“We are very worried. Medical experts say the appendix could easily burst. There is a risk to his life,” Chen said, adding: “The prison hospital is unable to deal with the kind of illness Chen Kegui has.”

Prison officials said they would make their own arrangements for treating Chen Kegui, he said, adding that he had been permitted to visit his son in prison several times.

[…] In an apparent concession, local prosecutors appear to have dropped a case against Chen Kegui’s mother, Ren Zongju, whom they accused of “harbouring a criminal” for helping her son before his capture, Chen Guangfu added.

But Chen Guangfu described a continued campaign of harassment against his family, with local thugs attacking his house with rocks, and posters describing his family as “traitors” placed on nearby streets.

Human Rights Watch provides more details on Chen Kegui’s illness and the various forms of “harassment and intimidation” to which his family has been subjected. “Chen Kegui urgently needs effective medical care,” commented the organization’s China director, Sophie Richardson. “Until the Beijing, Shandong, and Linyi authorities cease their persecution of the Chen family, it is hard to see what difference Xi Jinping’s administration is making over the previous leadership despite his promise to ‘put power in a cage of laws’.”

An editorial in The Washington Post last week noted Chen Guangcheng’s view that neither Beijing nor Washington has kept promises made last year:

It was a year ago this week that blind Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng escaped from illegal home detention in his native village in Shandong province and made his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, where he was given shelter. After days of intense negotiations between senior U.S. and Chinese officials, including then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a deal was struck under which Mr. Chen left the embassy. A senior U.S. official told reporters that among the commitments made by Chinese officials was that they would “investigate reported extra-legal activities committed by local Shandong authorities against Mr. Chen and his family.”

Ms. Clinton said that “making [China’s] commitments a reality is the next crucial task” and pledged that “the United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr. Chen and his family in the days, weeks and years ahead.”

Mr. Chen, who during the past year moved to New York to study at New York University, told us Thursday that, in his view, neither side has kept its word. […]

While Chen’s fears for his family appear to have been well-founded, worries that moving to the U.S. would doom him to irrelevance were not, according to Lijia Zhang, writing at The New York Times:

It happened to Wei Jingsheng, one of the most prominent Chinese dissidents, who moved to the United States in 1997. His calls for democracy once inspired so many in and outside of China. Not anymore.

[…] But on my recent trip to Chen Guangcheng’s hometown in rural Shandong, I saw that his spirit lives on — not only in the memories of people he has helped, many of whom have now become activists themselves, but also through Chen’s regular Internet contact with local activists. It’s a different world from when Wei Jingsheng went into exile.

[…] During my recent video call with Chen Guangcheng himself, he told me that he keeps in touch with people from all over the country. Before our conversation, he had been talking to a blind man from Inner Mongolia who runs a grocery store but also devotes much of his energy to helping other disabled people with their rights issues. Chen was planning to video-chat with a group of activists in Sichuan and give them his pitch about the importance of protecting their rights.

“How do people find you?” I asked. He replied with a laugh. “In this Internet age, if you are willing to be available, people can find you easily.”

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Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, chen kegui, Dongshigu, exile, Hillary Clinton, human rights watch, linyi, Shandong, United States, Wei Jingsheng
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Among the dead in the Tuesday afternoon fighting were 15 police officers and local government officials, the Xinjiang government propaganda office said in a news release. It said six assailants were killed on the spot and another eight were captured alive.

“Initial investigations show this was a gang plotting to carry out terrorist acts and the case is now being further cracked open,” the release said.

A leading activist from the region’s indigenous Turkic Muslim Uighur ethnic group questioned the official account, saying local sources said that police sparked the incident by shooting a Uighur youth during an illegal search of homes.

CNN provided more details on the alleged terrorist activity:

[…] Hou Hanmin, spokesperson for the Xinjiang government […] told CNN that some of the captured assailants said under interrogation that they had watched videos “from overseas” that featured violence and acts of terrorism.

“Then they made those large, lethal knives and wanted to use them for Jihad,” she said, referring to the Arabic term meaning “struggle.”

“They had been training in their own house for several months. They were affected by extremism and hoped to commit themselves to Jihad.”

But Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin urged caution about claims that terrorism was involved. From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:

“China has made many unproven and questionable statements about terrorism in the region. That does not mean there isn’t anti-state violence happening there, but we should take with a lot of caution any claim of terrorism,” said Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.

He added: “There are a lot of deaths and a dearth of explanation about them. Every time an incident has been investigated, it brings up elements that challenge profoundly the version put out by authorities.”

He noted that there were criminal gangs in Xinjiang that could not necessarily be linked to terrorism, and added: “Anything that is outside of state-controlled religion is viewed by the Chinese government as illegal religious activity – and anything viewed as illegal religious activity is in turn associated with terrorism.”

Bequelin added, on Twitter:

The 6 Xinjiang suspects are at v. high risk of torture. Police likely in need of “confessions” to back murky claims of terrorism.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) April 24, 2013

Commentators in the U.S., meanwhile, have been embroiled in their own disputes over the terrorism label following last week’s Boston Marathon bombing and the dramatic ensuing manhunt. For Zhu Zhangping at China’s Global Times, the attack’s Chechen connection highlighted America’s “double standards on terror”:

[…] For the US, the sole power enjoying global leadership, it faces terrorism threats from overseas and it fights against terrorism actually only for the sake of its own and its allies’ safety.

