China approves detention system reforms

Legislature votes largely in favour of new criminal procedure law, but there are doubts about its actual enforcement. Last Modified: 14 Mar 2012 07:40 inShare4

Premier Wen Jiabao repeated vague calls for political reform [Reuters]

China's legislature has approved revisions to a key criminal law that, at least on paper, will restrict police powers to secretly detain people, a tactic which human rights campaigners say is increasingly used against activists and government critics. The changes to the criminal procedure law were the most high-profile ones passed on the final day of the annual National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing on Wednesday. Speaking after the closing of the NPC, Zhang Jianxin, a Zhejiang provincial delegate said the new version of the law was more reflective of society. "I think big amendments have been made to the original criminal procedure law, these amendments relate better to our Chinese actuality," he said. The bill, which goes into effect on January 1, 2013, was passed with 2,639 delegates voting for the bill, and 160 against. "It has passed overwhelmingly," Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan reported from Beijing on Wednesday. "It is an overhaul of China's criminal procedure law after 15 or 16 years of no changes, so it is going to be quite a major thing," she said. "There has been a lot of controversy about it, but of course some of the positive things to come out of this new legislation is the fact that suspects will now have access to a lawyer immediately ... and there are other basic things that you would consider quite necessary to put in the rulebooks concerning the detention of suspects and the arrest of suspects." Enforcement While legal reformers have mostly applauded the revisions, saying they will offer better protection of suspects and reflect increasing awareness in China of the need for stronger detainee rights, legal enforcement in China is another matter. Police and prosecutors routinely ignore current legal provisions protecting suspects' rights and have frequently used charges of endangering national security against dissidents, according to human rights campaigners. Melissa Chan reports on China's "black jails" Authorities are also alleged to have used the tactic of extra-legally "disappearing" people for months at a time, detaining them in so called black jails and not informing their families. Activist lawyers, democracy campaigners and the internationally acclaimed artist Ai Weiwei have been detained over the past year amid government worries about whether the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring might spread to China. There are two relevant articles in the new law that deal with notifying families, one in regular criminal cases and the other involving a type of detention known as residential surveillance. Both have been revised to better protect detainees, though they do not do away completely with secret detentions, scholars said. In the case of residential surveillance, a sort of house arrest that can happen in a fixed location that is chosen by police, a detainee's family must be notified within 24 hours unless they cannot be reached. Dissidents detained under this kind of residential surveillance are often put in suburban hotels or apartments, and many have reported being tortured by police. "At this point it is quite difficult to see what the enforcement of [the new law] will be in terms of preventing secret detentions in China," Al Jazeera's Chan said. Political reform The revision to the criminal procedure law was seen as an incremental move and is not seen as leading to major changes in China's authoritarian one-party system, despite occasional calls for political reform. At a news conference on Wednesday following the session's close, Wen Jiabao, China's premier, repeated vague reform calls, saying they were needed to solidify the achievements of three decades of economic growth and prevent a repeat of the chaos that rocked China during the country's so-called Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s. "I know very well that the reform will not be an easy one. The reform will not be able to succeed without the consciousness, the support, the enthusiasm and creativity of our people,'' Wen said. As before, Wen offered no specific proposals, saying reform had to adhere to China's particular national circumstances and proceed in a "step-by-step manner". Chinese leaders often define political reform in terms of boosting administrative efficiency, but even those efforts at streamlining have gained little traction against an entrenched bureaucracy and struggle for influence ahead of this year's generational leadership transition. This year's 10-day congress was held not only amid economic concerns but a challenging leadership transition as President Hu Jintao and the most senior Communist Party leaders begin stepping aside in October, after a decade in power, to make way for a younger generation.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies