IV. Political Prisoner Database

The CECC Political Prisoner Database (PPD) is a unique and powerful resource that became globally accessible via the Internet in November 2004. The PPD is designed to serve as a tool for individuals, educational institutions, NGOs, and governments that wish to research political and religious imprisonment in China or advocate on behalf of prisoners. During the PPD's first eight months of operation, about one-third of the requests for prisoner information originated from government Internet domains (.gov).

The PPD is designed to allow anyone with Internet access to query the database and download prisoner data without providing personal information. Users have the option to create a user account, which allows them to save, edit, or reuse queries. A user-specified ID and password is the only information required to set up a user account. The PPD does not download or install any software or Web cookies to a user's computer.

The PPD allows users to conduct queries on 19 types of prisoner information. Users may search for prisoners by name, using either the Roman alphabet or Chinese characters. Users may construct queries to include personal information (ethnic group, sex, age, occupation, religion), or information about imprisonment (current status of detention, place of detention, prison name, length of sentence, legal process).

Each prisoner's record describes the type of human rights abuse by Chinese authorities that led to his or her detention. These abuses include violations of freedom of speech, religion, and association, for example, as well as issues related to democracy, labor rights, and ethnicity. Each record includes a short summary of the case. Users may download information about prisoners from the PPD as Adobe Acrobat files or Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.

As of September 2005, the PPD contained more than 3,600 records of political and religious imprisonment in China. The Dui Hua Foundation, based in San Francisco, and the Tibet Information Network, based in London, shared their extensive experience and data on political and religious prisoners in China with the Commission to help establish the database. The Commission also relies on its own staff research for prisoner information, as well as on information provided by other NGOs and groups that specialize in promoting human rights and opposing political imprisonment.

Commission staff regularly updates the information in the PPD. The Commission staff also works to upgrade the PPD software periodically, to improve performance, and to provide PPD users with access to more data.

The PPD is accessible on the Internet at http://ppd.cecc.gov. The Commission Web site contains instructions on how to use the PPD.