December 2009 Archives
France chastised China on Saturday for jailing dissident Liu Xiaobo and reminded Beijingof its commitments to dialogue on human rights with the European Union.
Liu, China's most prominent dissident, was jailed on Friday for 11 years for campaigning for political freedoms, with the stiff sentence on a subversion charge swiftly condemned by rights groups and Washington.
"France, attached to the respect for freedom of expression throughout the world, reminds the Chinese authorities of their commitments in the scope of dialogue on human rights with the European Union," France's foreign ministry said in a statement.
Liu, who turns 54 on Monday, helped organize the "Charter 08" petition which called for sweeping political reforms, and before that was prominent in the 1989 pro-democracy protests centered on Tiananmen Squarethat were crushed by armed troops.
"(Liu's) resolute acts in support of respect for human rights and freedom of expression play an essential role in promoting democratic values in China," France's foreign ministry said.
(Reporting by Sophie Taylor; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Nirvi Shah, The Miami Herald | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
December 23, 2009
Customs agents in Miami have seized several shipments of toys from China considered dangerous by the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
The toys contained hazardous materials, including lead paint, or had small parts that pose choking hazards for children.
One shipment contained nearly 22,000 toys that had one or both violations. Another contained 444 lighters in the shapes of farm animals, complete with realistic sounds, that children could have mistaken for toys.
The items were headed all over the country, although Customs and Border Patrol would not specify which stores. Spokesman Jose Castellano said some items may have been intended for roadside stands and small businesses.
Other products intercepted this year include black toy guns that could be easily confused for real firearms and yellow toy ducks with lead paint.
This year, the federal government lowered the limits for lead in paint on children's toys to 90 parts per million, which is among the lowest in the world, and most children's toys must meet these and other standards, some of which were voluntary.
In 2008, the agency had reports of 19 toy-related deaths and about 172,700 hospital emergency room treated toy-related injuries to children under 15. Almost half affected children younger than 5. Most of the deaths were associated with drowning, motor vehicles or airway obstruction from a small toy or small part of a toy.
Last year, imports from China accounted for 60 precent of products seized by Customs for safety and security problems, Castellano said.
Toys that have been recalled by the federal consumer protection agency are listed at cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/category/toy.html and include pictures of the items.
By Luis Andres Henao | REUTERS | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
December 23, 2009
BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An Argentine judge has ordered the arrest of China's former President Jiang Zemin and another top official for "crimes against humanity" in the alleged persecution of the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Falun Gong hailed it as a historic human rights ruling on Tuesday, although a lawyer for the group acknowledged it is largely symbolic.
Federal Judge Octavio de Lamadrid on December 17 asked Interpol to issue an arrest warrant against Jiang and former security chief Luo Gan after four years of investigating charges of torture and genocide against the Falun Gong group.
The judge ordered the arrest of the two "over crimes against humanity committed in China" including genocide and torture, according to a copy of the ruling. Jiang was president from 1993 to 2003.
De Lamadrid made the ruling based on sections of Argentina's 1994 constitution that allow Argentine courts to address human rights issues in other countries.
In his ruling, the judge said "if universal jurisdiction is not admitted we would find ourselves allowing impunity, which is what the international community wants to avoid."
Alejandro Cowes, an Argentine lawyer representing Falun Gong, said: "It's a historic ruling because for the first time we're opening a universal jurisdiction to investigate crimes committed abroad."
However, a second lawyer for the group acknowledged that the ruling was mostly symbolic since it is unlikely that the arrests would be carried out. Falun Gong has pushed for such rulings without results in France, Spain and elsewhere.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez is scheduled to travel to China in January to discuss bilateral trade and business. Fernandez has pushed for human rights trials in Argentina against former military officers accused of abuses during the 1976-1983 "dirty war" against leftists.
A decade-long government crackdown drove Falun Gong underground in China but it has flourished abroad, where it has moved from a spiritual movement into a vehicle against Chinese Communist Party rule.
Thousands have been jailed since China declared Falun Gong a cult in 1999.
The Falun Dafa Information Center, which documents suspected abuses against practitioners in China, says 104 Falun Gong adherents died of abuse or neglect in custody last year, bringing to 3,242 the number of deaths documented over 10 years.
"I think this lawsuit is such great news because if (people in China) see that somebody is saying that this is wrong, even here in Argentina, they will be able to think that maybe what the government is telling them is not right," said Liwie Fu, president of the Falun Gong Group in Argentina, who brought the lawsuit.