As to Chechen separatists and Eastern Turkistan activists, the big headaches for Russia and China respectively, the US always takes two approaches.

On the one hand, the US defined some Chechen separatists as terrorist entities. On the other hand, the US often blamed the Russian government’s violation of ethnic groups’ human rights.

[…] The US does the same to the Xinjiang separatists. The US has only put the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement, one of about 50 Eastern Turkistan groups, on its terrorist list. [AP's Christopher Bodeen notes that ETIM was "later quietly removed […] amid doubts that it existed in any organized manner.“] On the other hand, it praises separatist head Rebiya Kadeer as a “prominent human rights advocate” and finances her group. Such double standards are often interpreted as making trouble to contain China’s rise, while hitting the most dangerous group that is most closely linked to Al Qaeda.

[…] Before it can trace any hints that the Xinjiang separatists may attack the US, the US will not easily abandon these troublemakers in its attempts to slow China’s rapid development and expanding power projection.

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Post tags: boston marathon bombing, human rights watch, kashgar, terrorism, Uyghurs, Xinjiang, Xinjiang violence
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Liang said his client, Yuan Dong, was taken into police custody along with three other activists for criminal investigation after they held banners in the Xidan Culture Square in Beijing’s Xicheng district on Sunday afternoon calling for greater disclosure of officials’ assets to improve the transparency of governance and combat official corruption.

Yuan, 45, was being held in the Beijing No3 Detention Centre along with two other activists, Zhang Baocheng and Ma Xinli, Liang said, but the whereabouts of the fourth activist, Hou Xin, was unknown.

Beijing police did not respond to an inquiry about the detentions yesterday.

The activists’ street campaign is part of a broader civil campaign launched in December calling for top government officials to declare their assets publicly to help fight rampant official corruption.

The issue has simmered since last year, when some officials at the 18th Party Congress told foreign reporters that they would be open to the idea as a way to curb corruption. It also became a popular Weibo topic after Global Times Chief Editor Hu Xijin addressed financial disclosure on his own microblog.

On Wednesday, Human Rights Watch urged the government to release the activists, calling the detentions “the harshest action yet against activists involved in a grass-roots campaign to press the government to honor its promise to fight corruption:”

“The detention of four anti-corruption activists calls into question President Xi Jinping’s commitment to get tough on graft,” said Sophie Richardson, China director, “The government’s treatment of these activists is a litmus test about whether Xi’s campaign to end China’s corruption epidemic is more than mere rhetoric and a few show cases.”

Police in Beijing arrested the activists – Hou Xin, Yuan Dong, Zhang Baocheng and Ma Xinli – on March 31, 2013. The four were displaying large banners with slogans such as “require officials to publicly disclose assets” and “unless we put an end to corrupt officials, the China Dream can only be daydreams.” The activists also gave a speech about the need to address corruption in Xidan Cultural Plaza in Beijing’s Xicheng District.

Police arrested them for “illegal assembly,” which carries a penalty of up to five years in prison. Yuan, Zhang, and Ma are being held in Beijing’s No. 3 Detention Center, while Hou is in No. 1 Detention Center. Under Chinese law, anyone accused of a crime is entitled to a lawyer within 48 hours of being taken into police custody. The police may detain a person for 37 days before they are required to obtain permission from the prosecutor’s office for a formal arrest.

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Post tags: assets, Beijing, detention, financial disclosure, human rights watch, official corruption, sina weibo, Xi Jinping
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Thirty-year-old Kal Kyi, a mother of four has set herself ablaze protesting near Jonang monastery in Zamthang in Eastern Tibet at 3:30 pm (local time).

“The local Tibetans carried her charred body inside the monastery premises to prevent it from falling into the hands of Chinese security personnel,’ said Tsangyang Gyatso, an exile Tibetan who has close contacts in the region.

Kal Kyi had died from injuries. Kyi is survived by her husband, Gyepo, and their four children.

Within 24 hours of Kal Kyi’s self-immolation in Zamthang, another Tibetan has set himself on fire today in an apparent protest against China’s continuing occupation of Tibet.

Forty-three-year old Lhamo Kyab set himself ablaze at Lushoe village in Tsoe region, Eastern Tibet. The self-immolation took place around 10 am (local time).

This is the fifth self-immolation protests in Tsoe since Sangay Gyatso set himself on fire on October 6 last year.

[…] Further detail about Kyab current status is not available at the time of filing this report.

The number of incidents within the P.R.C. now stands at 111, excluding two which may have been accidental. Chinese authorities claim that one recent case was actually a murder, whose alleged perpetrator tried to use self-immolation as a cover. Six more self-immolations have been carried out by Tibetans in India and Nepal.

At Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson argues that Beijing’s response—a policy of “surveillance and suppression” documented in a recent HRW report—has proven “self-defeating”:

The Chinese government- – unlike many Chinese scholars – seems fundamentally unwilling or unable to acknowledge at any level that its policies toward ethnic minority regions have failed. Massive subsidies and infrastructure development, imposed without the key step of ensuring people’s support, have unsurprisingly not bought allegiance. Unprecedented relocations, particularly nomads, under the guises of environmental protection and providing better access to public services, have arguably deepened resentment in the region.

