10 Nov 2008

Chinese activists tell UN of state torture

Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a coalition of lawyers, academics and activists from round the country, has grown in the shadows of state suppression in the last two years.

Its survival is a token of the courage of its members, who have been harassed, imprisoned and beaten as they taken up difficult cases and attempt to promote legal reform.

"Twenty years after China ratified the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1988, all are routinely practiced by government personnel," said the submission. It was just one of a number being put before a two-day hearing by the United Nations Committee Against Torture in Geneva.

The human rights group said: "Except for some progress in the promulgation of legislation and administrative documents, China has made no clear and discernible improvement in prohibiting the use of torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment."

It went on to give detailed case studies of abuses including beatings, forced labour, detention in psychiatric hospitals and forced abortions.

Among the causes taken up by lawyers and others who are associated with the group are those of petitioners complaining to the government about forced eviction from their homes and land to make way for development.

Many of these have been detained in so-called "black jails" - hostels used as illegal detention centres in Beijing for those who stage anti-government protests, while officials and police from their homes provinces arrive to return them home. Telegraph