Rogue Nation: The disappeared

Accounts from inside China's secret prisons
By Chieu Luu and Matt Rivers

Sui Muqing says he was forced to stay awake while he was interrogated for more than four days.
Chen Taihe describes being held in a jail cell so crowded he couldn't relieve himself.
And Peter Dahlin was left so traumatized by his experience, he slept with a knife next to his bed.
Three men, in three different parts of China.

They didn't know each other, but all had one thing in common: They advocated for human rights and became caught up in what activists say is the Chinese government's brutal crackdown on dissent.
Xi Jinping's wide-reaching sweep on perceived threats to both his rule and the Chinese Communist Party has led to the arrests of dozens of activists, bloggers, feminists, artists and lawyers.
The men, who CNN spoke to in detail over the course of the last 12 months, describe being forcibly taken from their homes, detained for weeks, sometimes months, in secret prisons, denied communication with family and legal representation, strong-armed into making videotaped confessions, and ultimately released without being convicted of a single crime.
Sui, Chen and Dahlin all say they were explicitly told not to talk about what happened to them, but have decided to speak out anyway. 

They say they want to shed light on the lengths to which China's government will go to silence anyone it deems a threat.
CNN reached out to the Chinese government for comment on each of the cases in this story, but received no response. 

Beijing has said regularly in the past that it does not torture prisoners and maintains these lawyers and activists are criminals dealt with under the law.

The 709 crackdown
While being a human rights lawyer has never been an easy path in Communist China, forced disappearances of lawyers were rare before 2015.
But on July 9 of that year, prominent Beijing rights lawyer Wang Yu disappeared, along with her husband, also a lawyer, and their teenage son.
The following day, police raided Wang's law firm and detained seven of her colleagues. 

Seven other rights lawyers were also detained or reported missing, according to the Hong-Kong based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, which has meticulously documented the cases. It became known as the "709 crackdown" -- a reference to the date the first arrests occurred.
Sui was among them. 

He'd earlier in the day spoken to two foreign media outlets to raise concern about Wang's disappearance.
That night, a security guard called up to Sui's apartment and said his car had been scratched in an accident and when he stepped outside, a group of police quickly whisked him away, said Sui. 

He wasn't seen again for nearly five months.

From left to right: Sui Minqing, Peter Dahlin and Chen Taihe.

Two days later, on July 12, the same thing happened to Chen. 

He said police asked him to come down from his apartment to answer a few questions. 

"I intentionally left my cell phone upstairs in my apartment because I thought I'd be back in a few minutes." 

He didn't return for six weeks.
During a period of less than a week, at least 146 lawyers and their families were detained in a nationwide swoop.
The roots of the crackdown on lawyers can be traced back to an editorial in the overseas edition of state-run People's Daily in July 2012, which warned the United States would use five categories of people to destabilize the Communist Party's near seven-decade rule. 

Rights advocates and lawyers were at the top of the list.
Dahlin, a Swedish national who co-founded a Beijing-based NGO that provided legal aid and training to Chinese lawyers, wasn't caught up in the first wave of detentions, and assumed his status as a foreigner might offer him some protection.
In early January 2016, however, he got tipped off authorities might be after him. 

He was about to depart for Beijing airport when 20 police officers turned up at his apartment.
They detained him and his girlfriend and they ransacked his home, he says, seizing computers and documents.
Dahlin says he was accused of masterminding a plan to smuggle the son of Wang Yu, the first lawyer to be detained in the swoop, into Myanmar, in an effort to evade authorities in October 2015.
He said investigators realized early on he had nothing to do with it, but instead of letting him go, quickly turned their attention to his NGO -- Chinese Urgent Action Working Group -- pressing him to give up information about his colleagues and other activists his group worked with.
Authorities said that Dahlin worked for an illegal organization that sponsored activities that jeopardized China's national security. 

The NGO said it "undertakes rapid response assistance for rights defenders in need."
By October 2017, some 321 lawyers, rights activists, their family members and staff had been caught up in the 709 crackdown.

How lawyers disappear

A key tool in the crackdown has been a relatively new form of detention. 

In 2012, China introduced "residential surveillance at a designated location" (RSDL) into the Criminal Procedural Law.
It appeared to legalize a long-used practice of "black jails" -- a means of temporarily detaining people outside the Chinese legal system who could not be immediately charged with a crime.
The government denied black jails existed in 2009. 

