Interpol Tragicomedy

Meng Hongwei faces indefinite detention in system experts say is cover for a purge of political rivals
By Lily Kuo in Beijing
 

Meng Hongwei appears to be the latest target of the Chinese ruling Communist party’s controversial anti-corruption campaign. 

The bizarre case of the former Interpol president Meng Hongwei, now detained and under investigation in China, has raised concerns about the country’s expanded anti-corruption drive.
Meng, a senior Chinese security official, appears to be the latest target in a far-reaching anti-graft campaign that critics say is a cover for eliminating political figures disloyal to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

On Monday, days after Meng was reported missing by his wife, Chinese authorities accused him of bribery in a lengthy statement stressing the importance of the country’s “anti-corruption struggle” and the need for “absolute loyal political character”. 

On Sunday, authorities said Meng was in the custody of the National Supervisory Commission (NSC), China’s new super-agency charged with investigating corruption throughout the government, which is overseeing his case.
Human rights advocates say Meng is likely being held in liuzhi or “retention in custody” – a form of detention used by the NSC that denies detainees access to legal counsel or families for as long as six months.
Liuzhi is meant to be an improvement on the previous shuanggui system, a disciplinary process within the ruling Chinese Communist party known for the use of torture and other abuses. 

Under liuzhi, family members are supposed to be notified.
Rights advocates say there are few indications liuzhi will be much better. 

The Chinese journalist Chen Jieren, who had accused a party official in Hunan province of corruption, has been detained since July by the NSC and denied access to his lawyer, according to Radio Free Asia.
In May, the driver of a low-ranking official in Fujian province died during interrogation after almost a month in liuzhi. 

When family members saw his body, his face was disfigured.
“Liuzhi ’is a very new system, but we can speculate pretty clearly [about] the kind of treatment people are subjected to,” says Michael Caster, a human rights advocate with Safeguard Defenders, a human rights NGO in Asia. 

“Prolonged sleep deprivation, forced malnourishment, stress positions, beatings, psychological abuse, threats to family members certainly, oftentimes leading to forced confessions.”
Meng’s case is the most high-profile yet for the NSC, which was created in March to expand China’s anti-corruption drive to people and entities outside the Communist party, including government ministries, state-owned companies, and people working in the public sector.
“Since its inauguration, however, the NSC has not nabbed any big ‘tigers’, so to speak,” said Dimitar Gueorguiev, assistant professor of political science at Syracuse University, where he focuses on Chinese governance. 

“Meng’s arrest seems like a powerful demonstration of China’s commitment to rooting out corruption, even when it can cost them the directorship of an important international vehicle,” he said.
Speculation for the reasons behind Meng’s swift downfall ranges from his access to sensitive information after a long career at the public security ministry to his tenure at Interpol, when the organisation revoked an international alert for Dolkun Isa, the president of the Munich-based World Uyghur Congress, which is critical of China’s treatment of ethnic Uighurs in East Turkestan. 

While Meng’s exact whereabouts are still unclear, rights activists say his fate is not.
“The formula is simple,” says Maya Wang, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch. “Like others forcibly disappeared before him, including human rights activists mistreated in custody by Meng’s public security ministry, he faces detention until he confesses under duress, an unfair trial, and then harsh imprisonment, possibly for many years.”

China eliminating civil society by targeting human rights activists

Report details use of torture by Chinese security agencies – including beatings, stress positions and sleep deprivation – to force activists to confess ‘crimes’
By Benjamin Haas In Hong Kong

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society. 

China’s human rights situation further deteriorated last year as police systematically tortured activists and forcibly disappeared government critics while state TV continued to broadcast forced confessions, a new report shows.
A creeping security state also attempted to codify much of its existing behaviour on paper, giving the police legal authority to criminalise a host of NGOs deemed politically sensitive by the authorities, according to the report by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
“The Chinese government seems intent on eliminating civil society through a combination of new legislation restricting the funding and operations of NGOs, and the criminalisation of human rights activities as a so-called threat to national security,” Frances Eve, a researcher at CHRD, told the Guardian.
“What stands out is the institutionalised use of torture to force defenders to confess that their legitimate and peaceful human rights work is somehow a ‘crime’.”
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society. 

In 2015, police targeted almost 250 rights lawyers and activists in a “war on law”, and the effects of that campaign continued to be felt throughout last year.
Reports of torture while in detention in 2016 were rampant, with methods including beatings, attacks by fellow inmates on the orders of prison guards, stress positions, deprivation of food, water and sleep, inhumane conditions and deprivation of medical treatment.
In some cases, human rights activists were prevented from receiving medical care even once they were released.
Huang Yan, who was detained in November 2015, was suffering from ovarian cancer and diabetes. Police confiscated her diabetes medication, and despite an exam done at a detention facility in April 2016 showing the cancer had spread, she was not treated and was denied medical bail.
When she was finally released, Huang was scheduled to undergo surgery last November to treat her cancer, but the authorities pressured the hospital and the team of surgeons declined to treat her.
Torture also took more overt forms. 

