\n
Comment on this story<\/title><path d=\"M14 14V2H2v9.47h8.18L12.43 13ZM3 10.52V3h10v9.23l-2.5-1.66Z\"\/><\/svg><\/button><\/p>\n<p>Comment<\/p>\n<p><\/button><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"teaser-content grid-center\">\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Soon after Shi Minglei\u2019s husband, Cheng Yuan, an activist against workplace discrimination, was arrested in July 2019 on subversion charges, Chinese security agents informed her that she too would be placed under \u201cresidential surveillance\u201d on suspicion of similar offenses.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Unlike her husband, Shi had never worked for a nongovernmental organization, and she couldn\u2019t understand the charges, she said in an interview. But the officers maintained she was being investigated and instructed her to hand over her ID card, passport, driver\u2019s license, social insurance card, cellphone, computer and bank cards.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Shi, who remained under house arrest for 180 days, was terrified primarily about the implications for her 3-year-old daughter. \u201cAs a mother, if you cannot protect your child and give her freedom from fear \u2014 it scares me to death,\u201d she said. Her husband was handed a five-year prison sentence in July 2021.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p><span class=\"font--article-body font-copy hide-for-print ma-0 pb-md db italic interstitial\"><a target=\"_blank\" data-qa=\"interstitial-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2022\/08\/19\/china-xiao-jianhua-sentenced-prison\/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_6\" rel=\"noopener\">China sentences tycoon Xiao Jianhua to 13 years in prison<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Chinese law enforcement\u2019s use of house arrests or \u201cresidential surveillance\u201d has risen sharply under President Xi Jinping, according to <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/urldefense.com\/v3\/__https:\/\/safeguarddefenders.com\/en\/blog\/home-becomes-prison-china-s-expanding-use-house-arrests-under-xi-jinping__;!!M9LbjjnYNg9jBDflsQ!D5yuSsF_yojYWogWYhpfXVrh6gRBCf3BSnmRgcfutKqndPePQmDJ-_h57U-_yC0CG1-ND3Fw-UOjLb1G3IDpHTmR2YY11vs$\" rel=\"noopener\">research<\/a> by Safeguard Defenders, a nonprofit focused on rule of law in China, released on Tuesday. The group\u2019s estimates suggest over a quarter of a million officially approved instances of house arrest take place each year, up from fewer than 10,000 in 2013.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Chinese legal scholars argue the measure is meant to function as a less invasive alternative to pretrial detention for special cases such as suspects in poor health. However, testimonies gathered by Safeguard Defenders suggest that house arrest is often misused to threaten and silence Chinese human rights activists and their families.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">\u201cIt has become a flexible tool that the police have impunity to use however they want,\u201d said Peter Dahlin, director of Safeguard Defenders. Some uses of \u201cresidential surveillance\u201d may be a better option for suspects than being held in detention centers, but revisions to China\u2019s criminal procedure law in 2012 and 2018 have made the measure more invasive and opened it up to misuse because of minimal judicial review requirements, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Safeguard Defenders\u2019 tally of official \u201cresidential surveillance\u201d cases recorded in the Supreme People\u2019s Court\u2019s online judgment database shows an increase from 5,549 in 2013 to at least 40,184 in 2020. Incomplete data for 2021, caused by a delay between rulings and cases appearing in the database, showed that at least 15,403 instances of house arrest had been logged so far.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Only a portion of China\u2019s total legal cases are recorded in the database, and it rarely includes politically sensitive cases such as those touching on national security or involving dissidents and human rights activists. In recent years, some verdicts deemed unsuitable for public attention have begun to disappear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">When assuming that only two-thirds of cases appear and some cases of residential surveillance are never tried, Safeguard Defenders estimated that unrecorded house arrests could be at least triple the number of cases in the database. The group therefore predicts that the number of lawful instances could pass 1 million at some point in the next three years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p><span class=\"font--article-body font-copy hide-for-print ma-0 pb-md db italic interstitial\"><a target=\"_blank\" data-qa=\"interstitial-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2022\/08\/31\/un-china-xinjiang-report\/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_17\" rel=\"noopener\">U.N. report: China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Chinese human rights lawyer Tang Jingling sees the increased use of house arrests as another piece of the expanding security state that can be turned on activists at any time. \u201cTo surmise the purpose, it is to eliminate any kind of civil resistance,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is basically no space to challenge authorities once you are confined.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">In 2011, when Tang was detained on suspicion of inciting subversion, his wife, Wang Yangting, was held under what Tang called illegal house arrest for months, despite not being accused of any crime.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Tang said that she \u201ccouldn\u2019t contact the outside world, nor was she allowed to leave home.\u201d Heavyset men were stationed at the door around-the-clock to watch his wife. Even his mother-in-law, who lived with them for part of the time, needed a permit to go to shopping.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">China\u2019s Ministry of Justice declined to answer faxed questions about the practice, including how many cases of residential surveillance are officially approved a year, the strictness and invasiveness of such detentions, and allegations from rights activists that they were subjected to extended house arrest without being given official notice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">\u201cResidential surveillance\u201d sits on the spectrum of tools of monitoring and control used by the Chinese security state to target dissidents. Some are relatively benign, if intrusive, such as a practice of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/us-china-congress-rights-insight-idUSKBN1CR01T\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cvacationing\u201d<\/a> high-profile activists during important political meetings, when security agents escort them to remote regions of the country so they cannot stage protests.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">At the more severe end of the scale are measures of detention and interrogation with minimal oversight that human rights groups allege allow abuses and torture. These include \u201cresidential surveillance in a designation location\u201d \u2014 a form of pretrial detention during which police hold a suspect for up to six months in often off-books locations including converted hotel rooms known among activists as \u201cblack jails.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p><span class=\"font--article-body font-copy hide-for-print ma-0 pb-md db italic interstitial\"><a target=\"_blank\" data-qa=\"interstitial-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/interactive\/2022\/shanghai-lockdown-portraits\/?itid=lk_interstitial_manual_28\" rel=\"noopener\">Stranded in their own homes: Portraits of Shanghai\u2019s lockdown<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">In theory, house arrest is meant to be a softer version of this detention method. Du Xuejing, a professor of policing studies at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, argued in a recent article that \u201cthe legislative intent of residential surveillance is to avoid \u2026 detention and excessive restriction of the personal freedom of the criminal suspect.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">However, some activists subjected to house arrest allege that the system was used arbitrarily, sometimes without apparent official approval.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">Xu Wu, a former employee of Wuhan Iron and Steel Corporation who repeatedly sued the company over wage cuts, said in an interview that he has been under house arrest since he was released from a psychiatric hospital over a decade ago, with a dozen security cameras and a group of security officials guarding his sixth-floor apartment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\">\u201cI have been living in this small prison since 2011,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no lawful notice saying that I am under house arrest. They still say nobody is watching me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"article-body\" data-qa=\"article-body\">\n<p data-qa=\"drop-cap-letter\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"font-copy font--article-body gray-darkest ma-0 pb-md\"><i>Lily Kuo and Vic Chiang in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section class=\"b bt bc-offblack dn-ns hide-for-print\" data-testid=\"mostRead\" subscriptions-section=\"content\"\/><\/div>\n<p>[ad_2]<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/world\/2022\/09\/06\/china-house-arrest-human-rights-surveillance\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=wp_world\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ad_1] Comment on this story Comment Soon after Shi Minglei\u2019s husband, Cheng Yuan, an activist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35527,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35525\/revisions\/35527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}