GENEVA, Oct. 31, 2018 -- Chinese experts introduced their observations on human rights practice in China on Monday during a meeting held here jointly by the China Society for Human Rights Studies and the Chinese Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva.
Zhang Yonghe, executive director of the Human Rights Research Institute of the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said that as one of the basic rights, China's anti-poverty achievement is a comprehensive utilization of various efforts, including the high priority given by the government, the growth-driven poverty reduction and a strong policy support system.
Over the past 40 years of reform and opening-up, more than 700 million poor people in China have been lifted out of poverty, and the rural poverty rate in China has fallen from 97.5 percent in 1978 to 4.5 percent in 2016.
Zuliyati Simayi, deputy dean of the College of Politics and Public Administration of Xinjiang University, said at the meeting that employment is the biggest welfare for people's livelihood, and the right to work and employment is an important part of the right of human development.
At present, she said, through the focus on those deep poverty-hit areas, investment promotion, employment training and various models to improve the employment rate, the overall employment situation of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang has been improved.
Li Changlin, a professor at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law, said that in the past 30 years, China has established a relatively complete juvenile criminal justice system, which embraces specialized and professional juvenile criminal justice personnel and organizations.
"China has made outstanding achievements in the protection of the legal rights of minors, especially juvenile criminal suspects and defendants," he said.
Dawa Cairen, a researcher at the Institute of Religious Studies at the China Tibetology Research Center, said that over the years, the central government and the Tibet Autonomous Region government have fully respected citizens' rights to freedom of religious belief.
All religions in Tibet are equally respected and protected, he said, adding that normal religious activities and religious beliefs are also well protected by law.
With a total of 1,787 religious places and more than 46,000 monks and nuns, Tibetan religious believers enjoy full freedom to carry out normal religious activities, he noted.
Zhang Nan, a researcher at the School of Anti-Terrorism Law at Northwest University of Political Science and Law, said that Xinjiang's vocational education and training program should be viewed as a constructive practice to help eliminate the soil that breeds terrorism and extremism.
He said that the trainees under the vocational education and training program are only limited to those who are influenced by terrorism and extremism, suspected of minor criminal offenses and can be dealt with leniently.
For those people, he said, Xinjiang has provided them with free vocational education and training to help improve their ability to obtain more knowledge and information through mastering the country's common language, acquire legal knowledge to distinguish illegal behaviors, and get jobs through commanding vocational skills.
Wu Wenyang, a lecturer at the Institute of Human Rights at the China University of Political Science and Law, said that China has taken various measures to actively eliminate poverty, which has not only fundamentally improved people's living standards, but also provided more access to education, knowledge and information for the poor, thus helped them participate in a richer and more diverse spiritual and cultural life and create a safer and more stable social environment.
Some 50 diplomats and officials from the relevant international organizations attended the meeting on Monday. Before the meeting, China's Experts on human rights held discussions in Geneva with diplomats from the European Union, Denmark, Ireland, Egypt, etc.
