Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/China.htm
|
|||||||||||
|
CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in China. Some of these links may lead to websites that
present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No attempt
has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking for
material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
FEATURED ARTICLES *** The
disappeared - Accounts from inside China's secret prisons Chieu Luu
and Matt Rivers, Cable News Network CNN, 24 November 2017 www.cnn.com/2017/11/23/asia/china-lawyers-disappeared/index.html [accessed 25
November 2017] The 709 crackdown -
While being a human rights lawyer has never been an easy path in Communist
China, forced disappearances of lawyers were rare before 2015. But on July 9 of
that year, prominent Beijing rights lawyer Wang Yu disappeared, along with
her husband, also a lawyer, and their teenage son. The following day,
police raided Wang's law firm and detained seven of her colleagues. Seven
other rights lawyers were also detained or reported missing, according to the
Hong-Kong based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, which has
meticulously documented the cases. It became known as the "709
crackdown" -- a reference to the date the first arrests occurred. Sui was among them.
He'd earlier in the day spoken to two foreign media outlets to raise concern
about Wang's disappearance. That night, a
security guard called up to Sui's apartment and said his car had been
scratched in an accident and when he stepped outside, a group of police
quickly whisked him away, said Sui. He wasn't seen again for nearly five
months. Former Tibetan
political prisoner dies from torture in prison AsiaNews - RFA,
Beijing, 9 May 2020 www.asianews.it/news-en/Former-Tibetan-political-prisoner-dies-from-torture-in-prison-50035.html [accessed 10 May
2020] A former Tibetan
political prisoner died on May 7 in Serthar county
(Sichuan), part of the historic Tibetan region of Kham. Choekyi died in his
home after the authorities repeatedly rejected his request for
hospitalization in Lhasa (Tibet). He had been ill for some time, the result
of the harsh treatment he suffered during his captivity. Choekyi, who was
also a Buddhist monk, spent four years in Mianyang
(Sichuan) prison. He had been convicted in 2015 for making a shirt that
celebrated the 80th birthday of the Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso.
According to sources quoted by Radio Free Asia, he suffered brutal prison
torture, which caused severe liver and kidney damage. China’s Mass
Internment, Torture And Persecution Of Muslims In Xinjiang Amnesty
International [ Long URL ] [
Download Report ] [accessed 21 July
2021] Amnesty
International’s latest report Like We Were Enemies In A War is a
comprehensive human rights investigation into the crushing repression faced
by Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities in
China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. Based on scores of
interviews – 55 of them with former detainees – the investigation since
October 2019 found evidence of systematic state-organized mass imprisonment,
torture and persecution, amounting to crimes against humanity, among numerous
other human rights violations. The world now knows
a significant amount about what has been occurring in Xinjiang. Credible
documentary, testimonial, and photographic evidence has revealed certain
inescapable facts: the human rights violations have been massive in scale,
methodically carried out by government officials at all levels throughout
Xinjiang, and directed at parts of the population not because of anything
unlawful they did but rather because of who they are and because of their
beliefs and their culture. ***
ARCHIVES *** Tibetan Monk Dies
After Living Two Years With Torture Injuries Sustained in Custody Radio Free Asia RFA,
24 April 2020 www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/gendun-sherab-04242020150923.html [accessed 27 April
2020] “While in custody
his captors severely tortured him and he was not even allowed to seek medical
treatment from hospitals afterwards,” the source said. “The authorities
held him in a detention center in Lhasa for three months, during which they
beat him severely. The torture was so bad that he could not even move his
body and was unable to speak,” the source added. The monk was
released by the authorities after suffering life-threatening injuries,
according to the source. “They only let him
go because it was pretty clear he was about to die,” said the source. Torture and
wrongful convictions: Some good news amid the gloom Alexander Boyd,
supchina.com, 8 April 2020 supchina.com/2020/04/08/torture-and-wrongful-convictions-some-good-news-amid-the-gloom/ [accessed 12 April
2020] “The police brought
me to some place, I don’t even know. I got pushed into a room and a few
people started kicking me. I was shackled and fettered at hands and feet.
Then they got scared that they would scar me, so
they took off the handcuffs and tied me to a bed with a rope. My feet didn’t
touch the ground for two days.” After the physical
abuse, police threatened to lock his wife up if he didn’t confess, intimating
the horrors she would face. He confessed. ‘The Notorious
Masanjia’: One Woman’s Story of Torture and Sexual Violence in a Chinese
Gulag Joan Delaney, Epoch
Times, 17 May 2019 [accessed 19 May
2019] It was at Masanjia that Yin ended up in September 2000. She had
been detained and tortured in other labor camps but refused to be
“transformed”—a term for forcing Falun Gong practitioners to give up the traditional
meditation practice—so she was sent to Masanjia. She was beaten,
kicked, punched, and shocked repeatedly in sensitive parts with high-voltage
electric batons by one of the guards. “She started to
shock me with two electric batons, on my face, neck, feet and hands. I was in
extreme pain. I had a hard time breathing and my
face kept twitching. I couldn’t stand up anymore and fell backward,” Yin said
in an interview with Minghui.org after she escaped to Thailand in 2013. “They slammed my
head against the wall, which caused my ears to ring loudly,” she said. “When they got
tired of beating me, they forced me to half squat down with my hands
stretched out flat. They put needles under my wrists. If my hands dropped,
they would pinch me. In less than two hours, my wrists were pinched so badly
that blood flowed from them. If I moved my hands away from the needles, they
would beat me with wooden sticks and slap my face.” “When I regained
consciousness, I found three males lying next to me and their hands and
bodies were all over me. Two stood between my legs, one was shooting a video
and the other was watching the video. They kept talking dirty. They said
dirty words and one of them kept saying, ‘Don’t pretend death. You have to
renounce Falun Gong even if you are dead!’ “I couldn’t believe
what I saw,” Yin said. “I vomited blood and there was blood all over.” She
realized she had been videotaped while being gang-raped when she was passed
out. Man Who Lost Both
Feet From Police-Inflicted Torture Dies Cathy Zhang, Epoch
Times, 7 May 2019 www.theepochtimes.com/man-who-lost-both-feet-from-police-inflicted-torture-dies_2908855.html [accessed 8 May
2019] During the two
decades, Wang was detained on several occasions, and beaten, tortured, and
harassed by police more than a dozen times—despite his disability. On one occasion, police
tortured Wang while he was detained at a station. Wang protested the
detention by going on a hunger strike. On the fifth day of his hunger strike,
officers dragged Wang onto a large metal rack, and stretched his arms and
legs out in four directions, buckling them onto hoops connected to a rack.
