China Hammers Dissent Despite Looming UN Review

Days before China's human rights record comes under scrutiny before a key U.N. panel, the government's grip on dissent seems as firm as ever.

Chinese petitioners display each petition as they gather outside the State Council Information...

Chinese petitioners display each petition as they gather outside the State Council Information Office in Beijing, China, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2009 to seek justice for their grievances ranging from corruption, lost properties, murder to human rights. Most protests including these petitions in China sprout from the failure of local courts to deal with land seizures, layoffs and local corruption.

(Ng Han Guan/AP Photo)

Government critics have been rounded up and some imprisoned on vaguely defined state security charges. Corruption whistle-blowers have been bundled away, while discussion of sensitive political and social topics on the Internet remains tightly policed.

On Friday, officers stationed outside a government building in Beijing took away at least eight people — members of a loosely organized group of 30 who had traveled to the capital from around the country, seeking redress for various problems, almost all of them involving local corruption.

One member of the group, Li Fengxian, a gray-haired woman from the central province of Henan, held up a sign with the character for "injustice" painted on it.

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Li, 65, said she has spent years fighting officials in her village who she claimed give away a poverty allowance allotted to her family to other officials.

The police response underscores the government's determination to keep control over a fast-changing society — even in the face of a U.N. meeting to examine China's human rights record.

The review by the U.N. Human Rights Council, which begins Monday, is part of a new process that evaluates member countries in an effort to prompt improvements and address violations. The council, which replaced the discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission, has no enforcement powers, but is supposed to act as the world's moral conscience on human rights.

Following the review, the three-nation working group composed of Canada, India, and Nigeria will submit a report of their findings.

The stakes are high for China, one of five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, which wants to be seen as a responsible player in the international community. At the same time, the Communist leadership is worried about its grip on power slipping as the economic downturn and rising unemployment threaten to aggravate social unrest.