Posts Tagged ‘Safeguard Defenders (NGO)’

Joint civil society statement on the fifth anniversary of the “Xiamen gathering” crackdown

February 11, 2025

On the fifth anniversary of the “Xiamen Gathering” crackdown, 34 civil society organisations (on 10 February 2025) across the world reaffirm their solidarity with Chinese human rights defenders and lawyers persecuted for advocating for human rights:

26 December 2024 marked the fifth anniversary of the crackdown on the “Xiamen gathering”, a private gathering that about 20 Chinese human rights defenders and lawyers convened in Xiamen, China in December 2019 to discuss the situation of human rights and civil society in China. In the weeks after, Chinese authorities interrogated, harassed, detained and imprisoned every participant who was not able to leave China then and subjected almost all of them, including some families and friends, to travel bans, up to the present day, under the pretext of national security.

Among those detained were legal scholar Xu Zhiyong and human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi. Both are leading human rights defenders who spearheaded the “New Citizens’ Movement”, empowering citizens as rights-bearers to advocate for a more equal, rights-respecting and free society, and to combat corruption, wealth inequality and discrimination in access to education. In 2014, Xu and Ding were both sentenced to four years and three and a half years in prison, respectively, for participating in the New Citizens’ Movement and charged with “gathering a crowd to disturb public order”.

From 26 December 2019, and over the weeks that followed, the Chinese authorities forcibly disappeared both under Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL), a criminal procedure allowing secret detention for up to six months without access to legal counsel or family. RSDL is considered by UN Special Procedures experts to constitute secret detention and a form of enforced disappearance, and may amount to torture or other ill-treatment. While held under RSDL, both men were subjected to torture and other ill-treatment, before being charged with the national security crime of “subversion of State power”. They were subsequently convicted in a secret trial and handed severe prison sentences of 14 and 12 years, respectively, in April 2023. Despite multiple calls from the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk and from UN Special Procedures’ experts as recently as November 2024, China has failed to address these grave violations.

These cases are emblematic of a broader and alarming trend of persecution  of human rights defenders and lawyers in China. Authorities systematically employ RSDL, harsh national security charges, torture and other ill-treatment, prolonged detention, travel bans and harassment to silence dissent and dismantle independent civil society. The use of vague charges such as “subversion of State power” or “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” has become a routine tactic to criminalise human rights work, despite UN human rights experts’ repeated call for them to be repealed. Victims often face prolonged pre-trial detention, lack of due process, restricted access to lawyer and adequate healthcare, and torture or other ill-treatment aimed at extracting forced ‘confessions’.

This systematic repression is further reflected in the cases of human rights lawyers Xie Yang and Lu Siwei, feminist activist Huang Xueqin, labour activist Wang Jianbing, and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, all of whom are currently subjected to arbitrary detention or imprisonment  . UN Special Procedures’ experts have recently described these cases as part of “recurring patterns of repression, including incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance aimed at […] silencing human rights defenders and dissenting or opposing views critical of the Government”.

As we commemorate the fifth anniversary of the crackdown, we, organisations and activists from all over the world, continue to stand in solidarity with all human rights defenders and lawyers in China who courageously advocate for justice despite knowing the risks of doing so.

We urge the Chinese government to:

  1. Immediately and unconditionally release all human rights defenders and lawyers arbitrarily detained or imprisoned for their human rights work, including Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi;
  2. End the systematic crackdown on civil society, including harassment, unjustified detention, enforced disappearance, and imprisonment of human rights defenders and lawyers;
  3. Amend laws and regulations, including national security legislation, the Criminal Law and the Criminal Procedure Law, to bring them fully in line with international human rights standards;
  4. Rescind the travel bans imposed on the gathering participants as well as their friends and families immediately.