Since he did not have feet, the police couldn’t buckle his legs, so they
wrapped his thighs with wire and tied that to the hoops. While Wang was tied
up in this position, police kicked him in the head, chest, abdomen, and ribs.
As a result, he sustained a large amount of swelling on the head. Wang was tied up on
the rack for five days, and was force-fed daily by a tube inserted through
his nose into his stomach. These force-feeding sessions caused Wang to vomit
and lose consciousness. 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: China U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/china/
[accessed 7 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT Numerous former
prisoners and detainees reported they were beaten, raped, subjected to
electric shock, forced to sit on stools for hours on end, hung by the wrists,
deprived of sleep, force fed, forced to take medication against their will,
and otherwise subjected to physical and psychological abuse. Although prison
authorities abused ordinary prisoners, they reportedly singled out political
and religious dissidents for particularly harsh treatment. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Physical
Conditions: Authorities regularly held prisoners and detainees in overcrowded
conditions with poor sanitation. Food often was inadequate and of poor
quality, and many detainees relied on supplemental food, medicines, and warm
clothing provided by relatives when allowed to receive them. Prisoners often
reported sleeping on the floor because there were no beds or bedding. In many
cases provisions for sanitation, ventilation, heating, lighting, and access
to potable water were inadequate. The lack of
adequate, timely medical care for prisoners remained a serious problem,
despite official assurances prisoners have the right to prompt medical
treatment. Prison authorities at times withheld medical treatment from
political prisoners. Multiple nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and news
agencies reported detainees at “re-education” centers or long-term
extrajudicial detention centers became seriously ill or died. Political prisoners
were sometimes held with the general prison population and reported being
beaten by other prisoners at the instigation of guards. Some reported being
held in the same cells as death row inmates. In some cases authorities did
not allow dissidents to receive supplemental food, medicine, and warm
clothing from relatives. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/china/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 14 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE
USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Conditions in
places of detention are harsh, with reports of inadequate food, regular
beatings, and deprivation of medical care. The law encourages judges to
exclude evidence obtained through torture, but in practice, torture and other
forms of coercion are widely used to extract confessions or force political
and religious dissidents to recant their beliefs. Security agents routinely
flout legal protections, and impunity is the norm for police brutality and
suspicious deaths in custody. An unusually high number of well-documented
cases of political and religious prisoners dying in custody or shortly after
release due to denial of proper medical attention emerged in 2019, with
examples from across China. Citizens who seek redress for abuse in custody or
suspicious deaths of family members often meet with reprisals and even
imprisonment. Woman
describes torture, beatings in Chinese detention camp Maria Danilova,
Associated Press AP, 26 November 2018 www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Woman-tells-of-torture-beatings-in-Chinese-13423044.php [accessed 27
November 2018] www.boston.com/news/politics/2018/11/26/woman-tells-of-torture-beatings-in-chinese-detention-camp [accessed 30
December 2018] Several months
later, she was detained a third time and spent three months in a cramped,
suffocating prison cell with 60 other women, having to sleep in turns, use
the toilet in front of security cameras and sing songs praising China's
Communist Party. Tursun said she and other inmates
were forced to take unknown medication, including pills that made them faint
and a white liquid that caused bleeding in some women and loss of
menstruation in others. Tursun said nine women from
her cell died during her three months there. One day, Tursun recalled, she was led into a room and placed in a
high chair, and her legs and arms were locked in place. "The
authorities put a helmet-like thing on my head, and each time I was
electrocuted, my whole body would shake violently and I would feel the pain
in my veins," Tursun said in a statement read
by a translator. "I don't
remember the rest. White foam came out of my mouth, and I began to lose
consciousness," Tursun said. "The last
word I heard them saying is that you being an Uighur
is a crime." Former
Uyghur Inmates Tell of Torture and Rape in China’s ‘Re-Education’
Camps Isabel van Brugen, The Epoch Times, 15 October 2018 [accessed 21 October
2018] HOW ARE UYGHURS
TORTURED?
-- Uyghurs face five forms of punishment and torture if they disobey orders from
officials in the detention camps, according to Bekli. Bekli explained: “If you
refuse to sing songs praising the CCP and leader Xi Jinping, you’ll be beaten
severely. They then make you stand and face the wall, and deprive you of
sleep and food for 24 hours.” Refuse again, and
you’ll be chained up in a “tiger seat,” and deprived of food and sleep for a
day longer, he continued. The next punishment
is being “chained up like an animal” for one to three days in an extremely
dark room called a “black hole,” which measures approximately three meters
squared, he said. “The fourth
punishment is, if it’s a hot summer day, they make
you stand on a cement slab outside under the sun. You have nothing on your
body except underwear—no shoes. “Your feet will
burn because of the heat of the sun. If it’s winter they do the same thing,” Bekli told The Epoch Times. The final
punishment includes being beaten severely with sticks and “anything they can
find.” “Then they hang you
up from both of your hands. They put you in a water prison filled with very
dirty, smelly water, up to your neck, for one to five days. Minitrue: Do Not Report
Hotelier’s Death by Torture China Digital Times,
26 September 2018 chinadigitaltimes.net/2018/09/minitrue-do-not-report-hong-kong-hoteliers-death-by-torture/ [accessed 26
September 2018] The following censorship instructions, issued to the
media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The
name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source. The indictment
alleged that Lau had been blindfolded and tied to an interrogation chair,
with his bound legs raised in front of him. “In order to hasten the
confession” his mouth was taped shut, his nose was covered with a toilet
plunger and his feet were stabbed with keys, the indictment said. After several days,
the interrogators “folded” Lau’s upper body towards his legs multiple times
until he “went limp and lost consciousness”. A doctor at the interrogation centre, located near the North Korean border, was unable
to revive him. Panicked, the interrogators then tried to destroy the recording
devices installed in the interrogation room, the indictment alleges. Former
inmates of China’s Muslim ‘reeducation’ camps tell of brainwashing, torture Simon Denyer, Washington Post, Beijing, 16 May 2018 [accessed 16 May
2018] Kayrat Samarkand says his
only “crime” was being a Muslim who had visited neighboring Kazakhstan. On
that basis alone, he was detained by police, aggressively interrogated for
three days, then dispatched in November to a
“reeducation camp” in China’s western province of Xinjiang for three months. “Those who
disobeyed the rules, refused to be on duty, engaged in fights or were late
for studies were placed in handcuffs and ankle cuffs for up to 12 hours,” he
said. Further disobedience would result in waterboarding or long periods strapped
