Towards the International Criminal Court for Xi Jinping's Crimes in East Turkestan?

UK calls for UN access to Chinese concentration camps in East Turkestan

Foreign Office responds after leaked China cables appear to confirm brainwashing centres
By Juliette Garside and Emma Graham-Harrison

A facility in Artux, one of a growing number of internment camps in East Turkestan where an estimated 1 million Muslims are detained. 

The UK has urged China to give United Nations observers “immediate and unfettered access” to concentration camps in East Turkestan, where more than a million people from the Uighur community and other Muslim minorities are being held without trial.
The call from the Foreign Office was in response to the China cables, a leak of classified documents from within the Communist party which provide the first official confirmation that the camps were designed by Beijing as brainwashing internment centres.
The documents describe how inmates are to be cut off from their families for at least a year and held behind multiple layers of security to undergo ideological transformation.

The International Criminal Court building is seen in The Hague, Netherlands, in this January 16, 2019, photograph. 

The leak prompted the Foreign Office to demand “an end to the indiscriminate and disproportionate restrictions on the cultural and religious freedoms of Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in East Turkestan.”
A spokesperson added: “The UK continues to call on China to allow UN observers immediate and unfettered access to the region.”
In Brussels, the European commission condemned the use of “political re-education camps”. 

In a statement the commission said it would not comment on the details of the leak, but insisted it would continue to raise the issue of human rights abuses in East Turkestan with Chinese government officials.
“We have consistently spoken out against the existence of political re-education camps, widespread surveillance and restrictions of freedom of religion or belief against Uighurs and other minorities in East Turkestan,” a spokeswoman said.
“We as the European Union continue to expect China to uphold its international obligations and to respect human rights, including when it comes to the rights of persons belonging to minorities, especially in East Turkestan but also in Tibet, and we will continue to affirm those positions in this context in particular.”
In July, 22 countries at the UNs’ top human rights body took the unusual step of issuing an joint statement calling for China to end its arbitrary detentions and other violations against the rights of Muslims in the north-west border colony of East Turkestan.
Signatories included the UK, Australia, Canada and a number of European countries. 

The statement urged China to allow “meaningful access” to the region independent international observers, including Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights.
Chinese authorities deny they run detention camps and say the “vocational education and training centres” are part of a focused crackdown on extremism and terrorists.
However, the China cables point to the ruling party setting out a blueprint for human rights violations.
Reports of a crackdown first emerged two years ago, as hundreds of thousands of muslims in East Turkestan were rounded up into secretive, newly built and heavily guarded compounds.
Xi Jinping’s government took action following a rise in terrorist attacks. 

In 2009, nearly 200 people died during riots in the East Turkestan capital, Urumqi. 

Dozens more were then killed and hundreds injured over the following years.
The China cables contain dozens of pages of orders covering the setting up of the camps and the establishment of a vast digital surveillance operation being used to identify new detainees.
In a single week in June 2017, the digital platform flagged up 24,412 “suspicious” individuals in one part of southern East Turkestan alone. 

Of these, more than 15,000 were sent to re-education camps, and a further 706 were jailed.The cables reveal camps must adhere to a strict system of total physical and mental control, with multiple layers of locks on dormitories, corridors, floors and buildings.
Inmates could be held indefinitely – but must serve at least a year in the camps before they can even be considered for “completion”, or release. 

Weekly phone calls and a monthly video call with relatives are their only contact with the outside world, and they can be suspended as punishment.
Control of every aspect of their lives is so comprehensive that they have to be assigned a specific place not only in dormitories and classrooms, but even in the lunchtime queue.
Obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian and 16 other media partners, the documents have been independently assessed by experts who have concluded they are authentic.

Turkey condemned China's treatment of Uighur people as "a great embarrassment for humanity"

Ankara calls for UN to act on ‘human tragedy’ of the Turkic-speaking minority in China's East Turkestan colony
Agence-France Presse

People protest at a pro-Uighur rally outside UN headquarters in New York. 

Turkey has condemned China’s treatment of its Muslim ethnic Uighur people as “a great embarrassment for humanity”, adding to rights groups’ recent criticism over mass detentions of the Turkic-speaking minority.
“The systematic assimilation policy of Chinese authorities towards Uighur Turks is a great embarrassment for humanity,” Turkish foreign ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said in a statement.

