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Xi Jinping’s China muzzles dissent with house arrests

House arrests in China under President Xi will mark 1 million soon, says Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders
Thousands of people have been victims of house arrests in China since 2013

Thousands of people have been victims of house arrests in China since 2013. (Photo: Safeguard Defenders)

Published: September 07, 2022 11:03 AM GMT
Updated: September 07, 2022 11:10 AM GMT

China’s communist regime under President Xi Jinping has suppressed and abused thousands of people including rights defenders and government critics arbitrarily and repeatedly with house arrests by exploiting a draconian criminal law, says a rights watchdog.

Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders released a 46-page report titled “Home Becomes Prison – China’s expanding use of house arrests under Xi Jinping” on Sept. 6.

The report, based on testimonies of the victims, accused Beijing of misusing the Criminal Procedure Law and violating human rights by crushing dissent with house arrests and other forms of abuses.

The report highlighted the state’s rampant use of house arrest, officially dubbed “Residential Surveillance (RS),” with the help of legal loopholes to simply bar communication and isolate victims within their homes.

The victims’ ID cards and passports were seized, bank accounts frozen, phone calls tapped, internet activity monitored, and meeting with family or lawyers blocked by the police and government officials, the report said

Using official government data, Safeguard Defenders has highlighted a meteoric increase in Residential Surveillance from only 5,549 cases in the first year of President Xi Jinping’s rule in 2013 to 28,704 (417 percent) in the second year.

“The use of lawful house arrests since Xi Jinping came to power will almost certainly cross the 1 million mark soon,” the group said, “It [Residential Surveillance] has gone hand in hand with continued revision to law to allow for its greater use.”

Until the Covid-19 pandemic, the data showed a consistent increase of 5 percent year on year. However, compared to the 35,509 cases registered in 2019, there was a sharp 13 percent increase to 40,184 cases in 2020.

Residential Surveillance was introduced into the Chinese Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) in 1979 and has been implemented on a large scale to muzzle dissent and criticism.

House arrest is used to detain an individual who is under investigation, awaiting criminal proceedings, or identified as a threat to national security under the CPL.

“The CPL allows the restriction and monitoring of detainees’ communications, it also gives police powers to block their access to their lawyers and render them isolated from friends and family,” the report states.

“While the official procedure requires the public authorities to issue a “formal notice” to inform the person or their family that the case has been put under RS there have been several instances where cases were placed under RS without any notice,” the report read.

While the report does not directly mention using house arrests against ethnic and religious groups, there have been numerous media reports on Chinese authorities’ crackdown on ethnic and religious groups for allegedly violating laws.

Catholic clergy including bishops as well as Protestant pastors have been detained and placed in house arrests in undisclosed locations for months.

Despite the legal time limit of six months for Residential Surveillance (RS), the accused activists are subjected to prolonged detention.

Wang Quanzhang, a human rights lawyer and a victim of the CPL, said he was not allowed to return to his home in Beijing to reunite with his family even after his release from prison on Apr. 5, 2020.

“They used the pretext of the epidemic as an excuse to quarantine him for 14 days when he should have been able to return to his home in Beijing according to the relevant legal guidelines,” said Li Wenzu, wife of Wang Quanzhang.

While access to justice and legal assistance is already restricted under official RS, those who are put under it illegally face an even higher level of surveillance and isolation.

The victims are typically charged with “picking quarrels” and “provoking trouble” or “inciting subversion of state power.”

Activist Shi Minglei and her husband Cheng Yuan, co-founder of Changsha Funeng, an NGO advocating for the rights of people with disabilities and other marginalized groups, were both taken by the Changsha City State Security Bureau for ‘subversion of state power.”

The activists faced threats and harassment from the police officials and were told that they had, “touched politics, so don’t talk about the law now.”

The report also stated that some of the victims faced consistent surveillance and were followed by police officials at all locations and were accompanied at all times.

“They follow me like a shadow: on the phone, when I am out, at my daughter’s nursery, in the garage. They can appear at any time. I was in a state of panic,” said Shi Minglei.

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