Key concerns:
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Chinese authorities, using legal provisions, criminalise legitimate
human rights activities based on International Human Rights Conventions.
Tens thousands of prisoners of conscience and human rights activists
(including ethnic group activists, pro-democracy activists, religious
right activists, free trade union initiators, housing & land rights
activists, feminists, child rights activists, disability
rights activists, LGBT advocates, environmental activists, lawyers, NGO
workers, writers, artists &filmmakers, teachers) have been
imprisoned on spurious charges such as "terrorism”, "separatism",
"subversion of state power", "Evil Cult", "creating a disturbance ",
“leaked state secrets” , "protecting and harbouring the
criminal”，“creating a public disturbance ", illegal business operation”
etc.
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Criminalisation of people exercising their right to participate in
public life through standing as independent Local People’s Congress
candidates or engaging in public policy debates.
Example: Liu Ping (刘萍) of Jiangxi province, and Li Biyun (李碧云) of
Guangdong province attempted to stand as candidates in the 2011-12 local
people’s congress elections. Acrossing the country, over four-dozen
independent woman candidates including Liu and Li experienced harassment
from the local authorities including physical and verbal attacks, were
prevented from standing, were detained and experienced ill treatment,
likely amounting to torture, while they were in detention. The court
also refused to file a case to investigate the allegation of torture
brought by their lawyer. Li Biyun’s lawyer has reported that beatings by
police have resulted in broken vertebrae and her losing consciousness.
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Crackdown on freedom of expression, peaceful assembly & association
Example: Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄) (also known as Yang Maodong), a prominent
human rights lawyer from Guangzhou, was criminally detained in August
2013 and formally arrested a month later in a nationwide crackdown on
freedom of assembly, association, and expression. Police in Guangzhou
accused Guo of organizing rallies in front of the Southern Weekly
headquarters in January 2013, organizing a campaign calling on the
government to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights, and also leading an anti-corruption campaign. Guo has been
ill-treated in prison.
More Individuals Detained in Crackdown on Peaceful Assembly, Association & Expression:
http://www.chrdnet.com/2013/07/individuals-detained-in-crackdown-on-assembly-and-association/
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Control and crackdown during the Beijing Massacre Anniversary and
Universal Suffrage Movement in Hong Kong. Four dozen of activists
participating commemorating the Beijing Massacre Anniversary and
Universal Suffrage Movement in Hong Kong have been still held by police.
The suppression that began in the spring of 2013—and caught dozens of
activists and lawyers in violation of their rights to peaceful
expression, assembly, and association—was even more pervasive in 2014.
More than 260 individuals were detained either around the June Fourth
anniversary or as the pro-democracy protests were happening in Hong
Kong._ Now at least 30 activists are waiting for trial.
Example One: Yu Shiwen (于世文) , a student organiser at Zhongsan
University during the 1989 pro-democracy movement, was disappeared on 23
May 2014, until May 28, when their family received a notice saying he
had been criminally detained on charges of “gathering a crowd to disrupt
order of a public place.” The charges apparently stem from their
organizing a June Fourth memorial event in February 2014 in the hometown
of Zhao Ziyang (赵紫阳), a former CCP secretary-general who was dethroned
for his efforts to stop the 1989 Beijing massacre, and was under
constant house arrest until his death in 2005. Of several dozen people
who had gathered for the activity, at least 10 have been detained since
May. When he was formally arrested in July, the charges against him had
been changed. Yu reportedly suffers from hypertension and hereditary
cardiovascular disease, which had led to his father’s death. In July
2014, Yu suffered a stroke in detention after not being provided any
medication to manage his illnesses. He was sent to the detention
center’s hospital for treatment, but his hands and feet were almost
always shackled to his bed, which was unbearable for Yu, who decided in
the end to return to his cell instead.
Example Two: Chen Yunfei, a human rights activist and blogger from
Sichuan province who has campaigned against environmental degradation,
highlighted human rights abuses and spoken out on behalf of the families
seeking justice for those killed in the aftermath of the Tiananmen
Square protests in 1989. He has been subjected to threats, harassment,
physical attack, illegal detention and house arrest as a result of his
work. On 6 April 2015, the family of human rights defender Mr Chen
Yunfei received formal notification from the authorities in Sichuan
province that the defender has been charged with 'picking quarrels and
provoking troubles' and 'inciting subversion of state power'. He is
currently detained in Xinjin County Detention Centre in Sichuan
Province, where he has not yet been permitted access to a lawyer.
Example Three: Han Ying (韩颖), housing and child rights activist, 2011
independent candidate for Beijing National People's Congress elections,
founder of Smile Charity (grassroots NGO), has been seized on October
1, has been formally arrested.
