Human Rights: September 2005 Archives

By JOSEPH KAHN - The New York Times

ANYANG, China - For three days and three nights, the police wrenched Qin Yanhong's arms high above his back, jammed his knees into a sharp metal frame, and kicked his gut whenever he fell asleep. The pain was so intense that he watched sweat pour off his face and form puddles on the floor.

On the fourth day, he broke down. "What color were her pants?" they demanded. "Black," he gasped, and felt a whack on the back of his head. "Red," he cried, and got another punch. "Blue," he ventured. The beating stopped.

This is how Mr. Qin, a 35-year-old steel mill worker in Henan Province in central China, recalled groping in the darkness of a interrogation room to deduce the "correct" details of a rape and murder, end his torture and give the police the confession they required to close a nettlesome case.

On the strength of his coerced confession alone, prosecutors indicted Mr. Qin. A panel of judges then convicted him and sentenced him to death. He is alive today only because of a rare twist of fate that proved his innocence and forced the authorities to let him go, though not before a final push to have him executed anyway.

Justice in China is swift but not sure. Criminal investigations nearly always end in guilty pleas. Prosecutors almost never lose cases brought to trial. But recent disclosures of wrongful convictions like Mr. Qin's have exposed deep flaws in a judicial system that often answers more to political leaders than the law.

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How local officials in China launched a brutal campaign of forced abortions and sterilizations
By HANNAH BEECH/SHANDONG - TIME magazine

The men with the poison-filled syringe arrived two days before Li Juan's due date. They pinned her down on a bed in a local clinic, she says, and drove the needle into her abdomen until it entered the 9-month-old fetus. "At first, I could feel my child kicking a lot," says the 23-year-old. "Then, after a while, I couldn't feel her moving anymore." Ten hours later, Li delivered the girl she had intended to name Shuang (Bright). The baby was dead. To be absolutely sure, says Li, the officials--from the Linyi region, where she lives, in China's eastern Shandong province--dunked the infant's body for several minutes in a bucket of water beside the bed. All she could think about on that day last spring, recalls Li, was how she would hire a gang of thugs to take revenge on the people who killed her baby because the birth, they said, would have violated China's family-planning scheme.

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Every case is a bloody debt incurred by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). According to the most recent statistics from Minghui.org, 61 Falun Gong practitioners were confirmed to be tortured to death in mainland China during the month of August. Each of the 61 cases has been verified through non-government channels. Since the persecution of Falun Gong began on July 20, 1999, 2800 practitioners have been tortured to death in camps and detention centers that have been set up throughout China as part of the CCPs overarching plan to eradicate Falun Gong from the country.

from BBC News
The United Nation's human rights chief, Louise Arbour, has said she is "guardedly optimistic" that China is making progress on human rights.

But she questioned Beijing's widespread use of the death penalty, warning that some of those being executed might be victims of discrimination.

Ms Arbour was speaking at the end of a five day visit to Beijing.

During her trip an agreement was signed to bring China closer to ratifying a covenant on civil and political rights.

She also raised a number of cases of specific concern to the UN - including cases of detained journalists, labour activists and ethnic minorities - as well as highlighting treatment of Tibetans and the Muslim Uighur minority in the restive region of Xinjiang.

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