[🇨🇳] What makes Chinese politicians, businessmen, military personnel, sportsmen go missing.

[Krishna with Flute]

hahaha. Don't use your sewer life to fantasize about others. thank you.

You know. The Chinese have always looked down upon Indians.

Xi looks down upon you 1.4 billion Chinese. China is a shadow civilization of India.

 

[Jiangnan]

Xi loos down upon you 1.4 billion Chinese. China is a shadow civilization of India.

Please stop boasting... Boasting is not accepted in our Confucian philosophy.

This is not India.

 

[Krishna with Flute]

Please stop boasting... Boasting is not accepted in our Confucian philosophy.

This is not India.

That is what your fellow Chinese say. I have opened a thread on same.

 

[Jiangnan]

That is what your fellow Chinese say. I have opened a thread on same.

Um... I don't care.

 

[Krishna with Flute]

Hundreds Forcibly Disappeared in China​

August 29, 2024


The Chinese Government Must Stop Making Rights Defenders and Critics Vanish

(Chinese Human Rights Defenders – August 29, 2024) A young activist named Fang Yirong unfurled a banner on a footbridge with the message “Equality, not privilege. Freedom, not control. Dignity not lies” on July 30, 2024. Days later police put him under criminal detention. Mr. Fang’s act in a small city in China’s south-central Hunan province unmistakably replicated the scene on a Beijing bridge in 2022, where the now iconic protester Peng Lifa unfurled his banner with similar demands. Mr. Peng has vanished for two years since policemen wrestled him into a vehicle on that bridge.

Chinese Authorities are using enforced or involuntary disappearances as a strategy to strike terror in the hearts of the population, intimidating anyone who challenges the government online or in the streets, in the nation’s Capital or the hinterlands. The UN documented 168 outstanding cases of forced disappearances in China as of one year ago. At least 30 dissidents are currently known to have disappeared, according to CHRD records since 2019.

On the occasion of the International Day of the Disappeared, August 30, CHRD urges the Chinese government to stop the reprehensible practice of enforced disappearances, which is strictly prohibited under international law, and to sign and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (ICPPED).

Despite years of concerns raised by human rights organizations and United Nations experts, Xi Jinping’s government’s use of enforced disappearances remains widespread. It is often wielded against human rights defenders (HRDs), dissidents, and members of ethnic and religious communities. Even government officials and Communist Party members are not spared.

CHRD has documented, in its Prisoner of Conscience database since 2019, 33 active cases of individuals who are currently in forced disappearance, including nine individuals forced into disappearance in 2024, of which three are women. The victims include individuals taken away around the June Fourth anniversaries, Catholic priests, Falun Gong adherents, and petitioners who tried to lodge grievances against officials with the government. Due to the nature of the rights violation, sometimes a disappearance is not even known till years later, as is the case of a Tibetan woman who went online by using VPN to pass the Great Firewall in 2016 and whose disappearance only became known this year.

The Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID) has 168 outstanding cases in China documented under its humanitarian mechanism as of May 2023. Due to the nature of the crime, it is likely that the actual numbers of cases are considerably higher than those CHRD and the WGEID have documented.

CHRD calls for renewed efforts and attention from the international community. UN Member States, convening in Geneva for the 57th Human Rights Council session, must take actions to hold the Chinese government accountable for its UN Charter-based obligations, support victims and their families, and press the government to sign and ratify the ICPPED.

Vanished without a Trace

Under international law, an enforced disappearance is the arrest, detention, or abduction by State agents or its proxies, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or the concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places them outside the protection of the law. It is a serious human rights violation that leaves victims highly vulnerable to torture and ill-treatment, and may rise to a crime against humanity when committed as part of a “widespread or systematic attack directed at any civilian population.” The UN Secretary General describes enforced disappearances as a state “strategy to spread terror within the society.”

One victim of enforced disappearance is the human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been forcibly disappeared for seven years. Gao went missing on August 13, 2017, after he attempted to escape home confinement. Since 2006, Gao had been imprisoned and repeatedly disappeared and tortured. The Chinese authorities have told the UN that he is not detained but offered no explanation of his whereabouts, other than confirming in 2017 that his family reported him missing and police opened a case. His wife Geng He, who fled to the US with their daughter, continues to campaign for the government to reveal his whereabouts, even though she is not sure if he is still alive.

