China Human Rights and Rule of Law Update - March 2006

The Tibetan government-in-exile announced in a press release on February 15 that the Dalai Lama's envoys, Lodi Gyaltsen Gyari and Kelsang Gyaltsen, arrived in China the same day for the fifth round of talks with Chinese officials on the Tibetan issue. They were accompanied by senior aides. The press release provided no information about the envoys' itinerary or the planned duration of the visit. Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's Special Envoy, customarily makes a detailed public statement only after the envoys have departed from China and briefed the Dalai Lama in person.

Xu Wei and Jin Haike, sentenced to 10-year prison terms for participating in occasional meetings of the New Youth Study Group, a discussion group of young intellectuals, and for disseminating articles over the Internet, will become eligible for parole on March 13. Yang Zili and Zhang Honghai, two other prisoners sentenced for their participation in the group, became eligible for parole on March 13 of last year.

Human rights defenders in China launched a hunger strike relay on February 4, according to Chinese dissident Web sites and international news media reports. On February 4, the Epoch Times set up an online forum (in Chinese) for discussion of the topic and posted a "Proposal by Gao Zhisheng and Others to Organize a Rights Defender Hunger Strike Support Group." The proposal condemned the increasingly oppressive environment in which Chinese citizens have attempted to defend their rights, and established the hunger strike relay in support of "laborers, farmers, intellectuals, free [religious] believers, as well as Party, government, military, police, and members of all communities and all groups (including petitioners and social activists in all places) who are illegally persecuted or violently beaten." Organizers launched a Web site (www.jueshi.org) through which volunteers could register to participate. Beginning February 15, they coordinated simultaneous hunger strikes in at least 10 provinces and municipalities, including Beijing, Liaoning, Shaanxi, Hubei, Hebei, Shandong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Guangdong, according to a Radio Free Asia (RFA) report (in Chinese) on the same day. As of February 16, over 370 individuals (including overseas supporters) had joined the hunger strike relay, according to an Agence France-Presse article (via Yahoo News) published the same day.

Officials at several religious sites throughout China have not yet implemented a December 2005 national circular requiring that admission fees be waived for religious believers who visit tourist destinations that also are sites of religious activity, according to a February 7 investigative report in the China Ethnicities News. Reporters who talked to officials and visited religious sites in Beijing municipality, Sichuan, Hubei, and Hebei provinces, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) found that officials in most localities were tardy in transmitting the circular to the appropriate departments and work units. Only the Hubei Province Ethnic and Religious Affairs Commission and a Daoist temple there confirmed that they had received the circular. An official from the Hubei Commission said that office transmitted the circular to appropriate departments after receiving it, but the official expected implementation would lag since the new guidance had come out at the year's end. The Daoist temple had not yet implemented the circular.

The high people's courts (HPCs) of Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin municipalities, Hainan and Qinghai provinces, and the Tibet Autonomous Region all have reported that they currently handle death penalty appeals in court, according to a January 17 China Youth Daily article. These reports come several weeks after a Supreme People's Court (SPC) circular went into effect on January 1, requiring court hearings in all death penalty appeals beginning in the second half of 2006. The China Youth Daily article implies that other provincial-level HPCs do not currently conduct court hearings to resolve death penalty appeals, but are preparing to institute new procedures that will bring them into compliance with the SPC requirement.

The State Council issued Regulations on AIDS Prevention and Control on January 18. The new regulations, which will take effect on March 1, outline the central government’s most comprehensive policy toward HIV/AIDS since the adoption of the first government guidelines on AIDS in 1987.

Authorities in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have tightened controls over who may enter mosques, according to a February 6 Radio Free Asia (RFA) report. A photograph sent to RFA depicts a sign in front of a mosque in the southern part of the XUAR that forbids entry to five categories of people: Communist Party and Communist Youth members; state employees, workers, and retirees; minors under 18; local government employees; and women. According to RFA, an imam in Kashgar confirmed some of these restrictions and said that policies elsewhere are the same as at his mosque. A XUAR resident cited in the article said authorities monitor attendance at mosques and levy fines when people violate the bans.

Imprisoned China Democracy Party (CDP) member Tong Shidong's sentence will expire on March 9, 2006, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S. NGO that advocates for prisoners of conscience in China. The Changsha Intermediate People's Court's initial sentence provides that Tong will be deprived of political rights for three years after release.

The annual report of the government-sponsored Beijing Migrant Workers Legal Aid Center said that labor subcontractors “have become a serious obstacle to the protection of migrant worker rights,” according to a January 18 China Youth Daily article. Established in September 2005, the Center has received 2,007 inquiries regarding cases, 757 of which represent back wage issues involving more than 13,000 workers and totaling about 35 million yuan (about US $ 4.3 million) of disputed back wages. The Center has accepted 271 of these cases.

A court in Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (TAP), Gansu province, sentenced five Tibetan monks and nuns in late January to up to three years of imprisonment for displaying and distributing letter-sized posters critical of the Chinese government in 2005, according to a series of reports that emerged beginning in July 2005. Public security officials detained the monks and nuns on May 22, 2005, in Xiahe county, the location of Labrang Tashikhyil Monastery and Gedun Tengyeling Nunnery, where the monks and nuns studied. A January 30 "urgent campaign" document posted on the Web site of the London-based Free Tibet Campaign (FTC) provides the most detailed account available. Reuters (reprinted in the Web site of the New York Times) and the Associated Press (AP, reprinted on the Web site of the INQ7 Network) reported the story on February 6 and 7, respectively, citing FTC as the source.

