BEIJING - UN human rights chief Mary Robinson urged China yesterday at landmark talks on sensitive penal system reforms to scrap the ''reeducation through labor'' system it has used to lock away dissidents.
Hours later the Communist Party called for the ''complete elimination'' of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which it banned as a cult in 1999 and against which ''reeducation through labor'' has been a key weapon.
''If the cult is not removed ... the process of China's reform, opening-up, and socialist modernization drive will be affected,'' said an editorial in today's People's Daily, issued through Xinhua news agency.
Xinhua said the government cited 110 organizations and 271 individuals for anti-Falun Gong work in a move underscoring national resolve ''to wipe out the cancer of Falun Gong from society.''
The official statements did not unveil new policies in China's 19-month battle against Falun Gong, which has provoked strong international concern about violations of religious freedom and civil rights.
Earlier yesterday, Robinson, the UN high commissioner for human rights, opened a two-day seminar on punishment of minor crimes in Beijing, calling for ''a serious review leading to the abolition'' of the extrajudicial labor camp program.
''The concept of using forced labor as a punishment is against the accepted international human rights principles embodied in many international instruments,'' Robinson told Chinese officials and legal specialists.
Falun Gong representatives say 5,000 members of the spiritual group are undergoing reeducation labor in harsh conditions.
Robinson's remarks echoed demands by Western human rights activists and some Chinese legal specialists who say the 45-year practice of sending people to labor camps without trial or due process spawns widespread abuses, including arbitrary detention.
Calls to abolish labor camps go beyond China's official recommendation of reforms that would add judicial review to the process.
Sophia Woodman, research director for the New York-based Human Rights in China, cautioned that academic talk of reform ''doesn't mean that the security ministries have changed their point of view.''
Human Rights in China issued a report last week that quoted Chinese sources as saying 260,000 people were in labor camps, 60 percent for the catchall offense of ''disturbing public order.''
There was no direct Chinese reaction to Robinson's call