China to pass law to be able to detain suspects for 37 days
The Telegraph, 13 March 2012
By Malcolm Moore
China will on Wednesday pass a new law that allows the authorities to secretly detain people suspected of terrorism, corruption and endangering state security for up to 37 days.
The updated Criminal Procedure Law codifies and legalises the widespread practice of “disappearing” suspects into hidden jails and holding them without telling their families where, and why, they are being held.
The law, which has been under consultation since last year, and which has watered down the detention period to 37 days from a proposed six months, will be voted on by China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress. It is expected to come into force next year.
It states that suspects can be put “under monitored residency”, outside of the prison system, and that families should be informed within 24 hours, unless it would “impede the investigation”.
Last year, Ai Weiwei, the Chinese artist, became the most high profile person to be “disappeared” into an unknown detention centre, for what the government later said was tax evasion.
“Already, many thousands of people in China are being held in secret and are at great risk of being tortured,” said Catherine Baber, the deputy Asia director of Amnesty International, in a statement.
“These thousands include petitioners seeking justice, members of underground churches, and political activists,” she added.
Xiao Han, an associate professor at China’s University of Political Science and Law, pointed out on his blog that the articles in the new law are “a complete set of boxing moves, encompassing secret evidence collection, secret arrest, illegal long-term imprisonment, and technical aspects of investigation, sufficient to go out and get anyone.”
The new law does also, for the first time, urge the police to “safeguard human rights” and introduces new provisions against collecting evidence under duress and forcing suspects to sign confessions, until now a common practice. “The rights of defence lawyers have also been expanded,” said Chen Weizhong, a law professor at Renmin university. “There have been lots of improvements,” he added.
“People expect too much when it comes to protecting human rights,” said Mr Chen. “They hope the criminal law would jump forward in one big step. But this is impossible in today’s China,” he said. “In our situation, maintaining stability is very important to our country’s development.”
In recent years, the UK and the United States have also both been accused of carrying out secret detentions of terrorist suspects.