Torture still widespread in China, says UN investigator

Immersion in sewage, ripping out fingernails, sleep deprivation, cigarette burns and beatings with electric prods - these are some of the torture methods used by China's police and prison officers to extract confessions and maintain discipline, a United Nations investigation has found.

Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said yesterday that abuse of suspects and prisoners remained widespread in China. Treatment was far worse than international norms, despite recent signs of improvement.

Mr Nowak's investigation was the first ever permitted by China and, as such, represents a breakthrough in human rights. Despite this, he said he had been obstructed by security officials, who intimidated some victims and their relatives or prevented them from seeing him.

However, he was able to visit prisons, detention centres and "re-education" labour camps in Beijing and the troubled regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as interviewing academics, justice officials and detainees. Among the prisoners, Mr Nowak said he observed a "palpable level of fear and self-censorship", which he had not seen in missions to other countries.

Human rights groups say brutality and degradation are common in Chinese prisons, where many of the victims are from the Tibetan and Uighur ethnic minorities, political dissidents, followers of the banned Falun Gong sect and members of underground churches.

Although China outlawed torture in 1996, its definition of illegal acts - those leaving physical marks - is so narrow that interrogators can employ a wide range of methods contravening UN standards. Suspects are manacled in contorted positions, deprived of sleep and subjected to psychological torture. Some techniques have been given names, such as "reversing an aeroplane", where a victim must remain standing, bent double, with arms splayed upwards and backwards.

Mr Nowak welcomed an apparent decline in the incidence of torture, as well as improved police training. But one big problem, he said, was that officers remained under heavy pressure to obtain confessions. Even after imprisonment, those who refuse to admit guilt are subjected to "re-education", aimed at breaking their will. Mr Nowak called this "inhumane and degrading punishment".

Rights groups say Mr Nowak's visit is a step in the right direction, but that China still has far to go. "The government maintains a system of laws and practices that give rise to torture," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.

He urged China to move away from a confession-based prosecution system, use independent monitors at detention centres and allow suspects earlier access to lawyers. "This isn't rocket science," he said. "It's what the government should do if it's serious about eradicating torture."