China is to allow a senior UN official access to detention centres as part of an investigation into allegations of torture, according to the UN human rights agency.
Manfred Nowak, the UN Human Rights Commission's special investigator on torture, will visit China from Nov. 21 to Dec. 2 to meet with government officials and get a firsthand look at Chinese detention centers.
"There are all kinds of allegations ranging from Falun Gong people to dissidents about the treatment in re-education through labor camps," Nowak said in a telephone interview. "I want to verify or falsify them as much as possible."
Nowak said he was pleased China had "finally accepted a visit, after years of negotiations," and said Beijing had not stipulated any conditions for his trip.
Nowak said he also would examine "in general, the way people are treated in prisons after they are convicted and in particular, those sentenced to death."
Nowak will include his findings in a report to be submitted at next year's meeting of the commission, the United Nations' top rights watchdog. Nowak, a Vienna law professor, is one of several experts appointed by the 53-nation body.
While China outlawed torture in 1996, activists and lawyers say it is widely practiced in the country. But China's parliament recently has enacted new rules limiting police interrogations to 12 hours in a new effort to limit abuses after a series of highly publicised complaints.
China has drawn international criticism amid allegations of police torture and the government's use of the death penalty.
Beijing has never allowed a UN torture expert to visit the country, but it has in the past granted such permission to experts on religious tolerance and arbitrary detention.
In June, Nowak and three other investigators decided to launch an inquiry into allegations of torture at the US prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other US facilities holding terrorist suspects.
AP