1995 Annual Report for China
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 1995(this report covers the period 1.1.94-31.12.94)
CHINA
Hundreds of political dissidents and members of ethnic and religious groups were arbitrarily detained. Scores of them, including prisoners of conscience, were held without charge or trial or sentenced to terms of imprisonment after unfair trials. Thousands of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners arrested in previous years remained in prison. Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners were widely reported. At least 2,496 death sentences and 1,791 executions were recorded.
The authorities stated early in the year that ''political stability'' was essential to continued economic development, and during 1994 the repression of people perceived as threatening the established political order intensified. There was a renewed crack-down on prominent dissenters and further repressive legislation was adopted. Two new laws came into force in January which banned certain religious activities. In July the government banned specific activities ''endangering state security'', increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and association.
Scores of political dissidents were arbitrarily detained throughout the year. Most of them, including prisoners of conscience, were held for months without charge and were still in prison at the end of the year.
A crack-down on prominent dissidents and human rights activists started in Beijing and Shanghai in March 1994. Some of those detained in Beijing were apparently arrested for attempting to form an independent labour rights group, the League for the Protection of the Rights of the Working People (lprwp), which was refused legal registration in March. Yuan Hongbing, a law professor at Beijing University, and Wang Jiaqi, a law graduate, were secretly detained on 2 March in Beijing. They had sponsored the lprwp and had initiated a petition in January seeking justice in a case of alleged police brutality. Wang Jiaqi later escaped and fled the country. Zhou Guoqiang, a lawyer and a sponsor of the lprwp, was detained on 3 March. Others associated with the lprwp were detained between April and June. Yuan Hongbing, Zhou Guoqiang and other lprwp sponsors remained held without charge at the end of the year.
Wei Jingsheng, a prominent dissident and former long-term prisoner of conscience, was detained on 1 April, apparently for making public comments about human rights issues, and remained held without charge at an undisclosed location at the end of the year. His assistant, Tong Yi, a professor of Chinese literature, was detained on 4 April and sentenced in December, without charge or trial, to two and a half years of ''re-education through labour'' for ''disturbing public order''. She was believed to have been detained because of her association with Wei Jingsheng.
Several human rights activists were detained in Shanghai. In March Zhu Fuming was reportedly arrested for his links with the Shanghai-based Association for Human Rights, which was formed in 1993 but refused legal registration. His whereabouts were unknown to his family. At least five other members of the association were detained in April and May and held without charge, including Li Guotao, the association's chairman, Yang Zhou, a founding member, Dai Xuezhong and Yang Qingheng. Bao Ge, another dissident associated with the Shanghai human rights group, was detained in June after sending an open letter to the government asking for a national human rights organization to be set up. Li Guotao, Yang Zhou, Bao Ge and Yang Qingheng were later sentenced without trial to three years' ''re-education through labour''. The fate of the others remained unknown.
Scores of members of religious groups were detained because of their peaceful religious activities. From late 1993 at least 30 Protestant and Catholic leaders were detained or placed under restriction in various regions of China. Father Zhu Tai, for instance, was reportedly detained in November 1993 while celebrating Roman Catholic mass in Zhangjiakou city, Hebei province. He was said to have been assigned to one year's ''re-education through labour''. Three members of a banned Protestant group known as the Shouters – Lin Zilong, aged 79, He Xiaxing and Han Kangrui – were reportedly arrested in Fujian province in December 1993. They remained in detention ''under investigation for religious reasons''. Pan Yiyuan, a Protestant house-church leader from Zhangzhou city in Fujian province, was arrested in February for his peaceful religious activities. He was believed to be still held without trial at Zhangzhou Detention Centre at the end of the year.
Repression of dissent continued in the Tibet Autonomous Region (tar) as new security measures were taken to prevent nationalist demonstrations. On 10 May the authorities in Lhasa, capital of the tar, declared a one-month period of heightened security measures before a series of anniversaries, including Tibetan religious festivals, in late May. By October at least 50 Tibetans, mostly monks and nuns, were reported to have been arrested, and many others beaten by armed police, following a series of peaceful pro-independence demonstrations in the tar.
Demonstrators were arrested on 27 May in Lhasa during a peaceful protest by up to 200 Tibetan shopkeepers against official tax assessments. According to eye-witness accounts, 17 shopkeepers were kicked and beaten with rifle butts by armed police. They were reportedly released after officials at Gutsa Detention Centre refused to admit them because they were bleeding from head wounds. On the same night a number of suspected political activists, regarded as possible instigators of further protests, were rounded up from their homes.
Tibetan monks and nuns, who make up the majority of political prisoners in the tar, were reported to have received heavy sentences for their pro-independence activities. In July, five Tibetan monks were sentenced to between 12 and 15 years' imprisonment for ''counter-revolutionary sabotage''. They had allegedly broken the name-plate on a government building and pasted up pro-independence slogans in eastern Tibet in March. The sentences were announced by a court in Pakshoe county, Chamdo Prefecture, at a show trial attended by several thousand local inhabitants, and broadcast on Tibetan television.
It was also reported during the year that 14 nuns imprisoned in Drapchi Prison, Lhasa, had their sentences increased in October 1993 by up to nine years for composing and recording pro-independence songs in prison. One of them, Phuntsog Nyidron, had her sentence extended to 17 years' imprisonment. The nuns had reportedly been arrested between 1989 and 1992 for taking part in pro-independence demonstrations.
The police continued to use ''shelter and investigation'', a form of administrative detention, to arbitrarily detain dissidents without charge, in violation of Chinese law. Professor Xiao Biguang, another co-founder of the Beijing-based lprwp, was arrested at his home on 12 April. He was reported to be administratively detained under a ''shelter and investigation'' order issued by the Beijing Public Security Bureau and was denied visits from his family.