Aksoy also said Turkey had learned of the tragic death in custody on Saturday of Uighur poet and musician Abdurehim Heyit.
“We’ve learned with great sorrow that dignified poet Abdurehim Heyit, who was sentenced to eight years in prison for his compositions, died in the second year of his imprisonment,” he said.
“This tragic incident has further strengthened the Turkish public’s reaction to the serious human rights violations in East Turkestan region.”
The East Turkestan colony of China, where most Uighurs live, has been under heavy police surveillance in recent years, after violent inter-ethnic tensions.
Nearly one million Uighurs and other Turkic language-speaking minorities in China have been held in concentration camps, according to a UN panel of experts.
Beijing says the “vocational education centres” help people steer clear of terrorism and allow them to be reintegrated into society.
But critics say China is seeking to assimilate East Turkestan’s minority population and suppress religious and cultural practices that conflict with communist ideology and the dominant Han culture.
“It is no longer a secret that more than one million Uighur Turks – who are exposed to arbitrary arrests – are subjected to torture and political brainwashing in concentration centres and prisons,” Aksoy said in the Turkish foreign ministry statement.
“Uighurs who are not detained in the camps are also under great pressure,” he added.
Turkey called on the international community and the UN secretary general, António Guterres, “to take effective steps to end the human tragedy in East Turkestan colony”.
Most mainly Muslim countries have not been vocal on the issue, not criticising the government in China, which is an important trading partner.

China's Final Solution

Amnesty International wants information about fate of those caught up in crackdown on Turkic Muslim ethnic group.

al jazeera
China is accused of interning more than a million Uighur Muslims in brainwashing camps 

Amnesty International has called on China to end its campaign of systematic repression against Uighur Muslims and demanded information about what has happened to those in detention.
Organisations including the UN and Humans Rights Watch (HRW) say that China is holding Uighurs in what it calls "re-education camps" but those with relatives inside call "concentration camps".
Multiple testimonies by Uighurs who have fled China back up the reports of mass imprisonment of the Turkic ethnic group.
Inside, prisoners are forced to reject Islamic practices and anything seen as contrary to China's dominant Han culture.
"The Chinese government must not be allowed to continue this vicious campaign against ethnic minorities in northwest China," said Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International's East Asia Director.
"Governments across the world must hold the Chinese authorities to account for the nightmare unfolding in East Turkestan.
"Hundreds of thousands of families have been torn apart by this massive crackdown."
For its report, Amnesty interviewed more than 100 people whose relatives in their native East Turkestan colony had gone missing and were believed to be imprisoned in the camps.
According to the organisation, those who resisted or failed to show enough progress inside the camps were subject to beatings and other forms of torture.
"The mass detention camps are places of brainwashing, torture and punishment," Bequelin said.
The Uighurs are subject to repressive measures inside China, such as heavy surveillance, restrictions on movement, and prohibition of religious expression.
Amnesty also said the country was recruiting spies in overseas Uighur communities, adding to the pressure many of those who fled feel.

Die Endlösung der Uigurischfrage

UN alarmed by reports of China's mass detention of Uighurs

BBC News
The UN commission says China discriminates against its Uighur population.

The UN says it is alarmed by reports of the mass detention of Uighurs in China and called for the release of those held on a counter terrorism "pretext".
It comes after a UN committee heard reports that up to one million Muslim Uighurs in China's East Turkestan colony, were held in re-education camps.
Beijing has denied the allegations but admitted that "some" religious "extremists" were being held for re-education.
China blames Islamist militants and separatists for unrest in the region.
During a review earlier this month, members of the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said credible reports suggested Beijing had "turned the Uighur autonomous region into something that resembles a massive internment camp".
China responded that Uighurs enjoyed full rights but Beijing made a rare admission that "those deceived by religious extremism... shall be assisted by resettlement and re-education".
East Turkestan has seen intermittent violence - followed by crackdowns - for years.

What does the UN say?
The UN body on Thursday released its concluding observation, criticising the "broad definition of terrorism and vague references to extremism and unclear definition of separatism in Chinese legislation".
The committee called on Beijing to:

• End the practice of detention without lawful charge, trial and conviction;
• Immediately release individuals currently detained under these circumstances;
• Provide the number of people held as well as the grounds for their detention;
• Conduct "impartial investigations into all allegations of racial, ethnic and ethno-religious profiling".

What is China accused of?
Human rights groups including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have submitted reports to the UN committee documenting claims of mass imprisonment, in camps where inmates are forced to swear loyalty to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.
The World Uyghur Congress said in its report that detainees are held indefinitely without charge, and forced to shout Communist Party slogans.
It said they are poorly fed, and reports of torture are widespread.
Most inmates have never been charged with a crime and do not receive legal representation.
The latest UN statement comes amid worsening religious tensions elsewhere in China.
In the north-western Ningxia region, hundreds of Muslims have been engaged in a standoff with authorities to prevent their mosque from being demolished.

