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01/16/2007
China
Events of 2006
Human rights conditions in China deteriorated significantly in 2006. Authorities greeted rising social unrest—marked at times by violent confrontation between protesters and police—with stricter controls on the press, internet, academics, lawyers, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
Several high-profile, politically-motivated prosecutions of lawyers and journalists in 2006 put an end to any hopes that President Hu Jintao would be a progressive reformer and sent an unambiguous warning to individuals and groups pressing for greater respect for the fundamental rights and freedoms of Chinese citizens. Domestic observers believe that these constraints will remain in place at least through the 2008 summer Olympics being hosted by Beijing.
Layers of Control
The Chinese government continues to use a vast police and state security apparatus to enforce multiple layers of controls on critics, protesters, and civil society activists. Such controls make actual arrests—which draw unwanted international attention—less necessary in silencing critics.
The system includes administrative and professional pressures, restrictions on domestic and foreign movements, covert or overt tapping and surveillance of phone and internet communications, visits and summons by the police, close surveillance by plainclothes agents, unofficial house-arrests, incommunicado confinement in distant police-run guest houses, and custody in police stations. Many are charged with vaguely defined crimes such as “disrupting social order,” “leaking state secrets,” or “inciting subversion.”
Some 100 activists, lawyers, writers, academics, HIV/AIDS campaigners, and human rights defenders were subject to such treatment in 2006, indicating a new crackdown.
China’s Legal System
Despite expectations of major new legislative initiatives and vigorous legal debates in academic and professional circles, legal reforms stalled in 2006.
The Criminal Procedure Law has not been amended. The scheduled adoption of a property law, which would have secured private ownership and bolstered the legal rights of common citizens, was unexpectedly shelved. Long-discussed proposals to add a judicial component to “reeducation through labor” regulations also appear to have stalled.
The government took initial steps to reform the death penalty system by requiring the review of all cases by the Supreme People’s Court, which is likely to limit the approximately 10,000 executions carried out every year.
New regulations governing organ procurement enacted on August 1, 2006, failed to address the fact that judicial executions are the major source of organs used in transplant surgery in China.
Despite exponentially increasing demands for justice, dispute resolution, and vindication of constitutional rights, the court system provides minimal redress. Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership acknowledges that many social protests have been fueled by abuses by local officials, institutionalized political interference in the judiciary allows local power holders to deny justice from plaintiffs and vulnerable groups. The lack of judicial remedies further exacerbates social unrest. The Ministry of Public Security reported August 9, 2006 that there were 39,000 cases of “public order disruptions” in the first half of the year, quadruple what it was a decade ago. Thirteen Chinese villagers arrested after such an incident in Dongzhou, Guangdong Province, where security officers shot at least three protesters, were sentenced on May 24, 2006, to prison terms raging up to four years.
In March 2006, in an effort to curb legal activism around issues such as land seizures, forced evictions, and environmental and labor grievances, the government imposed new restrictions on lawyers representing protesters. As of April, new “Guiding Opinions on Lawyers” require lawyers and law firms to report to and seek instructions from local judicial authorities—often themselves party to the disputes—in all cases involving 10 plaintiffs or more.
Coerced confessions, legal procedures weighted in favor of the state, closed trials, and administrative sentencing continue to undermine defendants’ rights.
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