By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A U.N. panel of independent human rights experts on Friday expressed concerns about reports of summary executions and poor prison conditions in Rwanda, and about Australia's anti-terrorist legislation.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee, which is separate from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, said in a new report that it was also worried about the limited number of prosecutions of individuals related to Rwanda's 1994 genocide, in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered.
The 18-member committee's job is to monitor compliance with the 1976 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It periodically reviews and issues non-binding reports on its signatories and their compliance with the covenant.
It pointed to a number of possible breaches in Rwanda.
The report said there had been "reported cases of enforced disappearances and summary or arbitrary executions in Rwanda" and said the panel was worried "about the impunity apparently enjoyed by the police responsible for such violations."
The committee praised Rwanda for officially abolishing the death penalty but chided it for replacing it with life imprisonment in solitary confinement, which the report said was a violation of the 1976 covenant.
"The committee remains concerned about reports of deplorable conditions in some prisons, particularly as regards health conditions, access to health care and food," it said.
AUSTRALIAN LAW
In a separate report on Australia, the U.S. panel expressed concern about its 2005 Anti-Terrorist Act and other Australian counterterrorism measures, some of which appeared to be "incompatible" with the civil and political rights covenant.
The report said Australian anti-terrorism rules suffer from a vague definition of acts of terrorism and shift the burden of proof from the accuser to the person accused of terrorism.
The panel voiced concern about the so-far unused powers given to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation "to detain persons without access to a lawyer and in conditions of secrecy for up to seven-day renewable periods."
Australia's centre-left Labour Party government, which took office in 2007, has promised to review the Anti-Terrorist Act.
The U.N. panel was also worried about the rights of indigenous peoples in Australia who "are not sufficiently consulted in the decision-making process," the report said.
Australia announced on Friday that it has endorsed the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that it voted against when adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2007.
The U.N. welcomed Australia's decision and said it set an good example for the United States, Canada and New Zealand, which also have large indigenous populations and rejected the indigenous rights declaration. [nL3481392]
"The Australian move sets an important example which we hope will be followed by the three remaining states that opposed this key declaration when it was adopted," a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights said in Geneva.
(Editing by Anthony Boadle)