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The Mini heads
and used threatening body language. This contributed to a part- icularly bad meeting with officers of the Supreme Court.
6. One other feature of the visit was fencing between the Chinese and Australian sides on its title. The Chinese constantly referred to "Delegation of Parliamentarians" while the Australian preference was for the Human Rights Delegation". In-China, PIFA tried toda persuade the delegation to accept the Chinese nomenclature until beaten back by Schacht.
Detail on Individual Meetings
7. The call on the Development and Research Centre of the State
saw Zhang Pan, of Vice-Ministerial rank, give a general social and economic context to the study of human rights in China. This
was followed by a meeting with Zhu Entao, of the International Relations Department of the PSB (he is known to us and is a part- icipant in Interpol meetings). He had prepared well for the meeting and was prepared to answer aggressive questions in detail. He described the procedures for arrest and detention but refused to be drawn on the number of executions which was a question for the Supreme Court (the Supreme Court later refused to provide a number on the grounds that this information could not be divulged to foreigners). Executions were carried out by the judicial police, unless their manpower proved inadequate in which case the job was shared out to other units. The meeting lasted 2 hours and individual members of the delegation were able to have a follow up session the next day. Questions were not submitted in advance but the delegation did give PIFA a general indication of their area of interest for each meeting in order that their Chinese interlocuters should be well prepared.
8. The call on the Supreme People's Procuratorate (roughly the equivalent of the French Investigating Magistrate), was reasonably friendly but the call
but the call on the Supreme People's Court went badly. The Chinese officials were extremely cautious and very ready to take offence. The delegation handed over a list of
a list of names and were aggressive in their questioning. PIFA managed to secure the reluctant agreement of the Court to a follow up meeting with individual officials which took place on the specific conditions: (a) that the Australian delegation must be polite; and (b) that questions be put in advance.
9. Probably as a consequence of the difficult call on PIFA the meeting with Vice-Minister of Justice Jinjan did not take place. He was replaced by the Head of the Ministry's Foreign Affairs Bureau, who did however provide a competent briefing. Much more interesting were meetings with lawyers who defended dissidents, in particular Pan Shizhao, of the Fifth Peking Lawyers Office who had defended Liu Xiaobo. Pan, an impressive figure in his late 50s,
lady lawyers from the First and Fourth
was accompanied by tw
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/Peking