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A new publication by the human rights group Safeguard Defenders examines the modern methods of systematic repression of dissidents and opposition activists in China. Since the Communist Party Congress in 2012, the Chinese penal code has allowed the almost unrestricted detention of people who are suspected of „terrorism“ or who are accused of a general offence against state authority. The so-called RSDL (Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location), in name an aggravated form of house arrest, but in reality the officially sanctioned enforced disappearance of thousands of people – completely outside the regular Chinese penal system – is becoming increasingly widespread.
The dry wording is deceptive – RSDL is anything but harmless. The prison conditions are brutal and much harsher than the already difficult conditions in normal Chinese prisons. Those affected disappear without trace or are completely cut off from the world and their families, remaining for years without official charges or court proceedings and without legal assistance. False confessions are extorted through threats and the targeted use of physical violence, such as sleep deprivation, beatings, electric shocks, food deprivation and various forms of psychological torture. The RSDL system is particularly problematic because it aims to normalise and trivialise the punishment of people who are not guilty of any crime other than standing up for respect for human rights and basic democratic values in China.
The editor of this collection, Michael Caster, lets the victims themselves have their say. The twelve testimonies paint a multi-layered and nuanced picture of modern repression. The result is a book that dismays and emphasises that the human rights situation in China remains more than precarious. At the same time, it is an urgent appeal to the world not to lose sight of the reality in which the suffering of millions of Chinese citizens is deliberately concealed behind glittering facades of consumerism and clever public rhetoric.
Perhaps of particular interest to European readers are the experiences of Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin, who was detained in China for three weeks in early 2016 and had to experience the methods of the Chinese police and security apparatus at first hand; and the fate of Gui Minhai, a Swedish-Chinese publisher who was abducted from Thailand by Chinese security forces in 2015. In October 2017, the Swedish government announced Gui’s release, only to learn a few days later that he was still in China, now under so-called „house arrest“. The Chinese propaganda ploy had the desired effect: the calls from the international press fell silent and to this day there are no further details about Gui Minhai’s whereabouts.
The People’s Republic of the Disappeared is dedicated to the young lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who was targeted by the Chinese government in 2015 as part of its official „War on Lawyers“ campaign. Wang has so far refused any form of admission of guilt that would be forced from him and no one knows where he is or what his status is.
The book : Review: The People’s Republic of the Disappeared: Stories from inside China’s System for Enforced Disappearance. Michael Caster, editor, with a foreword by Dr Teng Biao. Safeguard Defenders, 2017 (English and Chinese)