Beijing’s devotion to demonising the Dalai Lama accomplishes little other than further alienating Tibetans. Unilaterally imposing on Tibetans a model of life that Beijing wants – of an urbanised, monetised, secular, ‘modern’ society – is proving a losing strategy. Beijing’s imposition of the “grid” shows it intends to double-down rather than change course.

The willful refusal to see Tibetans as people who want to live a different way and have every right to do so – not as insurgents, criminals or separatists – is ultimately self-defeating. If Beijing wants to stop Tibetan ‘innocents’ from immolating, it must reverse course and loosen up – not batten down. Self-directed violence can dissipate if there is hope. Something Beijing is long overdue to deliver to Tibetans.

See more on the self-immolations, the resulting crackdown and the ensuing debate via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: human rights watch, self-immolations, surveillance, Tibet, tibet policy, Tibetans
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A bid by Beijing to expand a new surveillance and security system across Tibet significantly increases the monitoring particularly of ex-prisoners and exile returnees and raises tensions in a region already gripped by resentment against Chinese rule, a human rights organization said Thursday.

Official documents described the new system, created as a “grid” of community-based information-gathering units, as designed to improve public access to basic services.

But New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the system is part of an effort to expand even further a longstanding practice of carrying out security policies more restrictively in Tibet than in most of the rest of China.

Expansion of the grid system “means that surveillance is now a pervasive part of life across the region,” HRW said.

A Human Rights Watch report details the “grid,” and explains the organization’s concerns with the system:

Official documents describe the new system, known as “grid” (Tib.: drwa ba, Ch.: wangge) management, as designed to improve public access to basic services. But the system also significantly increases surveillance and monitoring, particularly of “special groups” in the region – former prisoners and those who have returned from the exile community in India, among others. Expansion of the grid system, alongside the construction across Tibet of over 600 “convenience police-posts” with high-tech equipment to monitor daily life, and increasingly active volunteer security groups known as “Red Armband Patrols” (Tib.: dpung rtag dmar po) in 2012, means that surveillance is now a pervasive part of life across the region.

“Chinese authorities should dismantle this Orwellian ‘grid’ system, which has been imposed while the government continues to avoid addressing popular grievances,” said Sophie Richardson, China director. “Its purpose appears to be surveillance and control, and it encroaches on Tibetans’ rights to freedom of expression, belief, and association.”

[...]The new grid system grows out of the nationwide “social stability maintenance” (Ch.: weiwen) policy drive, and establishes a new sub-local layer to the administrative system in urban and rural areas across China. According to one Chinese scholar, the grid system is designed to ensure that “information is proactively gathered about people, events, and things so as to build up a database of urban components and events … through which relevant departments and work units can proactively uncover problems in a timely manner.”

Also see prior CDT coverage of protest in Tibet, self-immolation and surveillance.

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Naw Kham’s wry smile belied his macabre circumstances. “I haven’t been able to sleep for two days. I have been thinking too much. I miss my mum. I don’t want my children to be like me,” the 44-year-old Burmese druglord, chained to a chair, told a Chinese TV interviewer.

On Friday – two days after the interview – the Burmese freshwater pirate was executed for allegedly murdering a crew of Chinese sailors on the Mekong river in October, 2011. His last moments were aired on state television.

In the two-hour live broadcast, black-clad police officers hauled Naw Kham from a detention centre in southern China, bound him with ropes and chains, and bundled him on to a bus bound for the execution site. Three of his alleged henchmen followed in similar fashion. They were each killed – off camera – by lethal injection.

Though a rumored live broadcast of the actual executions failed to materialize, the TV coverage attracted heavy criticism. “It’s hard to see how that spectacle doesn’t violate [the] prohibition on parading condemned in the streets,” tweeted human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig, referring to a 1984 ban introduced to avoid unfavorable foreign media coverage. Human Rights Watch’s Nicholas Bequelin commented that China had “just wiped away any perception that it was making progress on the death penalty issue.” Within China, reactions to the broadcast were deeply polarized. From Andrew Jacobs at The New York Times:

“Rather than showcasing rule of law, the program displayed state control over human life in a manner designed to attract gawkers,” Han Youyi, a criminal law professor, wrote via microblog. “State-administered violence is no loftier than criminal violence.”

[…] In one segment, Liu Yuejin, director general of the central government’s Narcotics Control Bureau, cast the executions as a pivotal moment for a newly confident China and for ethnic Chinese across the globe. “In the past, overseas Chinese dared not say they were of Chinese origin,” said Mr. Liu, who led the task force that spent six months hunting the culprits. “Now they can hold their heads high and be themselves.”

Supporters of the program were many, and enthusiastic. One blogger suggested that death by lethal injection was too lenient, adding “These beasts should be pulled apart by vehicles.”

Some critics said the broadcast, and the subsequent public gloating, displayed an ugly side of China and would hurt its image abroad. To Murong Xuecun, a well-known Chinese author, the program revealed a national psyche, fed by decades of Communist Party propaganda, that craves vengeance for the years of humiliation by foreigners. “It proves that hatred-education still has a market in China,” he said in an interview.