Another form of administrative detention, ''re-education through labour'', was increasingly used to sentence dissidents without charge or trial to up to three years' detention. Such sentences were imposed on human rights activists, members of unapproved religious groups and other people branded as ''troublemakers''. The many cases reported included that of Yan Zhengxue, a painter from Beijing and deputy from a local People's Congress in Zhejiang province, who was assigned in April to two years' ''re-education through labour'' in a forced labour camp in Heilongjiang province, northern China. He was sentenced, without a trial, for allegedly stealing a bicycle – an unfounded accusation that followed his efforts to bring to justice three police officers who had assaulted him in 1993. In another case, Zhang Lin, a pro-democracy activist arrested in Beijing in May, was sentenced in August in his home province of Anhui to three years' ''re-education through labour'', reportedly because his marriage licence was ''not in order'' and he had too many contacts with foreign reporters.
Thousands of political prisoners detained or convicted after unfair trials in previous years remained held. In October the authorities acknowledged holding over 2,800 prisoners convicted of ''counter-revolutionary'' offences, a euphemism for political crimes. However, the figure is far below the real number of political prisoners: it excludes those held for political reasons but convicted of other offences, those held under various forms of administrative detention without charge or trial, and those detained for long periods pending trial. Among cases previously unknown which came to light during 1994 were those of several hundred political prisoners held at the Qinghe penal farm, near Tianjin, and at Beijing Prison No. 2, who had been convicted of political or criminal offences for their activities during the 1989 pro-democracy protests.
Those believed to be still held since the early 1980s included dissidents imprisoned for their involvement in the ''democracy wall'' movement of the late 1970s (see previous Amnesty International Reports) and people convicted of ''counter-revolutionary'' offences for a variety of peaceful political or religious activities.
Some prisoners of conscience were released during 1994. Two Tibetan human rights monitors, Gendun Rinchen and Lobsang Yonten, who were arrested in May 1993 (see Amnesty International Report 1994), were released in January. In April and May, Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, branded as ''black hands'' of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, were released on bail for medical treatment after serving over four years of their 13-year sentences. Others released included people jailed for their involvement in peaceful religious activities.
Political trials continued to fall far short of international fair trial standards. Extreme limitations were placed on the right to defence. Confessions, often extracted under torture, were accepted as evidence. Defendants had no right to call witnesses and had insufficient time and facilities to prepare their defence. Verdicts and sentences were routinely decided by the authorities before trial.
In April Ulaanshuvu, a former lecturer at Inner Mongolia University, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for ''counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement'', nearly three years after his arrest. His trial before the Hohhot Intermediate People's Court lasted less than 30 minutes and the charge against him had reportedly been changed. He was reportedly ill-treated in prison.
In another case, Gao Yu, a prominent freelance journalist held since October 1993, was sentenced to six years' imprisonment after a secret trial in November in which she had no legal representation. She was charged with ''disclosing state secrets'' in articles she had written for Hong Kong publications. During two previous hearings of her case, the court reportedly decided that there was insufficient evidence for conviction, but instead of acquitting her it returned the case to the procuracy for ''further investigation''.
A major political trial of 15 prisoners of conscience began in Beijing in July. The 15 had been detained for more than two years on charges of ''counter-revolution'' for forming or joining three underground dissident groups, writing and printing political leaflets and planning to distribute them before the 1992 anniversary of the 1989 massacre in Beijing. Their trial had been postponed several times since 1993, reportedly because of lack of evidence. In December, nine were sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from three to 20 years, five were ''exempted'' from criminal punishment, and one was placed under ''supervision'' for two years. Relatives of the defendants were reportedly not permitted to attend the court hearing.
Torture and ill-treatment of detainees and prisoners held in prisons, detention centres or labour camps were widely reported. Methods most often cited were beatings, electric shocks, use of shackles, sleep deprivation and exposure to extremes of cold or heat. Prison conditions were frequently harsh and many prisoners suffered from serious illnesses as a result. Medical care and food were often inadequate, and punishments frequently threatened the physical and psychological well-being of prisoners. Political prisoners in Hanyang Prison in Hubei province, for example, claimed that they had been beaten and held in conditions that amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
Phuntsog Yangkyi, a Tibetan nun and prisoner of conscience, reportedly died in a police hospital in Lhasa in June, allegedly as a result of ill-treatment. She was one of several nuns beaten at Drapchi Prison in February after singing nationalist songs. No independent investigation was conducted into her case or those of other prisoners alleged to have been tortured or ill-treated in detention.
The dramatic increase in the use of the death penalty which began in 1990 continued (see Amnesty International Reports 1991 to 1994). At least 2,496 death sentences and 1,791 executions were recorded by Amnesty International, but the true figures were believed to be far higher.
Amnesty International continued to urge the authorities to release all prisoners of conscience, ensure fair and prompt trials for other political prisoners, investigate torture allegations and safeguard prisoners from ill-treatment. It also urged the authorities to commute all death sentences. The government did not respond.
In oral statements to the un Commission on Human Rights in February, Amnesty International included reference to its concerns in China.
Amnesty International published several reports on China including: in January, China: Dissidents Detained Since 1992 – Political Trials and Administrative Sentences; in March, China: Protestants and Catholics Detained Since 1993; in April, China: Death Penalty Figures Recorded for 1993; in June, China: Human Rights Violations Five Years after Tiananmen; and in November, China: The Imprisonment and Harassment of Jesus Family Members in Shandong Province.