But in 2011 Chinese state media reported on a campaign by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau to crack down on them.
The amended law says residential surveillance shouldn't exceed six months but requires detainees' families be notified within 24 hours, unless they can't be reached, and guarantees all suspects the right to a lawyer, with whom a meeting should be granted within 48 hours of a request.
The new system gives arbitrary detention a legal gloss and normalizes enforced disappearances. 

Earlier this year, 11 countries called on China to end the practice and investigate reports of torture against human rights lawyers. 

The UN High Commission on Human Rights has also called on China to halt the detention of lawyers.

Chen Taihe, a blogger, was detained in Guilin. He now lives in the US.

Although they were held at opposite ends of the country, Sui, Chen and Dahlin all describe similar conditions: Sparsely furnished rooms with black-out curtains on the windows and fluorescent lights kept on 24-hours a day.
They say they slept on a single bed, and were not allowed any reading or writing materials. 

Guards were always in the room watching their every move, even when they used the bathroom.
"There's nothing to look at except some very beige-looking suicide padding on the wall," said Dahlin.
He described being so bored he almost looked forward to the daily interrogations, "because at least you're taken out to another room ... and have some kind of interaction with people."
The interrogators used methods which Dahlin said reminded him of "bad American movies."
"They would have lots of people rush into your cell at night surrounding your bed just trying to scare you," he said.

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish national, was detained in China on January 4, 2016 and held for three weeks.

Just months earlier, Sui says he was held at a police training facility in Guangzhou, the free-wheeling hub of China's manufacturing heartland where he worked as a human rights lawyer defending a number of high-profile activists.
He says interrogators accused him of inciting subversion and pressed him to give them details ranging from his personal life and finances, to his work, clients, and all of his contacts.
Initially he refused to answer the questions, but his resistance only made his interrogators push harder. 

"They wouldn't let me sleep for four days and nights. By the fifth day, I felt like I was going to die," he said.
Sui said it was the sleep deprivation plus threats of torture which ultimately broke his will and made him cooperate. 

He said investigators threatened to shackle his hands, hang him from the ceiling and shine a flashlight directly into his eyes.
"I knew someone who had a heart attack due to deprivation of sleep in jail, so I was a bit frightened my life could be at risk if I continued to fight back," he said.

Sui Muqing, a lawyer, was detained from July 10, 2015 until January 6, 2016.

Chen, a professor who advocated for a US-style jury system in China on his blog, was first accused of "picking quarrels and provoking troubles," -- a vague charge often used by Chinese authorities that can carry a 10-year prison sentence. 

He told CNN he refused to admit any wrongdoing during a 20-hour interrogation, but then found himself sharing a jail cell with inmates accused of crimes ranging from petty theft to murder.
"The cell was so crammed I had to ask other prisoners to make room so I could urinate and defecate," he said. 

"I didn't have a spoon or chopsticks to eat with. We'd get one scoop of rice and would have to eat it with our hands."

After a month, Chen said he was told to collect his belongings. 

He thought he was going home -- but instead was driven to what appeared to be an abandoned hotel and held for another 10 days.
Earlier this year, CNN visited the nondescript building where Chen said he was held in Guilin, a southern city famed for its stunning landscape of karst mountains. 

Signs posted around the area in Chinese and English marked it as military property, but it otherwise appeared open and accessible.
Local officials denied that the building was used as a secret detention center.

The building in Guilin where Chen Taihe was held.

'You have to confess'
The rights activists held captive weren't just concerned about their own well being. 

Their loved ones were also threatened.
Dahlin's interrogators made it clear that they'd keep his girlfriend, a Chinese national, in custody for as long as it took to resolve his case.
"She was taken hostage just to put pressure on me," he said. 

Dahlin asked about his girlfriend every day but got limited answers.
"They said she was being treated quite well. That she was being given yoghurt and fruit and things like that. She was allowed to make a few drawings and do yoga in her room," he said. 

"They knew she had nothing to give them."
Finally, after more than three weeks, Dahlin was told he was going to be released -- but he had to do one thing: confess on camera.
He said he knew what authorities were really going to do with it. 

But wanting to speed up his release -- and that of his girlfriend -- Dahlin agreed to play his part.

Dahlin 'confesses' on state TV

He was taken into a room where a woman from state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) was sitting with a cameraman. 

Dahlin was handed a piece of paper with the questions that she would ask and the answers he would give.
"I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people. I apologize sincerely for this," Dahlin said in the confession broadcast nationwide and splashed across state-run newspapers.
Immediately after its broadcast activists denounced it as a forced confession -- one of many that have been shown on CCTV in the years since Xi came to power.
Sui and Chen said they had to make similar "confessions." 

