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Rights group approves abolition of abusive laws

"Legislation is just the first step."

Amnesty International statement

International rights group Amnesty International has approved China's abolition of vagrancy detention laws it says have led to widespread abuse and mistreatment of the homeless, an official statement received yesterday said.

But it has called for more action by Chinese authorities, in particular the abolition of the "re-education through labor" penal code, another form of administrative detention prone to abuse.

The reforms scrap the controversial "custody and repatriation" law on August 1 and hands responsibility for the welfare of vagrants and homeless people from the police to civil affairs departments.

Amnesty said the move would go some way to ending the abuse, forced labour and extortion of vagrants by operators of shelters for the homeless.

"If implemented effectively, the new vagrancy regulations should help to curb the widespread abuses that have characterized the treatment of some of China's most vulnerable groups of people," London-based Amnesty said in a statement.

"But legislation is just the first step -- reforms must be implemented fully at the local level and accompanied by other safeguards to make officials fully accountable for their actions."

Millions of migrants flood into the cities from poor rural areas each year in search of work.

But unable to get work papers, many of them, including thousands of children and mentally ill, are placed in retention camps where detainees are often subjected to rape, beatings, extortion and forced labor, Amnesty said.

While it hails the reform, Amnesty has urged Beijing to go further and release all detainees as well as scrap the "re-education through labor" system.
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