Example Four:
Wang Zang (王藏) , artist, was taken away in early October 2014 after he had posted a photo and expressed support online for the
Hong Kong pro-democracy protests[1].
According to his lawyer, who was finally allowed to meet Wang nearly
three months after his initial detention, Wang was subjected to torture
and other forms of mistreatment. Authorities initially locked up Wang at
a military camp-like facility, and kept him in a padded room for 15
days and under 24-hour watch, purportedly to prevent him from committing
suicide. Police then interrogated him for five days straight, depriving
Wang of any sleep. During the interrogations, police forced him to
stand and struck him when he fell down. The interrogators tried to force
Wang to hand over the passwords for his
weibo account and his
cell phone. Wang subsequently suffered a heart attack and passed out.
Prior to being detained, he had no history of heart disease and was
generally in good health. Authorities then moved Wang to Beijing No. 1
Detention Center for the remainder of his 37-day criminal detention and
later transferred him to Tongzhou District Detention Center after his
formal arrest in November 2014.
Example Five: Bian Xiaohui (卞晓晖), a new graduate student and NGO
worker, was sentenced to three and half years in prison. Her father,
Bian Lichao, has been serving a 12-year sentence in Shijiazhuang Prison
since 2012 for practicing Falun Gong. Since then, her requests to visit
him had been rejected by the prison authority. In March 2014, she held
up a sign outside the prison, saying “I want to see my father.”
Immediately she has been detained.
Example Six: veteran Chinese dissident Qin Yongmin (秦永敏) and his wife Zhao Suli
(赵素利), have been "forcibly disappeared" for over three months.
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/search-04172015101633.html
26 activists are still in custody for expressing support for Hong Kong pro-democracy protests
115 detentions of individuals were taken away since October in the
crackdown on supporters of the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests. Of all
those once detained, 27 individuals are still in police custody—24 who
have formally arrested and three others who are under criminal
detention. Police have denied lawyers visits for an extended period of
time for many detainees, some of whom have reported being tortured.[
To date, police in Beijing have recommended indictments in the cases of nine individuals:
Wang Zang (王藏), Xu Chongyang (徐崇阳), Zhui Hun (追魂 aka Liu Jinxing
刘进兴);
Another 15 arrested individuals—all in Beijing or Guangdong Province—remain under police investigation:
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In Beijing: Guo Yushan (郭玉闪), He Zhengjun (何正军), Jiang Jiawen (姜家文),
Li Yufeng (李玉凤), Ran Chongbi (冉崇碧), Zhang Miao (张淼), Zhang Weishan (张伟姗
aka Zhang Ying, 张瑛), and Zhu Yanguang (朱雁光)
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In Guangdong: Chen Qitang (陈启棠, aka Tian Li, 天理), Su Changlan (苏昌兰),
Wang Mo (王默), Xie Wenfei (谢文飞), Ye Xiaozheng (叶晓峥), and Zhang Shengyu
(张圣雨 real name Zhang Rongping, 张荣平)
In addition, Ji Sizun (纪斯尊), Sun Feng (孙峰), and Xia Lin (夏霖) remain under criminal detention.
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Civil society participation in UN Universal Periodic Review/other international human rights mechanisms blocked.
Example One: Cao Shunli (曹顺利) was detained several times
after advocating for civil society participation in the UPR in late
2008. Originally detained in September 2013 at Beijing Capital
International Airport while on her way to a training session on UN human
rights in Geneva, Cao was held at Chaoyang District Detention Centre
where her health seriously deteriorated. Her family’s requests for
medical release were repeatedly denied, and she developed a number of
serious illnesses, including tuberculosis, liver ascites, fibroid
tumours and cysts. Cao was taken to the intensive-care unit of Beijing’s
Qinghe Emergency Centre on 16 February 2014. The Chinese authorities’
role in disappearing, arbitrarily detaining, and denying Cao Shunli
medical treatment and tortured her in detention, directly led to her
death. During China's October CEDAW review in 2014, over ten women
activists in China were prevented them from traveling to Geneva to
contribute to the review. In addition, two women’s rights activist Ye
Haiyan (叶海燕) and Wang Qiuyun (王秋云) were detained during the review.
