Human Rights Day is observed on 10 December every year across the world. On this day, in the year 1948, United Nations General Assembly adopted, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) which is a milestone document that proclaims the inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being. Every human being is entitled to these rights regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
As Dr. Katrin Kinzelbach (Professor in International Politics of Human Rights) and Dr Hatla Thelle (Senior Researcher at the Danish Institute of Human Rights) declared in their article “Taking Human Rights to China: An Assessment of the EU's Approach”: “The protection of human rights in China has been a topic of international concern since the crackdown on Tiananmen Square during the night between 3 and 4 June 1989. Before that night, violations of human rights in China had not been an issue at the international level. In the early 1980s, the world was welcoming China back into the international community after 30 years of isolation during the Mao era and hoping for a share in the fast-growing Chinese market. But 1989 changed the picture of China overnight. The Chinese leadership was met with harsh criticism and sanctions and responded with equally harsh denial ad verbal counter-attacks. China also responded by beginning to issue Human Rights White Papers, explaining its policy and defending human rights protection in the country. European countries, in co-sponsorship with the United States, tried unsuccessfully to get a resolution on the human rights situation in China adopted by the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva.”
Today, the direction in which China plans to move with respect to human rights remains uncertain, in fact it seems quite alarming. Many photographers coming from within China or from abroad have raised this issue through a wide range of photographic series, offering a great variety of visual approaches and social comments. Below is a selection of a few authors that have inquired, more or less directly, into human rights concerns in China.
