REUTERS, SWITZERLAND: Rights groups urge U.N. to remember Chinese abuses.

By Karen Iley

GENEVA, April 4 (Reuters) - Activists joined forces on Thursday to urge the U.N. to address human rights gaps in China, where they said abuses against religious groups, minorities, labour organisers and pro-democracy activists were on the rise. The groups, speaking to reporters as the United Nations Commission on Human Rights held its annual session in Geneva, said the 53-member state body could not ignore violations taking place in a country home to a fifth of the world's population.

Concerns about China's record have slipped down the global agenda, overtaken by events in Afghanistan and Middle East. With the United States reduced to observer status this year, having been voted off the forum last year, no other country has stepped forward and announced it will bring a resolution on China. But representatives of the banned spiritual group Falun Gong, from the autonomous region of Tibet, the Muslim Uighurs and the U.S.-based group Human Rights in China, said the violations had not stopped just because attention had waned.

"There is a rapid and a general deterioration of the human rights situation in China in every field," said Nicolas Becquelin, senior researcher at Human Rights in China (HRIC). "Here at the 58th session of the Commission on Human Rights it is absolutely imperative to push forward a resolution addressing the human rights situation in China," he said.

Chhime Chhoekyapa, the Geneva representative of the exiled Dalai Lama, who is calling for self-rule in Tibet, said China needed to be discussed on an equal footing with other countries. "Some (at the Commission on Human Rights) seem to shy away from talking about human rights in China," he said. "In order to help the international community prevent gross violations of human rights it is very important to talk about it on an equal footing, not in a selective way. I hope many governments will have the courage to talk freely and frankly."

A Falun Gong representative gave a harrowing account of how more than 150,000 people have been detained, sent to forced labour camps or mental hospitals without trial since the group was banned as an "[slanderous term employed by Chinese authorities]" in July 1999. Zhang Erping, President of Falun Gong International, said at least 390 people had died while in custody and that women were tortured, raped and forced to have abortions eight months into pregnancy in a bid to make them renounce Falun Gong.

Erkin Alptekin, Secretary General of the Unrepresented People Organisation, said Muslim Uighurs who are seeking an independent state of East Turkestan, had become victims of the global fight against terrorism, with more than 30 executions and 3,000 arrests since September 11. In a report two weeks ago, Amnesty International accused China of stepping up repression and executions of the separatist Muslim Uighurs by invoking the "war on terrorism".