in agony in a metal contraption known as a “tiger chair,” he said, a
punishment he said he suffered. China
lawyer recounts torture under Xi's 'war on law' John Sudworth BBC
News, Beijing, 26 October 2017 www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-41661862 [accessed 27 October
2017] For Xie Yanyi it was not the
physical abuse that was the hardest to endure - although his list of the
deliberate cruelties inflicted upon him is long. He was kept in a stress position, crouched
on a low stool, from 06:00 in the morning until 22:00 at night. After 15 days like this, he tells me, his
legs went numb and he had difficulty urinating. At times he was
denied food and was subjected to gruelling
interrogations for "dozens of hours" on end. He was beaten. And he was watched while he slept, with
his guards insisting that he kept the same sleeping position all night. But harder to bear than all of this, Mr Xie insists, was the time
spent in solitary confinement. "I was kept
alone in a small room and saw no daylight for half a year. I had nothing to
read, nothing to do but to sit on that low stool." "People could go mad in that
situation. I was isolated from the world. This is torture - the isolation is
more painful than being beaten.". Tiger
Chairs and Cell Bosses - Police Torture of Criminal Suspects in China
Human Rights Watch, May 13, 2015 -- ISBN: 1-56432-765-5 www.hrw.org/report/2015/05/13/tiger-chairs-and-cell-bosses/police-torture-criminal-suspects-china [accessed 11 August
2015] Our analysis of
court cases and interviews with former detainees show that police torture
.and ill-treatment of suspects in pre-trial detention remains a serious
concern. Former detainees described physical and psychological torture during
police interrogations, including being hung by the wrists, being beaten with
police batons or other objects, and prolonged sleep deprivation. Some said they were
restrained for days in so-called “tiger chairs” (used to immobilize suspects
during interrogations), handcuffs, or leg irons; one convicted prisoner
awaiting review of his death sentence had been handcuffed and shackled for
eight years. Some detainees spoke about abuses at the hands of “cell bosses,”
fellow detainees used by detention center police as de facto managers of each
multi-person cell. In some cases, the abuse resulted in death or permanent
physical or mental disabilities. Most suspects who complained of torture to
the authorities had been accused of common crimes such as theft. Interviewees
said torture is particularly severe in major cases with multiple suspects,
such as in organized or triad-related crimes.
In most of the
cases we examined, police used torture and other ill-treatment to elicit
confessions on which convictions could be secured. Abuses were facilitated by
suspects’ lack of access to lawyers, family members, and doctors not beholden
to the police. Chinese
police to film interrogations as government promises end to torture following
miscarriages of justice Jamie Fullerton, The
Independent, Beijing, 22 February 2015 [accessed 30 March
2015] The announcement of
major new reforms of the police force in China has sparked hopes that police
torture and corruption are to be curbed and further miscarriages of justice
avoided. One crucial new
rule will require all police interrogations to be filmed. It was announced
days before the plan was announced that Nian Bin, a
man who spent eight years on death row before being acquitted of a double
murder, will receive ¥1.14m (£120,000) in compensation from the state. In 2008 Mr Nian, a former food stall
owner, was found guilty of killing 10-year-old Yu Pan and eight-year-old Yu
Han in the village of Aoqian in Fujian province in
2006. He said he confessed after being tortured by the police, and that officers faked reports and concealed evidence. Former
Tibetan nun recalls 'jail torture' Marianne Barriaux, Agence France-Presse AFP, March 14, 2015 www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national-news/2015/03/16/431160/p1/Former-Tibetan.htm [accessed 27 March
2015] [accessed 30
December 2017] Gyaltsen Drolkar spent 12 years in a Chinese jail where she says
she was relentlessly tortured, escaping after her release in an arduous trek
across the Himalayas to Nepal and then onto Belgium where she now lives. "We were
victims of all sorts of torture, mental, physical," she told AFP,
speaking through a translator. "For instance,
they tied me up and hung me up, covered my face, and beat me. "They used
electric instruments. I would faint, and when I came to, they would start
again." "When you
suffered a lot and screamed, they put electric instruments inside your mouth
because you were shouting." Others of her
fellow detained nuns had dogs set on them, she said, although that never
happened to her. Human
Rights Watch World Report 2015 - Events of 2014 Human Rights Watch,
29 January 2015 www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/...
or
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/wr2015_web.pdf [accessed 18 March
2015] CHINA China remains an
authoritarian state, one that systematically curbs fundamental rights,
including freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion, when
their exercise is perceived to threaten one-party rule. Since a new
leadership assumed power in March 2013, authorities have undertaken positive
steps in certain areas, including abolishing the arbitrary detention system
known as Re-education through Labor (RTL), announcing limited reforms of the hukou system of household registration that has denied
social services to China’s internal migrants, and giving slightly greater
access for persons with disabilities to the all-important university entrance
exam.” A new wave of
torture hits Tibet James Tapper, Global
Post, 28 Sept 2014 www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/china/140919/new-wave-torture-hits-tibet [accessed 17
November 2014] Dawa was taken to one
of the many detention centers in Tibet set up by Beijing, where she was
allegedly badly abused. She was eventually released in a critical condition
with severe head injuries. Family members said she was unable to move or
speak. She was
deliberately denied medical help after her torture, according to human rights
campaigners, who have been unable to verify her latest condition due to
restrictions imposed by the Chinese regime. The International
Campaign for Tibet, an advocacy group, says there is a growing trend of
Chinese officials denying medical care to torture victims, who are released
before they die so that they do not become official deaths in custody. Cases of torture in
police detention revealed Beijing, 22 Sept
2014 www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-09/22/content_18641063.htm [accessed 17
November 2014] Three police
officers and four other people helping them have been convicted of torturing
suspects to obtain confessions, in a rare example of a prosecution of the
practice. One of the cases resulted
in the death of a man after he had been tortured with electric shocks and hit
on the head and face with a shoe, Xinhua News Agency said Sunday. Mustard oil
was poured into suspects' mouths in other forms of torture, it said. Chinese Dissident Gao
‘Utterly Destroyed’ Following Torture in Prison Parameswaran Ponnudurai,
Radio Free Asia RFA, 14 August 2014 www.rfa.org/english/news/china/gao-08142014182924.html [accessed 15
September 2014] RIGHTS LAWYER - Once a prominent
lawyer lauded by China's ruling Communist Party, Gao fell afoul of the
government after he defended some of China's most vulnerable people,
including Christians, coal miners, and followers of the banned Falun Gong
spiritual movement. He has spent most of the last decade repeatedly
disappearing into secret jails and undergoing torture. Since his release
from the Xinjiang prison, the family has learned some terrible details about
how he was treated in prison, Freedom Now said. From the time of his reappearance in Shaya
prison in December 2011, Gao was held in a small cell, with minimal light and
guards were strictly instructed not to speak with him, the rights group said.