Signatories:

  1. Alliance for Citizens Rights
  2. Amnesty International 
  3. Asian Lawyers Network (ALN) (Japan)
  4. CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
  5. Free Tibet (United Kingdom)
  6. Human Rights in China
  7. India Tibet Friendship Society Nagpur Maharashtra (India)
  8. International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI)
  9. International Campaign for Tibet
  10. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
  11. International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) 
  12. International Tibet Network
  13. Judicial Reform Foundation (Taiwan) 
  14. Lawyers for Lawyers (Netherlands)
  15. LUNGTA – Active for Tibet (Belgium)
  16. PEN America (United States)
  17. Safeguard Defenders (Spain) 
  18. Swiss Tibetan Friendship Association (Switzerland)
  19. Taiwan Association for Human Rights (Taiwan)
  20. The 29 Principles (United Kingdom)
  21. The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders 
  22. The Rights Practice (United Kingdom)
  23. Tibet Justice Center (United States)
  24. Tibet Solidarity (United Kingdom)
  25. Voluntary Tibet Advocacy Group (V-TAG) (Netherlands)
  26. World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), within the framework of the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders
  27. Acción Solidaria (Venezuela)
  28. Amnistía Internacional Chile (Chile)
  29. CADAL (Argentina)
  30. Centro de Derechos Humanos Fray Francisco de Vitoria OP, A.C. (Mexico)
  31. CONTIOCAP – Coordinadora Nacional de Defensa de Territorios Indígenas Originarios Campesinos y Áreas Protegidas en Bolivia (Bolivia)
  32. Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres (Nicaragua)
  33. Red Nacional de Organismos Civiles de Derechos Humanos Todos los Derechos para todas, todos y todes (Mexico)
  34. Voces de Tíbet (Mexico)

https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/joint-civil-society-statement-on-the-fifth-anniversary-of-the-xiamen-gathering-crackdown

https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/fifth-anniversary-xiamen-gathering-crackdown

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Transnational repression: Human Rights Watch and other reports

March 19, 2024
Illustration of a map being used to bind someone's mouth

On 22 February 2024, Human Rights Watch came with a study on governments reaching outside their borders to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals or former nationals. Governments have targeted human rights defenders, journalists, civil society activists, and political opponents, among others, deemed to be a security threat. Many are asylum seekers or recognized refugees in their place of exile. These governmental actions beyond borders leave individuals unable to find genuine safety for themselves and their families. This is transnational repression.

See earlier posts:

Warning: Human rights defenders in Ukraine and in exile will be danger
Resisting in Exile: Voice of Human Rights Defenders – side event tomorrow, 5 March 2024
HRDs from Hong Kong fear arrest warrants and bounty
China goes after dissidents abroad

Transnational repression looks different depending on the context. Recent cases include a Rwandan refugee who was killed in Uganda following threats from the Rwandan government; a Cambodian refugee in Thailand only to be extradited to Cambodia and summarily detained; and a Belarusian activist who was abducted while aboard a commercial airline flight. Transnational repression may mean that a person’s family members who remain at home become targets of collective punishment, such as the Tajik activist whose family in Tajikistan, including his 10-year-old daughter, was detained, interrogated, and threatened.

Transnational repression is not new, but it is a phenomenon that has often been downplayed or ignored and warrants a call to action from a global, rights-centered perspective. Human Rights Watch’s general reporting includes over 100 cases of transnational repression. This report includes more than 75 of these cases from the past 15 years, committed by over two dozen governments across four regions. While the term “transnational repression” has at times become shorthand for naming authoritarian governments as perpetrators of rights violations, democratic administrations have assisted in cases of transnational repression.

Methods of transnational repression include killings, unlawful removals (expulsions, extraditions, and deportations), abductions and enforced disappearances, targeting of relatives, abuse of consular services, and so-called digital transnational repression, which includes the use of technology to surveil or harass people. These tactics often facilitate further human rights violations, such as torture and ill-treatment.

This report also highlights cases of governments misusing the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol)—an intergovernmental organization with 195 member countries—to target critics abroad.

Victims of transnational repression have included government critics, actual or perceived dissidents, human rights defenders, civil society activists, journalists, and opposition party members and others. Governments have targeted individuals because of their identity, such as ethnicity, religion, or gender. Back home, families and friends of targeted people may also become victims, as governments detain, harass, or harm them as retribution or collective punishment. Transnational repression can have far-reaching consequences, including a chilling effect on the rights to freedom of expression, association, and assembly among those who have been targeted or fear they could be next.

This report is not an exhaustive examination of cases of transnational repression. Instead, it outlines cases that Human Rights Watch has documented in the course of researching global human rights issues that point to key methods and trends of transnational repression.