A New York Times Editorial
December 22, 2009
Just more than a year ago, Cambodia was praised by the United Nations for its work on behalf of refugees. It was one of only two nations in Southeast Asia to sign the 1951 international convention on refugees, and it opened a brand new office that seemed to suggest a new determination to protect refugees' human rights.
That was then. Today, Cambodia has baldly violated its international commitments and put at risk the lives of 20 members of the Uighur minority -- including two infants -- who were forcibly deported back to China on Friday.
Poor, weak Cambodia is not the only villain in this piece. China shoulders even more blame for misusing its growing wealth and clout to force Cambodia to do its bidding. Already Cambodia's largest foreign investor, China rewarded Cambodia on Monday with 14 deals, valued at an estimated $850 million, including help in building roads and repairing Buddhist temples.
The Uighurs, members of a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority who say the Chinese government discriminates against them, entered Cambodia about a month ago with the aid of Christian missionaries and asked for asylum. China has been cracking down on the Uighurs since the ethnic unrest in July, the worst in decades.
Beijing said that at least 197 people -- mostly majority Han Chinese -- were killed in that violence. Han Chinese retaliated and hundreds of Uighurs have since been detained. Several of the fugitive Uighurs told the United Nations in written statements that they had been involved in the unrest and feared lengthy jail terms or even the death penalty if they were returned to China.
Chinese authorities claimed the Uighurs were criminals but offered no proof. Such charges are often a specious excuse of repressive societies, but in any case the Uighurs had protected status while their asylum cases were being investigated by the United Nations' refugee agency. China and Cambodia had a responsibility under international law to allow that process to be completed.
It is alarming that the United States, Europe and United Nations, despite making an effort, could not figure out a way to persuade Cambodia to do the right thing. They should make sure Cambodia pays a price for its behavior, but the focus must be on China, starting with an urgent demand for access to the 20 Uighurs to ensure that they are not mistreated. No Chinese refugee can feel safe if China is allowed to bully other countries into forcing them back to an uncertain and unjust future.
By Christine Simmons | The Huffington Post
December 20, 2009
A baby product manufacturer recalled on Friday about 447,000 of its infant car seat carriers, including some branded with Eddie Bauer and Disney logos, after dozens of reports of the carrier's handle coming loose.
There have been at least three injuries to babies, including bumps, bruises and a head injury. Dorel Juvenile Group Inc., of Columbus, Ind., received 77 reports of the child restraint handle fully or partially coming off the products.
In announcing the recall, the government said consumers should immediately stop using the seat's carrying handle. The bolts that attach the handle to the seat can loosen, causing the handle to possibly separate and creating a fall hazard for babies.
The recall involves Safety 1st, Cosco, Eddie Bauer and Disney branded infant car seat carriers with certain model numbers. They were sold at department and children's product stores nationwide from January 2008 through this month.
The recall was announced on Friday by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Dorel Juvenile Group.
The traffic safety agency said consumers should not use the handle until a repair kit has been installed. The repair kit includes new screws that consumers can attach to the seat carriers. They can order these free repair kits by contacting Dorel at 866-762-3316 or visiting . http://www.djgusa.com/safety_notice
"You don't want to take a chance by using this recalled car seat carrier, until you have the repair kit in place," said Patty Davis, a spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. "The handle can fall off and the car seat carrier can drop, injuring your infant."
The traffic safety agency said the car seat is safe for use in a vehicle because it meets federal safety standards. The recalled products were sold with strollers, which are not affected by the recall.
Vinnie D'Alleva, general manager for Dorel Juvenile Group, said safety is the company's top priority and it is working closely with government agencies to get the word out to parents about the recall.
Officials from the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could not say when the government first received complaints about the car seat carriers, which were on the market for about two years.
The baby seat carriers were made in China from January 2008 to April 2009. About five months later, on Sept. 1, 2009, the traffic safety agency began a preliminary evaluation about the problems, according to a report that Dorel Juvenile Group sent to the agency on Thursday.
By Radio Free Asia
14 December 2009
Chinese authorities ban registration for certain Internet domains, sparking fears of a wider crackdown.
A ban on registering certain domain names is part of a Chinese effort to tighten Internet controls, according to Chinese Internet experts.
Registration of domains with the suffix ".cn" was banned Monday, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which serves as the cyber management branch of the Chinese government.
The government has said tighter Internet restrictions are needed to effectively crack down on pornography.
But Qiao Jing, vice president of cyber enterprise DotAsia, said restricting applicants to other domain names will ultimately hurt China's Internet economy.
"This incident will certainly strengthen the official hands in eliminating pornography. It seems that now the review over domain name applications will be stricter," Qiao said.
"The procedure for international domain registration, provided by VeriSign, is to review after registration, not before it. However, if CNNIC reviews applicants in advance, those applicants who wanted ".cn" may turn to ".com" [suffixes]. This is not good for China's business," he said.
A Guangzhou-based Internet expert surnamed Li said the measure was introduced to crack down on netizens who sought to establish Web sites outside of the control of the central government.
"The reason for the CNNIC decision is probably because it was criticized by CCTV for its handling of the domain name registration process, but the real purpose is to rein in the spread of personal domains," Li said, referring to China Central Television (CCTV).
CCTV criticism
CCTV last week aired a program titled "Uncontrolled Domain Names" on its "Topics in Focus" segment, criticizing CCNIC for the spread of pornography on China's cell phones.
The program suggested that CNNIC, part of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, is too lax in its supervision of Internet domain name registration, leading to misleading, inaccurate, and incomplete registration information from applicants.
Following the program, CNNIC punished three Internet domain registration offices and unveiled a set of new rules regarding domain registration on its Web site.
The latest rule, published Saturday, denies netizens the right to register for domain names containing the suffix ".cn," beginning 9 a.m. on Dec. 14.
Netizens concerned
CNNIC's new regulation has caused concern among China's netizens, who fear that more crackdowns on the registration of international domain names may follow.
Some netizens have suggested that the Chinese government may seek to eventually ban all personal Internet domain registration.
Others see Internet forums, personal blogs, personal chat and networking sites, and peer-to-peer file transfer services as other potential targets of a larger Internet rein-in.
Beijing-based blogger Guo Weidong said that CNNIC is seeking to control public opinion, "because it is absurd to close so many Web sites in the name of eliminating pornography."
"This is a fabrication. We all know that China's currency, the yuan, can be used to buy food, drink, houses, and cars. And it can also be used to buy drugs, guns, ammunition, and even prostitutes. Can you say that the yuan is illegal and committing obscene acts?"
Increase in online censorship
Many of China's nearly 360 million netizens are disgruntled at the increasing failure of Internet circumvention tools to get around the sophisticated set of blocks and censorship filters known as the "Great Firewall."
Chinese netizens and overseas technology experts say the authorities are now successfully undermining key software used to get around the Great Firewall, such as U.S.-based software developer Andrew Lewman's Tor "tunneling" software and U.S.-based Dynamic Internet Technology's Freegate software.
Netizens have also reported problems using Chinese versions of the micro-blogging service, Twitter.
Twitter equivalents Fanfou, Jiwai, and Digu were recently shut down, forcing many Internet users to migrate to Twitter, bloggers said.
And when leading Chinese Internet portal Sina.com launched its own Twitter-like service, Sina Micro Bo, users complained of too many controls.
To sign up for the service, users must receive a registration invitation containing a password.
The operators further limit users' freedom by strictly monitoring comment boards and by using automatic filters.
The controls on Sina Micro Bo are consistent with attempts by Beijing to impose real-name user registration on all of China's netizens, making anonymous Web surfing much more difficult.
Additionally, China has detained dozens of bloggers and online authors in recent months.
Authorities around the country subjected dozens more to temporary house arrest and police interviews ahead of the sensitive 60th anniversary of Communist Party rule on Oct. 1.
Original reporting by Xin Yu for RFA's Mandarin service. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated by Ping Chen. Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
By SHARON LaFRANIERE | The New York Times
December 12, 2009
Liu Xiaobo, one of China's best-known dissidents and a principal author of a pro-democracy manifesto that has attracted more than 10,000 signatures from Chinese supporters, was indicted Thursday on charges of trying to subvert the state, his lawyer said.
Mr. Liu was expected to be tried in four to six weeks, the lawyer, Shang Baojun, said Friday.
The authorities disclosed the decision to prosecute Mr. Liu -- a step that almost invariably ends in imprisonment -- exactly one year and a day after the manifesto, Charter 08, was published. Other Charter 08 signers said in interviews that the government was using Mr. Liu's case to send a strong message to Chinese intellectuals that it would not tolerate organized, independent efforts to foster democracy.
"The government is trying to tell us to stop trying to push for human rights and democracy in China," said Xu Youyu, a Charter 08 signer and a philosophy professor who recently retired from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Secondly, he has been the biggest threat inside of China, and they want to get rid of him."