He was not allowed any reading materials, television, or access to anyone or
anything. He was fed a single slice of
bread and piece of cabbage, once a day; as a result, he has lost roughly 22.5
kg (50 pounds) and now weighs about 59 kg (130 pounds), Freedom House said.
Gao has lost many teeth from malnutrition, it said. It is believed he was also “repeatedly
physically tortured.” “Unfortunately, it is hard to get much more than basic
information from him.” New Book Exposes
Inhuman Sexual Torture in Masanjia Labor Camp Lu Chen, Epoch
Times, 28 July 2014 www.theepochtimes.com/n3/817658-new-book-exposes-inhuman-sexual-torture-in-masanjia-labor-camp/ [accessed 1 August
2014] “As a human being,
there’s no reason or excuse to tolerate the atrocities that happened in ‘Masanjia Women’s Labor Camp,’ including the long-time use
of a uterine dilator for tube feeding women, making women lie in their own
waste, tying up several toothbrushes and twisting them in women’s vaginas,
putting pepper powder in women’s vaginas, shocking women’s breasts and
vaginas with electric batons, and putting women into male cells …” the author
Du wrote on twitter after the release of the book. The book records in
detail the testimonies of dozens of survivors from Masanjia
Labor Camp who were victims or eyewitnesses. One of the important sources of
the book is a diary written by Liu Hua, a former inmate who witnessed those
tortures to Falun Gong practitioners and petitioners. "They helped
to spotlight what we have been saying for years that because of many factors
like 300 years of slavery and several military dictatorships, torture has
unfortunately become an acceptable and ingrained practice in our
country," Salvatti said by telephone. Chinese lawyers say
they were tortured by police The Associated Press
AP, Beijing, 15 April 2014 newsinfo.inquirer.net/594579/chinese-lawyers-say-they-were-tortured-by-police [accessed 21 August
2016] “I got hoisted with
my head facing down, feet off the ground and butt in the air,” Tang said in an
interview with The Associated Press. “Five or six people were hitting me and
kicking me. All I heard was ‘thud, thud, thud,’ throughout.” Tang is among a
group of four Chinese rights lawyers who say they were tortured by police
when they were rounded up in late March after protesting outside a detention
center in Jiansanjiang, a farming community in
northeastern China. They had joined several people shouting to demand
information about relatives believed locked up inside because they were
members of Falun Gong — banned as a cult though they claim to be a peaceful
spiritual movement. Tibetan Political
Prisoner Dies After 'Brutal' Torture in Jail Radio Free Asia RFA,
21 March 2014 www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/jail-03212014142217.html [accessed 21 March
2014] A Tibetan who was
“brutally tortured” and suffered other abuses in jail for challenging Chinese
rule has died following his release from custody before the end of his term, a
rights group and sources close to the former political prisoner said. Goshul Lobsang, 43, who had been beaten so severely that he
could not even swallow his food, died on March 19 at his family home in Machu
(in Chinese, Maqu) county in the Kanlho (Gannan) Tibetan
Autonomous Prefecture in northwestern China’s Gansu province, the sources
said. “His condition
never improved after he was released, and he remained bedridden until he took
his last breath on March 19 at around midnight local time,” a local source
told RFA’s Tibetan Service on Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity. Separately, the Dharamsala, India-based Tibetan Centre for Human Rights
and Democracy (TCHRD) confirmed Lobsang’s death in
a statement Friday. “Chinese police and
prison authorities [had] brutally tortured him in detention and in prison,”
TCHRD said, adding, “He suffered life-threatening injuries as a result.” “When Goshul Lobsang died, it hardly
surprised his family and friends given his extreme health condition,” TCHRD
said. Tibet: Monk Dies
After ‘Torture’ Radio Free Asia RFA [accessed 17 March
2014] A Tibetan monk
detained last week [28 February 2014] by Chinese police on suspicion of
possessing politically sensitive writings has died after being severely
beaten in custody, according to a Tibetan source. Tashi Paljor, 34, a monk at the Wenpo
monastery in Chamdo (in Chinese, Changdu) prefecture in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR),
died en route to a hospital after authorities
returned him to his family the day after he was detained, a local resident
told RFA’s Tibetan Service on Wednesday [5 March 2014]. “He was taken away
by Chinese authorities at around 3:00 p.m. on 28 February [2014], and he was
so badly beaten afterward that when he was handed over to his relatives on
March 1 [2014], he could not talk,” the source said, speaking on condition of
anonymity. “His family rushed
him to the local Chamdo county hospital, but
unfortunately he succumbed to his injuries and died on the way between 3:00
and 4:00 p.m. that same day.” Paljor was seized by
police on Friday [28 February 2014] when he arrived at a residence in Wenpo village where authorities had found banned
recordings and writings by exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama and
exile political leader Lobsang Sangay,
the source said. “It was on this
pretext that Tashi Paljor
was detained and taken away,” he said. “It was very clear
that his death was caused by torture suffered in detention,” he said, adding,
“He was a young and healthy man before he was detained, but he could not even
speak when he was released into the care of his family.” In China, Graft
Confessions are Extracted Via Brutal Torture Matt, 1913 intel, 10
March 2014 www.1913intel.com/2014/03/10/in-china-graft-confessions-are-extracted-via-brutal-torture/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=in-china-graft-confessions-are-extracted-via-brutal-torture [accessed 13 March
2014] www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/03/07/china-brutality-yields-confession/6179431/ [accessed 30
December 2017] Zhou Wangyan begged them to stop. But the men taunted him and
kept pushing. Then, with a loud “ka-cha,” his left thigh bone snapped. The sickening
crunch reverberated in his mind, nearly drowning out his howls of pain and
the frantic pounding of his heart.
