November 12, 2015•Update: November 12, 2015
BEIJING
An international human rights group has blasted China’s criminal justice system, saying it is heavily reliant on forced confessions obtained through torture and ill-treatment, with lawyers often threatened, harassed, or even detained and tortured themselves.
Under international and China’s domestic law the burden of proof lies with prosecutors to show that evidence was obtained lawfully, a report released Thursday by Amnesty International says.
"In practice however, courts routinely dismiss allegations of torture if the defendant cannot prove them."
No End in Sight alleges that criminal justice reforms hailed as human rights advances by the Chinese government have in reality done little to change the deep-rooted practice of torturing suspects to extract forced confessions.
Attempts by defense lawyers to raise or investigate torture claims continue to be systematically thwarted by police, prosecutors and the courts, the report said.
"In a system where even lawyers can end up being tortured by the police, what hope can ordinary defendants have?" asks Patrick Poon, China Researcher.
"Papering over a justice system that is not independent, where the police remain all-powerful and where there is no recourse when the rights of the defendants are trampled upon will do little to curb the scourge of torture and ill-treatment in China.
"If the government is serious about improving human rights it must start holding law enforcement agencies to account when they commit abuses."
The report underlines that protection for those in custody is especially weak in cases where the defendants belongs -- or is suspected by the police of belonging -- to a politically sensitive category of people, such as political dissidents, human rights lawyers or members of ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uighur.
Uighur are a Muslim Turkic minority from northwest China who claim their cultural and religious rights are curtailed by the Chinese authorities while Tibetans are campaigning to free what they see as their Himalayan homeland from Chinese rule.
The report highlighted the case of Ilham Tohti -- the founder of website Uighur Online and an outspoken critic of Beijing’s policies on Uighur -- who lost 16 kilograms (35 pounds) while being held in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region Detention Centre in Urumqi, the area's provincial capital.
A June 2014 report by Amnesty said that the 45-year-old had gone on a 10-day hunger strike after jailers refused to serve him a Halal diet. His feet are reported to have been shackled for more than 20 days.
The report also documents alleged torture and ill treatment in pretrial detention, including beatings by police or by other detainees with the officers’ knowledge or upon their orders.
Tools it claims were used in torture include iron restraint chairs, tiger benches -- in which individuals’ legs are tightly bound to a bench, with bricks gradually added under the victim’s feet, forcing the legs backwards -- as well as long periods of sleep deprivation and the denial of sufficient food and water.
