AFP: British Team in China for Dialogue on Human Rights

BEIJING, Feb 12, 2001 -- (Agence France Presse) A senior delegation from Britain's foreign office began three days of talks on human rights in China on Monday, the British embassy in Beijing said. Ros Marsden, a top official in charge of the Asia Pacific, will meet officials from the Chinese foreign ministry and other agencies in wide-ranging talks that could cover the ongoing crackdown on the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. "Falun Gong may not be discussed per se, but perhaps in terms of alleged human rights abuses linked to the Falun Gong," an embassy official told AFP. The items likely to be on the agenda over the next three days range from human rights in a narrow political sense to economic and social rights, the embassy said. "Everyone knows roughly the direction we would like to see human rights move in China, and this is one of the ways to bring it about," the embassy official said. The meeting got underway as the London-based Amnesty International said in a report that torture has become "widespread and systemic" in China with a growing range of officials resorting to extreme physical abuse. Torture takes place not only in labor camps and police stations, but also in private homes and in public, Amnesty said. Many people are being killed, it added. The main objective of the visit by the British delegation is "to get out and about" and also visit organizations that are not directly attached to the Chinese government, according to the embassy. The dialogue has been going on for several years, and delegations meet roughly once or twice a year, either in Beijing or London. Although China usually bristles at criticism of its human rights record, it welcomes the dialogue with Britain for reasons such as the assistance it can get to move legal reform along. "I think the Chinese have always been willing to have a dialogue with other countries, when they think it is a constructive one," the embassy official said. "They are genuinely interested in western practices and want to know about the experiences of the British legal system." China also has a separate human rights dialogue with the European Union, holding nine sessions since its beginning in 1997. The EU said in late January it was concerned about China's lack of progress in areas such as restricted freedom of assembly, expression and association and the violation of freedom of religion and belief. U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch said in a report in December that the Chinese government showed no signs of easing stringent curbs on basic freedoms during 2000. Beijing, preoccupied with social stability, reacted with "tight political control" to worker and farmer unrest and to separatist movements in Tibet and the largely Muslim Xinjiang region, the group wrote in its annual report.