MARY ROBINSON VISITS CHINA

On her first visit to China since the September 11 attacks on the United States, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said the country´s Muslim-dominated northwest was of particular concern.
Robinson also said she would press Beijing to set a date for a long-awaited visit by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.
"It is necessary to ensure that the requirement to combat terrorism is not used to clamp down on freedom of expression, legitimate dissent, freedom of association and so on," Robinson told Reuters news agency in an interview.
"I´ll particularly raise the problem of the Uighur people in Xinjiang and other individual cases," said Robinson, shortly before starting two days of talks with China´s leadership, including President Jiang Zemin.
China has called for international support for its campaign against ethnic Uighur Muslim separatists in the northwestern region of Xinjiang whom it says have links to Osama bin Laden, the man wanted by Washington for the September 11 attacks.
But human rights groups, Uighurs overseas and Western experts on Xinjiang say most Uighur activists have no links with bin Laden and campaign peacefully for greater political, economic and religious freedoms.
Police in Xinjiang said last month they had launched a fresh campaign against crime, including separatism and terrorism, sparking fears among rights activists of another wave of arrests and executions.
"The information that I´ve been given is that there is a serious situation of imprisonment, detention and torture," Robinson said of the situation in Xinjiang.
Torture would be high on the agenda in her meetings with Chinese leaders, including Jiang on Friday, Robinson said.
"I will be raising the issue of addressing the problem of torture here in China," she said. "I will be pressing for a date for the visit of the special rapporteur on torture."
Robinson’s visit begins just two days after the mass-execution in Beijing of 18 convicted criminals, ten of whom were shot inside 15 minutes. The ten formed part of a gang specialising in armed robberies and homicides. Another eight convicts found guilty of similar crimes, aged between 22 and 23, were put to death soon after.