c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or PunishmentChinese law prohibits the physical abuse of detainees and forbids prison guards from extracting confessions by torture, insulting prisoners’ dignity, and beating or encouraging others to beat prisoners. Amendments to the criminal procedure law exclude evidence, including confessions, obtained through illegal means, including under torture in certain categories of criminal cases.
Numerous former prisoners and detainees reported they were beaten, subjected to electric shock, forced to sit on stools for hours on end, deprived of sleep, and otherwise subjected to physical and psychological abuse. Although ordinary prisoners were subjects of abuse, prison authorities singled out political and religious dissidents for particularly harsh treatment. In some instances close relatives of dissidents also were singled out for abuse. During his November 29 trial, Yang Maodong delivered a closing statement in which he described how he was tortured during previous incarcerations, which included marathon interrogations and sleep deprivation. He said authorities repeatedly reviled, beat, shackled him to his bed, and applied a high-wattage Taser to his groin.
The Dui Hua Foundation’s quarterly Human Rights Journal reported that in May, a court in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, convicted seven defendants, including three police officers, of coercing confessions through torture in connection with seven separate incidents, all committed in March 2013. The court imposed sentences ranging from a suspended one-year prison sentence to two and one-half years in prison. At least one of the defendants appealed the verdict.
The Harbin court found evidence of routine use of electric shock and other physical torture in the investigation of drug cases by officers at the Daowai District Branch Public Security Bureau. One suspect recalled being handcuffed to a metal chair and shocked with electric batons. Mustard oil was poured up his nose. When he refused to tell police where he got his drugs, they took off his shoes, applied wires to one of his toes, then connected the wires to an old-fashioned military crank telephone, which sent a current of 120 volts through his body as they cranked it, causing his entire body to convulse.
The same technique was used during another drug investigation that same month. Again, a drug suspect, surnamed Liang, was handcuffed to a chair. When he began to shout, a towel was stuffed in his mouth. One interrogator began beating Liang in the face with the sole of a shoe. During this ordeal Liang lost consciousness and died.
Aside from the three police officers, the other defendants, including the ones responsible for carrying out most of the actual physical torture, were “special informants.”
The relatively light sentences attracted comment. Legal scholar Wang Gangqiao, writing in the Beijing News September 23, pointed out that the maximum penalty for coercing confessions through torture is three years’ imprisonment, but torture resulting in serious injury or death should be punished according to the more serious offenses of intentional injury or homicide. He questioned the court’s failure to hand down more serious penalties in this case.
According to reports, however, local prosecutors lacked evidence to bring homicide charges because police cremated the body of the deceased as the incident was under investigation. As a consequence authorities subsequently prosecuted for abuse of power a deputy chief at the Daowai Public Security Bureau who ordered the cremation.
In March authorities in Heilongjiang Province sentenced 11 persons to administrative detention for “using cult activities to endanger society” after they were caught investigating illegal detention facilities for Falun Gong adherents. After their release, three human rights lawyers among the detained--Jiang Tianyong, Tang Jitian, and Wang Cheng--reported being they were tortured by police during their detention. Wang Cheng alleged police hoisted him from the ceiling, hooded him, and beat him. Police later forced the three to sign confessions that they had “disturbed public order.”
On July 17, alleged plainclothes police attacked veteran activist Hu Jia in Beijing, causing multiple bruises to his face and head.
There were widespread reports of activists and petitioners being committed to mental health facilities and involuntarily subjected to psychiatric treatment for political reasons. According to Legal Daily (a state-owned newspaper covering legal affairs), the Ministry of Public Security directly administered 23 high-security psychiatric hospitals for the criminally insane (also known as ankang facilities). From 1998 to May 2010, more than 40,000 persons were committed to ankang hospitals. According to the most recent information available, in 2010 an official of the Ministry of Public Security stated that detention in “ankang” facilities was not appropriate for patients who did not demonstrate criminal behavior. Nonetheless, political activists, underground religious adherents, persons who repeatedly petitioned the government, members of the banned Chinese Democracy Party (CDP), and Falun Gong practitioners were among those housed in these institutions.
On May 20, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued the opinion that Xing Shiku had been detained arbitrarily in violation of article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Since 2007 Xing had been held in the Daowai District Psychiatric Hospital in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, because of his frequent trips to Beijing to protest local corruption and the privatization of the state-owned company where he once worked.
A 2012 law bans involuntary mental health examinations and inpatient treatment except in cases in which patients expressed intent to harm themselves or others. Critics maintained, however, that the law does not provide meaningful legal protections for persons sent to psychiatric facilities. The 2012 amendments to the criminal procedure law require a procuratorate (the agency responsible for both prosecution and investigation) review and a court decision for the psychiatric commitment of persons who have committed serious offenses but are exempt from criminal responsibility under the law. The amendments include a provision for appealing compulsory medical treatment decisions. Civil society and media sources reported that enforcement of these laws remained uneven.
According to the National Health and Family Planning Commission, approximately 10,000 organ transplants were performed annually, while 300,000 persons needed transplants each year. Advocacy groups continued to report organ harvesting from prisoners. Director of the China Organ Donation and Transplant Committee Huang Jiefu previously stated that organs from executed prisoners accounted for 64 percent of transplants in 2012 and for 54 percent by mid-2013. According to Huang, as of January 1, 2015, all organs would come from voluntary donations by Chinese citizens. Huang stated that prisoners would still be qualified to donate, but their organs would be registered in a computerized donation system instead of being traded privately.