Promises Unfulfilled: An Assessment of China’s National Human Rights Action Plan

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Li Xuemei, wife of Zhao Lianhai, is dragged away by police officers after being barred from the trial of her husband Zhao Lianhai, an activist on behalf of victims of melamine-tainted milk, in Beijing on Tuesday, March 30, 2010. A Beijing court sentenced Zhao to a two-and-a-half-year prison term on November 10, 2010, on charges of “provoking disorder” in retaliation for his efforts to assist the thousands who became ill in one of China’s worst food safety scandals. It was reported that Zhao’s personal blog in December 2010 stated he was released on medical parole and contained an apology, but his release from custody has not been independently confirmed. © 2010 AP Photo/Andy Wang 178389
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A survivor of the massive May 2008 Sichuan earthquake mourns relatives at ruins in Beichuan county, May 12, 2009. Chinese government officials and members of the security forces and their agents have pursued a relentless campaign of harassment and intimidation against relatives of the quake victims and activists who have questioned the government’s responsibility for the earthquake’s death toll. Parents of the quake’s thousands of child victims who have demanded an official investigation of the collapse of thousands of schools have been particular targets of official efforts at intimidation. © 2009 Reuters 178389
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Farmer Xiang Wen Jiang stands in front of his house surrounded by newly constructed residential buildings in the town of Gushi, Henan Province, March 28, 2010. Local authorities have tried to evict Xiang from his home, who is refusing to move until he is properly compensated. Although the NHRAP reiterates the government’s commitment to the right to adequate housing embodied in both China’s Constitution and international instruments, it provides no concrete measures to counter the widespread, rampant abuse of such rights through government-sponsored property disputes, forced evictions, and demolitions. © 2010 Reuters 178389
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Liu Xia, the wife of Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo, holds a photo of Liu Xiaobo during an interview in Beijing on October 3, 2010. The Chinese government responded to the October 8, 2010, announcement of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo with a wave of house arrests of his family, friends, and supporters, including Liu Xia. At this writing, Liu Xia remained under house arrest with her phone and internet connections severed by the authorities. © 2010 Reuters 178389
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Workers on strike gather at the front gate of Atsumitec Co. plant in Foshan, in China’s southern Guangdong province, on July 20, 2010. Chinese law forbids workers from organizing and forming trade unions outside of the state-affiliated All China Federation of Trade Unions. © 2010 Reuters 178389
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A hemophiliac wearing a face mask bearing the words “Blood products infect us with AIDS” cries while she with others take center stage during an AIDS awareness event on World AIDS Day held at Beijing’s south railway station on December 1, 2009. The Chinese government harasses individuals and civil society organizations devoted to protecting the rights of China’s HIV-AIDS population. Gao Yaojie, an activist physician who helped expose the government’s cover-up of an HIV-AIDS epidemic in central Henan province in the 1990s, went into self-imposed exile in the United States in August 2009 after “constant harassment” by authorities seeking to obstruct her efforts to document the scandal. In May 2010, Wan Yanhai, China’s leading activist for sexual minorities and people with HIV-AIDS, followed Gao into self-imposed exile. He explained that relentless persecution by police and government officials had seriously disrupted his work at the nongovernmental organization Aizhixing Institute. © 2009 AP Photo 178389
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Two Chinese children—among hundreds of thousands believed to have lead poisoning—show their elevated blood lead test reports in a village in central China in 2009. Lead poisoning can cause permanent physical and mental disabilities in children, but Human Rights Watch research has found that the Chinese government has inadequately addressed the polluting factories causing exposure to lead and failed to provide the treatment needed to mitigate its effects. © 2009 Imaginechina via AP Images 178389
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Tibetans walk past heavily armed police officers manning a checkpoint into the Tibetan quarters in Chengdu, in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, March 13, 2009. Human Rights Watch has documented the use of torture to gain information and confessions from Tibetans detained over the past two years in the aftermath of protests which broke out in the Tibetan city of Lhasa and elsewhere on the Tibetan plateau in March 2008. © 2009 AP Photo 178389
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A Uighur woman protests before a group of paramilitary police as journalists visit Urumqi on July 7, 2009. Human Rights Watch has documented a widespread campaign of enforced disappearances by security forces of dozens of ethnic Uighur men and boys which coincided with riots in Urumqi on July 5-7, 2009, many of whose whereabouts or reasons for detention are still unknown. © 2009 AP Photo 178389
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Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer, in a meeting with the media on April 7, 2010. This was his first public appearance since resurfacing on April 6, 2010, after being “disappeared” by security forces in February 2009. During that April appearance, Gao confirmed that he had been in detention, but he then vanished again days later, apparently back into official custody. Gao’s location, health, and circumstances remain unknown. © 2010 AP Photo 178389
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A Chinese Google user presents flowers outside of Google China headquarters in Beijing, Friday, Jan. 15, 2010. Google ended five years of complicity with Chinese censors in March 2010 when it began automatically diverting all searches on its domestic Google.cn web site to the company’s uncensored Hong Kong site. All other internet search engine firms doing business in China, including Yahoo China and Microsoft’s Bing, self-censor user searches for any content deemed “sensitive” by the Chinese government. In July 2010, the Chinese government renewed Google’s search engine license, despite its decision to stop censoring. © 2010 AP Photo 178389
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A Chinese petitioner being detained by police on March 14, 2010, after she tried to protest outside the Great Hall of the People after the end of the National People’s Congress held in Beijing. The NHRAP states that mechanisms to allow petitioners to file complaints “will be broadened and remain unblocked” but petitioners continued to be incarcerated in secret, illegal detention facilities known as “black jails” throughout the 2009-2010 NHRAP period. Chinese rights activists estimate that thousands of petitioners are ensnared annually in black jails in Beijing alone. © 2010 AP Photo 178389
In April 2009, the Chinese government unveiled its first-ever National Human Rights Action Plan (2009-2010), in which it recommitted to existing human rights protections in domestic and international law. However, at the same time the Chinese government has touted its commitment to human rights through this document, it has also continued to egregiously violate those obligations, most notably through its persecution of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. An overview of the deterioration in China’s overall human rights environment.
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