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Deprive medical treatment or torture as a form of reprisal against
prisoners of conscience received considerable attention in 2014. For
HRDs, “death by detention” remains a very real possibility, and various
abuses behind bars led directly to deaths in 2014. Only in 2014, at
least 5 prisoners of conscience died in custody or died immediately
after they were released. Cao Shunli (曹顺利) passed away in March from
illnesses that worsened or were contracted in detention. Tibetan
prisoners Goshul Lobsang (果秀洛桑), Kunchok Drakpa, and Tenzin Choedak
(丹增曲扎) died in Marc, April and December, respectively, after their
bodies were decimated by torture; they had been serving long sentences
tied to the demonstrations in the Tibet Autonomous Region in 2008._ Shi
Enxiang (師恩祥), an underground bishop died in custody after 14 Years
secret detention.
Example One: Wang Bingzhang (王炳章), born in 1947, a veteran US-based
Chinese democracy activist has been sentenced to life in prison since
2003, being held in solitary confinement. Wang was abducted by Chinese
security forces along the border of China and Vietnam in 2002. He
suffers from chronic phlebitis, severe allergies, untreated depression,
and has been stricken with at least three strokes in the last six years.
Example Two: Yang Tongyan (杨同彦, aka Yang Tianshui (杨天水), a writer, is
critically ill, raise serious concerns about the treatment of detainees
in Chinese prisons and detention centers. Yang, currently serving a
12-year sentence for “subversion of state power” in Nanjing Prison, has
been hospitalized since mid-September 2009. Yang is ill with a myriad of
illnesses, which include intestinal tuberculosis, tuberculous
peritonitis, diabetes, kidney inflammation, and high blood pressure.
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Fresh “crackdown” on religious communities and other groups in civil
society in course of crackdown on civil society and all forms of
protest.
Example One: Khenpo Kartse is a popular senior religious
figure and well respected for his social work and the promotion and
protection of Tibetan language, culture and religion. He was arrested on
6 December 2013 and his health condition has taken a turn for the
worse. He currently suffers from a sharp pain in his back and has begun
ejecting sputum, a bloody mixture of mucus and saliva. The authorities
denied his family's and his lawyer's appeal to release on medical parole
while they refused to provide medicine for him. On October 2014, he has
been sentenced a two-and-a-half-year prison term in a secret trial in
Tibet after being held in detention for nearly a year,
Example Two: Protestant Pastor Zhang Shaojie (张少杰) and eight
members of the state-registered Nanle Church remain in detention after
petitioning the authorities about a land dispute. Their lawyers have
been harassed, beaten and robbed, and at least two of the detainees have
reportedly been tortured in detention. The remaining church members
have been prevented from meeting together, and visitors to the church
have been harassed, detained and physically attacked.
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Charter 08 advocated a whole political change, a new constitution and
democracy in China. Now around two dozens Charter 08 signatories have
been jailed or detained. Two dozens have been held under house arrest.
Imprisoned Charter 08 signatories inclduding Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xianbin,
Chen Wei, Chen Xi, Zhu Yufu, Gao Yu, Pu Zhiqiang, Tie Liu, Zhao
Changqing, Guo Yushan, Tang Jingling, Wang Qingying, Yuan,Xinting, Jiang
Lijun, Zhu Yingdi, Li Bifeng, Wei Qin, Wang Kouma, Zhang Lin. http://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2014/12/1210-28.html?spref=tw
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Use of unlawful and arbitrary detention including de facto house
arrest, “psychiatric hospital”, “black jails”, “so-called legal
education centres for petitioners and religious communities.
Example One
: Liu Xia (刘霞), wife of the 2010 Nobel Peace
Prize winner and imprisoned dissident writer Liu Xiaobo (刘晓波), continues
to be subject to mistreatment. She has been put under house arrest
since October 2010. She has been cut off from contact with her family
and friends. Pressure and isolation have driven her to the brink of
mental break-down, according to a letter that she wrote and smuggled out
[2].
Example Two: Peng Lanlan (彭兰岚), Cao Shunli’s fellow activist in the
campaign, was tortured and subjected to other forms of mistreatment in
psychiatric facilities from 2013 to 2014. More examples: activists and
petitioners have been forcibly held in
psychiatric hospitals [3].
Example Three: Yu Jinfeng, a Falun Gong practitioner from Hulin city,
Heilongjiang province, was sent to a “brainwashing centre” set up in
the former Jixi re-education through labour (RTL) camp. This is one of
many reports of former RTL institutions continuing to be used to
arbitrarily and unlawfully detain groups, particularly Falun Gong
practitioners
[4].
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Tight media and communication censorship, control or suppression of
press, publication, and online expression, smother all sorts of
criticism and public commentary on party policies. There have been the
highest number of journalists in jail for at least two decades. In the
period between 2013 and 2014 more journalists are now in prison than at
any time since at least 1990, with more than half being Uighur or
Tibetans.