Mr. Liu's supporters had hoped that Chinese leaders would be persuaded to release Mr. Liu, who has been detained for more than a year, when President Obama visited China last month. During the visit, United States officials gave Chinese leaders a list of "cases of concern" that included Mr. Liu and 11 other political and religious activists who are imprisoned or facing charges, according to Nicholas Bequelin, an Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York.
Mr. Xu said: "I think the message to the outside world is, it doesn't really matter to the government how this case is viewed by the international community. It can do whatever it wants."
Many activists viewed Charter 08 as the most important pro-democracy effort in China since the 1989 Tiananmen protests. Although censors swiftly deleted the document from Internet pages and chat rooms, more than 10,000 people managed to sign it. It stated that Chinese citizens should be able to elect their own government, that power should be divided among different branches of government and that the military should come under government, not party, control.
By Radio Free Asia
December 08, 2009
Chinese activists risk surveillance and detention as they mark two anniversaries.
Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou have detained an activist who applied to hold a symposium on World Human Rights Day next week, one year after Chinese democracy activists signed a charter calling for political reform, his relatives said.
Guizhou police are believed to have detained Chen Xi, organizer of the human rights symposium, after escorting him away from his home, his wife said.
Chen had still not returned home late Monday.
"He has not yet come back and I don't know his whereabouts," his wife said.
"This is definitely related to World Human Rights Day," she said.
Fellow activist Li Renke said police had told the symposium organizers that they would have to apply to register the event, and that it couldn't go ahead.
"I told them that there was no law requesting a symposium to be registered, and there was no such thing as a pre-registered symposium either," Li said.
"Therefore, their banning the symposium was illegal."
More surveillance
Police in Zhejiang also stepped up surveillance of activists ahead of World Human Rights Day.
Zhejiang-based activist Zhu Yufu said police were sitting outside his house, carrying out round-the-clock surveillance.
By Radio Free Asia
December 08, 2009
A Chinese activist representing tainted-milk victims is barred from seeing his lawyer.
A spokesman for victims in last year's tainted milk scandal detained for weeks has yet to be allowed to speak with his attorney, according to his wife and a colleague.
Zhao Lianhai, the organizer of the victims' group Coalition of Families of Children with Kidney Stones, was detained by police for "provocative conduct" in the Daxing district of China's capital, Beijing, three weeks ago.
The activist had traveled to the capital with 41 other parents in the hope of attracting the attention of authorities during U.S. President Barack Obama's state visit.
Zhao's wife Li Xuemei said her husband's lawyer, Peng Jian, was permitted to meet with him only once immediately following his arrest.
"There is no information from the police. It has been three weeks now, and Peng Jian went there many times but couldn't see the police officer in charge of my husband's case," she said.
Following Zhao's detention, Jiang Yalin has emerged as a spokesperson for victims of contaminated baby formula. She said the police officer has been hiding from Zhao's lawyer.
"No one can locate him now. Each time Zhao's lawyer Peng Jian requests a meeting, the police say they can't find him," Jiang said.
By SHARON LaFRANIERE | The New York Times
December 05, 2009
In case President Obama is curious, some students who went to his town hall meeting in Shanghai last month wonder how he gets along with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, given their bruising battle for the presidency.
They didn't ask him. They weren't allowed.
"This is a sensitive question," Ni Shixiong, one of the Chinese organizers of the event, said in an interview published in the new edition of Southern People Weekly. "It's better not to ask things related to U.S. politics."
The interview was the latest indication of efforts by Chinese authorities to stage-manage Mr. Obama's visit here and the shaping of his public image in China.
They had rejected a White House request to nationally broadcast the town hall meeting, and one student reported that she and other participants had undergone an afternoon of training for the session.
The town hall event had been Mr. Obama's one chance to interact with ordinary Chinese on his three-day trip.
The White House said the president had wanted an open discussion with no screening of questions -- allowing for the American-style mix of incisive and ill-informed queries from the public.
There was precedent for a lively interaction, even if the Chinese vetted the questions beforehand.
When President Bill Clinton visited Peking University in Beijing in 1998, students challenged him about arms sales to Taiwan and whether the United States sought to contain China geopolitically.
Some sparks also flew during President George W. Bush's question-and-answer session with Tsinghua University students in Beijing in 2002.
But Mr. Ni, a professor at Fudan University and a specialist on American-China relations, faulted the Beijing students for having asked "offensive questions."
