SALON

Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 5:54 AM UTC

China To Restrict Secret Detentions _ On Paper

By

Topics: From the Wires,

China To Restrict Secret Detentions _ On PaperA Chinese police officer takes pictures from inside a police car during the National People's Congress held in Beijing, China, Thursday, March 8, 2012. China's authoritarian government is restricting the police's power to secretly detain people, at least on paper, announcing stricter revisions to a key criminal law Thursday after a wave of public complaints. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) (Credit: AP)

BEIJING (AP) — China’s authoritarian government is restricting the police’s power to secretly detain people, at least on paper, announcing stricter revisions to a key criminal law Thursday after a wave of public complaints.

Scholars welcomed the changes, saying they will offer better protection of suspects and reflect increasing awareness in China of the need for stronger detainee rights.

The formal introduction of the revised criminal procedure law to the national legislature ends a half-year of speculation and debate about whether the Communist government would give police the legal authority to do something they have long done extra-legally: disappear people for months at a time without telling their families.

Police have increasingly used the tactic over the past year to detain activist lawyers, democracy campaigners, and even internationally acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei, amid government worries about whether the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring might spread to China.

Under the proposed revisions, authorities must notify families of people held under residential surveillance, a sort of house arrest, within 24 hours except when the families cannot be reached. Dissidents detained under this kind of residential surveillance are often put in suburban hotels or apartments, and many have reported being tortured by police.

“It’s not a picnic; it’s not fun,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human rights researcher based in Hong Kong who has documented detainee accounts of residential surveillance. “It involves serious psychological and physical abuse. This is something that is facilitated by police having so much control.”

Rosenzweig said abuses include being confined to bed for days at a time and holding fixed positions for hours, as well as constant police surveillance including when a detainee is using the toilet or in the shower.

“None of that is necessarily going to change because police are required to notify the family,” he said. “What goes on in those so-called designated locations and how much regulation of police behavior in those places can take place is still an open question and an important question.”

Still, Rosenzweig and others said the latest version of the law marks a step forward for Chinese legal reform.

Chen Guangzhong, an 82-year-old tenured professor at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law in Beijing who was boldly critical of earlier drafts of the legislation, said the revised law marked a necessary curtailment of police powers.

“This change is significant,” he said. “It means China is making further effort in improving human rights, democracy and the rule of law. … In the past, judicial authorities had too much power.”

In the case of regular criminal detention in detention centers or prison, families must also be notified — unless the cases involve the crimes of endangering national security or terrorism and authorities believe notifying the family would impede the investigation. Many dissidents are accused of threatening security, so the exception could still allow police to hold them secretly — but they would at least be in a formal detention facility, where abuses might be less likely to occur.

In introducing the bill, legislative vice chairman Wang Zhaoguo said the revisions are meant to address lack of notification requirements in the current law.

“Taking full account of the need for punishing crimes and protecting the rights of criminal suspects and defendants, it is necessary to strictly limit exceptions to the provision of notifying family members after a coercive measure is adopted,” Wang told the National People’s Congress, which is in the middle of its 10-day annual session.

The final revisions are more detainee-friendly than some proposed changes announced in August that drew heated criticisms from the legal community and prompted tens of thousands of people to list their complaints online. Those proposals allowed residential surveillance without any notification for cases involving national security and terrorism. Activist Hu Jia, himself living under a form of house arrest, dubbed it the “KGB clause.”

Rosenzweig said that public feedback was very important to realizing the final draft and noted that Chinese in general were becoming more aware of the need to protect the rights of detainees.

“They see these examples of miscarriages of justice where people have been sent to prison or sent to their execution on the basis of coerced confessions, so they know this is a problem and moreover there is a growing awareness that following procedure has something to do with protecting people from those outcomes,” he said.

Aside from the changes on notification, many other amendments to the criminal procedure law also attempt to improve treatment of suspects, promising more timely access to lawyers and raising standards for use of illegally gathered evidence, among others.

The congress, which is controlled by the ruling Communist Party, is all but certain to approve the changes when the session ends Wednesday.

While legal reformers have cheered the revisions, enforcement of most laws in China is spotty. Police and prosecutors have routinely ignored current legal provisions protecting suspects’ rights and have frequently used charges of endangering national security against dissidents.

More Alexa Olesen.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments are not enabled for this story.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
345 points346 points | 113 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
64 points65 points | 3 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
37 points38 points | 2 comments
vote
Temple Grandin on DSM-5: “Sounds like diagnosis by committee.” When it comes to autism, Grandin argues we're paying too much attention to labels -- and not enough to individuals
37 points38 points | 3 comments
vote
Doug Henwood: Capitalism Thrives on Class Exploitation
36 points37 points | 4 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations