On her last visit as UN human rights chief, Mary Robinson said yesterday China has made small steps on human rights, such as allowing family access to labor camp prisoners, but still has a long way to go.
After five years in office and seven visits to China, Robinson said "technical cooperation" between her office and Beijing had helped spawn minimal reforms to the widely criticized laogai or "re-education through labor" system.
It had also spurred human rights training for police and prison officers and discussions on introducing human rights education into primary and secondary schools, she said.
PHOTO: AP
But rights remained a concern as outlawed groups such as the Falun Gong spiritual movement were repressed, the death penalty was used widely, Tibet's culture was diluted and Tibetans had became a minority in the region's main city, Lhasa, she said.
The outspoken Robinson acknowledged some progress on laogai reform, a cornerstone of her China campaign, but said the government needed to abolish the system to fulfil a UN covenant on civil and political rights it has promised to ratify.
"We continue to bring it home to the Chinese authorities that, at the moment, re-education through labor for what they call punishment of minor crimes would not satisfy the criteria," she told reporters in reference to the covenant.
China says human rights have improved dramatically under Communist rule and accuses Western critics of imposing their values on a developing and largely impoverished country.
But Robinson said she told Chinese officials of her concerns that people were incarcerated in mental institutions for political reasons, as outlined in a report by the group Human Rights Watch earlier this month.
Robinson said she had also pressed vice foreign minister Wang Guangya to release prisoners, including Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, jailed for eight years for mailing newspaper clippings to her husband who lives in America, and the historian Tohti Tunyaz.
She said the list included four men accused of leading mass labor protests in the northeastern city of Liaoyang in March.
Robinson said she had brought up many of the cases on previous visits but to no apparent avail. Wang gave assurances the cases were being examined, she said.
"I have made it clear both to the Chinese authorities and more publicly that I'm concerned that there isn't as much progress in relation to individual cases," she said.
However, China's rulers were grappling to find a new value system as discontent over greed and corruption spread and they showed signs of moving towards their critics on human rights, she said.
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