At Bloomberg World View, Adam Minter described the spectacle as a “graphic extension” of a broader political strategy:

[…] Over the last two years the Chinese government has found itself embroiled in increasingly dangerous sovereignty disputes with its Southeast Asian and Japanese neighbors. So far, diplomacy has been the preferred course of action. Yet on China’s decidedly nationalistic and highly influential microblogging platforms, diplomacy — especially on sovereignty issues — is unpopular and viewed as a sign of weakness.

In response, the Chinese government and its official media tribunals have carefully ratcheted up the aggressive rhetoric, especially toward Japan, since the fall of 2012, reminding Chinese that they will not be bullied by outside forces. Rather, if there will be any bullying, China will be doing it.

A 2012 Reuters investigation into the Mekong murders described the web of trafficking in drugs, humans and endangered animals in Southeast Asia’s “Golden Triangle”, and Naw Kham’s legendary or perhaps mythical place in it. The report also highlighted the possible involvement of an elite Thai anti-drugs unit in the killings.

China’s Global Times recently revealed that authorities had considered killing Naw Kham with a drone strike instead of capturing him. See more on China’s drone programs, and more on the death penalty in China, via CDT.

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Post tags: CCTV, death penalty, diplomacy, drug trafficking, execution, Golden Triangle, human rights watch, Japan, legal system, Mao era, Mekong river, murders, Murong Xuecun, Myanmar, Southeast Asia, territorial disputes, thailand
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The training has been taking place in the hills of Yunnan Province. It borders Kachin State in northern Myanmar, where a civil war between an ethnic Kachin rebel army and the Burmese Army has been unfolding. The fighting intensified in late December, and Chinese officials and news organizations reported that shells had landed in China and that Kachin refugees had begun living in hotels and the homes of family and friends in Yunnan.

[…] The current round of fighting in Kachin State has centered on the town of Laiza, from which the Kachin army controls an autonomous area of the state. This winter, the Burmese Army has been pressing an offensive to capture Laiza or crucial military positions around it. The army has deployed fighter jets and heavy artillery, and residents have said civilians were killed.

[…] Chinese officials have expressed concern this winter over the violence, especially artillery shells falling within Yunnan; at least four have landed since Dec. 30. There are also worries about a potential flood of refugees.

Human Rights Watch reported in June last year that at least 7-10,000 Kachin refugees had crossed the border in the previous twelve months, and had not received adequate aid or protection from China. Two months later, they were reportedly forced to return, though state media claimed that those who went back had done so of their own accord.

The Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Kan and south-east Asia bureau chief Patrick McDowell discussed the conflict and China’s stake in it earlier this month, as the peace talks began:

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Wang Gaowei and his other nine accomplices, natives of Yuzhou City in central China’s Henan Province, imprisoned the 10 petitioners, also from Henan, in April 2012.

They were falsely imprisoned at two courtyards in Wangsiying Township in Beijing’s Chaoyang District for several days, according to the Beijing Chaoyang District People’s Court.

The court ruled that Wang and the other nine respondents had infringed the personal rights of the 10 petitioners, which constituted the crime of false imprisonment.

The case had previously surfaced in December, when premature reports of the sentences appeared in state media but were quickly dismissed as “fake news” by the court. Its resolution revives hopes that change may be afoot for the petitioners who flock to Beijing to air their grievances, but promising signs in the past have not brought an end to the illegal detentions, and uncertainty remains. From Josh Chin at China Real Time Report:

“If it’s the start of a sincere effort to curb the use of black jails and punish those involved, it’s quite significant,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human rights researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “But I’d be reluctant to draw too many conclusions from just one case when it’s a problem that’s been so widespread for so many years.”

Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, described the court’s decision as one of a several signals the city has recently sent to local governments on the petitioner question. “Beijing’s message to the local officials has been: one, we don’t want your petitioners in Beijing, but two, we don’t want to know how you do that, and three, if something goes awry we won’t necessarily cover up for you,” said Mr. Bequelin.

See also a sympathetic Economic Observer profile of two Beijing-based interceptors and Yu Jianrong’s recent critique of the “rigid stability” machinery of which they are a part, via CDT.

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Post tags: Beijing, black jails, Henan, human rights watch, illegal detentions, petitioners
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“What is forcing these self-immolations?” Lobsang Sangay, prime minister of the Tibetan government in exile, asked in an interview. “There is no freedom of speech. There is no form of political protest allowed in Tibet.”

“None of them have tried to harm anybody else,” said Penpa Tsering, the speaker of the Tibetan Parliament, which is based in Dharamsala, the Indian city that is host to the exiled Tibetan government. “None of the 99 people have tried to harm any Chinese.”

For more than a half century, India has been the primary host of exiled Tibetans, and many of the people who flocked to New Delhi came from special Tibetan villages elsewhere in the country. Lobsang Thai, 28, who came from Mundgod, a Tibetan village in the Indian state of Karnataka, said the self-immolations reflected the desperate situation in Tibet. “I don’t think it is about right or wrong,” he said. “That is the only thing we can do without hurting other people. That’s the best way to get the world’s attention.”

