China ramps up campaign to redefine ‘human rights’

BEIJING, China (AFP) – China is ramping up a global campaign to promote its own vision of human rights, inviting the likes of North Korea and Syria to a forum on the topic and drafting other countries to back its policies at the UN.

Western nations have condemned China's rights record, including a security crackdown that has detained an estimated one million mostly Muslim minorities in re-education camps in northwest Xinjiang region.

China is responding with an increasingly strong counter-narrative, which emphasizes security and economic development over civil and political freedoms.

"The people of each country all have the right to decide for themselves their human rights development path," Chinese vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu told delegates at a summit on the issue this week.

Attendees at the "South-South human rights forum" included representatives from North Korea, Pakistan and Syria–three countries with their own chequered human rights records.

Beijing introduced a resolution at the UN Human Rights Council last year that "gutted procedures to hold countries accountable for human rights violations, suggesting 'dialogue' instead," Human Rights Watch researcher Maya Wang told AFP.

In October, 23 nations backed a British statement at the UN condemning China's human rights record in Xinjiang.

But China's allies countered with a statement of their own that won even broader support, with some 54 nations backing a text that heaped effusive praise on Beijing's "remarkable achievements in the field of human rights."