By NOV. 18, 2015
A guard at the No.1 Detention Center in Beijing in 2012. Chinese officials told a United Nations committee on Wednesday that solitary confinement in prisons was “not a punitive measure.” Credit Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
GENEVA — Senior Chinese officials dismissed allegations of the widespread use of torture, responding Wednesday to questions from a United Nations panel by affirming their commitment to eliminating the practice — though with a dearth of details.
In opening remarks before a hearing of the panel, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, China’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva said the “copious data” that the Chinese delegation had provided showed “truly tangible, physical and sustained” achievements in combating torture. The ambassador, Wu Hailong, led a 39-member delegation to the two-day hearing.
Human rights advocates countered that the officials’ evasion of many questions posed in the hearing exhibited a disregard for international norms bordering on contempt. As the hearing progressed, they listened with what they described as a mix of incredulity and derision to the delegation’s responses on interrogation.
Li Wensheng, deputy director of legal affairs for the Public Security Ministry, said that the “Chinese government prohibits torture and prosecutes any personnel of state organs for their torture activities.” He had no details, however, on the number of prosecutions.
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As an example of the state’s progress in combating torture, Judge Li Xiao of the Supreme People’s Court told the panel that Chinese courts had found 2,191 people not guilty over a period of two and a half years because of evidence that was insufficient or illegally obtained.
But the delegation provided none of the information sought by the panel on the number of Chinese lawyers who have been detained in the course of a crackdown that started in July or on the charges against them. It did cite a number of new cases of lawyers “disrupting the court order” and the case of Li Qinghong, who “violated the discipline of the court” several times.
The panel had sought details on the number of political detainees in Tibet, an autonomous region of China. But Jin Chunzi, a deputy director of the State Ethnic Affairs Commission, told the panel “there are no such cases of political prisoners.” She added, “The allegation of cruel treatment of suspects from ethnic minority groups is groundless.”
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