E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6 page 17 57. While procurators, some of whom are resident in prisons and near police stations, are mandated to monitor police, the procuratorate’s dual functions of prosecution and police oversight means that it is unlikely to proactively uncover police malpractice, especially if such actions are seen as undermining the police’s ability to perform in their joint endeavour to crack down on growing crime. In other words, it is difficult to rely on the vigilance of procurators whose interest in convicting suspects as charged might compromise their ability to oversee the police and prison guards. In addition, procurators encounter substantial difficulties in practice to exercise their supervisory role, including because detainees are afraid to report instances of torture to them. The inefficiency of current complaint and oversight mechanisms is clear from the paucity of complaints and prosecutions in a country the size of China.66 58. International practice has shown that the most effective way to fight torture is through self-generating and/or self-sustaining social and political institutions including: a free and investigatory press, citizen-based human rights monitoring organizations, independent, fair and accessible courts and prosecutors, and the accountability that comes through regular elections. Judicial oversight is particularly important. Without a court system that judges cases fairly and independently according to law, thereby redressing grievances in a timely manner, the problem of torture cannot be brought under effective control, particularly in a context where police exercise wide discretion in matters of arrest and detention and are under great pressure to solve cases. 59. The Special Rapporteur is of the opinion that the establishment of a system of preventive visits to all places of detention as envisaged by the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture (OPCAT) would greatly enhance efforts to prevent torture or ill-treatment from occurring within places of detention. In this regard, the Special Rapporteur urges China to ratify the Optional Protocol and to establish a truly independent monitoring mechanism, where the members of the visiting commissions would be appointed for a fixed period and not subject to dismissal, to visit all places where persons are deprived of their liberty throughout the country. IV. DEPRIVATION OF LIBERTY FOR POLITICAL CRIMES AND FORCED RE-EDUCATION AS A FORM OF INHUMAN OR DEGRADING TREATMENT 60. The criminal justice system and its strong focus on admission of culpability, confessions and re-education is particularly disturbing in relation to political crimes. Although many such crimes, such as “organizing a counter-revolutionary group” and “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement” were abolished in 1997, members of the “democracy movement” and political dissidents who were sentenced before 1997 for these crimes are still serving long prison sentences today.67 The Special Rapporteur welcomes the decision of the Government of China to grant prisoners convicted of these crimes the same access to sentence reduction and parole as other prisoners, and notes the relatively large number of sentence reductions and early releases granted to such prisoners. However, prisoners are still serving sentences for counter-revolution, and several hundred more are serving sentences for “hooliganism”. Most systems provide for the release of prisoners serving sentences for a crime that is removed from the criminal law. Article 15, paragraph 1, of ICCPR suggests that, at a minimum, reviews of the prisoners’ sentences should be carried out. Release of all counter-revolutionaries and hooligans