Access to Justice
On April 14, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) will convene a hearing to examine China’s systemic use of torture and maltreatment in the criminal justice system. Torture experts have concluded that the lack of a definition of torture in China’s legal code is highly problematic. There are also well-documented cases of the frequent use of “tiger chairs” during interrogation and other forms of torture to coerce confessions from criminal defendants and political prisoners alike; reports of deaths in custody and the lack of adequate medical treatment in detention; and the abuse and mistreatment in detention of individuals from China’s ethnic minorities, including Tibetans and Uyghurs.
As President Obama prepares to host Chinese President Xi Jinping on September 24-25, 2015, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) will hold a hearing to examine the critical human rights and rule of law issues that deserve frank and robust discussions during the planned state visit.
This CECC hearing will examine Chinese authorities’ treatment of democracy, human rights, and anticorruption advocates in 1989 and 2015, and ask if China under Xi Jinping has made progress toward respecting the universal freedoms of speech, assembly, and association—the very principles which animated the 1989 Tiananmen protests 26 years ago. It will also explore the continuing efforts of individuals in Tiananmen and subsequent generations to further these ideals and to secure those universal freedoms.
The following Chinese text was retrieved on November 30, 2016, from the website of the PRC Supreme People's Procuratorate.
Refer to this page for a prior version of the PRC Administrative Procedure Law, passed on April 4, 1989, and effective on October 1, 1990.
In 1989 citizens from all walks of life participated in demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square and throughout China calling for political reform, respect for universal freedoms of speech, assembly, and association, and an end to government corruption. The government's violent suppression of the protests in June of that year had far-reaching ramifications for both the development of human rights and the rule of law in China and U.S.-China relations. In the years since, Chinese authorities have censored public discussions of Tiananmen and prevented a public accounting of what happened. At the same time, Chinese citizens continue to advocate for human rights, democracy, and an end to corruption.
Chinese officials have cracked down on independent rights advocacy, detaining large numbers of individuals for peacefully advocating on issues ranging from combating official corruption and protecting the rights of ethnic minorities to ensuring educational equality for migrant children and seeking greater freedom of the press. Those detained include Ilham Tohti, a scholar and an advocate for the Uyghur ethnic minority, who sought to build bridges between Uyghurs and the majority Han population. They also include individuals from the New Citizens’ Movement, who have called for social justice, rule of law, and citizen rights.
On February 20, 2014, the Urumqi Municipal Public Security Bureau formally arrested Minzu University professor Ilham Tohti on charges of separatism.[1] The arrest notice indicated authorities were detaining Tohti in a detention center in Urumqi, the regional capital of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).[2] Authorities reportedly only informed Tohti’s wife about her husband’s arrest on February 25.[3] Prosecutors formally approved Tohti’s arrest just short of the 37-day limit mandated by Article 69 of the PRC Criminal Procedure Law.
Update: Anticorruption and Transparency Advocates Already Sentenced
In 2013, authorities commenced a crackdown on anticorruption and transparency advocates, many linked to the “New Citizens’ Movement,” which is a broad network of individuals promoting legal and political reforms, human rights, and social justice. In late 2013 and early 2014, authorities began trials for several of these advocates and courts have already handed down sentences in some cases: