[D66] China legalises secret detention

[Antid Oto]

China legalises secret detention
By John Chan
3 September 2011

The Chinese government is about to enact legislation to “legalise” the existing
police-state practice of secret detention. Individuals simply disappear into the
hands of the state security apparatus for months without any contact with
friends, relatives or the outside world. The new law is part of broader
repressive measures directed at a range of political opponents, from social
networking bloggers to Uigher separatists, amid rising social tensions.

A draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code released on Tuesday has been
sent to the National Peoples Congress (NPC) for approval by the end of
September. All of this is supposedly to allow public discussion on an amendment
to enhance the “human rights” of suspects and protect privacy. In reality,
significant changes expanding the police power of “residential surveillance” are
buried in the middle of the draft new Article 73.

“Residential surveillance” is a form of house arrest, enforced by the police or
other state security agencies. It has been a routine practice against human
rights advocates, dissidents and social activists. Often detainees disappear for
months to unknown locations and could be subject to torture and abuse. Strictly
speaking, the practice of “forced disappearance” was banned under the current
criminal procedural code, last revised in 1996.

In the draft amendment, Article 72 defines “residential surveillance” as
restricting the freedom of suspects or defendants at their residence if the
courts, prosecutors and police have decided that they meet the conditions for
arrest. This, it is claimed, would be a more humane form of detention, allowing
those who are seriously ill, or pregnant and breast-feeding women, to stay at
home rather than in a detention centre.

While stipulating that “residential surveillance” would generally be the home of
a suspect or defendant, the new Article 73 allows for exceptions. “For suspects
involved in national security crimes, terrorist activities and major corruption,
when staying at their residence will obstruct investigations, this can also be
carried out at a specified residence, with approval from a superior Peoples
Prosecutorate or Public Security authority.”

In other words, for a broad range of offences, the police and courts will be
allowed to detain suspects at other locations. National security crimes mainly
refer to “subverting state power” or “inciting to subvert the state power”—the
offence that is often used to charge organisers of protests or dissidents who
publicly call for changes in the current political and social order.

The article also stipulates that family members will be informed within 24 hours
of where and why such a suspect has been detained at a “specified location”. But
again the amendment allows for exceptions when “the suspect is involved in
crimes endangering state security, terrorist activities, or when informing them
[family members] may cause obstruction to the investigation.” In short,
“residential surveillance” can be transformed into “forced disappearance” for a
broad range of charges that can and are used against political dissidents.

The law has already been condemned within China and internationally. An expert
on Chinese law at New York University, Jerome Cohen, told the Guardian: “The
proposed ‘reform’ is designed to legitimise this blatantly unfair, police-state
practice, while leaving the rest of the criminal procedural law as misleading
decoration.” He explained that under the old rules issued in 1996, police were
specifically banned from holding suspects at an address other than his or her
home. “This is a perfect illustration of the dangers of revising the law in
repressive times.”

Jiang Tianyong is a Beijing lawyer who disappeared for two months earlier this
year without any contact with his family, amid a crackdown on online critics
calling for a “Jasmine Revolution” in China in line with the mass uprisings in
Tunisia and Egypt. Speaking to Reuters, he warned: “More people would face the
risk of being disappeared.”

The most prominent figure targeted in that crackdown was artist Ai Weiwei. He
was taken away by security agents at an airport in April and disappeared for 80
days. While Ai was eventually charged with tax evasion, it was clearly a
political prosecution for his public criticism of the regime’s endemic
corruption and lack of democratic rights.

Ai’s lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan told Associated Press that the new detention power
would leave suspects with less legal protection than if they were held in a
detention centre that was at least monitored. “This is a step backward for
Chinese law,” he said. “I think they need to do this because when it comes to
state security crimes, investigators usually don’t have enough evidence and want
to hold the person for a long time but the detention centre’s procedures make it
less convenient.”

Amid growing public criticism, the official Xinhua news agency insisted that the
criminal procedure code amendment “conforms to rather than contradicts
international conventions.” In fact, it is the growing use of repressive
measures in the US, Europe and internationally—including detention without
charge—that is increasingly conforming to the police-state system in force in China.

The tightening of police powers in China reflects deepening fears in the regime
of social unrest amid revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East and a growing
radicalisation of the working class in the US and Europe. The Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) is clearly worried that workers in China will draw inspiration from
these struggles and challenge the regime in Beijing.

Chinese authorities are particularly sensitive to the way in which the Internet
is being used to organise protests, including the Shanghai truckers’ strike in
April, protests by migrant workers in Zengcheng in Guangdong in June and the
public uproar over the bullet train crash in Wenzhou in July. More recently, a
major protest in Dalian against toxic chemical spills was mainly organised
online and forced the closure of a multi-billion dollar chemical plant.

In response, the CCP regime has initiated a crackdown on social networking users
and micro-bloggers. The Politburo issued a direct order on August 22 to
Sina.com’s Twitter-like Weibo microblog service to “resolutely put an end to
fake and misleading information.” A number of bloggers have had their accounts
temporarily suspended for spreading “rumours”. The Xinhua news agency has set
the line for the media by declaring war on the “cancer” of online rumours
because they present “a massive social threat”.

At the same time, Beijing has issued a heightened alert throughout the country,
especially at airports, on the grounds that Uighur separatists and Islamic
extremists from the Central Asian province of Xinjiang might launch a major
attack. Like its counterparts in the US and Europe, the regime exploits its own
“war on terror” to justify repressive methods. Above all, these are directed
against the working class.

http://wsws.org/articles/2011/sep2011/chin-s03.shtml