In December 2005, two groups of registered Catholics demanded that officials in Tianjin municipality return a number of properties confiscated from the Catholic church in the 1950s, according to foreign news media reports. Unidentified assailants allegedly beat members of the first group, and officials indicated later that they will return at least some of the property to the group's diocese. Neither officials nor church leaders have reported whether or not the municipal government has responded to the second group.

A Jiangsu court awarded compensation to the family of a migrant holding a rural hukou (household registration) who was killed in a traffic accident, using the same standards used to calculate compensation amounts for victims holding urban hukou, according to a February 16 China Court article. The decision contrasts with other cases in which parties to court cases have applied lower compensation standards for individuals who hold rural hukou but reside in urban areas. It also contrasts with appellate court rulings that have reversed decisions similar to that of the Jiangsu court.

Thawing permafrost on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau could threaten the safe operation of the Qinghai-Tibet railway in as little as 10 years, according to a series of statements by Chinese officials and experts reported by the Chinese news media. In December 2004, a China Daily article described the railway as the "centerpiece of China's ongoing 'develop the west program'." (See the Office of the Leading Group for Western Region Development of the State Council Web site for more information on the Great Western Development program.) Government investment in the railroad totaled about 33 billion yuan, according to an October 15, 2005, China Daily report, and the project will "attract tourists, traders, and ethnic Chinese settlers" to the region.

The China Economic Times, a State Council-sponsored publication, criticized a decision by the Shanghai local people's congress (LPC) to deny two migrant observers to an LPC session full status as representatives, according to a January 17 editorial reprinted on the People's Daily Web site. The editorial asserted that the decision provided insufficient representation for the interests of Shanghai's migrant population. On January 15, the Shanghai LPC allowed for the first time two migrant workers from Jiangsu to attend a session of the Shanghai LPC as observers. Whether the LPC intends that these two migrant workers serve as permanent observers is unclear.

The Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) procuratorate approved the arrest of 18,227 criminal suspects investigated by public security, state security, and other agencies during 2005, according to a report delivered at the 4th Session of the 10th XUAR People's Congress and cited in a January 20 Xinjiang Daily article (in Chinese) and a January 23 Reuters article in The China Post. The procuratorate indicted 21,853 people during the same year, and courts acquitted 39 people in public prosecution cases for crimes in the region. The report neither specified the number of arrests or people indicted for state security offenses, nor provided a breakdown by ethnic group of those arrested and indicted in the XUAR.

The absence of legal protections for the press has resulted in journalists meeting with "crude interference" when attempting to gather and report news, according to an article (in Chinese) published in the February edition of the Journalist Monthly, a joint publication of the Shanghai Communist Party Central Committee and the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. The article asserts:

The General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) published an article (in Chinese) on January 4 entitled "Looking Back on 2005: Focusing on Ten Bright Spots on the Press Battle Lines." Three of these "bright spots" were:

The Web sites of Xinhua and the China Youth Daily published an op-ed on January 20 criticizing Hunan provincial authorities' censorship of a politically sensitive critical news report. According to the editorial, on January 16 Xinhua filed a wire report stating that the National Development and Reform Commission had issued an emergency circular criticizing the fact that the work of closing and suspending the operation of unsafe mines was not proceeding according to schedule in 10 provinces. The commentator saw a version of the report on the Internet saying that Hunan province had been listed at the top of the "10 criticized provinces," but found: "[When] I opened the local newspapers I saw that it was not possible to find this Xinhua article in the mainstream provincial newspapers, and while the non-influential 'Contemporary Commercial Reports' had a portion of the information on page A11, the word 'Hunan' had been deleted."

A February 9 explosion in a perfume factory in Guangdong province that killed 5 workers and injured 12 illustrates that Chinese workers in industries outside the coal mining sector also face dangerous conditions. The perfume factory explosion was reported in a February 10 article in the Epoch Times.

Housing rights activist Ye Guozhu has reportedly been abused in prison and is currently in poor health, according to a February 1 Radio Free Asia (RFA) article (in Chinese). Ye is serving a four-year prison sentence in the Tianjin Cha Dian Qing Yuan Prison, and became eligible for medical parole on December 27, 2005. RFA reports that prison officials have placed him under high security due to his failure to admit guilt for his alleged wrongdoing. During this period of lockdown, officials have regularly kept his hands and legs shackled to a bed, and his inability to move while shackled has resulted in deformities and swelling in the legs. Ye's brother has expressed concern that Ye might be at risk of death, and that prison officials have not shown due care for his physical condition. RFA notes that the Communist Party Political-Legal Committee in Beijing directly handles Ye's case, and that they have prohibited telephone contact with his family.

The Shanghai No. 2 Intermediate People's Court conducted an appeals hearing on January 20 and upheld the original guilty verdict against petitioner Xu Zhengqing, according to a press release issued on the same day by Human Rights in China (HRIC). Xu was originally sentenced to three years imprisonment on a charge of "creating disturbances," a crime under Article 293 of China's Criminal Law. HRIC noted that over 100 supporters appeared outside the courthouse for Xu's appeal hearing, and that public security officials forcibly removed the supporters and temporarily detained them in a nearby school building.