Amnesty International thanks you for the invitation to participate in this commemoration, remembering the Falun Gong who are suffering in China.
Falun Gong practitioners ,we know, are not merely detained in Chinese prisons. They are undergoing torture and beatings. Many thousands – I believe my recollection is correct, 50,000 – are undergoing re-education in detention camps. And we also know that the Amnesty Year Book records that some 500 had died in custody by the end of last year.
And so I wish to speak to you quite briefly on the unpleasant subject of torture in China.
There are really two categories. The first into which the Falun Gong fall relate to the use of torture to coerce belief. As you are all aware the Chinese Communist Party has a fixed policy of eradicating non-conforming thought. The repression of the Falun Gong is extreme because of their numbers and the courage of its members. And so in its case a particular organization the notorious Unit 610 has been formed to deal with what was euphemistically described as the Falun Gong issue. Torture is one method to coerce belief. Chen Ziiku a practitioner whose bruised body and swollen eyes and broken teeth was returned to her family after being in a Falun Gong Transformation Centre. I give you the English translation of the description. That sums it up. The transformation of the Falun Gong. Thought control in the re-education centres is only another aspect of this. This is applied to any nonconforming belief. To christians in the non-registered Churches as well. A recent Amnesty urgent action, the case of Gong Shenliang a pastor of the Huanan South China Church, who was in a coma a few weeks ago after beatings.
The second category is the use of torture in the general administration of justice. Torture is endemic in Chinese justice. This is grudgingly conceded by the Chinese Government. For years now THE United Nations, Amnesty and other bodies have been trying to get the Chinese Government to admit the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. For years the Chinese Government has been promising that it will do so. But still no international inspection has been allowed.
The legal and administrative structure facilitates torture.
First, legally — there is no exclusion of the use of evidence obtained by torture in evidence in Chinese Courts. This is extremely important when linked with Article 93 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which requires a suspect to answer questions truthfully. These provide an incentive to use evidence obtained from torture. This becomes most harmful in Strike Hard campaigns in which police, courts and I am afraid execution squads also are instructed and required to hasten procedures and in which the incentive for police and courts to obtain convictions irrespective of the means of doing so is immense.
But administratively the situation is no more promising. There is, as I have said, no avenue of complaint before the Courts. Nor is there before the Procuracy. That body, insufficiently separate from the prosecutor to be neutral, too often refers complaints about the police or security forces to the very bodies who have been complained about.
Finally – and on a matter Amnesty has been pressing for some years – why if China is at all serious about removing torture are police and security officials allowed so freely to have electric batons? Who authorises this? What are the conditions of authorisation? We have so far been unable to obtain answers to these questions.
Posting date: 26/June/2003
Original article date: 23/June/2003
Category: Australian News