All three men now maintain their innocence, but they said they had no choice but to do as authorities wanted.
Sui says he admitted to charges of inciting subversion. 

Chen told CNN he confessed to charges of picking quarrels and provoking troubles, inciting subversion and embezzlement.
"You have to confess," Chen said. 

"Otherwise they won't let you go."

No end in sight
The crackdown on lawyers is still taking place.
On Tuesday, a court in Changsha, central China sentenced human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong to two years in prison after convicting him of inciting subversion against the state.
In August, he had confessed in a trial that was streamed live online and watched by his wife Jin Bianling in California.
"He used to tell me, if I ever admit to a crime like this, it means I've been tortured," Jin said.
Jiang was a prominent human rights lawyer who had represented some of his colleagues targeted in the 709 crackdown, and was an outspoken critic of the government. 

He disappeared in November 2016, en route to catching a train from the central city of Changsha to Beijing. 

Months went by before the authorities confirmed he had been detained.
"Please give me another chance to be a human being ... and to make up for my wrongdoings," Jiang told a panel of three judges at his August trial.
Albert Ho, a Hong Kong-based activist with the China Human Rights Lawyer Concern Group, said Jiang, like other lawyers his group has spoken to, likely admitted to the charges in order to live to fight another day.
"Only an idiot would believe that he is truly speaking from his heart," Ho said.

Sleeping with a knife
Six days after his "confession" was broadcast on CCTV, Dahlin was released and expelled from China. 

His girlfriend was also released without charge.
Dahlin is now based in Thailand, but has trouble forgetting his time in detention.
"Early on it was quite extreme. Every little noise at night would wake me up. I'd sleep with a knife next to my bed, ready to stab the first Chinese person who comes into my gate," he said.

Wang Yu poses during an interview in Hong Kong on March 20, 2014.

Wang Yu, the first lawyer detained in the 709 crackdown, was charged with subversion, while her husband was charged with inciting subversion. 

They were both released on bail after more than a year in custody, after Wang's taped confession was aired on CCTV.
In it, Wang renounced her legal work and blamed "foreign forces" for using her law firm to undermine and discredit the government. 

Their son, who was detained along with them, was released soon afterward, but his movements have been heavily restricted.
Authorities never aired Chen's statement. 

He was released a day after recording it and the charges against him were dropped.
"I have no criminal record, but they can still use the video to discredit me," he said.
Chen and his family now live in US, where he's a visiting scholar at the University of California's Hastings Law School and studies the US jury system. 

He said he won't return to China until it becomes more democratic.
Sui was released on bail after his "confession," which was also never broadcast. 

He continues to practice law in Guangzhou, but said his movements have been restricted and fears the worst may still be yet to come.
"It's increasingly difficult to maintain a harmonious society through brainwashing," Sui said.
"The only resort left is violence. For anyone who's not submissive, a brutal crackdown is on the way."

China tortured detained Canadian into giving bribery confession

By CRAIG OFFMAN

A Canadian citizen held in Chinese custody says authorities tortured her into confessing that she bribed a former leading official who became an outspoken critic of the regime.
You Ziqi of Richmond, B.C., was detained on fraud charges by customs officials at the Beijing airport in 2014 while travelling with her son to visit family in Hubei province.
In a complaint written to the Chinese authorities and obtained by The Globe and Mail, Ms. You said Chinese officials forced her to give testimony that she had bribed Xie Weidong, who was a businessman and former Supreme Court judge before he immigrated to Canada two years ago. 

In the meantime, the Chinese government seized almost all of Ms. You’s family assets, worth around $10-million.
Evidence provided by Ms. You became the basis for a Red Notice, an international arrest warrant-like demand issued by Interpol, against Mr. Xie, who lives in Toronto and has applied for permanent residence here.
Both expatriates say the case against them is based on false testimony, instigated by Communist Party officials trying to cover up the theft of Ms. You’s family assets. 

“I have come from inside the system. I know very well the extent of corruption and darkness there,” Mr. Xie told The Globe.
Their plights represent the murk of the country’s judiciary system, which remains firmly controlled by the party. 

What may be look like an earnest effort to root out corruption could equally be part of a broader effort to purge an official who has fallen out of favour. 

Such a dilemma underscores the difficulty of co-operating with a country whose evidence is often unreliable and whose allegations of criminality often masks ulterior motives.
Winnipeg lawyer David Matas, who has a long career in the field of human rights in China, said these kinds of situations are common. 

“The target of a corruption charge is being asked to implicate somebody relatively high up,” he noted. “They operate by attacking friends, relatives, neighbours and business associates as a way of getting the target. They drain the pool to catch the fish.”
At the same time, China is pushing for countries such as Canada and the United States to participate in Operation Foxhunt, its controversial effort to scour the globe for people it calls corrupt. 

Beijing has pushed Ottawa for a formal extradition treaty, and the government has agreed to discussions.
This week, Interpol announced that a leading Chinese security official, Meng Hongwei, will head the global police organization, stoking worry that the appointment may be instrumental in tracking down dissidents as well as alleged fugitives who have fled abroad.
The allegations against Ms. You date back to 1999, when she represented her brother in a debt dispute that landed before Mr. Xie while he was a judge on the Chinese Supreme Court.
Mr. Xie ruled in Ms. You’s favour, and told The Globe that he reached out to her after delivering his verdict. 

At the time, he was planning to step down from the court to launch a website devoted to legal matters.
“She was a businesswoman, and I was just starting my own business. We had a lot in common,” Mr. Xie said.
He left the court in 1999. 

The two became romantically involved, he added, but the relationship did not last.
In 2002, Ms. You left for Canada, where she obtained citizenship. 

While she was gone, authorities targeted her family back home, seizing more than $10-million in assets from her brother, including a set of precious books and a limousine.
When authorities arrested Ms. You upon her return to China in 2014, they showed a remittance slip that, they said, proved her brother’s company had invested in Mr. Xie’s website in 2004 – which they called evidence of a bribe for the favourable Supreme Court ruling years earlier.
As interrogators pushed her to confess, they threatened to go public with a tale of her seducing an important judge, and amassed bank transfer statements, audit reports and testimony that, they said, proved she had on several occasions moved public company funds into accounts she personally controlled.
“The suspect You Ziqi defrauded the wealth of listed companies in large numbers,” legal papers filed against her allege.
Authorities changed her name while in detention and told her they could send her to remote Inner Mongolia, where “even if she died, no one would know,” her lawyer, Xuan Dong, said in an interview. 

He was not allowed to see her until she had been in detention for more than a year. 

By that time, she had signed a confession, but authorities refused to provide Mr. Xuan the videotape of her confession.
Later, Ms. You recanted her testimony, insisting that it was forced in a detailed six-page letter – copied to Xi Jinping – and in court, where in a pretrial meeting she threatened to commit suicide inside the courtroom if found guilty.
According to documents provided by Ms. You’s son, Li Ang, consular officials have visited Ms. You at least three times. 

“Canada takes allegations of mistreatment or torture of Canadian citizens abroad extremely seriously,” Global Affairs spokeswoman Jocelyn Sweet wrote in an e-mail, adding that the department has put in place a mechanism designed to identify situations in which mistreatment of a Canadian may have occurred and to take steps to protect the interests and well-being of Canadians.
Mr. Li, who was with his mother at the Beijing airport when she was detained, said that as she was taken into custody, his mother told him to take of himself, but she didn’t seem troubled. 

“She was confident she was innocent,” he said.
Based on the evidence it extracted from Ms. You, Beijing issued an Interpol Red Notice seeking the arrest of Mr. Xie, who moved to Canada in 2014. 

In a June, 2016, notice provided by Mr. Xie, the Department of Canadian Citizenship and Immigration listed a set of accusations against him based on the Red Notice.
The Immigration Department said it could not comment on a specific case without consent. 

The Chinese embassy in Ottawa did not respond to questions.
Mr. Xie said one his sisters has now been hauled away in China and accused of taking bribes, as a way to force him back. 

Another sister, who also lives in Canada, has been barred from leaving China.
For China, bringing back Mr. Xie could have another benefit, silencing a rare figure who both occupied the highest levels of the judiciary and emerged as a public critic.
“If the Canadian government establishes an extradition treaty with the Chinese government, the Canadian government will be helping the evil and dark forces of the Chinese government,” he said.

The Nazi Interpol

Fears For Dissidents As China Security Czar is Appointed as the New Head of Interpol
By Dominique Rowe

Meng Hongwei (R), Chinese Vice Public Security Minister in Beijing, China, Aug. 26, 2016.

Global police body Interpol announced the appointment of its new chief Wednesday, China’s Vice Minister for public security Meng Hongwei.
Meng is the first Chinese national to take up the role as head of Interpol, but rights groups are concerned that the nomination will facilitate efforts to target Chinese dissidents living overseas, reports The Guardian.
“This is extraordinarily worrying given China’s longstanding practice of trying to use Interpol to arrest dissidents and refugees abroad,” Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East Asia, Nicholas Bequelin, told the Guardian on Thursday.
Bequelin added that Chinese police have a “political mandate” to protect the power of the Communist party.
As part of Xi Jinping’s far-reaching crackdown on corruption, last year, Beijing launched Operation Sky Net, a campaign to nab 100 suspected corrupt former Communist Party officials who had allegedly fled overseas. 

