E/CN.4/1996/72/Add.4 page 3 6. In addition to official meetings and meetings with local community leaders, the Special Rapporteur met representatives of several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), religious institutions and trade unions, including Amnesty International, the Runnymede Trust, the Institute for Race Relations, the Minority Rights Group, the Law Society, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Churches Commission for Racial Justice, the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry. 7. The Special Rapporteur concluded his trip with a visit to the Campsfield holding centre at Kidlington, near Oxford, to the north of London, where “illegal” immigrants and asylum-seekers are held while waiting to be either expelled or authorized to enter Britain after consideration of their cases. 8. A detailed schedule of the mission appears in the annex to this report. 9. The Special Rapporteur would like to convey his deep gratitude to the Government of the United Kingdom for its diligence in arranging his visit, for the quality of the hospitality he received, and for the spirit of cooperation displayed by its representatives. He also thanks the representatives of non-governmental organizations who agreed to see him and provided him with information. C. Breakdown of the population of the United Kingdom 10. According to the official census carried out in 1991 by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys (OPCS), there are 51,874,000 Whites and 3,015,000 members of minority ethnic groups (see Table 1). Among these ethnic groups, a distinction has been made between Blacks (Afro-Caribbeans, Africans and other Blacks) and Asians (Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Chinese and other Asians). Overall, minorities make up 5.5 per cent of the population of the United Kingdom. 11. It is important to note that, according to information obtained from several official and unofficial sources, most members of ethnic minorities, in a spirit of solidarity and for political purposes, prefer to be called “Black”. Therefore, the use of the term “Blacks” throughout the rest of this report will be used in a political rather than a racial sense and will denote all the ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. The terms “Black” and “ethnic minority” are also used in studies on the British population.