Her Excellence Ms. Louise Arbour

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

UNHCHR

Mr. Miloon Kothari, Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing

Secretoriat Ms. C. Moller

Room 4-010, Palais Wilson, email cmoller@ohchr.org

Mr. Walter Kalin, Representative of the Secretary General

Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons

Secretariat: Paul Oertly

Room 3-016, email poertly@ohchr.org

Ms. Leila Zerrougui, Chairperson-Rapporteur

Working Group on Arbitrary Detention

c/o United Nations Office at Geneva

8-14 avenue de la Paix

1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Dear Ms. Arbour, Mr. Kothari, Mr. Kalin, and Ms. Zerrougui:

We are submitting a communiqué concerning the alarmingly widespread abuses of human rights involved in forced eviction due to land requisition and housing demolition in the People's Republic of China, "Victims of 'Development'." (See attachment)

This communiqué begins with an overview of the grave situation.  It then presents two typical but also urgent cases: the Zigong case and the Putian case.   But the abuses are geographically widespread.  We are in the process of preparing more cases, which will be submitted to you as soon as possible.  The current submission is an update on the earlier submission we sent to you in late June, 2006, though this is the first time we are sending this also to the WGAD.

Given the widespread abuses of human rights (arbitrary detention, police brutality, torture to force confession, and denial of freedoms of expression, assembly, association, and peaceful demonstration) in the ruthless housing/land evictions all over China, as indicated in this report, we take this opportunity to ask you to request country visits from the Chinese government.   We also request that you use the Urgent Appeal procedure to demand the immediate release of Mr. Huang Weizhong in Fujian and an end to the illegal detentions in Zigong, Sichuan Province.   The Chinese authorities have used detention and imprisonment as punishments or legal tools to suppress rural protests against unfairly compensated, forced land/housing eviction.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contac us. We will keep you updated on any new developments.  

Sincerely yours,

International coordinator

The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders

Phone: 852 8125 7553

admin@chinese-rights-defenders.net

(Other names of those who filed this report are omitted here for their safety.)

Please see the full report at: 

Part 1: http://www.crd-net.org/Article_Show.asp?ArticleID=1597

Part 2: http://www.crd-net.org/Article_Show.asp?ArticleID=1598

Part 3: http://www.crd-net.org/Article_Show.asp?ArticleID=1599

Part 4: http://www.crd-net.org/Article_Show.asp?ArticleID=1600