Who are the Uighurs?
The Uighurs are a Muslim ethnic minority mostly based in China's colony of East Turkestan. 

They make up around 45% of the population there.

Chinese occupation forces in East Turkestan, where all filming and reporting by foreign media is tightly controlled.

East Turkestan is a Chinese colony, like Tibet to its south.
Reports that more and more Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are being detained in East Turkestan have been circulating for some months.

China's crimes against humanity

China detains one million in secretive “reeducation camps,” where they face political indoctrination and torture.
By Jen Kirby

A Uighur man makes bread at a local bakery on July 1, 2017, in Kashgar, in China’s East Turkestan colony.

A United Nations human rights panel has accused the Chinese government of ruthlessly cracking down on Uighurs, an ethnic Muslim minority in China’s East Turkestan colony, and detaining as many as 1 million in internment camps and “reeducation” programs.
These programs range from attempts at psychological indoctrination — studying communist propaganda and giving thanks to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping — to reports of waterboarding and other forms of torture.
The Chinese government’s repression of ethnic Uighurs, most of whom are Sunni Muslim, has intensified in recent years amid what it calls an anti-"extremism" initiative.
“[I]n the name of combating religious extremism and maintaining social stability,” China has turned its East Turkestan colony “into something that resembles a massive internment camp that is shrouded in secrecy, a sort of ‘no rights zone’,” Gay McDougall, a member of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, said in Geneva last week.
The Chinese government has pushed back on the allegations. 

Hu Lianhe, a senior official with the Chinese government agency that oversees ethnic and religious affairs in the country, told the UN panel on Monday that convicted “criminals charged with minor offenses” were sent to “vocational education and employment training centers” to help them reintegrate. 

He declined to say how many people were being held in these centers.
This confrontation between the UN panel and China is a culmination of a human rights situation in the East Turkestan colony that has become increasingly precarious, according to human rights organizations, advocacy groups, and journalists, who have tried to document the situation despite China’s tight media control.
Here’s what’s going on, and why the UN is finally confronting Beijing on its brutal policies against, and detainment of, the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities within China’s borders.

The Uighurs: China’s minority Muslim group that’s increasingly the target of repressive policies
East Turkestan, where about 10 million Uighurs and some other Muslim minorities live, is a colony in China’s northwest that borders Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Mongolia. 

It has been under Chinese occupation since 1949, when the communist People’s Republic of China was established.
Uighurs speak their own language — an Asian Turkic language similar to Uzbek — and most practice a moderate form of Sunni Islam. 

East Turkestan colony, once situated along the ancient Silk Road trading route, is oil- and resource-rich. 

As it developed, the region attracted more Han Chinese, a migration organized by the Chinese government.
But that demographic shift inflamed ethnic tensions, especially within some of the larger cities. 

In 2009, for example, riots broke out in Urumqi, the capital of the East Turkestan colony, after Uighurs protested their treatment by the government and the Han majority. 

About 200 people were killed and hundreds injured during the unrest.
The Chinese government, however, blamed the protests on violent separatist groups — a tactic it would continue using against the Uighurs and other religious and ethnic minorities across China.
East Turkestan colony is also a major logistics hub of Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, a trillion-dollar infrastructure project along the old Silk Road meant to boost China’s economic and political influence around the world. 

East Turkestan’s increasing importance to China’s global aspirations is a major reason Beijing is tightening its grip.
All of which means China has increasingly tried to draw East Turkestan into its orbit, starting with a crackdown in 2009 following riots in the region and leading up to the implementation of repressive policies in 2016 and 2017 that have curbed religious freedom and increased surveillance of the minority population, often under the guise of combating terrorism and extremism.
The Chinese government justifies its clampdown on the Uighurs and Muslim minorities by saying it’s trying to eradicate extremism and separatist groups. 

But while attacks, some violent, by Uighur separatists have occurred in recent years, there’s little evidence of any cohesive separatist movement — with jihadist roots or otherwise — that could challenge the Chinese government, experts tell me.

China’s “de-extremification” policies against the UighursAn ethnic Uighur man has his beard trimmed after prayers on June 30, 2017, in Kashgar, in East Turkestan colony.

China’s crackdown on the Uighurs is part of a policy of “de-extremification.” 

