Oft-Criticized China Trumpets Human Rights Progress

BEIJING (Reuters) - China, accused of cracking down on Muslim Uighurs in its western region of Xinjiang under the guise of fighting terrorism, Wednesday trumpeted its progress in human rights.

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The State Council, or cabinet, painted a rosy picture of China's rights record in 2004 in a 41-page policy paper a day after two U.S.-based rights watchdogs accused Beijing of a "wholesale assault" on the Uighurs' faith.

But the paper also said Chinese prosecutors had launched a campaign against government officials abusing their power and infringing upon people's rights, such as extorting confessions by torture and illegal detention.

"In total, 1,595 government functionaries suspected of criminal activities were investigated and prosecuted (in 2004), thus effectively bringing under control offences of infringement of rights," said the document, China's eighth since 1991.

The paper's release came a month after China freed one of its highest-profile political prisoners, Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, and after Washington opted not to seek a U.N. rebuke of China's rights record because of China's progress.

It said economic growth and rising living standards contributed to progress in the Chinese people's right to subsistence and development, their civil, political, judicial, economic, social and cultural rights as well as the rights of ethnic minorities and the disabled.

"The year 2004 ... saw all-round progress in China's human rights undertakings," the cabinet said in the paper, weeks before the European Union considers whether to lift an arms embargo on China, imposed after the People's Liberation Army crushed the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations for democracy.

China's definition of human rights differs from that of the West, insisting that the fundamental rights of its 1.3 billion people to food, clothing and housing take precedence over individual civil liberties.

The policy paper defended the government, saying it has poured billions of dollars to develop the impoverished hinterland inhabited mainly by ethnic minorities.

"Increased financial input from the state has brought about rapid economic and social development in ethnic-minority areas and continuously improved the living standard of ethnic minority peoples," the paper said.

The minority-heavy regions of Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Guangxi and Ningxia recorded double-digit economic growth last year and education in minority areas "advanced with great strides," it said.

Uighurs make up 8 million of Xinjiang's population of 19 million, with many favoring greater autonomy for the region. Separatists have been fighting for decades to make the region an independent homeland they would call East Turkestan.

The paper did not address accusations by two U.S. rights watchdogs, but China had previously denied it suppresses Islam among Uighurs in Xinjiang and said it only wants to stop the forces of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism in the region.

China had more than 100 million adherents of various religions, more than 100,000 venues for religious activities and 300,000 clerics -- illustrating the religious freedom that Chinese people enjoy, the paper said.

Though a new national law enshrines religious belief as a basic right of all citizens, China's stability-obsessed government forbids worship outside designated religious organizations and its official Catholic church does not recognize the Vatican.

The paper said about 35 million copies of the Bible had been published since the atheist Communists swept to power in 1949.