UN calls on China to investigate torture

GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. Committee against Torture urged China Tuesday to investigate fully all allegations of torture and abolish administrative detention.

Its diplomatically worded conclusions, issued after a two-day examination last week of China's record, fell far short of condemning Beijing.

The committee, composed of 10 independent experts, expressed concern about the ``continuing allegations of serious incidents of torture, especially involving Tibetans and other national minorities.''

The committee welcomed China's continuing moves to bring its domestic legislation into line with the 1987 U.N. Convention against Torture, which it ratified a year later.

But it called for further reforms to incorporate the pact's definition of torture into domestic law. Human rights training should be provided for law enforcement officers, it said.

Rights groups charge that torture and ill-treatment occur frequently in administrative detention, where inmates are in legal limbo for up to three years with little chance of redress.

In a statement, Amnesty International criticized the U.N. committee for omitting reference to ``numerous cases of torture leading to death'' during secret or incommunicado custody.

The London-based rights group called on China to eliminate torture, which it alleges is widespread despite what it called Beijing's ``official whitewash'' of the problem.

Amnesty also regretted that the committee failed to address ''attempts by the Chinese authorities to suppress information on torture by imprisoning those who report it.''

``Despite these major gaps, the committee's recommendations, if fully implemented, would be a significant contribution toward the elimination of systemic torture in China,'' Amnesty said.

Human Rights in China also accuses the world's largest country of widespread torture, including ill-treatment of detained members of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong.

Spokesmen for the U.S.-based group said they regretted that the committee failed to denounce China for allegedly allowing evidence extracted by torture to be heard in court and for forcing women to undergo abortions and sterilizations.

Qiao Zonghuai, China's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, said that some of the committee's conclusions were based on ``totally unfounded'' allegations by non-governmental organizations.

He invited committee members to visit China to ``see the reality of the situation,'' but made no reference to the U.N. special rapporteur on torture. That investigator, British law professor Nigel Rodley, has been seeking a visit for one year.

Yu Ping, of the New York-based Human Rights in China group, told a news briefing: ``Under China's legislative system, evidence obtained through torture is still used in the courts. The committee didn't pay enough attention to this.

``Women in China are particularly vulnerable to torture, especially in family-planning programs where there are enforced abortions, sterilizations, illegal detentions and sometimes monetary fines,'' he added. ``We wish that the Committee against Torture had highlighted these problems.''

Ngawang Drakmargyapon, of the Tibet Bureau for U.N. Affairs in Geneva, which represents the government-in-exile of the Dalai Lama, said more than 30 Tibetans had died as a result of torture in prisons since the committee last took up China in 1996.

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