By
Associated Press
BEIJING - China ratified a human rights treaty yesterday that activists said would help them pressure Beijing to legalize strikes and improve basic liberties, but some expressed skepticism about the government's timing.
The U.N.-sponsored pact, which China had been under pressure since 1997 to approve, requires governments to permit strikes, but it was not clear whether Beijing would end its ban on independent labor unions.
Dissidents and human rights activists said the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights set an important moral standard for a government that has jailed labor organizers and critics of communist rule.
"It will allow us to say, You signed the pact, but you're not implementing it," said dissident Ren Wanding, who has spent a total of 11 years in prison.
Critics said the vote by the executive committee of China's legislature was timed to diffuse international criticism.
The United Nations will hold an annual human rights conference in two weeks, where the Bush administration says it will sponsor a motion to censure China for human rights abuses. In July, the International Olympic Committee is to vote on Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Games.
"The ratification looks more like an appeal to the international community than a genuine policy change," said Xiao Qiang, executive director of New York-based Human Rights in China.
The economic pact and a companion treaty on political rights are meant to set basic standards for civil liberties. China signed the political pact in 1998 but says it is not ready to ratify it.
China has expressed reservations about the economic pact's requirement to permit independent labor unions.
In a brief report announcing the ratification, the official Xinhua News Agency said Beijing would assume that obligation "in line with relevant provisions" of its labor law. Chinese law allows only one union, which is controlled by the Communist Party.
Human rights activists and U.N. officials said they didn't understand what that statement meant. U.N. officials in Geneva said they would have to wait to see the official Chinese copy of the ratified pact.
Chinese officials could not be reached for comment.
"Any reservation on that would be disappointing in what otherwise is a welcome step," said Catherine Baber, a researcher in Hong Kong for Amnesty International. Baber said China is holding scores of activists who tried to form trade unions or organize workers' strikes or protests.
Yesterday, a Chinese pro-democracy group said a veteran activist was released after spending three years in a labor camp for reading a letter on Radio Free Asia, a U.S. government broadcaster, advocating independent unions.
Yang Qingheng was freed Monday, the China Democracy Party said in a statement from its office in New York City. The party's mainland leaders are in prison serving sentences of up to 13 years on subversion charges.
The treaty, once ratified, is supposed to have the force of law, but does not include penalties for failure to comply.
