World Tibet Network News Tuesday, March 03, 1998

BEIJING, March 3 (AFP) - Despite some high-profile initiatives, the Chinese government still practised gross violations of human rights in 1997, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

The rights watchdog said that last year possibly thousands of protesters and suspected government opponents were arbitrarily detained.

"Grossly unfair trials, widespread torture and ill-treatment in police cells, prisons and labor camps, and the extensive use of the death penalty" all continued, according to Amnesty.

It said that despite a repeal of the crime of "counter-revolution" in March 1997, at least 2,000 prisoners convicted on such charges remain in jails.

"Despite some legal changes, Chinese legislation still allowed more than 200,000 people to be detained in 1997 without charge or trial for 're-education through labor'," the group said.

It quoted "official sources" as saying that between January and July last year between 300 and 400 cases of torture or ill-treatment were investigated among prisoners, but that many cases are not looked into and the figures do not reflect the real incidence of torture.

Amnesty added that in the western, mainly Moslem province of Xinjiang, a crackdown on Muslim nationalists and alleged terrorists intensified.

It said hundreds of people were rounded up and at least 15 sentenced to death at mass trials, with at least 12 of them executed immediately afterwards.

In the troubled province of Tibet at least 96 people were detained, with some arrested for what Amnesty called a peaceful protest against a ban on images of the Dalai Lamai, the Tibetan spiritual leader.

In June 1997, monks were locked inside a monastery for three weeks until they signed declarations denouncing him, Amnesty said.