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Text File | 1994-05-06 | 52KB | 936 lines

<text> <title> China And Tibet </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Asia Watch: China and Tibet </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments If anything, the Chinese authorities showed themselves even less willing in 1991 than in 1990 to ease up on the relentless repression that they have pursued since the military crackdown in Beijing and other cities on June 4, 1989. The year brought no large-scale releases of pro-democracy activists, unlike 1990, when a total of 881 such releases were announced by the authorities. Instead, as if to symbolize the regime's unrepentant stance in the face of international censure, the year began with the biggest wave of dissident trials in China since the summer of 1989. Dozens of leading Tiananmen activists some of them dubbed "black hands" of the movement were brought before the Beijing Intermediate Court and sentenced, after wholly unfair trials, to prison terms ranging from two to thirteen years. Meanwhile, thousands of other pro-democracy activists (the precise number remains unknown) remain behind bars, many having been brought to trial and sentenced secretly, while many others were sent by the police, without any trial at all, for up to three years of administrative detention (so-called "reeducation through labor"). Others continue to languish, long over the lawful time-limits for pretrial detention, in police lockups and local detention centers, their cases as yet unresolved. The identities of most of those detained after June 4, 1989 were either never publicly reported by the authorities, or were reported without follow-up, so there is no indication of their fate. In effect, China has a major "disappearance" problem. In addition, further well-documented instances of gross brutality toward detainees, extending from beatings to outright torture, were recorded throughout the year, contributing to a picture of generalized and often random state violence toward those in custody. Also indicative of the authorities' undiminished hard-line stance in 1991 was their harsh treatment of all those who dared to continue pro-democracy activities, of necessity in secrecy, well after Beijing's "quelling of the counter-revolutionary rebellion" of June 1989. A clear though unstated official policy of sentencing such people harshly emerged in the course of the year. Even for the several dozen pro-democracy activists who were released from prison in 1991, persecution and harassment did not come to an end. Most were left without jobs or income; many found themselves in broken health as a result of their harsh conditions of incarceration, while others were simply stripped of their urban residence permits and deported to the countryside. Discriminated against and often placed under near-constant surveillance, there seemed little opportunity for them to begin rebuilding their lives. Religious activities were further curtailed in 1991, with a fresh round of repression against Catholic priests who refused to renounce their allegiance to the Vatican and against leaders and participants of unofficial Protestant "house congregations." For example, an internal government directive on religious policy, issued in February, ordered a severe crackdown on all unauthorized religious groups, whether Christian, Buddhist or Muslim, and instructed security forces "to attack the use of religion for unlawful and criminal purposes and to firmly resist the infiltration of foreign religious inimical forces." ("Crackdown on 'illegal' churches," South China Morning Post, November 13, 1991.) Government attempts to silence dissident or nationalist voices among China's main ethnic minorities also intensified. The list of Buddhist monks, nuns and others imprisoned for espousing the independence of Tibet continued to grow, amid mounting evidence of the widespread use by security forces in the region of brutal and often extreme forms of torture against such detainees. The authorities in May declared an "anti-separatist" war on another ethnic front, by launching a regionwide crackdown against Mongol academics, students and government cadres in Inner Mongolia who had sought legal registration of their newly founded ethnic study groups. Finally, freedom of expression was further reined in during 1991, with tightened censorship controls and escalating attacks on independent-minded academics and students. Such measures proceeded in tandem with a mounting official propaganda blitz against so-called "peaceful evolution" the code word for an alleged long-term plot by Western nations to undermine Chinese socialism from within by "smuggling" into China concepts of democracy, pluralism and freedom. In the course of this campaign, internal government documents designated the United States an "enemy" nation. Correspondingly, punitive action including expulsion from the country was taken against Western journalists, writers and others deemed to be the bearers of the "peaceful evolution" virus. Trials of the "black hands" The trials of several dozen leaders of the April-June 1989 pro-democracy movement took place during January and February 1991, under cover of China's "cooperation" in the U.S.-led military action in the Persian Gulf, when international scrutiny was effectively diverted from events in Beijing. Aside from the spurious and entirely political nature of the "counterrevolutionary" charges laid against the principal accused, the trials themselves were invalid even under Chinese law, since the defendants had all been held long in excess of the maximum five and a half months of pretrial detention allowed by the 1980 Criminal Procedure Law. The trials showed all the hallmarks of China's criminal justice: there was no presumption of innocence; the defendants were denied all access to defense counsel until only days before their trials; lawyers were specifically barred from entering "not guilty" pleas on behalf of their clients (although in a number of highly honorable exceptions defense lawyers still presented spirited cases arguing innocence); requests to cross-examine prosecution witnesses and summon for questioning absent providers of testimonials for the prosecution were flatly denied; and official media reports, appearing well in advance of the trials, showed that guilt had been entirely predetermined by the political authorities and that the court hearings represented no more than the so-called "verdict first, trial second" scenario that has been increasingly condemned by the legal establishment itself in recent years. Student leader Liu Gang, one of four alleged prominent "black hands" behind the 1989 protests, declared at his trial that all statements made by him in pretrial custody should be discounted, since they had been extracted by interrogators who had repeatedly threatened him with death should he fail to comply. Moreover, these ostensibly "open" trials were shrouded in secrecy, to the extent that in at least one reported case, that of veteran human rights campaigner Ren Wanding, even the accused's wife was not informed of the trial in advance and so could not attend. (Ren received a seven-year prison sentence for "counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement.") All foreign observers were barred from attending, in accordance with obscure internal judicial regulations that also specifically encourage Chinese law-enforcement officers knowingly to violate provisions of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. All requests from Asia Watch, Amnesty International and other concerned groups to attend the trials and monitor observance of due process were ignored; the members of one monitoring group from Britain that had sought access to the trials were unceremoniously expelled from the country. Far from exhibiting the "lenience" noted by some foreign commentators and claimed by the Chinese authorities them