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	China evicts many to make way for the Games by News agencies China   July 2008   With the Olympic Games starting in just 20 days time, China"s appears to have pulled out all stops to make Beijing look good. But a human rights group reports that more than a million people have been forced out of their homes to make way for the Games. Outside Beijing, stories of brutal-forced evictions have surfaced.   This week Beijing is practising the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. This summer, this city has got the world"s attention.   That means it had to think very carefully about how it handles people like Yu Ping Diu. We meet her earlier this week at home. Officials plan to knock down her house to make way for flower beds - they are already digging the earth. The police watched from across the road, but they didn"t storm in.   Early the next morning we come back, the house and Mrs Yu are gone. The police decided to evict her in the middle of the night - the only time this summer when no-one"s watching.   Outside of Beijing local officials don"t have to worry about the Olympic attention. A village eviction was filmed in May in a province outside Beijing and was posted on YouTube, in the film men punch and kick people who refuse to leave their homes. One of them, is kicked in the head and seriously injured.   This morning we found that man still recovering in hospital. He allowed us to film him, but was too scared to be interviewed. We find the remains of the home he was defending. It"s been knocked down to make way for blocks of flats. It"s difficult to get any official answers.   When you get away from Beijing and from all the Olympic attention there is less official need to justify what goes on. We try the man"s neighbours. They don"t even want to open the door. Their house is set to be knocked down as well. "Of course we are scared," says the woman inside.   Editors Note: The practice of the forced removal of home owners in the face of developers seems now common practice in many growing Chinese cities. Many citizens have protested, that they receive inadequate compensation and have been left financially much worse off.   Chinese Public Interest lawyers have been struggling within the legal system to protect the property rights of hundreds of thousands of poor Chinese in the face of property developers who have often colluded with local party officals to rush through developments for financial gain, with scant regard for citzen rights.   For a party that is meant to represent the interests of the people, China’s Communist Party has been accused of neglecting the rule of law for it"s own people in it"s rush to modernize.   Lawyers complain that the Chinese constitution does offer some protections to home owners but local government corruption and the greed of developers means poorer property owners most often miss out on reasonable compensation or adequate legal protection.
	Prison overcrowding hinders peace process in post-conflict States by United Nations News   Sept 2008   Ineffective judicial systems are leading to prison overcrowding in countries with United Nations peacekeeping operations and can obstruct these blue helmet missions, senior officials have told a Department of Peacekeeping (DPKO) meeting in New York.   Patricia O’Brien, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, said that the promotion of the rule of law at both the national and international levels was “at the very heart of the UN mission.”   “The work that you do as the heads of corrections and justice components of peacekeeping missions is at the sharp end and is absolutely key to the UN delivery of rule of law assistance to States,” said Ms. O’Brien.   DPKO supports post-conflict States in their policing and corrections functions by offering assistance in reforming and managing prisons, preparing constitutional reforms, and creating processes to monitor and reconstruct legal systems.   The meeting heard that prison overcrowding in some countries was due to a combination of inadequate detention facilities and a judicial system lacking in courts, judges, prosecutors and defence counsellors.   Overcrowding in prisons is a consequence of ineffective legal structures in many countries with peacekeeping missions, where more than 90 per cent of prisoners are pre-trial detainees.   The National Penitentiary in Haiti, which was built to house 450 detainees but currently holds 3,800, and the lack of basic amenities in some prisons have led to detainees starving to death, were also used as examples of how some countries are seriously lacking in sufficient penal infrastructure.   “This undermines public confidence in the rebuilding efforts taking place in the justice sector. Without sustained, balanced support to all three pillars of the justice system – police, justice and corrections – sustainable peace in not achievable,” said the Assistant-Secretary-General of Rule of Law and Institutions, Dmitry Titov.   July 2008   DR Congo: UN voices alarm at rising number of prison deaths.   Human rights officials with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have expressed serious concern about the living conditions in the Mbuji Mayi central prison, where at least 26 prisoners have died from severe and acute malnutrition since February.   In the latest incident at the prison, located in Kasaï Oriental province, four prisoners died of hunger last week, bringing the total number of deaths in one month to 10.   Staff from the UN mission, known as MONUC, visited the prison to investigate after being informed about the new deaths. They found there are more than 20 prisoners on the verge of death in the prison, which houses 425 prisoners in a facility originally designed for 200.   In addition, the four prisoners who died last week were on a list of 30 prisoners whose health condition was considered alarming, and who required urgent medical care.   “MONUC expressed deep dissatisfaction to the provincial authorities on the living conditions of the prisoners,” said MONUC Mbuji Mayi human rights officer Assiongbon Tettekpoe.   “Our concern is even greater as we noted that among these deaths, many of them are defendants, who are therefore presumed innocent because they have not been judged due to the slowness of the legal process,” he added.   MONUC was particularly concerned at the fact that there are no specific measures being taken to ensure good conditions of detention in the prisons of Kasaï Oriental province, despite the high number of deaths.   The mission has emphasized that Congolese authorities have the primary responsibility to ensure reasonable detention conditions for prisoners in all of the country’s prisons.   To address the problem of malnutrition in the Mbuji Mayi prison, MONUC has suggested instituting a specific food and health-care budget for the prisoners. For the time being, the mission is providing water to the prison on a weekly basis. It also distributed corn for the prisoners twice a week between January and May.
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