China announces reforms to improve rights record

Amid global criticism over its rights record, China today announced reforms in laws protecting human rights as well as outlined measures to improve the conditions of prisons and detention centres.
Chinese judicial authorities have introduced reforms in many areas in order to further improve the legal guarantee procedure of human rights, an official white paper issued today said.
Titled "New Progress in the Judicial Protection of Human Rights in China", the White Paper issued by the central cabinet said China has introduced reforms in the case admitting system by converting the case-filing review system into a case-filing register system.
China has revised the Criminal Procedure Law, and implemented principles of legality, in dubio pro reo, exclusion of unlawful evidence, the white paper said.

The reforms followed criticism over the treatment meted out to dissidents and the human rights lawyers with prison terms.
The country also revises the Civil Procedure Law to effectively settle disputes, revised the Administrative Procedure Law to strengthen the protection of legitimate rights and interests of private parties in administrative lawsuits, the white paper said, adding it enacted the first Anti-Domestic Violence Law to strengthen legal protection of the personal rights of victims of domestic violence.

Judicial authorities have "put in place a system to exclude unlawful evidence and protect the legitimate rights and interests of criminal suspects," the paper said.

In 2014, the Ministry of Public Security issued more explicit regulations concerning the scope of and interrogation recording requirements for cases subject to audio and video recording.
The paper also outlined measures to improve the conditions of prisons and detention houses and to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of detainees to address criticism over labour camps and poor conditions in jails.
In 2015, the procuratorial organs at all levels demanded
the withdrawal of 10,384 cases wrongly filed by investigation bodies and regulated 31,874 cases of illegal conduct involving abuse of compulsory measures and unlawfully obtaining evidence, the white paper said.

China has also improved procedures for juvenile criminal cases to help underage offenders better reintegrate into the society, it said.
China will enhance scrutiny of supervisory activities and the execution of punishment, standardise commutation, parole, and execution of sentence outside prison, it said.
The new rules stipulate that criminal defendants and appellants no longer need to wear clothing bearing the name of the detention house, so as to safeguard the detainees' personal dignity, safety, legal property, and legitimate rights including the rights to defence, to appeal, to complain, and to report violations of law, the white paper said.
By the end of 2015, psychological counselling rooms had been built in 2,169 detention houses in China, and 2,207 detention houses had provided two-way video via the internet for those who serve their term of imprisonment in the detention houses, the white paper said.

It added that medical services and life management in prisons and detention houses will be standardised in a bid to safeguard detainees' right to health, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The country will also standardise commutation, parole and execution of sentence outside prison and safeguard detainees' rights to implementation of penalty change, the white paper said.
Officials say over the years Chinese prison system is undergoing reforms.
Since, last yearChina has banned the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners for organ transplants and ordered all hospitals stop using organs from death-row prisoners.
The ban came amid criticism over the high rate of executions to cater to the heavy demand for organs.

Ahead of the ban China also removed a number of economic offences from the category of death sentence as part of its judicial reforms which brought down the number of executions.