Excellencies,
Re : next session of the EU/China dialogue – 13 November 2002
We are writing you in view of the next session of the EU/China dialogue, to take place on November 13 in Beijing.
In view of the benchmarks fixed by the EU to assess the results of its dialogue with China (see annex), and with regard to the agenda of the forthcoming session of the EU/China dialogue, we have the pleasure to send you enclosed a briefing note giving a clear picture of the present situation in the fields which are on the agenda of the November 13 session. The present document evidences not only the lack of progress with regard to death penalty, torture, freedom of expression, information and association, discrimination against ethnic minorities, violations of refugees’rights, and cooperation with the UN. It also shows clearly that the human rights situation is continuously degrading.
As repeatedly affirmed by the General Affairs Council of the European Union, "the dialogue is an acceptable option only if enough progress is achieved and reflected on the ground" [1] .
We therefore call on the EU to duly address our concerns on November 13, and to make clear that the EU would draw the consequences of the absence of genuine progress in those fields. In that regard, we would like to recall that, according to the EU itself, "the fact that there is a human rights dialogue between the EU and a third country will not prevent the EU either from submitting a Resolution on the human rights situation in that country (…) nor will the fact that there is a human rights dialogue between the EU and a third country prevent the European Union from denouncing breaches of human rights in that country, inter alia in the appropriate international fora" [2]. Bearing that principle in mind, we believe that the EU should play a much more active role at the next session of the UN Commission on human rights with regard to the human rights situation in China, in order to put its acts in line with its declarations of principle.
By tabling a resolution on the human rights situation in China, the EU would draw the logical consequence of the lack of progress under the dialogue. More generally, we believe that public scrutiny necessary complements the dialogue in order to make it result-oriented.
We hope that you will take the present submission into account and remain available for any additional information.
Sincerely yours.
Qiang Xiao
Executive Director of HRIC
Sidiki Kaba
President of the FIDH
EU/China dialogue of November 13, 2002
BRIEFING NOTE
1. Death penalty
The death penalty continues to be used extensively, arbitrarily, and frequently as a result of political interference. Executions are carried out for non-violent crimes such as bribery, pimping, embezzlement, tax fraud, selling harmful foods, as well as drug offences and violent crimes. By the end of the year, with the limited records available, Amnesty International had recorded 4,015 death sentences and 2,468 executions, although the true figures were believed to be much higher. Execution was by shooting or lethal injection and sometimes occurred within hours of sentencing. Many of those sentenced are likely to have been tortured in order to extract "confessions". There are also persistent allegations of organs being harvested for transplantation from the bodies of the executed without consent. In the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, Uighur political prisoners labelled as ’’separatists’’ or ’’terrorists’’ by the authorities continue. Most are executed after secret or summary trials where convictions are based on confessions extracted under torture. Xinjiang is the only region of China where political prisoners are known to have been executed in recent years
2. torture
China ratified the UN Convention against torture in 1988 ; that ratification was a progressive move. However, torture remains systemic and widespread : it potentially affects all individuals deprived of their liberty. The government fails to address major institutional deficiencies - including an overly narrow definition of torture and the absence of effective complaint mechanisms ; torture remains widespread in Tibet and Xinjiang and prisoners of conscience, such as Falun Gong practitioners, are particularly targeted. The judiciary relies on forced confessions to obtain convictions that might lead to the sentencing of innocents.
In its last Concluding observations on China, the UN Committee against torture (CAT) expressed its concerns about "the continuing allegations of serious incidents of torture, especially involving Tibetans and other national minorities" and about "the absence of a uniform and effective investigation mechanism to examine allegations of torture" (A/55/44, 9 May 2000, para 116 and 121).
The Committee recommended notably that China " incorporate in its domestic law a definition of torture that fully complies with the definition contained in the Convention" (para 123), " consider abolishing all forms of administrative detention" (para 127) and " ensure the prompt, thorough, effective and impartial investigation of all allegations of torture" (para 128).
The EU should urge China to implement those recommendations, and to allow the visit by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in full respect of the Rapporteur’s own terms. China gave its agreement on that visit three years ago but no progress has been achieved since the Rapporteur transmitted its terms of reference to concretise that visit.
3. Freedom of expression, information and association
Hundreds of people are still serving substantial prison terms for the peaceful exercise of their fundamental rights and freedoms, and many more have been sentenced administratively to Re-education Through Labour (RTL), a form of detention qualified as arbitrary by the UN working group on arbitrary detention (see below). People calling for human rights improvements, from members of the China Democracy Party to Falun Gong practitioners, are systematically silenced. Efforts to organize independently, whether around issues of religion, politics, human rights, or labour are ruthlessly repressed.
The FIDH and HRIC are particularly concerned about the situation of Li Hai, a human rights defender detained in 1995 for documenting the cases of some 900 Beijing residents sentenced to long prison terms for their role in the 1989 demonstrations. In 1996, Li Hai was sentenced to a nine-year prison term for "prying into and gathering" state secrets. Li has suffered from serious medical problems in prison, and has not received appropriate medical treatment.
China continues to crush any attempt to set up legal political parties. China Democratic Party (CDP) founding members Xu Wenli, Wang Youcai and Qin Yongmin, who tried to register their Party legally with the Civil Affairs departments are currently undergoing heavy prison sentences. Xu Wenli was sentenced to 13 years in prison and three years’ deprivation of political rights. Wang Youcai was convicted of violating Article 106 of the Criminal Code and sentenced to 11 years in prison. His "crimes," according to the prosecution, included drafting the CDP declaration; being the prime mover of the CDP; intending to hold a CDP meeting in the form of a tea party; and sending 18 CDP documents abroad by electronic mail.
