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Protecting the human rights of criminal suspects in lockup
By Li Huizi |
June 1, 2009, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
WANG Guangwei (not his real name), clad in white shirt and black trousers provided by his family, chatted with a Xinhua reporter in a small city in the northwest.
It was a pretty normal scene, save that Wang was wearing handcuffs. No police were present at the interview in a meeting room in Liaoyuan Detention Center, in a city in the northeast rustbelt well known for scenic Mt Changbaishan.
Sporting a crew cut, the 56-year-old said he cherished the opportunity to speak to "people from outside."
The detention center in Jilin Province challenges the deep-rooted belief that such facilities are dim and humid, with men in custody shaven bald and wearing identical yellow waistcoats.
In China, police put suspects in pre-trial detention centers. If a court convicts them, they are transferred to prison.
Wang's quarters, shared by 20 detainees, faces south and catches sun when the weather is fine. About 45-square-meters, the ward has two wide beds, each six meters long and two meters wide, with heating underneath, as northeastern China's winter is bitter cold. Each bed can hold 10 people.
Detention center officials said the cell conditions were "first-class." It has 22 similar cells, each of which can hold 20 detainees, in line with the law.
The law says that the per capita area of the room in detention centers should not be smaller than two square meters. The 45-square-meter room accommodating 20 people meets the standard.
Detainees here rise at 6am and go to bed at 9pm. They have three meals a day, with breakfast of porridge, steamed buns and pickles, and the other two meals containing cabbage, carrots, potatoes or leeks.
On festival occasions, such as the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival in September or October, detainees are given moon cakes or better food.
The government allocates each inmate 120 yuan (US$17.60) per month as meal expenses. Relatives can order a "special meal box" costing 30 yuan each for inmates.
Model centers
Wang and his fellow inmates can have more than one hour of outdoor activities each day, and watch China's Central Television (CCTV)'s news broadcast at 7pm and CCTV's China Legal Reports at 8pm.
On weekends, they must watch court trial videos or "The Confessions," a legal feature program about crime, on CCTV.
Wang was accused of drug trafficking and was brought here by the police three months ago. The center, three kilometers from downtown, covers 50,000 square meters. It was among the country's first batch of "model detention centers" in the 1990s, a title which it lost later because of poor funding by the local government.
Zheng Lizhong, the detention center's director, said since the center was set up in 1991, there have been no reports of deaths of inmates caused by violence.
Wang said he was uncomfortable with the environment and felt agitated, oppressed and nervous during his first two weeks here, but he felt better and calm after a month.
"The space is quite small, with so many people living together, so people cannot be in a good mood and fighting is inevitable," he said.
Violence in China's detention centers has caused several deaths this year. The detention center's political commissar, Hong Meidong, said the custodial police have a duty to chat with detainees.
The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-10), the country's first working plan on human rights, issued last month by the Information Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, highlighted goals to safeguard detainees' rights and treatment.
Corporal punishment, abuse, insulting detainees or the extraction of confessions by torture will be strictly prohibited, according to the document.
"All interrogation rooms must impose a physical separation between detainees and interrogators," it stated, adding that a system for conducting physical examinations of detainees before and after an interrogation will be introduced.
In Liaoyuan Detention Center's interrogation rooms, both interrogators and suspects have fixed seats, with a barrier in between.
Director Zheng said interrogators and detainees could not touch each other, which "effectively prevents torture."
Humane treatment
Professor Hurst Hannum at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in the United States who is also a legal consultant to the United Nations, responded in a Xinhua e-mail interview: "Human rights are often measured by the degree to which the least powerful members of society are treated fairly in every society, and criminal suspects (like many minorities) have little public support."
A spate of unnatural deaths in detention centers across the nation has shocked the Chinese public in recent months.
The death of 24-year-old Li Qiaoming at the Jinning detention house, in south China's Yunnan Province, in February was the first case brought to public attention. An investigation determined that other inmates had beaten Li to death.
On March 8, 19-year-old Xu Gengrong died in a detention center in west China's Shaanxi Province, on the seventh day of his detention.
On March 27, 50-year-old Li Wenyan allegedly died in the middle of a "nightmare," according to the head of a detention department in Jiujiang of eastern Jiangxi Province.
Professor Hannum said: "Protecting the human rights of suspects is linked to greater respect for human rights throughout society. Fair trials and humane treatment are essential if the rule of law is to become anything more than a slogan."
