On 10 April 2018, the human rights organisation SafeguardDefenders published a new report on the use of forced confessions as a propaganda tool in China. We reported on the China-related study The People’sRepublicoftheDisappeared in January.
45 victims recount their experiences – how they were forced under threat and torture to make public, televised „confessions“, often before their actual arrest and before the trial began. From these accounts, a clear picture now emerges of how these false confessions are produced and filmed – with the help of Chinese state television CCTV – in close co-operation with China’s police and security apparatus and the Communist Party.
The forced „confessions“ in political cases – such as those of dissidents and their lawyers – are not only intended for the domestic Chinese audience. Forced confessions have become an important instrument of Chinese foreign policy, as the case of the Swedish-Chinese publisher GuiMinhai clearly shows. Since his arrest in 2015, three alleged „interviews“ with GuiMinhai have already been broadcast on Chinese television, which in turn have been widely publicised in international media.
Such methods have long been familiar from previous dictatorial regimes. In the 1930s, the Soviet Union used large-scale show trials to denounce alleged enemies of the state and intimidate the public. The victims of the National Socialists were accused of „confessions“ in order to accuse them of betraying their own cause or fellow sufferers. The lawyer Fritz Bauer was only recently accused of having signed a „declaration of submission“, thereby admitting that he would henceforth abide by the Nazi rules – because he wanted to be released from the concentration camp. Such accusations are levelled out of naivety, historical ignorance or whatever motivated calculation. F. Bauer was also accused at the time, and is still accused today, of having admitted to being homosexual.
Forced „confessions“ in emergency situations are weaponised out of political ignorance. Or, unfortunately, they are also used against the victims and their relatives for their own or propaganda purposes out of political calculation. This is a subtle method that must be constantly and continuously investigated and requires resistance in order to protect those affected from this abuse.
