The Chinese government has a novel solution to the growing problem of illegal enforced disappearances.
“Legalize” them.
On Aug. 24, Chinese state media announced a proposed change in the Criminal Procedure Law which would allow police to legally detain individuals and hold them incommunicado in secret detention for up to six months without contact with either their families or legal counsel.
The Chinese government is pitching the proposed change as merely an extension of the conditions of the existing practice of residential surveillance, or “soft arrest,” to suspects in state security, terrorism or major corruption cases. “Soft arrest” allows police to confine criminal suspects to their homes for up to six months without trial or due legal process.
But Chinese lawyers, legal scholars and human rights activists warn that the proposal is a cynical fig leaf of legal justification for a wave of enforced disappearances which violate both domestic and international law.
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