(The author is a writer at Xinhua news agency.)
It was a pretty normal scene, save that Wang was wearing handcuffs. No police were present at the interview in a meeting room in Liaoyuan Detention Center, in a city in the northeast rustbelt well known for scenic Mt Changbaishan.
Sporting a crew cut, the 56-year-old said he cherished the opportunity to speak to "people from outside."
The detention center in Jilin Province challenges the deep-rooted belief that such facilities are dim and humid, with men in custody shaven bald and wearing identical yellow waistcoats.
In China, police put suspects in pre-trial detention centers. If a court convicts them, they are transferred to prison.
Wang's quarters, shared by 20 detainees, faces south and catches sun when the weather is fine. About 45-square-meters, the ward has two wide beds, each six meters long and two meters wide, with heating underneath, as northeastern China's winter is bitter cold. Each bed can hold 10 people.
Detention center officials said the cell conditions were "first-class." It has 22 similar cells, each of which can hold 20 detainees, in line with the law.
The law says that the per capita area of the room in detention centers should not be smaller than two square meters. The 45-square-meter room accommodating 20 people meets the standard.
Detainees here rise at 6am and go to bed at 9pm. They have three meals a day, with breakfast of porridge, steamed buns and pickles, and the other two meals containing cabbage, carrots, potatoes or leeks.
On festival occasions, such as the traditional Mid-Autumn Festival in September or October, detainees are given moon cakes or better food.
The government allocates each inmate 120 yuan (US$17.60) per month as meal expenses. Relatives can order a "special meal box" costing 30 yuan each for inmates.
Model centers
Wang and his fellow inmates can have more than one hour of outdoor activities each day, and watch China's Central Television (CCTV)'s news broadcast at 7pm and CCTV's China Legal Reports at 8pm.
On weekends, they must watch court trial videos or "The Confessions," a legal feature program about crime, on CCTV.
Wang was accused of drug trafficking and was brought here by the police three months ago. The center, three kilometers from downtown, covers 50,000 square meters. It was among the country's first batch of "model detention centers" in the 1990s, a title which it lost later because of poor funding by the local government.
Zheng Lizhong, the detention center's director, said since the center was set up in 1991, there have been no reports of deaths of inmates caused by violence.
Wang said he was uncomfortable with the environment and felt agitated, oppressed and nervous during his first two weeks here, but he felt better and calm after a month.
"The space is quite small, with so many people living together, so people cannot be in a good mood and fighting is inevitable," he said.
Violence in China's detention centers has caused several deaths this year. The detention center's political commissar, Hong Meidong, said the custodial police have a duty to chat with detainees.
The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-10), the country's first working plan on human rights, issued last month by the Information Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, highlighted goals to safeguard detainees' rights and treatment.
Corporal punishment, abuse, insulting detainees or the extraction of confessions by torture will be strictly prohibited, according to the document.
"All interrogation rooms must impose a physical separation between detainees and interrogators," it stated, adding that a system for conducting physical examinations of detainees before and after an interrogation will be introduced.
In Liaoyuan Detention Center's interrogation rooms, both interrogators and suspects have fixed seats, with a barrier in between.
Director Zheng said interrogators and detainees could not touch each other, which "effectively prevents torture."
Humane treatment
Professor Hurst Hannum at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in the United States who is also a legal consultant to the United Nations, responded in a Xinhua e-mail interview: "Human rights are often measured by the degree to which the least powerful members of society are treated fairly in every society, and criminal suspects (like many minorities) have little public support."
A spate of unnatural deaths in detention centers across the nation has shocked the Chinese public in recent months.
The death of 24-year-old Li Qiaoming at the Jinning detention house, in south China's Yunnan Province, in February was the first case brought to public attention. An investigation determined that other inmates had beaten Li to death.
On March 8, 19-year-old Xu Gengrong died in a detention center in west China's Shaanxi Province, on the seventh day of his detention.
On March 27, 50-year-old Li Wenyan allegedly died in the middle of a "nightmare," according to the head of a detention department in Jiujiang of eastern Jiangxi Province.
Professor Hannum said: "Protecting the human rights of suspects is linked to greater respect for human rights throughout society. Fair trials and humane treatment are essential if the rule of law is to become anything more than a slogan."
(The author is a writer at Xinhua news agency.)
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