Last year reports also emerged that rights lawyer Xie Yang was subject to beatings and stress positions in detention, with interrogators warning him: “We’ll torture you to death just like an ant”.
In November 2016, Jiang Tianyong, a respected Christian attorney, disappeared while about to board a train and police waited weeks to confirm he had been detained. 

Jiang’s whereabouts are still a mystery nearly three months later.
In a rare strongly-worded statement, the European Union called for his immediate release along with several other lawyers.
China also continued the practice of airing confessions on state television, a move that is reminiscent of internal Communist party political purges.
In one of the most prominent cases, Swedish NGO worker Peter Dahlin was paraded on the national broadcaster after three weeks in detention, declaring: “I have violated Chinese law through my activities here. I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.”
The confessions air before detainees ever see the inside of a courtroom, and in Dahlin’s case he was promptly deported.
For those activists that do go to trial, in at least 15 cases last year police attempted to pressure activists into accepting government-appointed lawyers. 

In cases where state-appointed lawyers represented human rights activists, little defence was mounted and the accused pleaded guilty and promised not to appeal their cases.
The report also outlined two laws passed in 2016 that are likely to curb civil society: legislation regulating charitable giving and a law on foreign NGOs. 

The charity law, while not explicitly requiring all NGOs to register with the government, makes it difficult for unregistered organisations to raise funds domestically.
The foreign NGO regulations require overseas groups that give money to Chinese organisations to be registered with the police.
“Together, these laws will hamper the development of Chinese civil society by restricting their funding,” the CHRD report said.
“There are no more ‘grey areas’,” an unnamed human rights activist said in the report. 

“To advocate for human rights in China today, you must be willing to accept the reality that the government views your work as ‘illegal’.”

China torturing suspects in political purge against members of rival factions

Opaque extralegal detention system used by officials to hold suspects indefinitely until they confess
By Benjamin Haas in Hong Kong

Regular beatings, sleep deprivation, stress positions and solitary confinement are among the tools used by China’s anti-corruption watchdog to force confessions, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.
The report throws the spotlight on to Xi Jinping’s "war on corruption", which has punished more than a million Communist party officials since 2013. 

Xi has said fighting corruption is “a matter of life and death” but experts characterise the campaign as a political purge against members of rival factions.
The opaque extralegal detention system is used by "anti-corruption" officials to hold suspects indefinitely until they confess. 

At least 11 have died while in the custody of the country’s widely feared Commission for Discipline Inspection.
“Xi has built his 'anti-corruption campaign' on an abusive and illegal detention system,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch.
“Torturing suspects to confess won’t bring an end to corruption but will end any confidence in China’s judicial system.”
All of China’s 88 million Communist party members can be subject to detention or shuanggui, which in Chinese means to report at a designated time and place, where suspects are held incommunicado and often in padded, windowless rooms.
“If you sit, you have to sit for 12 hours straight; if you stand, then you have to stand for 12 hours as well. My legs became swollen and my buttocks were raw and started oozing pus,” a former detainee is quoted as saying in the report. 

Names were withheld for fear of government reprisals.
Others have described detention simply as a “living hell”. 

It is extremely rare for those who have been through the system to speak openly.
In one account a detainee was kept awake for 23 hours a day, forced to stand the entire time and balance a book on his head, one lawyer said. 

After eight days he confessed “to whatever they said” and was then allowed to sleep for two hours a day.
While Xi champions his "anti-corruption" drive, he has also advocated enhancing China’s “rule of law”, but activists say the two concepts are completely at odds when suspects are tortured and forced to confess.
Although the "anti-corruption" campaign is technically separate from China’s judicial system, Human Rights Watch documented cases where prosecutors worked alongside corruption investigators, using the shuanggui system to gather evidence. 

After the extralegal detention, cases are usually transferred to the courts, where there is a 99.92% conviction rate.

“In shuanggui corruption cases the courts function as rubber stamps, lending credibility to an utterly illegal Communist party process,” Richardson said. 

“Shuanggui not only further undermines China’s judiciary – it makes a mockery of it.”
Those sentiments have been echoed by western governments as Xi has ramped up his "anti-corruption" push and use of the system has skyrocketed.
Shuanggui “operates without legal oversight” and suspects are “in some cases tortured”, the US State Department wrote in its annual human rights report on China. 

Some confessions extracted in detention were eventually overturned by courts, the US government report said.
Government officials are the majority of suspects disappeared into the system, but bankers, university administrators, entertainment industry figures and any other Communist party member can be detained.
Human Rights Watch called for shuanggui to be abolished, adding that successfully fighting corruption required “robust protections for the rights of suspects”.
“Eradicating corruption won’t be possible so long as the shuanggui system exists,” Richardson said. “Every day this system threatens the lives of party members and underscores the abuses inherent in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.”