A recent article from China Daily, Law to Ensure Human Rights, discusses a recently passed amendment to China's Criminal Procedure Law. Basically, the amendment includes provisions intended to ensure certain protections for people from police abuse. For example, while a previous draft allowed police to arrest suspects or place them under surveillance without notifying their families, this was modified in the latest draft which requires law enforcement to inform a criminal suspect's family within 24 hours after arrest or detention. The revisions were largely due to public disapproval due to fear of potential abuses by law enforcement.
There is a potentially broad loophole built into the amendment since, in cases of detention, law enforcement authorities do not have to notify family if the case is related to state security or terrorism, and its believed that informing the family might impede the investigation. China has been known to use very broad and ambiguous ideas of "state security" as justification for ignoring laws that would otherwise protect individuals accused of criminal acts. It also remains to be seen to what degree the increased protections will be enforced.
Another important change is that forced confession obtained by torture is prohibited in the amendment. China has a long history of using various forms of torture to obtain confessions from people suspected of crimes. An obvious flaw, in addition to human rights concerns, is that torture can result in people confessing to crimes they did not commit. A recent example involves a Chinese farmer, Zhao Zuohai, who was released from prison in 2010 after it was found out that he did not commit a murder he was convicted of 10 years earlier. In 1999, Zhao was involved in a hatchet fight with a neighbor who then disappeared. A year later, a headless body was found nearby and Zhao was arrested for murder. Zhao confessed, according to him, due to torture during police interrogation (allegedly police forced him to drink chili water and set off firecrackers over his head). Ten years later, the alleged victim reappeared in living form, claiming that he fled because he was afraid he might have killed Zhao.
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| Zhao was ultimately freed and paid 650,000 yuan (about U.S. $103,000) in compensation |
Although some critics are skeptical of the amendment's provisions and regardless of enforcement issues, the amendment seems to be at least a somewhat positive step in an attempt to increase human rights protection as guaranteed in China's Constitution. Of course, Chinese notions of human rights are in some ways quite different than Western views and its unrealistic to expect China to completely follow Western legal ideals.
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