Issues Identified by UN Human Rights Bodies and International NGOs

Areas of concern noted recently by UN human rights treaty bodies and international NGOs include the following:

Ø  Widespread use of torture and ill-treatment of suspects in police custody, especially to extract confessions or information to be used in criminal proceedings, and lack of legal safeguards for detainees;

Ø  Abuses in prisons, including the high number of deaths in custody;

Ø  The extended use of all forms of administrative detention, including “re-education through labour” (laodong jiaoyang), without charge, trial or review;

Ø  The existence of secret detention facilities, including “black jails”, to detain petitioners and human rights defenders;

Ø  The broad application of the 1988 Law on the Preservation of State Secrets, which severely undermines the availability of information about torture, criminal justice and related issues;

Ø  Harassment and violence against defense lawyers, petitioners and human rights defenders by unaccountable personnel alleged to be hired by State authorities;

Ø  Targeted torture, ill-treatment and disappearances directed against national, ethnic, religious minorities and other vulnerable groups in China, among them Tibetans, Uighurs, and Falun Gong practitioners;

Ø  The lack of legislation on violence against women that also provides access to justice and means of support for victims and punishment of perpetrators;[1]

Ø  The use of Chinese as the only teaching language in minority autonomous regions, especially in secondary and higher education;[2]

Ø  Tight control over internet by blocking certain human rights-related and social connection websites and filtering internet content based on specified words and topics;[3]

Ø  Strict sanction of members of unregistered religious organizations, which are considered illegal and even as “evil cults”, e.g. Falun Gong;[4]

---

[1] Concluding comments of the Committee against Torture: China, 2008.

[2] Concluding comments of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination: China, 2009.

[3] Amnesty International Report 2008: Human Rights in People’s Republic of China.

[4] Human Rights Watch World Report 2009/2010.