Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Macau.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Macau. 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: Macau 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/macau/
[accessed 28 July
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT The law prohibits
such practices, and there were no reports that government officials employed
them. PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS There were no
significant reports regarding prison or detention center conditions that raised
human rights concerns. Physical
Conditions: There were no major concerns in prisons and detention centers
regarding physical conditions or inmate abuse ***
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 5 February
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. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
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ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, "Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance
& Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st Century-
Macau", http://gvnet.com/torture/Macau.htm, [accessed <date>] |
