U.N. rights experts urge China to provide care for rights lawyer

By REUTERS

GENEVA – United Nations experts called on China on Friday to provide medical care to Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer jailed for inciting “subversion”, amid reports of his deteriorating health.
In a rare joint statement on China, six independent human rights experts voiced deep concern at the condition of Jiang, sentenced to two years jail last November after being found guilty of inciting subversion of state power.
“Mr. Jiang’s health has apparently deteriorated dramatically in recent months. He is reportedly weak and suffers from severe memory loss, and it is suspected that he may have been drugged,” the experts said. 

“This raises fears of torture or ill-treatment in detention, without access to adequate medical care.”
Xi Jingping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on human rights activism in China since 2015 that has seen hundreds of rights lawyers and activists detained, dozens arrested and some handed lengthy prison sentences.
Jiang, who provided legal defence for some of the lawyers arrested in the crackdown, had already been disbarred in 2009 and disappeared in November 2016. 

He was held in secret detention for more than nine months, the experts said.
Many of the nearly 250 lawyers and defenders arrested remain in detention and are “often held incommunicado”, they added.
“We appeal to the Chinese government to provide the detainees at a minimum with access to their families, lawyers of their own choosing and adequate health care,” they said.
The U.N. experts included Philip Alston, special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, who met Jiang during an official visit to China in August 2016. 

Alston has voiced concern at the Human Rights Council that Jiang’s subsequent disappearance and arrest may be in part a reprisal for that contact, calling it “the equivalent of a legal sledgehammer”.

Rogue Nation

China’s Rights Crackdown Is Called ‘Most Severe’ Since Tiananmen Square
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Pro-democracy activists held portraits of the detained Chinese human rights lawyers Jiang Tianyong, background left, and Wang Quanzhang at a protest in Hong Kong this summer.

GENEVA — China is systematically undermining international human rights groups in a bid to silence critics of its crackdown on such rights at home, a watchdog organization said on Tuesday. 

The group also faulted the United Nations for failing to prevent the effort, and being complicit in it.
“China’s crackdown on human rights activists is the most severe since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement 25 years ago,” Kenneth Roth, the director of the agency, Human Rights Watch, said in Geneva on Tuesday at the introduction of a report that he described as an international “wake-up call.” 

“What’s less appreciated is the lengths to which China goes to prevent criticism of that record of oppression by people outside China, particularly those at the United Nations.”
“The stakes are not simply human rights for the one-sixth of the world’s population who live in China,” Mr. Roth added, “but also the survival and effectiveness of the U.N. human rights system for everyone around the globe.”
The report highlights China’s measures to prevent activists from leaving the country to attend meetings at the United Nations, its harassment of those who do manage to attend and the risk of reprisals when they return or if they interact with United Nations investigators inside or outside China.
The report also noted barriers placed by Chinese officials to visits by United Nations human rights officials. 
Beijing has not allowed a visit by the agency’s High Commissioner for human rights since 2005, and continues to delay 15 requests for visits by special rapporteurs working on political and civil rights issues.

China allowed visits by four rapporteurs since 2005 on issues like poverty, debt and the status of women. 

But it carefully choreographed those visits, and contacts not sanctioned by the state posed risks to those involved. 

The United Nations has expressed concern that the detention of Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer, resulted from a 2016 meeting in Beijing with the United Nations special rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston.
Mr. Jiang disappeared for several months and was later charged with subversion.
The report also documents China’s diplomacy in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where China aligns with an informal collection of states, including Algeria, Cuba, Egypt and Venezuela, that discretely coordinate their positions to deflect scrutiny of their records and consistently challenge the council’s ability to look into accusations of abuse in other states without their consent.
“It’s becoming a mutual defense society among odious dictators in which everybody understands the need to deflect criticism of you today because they may criticize us tomorrow,” Mr. Roth said.
“And China is an active, willing partner in that effort.”
Moreover, China has withheld information requested by United Nations bodies that monitor issues like torture, treatment of the disabled and children’s rights, and has tried to stop the filming and online posting of their proceedings, Human Rights Watch said.
The report also accused China of using its position on a United Nations committee that accredits nongovernment organizations to obstruct applications by civil society groups.
Individual measures by China could be passed over as unremarkable, Mr. Roth said, “but when you put it all together, what it represents is a frontal assault on the U.N. human rights system.”
Human Rights Watch delivered a copy of its report to China but received no substantive response, he said.
The effect of China’s behavior on human rights is like “death by a thousand cuts,” Mr. Roth said, but he also pointed to the dangers of “a thousand acts of acquiescence” by the United Nations and states that support human rights.
Human Rights Watch presented a copy of its report to the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, Mr. Roth said, but Mr. Guterres’s response did not mention China by name.
“That illustrates what needs to change,” Mr. Roth said.
A request for comment from Mr. Guterres’s office was not immediately returned.
The report cited the United Nations’ treatment of the Uighur rights activist Dolkun Isa, who had received United Nations accreditation to attend meetings in its New York headquarters but was escorted off the premises by security officers without explanation.
It also cited the exceptional treatment that the United Nations accorded Chinese dictator Xi Jinping when he visited its Geneva headquarters in January: It sent home many staff members early, refused access to nongovernment organizations and granted access to only a handful of journalists.
Its handling of the occasion “was an utter embarrassment for the U.N.,” Mr. Roth said.
“It became actively complicit in Xi Jinping’s terror of any criticism. It was an utter abandonment of the principles the U.N. should abide by. It was a shameful moment.”

Missing Chinese Legal Activist Is at Risk of Torture, Says U.N.

State police claim that Jiang Tianyong has been released from detention, but his family and lawyer fear that he has been 'disappeared.'
By Reuters

Richard Gere (R) called Chen Guangcheng (L) a "kind and gentle troublemaker, a man that China should be proud of instead of arresting and torturing."

Jiang Tianyong in Beijing in 2012

The family of prominent Chinese legal activist Jiang Tianyong is unable to locate him despite police saying that he had been released on December 1 after spending nine days in detention, his family's lawyer said on Friday.
Disbarred lawyer Jiang, 45, has spoken out about a government crackdown on legal defenders and has been involved in high-profile cases of dissidents who have angered authorities, including blind activist Chen Guangcheng, who left China after he fled to the U.S. Embassy in 2012.
Jiang's wife, Jin Bianling, told Reuters in November that she and his friends had been unable to contact him since Nov. 21 after he traveled to Changsha in Hunan province to visit relatives of an arrested human rights lawyer, Xie Yang.
Philip Alston, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said in a statement last week that he feared Jiang's disappearance was in part a reprisal for a meeting the two had during Alston's August visit to China.
Jiang may be at risk of torture, the United Nations said.
When asked about Jiang at a daily briefing on Friday, foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he "did not understand the situation."
Officers at a police station in Changsha told Jiang's parents on Thursday they had released Jiang on December 1 after nine days of detention, according to family lawyer Qin Chengshou.
"The local station did not provide any form of written proof of his detention or his release, and as we still cannot contact him, we suspect that he has either not been released or has been transferred to another police station," Qin said.
Qin said police told him that Jiang was detained for nine days after attempting to use an identification card that was not his to buy train tickets.
"At this time, we have no way of confirming whether what they said is correct," Qin said.
An officer at the police station who answered the telephone on Friday said the issue had "nothing to do with us". 

He did not elaborate.
Since 2015, dozens of people linked to a Beijing law firm have been detained or prosecuted by the authorities in a crackdown on dissent.
China consistently rejects criticism of its human rights record and says it is a country ruled by "law".