It’s generated extreme policies, from the banning of Muslim names for babies to torture and political indoctrination in so-called “reeducation” camps where hundreds of thousands have been detained.
Communist China has a dark history with reeducation camps, combining hard labor with indoctrination to the party line. 

According to research by Adrian Zenz, a leading scholar on China’s policies toward the Uighurs, Chinese officials began using dedicated camps in East Turkestan around 2014 — around the same time that China blamed a series of terrorist attacks on radical Uighur separatists.
China escalated pressure on Muslim minorities through 2017, slowly chipping away at their rights with the passage of religious regulations and a "counterterrorism" law, according to the Uyghur Human Rights Project, a group based in in Washington, DC.
In 2016, East Turkestan also got a new leader: a powerful Communist Party boss named Chen Quanguo, whose previous job was restoring order and control to the restive province of Tibet. 

Chen has a reputation as a strongman and is something of a specialist in ethnic crackdowns.
Increased surveillance and police presence accompanied his move to East Turkestan, including his “grid management” policing system. 

As the Economist reported, “authorities divide each city into squares, with about 500 people. Every square has a police station that keeps tabs on the inhabitants. So, in rural areas, does every village.”
Security checkpoints where residents must scan identification cards were set up at train stations and on roads into and out of towns. 

Authorities used facial recognition technology to track residents’ movements. 

Police confiscate phones to download the information contained on them to scan through later. 

Police have also confiscated passports to prevent Uighurs from traveling abroad.
Some of the government more targeted “de-extremification” restrictions gained coverage in the West, including a ban on Muslim names for babies and another on long beards and veils. 

The government also made it illegal to not watch state television and to not send children to government schools. 

The government tried to promote drinking and smoking, because people who didn’t drink or smoke — such as devout Muslims — were deemed suspicious.
Chinese officials have justified these policies as necessary to counter religious radicalization and extremism, but critics say they are meant to curtail Islamic traditions and practices.
The Chinese government is “trying to expunge ethnonational characteristics from the people,” James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University, told me. 

“They’re not trying to drive them out of the country; they’re trying to hold them in.”
“The ultimate goal, the ultimate issue that the Chinese state is targeting [is] the cultural practices and beliefs of Muslim groups,” he added.

What we know, and don’t know, about the detention camps

A Chinese flag flies over a local mosque closed by authorities in June 2017, in Kashgar, in the East Turkestan colony.

“Reeducation camps” — or training camps, as the Chinese have called them — are perhaps the most sinister pillar of this de-extremification policy. 

As many as 2 million people have disappeared into these camps at some point, with about 1 million currently being held.
The Chinese government has denied these camps exist. 

When confronted about them at the United Nations this week, officials claimed they were for the “assistance and education” of minor criminals. 

China’s state-run media has dismissed the reports of detention camps as Western media “baselessly criticizing China’s human rights.”
This misinformation on the part of the Chinese government makes it difficult to find out what’s really going on, but leaked documents and firsthand accounts from people detained at the camps have helped paint a disturbing picture of what amount to modern-day concentration camps.
Millward said the Chinese authorities see the camps as “a kind of conversion therapy, and they talk about it that way.”
Or, as a source told told Radio Free Asia, a Chinese official referred to the “reeducation” as “like spraying chemicals on the crops. That is why it is general reeducation, not limited to a few people.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Josh Chin and Clément Bürge, who documented the increasingly oppressive state surveillance in East Turkestan in a December 2017 report, described one of these detention centers:
One new compound sits a half-hour drive south of Kashgar, a Uighur-dominated city near the border with Kyrgyzstan. 

It is surrounded by imposing walls topped with razor wire, with watchtowers at two corners. 

A slogan painted on the wall reads: “All ethnic groups should be like the pods of a pomegranate, tightly wrapped together.”
Those detained in the camps are often accused of having “strong religious views” and “politically incorrect” ideas, according to Radio Free Asia. 

But Zenz, the researcher, said people are detained for all sorts of reasons.
“Those where any religious (even non-extremist) or other content deemed problematic by the state was found on their mobile phones. Those aged 18 to 40. Those who openly engage in religious practices,” Zenz said of the detainees. 

“But many Uighur-majority regions have been ordered to detain a certain percentage of the adult population even if no fault was found. Detentions frequently occur for no discernible reasons.”
Inside these camps, detainees are subjected to bizarre exercises aimed at “brainwashing” them as well as physical torture and deprivation.
Kayrat Samarkand, who was detained in one of the camps for three months, described his experience to the Washington Post:
The 30-year-old stayed in a dormitory with 14 other men. 