Tenzin Losec, 42, who is from Mainpat, a Tibetan village in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh, agreed. “This is very sad for us,” he said. “But people inside Tibet, they have no other way. They have no rights. Outside Tibet, we are trying to raise awareness around the world.”

Chinese state media has called the self-immolations in Gansu, Qinghai, and Sichuan provinces copy-cat suicides, from Xinhua:

Some foreign media later branded Tsekho a “Tibetan martyr” protesting the growing influence of Han Chinese in the Tibetan plateau. They also used his story as an excuse to attract international attention to the so-called “Tibet issue” and the ultimate pursuit of “Tibet independence,” a campaign spearheaded by the Tibetan government-in-exile, with the Dalai Lama as its spiritual leader.

“It is sheer destruction of humanity,” says the Tibetan official who asked not to be named. “Why did you goad 17- or 18-year-olds to self-immolate? Why didn’t you self-immolate?”

Urigtsang, a young Living Buddha of the Hezuo Monastery, says self-immolations go against Buddhist doctrine and Chinese law.

Monks should focus their attention on practicing Buddhism and cherishing life, and then they will have a good afterlife, he explains, adding that according to Buddhist scriptures, if someone ends his or her life by self-immolating, his or her soul can not be reincarnated.

Human Rights Watch has called on China to stop the sentencing of Tibetans for inciting self-immolations:

“These prosecutions are utterly without credibility,” said Sophie Richardson, China director. “The Chinese government seems to think it can stop self-immolation by punishing anyone who talks about it.  But in pursuing these ‘incitement’ cases, the government compounds the tragedy of these suicide protests.”

According to Chinese state media reports of the trial, both men confessed to trying to “goad” or “incite” eight people to self-immolate since 2010, three of whom died, on instructions from “the Dalai Lama clique.” Those confessions were made public in December, after the men had been in detention for four months. According to state media, Lorang Konchok and Lorang Tsering did not present defenses and the lawyers assigned to them asked the court for leniency on the basis of their cooperation.

“Sentencing someone to death for allegedly inciting someone else to commit suicide is neither just nor respectful of the right to life,” said Richardson. “The ongoing prosecution of people linked with self-immolation appears to be about stifling dissent and laying blame on others for this tragedy.  It is time for China to respond to the grievances and human rights violations that appear to be provoking this tragic form of protest.”

Meanwhile, Tibetans gather in grass-roots meetings to pray for the souls of the self-immolators, from IHT Rendezvous:

“The meetings are a traditional thing to do during the winter and are held daily in different villages, and last three days,” the witness said. They are known in Chinese as “fahui,” or dharma meetings, which are also Buddhist law meetings.

“People drive on motorbikes for long distances, 50 or 60 kilometers, to whichever village is holding a prayer meeting. It’s mostly adults, and they are anywhere between 16 and over 80 years old. As soon as they can drive a motorbike, they’ll go,” the person said.

“Their aim is for each meeting to have chanted ‘Om mani padme hum’ 100 million times. There’s no question that they regard the self-immolators as very great, and believe that with the help of their prayers, they will come back as powerful and blessed people,” said the person, who confessed to having reservations about the self-immolations.

With the Lunar New Year approaching, the prayer meetings will soon be scaled back, as farm work and animal husbandry resume. For now, though, the villagers are praying hard for the souls of the dead, with millions of mantras circulating in the thin air of the plateau.

See also Why People Set Themselves on Fire to Protest China, via CDT.

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Post tags: human rights watch, Lobsang Sangay, self-immolations, Tibet
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At The Wall Street Journal, Josh Chin reported on the wave of protests and the two sentences handed down in Sichuan:

A total of 86 Tibetans, mostly monks and nuns, have set themselves on fire in protest against Beijing’s policies since the start of 2012, according to a Jan. 25 statement issued by the Tibetan government in exile. Of the 99 self-immolations since 2009, 83 have been confirmed to be fatal, Tenzin Lekshay, a press officer for the Tibetan exile administration said last week, saying the rest were untraceable.

Mr. Sangay, who was in New Delhi to attend a four-day gathering over the Tibetan self-immolations, said Chinese authorities had failed to realize that their “repression of the aspirations of Tibetans” was what led to protests. “The solution really lies in a peaceful and transparent dialogue process,” he said.

[…] The sentences handed down Thursday are the “most severe imposed on people accused of inciting self-immolation,” said Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher in the Asia division of Human Rights Watch.

[…] “This is all part of a pattern of escalation against the communities where the people who have committed self-immolations come from,” he said. “At the same time, the government hasn’t even started to address the grievances that underlie the self-immolations.”

Beside criminal prosecutions, authorities have tried threatening to cancel government benefits for self-immolators’ families, confiscating TVs, dismantling satellite dishes and tightening travel restrictions. These include restrictions on the issuing of passports, as Columbia University’s Robert Barnett discussed with Matt Schiavenza at The Atlantic:

Why has the Chinese government stopped issuing passports to Tibetan people? Why now?

The Chinese have given no public explanation so far, but we know from leaked internal documents that it started as a response to a relatively small event last year, one that they have treated as if they were a major threat: a few thousand Tibetans were given permission to travel legally on passports in December 2011 to Nepal, and they then went on to India to attend religious teachings by the Dalai Lama. When they returned, although they hadn’t broken any Chinese laws, they were put in detention for some two months and given political re-education and their passports were all withdrawn. Officially the authorities claimed that these passport cancellations would be done only to government employees and Chinese Communist Party members — but in fact they did it to all the Tibetans whom they suspected of having gone to these Buddhist teachings.