Chinese authorities have systematically forcibly disappeared Tibetans, Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima has been missing since 1995 after the Dalai Lama named the then-six-year-old the 11th Panchen Lama, the second highest religious authority in Tibetan Buddhism. The government indicated in a response to the UN in 2020 that he is still alive. UN independent human rights experts have also raised continued concerns about enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention of Tibetan environmental defenders and cultural and religious figures, who they assessed were likely victims of a “pattern of religious persecution in the Tibetan autonomous region by Chinese authorities.”

In Xinjiang, mass enforced disappearances since 2017 has been an ongoing nightmare for families, who have no information on the fate of their family members swept up in the government’s campaign that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in 2022 may amount to crimes against humanity. Prominent Uyghur scholar Rahile Dawut was reported to have been sentenced to life imprisonment for “separatism,” according to news that emerged in September 2023, but her daughter Akeda Pulati has no information on her whereabouts, conditions, or any legal proceedings. She hasn’t been able to speak to her mother since December 2017, shortly before Dawut vanished.

“A Strategy to Spread Terror” in Transnational Repression

The Chinese government has instrumentalized enforced disappearances in its transnational repression campaign, targeting HRDs, dissidents and Uyghurs who have fled or reside overseas. In July 2023, Laos police detained Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei as he tried to flee China for the United States to reunite with his family. He disappeared from Laos custody only to reappear in Chinese police custody months later. According his wife Zhang Chunxiao’s update in July 2024, after a month in detention, Lu was released on bail and forced to reside in a designated location, where he is monitored around the clock. He may be released from monitored residence in October, or face trial and possibly prison.

China has a history of abducting its critics abroad and sentencing them to lengthy prison terms back home. In 2015, Swedish writer Gui Minhai was kidnapped from Thailand and then reappeared in China three months later. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison in February 2020, and there has been no information on his conditions or whereabouts since then. In 2002, democracy activist and US permanent resident Wang Bingzhang was kidnapped from Vietnam and then sentenced to life imprisonment in China.

The Chinese government has also sought unlawful returns of Uyghurs who fled repression and discrimination. A group of 43 Uyghur refugees have been detained in Thailand since 2014 in conditions that led to several deaths in custody. They were part of a larger group of Uyghurs who fled and of whom 109 men, women and children were deported to China in July 2015 and have since disappeared, the likely fate awaiting any of the group of 43 if they are forcibly returned.

Incompatible with International Human Rights Law and Chinese Law

China’s Criminal Procedure Law (CPL) and related regulations establish processes around deprivation of liberty, such as requiring police to notify families within 24 hours and permitting visits with lawyers, with an understanding of the legal necessity of such protections to prevent the conditions of enforced disappearances. However, such provisions are regularly violated in practice, as described above, but also in law when it comes to the nebulous concept of “national security”.

The CPL enshrines the “residential surveillance in a designated location” (RSDL) system, a legalized practice of secret detention for six months when an individual is charged with a national security and other crimes. Torture and other ill-treatment is rife under RSDL. UN experts have urged China since 2018 to repeal RSDL because it is a form of enforced disappearance and not compatible with international human rights law. According to the Chinese government data, authorities have put an estimated 23,700 people under RSDL between 2013 and 2021, which, despite being such a large number, is believed to be an undercount.

Another legalized form of enforced disappearance in China is the liuzhi system of “retention in custody” for investigating and discipling Communist Party members and government officials. The practice of enforced disappearance is so widespread that in 2023, five current or former senior government ministers or officials were disappeared, believed to be subject to liuzhi though CHRD is unable to confirm.

While China has not signed or ratified the ICPPED, by systematically practicing enforced disappearance, it has violated the Convention against Torture, which it is party to, and customary international law, including the Declaration on the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1992.

By committing enforced disappearances, the Chinese government also violates the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which China has signed though not ratified. Under its international obligations, the government must prevent enforced disappearances, investigate cases, and hold those responsible accountable.

