Published by: World Tibet Network News,Thursday, Mar 14, 1996

March 12, 1996, APn

Systematic human rights abuses detailed in Amnesty International's report on China:

-- Arbitrary law enforcement, as in the case of 50-year-old painter Yan Zhengxue, who was severely beaten July 2, 1993 by three Beijing policemen after an argument with a bus conductor.

He sued his attackers, one of whom was given a suspended sentence and ordered to pay compensation, But police subsequently accused Yan of bicycle theft, prompting a municipal to sentence him, without formal charge or trial, to two years of labor camp.

--Use of the state secrets law to punish and imprison journalists and other alleged prisoners of conscience.

--Administrative detention, which is used to hold several hundred thousand people each year without formal charges or trial for months, sometimes years.

--Unfair trials, with defendants often considered guilty before conviction. In a number of prominent cases like that of journalist Gao Yu, who was convicted of leaking state secrets, trials are conducted in secret.

--Imprisonment for political dissent. Amnesty International said it has identified 3,000 people jailed for political reasons since 1989, although it believes the total number to be much higher.

--Cruel, inhumane or degrading conditions of imprisonment, including incarceration in tiny, dark cells without ventilation or sanitation, prolonged handcuffing, exposure to intense heat and cold, deprivation of food and sleep, and medieval forms of physical constraint.

--Repression of ethnic and religious minorities. Unauthorized churches, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and other religious establishments in many cases have been closed and demolished and their adherents punished.

--Abuses connected with the enforcement of China's stringent family planning program, including forced abortions, sterilizations and infanticide, and demolition of the houses of women who have unauthorized babies.