The United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Mrs Mary Robinson, began a visit to China yesterday with a warning to her hosts not to use the war against terror as an excuse for repression.
Mrs Robinson told reporters in Beijing she would raise individual cases of prisoners as well as her concerns about the "widespread" use of torture in China and the treatment of people in the regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.
Mrs Robinson, who is due to meet President Jiang Zemin during her two-day trip, began the visit by signing an agreement between the UN and China on further co-operation in human rights dialogue during 2002.
Afterwards, answering questions alongside co-signatory Vice-Foreign Minister Mr Wang Guangya, she made it clear measures to crack down on terrorism should not be used to justify rights abuses.
The former Irish president said she was concerned at "a worrying trend in a number of countries to use the excuse of combating terrorism to clamp down on freedom of expression and legitimate dissent which is not violent".
She specifically highlighted the situation of the ethnic Uighur Muslim population of Xinjiang, China's farthest west region, where rights groups have claimed a crackdown against separatists has been stepped up since the September 11th attacks on the United States.
In anti-terror campaigns, "there must also be very clear boundaries and I am worried specifically about the Uighur population in Xinjiang, I am worried about the situation in areas like Tibet for example, which I wish to raise," she said.
"I adopt a two-pronged approach. One is to encourage this co-operation and the other is to express concerns about serious situations of human rights violations or shortcomings, that I will also do."
China later denied there were abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet and said "the situation there is very good".
Beijing has repeatedly said it is "a victim of terrorism" in Xinjiang, which borders Afghanistan.
Mrs Robinson said that among other issues she would bring up was the widespread problem of torture in China.
"I will also raise some individual cases and express concerns. I do this in each country that I visit," she said.
Analysts have warned that however tough Mrs Robinson's talk, international attention is probably too firmly focused on the anti-terror coalition, of which China is a part, to place much pressure on Beijing over human rights.