The names were placed on Interpol’s “Red Notice” list with the aim that the police body would help extradite them back to China.
Amnesty’s fear is that some of those on the list, rather than being guilty of graft, may be political dissidents whose real crimes exist only in the eyes of the Communist Party.


Chinese Official Named Head of Interpol, Drawing Criticism
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

BEIJING — A top Chinese police official was elected president of Interpol on Thursday, setting off alarm bells among rights advocates over abuses and a lack of transparency within China's legal system, as well as the misuse of the police organization to attack Beijing's political opponents.
Vice Public Security Minister Meng Hongwei was named as the first Chinese to hold the post at the organization's general assembly on the Indonesian island of Bali, Interpol announced in a press release.
The Lyon, France-based International Criminal Police Organization has 190 member nations and has the power to issue "red notices." 

It's the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant in use today. 

Interpol circulates those notices to member countries listing people who are wanted for extradition.
While Interpol's charter officially bars it from undertaking "any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious or racial character," critics say some governments, primarily Russia and Iran, have abused the system to harass and detain opponents of their regimes. 

Interpol says it has a special vetting process to prevent that from happening.
Quoted in the Interpol release, Meng said he takes over at a time when the world is facing some of the most serious global public security challenges since World War II.
"Interpol, guided by the best set of principles and mechanisms to date, has made a significant contribution to promoting international police cooperation," Meng was quoted as saying. 

"Interpol should continue to adhere to these principles and strategies, while further innovating our work mechanisms in order to adapt to the changing security situation we see today."
Interpol's president is a largely symbolic but still influential figure who heads its executive committee responsible for providing guidance and direction and implementing decisions made by its general assembly. 

Interpol Secretary General Jurgen Stock is the organization's chief full-time official and heads the executive committee.
Meng, who takes over from Mireille Ballestrazzi of France for a four-year term, will assume his new duties immediately.
His election comes as Xi Jinping is seeking to give new momentum to his 4-year-old campaign against corruption, including a push to seek the return of former officials and other suspects who had fled abroad. 

China filed a list of 100 of its most-wanted suspects with Interpol in April 2014, about one third of whom have since been repatriated to face justice at home.
The anti-corruption drive is led by the Communist Party's internal watchdog body, the highly secretive Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, rather than the police, prompting questions about its transparency and fairness.
More than 1 million officials have been handed punishments ranging from lengthy prison terms to administrative demerits or demotions. 

While authorities deny their targets are selected for political purposes, several of the highest-profile suspects have been associated with Xi's predecessor Hu Jintao and other rivals.
China's police and judicial systems have been routinely criticized for abuses, including confessions under torture, arbitrary travel bans and the disappearance and detention without charges of political dissidents and their family members. 

That has prompted reluctance among many Western nations to sign extradition treaties with China or return suspects wanted for non-violent crimes.
China also stands accused of abducting independent book sellers who published tomes on sensitive political topics from Hong Kong and Thailand. 

U.S. officials have meanwhile complained that China has asked for the return of corruption suspects while providing little or no information about the allegations against them.
Given those circumstances, Meng's election is an "alarming prospect," said Maya Wang, Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch.
"While we think it's important to fight corruption, the campaign has been politicized and undermines judicial independence," Wang said. 

Meng's election "will embolden and encourage abuses in the system," she said, citing recent reports of close Chinese ally Russia's use of Interpol to attack President Vladimir Putin's political opponents.
Nicholas Bequelin, Amnesty International's regional director for East Asia, tweeted: "This is extraordinarily worrying given China's longstanding practice of trying to use Interpol to arrest dissidents and refugees abroad."
At the same time, China's 3-decade-old economic boom has produced waves of embezzlement, bribery, corruption and other forms of white-collar crime that have forced the government to spread a wide net to track down suspects and their illicit earnings. 

China also says it faces security threats from cross-border "extremist" Islamic groups seeking to overthrow Chinese rule over the far-western region of Xinjiang.
Along with electing Meng, Interpol also approved a call for the "systematic collection and recording of biometric information as part of terrorist profiles" shared by the organization.
About 830 police chiefs and senior law enforcement officials from 164 countries joined in the four-day meeting. China became a member in 1984.