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Forced Confession, China, Media, Human Rights, Criminal Justice

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Forced Confession, China, Media, Human Rights, Criminal Justice SAFEGUARD DEFENDERS | APRIL 2018 1 Copyright 2018 Safeguard Defenders Cover illustration Copyright 2018 MELTAN Additional art work by MELTAN and Alexey Garmash Published in the United States by Safeguard Defenders All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without expressed written consent of the publisher/author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Also available as full colour 8.5”x11” (A4) book: ISBN: 978-1983743375 Keywords: Forced Confession, China, Media, Human Rights, Criminal Justice https://SafeguardDefenders.com SAFEGUARD DEFENDERS | APRIL 2018 2 SAFEGUARD DEFENDERS | APRIL 2018 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY “It is difficult to explain, why I went on television, what kind of mental process I had gone through. And until now, I still feel it is difficult to describe, I don’t know how to talk about it. Actually, I do want to talk about it in detail, but I always feel sad. I am still struggling to get over the trauma. But I know I should speak out, even if just in this simple way.” Wang Yu, human rights lawyer The use of televised confessions of detainees by the Chinese state came to the world’s attention in July 2013 when the first high-profile confession was aired: Liang Hong, a top executive for British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline in China, appeared on state broadcaster CCTV and confessed to bribery. Despite violating both domestic law on the right to a fair trial and many international human rights protections, since then scores of high- profile forced confessions, including many by foreign nationals, have been broadcast on Chinese state television and, in some cases, by Hong Kong media. Scripted and Staged: Behind the scenes of China’s forced TV confessions analyses the recordings of 45 confessions broadcast between 2013 and 2018 and includes interviews with a dozen people or members of their family, who Chinese police had made, or had tried to make, give a confession on camera. These confessions are made before trial and often even before formal arrest. This report will show that China’s televised confessions are routinely forced and extracted through threats, torture, and fear; that police routinely dictate and direct the confessions; and that there is strong evidence that in certain cases they are used as tools of propaganda for both domestic audiences and as part of China’s foreign policy. Every single interviewee for this study said their interrogators had forced them to confess. Further, the fact that it would be broadcast on television was generally concealed from them. In one of the worst cases of deception, British investigator Peter Humphrey had agreed to meet with newspaper reporters only but was then drugged and locked into a cage for state television to film a confession. Police regularly used threats (both towards the detainees as well as against their family members) and physical and mental torture to produce a state of fear in order to coerce the confession. Of the 37 people who appeared in televised confessions analysed in this study, five of them publicly retracted their confession and many others have done so anonymously to researchers working on Scripted and Staged. The interviewees described how the police took charge of the confession from dressing them in “costume;” writing the confession “script” and forcing the detainee to memorise it; giving directions on how to “deliver” their lines—including in one case, being told to weep; to ordering retake after retake when not satisfied with the result. One interviewee said he spent seven hours recording for what amounted to just a few minutes of broadcast. Efforts to direct the confessions could also be seen in how the 45 broadcasts in this study came in two “formats”: one, filmed at a type of detention centre and another, more popular after 2015, that was recorded in a civilian and seemingly less threatening setting. In many cases, media that broadcast these confessions were active participants in the process of making them, from using the police-provided script of questions, concealing the truth of the confession set-up, to producing a sophisticated news package with graphics, and SCRIPTED AND STAGED 4 interviews with police and commentators to paint the suspect as guilty—despite them often not having been charged with a crime. For anyone who doubts these confessions are manufactured propaganda they only need to read the testimony of renowned human rights lawyer Wang Yu, who provided her lengthy testimony for this report. Disappeared for 10 months on trumped up charges, and just a few weeks after undergoing surgery for breast cancer, Ms. Wang was coerced into recording a videoed confession to protect her teenaged son. Her harsh treatment in custody had affected her memory so much that she could not remember the words the police told her to say. After making hours and hours of retakes over several weeks, they resorted to printing her lines on a computer in large font, like a teleprompter. But it still wasn’t good enough; that confession video never aired, and Ms. Wang stayed locked up until August. The timing and content of the confessions indicates that they are often used for propaganda purposes—both for domestic and overseas consumption. Some of the confessions were timed to coincide with crackdowns, such as a new law in 2013 to stop “rumours” spreading online; a summer 2014 campaign against drug use, and the now notorious 709 Crackdown against human rights lawyers and activists that was launched in July 2015. Others are aired shortly after criticism, mostly from sources outside mainland China, concerning the victim’s detention. These confessions are worded as direct rebuttals, such as the confessor denies being tortured or kidnapped by Chinese security. These types of confessions were most often made by overseas nationals. Other signs of propaganda include confessors who praise and defend the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), its agencies including the police, and its actions. Others denounce and criminalise colleagues and friends who have also been detained or recently sentenced. Many of the confessions are delivered by human rights defenders, independent journalists, and Uighurs, individuals that are typically seen as CCP critics or enemies. China’s televised confessions are reminiscent of violent and degrading episodes of political persecution from history. They have been compared to Stalin’s show trials, the public struggle sessions of China’s Cultural Revolution and the more recent shame parades when suspects are put on show to be humiliated in front of the public; a practice that China only outlawed a few years ago. Televised confessions represent such a transgression of rights that they are only practiced today by regimes such as North Korea and Iran. They deprive the suspect of due process; infringing on the right to a fair trial, the presumption of innocence, the right to remain silent, the right not to self-incriminate and the right to be protected against giving a forced confession and torture. These are fundamental human rights, largely part of customary international law, which are binding upon all states regardless of treaty ratification. China, itself, has ostensibly enshrined the right to a fair trial, the right not to self-incriminate, and incorporated protections against forced confessions and torture into its Criminal Procedure Law. All interviewees said they had no access to a lawyer to discuss their confessions; while 18 of the confessions analysed in this study were people held under the custodial system, Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL), a form of detention that in many cases effectively amounts to an enforced disappeared, where the suspect is kept in solitary confinement with no procedural safeguards, such as access to a lawyer or prosecutorial oversight. China’s use of forced televised confessions warrants urgent global attention. The practice constitutes a human rights violation not confined to China’s borders: foreign nationals count among the victims; privately-owned media from outside the mainland SAFEGUARD DEFENDERS | APRIL 2018 5 have been co-opted into filming and broadcasting them; while Beijing’s aggressive push to globalize its party/state media—including on social media channels banned at home—to “tell the China story” means these human rights violations end up on screens across the globe, dressed up as “news.” Media organizations that film, collaborate with police in the staged and scripted process, and broadcast these confessions, whether they be Chinese state media or private outfits, are as culpable as the Chinese state in committing this deceptive, illegal and human rights violating practice. Recommendations The continued use of forced televised confessions and their more frequent use to counter overseas criticism, such as with the recent February 2018 broadcast of Swedish citizen Gui Minhai’s third confession video by a number of additional media outlets, including Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, illustrate that the practice and propaganda reach of forced confessions are widening. In that latest video confession by Mr. Gui, following international condemnation after his abduction in the company of Swedish consular officials, he is made to accuse Sweden of using him like a “pawn.” China’s televised confessions violate Chinese law and universally accepted human rights norms and are part of China’s carefully scripted
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