{"id":51086,"date":"2015-11-14T00:19:00","date_gmt":"2015-11-14T00:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=51086 "},"modified":"2015-11-14T00:19:00","modified_gmt":"2015-11-14T00:19:00","slug":"51086-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=51086","title":{"rendered":"Rights Lawyers in China Routinely Face Abuse, Report Says"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>NOV. 12, 2015<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>BEIJING &#8212; Legal activists and those suspected of crimes in China are routinely abused and mistreated at the hands of law enforcement officials, a report released on Thursday by Amnesty International found, despite recent efforts by the government to crack down on inhumane judicial practices.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The report found that much of the abuse is directed at lawyers, who have come under increasing pressure amid a vigorous campaign by President Xi Jinping to rein in dissent and weaken a burgeoning human rights movement.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>According to the report, one lawyer was strapped to a chair and hit over the head with a plastic jug filled with water until he passed out. Another reportedly spent 99 days in police custody, turning suicidal after the pain from being handcuffed had grown overwhelming.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Mr. Xi has promised to strengthen the rule of law in China, and the government has vowed to punish officers who extract confessions through torture.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>But Mr. Xi&#8217;s legal overhauls have not resulted in a more humane system, the report contended, saying that the abuse of rights lawyers is common.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;These lawyers are actually trying to help, and the way they&#8217;re trying to do it is within the legal framework,&#8221; Patrick Poon, a researcher for Amnesty International based in Hong Kong, said in a telephone interview. &#8220;But they themselves become the victim of the legal system.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>In a statement on Thursday, Hong Lei, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, disputed the report&#8217;s findings and said the government was working to improve the judicial system and expand human rights.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;China is a country of rule of law,&#8221; Mr. Hong said. &#8220;China&#8217;s law clearly states extracting confession by torture is forbidden.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of experts that monitors the carrying out of a United Nations convention against cruel and inhumane treatment, is expected to examine China&#8217;s record this month in Geneva. In two weeks of public discussion, the committee will also look at Austria, Azerbaijan, Denmark and Jordan and Liechtenstein.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The report said that pressure to produce convictions in China had provided &#8220;an almost irresistible incentive for law enforcement agencies to obtain them by any means necessary,&#8221; resulting in an abundance of forced confessions.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>In trying to challenge those confessions, many lawyers were unable to persuade judges that torture had taken place, the report said. In the report&#8217;s sample of 590 cases in which suspects said they had been tortured in 2015, judges agreed to throw out confessions in only 16 cases.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The Amnesty International report drew on interviews with 37 Chinese lawyers and a review of several hundred court cases. The report called on Chinese leaders to work more aggressively to prevent torture and to shutter detention centers.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Yu Wensheng, a human rights lawyer in Beijing, recounted being detained last year for 99 days for supporting pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and being questioned by the police more than 200 times.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;My hands were swollen and I felt so much pain that I didn&#8217;t want to live,&#8221; he said in the report. &#8220;The two police officers repeatedly yanked the handcuffs. I screamed every time they pulled them.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/11\/13\/world\/asia\/china-rights-lawyers-abuse-amnesty-international.html?ref=asia&amp;_r=0\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;According to the report, one lawyer was strapped to a chair and hit over the head with a plastic jug filled with water until he passed out. Another reportedly spent 99 days in police custody, turning suicidal after the pain from being handcuffed had grown overwhelming.&lt;\/div&gt;&lt;div&gt;&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51086","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51086\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}