The Many Forms of Arbitrary Detention in China

By Jerome A. Cohen

Yesterday was International Human Rights Day. As we look back at Beijing’s human rights record this past year, one of the most troubling abuses in China continues to be arbitrary detention (I’ve written about this subject with Yu-Jie Chen, SSRN here).

Rights lawyers are often the target for such abuses. Persisting prominent examples are lawyers WANG Quanzhang and YU Wensheng, who remain in detention. Foreign critics and activists are not spared. YANG Hengjun, for example, a famous Australian-Chinese blogger, has been detained on the charge of espionage since January. Policy experts like Michael Kovrig and business people like Michael Spavor, the two Canadians detained in China after Canada arrested Huawei’s CFO in accordance with the U.S. extradition request, have been in detention for a year. Just to name a few.

The victims often suffer prolonged detention in a non-transparent process. While China’s Criminal Procedure Law provides some legal time limits on holding detained and arrested persons, there are exceptions to these limits that the police and procuracy have the liberty to invoke in practice. For example, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) can approve unlimited extensions of time for a criminal investigation! What is less clear is whether the NPCSC, when approving extensions, is supposed to issue a public notice to this effect as it does with other actions. Has the NPCSC ever done so?

Another technique for exceeding the prescribed criminal procedure time limits is for the police to restart the clock on the ground that investigation of the suspect has revealed the need to investigate another major crime that the suspect may have committed. My impression is that this has frequently been done in practice but with no systematic reporting of such important decisions to the outside world. Papers are processed within the police bureaucracy, and perhaps the procuracy is informed if it has inquired.

If police officials deign to acknowledge inquiries from a defense lawyer or family member, they might well release this often spurious “new crime” rationale for extending the detention time of a suspect whose case has been delayed for political or other meretricious reasons. But there is no way in practice for such a decision to be effectively challenged. When the case finally comes to trial, the rationale for the delayed detention might often be mentioned in the indictment and would be in the appended police documentation of the case and usually mentioned in the account of procedure rendered in the court’s judgment. Yet these are formalities, not protections.

Of course, it is important to bear in mind that in practice people are often detained in the criminal process in blatant disregard of prescribed limits (Think Gui Minhai, the Swedish national who was kidnapped from Thailand and now disappeared in the arms of Mainland police).

Moreover, with the recent introduction of the “supervision commission” process, suspects can be detained for 6 months before a decision is made about whether to turn the victim over to the formal criminal process or some other sanction.

Finally, there are also other supposedly “non-criminal” detention procedures such as those still existing for drug and prostitution offenders. Others are also detained wholly outside the formal criminal process and even outside the formal police short-term administrative detention process that annually punishes many millions of people for up to 15 days in jail. Of the more than one million Chinese Muslims who have been detained in Xinjiang’s re-education camps, only a minority have been detained under formal criminal procedures.

This is not an exhaustive list. The PRC has mastered many forms of arbitrary detention.

 

PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson should read human rights treaties China has ratified

PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson should read Human rights treaties China has ratified

By Jerome A. Cohen

 I’ve been following the case of Yang Hengjun, an Australian blogger detained in China since January this year. Here’s the latest excellent Guardian piece on Yang’s case.  It vividly brings home the millions of individual, unfair tragedies inflicted by PRC criminal justice. 

Once again, the PRC has issued a preposterous response to the Australian Government’s condemnation of the terrible abuse of one of its nationals. Can the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson not realize how ridiculous his statement makes his government appear? To say that Australia is interfering with China’s “judicial sovereignty” by protesting the PRC’s violation of the international human rights to which the PRC has freely committed itself in the exercise of its sovereignty is nonsense. Perhaps PRC spokesman Geng should be reading the UN Convention against Torture in addition to the latest words of Xi Jinping. To say that Yang has been treated in accordance with Chinese law is a shocking, frank indictment of the PRC legal system before the world. It is good to have a recently-published retranslation of DARKNESS AT NOON, since the Chinese Communist Party’s daily actions illustrate how it perpetuates the tradition of endless incommunicado detentions and coercive interrogations. What a perfect way to celebrate the PRC’s 70th anniversary!

Arrest of Australian citizen in China: Beijing-Canberra tension

By Jerome A. Cohen

Protests against the formal “arrest” of former diplomat Yang turned Australian citizen are beginning to mount. Australian officials have vigorously denied the espionage charges and condemned the PRC prosecution. The PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has accused Canberra of impermissible interference with PRC justice. It claims that Yang, who has been held incommunicado for more than 6 months, is being treated in accordance with Chinese law. This is true. The problem, of course, is that Chinese law violates basic precepts of international human rights law.

Although, in conformity with the Sino-Australian consular treaty, Yang’s jailers allow him monthly half-hour consular visits that are strictly limited in topics that can be discussed and monitored, they have yet to permit him access to a lawyer, even one chosen by the jailers. “Arrest” usually means the detained suspect is headed for indictment, trial, conviction and imprisonment, and the espionage charge guarantees a very long sentence, although the death penalty is always a threat.

A lawyer will eventually be provided to decorate the proceedings if the authorities refuse to allow the accused a counsel of his choice. In any event the defense lawyer’s role will be restricted and the Party-controlled court will reach the conclusions instructed by the Party leadership.

One practical issue of special interest to international lawyers is whether the PRC will allow Australian consuls to observe the trial to the extent it is deemed “secret”. In the Stern HU case some years ago the PRC violated even its own internal regulation in refusing Australia access to the secret parts of naturalized Australian Hu’s trial. The PRC should have based that determination on a valid interpretation of a disputed provision of the bilateral consular convention but instead simply sought to justify it with a reference to China’s supposedly untrammeled judicial sovereignty. Apparently that sovereignty is not even subject to international commitments made by the PRC in the exercise of its sovereignty!!

Chinese detention of Australian blogger Yang Hengjun

Jerome A. Cohen

The Chinese government has confirmed it has detained Yang Hengjun, a naturalized Australian who is a famous blogger in China, in “residential surveillance.”

The PRC’s actions in this case—including failure to inform the Australian embassy within three days of his detention and the reason for detention, and failure to provide consular access—are in plain violation of the required consular protections under the China-Australian consular agreement.

“Residential surveillance” sounds comforting but the version now so much in vogue in the PRC is not the original residential surveillance that might be considered similar to “house arrest” in other countries but “the designated location” version (RSDL) that Ai Weiwei’s illustration of his personal experience has done so much to expose. It is absurd to call it “house arrest” or claim it is similar to “home detention”, as Australia’s Defense Minister recently said mistakenly. Actually, Ai Weiwei’s theater and art show a tough, endless regimen that is nevertheless milder than that to which too many others have been subjected. RSDL frequently constitutes impermissible torture that violates both Chinese and international law.

If we go to China in the current circumstances, those of us critical of certain PRC actions now risk six months of RSDL for “investigation” of charges of possibly violating China’s “national security”. So far, as we have just seen in the PRC’s latest reaction to the Canadian-American Meng Wanzhou case, foreign critics of PRC “hostage justice” have only been attacked for “interfering with China’s sovereignty”. If we now dare to visit China, will we, like hapless blogger Yang, be detained for possibly “interfering with China’s national security”?