LONDON (EFGIC) – Three days ago, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture announced that officials in China had postponed his visit, and that inspections of China’s labour camps would not take place as originally agreed upon.
After nearly ten years of preparatory talks, the Special Rapporteur is not going to see any labour camps or detention centres because, as the Chinese officials put it, they need more time “to prepare.”
“Places, Everyone!”
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Just what are they preparing? The Special Rapporteur set forth noble conditions for his visit: unannounced access to places of detention and interrogation, and confidential and unsupervised interviews with detainees, without fear of reprisals to those revealing abuse.
Two survivors of the infamous Beijing’s Tuanhe Labour Camp independently declared those conditions impossible for China’s current regime to genuinely embrace without thwarting a systematic, state-sanctioned system of torture that former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin enacted against Falun Gong five years ago. (special report)
Mr. Gang Chen, who spent 18 months in Tuanhe and was subjected to torture, described the months of preparation that labour camp officials put into a visit by foreign media in June 2001. “Everyone got a paper with questions and answers – we had to learn to recite them or face punishment.”
The questions... “Do you get to eat meat here? ‘Yes!’ Anyone beaten? ‘No!’”
No Falun Gong practitioners were permitted to speak with the media representatives, except for a few who had arrived recently. “Those [recently arrived Falun Gong] detainees were kept isolated, so they couldn’t find out the real conditions in the labour camp, and so they could tell the media that they weren’t abused.”
Mr. Zhao Ming was also held in Tuanhe when officials hosted the foreign media. He recounts, “We [detainees] were separated into two groups – those who still practised Falun Gong, and those who had been ‘transformed’ and would speak favorably of the government’s treatment.” Those in the first group were taken to another building, where they were shown old black-and-white movies about the liberation war (an apparent first inside Tuanhe). The other group was sent to the yard to do light labour, and talk to the media when they arrived.
The result was that those actually interviewed told encouraging stories of compassionate jailors and a benevolent government. They also received a 3-month reduction in their sentences in return, which was big news in the Beijing Labour Camp Bureau’s circular.
Neither Mr. Gang nor Mr. Zhao was allowed to speak with the media on the day of the visit.
How the Trick Works
China has become adept at nodding vigorously to international conventions on human rights, torture, and fair labour, while avoiding all unstaged inspections of such.
A recent statement from Human Rights in China dissects this latest delay tactic: “The PRC government has engaged in a recurring strategy of responding to international pressure and scrutiny with well-timed overtures that it and other governments can point to as indicators of China’s progress in human rights reforms and willingness to cooperate with international human rights mechanisms. Once the pressure recedes, these overtures are all too often withdrawn. In light of the fact that the visit by the Special Rapporteur on Torture has been under discussion for the best part of a decade, this eleventh-hour postponement raises serious questions about the sincerity of the PRC government’s commitment to international cooperation.”
Dialogue is a decoy, according to Mr. Zhao, used by Jiang’s regime as a tasty morsel that officials can nibble on behind closed doors, while the real issues and bloody facts are safely out of sight.
“Dialogue has proven to have no result,” Mr. Zhao adds. Only vociferous, public denunciation of these policies can have an effect, he explains. “If China won’t adhere to inspection policies, it should be expelled from the international bodies whose agreements require it.”
“It’s is a game,” he says, “and certain Chinese leaders are very happy with this game.”
Documented Cases
In 2000, the Wall Street Journal ran a Pulitzer-Prize winning series of articles (link) that were the first to expose the Chinese leadership’s secret directive that, “no means are too excessive” to “eradicate Falun Gong.” Since that time, human rights workers have documented over 30,000 cases of beatings, torture, and severe abuse against Falun Gong practitioners in China.
Suggestions for Those Visiting China
Mr. Zhao offered some advice to those visiting China to carry out inspections: “Try to reach the real victims. We [Falun Gong websites] have numerous reports that include victims’ names and their details – insist on speaking with these individuals directly and find out what they have to say.”
He also suggested that inspectors travel with their own, independent interpreters.
Good for China, Good for the World
We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s uncompromising and upright position on imposing specific conditions for inspecting China’s forced labour camps, detention centres and prisons, and we ask others in the international community to take a similar stance with respect to China’s human rights issues.
Cooperating with such conditions insisted by foreign human rights groups and media workers is one way China’s people and the Chinese leadership can free themselves of the evil blight imposed by Jiang Zemin and his circle of influence.
NEWS – June 19 2004
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