Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment & Punishment
Beijing Police Torture Activist Hu Jia During Interrogation, Restrict His Freedom & Access to Medical Care

On March 14, police in Beijing summoned human rights activist Hu Jia (胡佳), citing suspicion of “creating a disturbance,” and proceeded to torture him during an eight-hour interrogation that has left him with serious injuries. Officers from the Tongzhou District Station of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau (PSB) took Hu from his home, where he had been put under house arrest since February 26. While interrogating Hu at the Zhongchang Police Station, police repeatedly insult and beat him, causing Hu to bleed from his head and suffer severe pain in his lower back.

From the beginning of the interrogation (see more details below), one security officer reportedly insulted Hu in an attempt to provoke him. Though at first composed, Hu eventually lost his temper and threw a paper cup with cold water at the officer, giving other policemen the pretext to attack him. Two policemen shoved him to the floor, pushed his head to the ground, and then pressed his face against a wall. They then kept him prone as the interrogation continued by holding him to the back of a chair and lifting his arms behind his back, an extremely painful position. The officer who initiated insults against Hu threw a cup of tea at Hu, who simply stared at the officer in silent protest.

Police questioned Hu about details of a visit to Liu Xia (刘霞) (the wife of jailed writer and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, 刘晓波), who has been under house arrest since October 2010, and who Hu and other activists briefly saw in her apartment in late December after they evaded guards. Officers also interrogated Hu about his recent tweets and online postings in which he expressed his political views about the new Communist Party leaders and called the National People’s Congress “the emperor’s new clothes.”

When police brought Hu home, they warned him not to go to the hospital and said that his house arrest would continue until the National People’s Congress annual session was over. Hu could hardly walk up the stairs to his apartment due to his back injury, and his skull reportedly remains swollen. Police are endangering Hu’s life by preventing him from going the hospital to seek medical attention, since he suffers from Hepatitis B and needs access to medication or hospital visits to maintain his fragile health.[1]

Following this incident, CHRD submitted on Hu Jia’s behalf allegations of several human rights abuses to UN Special Procedures. For more information about Hu Jia, please see previous appeals about Hu submitted by CHRD to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Special Notice

CHRD Releases Annual Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China in 2012

On March 14, CHRD published its annual report  on the situation of human rights defenders in China in 2012, “In the Name of ‘Stability’.” CHRD finds that the 2012 environment for HRDs remained perilous, with authorities ramping up controls in part to ensure “harmony” during the Communist Party’s major changing of the guard. CHRD applauds activists’ use of new strategies to bolster their advocacy while gaining some impressive ground, even as the government deployed its extensive “stability maintenance” apparatus to intimidate and punish Chinese citizens who tried to exercise basic liberties and defend fundamental human rights. In the report, CHRD analyzes developments in areas that have directly affected HRDs: legalized “enforced disappearance” in the revised Criminal Procedure Law; the controversial Re-education through Labor system; forced psychiatric commitment and passage of the Mental Health Law; and the CCP-controlled local People’s Congress elections counter posed to the unveiling of China’s new top leaders.