Torture Allegedly on Rise in China

The use of torture is on the rise in China, with officials at all levels resorting to physical abuse as a means of extracting confessions, suppressing political dissent and even enforcing the country’s “one child” policy, a human rights group has alleged.

In a report to be released today, Amnesty International says torture has become “widespread and systemic” across China, used not just by the criminal justice system but also by an increasing number of other agencies, such as those charged with family planning and tax collection. Although Chinese law largely prohibits torture, action against it or those responsible is rare, the report says.

“Torture in China remains a major human rights concern,” said Curt Goering, deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. “The government has acknowledged for many years that torture is a serious problem but has done little about it.”

The 58-page report cites dozens of specific instances of alleged police torture, many of them gruesome accounts of beatings with blunt instruments, shocks with electric prods, and sexual humiliation, often of women accused of prostitution.

In one instance, a 30-year-old farm worker was allegedly hung upside down, whipped, burned and sexually mutilated because he would not reveal the whereabouts of his wife, whom the authorities suspected of being pregnant without permission. In another incident, the defendant in a homicide case was said to have been shackled and then kicked and beaten whenever he failed to follow a scripted confession forced on him by his interrogators.

Some of the cases documented in the Amnesty International report were culled from China’s own press, which has increasingly focused its attention on police brutality and turned such abuses into the subject of public debate and outrage. In December, a top Chinese legislator admitted that torture had become a serious problem in need of redress.

But in a land of 1.3 billion people, where the rule of law is embryonic, law enforcement methods remain crude and low-tech, and a lack of accountability allows local officials to act with near-impunity, turning the situation around is a huge task.

Moreover, aggressive anti-crime campaigns, as well as crackdowns against the Falun Gong spiritual movement and other groups seen as political threats, work against official commitments to combating torture, human rights advocates say.

The report cites several deaths in custody of people accused of separatist activity in the western province of Xinjiang and in Tibet, including six Tibetan nuns.

“Even at the highest level, while there are some encouraging steps . . . one cannot say that there is sustained political will to cope” with torture and police maltreatment, Goering said. “We haven’t seen evidence of that.”

Over the weekend, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji told visiting Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien that Beijing would soon ratify one of two key international conventions on human rights. But observers expect that the government will attach conditions that would effectively limit the treaty’s scope in China.

Goering called on the Bush administration to sponsor a U.N. resolution condemning China’s human rights record, a move that previous U.S. administrations have tried in Geneva nearly a dozen times without success. So far, the White House has not said whether it will go forward with such a resolution.

Goering said his organization’s report was the outcome of several years’ research and documentation--much of it is second hand because the government does not allow Amnesty International into the country to conduct research.

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The full text of the report can be found at https://www.amnestyusa.org.