Three years after UN review, China failing to uphold commitments on human rights defenders

In November 2018, the Government of the People’s Republic of China underwent its third UN human rights peer-review (known as the Universal Periodic Review, or UPR), where it received a number of recommendations from other governments to stop arbitrarily detaining human rights defenders (HRDs), lawyers, and journalists, and to amend laws and practices that unduly restrict fundamental freedoms and close space for civil society. The Chinese government actively accepted the majority of these recommendations, identifying most as ‘already implemented’.

Yet, research conducted by ISHR, Front Line Defenders, Safeguard Defenders, Reporters Without Borders, and The 29 Principles, points to a radically different conclusion: the Chinese government continues to misuse legislation and implement policies that criminalise any form of dissent, and persecute those exercising their basic rights to protect the rights of others.

The report, titled Strategies of Silence: Repression of Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Lawyers and Journalists, draws attention to China’s widespread use of national security and other legal provisions to impose lengthy prison sentences, and forcibly disappear defenders, lawyers and journalists, under ‘Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location.’ Looking at the implementation of relevant UPR recommendations over the past three years, the report points to laws and practices used to disbar human rights lawyers, restrict defenders’ freedom of movement, bypass due process, and censor information, de facto depriving them from any possibility to engage in human rights work.