Human Rights Watch hopes that by drawing attention to cases of transnational repression, international organizations and concerned governments will pursue actions to provide greater safety and security for those at risk. Governments responsible for transnational repression should be on notice that their efforts to silence critics, threaten human rights defenders, and target people based on their identity are no less problematic abroad than they are at home. This report provides governments seeking to tackle transnational repression with concrete recommendations, while raising caution against laws and policies that could restrict other human rights.

Human Rights Watch calls on governments committing transnational repression to respect international human rights standards both within and beyond their territory. Governments combatting transnational repression should recognize such abuses as a threat to human rights generally and act to protect those at risk within their jurisdiction or control.

See also: 22 March 2024: https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/addressing-transnational-repression-a-global-mandate-for-justice-and-human-rights/

https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/02/22/we-will-find-you/global-look-how-governments-repress-nationals-abroad

https://www.commondreams.org/news/human-rights-watch-dissidents

Posted in books, HRW, human rights, Human Rights Defenders, ISHR | 2 Comments »
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International NGO opens office in Taiwan

May 17, 2022

On 16 May 2022 Safeguard Defenders announced the opening of its first Asian office in Taiwan’s capital, Taipei.

“With our focus on the decline in human rights in China and other authoritarian states in the region, Taiwan was an obvious choice because of its open society and geographic proximity. Only recently emerging from its own authoritarian past, this progressive democracy has now become a popular base for civil society and media, particularly as Hong Kong’s human rights situation rapidly deteriorates under Beijing’s control.”

The story behind Safeguard Defenders goes back to 2009, the year when a small NGO called China Action was founded in Beijing by human rights activists Peter Dahlin from Sweden and Michael Caster from the U.S. and a small group of Chinese rights lawyers and other human rights defenders (HRD). ,,China Action was shuttered in 2016 after Chinese authorities targeted it in a major crackdown and when many of its staff and partners were detained, disappeared or imprisoned, including Peter. The foundation for Safeguard Defenders was laid in 2016, and was publicly launched in 2017. The organisation has inherited the mission of China Action, but with an expanded scope to support the survival and effectiveness of civil society and HRDs in some of Asia’s most hostile environments, including China.

Safeguard Defenders has been researching developing rule of law issues including arbitrary detention, the black jail systems of RSDL and Liuzhi, forced confessions, transnational repression including global harassment and kidnappings, and the CCP’s secret police institution, the National Supervisory Commission. See e,g, : https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/01/18/china-goes-after-dissidents-abroad/

Coming in the next few months, Safeguard Defenders will have several key and ground-breaking reports on China on issues including the practice of sending political prisoners to psychiatric hospitals, the latest violations of human rights in the name of Covid, and how Beijing has weaponized exit bans. It will also be launching a brand new website. Follow on Twitter. 

China’s reaction will not be nice…

https://safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/safeguard-defenders-opens-taiwan-office

https://focustaiwan.tw/politics/202205170025

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Victims of ‘forced confessions’ urge Western TV channels to ban Chinese TV

April 12, 2021
Erkin Tursun, a former TV producer whom officials said is serving a 20-year sentence in Xinjiang province, is seen speaking in a video shown at a news conference in Beijing, China on April 9, 2021.
Erkin Tursun, a former TV producer whom officials said is serving a 20-year sentence in Xinjiang province, is seen speaking in a video shown at a news conference in Beijing, China on April 9, 2021. © Reuters TV via Reuters

NEWS WIRES of 12 April 2021 reports that thirteen people who describe themselves as “victims of forced confessions broadcast on Chinese television” are urging European satellite operator Eutelsat to reconsider carrying Chinese channels CGTN and CCTV4.

The letter published by human rights watchdog Safeguard Defenders details a list of violations that the signatories say China is guilty of using to extort confessions from them and “refuse the right to a fair trial”. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2018/04/12/how-china-extracts-televised-confessions-from-human-rights-defenders/]

“We are asking you… to determine whether television providers in democratic societies ought to continue to be morally complicit in the broadcast of information that is intentionally twisted and obtained through torture,” the group said. 

“We are only a dozen victims able to speak out…. Many other victims are in prison. A few have been executed...The victims have no way of demanding reparations. The only way to stop this is for television regulators to investigate and take measures,” the group added. 

