Torture envoy in China

The UN envoy on torture, Manfred Nowak, arrived in China on Monday for a two-week tour that will take in Beijing, Tibet and the restive Muslim region of Xinjiang as well as some detention centers, Reuters reported. The visit comes as Beijing grapples with a series of cases in which people have been wrongly convicted after giving forced confessions. In the summer, China's parliament passed a bill mandating punishment for policemen who torture detainees during interrogation.