“My leg is broken,” Zhou told the interrogators. According to Zhou,
they ignored his pleas. Zhou, land
bureau director for the city of Liling, was
confined in the party’s secret detention system at a compound in central
Hunan, touted as a model center for anti-corruption efforts. Nobody on the
outside could help him, because nobody knew where he was. In a rare act of
public defiance, Zhou and three other party members in Hunan described to The
Associated Press the months of abuse they endured less than two years ago, in
separate cases, while in detention. Zhou said he was deprived of sleep and
food, nearly drowned, whipped with wires and forced to eat excrement. The
others reported being turned into human punching bags, strung up by the
wrists from high windows, or dragged along the floor, face down, by their
feet. Chinese Youth Sues
Over Alleged Police Torture Didi Kirsten Tatlow, Sinosphere, The New
York Times, 15 November 2013 sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/15/chinese-youth-sues-over-alleged-police-torture/?_r=0 [accessed 16 Nov
2013] When the police
detained Yang Zhong, 16, for the crime of
“spreading online rumors” after he raised questions on his Sina Weibo account about the mysterious death of a local
karaoke club manager, they took him to their headquarters in Zhangjiachuan, in the northwestern province of Gansu. There, Mr. Yang
said, they tied him to an interrogation chair used for criminal suspects and
four or five officers beat him, kicking him, hitting him about the ears and
shaking his head to and fro. “On and off for two hours, from about 3 o’clock
until after 5 that day,” he said in a telephone interview. Mr. Yang had been
sentenced to seven days of administrative detention. But six days later, on
Sept. 22, he was released, as protests over his detention surged online,
though no one knew then about the alleged torture. As Mr. Yang left,
he said, the police warned him: Don’t tell anyone about the beatings. “I want to make the
police who beat me responsible. What they did was illegal. It was definitely
not O.K.,” he said. Prisoners Are
Subjected To 'The Big Hang' And 'The Death Bed' At China's Notorious
Re-Education Labor Camps Mamta Badkar,
Business Insider, 15 November 2013 www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Prisoners-Are-Subjected-To-The-Big-Hang-And-4985476.php [accessed 15 Nov
2013] Example one: The 2010 United
Nations Report submitted to Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Special
Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or
punishment, included the following description in his 2010 Report: “On 2 September
2008, Mr. Yu’s term was extended for another year. He was sent back to Masanjia Forced Labor Camp in October, and has been held
in solitary confinement since then. At the camp, Mr. Yu was forced to sign a
suicide letter before he was beaten, including on his head with a steel
baton, hung and shocked with electric batons. As a result, he bled severely
and lost consciousness for more than a week. Repeated requests by his family
to visit him have been denied.” Example two: On June 4, 2002,
without any legal recourse, cause, or documentation, Ms. Wang was taken to Masanjia Forced Labor Camp. During the day, more
than four collaborators participated in the torture of Falun Gong
practitioners. They interrogated Ms. Wang and tried to force her to give up
practicing Falun Gong. They made her squat, remain in a kneeling position, or
stand still for a very long time. Typical torture methods included hanging
her up by her hands, which were handcuffed behind her back, or forcing her to
stand still or squat for a long time. Another time, two guards from Benxi,
holding electric batons, shouted, "We will see who is tougher!" The
two men tore Ms. Wang's shirt open and shocked her breasts with two electric
batons for 30 minutes. Afterwards, they made her stand still for the entire
night. Her breasts were disfigured and became infected. Finally, Ms. Wang
gained her release. Later her family found out that the Masanjia
camp staff believed that she had only two months to live. Water torture
killed Wenzhou official, lawsuit claims Agence France-Presse AFP, 4 Sept 2013 www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/archives/2013/09/05/2003571389 [accessed 21 Aug
2016] A Chinese official
was allegedly drowned by investigators who stripped him naked and held him
down in a bathtub as they attempted to extract a confession to corruption,
state-run media reported. They only stopped
when Yu, 42, the chief engineer of a state-owned company in eastern Wenzhou,
stopped struggling, the report said.
He died in a hospital a few hours later. Relatives also
found multiple bruises on his body after his death in April, it added. He had
been detained since early March over suspected wrongdoings in a land deal,
the report said. “Yu Qiyi was a strong man before he was detained... but was
skinny when he died,'' the dead man's wife Wu Qian was quoted as saying by
the newspaper. “He was bruised
internally and externally during the 38 days [in detention]. Tales of torture,
death as 'corrupt' officials targeted Malcolm Moore, New
Zealand Herald, 25 June 2013 www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10892725 [accessed 25 June
2013] [accessed 21 July
2017] Since a major
anti-corruption campaign was started by the President, Xi Jinping, at the end
of last year, glimpses have emerged of the torture that wayward party members
are subjected to, sometimes fatally.
The system is run by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection,
an arm of the party that operates above the law. Since January, about 2300 officials have
been "disciplined" by the system known as "shuanggui". Guan was grabbed by
agents from his office and interrogated for seven days at a secret detention centre over 42,000 yuan ($8832) of alleged bribes. "He was kept in room 1118 and all the
interrogation was carried out there. He said he had not been allowed to sleep
for four days and from the surveillance video they allowed us to see it is
very clear that his right eye was bruised and he had difficulty
standing," said his wife, Wang Jinping, an economics professor. Later, Wang was called to Dandong No 1
Hospital. Her husband had broken his coccyx and gone deaf in one ear. In the past decade,
hundreds of officials have committed suicide or died while under "shuanggui". In the past four months, three officials
have died in suspicious circumstances. Falun Gong
practitioners arrested for fabricating torture pictures Xinhua News Agency,
Qingdao, 3 June 2013 news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-06/03/c_132427040.htm [accessed 4 June
2013] www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2013-06/03/content_16559920.htm [accessed 21 July
2017] Police in the
coastal city of Qingdao on Monday announced the arrests of 16 Falun Gong
practitioners who allegedly staged pictures depicting scenes of torture. Acting on tip-offs,
border police raided a residence in Dongnvgu
Mountain Village of Qingdao's Chengyang District on
May 2, where they found Falun Gong practitioners led by suspect Lu Xueqin acting out torture scenes. Some suspects were
found on the ground with red-colored fluids on their bodies, pretending they
had been tortured. Some were acting as the ones carrying out acts of torture,
holding batons and sticks in the air, while others pretended to help them by
pinning down the "victims." All of them had their pictures taken by
their peers, according to police. Authorities reject
report on torture at women's labour camp in
Liaoning Chris Luo, South
China Morning Post, 23 April 2013 [accessed 23 April
2013] Liaoning
authorities have lashed back at a news report alleging torture at a women's labour camp, calling the piece phony and containing
“malicious attack rhetoric” characteristic of the outlawed Falun Gong group. A 10-day
investigation by a joint panel in northern China's Liaoning province
concluded that the article “distorted facts and applied a large amount of
overseas Falun Gong malicious attack rhetoric", said Xinhua on Friday.
The report gave one-sided and false accounts and had “serious inconsistencies
with the truth", the state-owned news agency said, citing the
investigation results. Liaoning hit back,
saying its investigation found that allegations of corporal punishment were
“malicious fabrications”. Some prisoners were treated with measures that were
“absolutely righteous", said the investigation, which also acknowledged
that inmates were restrained only when they broke prison rules or went on
hunger strikes. Medical
examinations also ruled out an inmate’s claim in the Lens article that she
was forced to do intense labour even though she was
heavily pregnant and close to her expected due date, the investigation said.
