Corporate report

China - Country of Concern: latest update - 30 June 2014

Updated 21 January 2015

This was published under the 2010 to 2015 Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government

CHINA Latest Update: 30 June 2014 The second quarter of 2014 saw ongoing restrictions on civil and political freedoms in China. The climate for human rights defenders (HRDs) and civil society was particularly poor. There was a marked increase in the number of human rights and civil society activists arrested or detained in the weeks before the 25th anniversary of the violent suppression of popular protests on 4 June 1989.

The UK government continued to raise concerns about human rights issues with the Chinese authorities. Senior ministers, including the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office Minister for China, Hugo Swire, discussed human rights with their counterparts during visits to China. The Prime Minister and Premier Li Keqiang also discussed human rights during the UK-China Summit on 17 June, and both sides released a joint statement after the summit which emphasised “the importance of promoting and protecting human rights and the rule of law”.

The 21st round of the UK-China Human Rights Dialogue was held in London on 19-20 May. A range of human rights concerns were discussed in detail, including detainee rights, the death penalty, ethnic minority rights, women’s rights, freedom of religion or belief, and freedom of expression. A parallel workshop brought UK and Chinese experts together for discussions on disability rights. The Chinese delegation also visited a police station to see safeguards against mistreatment in the custody process, and the Supreme Court to discuss judicial transparency.

In the weeks leading up to 4 June, at least 50 HRDs were reported to have been formally detained around China, many on public order charges. Some have since been released, but others remain in detention, including prominent rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, arrested on suspicion of “creating a disturbance” and “illegally obtaining personal information” in June.

Some HRDs were detained on subversion charges, including Zhejiang democracy activist Xu Guang, and Buddhist monk Sheng Guan. Guangzhou human rights lawyer Tang Jingling was initially detained on public order charges, but he and two fellow activists were later arrested on suspicion of inciting state subversion.

Other HRDs remained in extra-legal detention, including Mongolian dissident Hada and Liu Xia, wife of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. After over 100 days under house arrest, Beijing activist Hu Jia was released in June, but placed under house arrest again five days later.

A crackdown on peaceful civil activism continued. In April, a Beijing court denied the appeal of New Citizens’ Movement (NCM) founder Xu Zhiyong and upheld his four-year prison sentence. Three other NCM activists were sentenced in Jiangxi in June after more than a year in detention. Liu Ping, Wei Zhongping and Li Sihua received prison sentences of between three and six-and-a-half years. Also in June, Guangdong activists Guo Feixiong and Sun Desheng were indicted on public order charges. Diplomats, including from the UK, continued to be denied access to the trials of HRDs.

Reports continued of detainees being denied access to adequate medical care. Tibetan film-maker Dhondup Wangchen was released from prison in June in fragile health after reportedly being denied treatment for hepatitis. Reports emerged that Tibetan political prisoner Goshul Lobsang had died earlier in 2014 after being paroled in critical condition due to torture. Tibetan religious leaders Khenpo Kartse and Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, dissident writers Chen Xi and Lu Jiaping, and independent election candidate Li Biyun were all also reportedly denied adequate medical treatment in detention for serious illnesses.

Restrictions on freedom of expression persisted. Journalist Gao Yu, who disappeared in April, and detained citizen journalist Xiang Nanfu, were shown on state television confessing to leaking state secrets and public order offences respectively. Beijing film-makers Shen Yongping and Shi Zhangkai were detained after making a documentary about constitutionalism. In May, central authorities announced a crackdown to remove “illegal and harmful information” from instant messaging apps such as WeChat.

New government regulations came into force in May banning people from petitioning central authorities without first going through local authorities. Officials said that this was intended to improve the efficiency of the petitioning system. Rights activists expressed concerns that it would restrict the channels available for citizens to raise grievances.

Legal professionals and scholars signed an open letter in June calling for the abolition of the arbitrary system of “custody and education” for detaining sex workers and their clients. However, reports of the use of various forms of arbitrary detention continued. After being detained for seeking access to clients held in a “legal education centre”, lawyers Jiang Tianyong, Tang Jitian, Wang Cheng and Zhang Junjie were released in April with serious injuries, reportedly as a result of torture.

The Supreme People’s Court announced in June that it had overturned the death sentence handed down in 2012 to Li Yan, a woman convicted of killing her abusive husband. The ruling was widely welcomed by Chinese women’s rights groups as reaffirming the principle that domestic abuse should be considered as a mitigating factor in such cases.

Blind and visually impaired people were able to sit national university entrance exams for the first time in June, following a landmark decision by the Ministry of Education to make papers available in braille and electronic format. Disability rights advocates cautioned that implementation would be challenging, but welcomed this as an important symbolic step.

Restrictions on freedom of religion or belief persisted. Sanjiang Church in Zhejiang Province was forcibly demolished in May, reportedly as part of a campaign against illegal structures, while other churches in the province were reportedly ordered to remove crosses from their buildings. Henan pastor Zhang Shaojie was tried in April on public order and fraud charges. Diplomats were refused access to his trial.

There was at least one reported self-immolation in Tibetan areas of China in this period. Tibetan government employees were reportedly banned from attending religious teachings held in Gansu during June. There were ongoing reports of arbitrary detention and imprisonment of both lay people and monastics, including religious leader Khenpo Lodroe Rabsel and senior monk Thardoe Gyaltsen, reportedly sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment for “separatism”.

After a terrorist attack on 22 May killed at least 43 people in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s regional capital, the authorities announced a year-long anti-terror campaign. There were reports of abuses of due process in connection with this campaign, alongside ongoing restrictions on cultural, religious and linguistic freedoms. State media reported that mass sentencing, arrest and detention rallies were held in parts of Xinjiang, with 380 people detained and 315 people convicted in the first month of the campaign. Thirteen people were reportedly executed for terror offences in Xinjiang in June, with a further 16 people sentenced to death on terrorism charges in separate cases.

At least 37 civilians and police are reported to have died in other terrorist attacks and outbreaks of violence in Xinjiang during this period. In May, there were reports of the use of live fire in Aksu to disperse peaceful protests. Lawyers were granted access to Uyghur academic Ilham Tohti in late June, after he had been held incommunicado for five months. They reported that he was in poor health and had experienced mistreatment in detention. Reports also emerged that Uyghur religious community leader Abdukerim Abduweli had his prison sentence arbitrarily extended for the fifth time earlier this year.