Let’s Increase the Political Cost for Perpetrators of Enforced Disappearances

In January 2024, during China’s fourth Universal Periodic Review (UPR) at the Human Rights Council, seven countries made recommendations to the Chinese government to ratify the Convention on Enforced Disappearances or end the practice, including Argentina, Lesotho, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Samoa, Japan, and Canada. More governments voiced concerns about forced disappearance in this round of UPR than in the last (third) round in 2018, when only three states made such recommendations. In addition, six states specifically called on the Chinese government to abolish RSDL, compared to only two in 2018. In response, Beijing vehemently denied its uses of enforced disappearances.

CHRD is heartened that there is more focused international attention on the issue of enforced disappearances and RSDL during the recent UPR, including from a number of Global South countries. However, states must follow up with concrete actions on ending enforced disappearance.

To help put an end to the scourge of enforced disappearances used by Chinese authorities, the international community, including governments of UN member states, should:

• Publicly and privately raise individual cases of enforced disappearance and call for their release in bilateral and multilateral dealings with Chinese officials, including Gao Zhisheng, Peng Lifa, Rahile Dawut and others, whose families are desperately in need of information and contact with their loved ones;
• Urge the Chinese government to allow visits from the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance in China. WGEID’s visit request was first made in 2013 and repeatedly renewed with no positive response from the government to date. Since the Chinese government insisted during the 4th UPR that “there is no such issue of ‘enforced disappearances’,” it must then lift the decade-long blockade to visits by WGEID and several other Special Procedures;
• Call on the Chinese government to submit its state report to the Committee against Torture (CAT), which is almost five years overdue, including providing information on the conditions in secret detention and RSDL, and providing concrete legislative measures and data about good-faith implementation of previous CAT recommendations concerning these practices;
• Follow up with China’s implementation on UPR recommendations about enforced disappearances, requesting concrete data and information from Chinese authorities on any claims of progress, such as the number of individuals released from secret detention, number of investigations of alleged cases of enforced disappearance, number of officials held responsible, proposed amendments to legislation, and concrete steps taken toward signing and ratifying the ICPPED;
• Push the High Commissioner for Human Rights to report on the Chinese government’s progress – or failure – to implement the recommendation from his Office’s assessment on Xinjiang, including clarifying the whereabouts about missing individuals, establishing safe channels of communication and travel for families; and for the High Commissioner to report on any efforts to establish an independent mechanism to locate and free missing and wrongfully detained family members.
• Follow the recommendation of over 50 UN independent human rights experts to hold a Human Rights Council special session on China, and establish an impartial and independent UN mechanism, like a Special Rapporteur, to monitor the human rights situation in China.

For more information, contact:

Renee Xia, Executive Director

Shane Yi, Researcher

Contact@NCHRD.org

Hundreds Forcibly Disappeared in China | Chinese Human Rights Defenders

www.nchrd.org

 

[Krishna with Flute]

Thousands of people being 'disappeared' in China for criticising the Communist Party or being too rich and powerful​

By Shannon Molloy
news.com.au·
6 Oct, 2021 03:37 AM6 mins to read

---

Save
Share

Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen on a big screen showing the Chinese state television CCTV evening news. Photo / Getty Images

Thousands of people have been snatched from their homes and off the street by Chinese authorities as part of a secretive and sinister program to "disappear" those who fall foul of the regime.

It doesn't matter how rich and powerful a person is, nor how anonymous and low-profile they are - anyone who dares criticise the Communist Party or not espouse its values can be targeted.

The most minor of indiscretions, like uttering a frustrated remark in the street that's overheard, to serious missteps, like speaking out about government policy at a business conference, are not tolerated.

Jack Ma. Photo / Getty Images
One of the most high-profile victims, billionaire tech guru Jack Ma, founder of the mammoth Alibaba Group – China's version of eBay, Amazon and PayPal, rolled into one – spoke at the Bund Summit in Shanghai in October 2020 and expressed frustration with banking regulation.



He was summoned to Beijing to meet CCP officials, who then pulled the plug on the IPO launch of his Ant Group fintech, which would have been one of the biggest stock market launches in history.

Ma then vanished, while his company was hit with billions of dollars in fines and forcibly restructured and scaled down.

When the billionaire eventually re-emerged more than three months later, it was in a brief video released by the CCP showing him at a rural school espousing the values of charity and nation-building, in which he referred to having been "re-educated".

