China Human Rights and Rule of Law Update - July 2005

Chinese news media have carried several articles that discuss the practical application of new measures to combat torture.

The Dalai Lama's envoys met with Chinese officials on June 30 and July 1 in Bern, Switzerland, according to a press release by the Tibetan government-in-exile. The fourth round of talks between the envoys and Chinese officials took place in the Chinese Embassy in the Swiss capital. The Tibetan delegation met with Vice Minister Zhu Weiqun and Mr. Sithar of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

In recent months, Chinese authorities have closed down or tightened restrictions on the few forums where private Chinese citizens could express themselves without government restraints, including academic conferences, electronic bulletin boards, and personal Web sites.

A new hotline for the protection of women's rights opened in Shanghai on June 15. The new line merges two preexisting local Shanghai hotlines for counseling on legal issues and domestic violence and will now offer legal, psychological, and social assistance and advice for callers from across China. The line will be staffed by members of the Human Rights Network of the Shanghai Women's Federation. Counselors include lawyers, psychologists, and sociologists, as well as a few senior police officials and judges. Another recent women's self-help effort is Women's Watch - China, which was started in Beijing in April 2005 to coordinate the work of women activists across several fields.

Villages in Wuyi county, Zhejiang province, have implemented limited political reforms establishing citizen supervisory committees for village affairs, according to a Southern Weekend report. Although a positive development, both the restricted nature of these reforms and local government resistance to them are likely to constrain their effectiveness.

Chinese writer Zhang Lin pleaded innocent to charges of subversion at a hearing in the Intermediate People's Court in Bengbu, Anhui province, Agence France Presse and the Committee to Protect Journalists reported on June 21.

About 14.5 percent of criminal suspects in Beijing meet with a lawyer during the first 48 hours of detention, according to an article in the Beijing Youth Daily. In cooperation with an NPC inspection of the implementation of the PRC Lawyers Law, the Beijing Public Security Bureau (PSB) surveyed 51,184 criminal detentions between October 2003 and April 2005 and found that only 7,425 suspects met with lawyers during the first 48 hours of detention.

The June 16 edition of "Seeking Truth," the official journal of China's Communist Party, includes an editorial by Nan Zhenzhong, editor-in-chief of Xinhua. The editorial discusses "public opinion supervision" (yulun jiandu), a Communist Party doctrine that dictates how China's state controlled media is allowed to report on national affairs. Nan's editorial provides several insights into how Chinese authorities approach censorship of politically sensitive news reports:

A January sweep of vagrants and mentally ill persons in Ganzhou city, Jianxi province, left five people missing and presumed dead, reports the China Youth Daily. According to the report, as part of an official effort to clean up the city, Ganzhou city civil affairs and public security officials rounded up seven vagrants and local mental patients, gave them some food, then drove them to a remote part of a neighboring county at night. The officials left the seven by the roadside in harsh winter weather. Two of the vagrants found their way back to Ganzhou, but five others in the group, including two mentally ill people who lived in the town, were still missing nearly six months later.

Chinese authorities claim to have uncovered evidence of a new crime of fraud in the case of detained New York Times researcher Zhao Yan, just as the maximum pre-trial detention period in his case was set to expire. Law enforcement officials, who are investigating Zhao on charges that he revealed "state secrets," had already extended Zhao's pre-trial detention to the maximum seven months by invoking several legal exceptions.

The State Council (SC) announced new Provisions on Implementing the Regional Ethnic Autonomy Law on May 31, just days after a National Conference on Ethnic Work ended and Communist Party leaders convened a special Politburo Meeting on Ethnic Affairs.

Problems have arisen in China as employers turn increasingly to labor-service agencies (laodong fuwu) to find workers. In an article posted on the Ministry of Justice Web site, reporter Zhong Angang describes how these agencies serve as the middlemen or intermediate agencies in the labor relationship.

The Southern Daily reported on June 22 that someone removed pages A35 and A36 from copies of the June 21 edition of its sister publication, the Southern Metropolitan Daily, that were distributed in the Da Gang township.

The China Youth Daily (CYD) has published a commentary questioning the hiring of committees of legal scholars to produce "expert opinions" in criminal cases. Scholarly committees submit such opinions, which typically address both factual and legal issues in individual criminal cases, to courts adjudicating the cases.

China's state-run news media must "take the standpoint of the Communist Party," "stabilize the emotions of cadres and the masses," emphasize "positive" and "constructive" reporting, and stop focusing on "exposes and scandals," according to a May 31 People's Daily editorial. The editors refer repeatedly to "public opinion supervision," which they claim is "an important characteristic in the progress of political civilization" that "increases governmental transparency" and "ensures administration in accordance with law."

