Activists said China has “systematized arbitrary and covert detentions” by placing thousands of people under “residential surveillance in designated locations.”
On September 24, Chinese authorities released Canadians Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, who had been in custody for over 1,000 days. Instead of being held in a regular prison, the couple were placed in Residential Supervision at a Designated Location (RSDL), conditions that human rights groups have likened to enforced disappearances.
The two Canadians had limited access to lawyers or consular services and lived in cells with lights on 24 hours a day.
Following changes to China’s criminal law in 2012, the police now have the power to detain anyone, whether a foreigner or a Chinese, in designated areas for up to six months without disclosing their whereabouts. Since 2013, between 27,208 and 56,963 people have been subjected to surveillance of housing in a designated area in China, the Spanish-based advocacy group Safeguards said, citing Supreme People’s Court figures and testimonies from survivors and lawyers.
“These high-profile cases are clearly getting a lot of attention, but they should not ignore the fact that they are not transparent. After collecting the available data and analyzing trends, it is estimated that between 4 and 5,000 people disappear from the NDRL system each year. ”, said the human rights organization Safeguard. This was stated by Defenders co-founder Michael Caster.
Custer estimates that between 10,000 and 15,000 people will pass through the system in 2020, up from 500 in 2013.
Among them are well-known figures such as artist Ai Weiwei and human rights lawyers Wang Yu and Wang Quanzhang, who were involved in China’s 2015 crackdown on human rights defenders. Other foreigners have also experienced RSDL, such as Swedish activist and Protection Defenders co-founder Peter Dahlin and Canadian missionary Kevin Garrett, who was charged with espionage in 2014. Garrett and Julia Garrett.
Since residential surveillance in a designated area was first introduced nearly a decade ago, the use of extrajudicial detention has evolved from an early exception to a more widely used tool, said William Nee, research and advocacy coordinator for the Chinese human rights group. .
“Before, when Ai Weiwei was taken away, they had to make excuses and say that this was really his business, or it was a tax issue, or something like that. So there was such a trend a year or two ago when they pretended that someone is being detained, and the real reason is their public activism or their political views,” Nee said. “There are concerns that [RSDL] will make it more ‘legitimate’ because of the appearance of legitimacy and legitimacy. I think that this is well known.”
Communist Party members, civil servants, and anyone involved in “public affairs” were imprisoned under a similar parallel “luan” system. Since its launch in 2018, between 10,000 and 20,000 people have been incarcerated in Luzhi each year, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Conditions of detention in a specially designated place and detention amounted to torture, and prisoners were held without the right to a lawyer. Survivors in both systems have reported sleep deprivation, isolation, solitary confinement, beatings, and forced stress positions, according to several advocacy groups. In some cases, prisoners may be placed in the infamous “tiger chair”, which restricts physical activity for several days.
Together, residential surveillance, detention and similar extrajudicial procedures “systematize arbitrary and secret detention,” Castells said.
Al Jazeera reached out to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment, but received no response by press release.
China has previously accused groups such as the United Nations Working Group on Enforced Disappearances of misrepresenting their practice of using residential surveillance in a particular location, saying it is regulated under Chinese criminal law as an alternative to arresting suspects. It also states that illegal detention or imprisonment is illegal under China’s constitution.
When asked about the detention of Spavor and Kovrig, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said that while the two were suspected of being a threat to national security, their “legal rights were guaranteed” and they were not “arbitrarily detained.” in accordance with the law. “
The couple’s 2018 detention was widely seen as retaliation against Canadian authorities for arresting Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou at the request of the US. Meng Wanzhou is wanted by the US Justice Department for allegedly helping a Chinese tech giant do business in Iran despite US sanctions.
Shortly before his release, Spavor, a businessman working in North Korea, was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 11 years in prison, while Kovrig has yet to be sentenced. When Canada finally allowed Meng Wanzhou to return to China after being placed under house arrest, the couple escaped further imprisonment, but for many, the RSDL was just the beginning.
Cases pending last year include Cheng Lei, an Australian broadcaster of dual Chinese descent, who was placed under house surveillance in a designated area in August 2020 and then arrested on “suspicion of illegally providing state secrets abroad” , and human rights lawyer Chang Weiping. He was and was released in early 2020 for his involvement in discussions about democracy. He was later detained again after describing his experience of watching a dwelling at a certain location on YouTube.
“For the hundreds of thousands of civil society members who do not have their own Wikipedia entries, they can spend the longest time locked up under one of these systems. Then they are placed under criminal arrest pending further investigation,” he said. .
Post time: Jul-12-2023
