"China Time" in Hamburg – Celebrating the partnership with Shanghai (November 4)

On occasion of the beginning of the "China Time" in Hamburg, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) and Hamburg's regional group of the Tibet Initiative Deutschland e.V. (TID) demand that the Hanseatic city must show more commitment concerning the human rights situation in its Chinese partner city Shanghai. The human rights organizations published a 36-page report on human rights violations committed in Shanghai in the years 2013/2014. The report documents 187 individual cases of arbitrarily detained human rights activists, petitioners and Falun Gong practitioners. It also provides information on the cases of auxiliary Bishop Thaddeus Ma Daqing, who was placed under house arrest for 28 months, of several professors whose teaching licenses were revoked, and lawyers who lost their law licenses because they defended dissidents in court.

"A city like Hamburg, which is committed to women's rights, cannot simply ignore the fact that three quarters of all victims of the ongoing serious human rights violations in Shanghai are women," said Ulrich Delius, the STP's China-expert. "Women over 60 make up the largest group among the pursued civil rights activists, the petitioners and the persecuted religious believers. It is shocking that the Chinese state preaches more respect for elderly people while senior citizens become targets of torture and repression at the same time."

Petitioners and supporters of the persecuted Falun Gong meditation movement are increasingly detained in "brainwashing centers" instead of the officially abolished labor camps. According to Helmut Steckel of the TID, there is systematic torture in these centers as well as in police wards and prisons – despite the official torture ban. What is most shocking is the extent to which psychiatric hospitals are misused to persecute dissidents.

This is the third time that the Society for Threatened Peoples and the regional group of the Tibet Initiative Deutschland e.V. in Hamburg publish a comprehensive report on the situation of human rights in the partner city – following the years 2008 and 2010. "Shanghai is a cosmopolitan city, but it is not a land of bliss," said Delius. "As in any other city in China, human rights are being trampled on. Hamburg's senate must take this into account too: The problematic human rights situation should not be ignored in the partnership."

Human Rights Report Shanghai

You can download the report (in German) here.

Ulrich Delius, head of STP's Asia department, is available for further questions: +49 551 49906 27 or asien@gfbv.de.