Gao Yu (高瑜), 71, women journalist, was sentenced to seven years in
prison on spurious charge “ leaking state secrets” which an internal
Communist party document which urged the aggressive targeting of
subversive ideological trends including support for western democratic
ideals, media independence, civil society and the “universal values” of
human rights. This is Gao's third time in prison. Gao, working for the
official China News Service in 1980s, mostly produced interviews with
various famous personalities and provided her articles including student
movements in 1988 to oversea Chinese language media in Hong Kong,
Taiwan, and other countries. In 1988, Gao joined the Economics Weekly
(经济学周报) which was taken over by the Democracy Wall veterans Chen Ziming
and Wang Juntao. She published a few influencial interviews, including
one with Yan Jiaqi and Wen Yuankai on political reform. During the 1989
Pro-democracy Movement, Gao Yu joined her fellow journalists in a few
protest marches. After the martial law, on May 21, Gao Yu contacted two
dozens representatives in the National People's Congress, demanding a
them to revoke the martial law. On June 3, just before the bloody
crackdown, Gao Yu was kidnapped in front of her home and then was
secretly jailed for 15 months. Gao Yu remained active after her release.
In 1993, she was arrested again for "leaking state secret" and
sentenced to six years in prison. While serving that sentence, she was
bestowed several
awards from various international organizations.
More cases:
https://www.cpj.org/blog/2014/12/China-mainstream-media-as-well-as-dissi...
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In Tibet and Xinjiang (East Turkestan); the current policy of brutal
repression violates basic human rights. Millions of Tibetans have been
displaced in their own homeland amid rampant mining and river damming in
vacated areas In name of development. A newer strategy for suppressing
Tibetans and Uyghurs was evident in 2013-4: “collectively punishing”
entire villages in the aftermath of individual acts, such as
self-immolations or other kinds of political resistance by Tibetans and
Uighurs, that the Chinese authorities blamed on Uighurs and Tibetans
“extremists”, “separatists” or terrorist.
The has regularly instituted extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary
executions in the region. Uighurs and Tibetans were given severe prison
sentences and faced greater violence from authorities. The life sentence
given to Uighur scholar
Ilham Tohti in September 2014
was a case study in the perverse lack of transparency and flagrant
political retaliation of China’s criminal justice system against any
critical voices.
See more:
Tibetan survivors of self-immolation: repression and disappearance
https://www.savetibet.org/tibetan-survivors-of-self-immolation-repression-and-disappearance-2/#sthash.MechsEr6.N7KKrN8t.dpuf
Annual Report 2014: Human Rights Situation in Tibet
http://www.tchrd.org/category/annual-reports/
Legitimizing Repression: China’s “War on Terror” Under Xi Jinping & State Policy in East Turkestan
http://uhrp.org/press-release/legitimizing-repression-china%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9Cwar-terror%E2%80%9D-under-xi-jinping-and-state-policy-east
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Human rights lawyers and lawyer professor were criminally detained—and
five of those later arrested—and two others were sent to prison in 2014
(among the two imprisoned are lawyer Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) and lawyer
professor Xu Zhiyong.The criminal conviction of a lawyer comes with a
serious price: an automatic ban from ever practicing law again in China,
which severely jeopardizes their chance to earn a living. During the
suppression around the June Fourth anniversary, police arrested three
lawyers—Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) and lawyer Tang Jingling (唐荆陵) have been held for one year. Xia Lin (夏霖), were seized in October for trying to represent
detainees from the crackdown related to the Hong Kong protest.
- While there are Tiananmen prisoners including including Miao Deshun (苗德顺), who have been kept in prison all
these years since they were locked up immediately after the Massacre,
there are over two dozen Tiananmen participants who have been imprisoned
in recent years, including Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, activist Chen
Yunfei, lawyer Pu Zhiqiang and journalist Gao Yu.
Partial list of imprisoned 1989 participators
Chen Shuqing 陈树庆
Chen Wei 陈卫
Chen Xi 陈西
Chen Yunfei 陈云飞
Ding Jiaxi 丁家喜
Jiang Lijun 姜力钧
Gao Yu 高瑜
Guo Feixiong
Li Bifeng 李必丰
Liu Xianbin 刘贤斌
Liu Xiaobo 刘晓波
Liu Shaoming 刘少明
Lü Gengsong 吕耿松
Pu Zhiqiang 浦志强
Ting Jingling唐荆陵
Xie Changfa 谢长发
Shenguan 圣观法师（Xu Zhiqiang )
Yang Tongyan 杨同彦
Yu Shiwen 于世文
Zhang Lin 张林
Zhao Changqing 赵常青
Zhou Yongjun 周勇军
Zhu Yufu 朱虞夫