The current passport restriction, then, was initially designed to weed out people who might do this sort of thing again. But now they seem to have extended it to all Tibetans in Tibet, using the excuse that their passports — even if they are valid and even if they’re about to travel somewhere — have to be replaced by new-issue electronic passports. And the new rules say that any Tibetan, before getting a new passport, if indeed they ever get one, must make a written declaration not to do anything while abroad that might threaten China’s national security, and must be visited by the police and interviewed once he or she returns to see if they kept this undertaking. Though there have been many kinds of unprecedented restrictions applied in many spheres of Tibetan life since the protests of 2008, this is one of the more surprising ones.

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Post tags: Gansu, homicide, human rights watch, Lobsang Sangay, self-immolations, sentencing, Sichuan, Tibet, trials
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Secretary of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the CPC Central Committee Meng Jianzhu told the conference that the CPC Central Committee has deliberated over (the reform) and “the system of re-education through labor is expected to come to a stop this year once the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) approves the proposal,” the Xinhua News Agency reported Monday.

According to caixin.com, Meng also said that before approval by the NPC Standing Committee, the use of re-education penalties should be strictly controlled, and the system shouldn’t be applied to petitioners.

However, Meng’s statement on the “stopping” of the system disappeared on major news portals within hours.

Responding to a question about the brief appearance of the news, Qu Xinjiu, a criminal law professor with the China University of Political Science and Law, told the Global Times that “The government has been very careful when dealing with the re-education through labor problem.”

“There are loopholes in China’s current legal system where people who threaten the safety of others are not necessarily subject to punishment by the law,” Qu said. “China may not be fully ready to abolish the re-education policy until we have figured out a way to close the loopholes.”

China’s RTL system, or “Laodong Jiaoyang” (劳动教养), was established in the 1950s and allows public security officials to detain criminals and dissidents in labor camps without the benefit of a judicial hearing. The Ministry of Justice’s Bureau of Re-education Through Labor Administration estimated that there were 160,000 people in 350 camps as of the end of 2008, though a United Nations Human Rights Council working group put the tally at 190,000 in an early 2009 report. Prominent voices within China have come out against the RTL system, most recently when police sent the mother of a rape victim in Hunan Province to a labor camp in August 2012 for “disruption of social order.”

The Global Times added that Monday’s news “sparked widespread celebration among the public,” with one former village official calling it “a major step forward in judicial reform.” Chen Dongsheng, a bureau chief of the Justice Ministry’s Legal Daily, attended the conference and relayed Meng’s statement to The Associated Press:

The proposal must first be sent to China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, for approval, Chen quoted Meng as saying.

Chen said he heard Meng make the pledge at a conference carried on closed-circuit television. China’s supreme court and other government offices declined to comment, although the respected independent magazine Caixin said it had confirmed Chen’s report with an unidentified conference participant.

“Meng said the reeducation system had played a useful role in the past but conditions had now changed,” Chen told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

NPR’s Louisa Lim spoke with former village official and outspoken RTL critic Ren Jianyu, who spent time in a labor camp as a young adult and “had a mixed reaction” to the news:

“When I first saw the news, I was very happy. At least it’s a small step toward reform. It shows a trend in the top leadership,” he says. “But the road is still very long.”

A propaganda film about one labor camp shows blue-suited inmates bent over their work making electrical wiring. The inmates make computer cables and headphones for MP3 players.

Ren says he worked for about 10 hours a day, during which he was not allowed to speak to fellow inmates. He seldom had a day off.

It was unclear, however, what shape any reforms would take as the official announcement contained few details. In addition, some microblog posts touting the news did not stay up for long. Voice of America posted a screen shot of a CCTV post that was later removed:

Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times noted that the way in which the news emerged, with statements by Cheng and others appearing briefly before being deleted, may have quelled any optimism that the system may go away completely. And human rights researcher Joshua Rosenzweig expressed skepticism while tweeting in real-time as news of the reforms began to vanish from Chinese social media:

Official media outlets’ posts on RTL starting to disappear from Weibo h/t @chinanalyst
— Joshua Rosenzweig (@siweiluozi) January 7, 2013

Xinhua: China to reform re-education through labor systembit.ly/117uCBV // this tells me nothing
— Joshua Rosenzweig (@siweiluozi) January 7, 2013

“劳教” doesn’t appear anywhere in Legal Daily front-page coverage of CCPL work conference
— Joshua Rosenzweig (@siweiluozi) January 7, 2013

Similarly, in a Monday press release, Amnesty International’s Roseann Rife cautioned that more detail was needed on the reforms:

“If these reports are true, clearly this is a step in the right direction, but the proposed reforms are unclear and need to be spelled out in detail and subject to open public debate.

“The danger is the authorities’ rhetoric creates a veneer of reform without the reality changing for the hundreds of thousands of people detained in such facilities nor is it clear that any new system will meet international standards.”