The panel found the woman was not pregnant at all. The investigation
team also found prisoners’ meal rations, medical treatment, working hours and
stipends were all in line with guidelines from the Ministry of Justice,
Xinhua said. The joint panel -
consisting of members of the Department of Justice, provincial bureau of labour camp administration and local procuratorial
organs - interrogated 116 prison officials and 55 inmates, pored over 73
relevant case documents, conducted field investigation and extracted 663
copies of testimonies, Xinhua said. Reporter Yuan Ling,
who wrote the Lens article, on Monday challenged the
government investigation results on his microblog. Women 'chained up
and tortured' in labour camp Chris Luo, South
China Morning Post, 9 April, 2013 www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1210058/dark-secrets-female-labour-camp-revealed [accessed 9 April
2013] Masanjia female labour camp, near Shenyang, houses nearly all the female
forced-labour prisoners in Liaoning province and is
one of over 300 labour camps in China, where police
can imprison people for up to four years without trial, a practice condemned
by critics as arbitrary and unconstitutional. The Lens report
revealed that women prisoners had frequently undergone torture for not
obeying prison officials, according to the prisoners’ accounts. Labour camp
administration laws stipulate police officials can only employ electric rods
during prison breaks or riots or if they are assaulted by prisoners. But the
report claimed prison guards had used electric rods regularly to torture
prisoners, leading in cases to disfigurement and nerve damage. “It was extremely
painful, causing my body to shake,” one woman recalled. Another woman who had
an electric rod pressed on her tongue said, “I could not stand still when the
electric current flowed through my tongue. It was like being pricked by
needles.” Use of handcuffs
was reportedly widespread with prisoners handcuffed to iron bars or gates for
prolonged periods of time, sometimes more than a week. Some prisoners said
they were handcuffed with both hands above their heads and unable to touch
the ground with their feet. Chinese Judge Calls Himself
"Hooligan" in Torture Video New Tang Dynasty
Television NTD, 27 Feb 2013 www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpHcPHPMuy0 [accessed 6 January
2015] In the video, shot
between April and June 2011, Xu is stripped naked and hung up, his nose and
mouth are bleeding, and a judge is cursing him loudly. His ribs are broken
and his teeth knocked out. [Judge]: “Are you
going to write confession? No?” [Xu Chongyang,
Wuhan Businessman]: “You want to fabricate evidence by forcing me. I won’t do
it… what kind of judge are you?!” “You know, when I
wear this robe I am a judge. When I take it off I am a hooligan. You don’t
want to cooperate… you want to see Hu Jintao? You want to go to the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs? I will let you walk vertically, but will throw you out
horizontally.” This is just one of
multiple instances when Xu says he was tortured. Beijing police and the Wuhan
judge were involved. Sometimes dozens of people were present. [Hu Jia, Beijing Activist]: “They record this,
sometimes for filing, sometimes for watching it themselves, just for fun!
Kind of a joy from sadism. This is a common practice among CCP thugs. No
matter what position they have—policemen, security guards, judges or staff
for dismissing petitioners, they hide such videos very carefully, because
once exposed, they become evidence of crimes they
committed. To obtain such videos is very, very difficult.” In April 2011, Xu
was detained for exposing forced demolition in the Zhongnanhai
area in Beijing. After being tortured and disappearing into secret detention,
he was formally arrested. Police accused him
of masterminding the so-called “Chinese Jasmine Revolution” and being a “US
spy.” That’s why he was tortured into giving a confession. Xu says during his
18-month prison term, Beijing police used psychedelic drugs on him, causing
his hair to fall out and skin ulcers to form. They locked his feet with
chains and handcuffed his hands, continuing to torture him. He still cannot
dress himself and has difficulty breathing. Rules to stem
police torture of suspects Macau Daily Times,
31 May 2010 www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chinese_rules_seek_to_stem_police_torture_of_crime_suspects_999.html [accessed 21 August
2016] China has issued
new rules to halt the use of police torture to extract confessions from
suspects following outrage over a case in which a man was jailed for 10 years
after a coerced admission. The
regulations ban courts from accepting confessions obtained via torture or
other “illegal” means and lay out guidelines for judges to better scrutinise evidence. The rules were
issued after a convicted murderer in central China’s Henan province was freed
in early May after more than 10 years in prison when his “victim” reappeared
in perfect health. Zhao Zuohai, 57, caused a national stir after he revealed that
police tortured a murder confession out of him by beating him with sticks,
setting fireworks off over his head and depriving him of sleep for about a
month, state media reports said earlier. Zhao had been
arrested after a neighbour went missing following a
fight between the two men over a woman. Zhao was charged when a headless,
decomposed body was found 18 months later.
