The full text of National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010)

China published its first working plan on human rights Monday, pledging to further protect and improve human rights conditions.

The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010), issued by the Information Office of the State Council, or Cabinet, highlighted goals that would be implemented in less than two years.

This action made China one of 26 countries that have responded to the United Nations' call to establish a national human rights plan since 1993.

The 54-page document is divided into five sections: Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; Civil and Political Rights; Rights and Interests of Ethnic Minorities, Women, Children, Elderly People and the Disabled; Education in Human Rights; and Performing International Human Rights Duties, and Conducting Exchanges and Cooperation in the Field of International Human Rights.

"The realization of human rights in the broadest sense has been a long-cherished ideal of mankind and also a long-sought goal of the Chinese government and people," the document stated.

China plans to continue to "raise the level of ensuring people's civil and political rights" through improving democracy and the rule of law, it said.

Civil, political rights to be guaranteed

The death of a Chinese man, Li Qiaoming, at a police station in Yunnan Province two months ago sparked a public outcry for enhancing transparency and supervision of the detention system.

These concerns were addressed in the second section of China's new human rights action plan, which stipulates principles for safeguarding detainees' rights and treatment.

Corporal punishment, abuse, insulting detainees or the extraction of confessions by torture will be strictly prohibited, according to the document.

"All interrogation rooms must impose a physical separation between detainees and interrogators," it stated, adding that a system for conducting physical examinations of detainees before and after an interrogation will be introduced.

Detainees, their families and society at large will be informed of detainees' rights as well as law-enforcement standards and procedures. Real-time supervision conducted by the people's procuratorate on law enforcement in prisons and detention houses will be intensified, according to the document.

"For detainees' convenience, complaint letter boxes should be set up in their cells and a detainee may meet the procurator stationed in a prison or detention house by appointment, if the former feels he has been abused and wants to make a complaint," it said.

Statistics from the Supreme People's Procuratorate show that Chinese procuratorates punished 930 government workers in 2006 who illegally took people into custody and extorted confessions by torture.

Regarding the death penalty, the action plan stated it will be strictly controlled and prudently applied.

"Every precaution shall be taken in meting out a death sentence," and judicial procedures for death sentences will be stringently implemented.