After the room was searched every morning, he said, the day began with two hours of study on subjects including “the spirit of the 19th Party Congress,” where Xi expounded his political dogma in a three-hour speech, and China’s policies on minorities and religion. 

Inmates would sing communist songs, chant “Long live Xi Jinping” and do military-style training in the afternoon before writing accounts of their day, he said.
“Those who disobeyed the rules, refused to be on duty, engaged in fights or were late for studies were placed in handcuffs and ankle cuffs for up to 12 hours,” he told the Post.
At a July hearing of the Congressional-Executive Committee on China — a special committee set up by Congress to monitor human rights in China — Jessica Batke, a former research analyst at the State Department, testified that “in least some of these facilities, detainees are subject to waterboarding, being kept in isolation without food and water, and being prevented from sleeping.”
“They are interrogated about their religious practices and about having made trips abroad,” Batke continued. 

“They are forced to apologize for the clothes they wore or for praying in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

A lot of criticism but very little action
The UN human rights panel harshly criticized China over its detainment of the Uighurs. 

But China has continued to deny the harshest of the claims. 

“People of all ethnic groups in East Turkestan cherish the current situation of living and working in peace and happiness,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Lu Kang said in a statement.
But whether or how the pushback from the UN will alter China’s policies toward the Uighurs is unclear. 

Zenz said it might prompt China to disguise the reeducation regime a bit more, or possibly tone down its policies. 

“But China’s stance at the moment is more one of justification, distraction, and defiance,” he wrote.
Some lawmakers in the United States are trying to draw attention to the plight of the Uighurs. 

Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling on the US government to sanction Chen, the strongman leader of East Turkestan colony, and other officials and businesses complicit in the surveillance of citizens and detentions.
The State Department, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, has also criticized China for detaining Uighurs and other minorities based on religion. 

But so far, there’s been little hard action to punish China.

Axis of Evil: China and Russia are waging war on human rights at UN

They lobbied to cut funding for human rights monitors and for a senior post dedicated to human rights work
By Julian Borger in Washington

The UN Human Rights Up Front initiative was established in 2014, after a series of UN failures in preventing or sounding the alarm over atrocities. 
China and Russia are leading a stealthy and increasingly successful effort at the United Nations to weaken UN efforts to protect human rights around the world, according to diplomats and activists.
The two countries have used the UN budget panel, known as the fifth committee, to cut funding for human rights monitors and for a senior post in the secretary general’s office which is supposed to ensure that human rights – one of three pillars of the UN’s function – are not forgotten in its day-to-day work.
The UN Human Rights Up Front initiative was established in 2014, after a series of UN failures in preventing or sounding the alarm over atrocities, culminating in mass killings in Sri Lanka in 2009.
A senior official in the secretary general’s office was appointed to ensure that progress was made on the issue throughout the organisation, but funding for that post has been cut this year by the fifth committee, as a result of lobbying by China and Russia. 

The cut, first reported in Foreign Policy, means that the human rights work that was the responsibility of that official will be spread around other posts with other priorities.
The funding of the office of the high commissioner for human rights in Geneva has also been cut. 

The current high commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad Hussein, has announced that he will be stepping down this year and not seeking another term in the post, explaining to his staff that the lack of global support for protecting human rights made his job untenable.
Last week, Zeid was due to address the UN security council on plight of civilians in Syria but before he began, Russia called a procedural vote to stop him speaking on the grounds that the council was not the proper forum for discussing human rights.
“The fifth committee has become a battleground for human rights,” Louis Charbonneau, the UN director for Human Rights Watch, said. 

“Russia and China and others have launched a war on things that have human rights in their name.”
“You can get a mandate for human rights work in the security council, but then Russia and China go behind the scenes to defund it,” Charbonneau said. 

“And the countries that pay lip service to human rights are not pushing back. But the question is are we going to let them win?”
“China has real political momentum at the UN now,” Richard Gowan, a UN expert at the European Council for Foreign Relations, said. 

“It is now the second biggest contributor the UN budget after the US, and is increasingly confident in its efforts to roll back UN human rights activities. It is also pushing its own agenda – with an emphasis on ‘harmony’ rather than individual rights in UN forums. And a lot of countries like what they hear.”
A western diplomat at the UN conceded that human rights were losing ground at the UN, because China had become a more assertive voice, prepared to lead lobbying campaigns, and because Beijing is increasingly leveraging its vast and growing investments in the developing world to win votes for its agenda at the UN.
“The fifth committee is a very important battleground,” the diplomat said. 

