Xi Jinping's war against human rights activists – A new report documents unprecedented persecutions in China

A few days before Xi Jinping's visit to Germany, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) accused the Chinese President of being responsible for unprecedented persecutions of human rights activists. According to a new human rights report which was published by the STP on Wednesday, the situation for China's human rights activists was never as bad during the past 15 years as it is today, under President Xi Jinping. Instead of implementing democratic reforms, the new president decided in favor of more persecutions, intimidations, arbitrary detentions, torture, unfair trials, long prison sentences and more deaths of human rights defenders in detention. The memorandum published by the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) gives the victims of persecution a face by listing 134 individual cases of human rights activists who were targeted by the Chinese State Security since Xi Jinping's coming into power in 2013.

"The tragic death of the imprisoned human rights activist Cao Shunli in March 2014 clearly shows how determined China's leadership is to silence critical human rights activists," said the STP's Asia-consultant, Ulrich Delius. She died after she had been denied adequate medical care, despite her being seriously ill. Cao Shunli had wanted to take part in a human rights training seminar at the United Nations in Switzerland in order to advocate for a more transparent human rights policy in China. Her tragic death is not an isolated case. In December 2013, two Tibetans came to a violent death in Chinese custody within only eleven days: the Buddhist monk Ngawang Jamyang and Kunchok Dhakpa, a committed critic of mining projects. Like Cao Shunli, both of them were obviously tortured, although torture is strictly prohibited under Chinese laws and by the Anti-Torture Act which was ratified by China. The persecution of Tibetan or Uyghur language rights activists has increased significantly – and Mongolian human rights activists are pursued primarily because of their commitment in fighting for more rights for nomadic peoples.

Some of the arrests and indictments were obviously meticulously planned and prepared for months. Thus, the imprisonment of the prominent Uyghur economist Ilham Tohti on January 15, 2014, was set up over a period of at least seven-months. In order to silence the human rights activist, China's State Security had collected allegedly incriminating evidence and harassed or arrested some of the professor's students – a perfidious strategy used by China's leadership to try and back up a long prison sentence or possibly even the death penalty.

There is no justice for the accused human rights defenders, not even in court. Exculpatory witness statements are not admitted, lawyers are being intimidated and are often unable to access files or not allowed to talk to their clients. "If you're in front of a court in China, you're practically condemned already," said Delius. As China's High Court recently published in its annual report, more than 99 percent of all criminal trials in 2013 ended with a guilty verdict.

Here you can download our Human Rights Report (in German).