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Human Rights Annual Report 2005

I find that approach not only extraordinary but shameful. It represents collusion with unacceptable and repressive practices. Shi Tao is a journalist serving a 10-year prison sentence for sending an e-mail in 2004 to a United States-based pro-democracy website. His e-mail summarised the content of a Chinese central propaganda department document that had been orally transmitted to editorial staff instructing them on how to cover the approaching Tiananmen square anniversary. On the basis of that e-mail, Shi Tao was convicted of ““illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities.”” There are countless other such cases. Torture, as referred to in the reports, is systemic, and the Chinese authorities use it extensively. It is reported in many state institutions as well as in work places and homes. It is used by many different types of official, including police officers and prison guards, and worryingly, it is used increasingly by officials outside the criminal justice system, such as tax collectors and birth control officials. Allegations of torture are rarely investigated, and those who should be held accountable often escape prosecution or receive only light punishments. In many cases, prisoners have died as a result of torture. Zhou Jianxiong is one of many victims of torture in China. He was an agricultural worker from Hunan province who was tortured to death by birth control officials in his hometown of Chunhua on 15 May 1998. He was tortured to make him reveal the whereabouts of his wife, who was suspected of being pregnant without permission. Zhou was hung upside down, repeatedly whipped and beaten with wooden clubs, burned with cigarettes, branded with soldering irons, and he had his genitals ripped off. We are talking about the most ugly and abhorrent practices, and they are taking place on a terrifying scale. As to the death penalty, each year China judicially executes more people than do all other countries put together. Between 1990 and 2000 at least 19,520 executions took place. Recent research by a Chinese parliamentarian suggests that the execution rate in China might be as high as 10,000 per year. Murder, rape and other crimes of violence all attract the death penalty, but so too do many non-violent offences including bribery, embezzlement, forgery, tax fraud, car theft and cattle rustling. Official sources have indicated that the recent preoccupation with applying the death penalty to economic crimes might even have arisen to help China meet the challenges of World Trade Organisation membership. I could cite many examples of people being executed for relatively minor crimes. Executions in China take place by shooting, or increasingly by lethal injection. The introduction of the lethal injection raises serious concerns about the increased involvement of the medical profession in the execution process. Amnesty International is increasingly concerned that the timing of executions might sometimes be orchestrated to meet the needs of the organ transplant industry. That is another horrific practice about which constituents have expressed to me their outrage. China says that it has strengthened its regulations and guidance, and that taking organs from executed prisoners must be done with their consent. However, in truth it is a lucrative industry. Transplant tourism, recently condemned by the British Transplantation Society and leading transplant surgeons in this country, is utterly abhorrent to people. As China understandably gains more prominence through its growing economic might and its enormous historical, cultural and scientific contribution to the world, it is important that we speak out. Its people are held back and its standing is damaged by those utterly unacceptable practices. Gross violations of human rights continue in the more remote parts of China. For example, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region there are arbitrary and summary executions, torture, arbitrary detention and unfair political trials. Such things have been aimed predominantly at the majority ethnic population, the Uighurs, who are Muslim. The political prisoners held in the region may number many thousands, although no one can be sure. As in Tibet, the Chinese Government’s fear of separatism is the principal cause. The authorities continue to discriminate against the Uighur population in favour of recently arrived Han Chinese in religious, cultural and employment issues. Since the escalation of the global war on terrorism, human rights violations appear to have intensified in the autonomous region and there is concern that the international community has perhaps become less keen to confront China about its behaviour towards the Uighurs.