“Our team is fighting in the trenches very hard on this. We want to get the best value for the taxpayer, but also to make sure that something as important and central as human rights in the work of the UN is not defunded.”

Rogue nation: UN tells China to release human rights activists and pay them compensation

Document rejects Chinese government claims that activists voluntarily confessed to their crimes at trials.

By Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong

Lawyer Xie Yang who has been detained by Chinese authorities as part of a crack down on human rights. 

The United Nations has demanded that China should immediately release prominent human rights activists from detention and pay them compensation, according to an unreleased document obtained by the Guardian.
The report, which has not been made public, from the UN’s human rights council says the trio had their rights violated and calls China’s laws incompatible with international norms.

Christian church leader Hu Shigen and lawyers Zhou Shifeng and Xie Yang were detained and tried as part of an unprecedented nationwide crackdown on human rights attorneys and activists that began in July 2015.
The operation saw nearly 250 people detained and questioned by police.
Hu was jailed for seven and a half years and Zhou was sentenced to seven years on subversion charges, while Xie is awaiting a verdict.
“The appropriate remedy would be to release Hu Shigen, Zhou Shifeng and Xie Yang immediately, and accord them an enforceable right to compensation and other reparations,” said the UN report seen by the Guardian, adding that Chinashould take action within six months.
The UN’s working group on arbitrary detention, which reviewed the case, rejected Chinese government claims the three men voluntarily confessed to their crimes at their trials and said their detentions were “made in total non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial”.
The group is a panel of five experts that falls under the UN’s human rights council, of which China is a member.
While its judgements are not legally binding, it investigates claims of rights violations and suggests remedies.
China promised to cooperate with the group when it ran for a seat on the human rights council in August 2016, when it also pledged to make “unremitting efforts” to promote human rights.
The group’s report on the Chinese activists said the trio were subjected to a host of rights violations, including being denied access to legal counsel, being held in “incommunicado detention” and their families “were not informed of their whereabouts for several months”.
Their detentions were due to “their activities to promote and protect human rights“, the UN found, while the opinion also encouraged China to amend its laws to conform with international standards protecting human rights.
Although Xie was released on bail after a trial in May, his wife, Chen Guiqiu said her husband was far from a free man.
State security agents rented a flat across the hall from his and Xie has 12 guards stationed 24-hours a day outside his building.
Police follow him whenever he goes out and despite the constant surveillance, he has to prepare reports for state security agents every four hours on what he has done and who he has spoken to.
But Chen welcomed the UN’s report and said she felt vindicated.
“Of course, he didn’t commit any crime, his arrest was completely illegal and I’m glad the UN, a very objective party that represents the international community, can see that,” said Chen, who fled to the US earlier this year.
“I hope this will put pressure on China and make them think twice the next time they consider arresting people on political charges.”
“Paying compensation would show the government admits they harmed our family, that they were wrong to subject us to more than two years of continuous harm,” she added.

During his detention, Xie was beaten and forced into stress positions, with one interrogator telling him: “We’ll torture you to death just like an ant.”
Ambassadors from countries including Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, wrote to China’s minister of public security in February, voicing concerns over the torture and calling for an independent investigation.
“The working group’s opinion cuts straight through the government’s lies and shows that the arrests were always about retaliation against lawyers for protecting human rights,” said Frances Eve, a researcher at the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
“The government put enormous resources into their propaganda campaign to smear human rights lawyers as ‘criminals’, deploying state media, police, prosecutors and the courts.”
During the course of the panel’s investigation, the Chinese government said the men were jailed not because “they defend the legitimate rights of others” but rather they have “long been engaged in criminal activities, aimed at subverting the basic national system established under the China’s [sic] constitution”.
The UN rejected this claim.
Hu was arrested for leading an underground church, which works outside the government-sanctioned system.
He previously spent 16 years in prison for distributing leaflets on the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and subsequent bloody crackdown.
Zhou is a prominent human rights attorney who founded the Fengrui law firm that was at the centre of the 2015 government “war on law”.
His firm represented dissident artist Ai Weiwei, members of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and a journalist arrested for supported protests in Hong Kong.
The UN’s working group on arbitrary detention previously told China to release Liu Xia, the wife of the Nobel peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died in detention in July.
Liu Xia has been under house arrest since 2010, when her husband won the prize, despite never being charged with a crime.