Published by: World Tibet Network News Issue ID: 97/10/23

by Jacques Boyer

GENEVA, Oct 21 (AFP) - A ground-breaking UN human rights mission has visited some 30 convicts in China, during a fact-finding trip to prisons that once were off-limits to foreigners, a UN spokesman said Tuesday.

Political prisoners were among those interviewed by two members of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, but it was unclear if they included high-profile dissidents such as Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan, said the spokesman, John Mills.

Comprisiong the working group's chairman Kapil Siba, from India, and vice chairman Louis Joinet, from France, the mission wound up its 11-day trip -- conducted at Beijing's invitation -- on Thursday.

It was the first such mission by UN experts on arbitrary detention, and thus was being seen as a step towards better cooperation between China and the international community on the thorny issue of human rights.

It had been preceeded by an advance trip by Joinet last year, and by a 1993 visit by a UN rapporteur focusing on religious freedoms.

Siba and Joinet notably got into prisons which had never before been visited by foreign delegations.

These visits had been authorized following negotiations with Chinese leaders who accepted changes to a scheduled which they had first proposed, Mills said.

The UN envoys were able to meet in private with prisoners of their choice. Overall, some 30 inmates, including political prisoners, were interviewed, Mills said.

In Tibet, scene of popular discontent with Chinese rule, Siba and Joinet met four or five prisoners out of a list which they had submitted to the government, he added.

Their travels took them to Beijing, Shanghai, the Tibetan capital Lhasa, and Chengdu, capital city of the southwestern province of Sichuan.

They sat in on a trial in Beijing and held meetings with officials of China's supreme court, prosecutors' service, and ministries of justice, public security and foreign affairs.

They also met judges, prosectors, lawyers and legal specialists.

The prisons they visited were in Shanghai and Lhasa, while in Chengdu they inspected a facility for young delinquents, and a re-education center for women in Shanghai.

The envoys are to submit a report to the next meeting of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva next March.