Hundreds Forcibly Disappeared in China

August 29, 2024       Comments Off on Hundreds Forcibly Disappeared in China

The Chinese Government Must Stop Making Rights Defenders and Critics Vanish

(Chinese Human Rights Defenders – August 29, 2024) A young activist named Fang Yirong unfurled a banner on a footbridge with the message “Equality, not privilege. Freedom, not control. Dignity not lies” on July 30, 2024. Days later police put him under criminal detention. Mr. Fang’s act in a small city in China’s south-central Hunan province unmistakably replicated the scene on a Beijing bridge in 2022, where the now iconic protester Peng Lifa unfurled his banner with similar demands. Mr. Peng has vanished for two years since policemen wrestled him into a vehicle on that bridge.

Chinese Authorities are using enforced or involuntary disappearances as a strategy to strike terror in the hearts of the population, intimidating anyone who challenges the government online or in the streets, in the nation’s Capital or the hinterlands. The UN documented 168 outstanding cases of forced disappearances in China as of one year ago. At least 30 dissidents are currently known to have disappeared, according to CHRD records since 2019.

On the occasion of the International Day of the Disappeared, August 30, CHRD urges the Chinese government to stop the reprehensible practice of enforced disappearances, which is strictly prohibited under international law, and to sign and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED).

Despite years of concerns raised by human rights organizations and United Nations experts, Xi Jinping’s government’s use of enforced disappearances remains widespread. It is often wielded against human rights defenders (HRDs), dissidents, and members of ethnic and religious communities. Even government officials and Communist Party members are not spared.

CHRD has documented, in its Prisoner of Conscience database since 2019, 33 active cases of individuals who are currently in forced disappearance, including nine individuals forced into disappearance in 2024, of which three are women. The victims include individuals taken away around the June Fourth anniversaries, Catholic priests, Falun Gong adherents, and petitioners who tried to lodge grievances against officials with the government. Due to the nature of the rights violation, sometimes a disappearance is not even known till years later, as is the case of a Tibetan woman who went online by using VPN to pass the Great Firewall in 2016 and whose disappearance only became known this year.

The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) has 168 outstanding cases in China documented under its humanitarian mechanism as of May 2023. Due to the nature of the crime, it is likely that the actual numbers of cases are considerably higher than those CHRD and the WGEID have documented.

CHRD calls for renewed efforts and attention from the international community. UN Member States, convening in Geneva for the 57^th Human Rights Council session, must take actions to hold the Chinese government accountable for its UN Charter-based obligations, support victims and their families, and press the government to sign and ratify the ICPPED.

Vanished without a Trace

Under international law, an enforced disappearance is the arrest, detention, or abduction by State agents or its proxies, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or the concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places them outside the protection of the law. It is a serious human rights violation that leaves victims highly vulnerable to torture and ill-treatment,  and may rise to a crime against humanity when committed as part of a “widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population.” The UN Secretary General describes enforced disappearances as a state “strategy to spread terror within the society.”

One victim of enforced disappearance is the human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been forcibly disappeared for seven years. Gao went missing on August 13, 2017, after he attempted to escape home confinement. Since 2006, Gao had been imprisoned and repeatedly disappeared and tortured. The Chinese authorities have told the UN that he is not detained but offered no explanation of his whereabouts, other than confirming in 2017 that his family reported him missing and police opened a case. His wife Geng He, who fled to the US with their daughter, continues to campaign for the government to reveal his whereabouts, even though she is not sure if he is still alive.

Chinese authorities have systematically forcibly disappeared Tibetans, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has been missing since 1995 after the Dalai Lama named the then-six-year-old the 11^th Panchen Lama, the second highest religious authority in Tibetan Buddhism. The government indicated in a response to the UN in 2020 that he is still alive. UN independent human rights experts have also raised continued concerns about enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention of Tibetan environmental defenders and cultural and religious figures, who they assessed were likely victims of a “pattern of religious persecution in the Tibetan autonomous region by Chinese authorities.”

In Xinjiang, mass enforced disappearances since 2017 has been an ongoing nightmare for families, who have no information on the fate of their family members swept up in the government’s campaign that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in 2022 may amount to crimes against humanity. Prominent Uyghur scholar Rahile Dawut was reported to have been sentenced to life imprisonment for “separatism,” according to news that emerged in September 2023, but her daughter Akeda Pulati has no information on her whereabouts, conditions, or any legal proceedings. She hasn’t been able to speak to her mother since December 2017, shortly before Dawut vanished.

“A Strategy to Spread Terror” in Transnational Repression

The Chinese government has instrumentalized enforced disappearances in its transnational repression campaign, targeting HRDs, dissidents and Uyghurs who have fled or reside overseas. In July 2023, Laos police detained Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei as he tried to flee China for the United States to reunite with his family. He disappeared from Laos custody only to reappear in Chinese police custody months later. According his wife Zhang Chunxiao’s update in July 2024, after a month in detention, Lu was released on bail and forced to reside in a designated location, where he is monitored around the clock. He may be released from monitored residence in October, or face trial and possibly prison.