Organizers of the Shanghai event felt "there was no need to make both sides embarrassed and stop our guests in their tracks," he said.
He said they also had not wanted to upstage events on Mr. Obama's next stop, Beijing.
There, Mr. Obama had two dinners with President Hu Jintao. He and Mr. Hu wound up by reading prepared statements to reporters. They took no questions.
"The climax was in Beijing," Mr. Ni said. "We could not overshadow what really counted."
Still, he said the town hall showed that China had loosened control over such events.
Although guidelines were set and some questions were rejected, he said, the students themselves drafted the queries and were not required to rehearse.
He contrasted the session with a visit that Yitzhak Rabin, then the Israeli prime minister, made to his classroom at Fudan University in 1993.
About 200 students were picked to attend, but 180 of them were ordered to remain silent, he said.
The 20 people who were allowed to ask questions were handed text that had been prepared for them. "They had to be able to recite the questions word for word," Mr. Ni said.
The plan went awry, he said, when Mr. Rabin began the session by posing a question of his own. No one answered. "It was very embarrassing," Mr. Ni recalled.
Mr. Ni said he repeated the question aloud and winked at his students, hoping to signal that someone should respond.
Finally one student raised his hand. But instead of answering the prime minister's question, he recited his own.
By BBC World News
November 27, 2009
Over 2,000 trafficked children have been rescued since China's government began a crackdown on the trade in stolen children earlier this year.
But as the BBC's Damian Grammaticas reports from Beijing, many thousands of children are being snatched off the streets to be sold every year and most are never recovered.
The footage from the CCTV security camera is soft and blurred, but a man can be seen walking down a street carrying a child away in the night.
He glances over his shoulder, wary. This is a child kidnapper in the act of committing his crime.
The man has snatched the boy off the street in Dongguan in southern China where he was playing.
Another camera films the abductor as he gets tired, pauses, puts the boy down, then picks him up and sets off again.
His air is unhurried. There are many passersby, but nobody questions him.
There are thousands of cases like this in China every year - children, often boys, stolen to be sold for profit.
Detective work
In another case a camera mounted in a bus station catches a man luring a boy into his trap.
The man is sitting, holding a baby turtle in his hand.
A young boy comes up to him, his sister by his side, to look at the animal. But it is the boy, three-and-a-half-year-old Luo Run, who is the target, not the girl.
He was abducted and spirited hundreds of miles away by a gang of traffickers.
In Luo Run's case the police were able to identify the man who snatched him.
Trailing the gang took them to the mountains of southern Fujian province.
There, posing as buyers looking for a child, detectives arranged a meeting with the so-called snakehead, the gangster who had sold the boy on.
The demand for children is driven by a deep-seated preference in southern China for sons, boys to keep the family name alive who have a duty to care for aged parents.
And some parents are prepared to buy a stolen child if they can not have a boy of their own.
It is thought China's One Child Policy exacerbates the problem. Couples the law applies to who have a girl first cannot then legally have another child, so many turn to the traffickers to procure a boy.
Arresting the snakehead who had sold Luo Run led detectives to trace and free not only him, but also more than a dozen children, all of whom had been stolen and traded to families in the area.
The children were all taken back to Guangdong province where they had come from and were reunited with their parents.
Mothers sobbed as they hugged the children they had lost, the terrible uncertainty of not knowing if they were alive or dead finally at an end.
Abductions rising
Luo Run's parents are poor migrant labourers who live in a tiny flat in a workers' block in Guangzhou.
They say their son ended up with a well-off elderly couple who were desperate for a son of their own and showered the boy with toys. When he was rescued it took him days to accept his real parents again. Now they never let him out of their sight.
"When my son went missing, it was like my heart was being cut into pieces. It was the darkest time of my life, words cannot describe it," Luo Run's father Luo An Xin says.
"When my son came back, everything suddenly became clear, and it filled my heart with joy."
Happy as it is, Luo Run's rescue is an exception.
Nobody knows how many children are being kidnapped every year. But parents say it is thousands, and most are never recovered.
Even China's Supreme People's Court has said the numbers of stolen children are rising.
This week it sentenced two men to death for kidnapping and trading 15 children. It may be a sign that China's government wants to send a signal that it is cracking down on the trade.
Desperate search
On the streets of southern China's teeming factory towns the children of migrant labourers, playing unsupervised, are easy prey for the traffickers.