China has “been debating how to change its labor camp system for much of the past decade,” according to The Telegraph’s Malcom Moore, who reported that four major Chinese cities debuted an alternative pilot system last year. But Nicholas Bequelin of Human Rights Watch tweeted that while the announcement itself is a step in the right direction, anything short of completely ending the program will be disappointing:

Meng Jianzhu’s annoucement that China is to “stop” using Reeducation-through-labor is big news. But what will replace it?
— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) January 7, 2013

Xi Jinping is sending a strong signal with the RTL announcement. The Gong’an has lost some of the political clout it had under Hu.
— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) January 7, 2013

What the int. community should say now is “No ‘RTL-light’ system to replace Reeducation-Through-Labor please! Only abolition will do.”
— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) January 7, 2013

In a Tuesday press release, Human Rights Watched echoed Bequelin’s sentiment that China should abolish the RTL system entirely:

“This decision, if it truly put an end to Re-Education Through Labor, would be an indisputable step towards establishing rule of law in China,” said Sophie Richardson, China director. “Courageous activists and ordinary citizens have long fought to end this system of arbitrary detention.”

…

Human Rights Watch urged the Chinese government to abolish the RTL system entirely and determine new laws that establish a system to punish minor crimes, one that is consistent with the Chinese Constitution as well as its international human rights obligations. The judiciary – not the police –should be responsible for considering charges, determining guilt, and assigning appropriate punishment. Individuals accused must have access to court proceedings, the right to assistance of counsel of choice, and all other fair trial guarantees. The Chinese government should also explore alternative measures other than detention for minor offenses, such as compulsory community service. In addition, the Chinese government should take measures to eradicate torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment in its detention facilities and prosecute those responsible.

“Cosmetic changes to the system or cutting down the amount of time served in administrative detention will do nothing to end RTL’s notorious abuses, and might only further entrench the system,” said Richardson. “Only abolition will suffice, and it is time that the new administration of Xi Jinping takes steps towards ensuring due process.”

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amnesty International, Beijing, CPC Central Committee, human rights watch, Internet censorship, judicial reform, Justice System, Labor Camp, microblogs, Ministry of Justice, National People's Congress, online public opinion, re-education through labor, reform, Ren Jianyu, Ren Jiayu, sina weibo, Tang Hui, Xi Jinping
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The grants are named for the American playwright Lillian Hellman and her longtime companion, the novelist Dashiell Hammett. Both were both questioned by US congressional committees about their political beliefs and affiliations during the aggressive anti-communist investigations inspired by Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. Hellman suffered professionally and had trouble finding work. Hammett spent time in prison.

In 1989, the trustees appointed in Hellman’s will asked Human Rights Watch to devise a program to help writers who were targeted for expressing views that their governments oppose, for criticizing government officials or actions, or for writing about subjects that their governments did not want reported.

[…] A concentration of grantees in certain countries points to especially severe repression of free expression by those governments. Twelve of this year’s grantees come from the People’s Republic of China; four of them are Tibetan and remain anonymous for security reasons. Five grantees are from Vietnam, four from Ethiopia, and three from Iran.

In addition to the four anonymous and imprisoned Tibetans, the honorees include one ethnic Mongolian, Huuchinhuu Govruud, and two Uyghur writers, Memetjan Abdulla and Gulmire Imin. Wang Lihong, Qi Chonghuai, Huang Qi, He Depu and Sun Wenguang also received grants. Profiles of all the named writers are available at HRW.org.

See also the November edition of Words without Borders magazine, which focused on banned Chinese writers and is still available for free.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ethiopia, free expression, freedom of expression, huang qi, human rights watch, Iran, mongolians, Qi Chonghuai, Tibetans, Uyghurs, Vietnam, Wang Lihong, writers
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“This is a case that tramples on the rule of law. It is a declaration of war against fairness and justice in the world. I absolutely cannot accept this and am very, very angry,” said Chen Guangcheng in an interview from his home in New York where he has been studying English and law. “There is no doubt that this is a kind of retaliation against me.”

[…] Since Chen Kegui disappeared into police custody in May, Yinan authorities have not officially notified his family about the prosecution nor have they let family members see him or hire their own lawyers to defend him. Lawyers were instead appointed to him, and one of them told his father Chen Guangfu about the trial only on Friday morning.

[…] “I feel very disappointed,” the father said. “I had believed that once the new generation of leaders came to power there would be improvements in the rule of law, but now it looks like the situation is still the same.”

Activist Hu Jia, a close friend of Chen Guangcheng and one of the first people he met with after his escape, described Chen Guangfu’s predicament on Twitter as the trial was underway:

陈克贵的父亲陈光福自始至终没能直接和法院工作人员交涉上，他一进入法院大门就被沂南县的警察围住，警察们明确告知大哥只能做证人，在大哥拒绝作证人的情况下，他们不让大哥旁听。现在十余名警察围着陈光福，有些曾参与过陈光诚案。他在法庭的路对面等待庭审结束的消息。 #陈克贵

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) November 30, 2012

Chen Kegui’s father, Chen Guangfu, has at no point been able to make direct representations to the courthouse staff: as soon as he set foot through the door, he was surrounded by Yinan county police who bluntly informed him that he could only be present [if he testified] as a witness, and that if he refused they would not let him attend the trial. Now ten or so policemen are surrounding him, some of whom previously took part in Chen Guangcheng’s case. He’s waiting across the road from the courthouse for word of the hearing’s result.