“They taught me how to plead guilty. They told me to repeat what they
said, and I had to, or I would be beaten,” the state-controlled China Daily
quoted Zhao as saying. “They wrote
down what I repeated and said it was my confession.” Conclusions and recommendations of the
Committee against Torture U.N. Convention
against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or
Punishment -- Doc. CAT/C/CHN/CO/4
(2008) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/china2008.html [accessed 24
February 2013] Widespread torture
and ill-treatment and insufficient safeguards during detention 11. Notwithstanding
the State party’s efforts to address the practice of torture and related
problems in the criminal justice system, the Committee remains deeply
concerned about the continued allegations, corroborated by numerous Chinese
legal sources, of routine and widespread use of torture and ill-treatment of
suspects in police custody, especially to extract confessions or information
to be used in criminal proceedings. Furthermore, the Committee notes with
concern the lack of legal safeguards for detainees, including: (a) Failure to
bring detainees promptly before a judge, thus keeping them in prolonged
police detention without charge for up to 37 days or in some cases for longer
periods; (b) Absence of
systematic registration of all detainees and failure to keep records of all
periods of pretrial detention; (c) Restricted
access to lawyers and independent doctors and failure to notify detainees of
their rights at the time of detention, including their rights to contact
family members; (d) Continued
reliance on confessions as a common form of evidence for prosecution, thus
creating conditions that may facilitate the use of torture and ill-treatment
of suspects, as in the case of Yang Chunlin. Furthermore, while the Committee
appreciates that the Supreme Court has issued several decisions to prevent
the use of confessions obtained under torture as evidence before the courts,
Chinese Criminal procedure law still does not contain an explicit prohibition
of such practice, as required by article 15 of the Convention; (e) The lack of an
effective independent monitoring mechanism on the situation of detainees
(arts. 2, 11 and 15). As a matter of
urgency, the State party should take immediate steps to prevent acts of
torture and ill-treatment throughout the country. As part of this,
the State party should implement effective measures promptly to ensure that
all detained suspects are afforded, in practice, all fundamental legal
safeguards during their detention. These include, in particular, the right to
have access to a lawyer and an independent medical examination, to notify a
relative, and to be informed of their rights at the time of detention,
including about the charges laid against them, as well as to appear before a
judge within a time limit in accordance with international standards. The
State party should also ensure that all suspects under criminal investigation
are registered. The State party
should take the measures necessary to ensure that, both in legislation and in
practice, statements that have been made under torture are not invoked as
evidence in any proceedings, except against a person accused of torture, in
accordance with the provisions of the Convention. The State party should
review all cases in which persons were convicted on the basis of coerced
confessions with a view to releasing those who were wrongly convicted. The State party
should establish consistent and comprehensive standards for independent
monitoring mechanisms of all places of detention, ensuring that any body established, at the local or the national level,
has a strong and impartial mandate and adequate resources. Conditions of
detention and deaths in custody 12. While the
Committee takes note of the information from the State party on conditions of
detention in prisons, it remains concerned about reports of abuses in
custody, including the high number of deaths, possibly related to torture or
ill-treatment, and about the lack of investigation into these abuses and
deaths in custody. While the Committee notes that the Special Rapporteur on
the question of torture has found the availability of medical care in the
detention facilities he visited to be generally satisfactory
(E/CN.4/2006/6/Add.6, para. 77), it also notes with concern new information
provided about inter alia the lack of treatment for drug users and people
living with HIV/AIDS and regrets the lack of statistical data on the health
of detainees (art. 11). The State party
should take effective measures to keep under systematic review all places of
detention, including existing and available health services. Furthermore, the State party should take
prompt measures to ensure that all instances of deaths in custody are
independently investigated and that those responsible for such deaths
resulting from torture, ill-treatment or willful negligence are prosecuted.
The Committee would appreciate a report on the outcome of such
investigations, where completed, and about what penalties and remedies were
provided. Administrative
detention, including “re-education through labour” 13. The Committee
reiterates its previous recommendation to the State party to consider
abolishing all forms of administration detention (A/55/44, para.127). The
Committee remains concerned at the extended use of all forms of
administrative detention, including “re-education through labour”,
for individuals who have never had their case tried in court, nor the
possibility of challenging their administrative detention. It is also concerned with the failure to
investigate allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in “re-education
through labour” (RTL) facilities, in particular
against members of certain religious and ethnic minority groups. While the
State party has indicated that the RTL system has recently been reformed and
that further reform of the system is currently being envisaged, the Committee
is concerned with repeated delays, despite calls from Chinese scholars to
abolish the system (arts. 2 and 11). The State party
should immediately abolish all forms of administrative detention, including
“re-education through labour”. The State party should provide more
information, including current statistics, on those currently subject to
administrative detention, the reasons for their detention, the means of
challenging such detention and the safeguards put in place to prevent torture
and ill-treatment in RTL facilities. Secret detention centres 14. The Committee
is concerned by allegations that secret detention facilities, including the
so-called “black jails”, exist and are used to detain petitioners, such as
those seeking to come to the capital, such as Wang Guilan. Detention in such facilities constitutes
per se disappearance. Detainees are
allegedly deprived of fundamental legal safeguards, including an oversight
mechanism in regard to their treatment and review procedures with respect to
their detention. The Committee is also
concerned over other unacknowledged detention facilities such as those where
prominent disappeared persons have been reportedly confined (arts. 2 and 11). The State party
should ensure that no one is detained in any secret detention facility. Detaining persons in such conditions
constitutes, per se, a violation of the Convention. The State party should investigate,
disclose the existence of any such facilities and the authority under which
they have been established and the manner in which detainees are treated, and
make reparations to the victims of enforced disappearances where appropriate. Common methods of
torture and abuse in the People's Republic of China Internationale Gesellschaft
für Menschenrechte
(IGFM), ISHR.org > Reports at Human
Rights > Methods of torture in the People's Republic of China www.ishr.org/countries/peoples-republic-of-china/methods-of-torture-in-the-peoples-republic-of-china/ [accessed 21 August
2016] Beatings and kicks /
Contortion and excessive twisting of limbs / Being forced to remain in a
painful position / Hanging / Electric shocks / Forced feeding / Burning and
scalding / Hunger, thirst, sleep deprivation / Sexual violence / Isolation /
Stabbings and lacerations / Psychiatric abuse / Suffocation / Abuse with
animals / Further methods of torture and abuse / BEATINGS AND KICKS - Almost every
detainee in China has to, or has had to, suffer being beaten and kicked. This
method of abuse, by far the most common, is often especially noticeable after
release from detainment, as some victims possess extensive bruises and
injuries on their bodies. However, a range of torture victims have reported
that in the weeks prior to their release from camps or prisons they were no
longer tormented by beatings and other methods of torture which leave obvious
external marks. Beatings, like other methods of torture, inflict wounds upon
victims which in most cases do not receive any medical attention, or receive
it far too late. Infections and more serious pain caused further abuse are
the consequence. South Korea Repeats
Call to Investigate Torture Claim Choe Sang-Hun, The New
York times - Asia Pacific, Seoul, South Korea, July 31, 2012 [accessed 9 January
2013] Mr. Kim, 49, who
has said he was trying to help North Korean refugees in China, was arrested
with three other activists from the South on March 29. They were held for 114
days on charges of endangering national security until they were expelled on
July 20. “They put a cattle
prod, wrapped in electric coils, inside my clothes and placed it on my chest
and back,” Mr. Kim told Chosun Ilbo,
a mass-circulation daily newspaper in South Korea. “It felt like being
continuously electrocuted. I could
smell my flesh burning,” he said. “They also threatened several times to send
me to North Korea.” Mr. Choi, a South
Korean human rights advocate who spent nearly four years in a Chinese prison
starting in 2003 for trying to smuggle 80 North Korean refugees out of China
by boat, said that Chinese inmates repeatedly beat him and that he was
injected with something that made his legs “wooden” so he could not walk
without help. Another activist,
Chung Peter, said on the same TV Chosun program
that “sleep deprivation” and “letting you hear the sound of torture from the
next room” were standard interrogation tactics when he was held for a year
and a half starting in 2003 for helping North Korean refugees. Inside Bo Xilai's dungeon: victims reveal ruthless torture Keith Zhai, South China Morning Post, Chongqing, 19 December,
2012 www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1107724/inside-bo-xilais-torture-chamber [accessed 9 January
2013] In mid-July 2009,
21-year-old Li Jun, freshly graduated from an American university, tried to
call her father in Chongqing from a Greek restaurant in downtown New
York. She could not reach him but
thought, "that's all right, maybe he's in a
meeting". In fact, her father
Li Qiang, once one of the southwestern
municipality's most successful businessmen, had been shackled to a metal
chair by police mounting the mainland's largest anti-triad campaign in
decades. A stocky man with a round face and big eyes, he was forced to sit in
the straight-backed, custom-made chair which was too small for him, for 76 days.
