China: UN experts alarmed as human rights lawyers keep disappearing
GENEVA: A group of independent UN rights experts said on Monday they were “gravely concerned” about the welfare of three human rights lawyers “forcibly disappeared” by Chinese authorities shortly after their arrests last December.
Ding Jiaxi, a prominent Beijing-based disbarred lawyer, previously jailed for protesting against official corruption, and lawyers Zhang Zhongshun and Dai Zhenya have been held since late last year in so-called “residential surveillance in a designated location” (RSDL).
That is a form of extrajudicial detention l asting up t o si x months where detainees are denied access to lawyers and relatives, and are vulnerable to torture and coercion, according to activists.
The three were among more than a dozen lawyers and activists who were detained or went missing in the final days of 2019 in what rights groups have said was a crackdown on participants of a private democracy gathering.
Five UN experts in areas including freedom of opinion and expression, and torture, as well as the UN Working Group on Enforced and Involuntary Disappearances, warned there were “parallels between this recent crackdown and previous attempts to silence dissenting voices in China”.
Nine other lawyers and activists who attended the informal weekend gathering in the city of Xiamen “have also been summoned f or questi oni ng or detained in what has been a cross-provincial operation led by a special taskforce of Yantai City police,” the experts pointed out.
The experts, who are appointed by the UN but who do not speak on behalf of the body, expressed alarm at the use of RSDL in China, insisting it constituted a form of enforced disappearance.