11月30日，光福大哥会是最难受的人。上午主持祭奠父亲，然后马不停蹄赶到法院，想要见到身处牢狱别离218天的儿子。但却只能见证儿子被枉法审判。

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) November 30, 2012

Chen Guangfu may be the unhappiest person of all today. In the morning, he directed the memorial ceremony for his father; afterwards, he immediately dashed to the courthouse, hoping to see in person the son who’s been away in prison for 218 days. But in the end he could only witness his son’s twisted trial.

Chen explained to The Guardian that “I hoped they would tell me early so that I could prepare, but since they didn’t, there is nothing I can do. I have not heard from my son, and the lawyers appointed by government didn’t tell me anything.” Following the trial, The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reported reactions from the family’s preferred lawyers:

Chen Wuquan, who was hired by Chen Kegui’s family to defend him but rejected by the court, said: “I can’t accept the result. Chen Kegui is not guilty at all. His behaviour was legitimate self-defence, not the crime of intentional injury. From a legal perspective, the result is unacceptable.”

[…] Teng Biao, another lawyer rejected by the court, said holding the case at such short notice ensured that they had no time to reach Yinan to help the family with legal advice.

Teng added that the defendant’s relatives had not seen him since his detention, noting: “No one has a clue about his condition.”

Human rights organisations have given scathing assessments of the trial. From Amnesty International’s Roseann Rife and Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardson, respectively:

“Chen Kegui was today tried by the same court that in 2006 sentenced his uncle Chen Guangcheng to prison on trumped up charges. The family has since suffered a catalogue of abuse at the hands of local authorities which central authorities have failed to investigate despite promises to the contrary.

“The sentence is appalling. It is clear that Chen Kegui’s trial was not fair. We are concerned that sentencing him to imprisonment for something that many consider self defence is nothing more than retaliation for his uncle’s escape.”

“Prosecuting Chen Guangcheng’s nephew was a test of China’s respect for the rule of law, and both the nephew, Chen Kegui, and the rule of law lost [….] This case bore the same disturbing hallmarks as Chen Guangcheng’s persecution – incommunicado detention, denial of lawyers of his choice, and a politicized and closed trial.”

[…] “Chen Kegui’s case not only violated Chinese and international legal standards, it also suggests that the new leadership in Beijing can’t or won’t follow through on commitments to investigate local officials implicated in wrongdoing and egregious human rights abuses [….] And that in turn is a worrying indication of what lies ahead.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amnesty International, Chen Guangcheng, chen kegui, Hu Jia, human rights watch, lawyers, Teng Biao, trials
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Under the new law, there should be no infringements upon the dignity, personal safety or the property of mentally ill people.

The law also stipulates that institutions and individuals should protect the privacy of mentally ill people by preventing leaks of private information, such as their names, addresses and employment status, unless the sharing of such data is necessary for institutions and individuals while exercising their lawful duties.

China currently has about 16 million people suffering from severe mental disorders, according to the Ministry of Health.

[…] The law is expected to curb abuses regarding compulsory mental health treatment and protect citizens from undergoing unnecessary treatment or illegal hospitalization.

Xinhua notes the 2011 case of Chen Guoming, held in an asylum for 56 days at his wife’s instructions after he refused to lend money to her family. But forced psychiatric incarceration has also been used as a political weapon against activists, petitioners and whistleblowers. From Reuters’ Sui-Lee Wee:

“We welcome it because having a law is better than not having one,” Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, a New York-based advocacy group, told Reuters.

“The most important thing that this law does is it will allow civil society to step in to monitor and press for improvement in the management of mental health in China, including … pushing for greater transparency and progressive curtailment of police rights.”

[…] But Bequelin said he was still concerned about China’s police-run psychiatric hospitals, which confine people the authorities consider troublemakers.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: human rights watch, illegal detentions, laws, legal system, mental health, mental hospitals, mental illness, psychiatry
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Allowing reporters to visit Beijing No 1 and 2 detention centres was a surprising move by public security officials, who usually avoid foreign media. But it was only a tiny glimpse of the highest quality facilities in the country.

Nicholas Bequelin, senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch, said there was no doubt the facilities were the country’s best, but added: “It does tell you something: it means this is what the government sees it should be doing … I don’t think China is building model detention centres just to fool the international community.”

[…] But John Kamm of Dui Hua, which advocates for political and religious prisoners and monitors developments in the criminal justice system, pointed out that not everyone was held in a detention centre: those put under residential surveillance were held in “guest houses” run by the Public Security Bureau. Last year, several of those held under such conditions during a crackdown on activists and lawyers, subsequently described being tortured.

In August, lawyer Zhang Yansheng recounted his own visit to a client in a Guangdong detention centre, and complained that conditions inside prevented him from offering effective legal counsel. In addition to residential surveillance, black jails and house arrests, there is also the notorious shuanggui system reserved for Party members, in which Bo Xilai now appears to be held and retired Hunan official Wang Zhongping died under disputed circumstances late last month.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: criminal rights, detention, human rights watch, torture
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