In addition he had heavy leg irons around his ankles and his wrists were in
manacles, his daughter and a fellow prisoner said. A black robe was often draped over his head
most of the time. For the first five days and six nights he was not given any
food or water, or allowed to go to the bathroom. Most of the people
she called were shackled to the same kind of chair as her father at that
moment, undergoing interrogation in various motels in rural parts of
Chongqing, leased by the police and used as torture centres
during the crackdown. Human Rights
Overview Human Rights Watch www.hrw.org/fr/node/82018 [accessed 24
February 2013] The Chinese
Communist Party governs China as an authoritarian, one-party state. The Party
sharply curbs freedom of expression, association, and religion. It equates
criticism of the Party with “subversion” and rejects judicial independence
and media freedom. The Party also extensively censors the Internet and
maintains highly repressive policies in the ethnic minority regions of Tibet
and Xinjiang. Chinese citizens have become more and more rights-conscious and
increasingly challenge official abuses including, land seizures, forced
evictions, and corruption. A small rights defense (weiquan)
movement persists despite risks including surveillance, detention, arrest,
enforced disappearance, and torture. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 ENFORCED
DISAPPEARANCES
- The number of people subjected to enforced disappearances grew. Many were
held in secret detention, including Hada, a
Mongolian political activist. Many others remained or were placed under
illegal house arrest. They included Liu Xia, wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner
Liu Xiaobo, and Zheng Enchong, a housing rights
lawyer from Shanghai. On 30 August, the
authorities released draft revisions of China’s Criminal Procedure Law, the
first proposed changes since 1997. Notwithstanding some positive amendments,
the revisions proposed to legalize detention of individuals for up to six
months without notification of their family or friends. Many legal
commentators regarded this as a legalization of enforced disappearances.
Prohibitions against the use of illegal evidence, including coerced
confessions and other evidence obtained through torture and other
ill-treatment, were incorporated into the draft revisions. However, torture remained pervasive in
places of detention, as government policies, such as ones requiring prison
and detention centre staff to “transform” religious
dissidents to renounce their faith, fostered a climate conducive to torture. On 16 December, Gao
Zhisheng, a well-known human rights lawyer who had
been subjected to enforced disappearance on and off for nearly three years,
was sent to prison to serve his three-year sentence for “repeatedly violating
his probation”, just days before his five-year probation was due to end.
During his disappearance he was believed to have been in official custody. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=china+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 25 December
2018] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm [accessed 9 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm [accessed 3 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – Since the
crackdown on Falun Gong began in 1999, estimates of Falun Gong adherents who
died in custody due to torture, abuse, and neglect ranged from several
hundred to a few thousand (see section 2.c.). In October Falun Gong adherents
Liu Boyang and Wang Shouhui
of Changchun, Jilin Province, reportedly died in custody after being tortured
by police. During the year
police continued to use torture to coerce confessions from criminal suspects,
although the government made efforts to address the problem of torture. A
one-year campaign by the Supreme People's Procuratorate
(SPP) to punish officials who infringed on human rights, including coercing
confessions through torture or illegally detaining or mistreating prisoners,
ended in May. The campaign uncovered more than 3,700 cases of official abuse. A series of
wrongful convictions in murder cases came to light in which innocent persons
were convicted on the basis of coerced confessions. Among them, Nie Shubin of Hebei Province,
who was executed in 1995 for a murder-rape, was exonerated in January after
the true killer confessed. She Xianglin of Hubei
Province was exonerated in March of murdering his wife in 1994 after she
reappeared alive and well. The SPP campaign resulted in the prosecution of
1,924 officers and 1,450 convictions. Among them, a Gansu Province police
officer was sentenced to life in prison in January for torturing a suspect to
death. In June three Yunnan Province police officers were sentenced to one
year in prison for torturing a suspect and rendering him disabled. At the
campaign's conclusion, the SPP announced that preventing coerced confessions
was its most important supervisory priority. Scholars advocated reform of
police interrogation practices. In one highly publicized experiment,
officials ordered audio and videotaping of police interrogations. Suspects in
a few locations were offered the opportunity to have a lawyer present during
interrogation. During the year
there were reports of persons, including Falun Gong adherents, sentenced to
psychiatric hospitals for expressing their political or religious beliefs
(see section 1.d.). Some were reportedly forced to undergo electric shock
treatments or forced to take psychotropic drugs. Petitioners and
other activists sentenced to administrative detention also reported being
tortured. Such reports included being strapped to beds or other devices for
days at a time, beaten, forcibly injected or fed medications, and denied food
and use of toilet facilities. A petitioner reportedly choked to death from
force-feeding in a police-run psychiatric hospital in Beijing, according to a
released inmate. Mao Hengfeng, a Shanghai housing
petitioner who reportedly suffered various forms of torture while in
reeducation-through-labor, was released in September, but authorities
continued to monitor and harass her. Freedom House
Country Report - Political Rights: 3 Civil Liberties: 3 Status: Partly Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/china [accessed 9 January
2013] LONG URL
ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 11 May
2020] Though
constitutionally recognized, religious freedom is sharply restricted. It
deteriorated further in 2008 as the CCP used the pretext of ensuring Olympic
security to crack down on minorities. All religious groups are required to
register with the government, which regulates their activities via
state-sponsored associations. Members of unauthorized groups face harassment,
imprisonment, and torture. The CCP controls
the judiciary and directs verdicts and sentences, particularly in politically
sensitive cases. In 2008, a party veteran with no formal legal training was
appointed as chief justice. Despite recent criminal procedure reforms,
trials—which often amount to mere sentencing hearings—are frequently closed,
and few criminal defendants have access to counsel in practice. Torture
remains widespread, with coerced confessions routinely admitted as evidence
and police conduct searches without warrants. Though in most
cases security forces are under direct civilian control, they work closely with
the party leadership at each level of government, which contributes to
frequent misuse of authority. Cases of extrajudicial and politically
motivated murder, torture, and arbitrary arrest continue to be reported. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, " Torture by Police, Forced
Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st
Century- China", http://gvnet.com/torture/China.htm, [accessed
<date>] |
