A UN special envoy said Friday that the use of torture remains prevalent in China as he completed a long-awaited fact-finding mission that allowed him to peek into the secretive world of the country’s prison system.
“The practice of torture, though on decline particularly in urban areas, remains widespread in China,” said Manfred Nowak, the United Nations Human Rights Commission’s special investigator on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The envoy said much more needs to be done to bring China’s justice system up to international standards, including reforms to offer such basics as the right to a fair trial and the presumption of innocence.
The UN delegation also appealed to Beijing to end the secrecy surrounding its death penalty system and reduce the number of crimes that qualify for it. China executes more criminals than the rest of the world combined, but it considers that statistic a state secret.
Though the two-week mission was long resisted by the Chinese government, Nowak and his team were allowed to meet with about 30 detainees in Beijing, Tibet and the Muslim-dominated Xinjiang region. But many people were afraid to talk to the UN personnel for fear of retribution, the envoy said.
Among the only prisoners willing to speak publicly about their experiences was He Depu, 49, a political prisoner sentenced to 8 years in 2003 for his involvement in the banned Chinese Democracy Party.
He told the investigators he was forced to lie down for 85 days in solitary confinement with his hands and feet exposed outside the blanket at all hours of the day. He was not allowed to get up except to eat and go to the toilet. Once he tried to touch a radiator to see if it was warm, He said, and as a punishment he was deprived of dinner.
He’s wife, who has not been charged with a crime, had come under constant surveillance just for being married to him.
The UN team had a difficult time outside the prisons trying to speak with alleged victims or relatives, Nowak said. The investigators frequently were monitored by security agents. The people they tried to visit were often subject to intimidation or physically prevented from approaching them.
Nonetheless, Nowak, an Austrian law professor, said of the mission: “It took us almost 10 years to arrive at this point. I see this as a major step.”
China technically banned torture in 1996, but it uses a definition of the practice that is vague and does not meet international standards. Chinese police under pressure to crack cases rely heavily on forced confessions. Often the techniques they use do not leave any scars but still are physically and psychologically punishing.