The letter notes Australian public broadcaster SBS stopped using content from Chinese state-run television in March pending a review of human rights concerns.

The UK also fined CGTN for partiality and violation of privacy and removed it from the airwaves, a ban that pushed the channel to set up shop in France. [see https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/01/08/forced-television-confessions-in-china-lead-to-request-to-ban-cctv-in-uk/]

French audiovisual regulator CSA determined in March that CGTN met the technical criteria necessary for broadcasting but just this week Safeguard Defenders submitted two complaints against the channel. 

One cited an allegedly coerced interview with a Uighur child and the other was a defamation complaint from German researcher Adrian Zenz, whose reports on the treatment of Uighurs in China’s western Xinjiang region have drawn rebukes from Beijing.

The signatories are from China and other countries, including Chinese human rights lawyers Bao Longjun and Jiang Tianyong who have been targeted by authorities in their country. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2015/07/29/the-remarkable-crackdown-on-lawyers-in-china-in-july-2015/]

Simon Cheng, a former British consulate staffer in Hong Kong, who was granted asylum in the UK after allegedly being tortured by Chinese secret police also signed the letter. 

Also giving support is Swedish activist and Safeguard Defenders co-founder Peter Dahlin, who spent three weeks in jail in 2016 before being expelled from the country as a national security threat.

Angela Gui, daughter of Gui Minhai who published in Hong Kong until he was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2020, signed on behalf of her father. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/02/25/gui-minhai-10-years-jail-sentence-in-china/]

https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210411-victims-of-forced-confessions-urge-western-powers-to-ban-chinese-tv-channels

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/forced-confession-victims-urge-chinese-tv-channels-ban-2411414

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How China extracts televised “confessions” from human rights defenders

April 12, 2018
confessors collage

Safeguard Defenders says these confessions violate both domestic and international law as they are often filmed before detainees have been allowed their right to a fair trial. In some cases, the confessions were extracted before formal arrest. “They deprive the suspect of due process; infringing on the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, the right to remain silent, the right not to self-incriminate and the right to be protected against giving a forced confession and torture.”

Many foreign nationals have been included in these confessions, which are aired on Chinese state television and, in some cases, by Hong Kong media. The monitoring group believes they are regularly used as “tools of propaganda” for both domestic audiences and as part of China’s foreign policy.

The report found that 60 percent of the confessions are from detainees who either worked in media – such as journalists, bloggers and publishers – or were human rights defenders, such as lawyers, NGO workers and activists. They are people whom the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) typically perceives as its enemies or critics and are usually charged with national security crimes or social order violations. The study also found that Chinese police regularly took charge of the so-called confessions. Routinely dictating and directing what the detainee should say and do, right down to the outfit they were to wear.

“The interviewees described how the police took charge of the confession from dressing them in ‘costume;’ writing the confession ‘script’ and forcing the detainee to memorise it; giving directions on how to ‘deliver’ their lines – including in one case, being told to weep; to ordering retake after retake when not satisfied with the result,” the report said.

As a result of their research, Safeguard Defenders has called on the Chinese authorities to immediately stop the use of televised confessions and ensure all detainees receive the legal protections enshrined in domestic and international law. The group also called on foreign governments to stress to Beijing that there will be “consequences for ongoing violations of fundamental rights and freedoms.”

State news channel CCTV was identified as the primary broadcaster for televised confessions. Sanctions, including travel bans and asset freezes, should be imposed on key executives of the media network, the group recommends. The network, along with others responsible for airing such confessions, should also be registered as foreign agents in other countries. According to the report, “media organizations that film, collaborate with police in the staged and scripted process, and broadcast these confessions… are as culpable as the Chinese state in committing this deceptive, illegal and human rights violating practice.”

https://qz.com/1249842/swedish-human-rights-activist-peter-dahlins-first-hand-account-of-how-china-extracts-confessions-for-tv/

https://www.standardrepublic.com/world/world-news-chinese-language-state-tv-which-operates-in-uk-and-us-produces-chilling-compelled-confession-movies-for-brutal-regime/

https://asiancorrespondent.com/2018/04/threats-torture-fear-rights-group-calls-for-end-to-chinas-televised-confessions/#crKm6uQdL4vf7sJS.97

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