CHRD Releases China Human Rights Yearbook (2007-2008)

(Chinese Human Rights Defenders, August 6, 2008)- CHRD today releases its first China Human Rights Yearbook, which presents a review of some of the most pressing human rights issues facing China as it plays host to a major world event, the 2008 Olympic Games.

The main focus of our attention is the situation of women and men who seek to defend human rights, expose abuses and gain redress for violations of rights they have suffered themselves, or those suffered by others. Human rights are always important, but they are most critical when things go wrong. The people on whom CHRD focuses are a barometer for the protection of rights more generally in China today; the conditions in which they operate indicate the degree of protection for rights, and the prevalence of abuses of them, in situations of conflict and contestation. Such contestation is endemic in a society undergoing rapid and destabilizing economic and social change, such as that being experienced across China.

The material published here shows that two major types of abuses remain prevalent: first, extra-legal measures to punish dissent and restrict those who seek to expose violations of human rights; and second, the use of laws that are not in compliance with China's international human rights obligations in that they permit violations of human rights. The fact that both types are perpetrated against the very people who seek to expose human rights abuses is testament to the fact that real protections for rights in China remain severely inadequate, and honored more in the breach than the observance.

An example of the extensive use of extra-legal measures is the operation by local authorities of what are known in China as "black jails," documented in two reports in the Yearbook. These are entirely illegal under current Chinese law, yet they are being run under the nose of the central government in Beijing, as well as in many other locations.

CHRD believes that this phenomenon is a serious human rights violation that deserves greater attention, especially as China's human rights record comes under the spotlight at the United Nations in 2009 when it will undergo its first "universal periodic review"—as is required for all members of the UN Human Rights Council.

The "black jails" phenomenon is just one aspect of systematic efforts to silence petitioners who attempt to present their grievances against local officials to higher level authorities, as documented in CHRD's report in this Yearbook. Although lodging complaints is a constitutional right in China—one of the few political rights laid out clearly in the 1982 Constitution—in practice it is routinely violated. This is not just a matter of abusive local officials trying to prevent the airing of local dirty linen. It results from central government policies that penalize local governments when complaints from their areas, particularly those of a collective nature, reach Beijing. It also demonstrates how, in the absence of effective institutions to monitor the daily operations of governments at all levels, institutional reforms can be subverted, even ignored. An example is that despite the abolition in 2003 of the measure "Custody and Repatriation" (收容遣送) under which many petitioners were held and forcibly sent back

to their places of residence registration in the past, it seems that many petitioners are routinely detained in various kinds of illegal facilities instead.

An example of the second type of prevalent abuse—laws not in compliance with international human rights standards—is apparent in the sentencing of many dissident writers and human rights activists to prison for the crime of "inciting subversion of state power." The use of this notorious article of the Chinese criminal code is documented in CHRD's report published here. Soon after the major revisions of Chinese criminal law were passed in 1997, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention expressed serious concern about the potential of this and other articles covering crimes of "endangering state security" to be used to penalize peaceful exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms. Ten years on, these fears have been shown to be fully justified, but yet a series of efforts to request that the National People's Congress address this failure to respect China's obligations under international human rights instruments by changing this law have met with only silence.

Such a failure to act is an indication that the Chinese leadership remains intent on exercising strict control over expressions of political dissent. The quotidian functioning of this intention is amply demonstrated in CHRD's report on mechanisms of control over the internet. It describes the major institutions involved, and shows how officials within them exercise daily censorship over content through constant communication with personnel working for internet service providers. The extent of this bureaucracy, and the scope of its operations, reveal the degree of repressive effort that goes into maintaining the appearance of "a harmonious society" in China.

This repressive effort has intensified in the year leading up to the Beijing Olympics, as the central government has sought to divert domestic attention away from destabilizing social crises and boost China's image as a world power.

As the report on the situation of Chinese human rights defenders in this Yearbook demonstrates, in the past year the government focused its repressive energy against those who defend fellow citizens' human rights and assist them in seeking redress for injustice.

The broader stretch of daily repression is evident in the Chronicle section of the Yearbook, which documents some of the major human rights events between July 2007 and June 2008, focusing principally on abuses related to the efforts of individuals and groups to defend human rights, document their violation and seek redress. This is far from a comprehensive record of the past year, reflecting CHRD's limited resources and the focus of our work.

Other organizations concentrate on collecting information on issues regarding labor and religious rights in China, and thus CHRD tends to focus its efforts on aspects other than these.

CHRD recorded the arbitrary detention of 428 individuals in the past year, a figure that does not include people who were already in detention at the beginning of the period.1 Alarmingly, we find that over 40 percent of these detentions were in "black jails." Since these secret facilities are illegal, individuals detained in them are stripped of all legal rights, thus particularly vulnerable to torture and other forms of ill-treatment and can be detained for an indefinite period of time. Most of those detained in black jails were petitioners, and a number, such as Cao Xiaoli (曹晓丽) and Sun Chongping (孙崇平), were repeatedly put into such facilities in the past year.