China has a history of abducting its critics abroad and sentencing them to lengthy prison terms back home. In 2015, Swedish writer Gui Minhai was kidnapped from Thailand and then reappeared in China three months later. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in February 2020, and there has been no information on his conditions or whereabouts since then. In 2002, democracy activist and US permanent resident Wang Bingzhang was kidnapped from Vietnam and then sentenced to life imprisonment in China.

The Chinese government has also sought unlawful returns of Uyghurs who fled repression and discrimination. A group of 43 Uyghur refugees have been detained in Thailand since 2014 in conditions that led to several deaths in custody. They were part of a larger group of Uyghurs who fled and of whom 109 men, women and children were deported to China in July 2015 and have since disappeared, the likely fate awaiting any of the group of 43 if they are forcibly returned.

Incompatible with International Human Rights Law and Chinese Law

China’s Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) and related regulations establish processes around deprivation of liberty, such as requiring police to notify families within 24 hours and permitting visits with lawyers, with an understanding of the legal necessity of such protections to prevent the conditions of enforced disappearances. However, such provisions are regularly violated in practice, as described above, but also in law when it comes to the nebulous concept of “national security”.

The CPL enshrines the “residential surveillance in a designated location” (RSDL) system, a legalized practice of secret detention for six months when an individual is charged with a national security and other crimes. Torture and other ill-treatment is rife under RSDL. UN experts have urged China since 2018 to repeal RSDL because it is a form of enforced disappearance and not compatible with international human rights law. According to the Chinese government data, authorities have put an estimated 23,700 people under RSDL between 2013 and 2021, which, despite being such a large number, is believed to be an undercount.

Another legalized form of enforced disappearance in China is the liuzhi system of “retention in custody” for investigating and discipling Communist Party members and government officials. The practice of enforced disappearance is so widespread that in 2023, five current or former senior government ministers or officials were disappeared, believed to be subject to liuzhi though CHRD is unable to confirm.

While China has not signed or ratified the ICPPED, by systematically practicing enforced disappearance, it has violated the Convention against Torture, which it is party to, and customary international law, including the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1992.

By committing enforced disappearances, the Chinese government also violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed though not ratified. Under its international obligations, the government must prevent enforced disappearances, investigate cases, and hold those responsible accountable.

Let’s Increase the Political Cost for Perpetrators of Enforced Disappearances

In January 2024, during China’s fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council, seven countries made recommendations to the Chinese government to ratify the Convention on Enforced Disappearances or end the practice, including Argentina, Lesotho, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Samoa, Japan, and Canada. More governments voiced concerns about forced disappearance in this round of UPR than in the last (third) round in 2018, when only three states made such recommendations. In addition, six states specifically called on the Chinese government to abolish RSDL, compared to only two in 2018. In response, Beijing vehemently denied its uses of enforced disappearances.

CHRD is heartened that there is more focused international attention on the issue of enforced disappearances and RSDL during the recent UPR, including from a number of Global South countries. However, states must follow up with concrete actions on ending enforced disappearance.

To help put an end to the scourge of enforced disappearances used by Chinese authorities, the international community, including governments of UN member states, should:  

• Publicly and privately raise individual cases of enforced disappearance and call for their release in bilateral and multilateral dealings with Chinese officials, including Gao Zhisheng, Peng Lifa, Rahile Dawut and others, whose families are desperately in need of information and contact with their loved ones;

• Urge the Chinese government to allow visits from the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance in China. WGEID’s visit request was first made in 2013 and repeatedly renewed with no positive response from the government to date. Since the Chinese government insisted during the 4th UPR that “there is no such issue of ‘enforced disappearances’,” it must then lift the decade-long blockade to visits by WGEID and several other Special Procedures;

• Call on the Chinese government to submit its state report to the Committee against Torture (CAT), which is almost five years overdue, including providing information on the conditions in secret detention and RSDL, and providing concrete legislative measures and data about good-faith implementation of previous CAT recommendations concerning these practices;

• Follow up with China’s implementation on UPR recommendations about enforced disappearances, requesting concrete data and information from Chinese authorities on any claims of progress, such as the number of individuals released from secret detention, number of investigations of alleged cases of enforced disappearance, number of officials held responsible, proposed amendments to legislation, and concrete steps taken toward signing and ratifying the ICPPED;

• Push the High Commissioner for Human Rights to report on the Chinese government’s progress – or failure – to implement the recommendation from his Office’s assessment on Xinjiang, including clarifying the whereabouts about missing individuals, establishing safe channels of communication and travel for families; and for the High Commissioner to report on any efforts to establish an independent mechanism to locate and free missing and wrongfully detained family members.

• Follow the recommendation of over 50 UN independent human rights experts to hold a Human Rights Council special session on China, and establish an impartial and independent UN mechanism, like a Special Rapporteur, to monitor the human rights situation in China.

For more information, contact:

Renee Xia, Executive Director

Shane Yi, Researcher

Contact@NCHRD.org