The alleged victim of a Shaanxi man charged with murder last year turned up alive in a neighboring province, according to a report in the Financial Times. Police accused Yue Tuyuan of murder after an acquaintance of his disappeared last year and an unidentified body was found in a nearby river. During an interview with prosecutors, Yue claimed police tortured him into confessing the crime, but prosecutors claimed they had DNA evidence and Yue relented and repeated the confession. The charge was only dropped after the alleged victim was found, but police never informed Yue of that fact and charged him with fraud instead. A court convicted him of that crime.

On June 21 Xinhua and the print edition of the People's Daily carried stories lauding China's General Administration of Press and Publication ("GAPP") for "promoting supervision and forwarding administration in accordance with law." The Xinhua version of the story mentioned what it termed "forceful acts" that "provided an environment conducive to the protection of intellectual property and the creative abilities of the people, and for the healthy flourishing and development of the news publishing industry":

Since the national Regulation on Religious Affairs (RRA) became effective in March 2005, central and local Party officials have held high-level meetings and training sessions to promote implementation of the new regulation in “standardizing” management of religious affairs. Reports this month from Anhui and Yunnan show local officials’ reaction to the implementation drive.

Unregistered Catholics in Hebei detailed the human rights abuses that local officials allegedly have been perpetrating against Catholics there in an unusual letter to the Italy-based Catholic publication AsiaNews. The letter identifies the officials as Chen Xiuyun, a provincial vice governor and director of the provincial United Front Work Department office and Wang Zhenguo, director of the county-level Administration of Religious Affairs office in Gaocheng county.

Chinese authorities arrested Mr. Naguunbilig, a popular ethnic Mongol medical specialist, and his wife Daguulaa on June 7 for practicing what the authorities call "a Mongol version of Falun Gong" and for holding "illegal gatherings," according to the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Center.

Radio Free Asia reports that Internet service providers have shut down two well-known political Web sites in China on orders from Chinese public security authorities. The story, a transcript of which is available on Boxun, reported that the "Public Opinion Supervision Net" (yuluncn.com) was shut down on June 16, and the "Democracy and Freedom Web" was shut down on May 22.

The Dalai Lama said that a "democratic Tibet" may not need a Dalai Lama, according to a June 20 report in the Hindustan Times, a major Indian daily newspaper. The Tibetan religious leader explained that if he dies in exile "there will be another Dalai Lama," but "if we cease to be a refugee community and can live in democratic Tibet, then I don't think there should be a successor to me after I die."

Chinese authorities convened a national Sweep Away Pornography and Strike Down Illegal Publications (SAPSDIP) Symposium on June 23 in Shenyang. Xinhua reports that Liu Binjie, deputy director of the SAPSDIP Task Force and the General Administration of Press and Publication, told the symposium that, since the launch of the Task Force in 1994, Chinese authorities have confiscated more than 1.4 billion illegal publications, and shut down over 40,000 print shops.

Public security officials raided unregistered Protestant house churches in Jilin province in northeastern China on May 22 and detained house church members, reports the China Aid Association (CAA), a U.S.-based NGO that monitors house church Protestants.

Chinese security police released unregistered Catholic priest Zhao Kexun on June 1, reports the Cardinal Kung Foundation. Father Zhao serves as the diocesan administrator of Xuanhua diocese in Hebei province, and was detained on March 30.

Wang Yi, an author in China and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, has filed an administrative appeal with the Press and Publication Administration to have his right to self-publish respected, the International Herald Tribune (IHT) reported on June 16. According to the report, Chinese authorities confiscated 906 books that Wang had privately printed to give to friends. Wang told the IHT that if the Press and Publications Administration rejects his administrative appeal, he will sue it in court.

Prosecutors must exclude illegally obtained testimony when deciding whether or not to indict a suspect, declared a Vice President of the Supreme People's Procuratorate (SPP) on May 26. According to an article in the China Youth Daily, the SPP Vice President said that "All oral evidence illegally obtained through torture or violence or illegally collected through intimidation, enticement, or fraud, etc. should be considered illegal evidence and resolutely excluded in accordance with the law."

Beijing Normal University's (BNU) environmental impact assessment (EIA) department recently declined to conduct an assessment of a controversial construction project at the Old Summer Palace in Beijing. The decision highlights continuing problems within the community of Chinese organizations that can conduct EIAs.