Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/HongKong.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Hong Kong. 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. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Hong Kong 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/hong-kong/ [accessed 22 July
2021] PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Physical
Conditions: According to activists, detained protesters were held at the
Castle Peak Immigration Center under unacceptable hygienic conditions and
subjected to verbal and mental abuse. In response to a 2019 police brutality
allegation and after the September 2019 closure of the San Uk Ling Holding Center, in May the Hong Kong Police Force
border commissioner convened a task force to investigate the accusations made
by protesters.. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES Democracy activists
were increasingly denied bail. In December during a routine bail check-in,
media owner and democracy activist Jimmy Lai was arrested on fraud charges
related to the use of office space and denied bail. Legal scholars noted bail
denial is unusual in civil suits; Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/hong-kong/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 12 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE
USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Police are
forbidden by law to employ torture, disappearance, and other forms of abuse.
They generally respect this ban in practice, and complaints of abuse are
investigated. For example, in February 2017, seven police officers were
sentenced to two years in prison for beating a protester in an incident that
was captured on video in 2014. However, the 2015
disappearances of five Hong Kong booksellers into police custody on the mainland
continue to cast doubt on the local government’s capacity to protect
residents from abuses by Chinese authorities. One of the five, Lee Bo, was
allegedly seized in Hong Kong and smuggled across the border to the mainland.
He and three others were eventually released, but they reportedly faced
surveillance and harassment; the fifth, Swedish citizen Gui
Minhai, remained in some form of detention on the
mainland in 2017. Separately, in January 2017, Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua was apparently abducted by Chinese officials from
a Hong Kong hotel and escorted across the border to the mainland. Hong Kong police
officers convicted of beating protester BBC, 14 February
2017 www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38967605 [accessed 27 July
2017] Seven police
officers in Hong Kong have been convicted of beating a protester during
pro-democracy rallies in 2014. The group, charged with intentionally inflicting grievous bodily
harm, were found guilty of a lesser charge of causing bodily
harm. TV cameras caught the officers
kicking and punching Ken Tsang, who was handcuffed, in a nearby park. Hong Kong: Police
Torture : Strong Arm of the Law Asian Human Rights
Commission, 27 August 2001 www.hrsolidarity.net/mainfile.php/1998vol08no10/1830/ [accessed 23 Jan
2014] But beatings of
suspects by Hong Kong police officers, say human rights activists, lawyers,
and even, in private, some police officers, are commonplace. The question is: does a culture of
violence permeate "Asia's Finest," with the force stuck in an
old-fashioned colonial mind-set of controlling the population rather than
serving it? One prominent criminal
barrister says one in three suspects complain to him that they have suffered
some form of physical assault by local police, while half encounter criminal
intimidation or verbal threats. In one of the worst
examples of alleged brutality, a 37-year-old man died a day after allegedly
being beaten for 20 minutes by three Police Tactical Unit officers at a busy
Tai Po market three years ago. The Complaints Against Police Office (CAPO)
has investigated the case, but its findings have not yet been released. No
criminal case was brought. Jailings
of Hong Kong police for assault are unusual. Since 1993, only one other case
has resulted in prison terms. In 1995, five officers were incarcerated after
appeals failed - for between three and seven months, and a sixth received a
suspended sentence, for a 1993 brawl with off-duty customs officers. And yet, speaking on condition of
anonymity, some senior police justify the strong-arm tactics. "It's to achieve success in their
objective," said one senior officer. "You may know this guy's
committed the crime. It's the frustration, and if you've got the wrong
mentality then I think you're tempted to assault. The degree of assaults can
go from being fairly minor shouting
and perhaps slapping around, which I would say is fairly common, to killing
someone." "It's so
frustrating sometimes," echoed another, with two decades' experience.
"You've got the evidence here, and the guy you know did it there, but
you just can't put them together." 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/HKG/CO/4
(2009) www1.umn.edu/humanrts/cat/observations/china2009.html [accessed 24
February 2013] Independent
investigation of police misconduct 12. The Committee
welcomes the enactment of the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC)
Ordinance on 12 July 2008 converting the IPCC into a statutory body, as
previously recommended by the Committee.
However, the Committee is concerned that, while the statutory
framework has reinforced the independent role of the IPCC, the latter only
has advisory and oversight functions to monitor and review the activity of
the Complaints Against Police Office (CAPO), which is still - in fact - the
body responsible for handling and investigating complaints of police
misconduct. In this respect, the
Committee also notes with concern the information that - despite the
considerable number of reportable complaints filed with the CAPO – a small
percentage of them were considered as substantiated and only in one case an
officer has been prosecuted and convicted of a criminal offence. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty International
Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=hong+kong+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 2 January 1, 2019] Scroll Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm [accessed 31 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61605.htm [accessed 4 July
2019 TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law forbids
prison guards from extorting confessions by torture, insulting prisoners'
dignity, and beating or encouraging others to beat prisoners; however, police
and other elements of the security apparatus employed torture and degrading
treatment in dealing with some detainees and prisoners. Officials
acknowledged that torture and coerced confessions were chronic problems and
began a campaign aimed at curtailing these practices. Former detainees
credibly reported that officials used electric shocks, prolonged periods of
solitary confinement, incommunicado detention,
beatings, shackles, and other forms of abuse. After a November
visit, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture Manfred Nowak concluded that torture
remained widespread, although the amount and severity decreased. He reported
that beatings with fists, sticks, and electric batons were the most common
tortures. Cigarette burns, guard-instructed beatings by fellow inmates, and
submersion in water or sewage were also reported. Nowak further found that
many detainees were held for long periods in extreme positions, that death
row inmates were shackled or handcuffed 24 hours per day, and that systematic
abuse was designed to break the will of detainees until they confessed.
Procedural and substantive measures to prevent torture were inadequate. Nowak
found that members of some house church groups, Falun Gong adherents,
Tibetans, and Uighur prisoners were specific targets of torture. The
government said Nowak's preliminary report was inaccurate because he had visited
only three Chinese cities (Beijing, Lhasa, and Urumqi) and urged him to
revise conclusions in his final report. 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: 5 Civil Liberties: 2 Status: Partly Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/hong-kong [accessed 31 January
2013] LONG URL
ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 12 May
2020] Hong Kong’s police
force, which remains firmly under the control of civilian authorities, is not
known to be corrupt. Police are forbidden by law to employ torture and other
forms of abuse. However, official figures indicated that police conducted
over 1,600 strip searches between July and September. Arbitrary arrest and detention
are illegal; suspects must be charged within 48 hours of their arrest. Prison
conditions generally meet international standards. 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- Hong Kong",
http://gvnet.com/torture/HongKong.htm, [accessed <date>] |
