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SCMP Reporter

THE United Nations last night called on Britain to submit a final report on human rights in Hong Kong next year.

  And it said British officials must explain then whether China's future reporting on freedoms in the territory had been settled.

  The move, designed to ensure Britain does not avoid the issue in the months running up to the handover, was prompted by pressure from Hong Kong human rights groups at a meeting of the Committee on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Geneva.

  Committee chairman Francisco Aguilar Urbina said he wanted the report in mid-1996 to allow further questioning of the British and Hong Kong governments this time next year.

  'We want to see how the problem with China has been resolved,' he said, after two days of examination of Hong Kong's human rights record and the future of monitoring under the covenant.

  The move is believed to be without precedent. Countries normally report once every five years.

  It reflects the seriousness with which the UN views doubts over the continuing monitoring of human rights in the territory after 1997.

  Mr Aguilar Urbina said he was happy with what the British side had said about its efforts to ensure China reports on human rights in the territory after 1997. He said Britain's efforts to get China to comply were encouraging and offered help.

  'If they need us, we are here,' he said.

  Foreign Office legal adviser Henry Steel, for the British Government, told the UN Britain had explained to China a number of ways it could continue to report, but he has not gone into any depth over how negotiations were progressing.

   Despite the committee's apparent optimism, some Legco members present at the hearings were suspicious Britain might not be able to reach a solution with China.

  Democrat Andrew Cheng Kar-foo said he wanted to know what the British Government would do if China refused to comply with its undertaking to report to the UN.

  'Britain has a hidden agenda to let it go and disappear and that is why we are frustrated,' he said.

  Independent Legco member Emily Lau Wai-hing said of the British and Hong Kong governments' appearances before the committee: 'They are giving a whole series of non-answers. They give a distinct impression that they want things to slide up to 1997 and wash their hands of it.

  'We want the committee to press the message to the British side that they have an obligation, they are party to a treaty on this.'   Hong Kong Solicitor-General, Daniel Fung QC, told the committee the workings of the police complaints system, the procedure for screening Vietnamese detainees and the return of the boat people, the legal aid system and the structure of the judiciary and the Court of Final Appeal.

  He explained at length how the detainees were counselled and admitted of the boat people problem: 'I personally recognise this as a human tragedy.'   But committee members complained about the way the camps were run. French member Christine Chanet, who has visited the camps, likened conditions to those in a concentration camp.



UN seeks extra report