Since early 2021, there have only been a handful of vague sightings of Ma, whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Advertisement

Increasingly of late, merely being wealthy and influential can be cause for scrutiny by Beijing, with authorities concerned about "celebrity" being a kind of creeping Western ideology.

Zhao Wei is a billionaire actress and singer who was suddenly erased from Chinese social media and streaming platforms, for no apparent crime at all – just for being popular.

Zhao Wei was essentially erased in China for no apparent crime other than being popular and wealthy. Photo / Getty Images
The CCP has since banned music charts that indicate and promote popularity, and imposed limits on how often children and teenagers can play video games.

It's part of efforts to move away from the recent era where fame and fortune are desired, and towards a goal of "common prosperity".

​

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business...-business-to-heel/J57P5NAUXFIVJESFRTBYE5VC6Y/
As well as the powerful, ordinary citizens who step out of line are also at risk of being snatched from their homes and whisked away to undisclosed locations.

The human rights group Safeguard Defenders said on average at least 20 people a day are "disappeared" by authorities across China for offending or upsetting the system and its gatekeepers.

Victims have no contact with loved ones and no access to lawyers during their detention.

"There is virtually no oversight, torture is common," Safeguard Defenders said. "This is mass state-sanctioned kidnapping (that constitutes the) widespread and systematic use of enforced disappearances."

President Xi Jinping was the architect of laws that gave authorities extraordinary and chilling powers to indefinitely detain people who fall foul of the regime, stripping them of basic rights.

In a 2020 report, Safeguard Defenders estimated that some 30,000 people have been "disappeared" since 2013 when the laws were enacted.


Many are held for a few days or a few weeks, some for months – or longer. A few never come back at all.

Fang Bin, a businessman in the city of Wuhan, posted videos to social media showing a local hospital overflowing with Covid-19 patients and victims in the early weeks of the pandemic.

He was detained and hasn't been seen since.

Often, the disappeared who return must then face court for dubious "crimes" and are swiftly found guilty and sentenced to yet more punishment.

Zhang Zhan, a journalist who travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to interview locals about how they were coping in lockdown, also shared videos to social media about her observations.

Journalist Zhang Zhan also vanished, and was then jailed, for reporting on the outbreak of covid in Wuhan. Photo / YouTube
In one, Zhang mentioned that Wuhan locals seemed more scared of the government than the virus, which seemingly landed her in hot water.


She was detained and not heard from for several months, before being sentenced in December to four years in jail for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble".

It's not just Chinese citizens who are targeted, with a number of foreigners also caught up in Beijing's barbaric reaction to perceived criticism and its apparent political retaliation.

An open letter signed by friends and colleagues of the Australian journalist Cheng Lei, detained in China on August 13, 2020 and not heard from since, has expressed grave concerns for her wellbeing.

Cheng, the face of China Global Television Network's English language news service, was growing in popularity with viewers, before she was abruptly arrested on suspicion of "illegally supplying state secrets overseas".

"We are confident she has done nothing wrong …" the letter, produced with the support of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, reads.

The MEAA and Cheng's supporters say: "We are concerned about the chilling effect her arrest has on the practice of journalism, which has never been more critical.


"Cheng Lei has, in her career, earned respect of her colleagues for her straightforward business reporting."

Cheng's two children, aged nine and 11, are in Australia, now in the care of family members.

"They have been separated from her for well over a year now and she's had no contact with them since her arrest," the letter reads.

Cheng Lei. Photo / Getty Images
The status of her case is unclear, as is her current location.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne's office did not respond to a request for comment.

Another Australian, author, blogger and political commentator, Yang Hengjun, is currently awaiting a verdict in his espionage trial.


During his one-day hearing, held in secret, Dr Yang insisted he was "100 per cent innocent" and revealed he had been subjected to 300 interrogations by authorities and had been tortured.

He has been held in detention since January 2019, when he was arrested after arriving in Guangzhou with his wife and child.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen on a big screen showing the Chinese state television CCTV evening news. Photo / Getty Images
These kind of "disappeared" do not include the estimated 1.5 million Uighurs imprisoned throughout a vast network of camps across China.

The persecution of the Muslim minority has been the subject of international condemnation for years, as well as various independent inquiries that liken it to genocide.

Thousands missing in China's brutal purge

Thousands of people have been snatched and 'disappeared' by authorities in China.

www.nzherald.co.nz