“In a Prison Cell Waiting for Daybreak”：Arbitrary Detention in China may Constitute Crimes Against Humanity

March 5, 2025 Comments Off

(Chinese Human Rights Defenders, March 5, 2025) Between 2019 and 2024, Chinese authorities arbitrarily detained thousands and convicted 1,545 prisoners of conscience for peacefully exercising or advocating for human rights. They were sentenced and imprisoned on charges that stem from laws that are not in conformity with the Chinese government’s domestic and international human rights obligations. Their cases proceeded through the full criminal justice system, with police, prosecutors, and courts arbitrarily depriving them of their liberty in violation of their human rights.

By CHRD’s analysis, which draws from its own and other databases of prisoners of conscience, these patterns echo a concern set out since 2017 by the United Nations (UN) Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: that the scope and scale of wrongful detention by Chinese authorities may constitute crimes against humanity.

For prisoners of conscience (PoCs) the stakes are high: the average sentence handed down during this period was six years, rising to seven years for national security charges. Women activists and marginalized communities, including Tibetans and Uyghurs, number disproportionately higher among those wrongfully detained.

Other key findings of CHRD’s analysis include:

Between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2024, authorities sentenced 1,422 PoCs to prison in mainland China (including Tibet and the Uyghur region) and 123 individuals in Hong Kong in violation of their human rights.
Three PoCs— Tashpolat Tiyip, Sattar Sawut, and Yang Hengjun—have been sentenced to death, two—Rahile Dawut and Abdurazaq Sayim—were sentenced to life in prison, and 48 were given sentences of a decade or more during this period.
Authorities frequently used three crimes or types of charges against PoCs: “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a crime identified by domestic activists and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as overly broad and vague; “organizing and using a cult to undermine implementation of the law,” a charge often used to target religious believers; and crimes in the category of “endangering national security.”
Of the over 700 older prisoners of conscience (defined as over the age of 60), two-thirds are women.
More individuals in Hong Kong were convicted of “subversion” and “inciting subversion” than in mainland China according to available data.
The average prison sentence in Hong Kong under the 2020 National Security Law is 5.15 years.
Beijing’s frequent use of national security charges—in the mainland and Hong Kong—shows the leadership’s reliance on the legal system as an instrument of political suppression.
Even after serving a prison sentence, PoCs in mainland China are still subjected to arbitrary deprivation of liberty.
Chinese authorities use of arbitrary detention nationwide underscore that these abuses are widespread and systematic.

Beijing’s concerted efforts to choke off the exercise and promotion of human rights has implications inside and outside the country. Defenders are among the only individuals willing to try to challenge abusive state policies and practices, to push for reform and accountability, and to share information on critical issues ranging from women’s rights and public health, to religious freedom and labor rights. When defenders are imprisoned for this work and silenced, people and governments around the world are left without information about domestic developments, and without allies for reform. Worse still, the impunity Chinese government officials enjoy at home emboldens them to commit abuses abroad.

To end arbitrary detention in China, CHRD recommends:

Supporting independent, international investigations into the Chinese government’s use of arbitrary detention as possible crimes against humanity.
Bolstering advocacy in support of human rights defenders across and from China, including using high-level meetings to publicly call for the release of specific individuals by name.
In keeping with the June 2020 call from 50 UN human rights experts, actively supporting a special session at the UN Human Rights Council and the creation of a dedicated mechanism focused on Chinese government human rights violations.

The Chinese government’s use of arbitrary detention to silence critics and punish HRDs is not new, but under Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping the scope and scale of violations has expanded. In 2022, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights determined that the Chinese government’s policies and treatment of Muslim groups in the Uyghur region may constitute crimes against humanity. That this government now stands twice accused by UN bodies of possibly committing crimes against humanity—which was not the case at the beginning of the period under consideration—reflects an alarming trend. Left unchecked, the implications are dire for human rights law inside and outside the country.

(Download and read the Full Report here)