2015-01-29
Cao Shunli in an undated photo.
Photo courtesy of HRIC (http://www.hrichina.org/en)
China under President Xi Jinping in 2014 mounted a severe attack on the rights of civic groups, lawyers, and others pushing for rule of law, with Beijing’s “open hostility” to critics proving fatal to one activist who died after neglect in detention, Human Rights Watch said Thursday.
The global rights watchdog’s annual survey for 2014 also highlighted mounting abuses in China’s handling of unrest in the Uyghur and Tibetan communities, which have long chafed under rule from Beijing. It said government repression has had the effect of increasing extremism among Uyghurs and discontent among Tibetans.
Human Rights Watch credited Xi’s government for abolishing the policy of Re-education through Labor that led to arbitrary detention and for several other incremental policy reforms, but said China remains a country that “systematically curbs fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion, when their exercise is perceived to threaten one-party rule.”
In 2014, which included the sensitive 25th anniversary of the killings of protestors near Tiananmen Square, Beijing “unleashed an extraordinary assault on basic human rights and their defenders with a ferocity unseen in recent years—an alarming sign given that the current leadership will likely remain in power through 2023,” said the report.
It was the second damning human rights report card for China by international NGOs in two days, after Freedom House placed Beijing near the bottom of an annual index of political and civil rights among 195 countries.
The death last March of grassroots activist Cao Shunli—following her detention for trying to take part in a United Nations Human Rights Council review of China—demonstrates Beijing’s “open hostility” towards human rights activists, it said.
“Activists increasingly face arbitrary detention, imprisonment, commitment to psychiatric facilities, or house arrest. Physical abuse, harassment, and intimidation are routine,” said the report.