Two thousand stolen children have been recovered by Chinese police in a special operation launched this year, but often China's authorities can be callous in their response to the problem.
Some parents say local officials often do not want to deal with cases of stolen children. They say they have been warned to keep quiet and not campaign publicly to find their children lest they disturb social order.
Peng Gaofeng's two-year-old son Le Le was abducted right outside his shop. Le Le was a cheeky, vivacious boy, doted on by his parents.
Security camera footage shows a man walking away holding the boy. But it is too blurred to show the face of the man.
Peng Gaofeng agrees to meet us, but only discreetly in a local restaurant.
He has travelled across southern China looking for his son. He has put up posters and been on television.
But since he began his public campaign to find Le Le and other children, he says he has been monitored by police and warned against making too much fuss.
"If there were just one or two cases it would be a minor thing for the police. But there are thousands of us who've lost our kids. It's a massive issue," Peng Gaofeng says.
"By campaigning openly we undermine the image the government wants to project that this is a harmonious society."
For some officials finding Peng Gaofeng's child appears less important than preserving the facade of order.
So all he has now are some pictures of his son, and the security camera footage showing Le Le, vanishing into the night.
By Radio Free Asia
November 30, 2009
A pastor at an unofficial Protestant church banned from holding indoor meetings by authorities in Shanghai said she would seek compensation for mistreatment by police, as hundreds of the church's followers held an open-air service in one of the city's parks.
Just one week after Shanghai police detained six pastors and organizers of the city's popular but unregistered Wanbang church for several hours, several hundred worshipers gathered Sunday in the city's Minhang Sports Park for an open-air meeting.
"Today we held an open-air service in Minhang Sports Park," the group's leader, Pastor Ren, said.
"It wasn't only prayers. We also held a meeting with preaching. Around 700-800 people were there."
"The police were standing around the edges. There were about 200-300 of them today, the ones wearing uniform. They were uniformed security guards."
Alleged mistreatment
Meanwhile, Wanbang deputy pastor Liu Quanqin said she was mistreated during her detention by officers from Shanghai's Zhuanqiao police station, and had written to demand compensation and an official apology.
"I was praying alone at the hotel at 6:10 p.m., and reading from scripture, and I heard sounds nearby --they were checking all the rooms," she said.
"They knocked on my door and then they used tried to use a key to open the door. It was double-locked, so they just forced it open."
She said police hadn't shown any identification during the detention, then locked her in a room and not allowed her to use the toilet.
"They left me in there for 15 hours," Liu said.
"I asked to go to the bathroom but they wouldn't let me. I asked for some water but they wouldn't give it to me. I was hungry and I asked them for food but they wouldn't let me eat."
Liu said she wrote a complaint letter after she saw a list of rules on the wall of the police station stipulating that police must give food and water to detainees.
She said she was taken to a courtroom but there was no hearing.
Instead, she was pushed, pinched, sworn at, and had her skirt lifted up for "inspection."
She said she had photographic evidence of blood-blisters where she had been pinched.
"The government wants me to stop my activities with the Wanbang church," Liu said. "They say it's an illegal organization."
"I have written an official complaint letter," she said. "I will win redress for this."
Wanbang deputy pastor Cui said it was unclear whether the church would be allowed to move back into its old premises after being expelled by the authorities earlier this month.
"We will have to talk to them about that," he said. "I don't know [if we can go back]. We haven't tried it."
"On the whole, the authorities have been fairly approving of us. They know we are all good people, and pretty trustworthy. The only problem is that we aren't legal [officially approved as a church]. That is where the flashpoint for conflict lies."
Henan intervention
Meanwhile, in the southern province of Henan, the leader of China's Association of House Churches, Pastor Zhang Mingxuan, said police had broken up a prayer meeting he tried to hold on Sunday, attended by around 30 people.
"House" churches, which operate without official registration documents and without the involvement of the local religious affairs bureaus, come in for surveillance and repeated raids, especially in more rural areas of the country, according to overseas rights groups.
Officially an atheist country, China nonetheless has an army of officials whose job is to watch over faith-based activities, which have spread rapidly in the wake of massive social change and economic uncertainty since economic reforms began 30 years ago.
Party officials are put in charge of Catholics, Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, and Protestants.
Judaism isn't recognized, and worship in unapproved temples, churches, or mosques is against the law.
In its most recent report on human rights in China, the U.S. State Department said freedom of religion is permitted to varying degrees around China.
Original reporting in Mandarin by Qiao Long. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
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