To make matters worse, the Chinese government is pushing through a provision in China’s draft criminal procedure law to effectively legalize such disappearances, which remain a serious crime in international law. The draft law will allow police to detain suspects in cases involving endangering state security, terrorism and major corruption for up to six months under "residential surveillance" in a location of the police’s choice without providing any notification to family members of the detainee's whereabouts or alleged offense. With the backdrop of the ongoing leadership transition, instances of enforced disappearances to silence dissent could become even more common in 2012.
That greater willingness of China’s state security agencies to resort to wholly illegal practices speaks to the wider erosion in rule of law in China in recent years, a trend that’s likely to continue in 2012. In China today, repression no longer wears a uniform. That was the lesson learned by the British actor Christian Bale on December 15, when he and a CNN crew were physically blocked from visiting the blind human rights defender Chen Guangcheng outside his home village in Shandong Province. Since Chen’s release from prison on September 9, 2010, on a politically-motivated conviction for “disrupting traffic,” he and his family have been illegally detained in their home and reportedly subjected to vicious beatings for defying their captors. A cordon of aggressive plainclothes thugs who appear to operate at official behest prevented Bale from entering the village and attempted to attack the CNN crew’s cameraman.Bale and his CNN team got off easy – those same thugs have reportedly detained, beaten and subjected to illegal search and seizure many of the dozens of sympathetic Chinese citizens who have tried to visit Chen over the past year.
The government’s overriding obsession with maintaining its monopoly on power make it likely that these abuses will continue under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Foreign governments could help reverse this trend and give support to Chinese who want a more accountable government by more vigorously engaging the government on such violations. Thirty years since the launch of China’s economic reform and opening, a decade after China entered the World Trade Organization, and five years since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the deterioration in respect for human rights and rule of law in China should be of serious concern for all countries seeking long-term, sustainable and mutually-beneficial bilateral relations with China.
For far too long, the international community’s approach to human rights abuses in China has been dominated by behind-closed-doors entreaties at the margins of diplomatic meetings or in bilateral human rights dialogues, which are typically triumphs of diplomatic form over substance. In recent weeks, the U.N. High Commissioner on Human Rights and some foreign governments have expressed more robust criticism in response to some abuses. However, it remains to been whether such engagement can and will be sustained in the face of concerns of foreign governments that such engagement are a threat to improved financial and economic ties with China.
In the longer term, governments truly committed to improving their approach to human rights abuses in China can’t rely on rhetoric alone. Instead, foreign governments, particularly the United States, the E.U. and the U.K., need to make progress on individual human rights cases a real benchmark for engagement with China and make clear that lack of progress will impact bilateral relations. Failure to do so will only ensure that in 2012 and beyond, yet more Chinese citizens will fall victim to their government’s dissent-stifling tactics of fear and intimidation.
Phelim Kine is a senior Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch.
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John Chan
USA is not a democratic society, and it never intends to be one. USA is a polyarchy.
USA’s Patriotic Act was passed without public and congress debate. Since the pass of Patriotic Act, the right to Freedom of speech, the right to freedom of assembly and the right to freedom of fair trail are no longer protected by the law in the USA; the pass of Patriotic Act, Amendments 4 and 6 to the bill of right are deadened; yet Americans made no protest at all against such tramp on their constitutional rights.
If it is true that “China’s draft criminal procedure law to effectively legalize such disappearances, which remain a serious crime in international law,” then it seems China is following the wrong model, it is implementing USA’s Patriotic Act in China; since there is no outcry against USA’s Patriotic Act a serious crime in international law, it must mislead China to believe that legalize disappearances is an acceptable norm in international community and is not a violation of human rights.
Indeed, the USA, EU and the UK must act what they preach regarding human rights, failure to do so will only prove they are hypocrites, and they don’t say what they meant.
Butter
And Washington and America preached about “superior values”. Maybe “hypocrisy” is one of them. Washington and its brainwashed citizens by Big Business, are not exactly good role models for the world. So don’t preach to another civilization which have other resources to draw from.
GK
Without careful concerns about the benefit of majority, those dissidents are basically reckless. To be honest, I tend to look them as traitors.
If they put more energy on substantial social challenges real facing, I’d like to respect them as heroes. Unfortunately, they are too ignorant, thus majority Chinese won’t support them.