AP: Rights Group: China Far from Justice

March 4, 2001 BEIJING - Reforms in the way China processes accused criminals - widely welcomed five years ago - have in some areas led to worse abuse, failed to curb torture and made defense lawyers' work more difficult and even dangerous, a human rights group says. In a damning report coinciding with the opening of the annual session of China's parliament, Human Rights in China appealed Monday for major reforms to protect defendants' rights, among them an end to the ruling [party's name omitted] Party's tight grip on the nation's courts. The New York-based group's report added to mounting international criticism of China's rights record heading into the United Nations' main annual human rights conference. The United States, citing what it said was a deterioration in China's rights record in the year 2000, said last week that it would seek to censure China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting that starts March 19 in Geneva. Human Rights in China's 104-page report focused on China's Criminal Procedure Law, key legislation revised in 1996 to give lawyers faster access to accused criminals and more time to prepare defenses, and to curb some sweeping police powers of detention. Despite the reforms, which were welcomed internationally and domestically, "China is still a long way from a system that protects the rights of suspects and defendants,'' the group said. In some areas, the law "actually resulted in greater limitations of key rights,'' the report said, adding that the use of torture, often to extract confessions, also is "epidemic'' despite its prohibition. Dissidents, labor organizers and others viewed as political threats to the government, including members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement, are routinely denied legal rights, the group said. The families of detained dissidents sometimes are not informed of arrests for weeks or months. Dissidents frequently are tried behind closed doors, and often are denied legal counsel or are unable to find lawyers willing to risk official ire by defending them. In Beijing, officials ordered lawyers not to provide counsel to Falun Gong followers without approval from the city's Justice Department, Human Rights in China said, citing a government circular issued July 29, 1999 - a week after the spiritual group was outlawed as a threat to society and [party's name omitted] rule. "In China, political will always prevails over due process,'' the group said. "Unless China changes its policy of discrimination against dissident defendants, it cannot be said to truly respect the rule of law.'' China's efforts to build rule by law, rather than by officials, is a recurrent theme at major government meetings such as the annual session of the National People's Congress, which this year meets for 11 days. After two decades of market reform and a determination never to repeat the brutal lawlessness of the radical 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, the legislature and government have introduced thousands of laws and regulations covering everything from stock markets to traditional Chinese medicine. The number of court cases has surged as citizens seek to enforce new legal rights and the wholly state-run media is granted greater leeway to discuss official abuses. But in an illustration of how official powers remain entrenched, the 1996 revisions that granted lawyers earlier access to defendants also made them more likely to come into conflict with authorities, putting them "at an even greater risk than before,'' Human Rights in China said. Police and prosecutors harass and intimidate lawyers, discouraging them from defending criminal cases. "In the worst cases, lawyers are detained, beaten up or even convicted for doing nothing more than vigorously representing their clients,'' the group said. http://www.jsonline.com/news/intl/ap/mar01/ap-china-law030401.asp