CHRD also noted 44 cases of torture involving 73 individuals. Among those arbitrarily detained in the past year, 18 percent experienced some form of torture or ill-treatment. In one of the most unfortunate cases, Chen Ningbiao (陈宁标), who led protests against forced evictions in his village in Guangdong Province, died in October 2007 after the prison authorities had denied him access to medical treatment for nearly half a year.

The Chinese government continued to show little respect for the right to freedom of expression. As it provides much greater space for public expression than other media, which are more tightly and effectively controlled, the internet was a principal focus of repressive action against expression. Authorities closed websites and blogs they considered threatening or outside their control, even when some of them seemed rather innocuous, such as the Contemporary Chinese Poetry Forum. Although the international media lauded China's "openness" immediately after the May 12 Sichuan earthquake, in fact the authorities continued to punish bloggers and reporters who dared to stray from the official script and focus on criticizing official misconduct, such as questioning why so many schools in the affected area collapsed. This persistent assault on free expression is also reflected in the fact that the largest proportion of those arbitrarily detained this year—59.8 percent—was held for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

In the year leading up to the Olympics, the authorities showed little tolerance for protest gatherings. Whether it was a group of human rights activists meeting foreign delegates in Beijing, or Shandong villagers protesting against forcible demolition of their homes, authorities were often quick to suppress collective action. Many of those labeled "organizers" of protests, or individuals who inspired them, were detained. Last year about 15.4 percent of the arbitrary detentions we documented were for exercising the freedom of association and assembly. The case of Chen Yuping (陈玉平), a workers' representative from Jilin Province, was a classic case where attempts to organize an independent union earned him eighteen months of Reeducation Through Labor (RTL).

Another pattern of the past twelve months concerned government authorities colluding with property developers to forcibly evict people from their homes, demolish their property and expropriate their land without adequate compensation. Especially in Beijing, residents continued to be evicted to make way for the Olympics venues without proper compensation and sometimes using violence. Nearly 20 percent of those arbitrarily detained in the past year were victims of forced evictions or land expropriation. Often, these people were incarcerated for petitioning higher authorities about their plight or organizing others to resist the evictions, as in the cases of Yang Chunlin (杨春林), Yu Changwu (于长武) and Wang Guilin (王桂林), villagers' representatives in Fujin City in Heilongjiang Province.

However, despite a repressive climate, efforts by people from across China to monitor human rights and publicize violations of them have not diminished, but have continued to grow in the past year. The abuses documented in this Yearbook would not have come to light without their dedicated and fearless work, as described in the report on human rights defenders published here. Many of the human rights defenders at the grassroots level began by seeking redress for their own grievances, whether about expropriation of land or property, torture and illtreatment, or about becoming infected with HIV due to official negligence in monitoring of blood supplies. They have gone on to take up the rights of others, and to advocate more broadly for the kind of changes in law, policy and practice that would address the hostilities of the political climate in which they have to work. Others are members of the elite, lawyers for example, who have encountered human rights violations at first hand through taking on difficult cases, and have then continued to practice this most dangerous and difficult branch of law.

Supporting and facilitating the work of such people and the groups they form is the mission of CHRD. In the concluding section of this Yearbook, we outline the actions CHRD took this year to do this, to monitor human rights violations and to advocate for greater protections for human rights. If the abuses occurring in China seem oppressive even to read about, the courage of human rights defenders is an inspiration that can lift that feeling of gloom.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Black jails in the Host City of the Open Olympics

Journey to the Heart of Internet Censorship

Using Inciting Subversion to Prosecute Free Speech

Appendix I: Relevant constitutional and legal provisions
Appendix II: Individuals convicted under Article 105(2)
Appendix III: Individuals charged under Article 105(2) but convicted of other crimes

Silencing Complaints: Abuses Against Petitioners

Petitioners: An Overview
Petitioning: History, Legal Basis and Structure
Interception of Petitioners: History, Mechanism and Methods
Harassment, Intimidation and Interception of Petitioners
Human Rights Violated in the Interception of Petitioners
Causes of the Violations 61 Recommendations
Appendix I: Cases of petitioners beaten and tortured
Appendix II: Cases of petitioners arbitrarily detained

Dancing in Shackles: Human Rights Defenders in China 2007

Introduction
Norms and Definitions
An Assessment of Two Key Freedoms for Defending Rights
A Fragile Movement in Emerging Civil Society
Tools of Persecution: An Analysis of the Laws and Institutions
Conclusion & Recommendations
Appendix: Examples of Citizen Actions to Defend Human Rights in 2007

Chronicle of Human Rights Violations Recorded by CHRD (July 2007 -June 2008)

Arbitrary Detention
Torture
Freedom of Expression
Freedom of Association and Assembly
Housing & Property Rights

A Year of Action

List of Abbreviations

To get a free copy of the Yearbook, please email your name and address to crdnetwork@gmail.com or networkcrd@gmail.com.

For the online version, click on the chapter titles listed above in the Table of Contents。