Qin Yongmin was sentenced after a two-and-a-half-hour trial on December 17, 1998, in the Wuhan People’s Intermediate Court. He was convicted of, among other things, "preparing to organize the CDP, editing [the newsletter] China Human Rights Watch, reporting on human rights to the United Nations and linking up with foreign hostile organizations." He was given a 12-year prison term.
Since July 1999, the Chinese government has forbidden the movement and has launched a repression against Falun Gong practitioners. They are victims of an increasing use of torture in order to force them to renounce the group and reeducation through labour is largely used in the brutal campaign against them.
According to Falun Gong themselves (Falun Dafa Information Centre), on 26 September 2002, 485 practitioners are dead since the persecution of Falun Gong in China began in 1999. According to the same source, 100,000 people would have been arbitrarily detained, 20,000 would have been sent to labour camps without trial (for terms up to 3 years), 500 would have been sentenced to extended jail terms (some up to 18 years) 1,000 healthy practitioners are being held in mental institutions (link) .
The FIDH and HRIC call for the abolishment of Reeducation Through Labour. It is worth to mention that the first workshop concerning China held in the framework of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ technical cooperation program, in February 2001, focused on administrative detention. At that time, the High Commissioner had publicly called on the government to abolish RTL, following recommendations of the UN working group on arbitrary detention. Since 1998, Chinese authorities have announced their intention to pass a law to reform RTL, but no progress has been achieved in that regard.
Another method to curb dissenting voices is the use of forced incarceration of dissidents in mental (psychiatric) facilities, without a fair trial or an independent medical evaluation of their mental state, merely because they exercised their rights to freedom of expression and association.
One of the preoccupying issues in that regard is "China’s expansive definition of the key legal determinant of involuntary psychiatric committal, namely "social dangerousness." Whereas under international standards, the applicable scope of the "dangerousness" criterion is mainly restricted to situations where mentally ill people pose a direct physical danger either to themselves or to others, in China it is applied also to those, such as certain types of dissidents, whom the government regards as posing a political threat to "social order" [3]
.
HRIC has documented a list of four victims of psychiatric abuse (see annex) who are still detained. The FIDH and HRIC call on the EU to address that issue on each occasion with the Chinese authorities, and ask for their immediate and unconditional release.
According to Reporters Sans Frontières, to date at least 11 journalists are in prison for having exercised their right to seek, receive and impart information. In addition, according to the same source, thirty one cyber-dissidents are currently in prison for having published information regarded by the authorities as too critical. The last cyber-dissident arrested is Chen Shaowen, who was detained since August 2002, and formally arrested in September for having published on the Internet "a lot of reactionary articles and essays". Chen has contributed regularly to several Chinese-language websites based abroad, writing articles about social inequalities, unemployment and the pitfalls of the legal system. He has also written several essays supporting democracy [4] .
"The promulgation in 2000 of a drastic legislation on the Internet was moreover the starting-point for an unprecedented crackdown, which led to the suspension of numerous web sites and of two search engines, Google and Altavista, a wave of closures of Internet bars - more than 2000 in June 2002 - and strict surveillance of Internet users" [5]
.
According to recent information, keyword filtering has not replaced the block on previously banned sites, but has been added as an extra layer to selectively screen content on other sites [6]. That new technology allows the government to block select portions of the sites. As a consequence, if Google is now back on line in China, users can only access search results that meet the authorities’ approval [7] .
The Chinese authorities continue to deny workers the right to set up independent unions and arrest systematically the leaders of workers’ protests. Labour representatives Yao Fuxin, Pang Qingxiang, Xiao Yunliang and Wang Zhaoming, who were arrested during the largest workers demonstration in March 2002 have been detained for more than six months, and to date, they have not been formally charged (On March 11 and 12, over 10,000 workers hit the streets in Liaoyang to demand that the government ensure their right to a decent standard of living).
The FIDH and HRIC are also concerned about the health of labour rights lawyer Xu Jian, who suffers from acute hepathisis. Xu Jian was arrested and sentenced to four years for allegedly "plotting to overthrow the socialist system and state power". A registered legal practitioner in Baotou, Inner-Mongolia, Xu Jian’s only crime was to have provided legal counselling to the workers at his office and via its hotline, as well as helping in filing labour dispute cases for arbitration and litigation. Xu’s activities were open and legal.
4. Ethnic Minorities
Since the September 11 attack, Beijing has sought to link its suppression of dissent in Xinjiang to the anti-terror campaign. In the treatment of minorities, the Chinese authorities do not distinguish between peaceful expression of dissent or cultural and religious identity and violent acts. Ethnic minorities who seek to develop their own national identity run the risk of being charged with engaging in an "act of splitting the country" even if their actions are entirely peaceful.
In the Uighur Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, the "terrorist" and "separatist" labels have mainly served to legitimate the suppression of any form of dissidence through the use of unrestrained force and violence. Members of minorities who advocate their national, cultural or religious identity are most likely to be viewed as engaging in an « act of splitting the country » and therefore, to be tried under the category of crimes of endangering state security defined by the Criminal Law. Discrimination in minority areas such as Xinjiang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia has been most manifest in the government’s effort to "eradicate separatist organizations" in the name of national unity, which has resulted in a variety of human rights abuses : arbitrary arrest and execution after summary trials to restrictions on freedom of expression, association and religion.
More generally, there are wide discrepancies in terms of economic status and living standards between ethnic minorities and the dominant Han Chinese. In recent years, Xinjang, Tibet and Inner Mongolia have seen a marked decline in the welfare of their indigenous inhabitants.
Because of their generally inferior economic conditions, their predominantly rural status and the dominance of the Chinese language at higher levels of education, minorities in the PRC are doubly disadvantaged in access to education. Overall, the dominance of the Chinese language