BEIJING, Feb 26, 2001 -- (Reuters) UN human rights chief Mary Robinson urged China on Monday to scrap the "re-education through labor" system it has used to lock away dissidents and protesting members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement.
"The concept of using forced labor as a punishment is against the accepted international human rights principles embodied in many international instruments," Robinson told Chinese officials and legal experts.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, opening a seminar on punishment of minor crimes in Beijing, called for "a serious review leading to the abolition of the practice".
Robinson's remarks echoed demands by Western human rights activists and some Chinese legal experts who say the 45-year-old practice of sending people to labor camps without trial spawns widespread abuses, including arbitrary detention.
"We're very happy that Mary Robinson made this strong statement at the workshop and is standing with the people inside China who are looking at this issue," said Sophia Woodman, research director for the New York-based Human Rights in China.
REFORM OR ABOLITION?
Calls to abolish labor camps go beyond China's official recommendation of reforms to add judicial review to the process.
Woodman cautioned that academic talk of reform "doesn't mean that the security ministries have changed their point of view".
Human Rights in China issued a report last week which quoted Chinese sources as saying 260,000 people were in labor camps, 60 percent of them for the catch-all offense of "disturbing public order".
Falun Gong spokespeople say 5,000 members of the spiritual group, which China banned in 1999 as an "[Chinese government's slanderous word]", are in labor camps.
There was no direct Chinese reaction to Robinson's call.
Addressing the seminar, Vice-Foreign Minister Wang Guangya said: "No country's human rights record is 100 percent perfect."
"We hope not only to work hard to improve our record, but to learn from the experience of other countries," he said. ... OLYMPICS, GENEVA SPOTLIGHT RIGHTS
China, which insisted last week sports and politics should be kept separate as International Olympics Committee (IOC) inspectors evaluated Beijing's 2008 bid, freed Wei and Wang to help its unsuccessful bid for the 2000 Games, which went to Sydney. They were jailed again later.
Several dissidents were detained during the Olympic inspection and a woman who wrote to the IOC asking it to press Beijing to free political prisoners was sent to a labor camp for two years.
The visit by Robinson, who arrived on Sunday, also comes as Beijing is steeling for its annual fight to avoid formal censure at the annual UN rights meeting in Geneva next month.
And while she is in Beijing, the U.S. State Department will publish its annual global human rights report -- an event which has sparked furious reaction from China in previous years.
The report, due to be released at 1700 GMT on Monday, is expected to raise concerns about China's crackdown on Falun Gong, its tough policies in the Buddhist region of Tibet and curbs on the Internet.
All content published on this website is copyrighted by Minghui.org. Minghui will produce compilations of its online content regularly and on special occasions.
Category: Falun Dafa in the Media
