UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson...

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said China needed to rely on political reform rather than repression to deal with growing social unrest.Robinson, on her seventh and final visit to Beijing after five years as rights chief, said China had made progress on legal reform but the human rights picture - from treatment of ethnic Uighur Muslims to detention of labour activists - remained worrying. In a country that arbitrarily jailed people for labour unrest and imposed death sentences in cases unrelated to violence, the government needed to loosen political controls to appease those facing wrenching economic change, she said. "At the moment there is heightened labour unrest," Robinson told reporters after opening a workshop on judges and the judicial system."It's all the more necessary that China embraces the kind of political reform and opening up of society which will also be better for human rights and prepare China to ratify the covenant on civil and political rights," she said. Ethnic Uighurs living in China's northwest faced increased challenges to civil liberties following the September 11 terror attacks on the United States, which spurred Beijing to intensify its own battle against Muslim separatists, she said. Campaigns against crime were of "very grave concern" as they encouraged more frequent use of the death penalty. Unjustified detention of people in mental institutions and "re-education through labour" camps remained key concerns, she said. China says human rights conditions have improved dramatically under Communist rule and accuses Western critics of imposing their values on a country where people are more concerned about the right to food and shelter than free speech.