August 30, 2005

China's widely criticised justice system, with its police torture, arbitrary courts and heavy use of the death penalty, will be the focus of the UN human rights chief's visit this week.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour is due to meet China's justice minister today and the head of the Supreme People's Court on Thursday. She planned to discuss reforms to the legal system needed before Beijing can ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, a UN spokesman said.

Beijing signed the covenant, a cornerstone of global rights law, in 1998 to coincide with the first visit by a UN high commissioner, but has yet to join 154 other countries in ratifying it.

"The high commissioner would like to at least see some kind of timetable for ratification of the covenant," Jose Diaz, a spokesman from Ms Arbour's office, said in Beijing.

"There still needs to be quite a few changes or reforms to the justice system in order for China to be able to comply with the covenant on political rights."

Topics Ms Arbour would raise with Beijing officials would include the system of re-education through labour and the use of the death penalty, Mr Diaz said.

Beijing has talked this year about reforming the re-education through labour system that allows dissidents and government critics to be sent to re-education facilities for up to four years without trial.

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China has the world's biggest prison population with 1.5 million inmates held in 670 jails. Rights groups see its judicial system as subordinate to the ruling Communist Party and an instrument to maintain its grip on power.

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Mainland courts, police and prisons have come under closer public scrutiny this year after a series of high-profile wrongful convictions, including a butcher executed for murder in 1989 and proven innocent when the "victim" turned up alive this June.

More people - up to 12,000 - are put to death in China each year than the rest of the world combined, rights watchdogs say.

Mr Diaz said that while Beijing had made some moves to improve human rights, the country was still not in a position to adopt the UN covenant.

"There has been progress, but I think everyone would acknowledge there is quite a bit to be done," Mr Diaz said. "That's why she is here."

Ms Arbour, a former international war crimes prosecutor, is to stay until Friday.