2014-08-15
Protesters demanding human rights in China during President Xi Jinping’s visit to Brussels, Belgium, March 31, 2014.
AFP
A group of lawyers has called for an investigation into allegations of torture under the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s internal disciplinary system, known as “shuanggui,” an overseas-based rights group said on Friday.
Lawyers representing a number of former party officials in the southern province of Hunan say the officials were held for weeks in extrajudicial detention in the shuanggui system pending investigation, often for corruption, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group said.
The group named one of the victims as former industrial park official Xiao Yifei from Hunan’s Ningyuan county, who was detained from June to December 2012 and then redetained last month, CHRD said in an e-mailed statement.
During that time, Xiao was strung up from the ceiling in full body armor with his hands behind his back in a position know as “hanging pig,” before being beaten with a wooden pole, it said.
Officers from the party’s Ningyuan County Discipline Inspection Commission also subjected Ning to simulated drowning, deprivation of food, extreme cold, threats and insults, the CHRD cited the lawyers’
letter as saying.
Xiao was re-detained by the same officers on July 19, which his wife said was sparked by his attempt to draw attention to the abuses he suffered in custody.
“After my husband was released, he tried to sue those officials and their leaders for acting illegally,” Xiao’s wife, Ouyang Xiaohong told RFA in an interview after her husband was re-detained.
“Not only were [they] not punished for breaking the law; they have gone from strength to strength, getting promoted to higher and higher positions,” Ouyang said.
She said she believed the attacks on her husband were a form of retaliation. “He didn’t do anything criminal,” she said.
Outside the law
Prominent rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who is himself currently under detention on public order charges after attending an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square military crackdown, has repeatedly said that the shuanggui system under which the party investigates its own officials is entirely outside the law.
