UK Independent:China's use of torture exposed by Amnesty

13 February 2001

The Chinese government came under fresh fire yesterday for failing to honour international commitments to improve its human rights regime. A report from Amnesty International, "Torture C A Growing Scourge in China", details the authorities' frequent use of violence to extract confessions, silence dissidents, enforce the one-child policy and even to collect taxes.

"Torture is widespread and systemic, committed in the full range of state institutions, from police stations to 're-education through labour' camps, as well as in people's homes, workplaces and in public", the report alleges. "Although the government has said it is committed to fighting torture, investigations rarely bring perpetrators to justice and investigators readily accept official denials."

The report comes one week before representatives of the International Olympic Committee arrive in Beijing to assess China's suitability as guardian of the Olympic spirit and host of the 2008 Games. Beijing's pitch for the Games describes a nation marching towards a new era of prosperity and openness. The Amnesty report, giving details of several hundred cases of torture, provides more sober reading.

Zhou Jiangxiong, 30, a farmer from the Hunan district, was tortured to death in 1998 by birth control officials hunting his wife, whom they suspected had become pregnant without state permission. Amnesty reports: "Zhou was hung upside down, repeatedly whipped and beaten with wooden clubs, burnt with cigarette butts, branded with soldering irons and had his genitals ripped off."

The litany of abuse extends from prisoners whose confessions were extracted only after their fingernails, to victims of sexual assault with electric shock batons and political activists incarcerated in psychiatric hospitals.

Such brutality is familiar to followers of the banned Falun Gong [group].

[...]

Diplomats from the Foreign Office were expected to raise China's campaign against the Falun Gong during the 6th UK-China Human Rights Dialogue, which opened in Beijing yesterday. Supporters of the group hope the British Government will put pressure on the Chinese over the case of Liang Wenjian C, the sister of Jane Liang, a UK citizen C who is serving a two-year labour camp sentence, without trial, for refusing to renounce Falun Gong. Her family alleges Ms Liang is forced to work 16 hours a day and has been tortured by being handcuffed to the top of a door, with her feet barely touching the ground, for hours at a time.

Beijing responded to the Amnesty charges yesterday with a flat denial. [...]