Refugee Review Tribunal AUSTRALIA RRT RESEARCH RESPONSE Research Response Number: CHN34225 Country: China Date: 23 December 2008 Keywords: China – Monitoring of international telephone calls – Detention of protest leaders – Torture by suspension – Staged suicide – Forced signing of agreements by detainees This response was prepared by the Research & Information Services Section of the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) after researching publicly accessible information currently available to the RRT within time constraints. This response is not, and does not purport to be, conclusive as to the merit of any particular claim to refugee status or asylum. This research response may not, under any circumstance, be cited in a decision or any other document. Anyone wishing to use this information may only cite the primary source material contained herein. Questions 1. Do the authorities in China listen in on the phone calls of citizens? 2. Is it likely that an individual would be arrested and detained for protesting to a local government official? 3. Is it likely that an individual who sent a letter of petition and immediately departed the country would face disciplinary action by the authorities if they returned to China? 4. Please provide any information about detainees having their hands tied behind their backs while being suspended above the floor? 5. Is there any information about detainees being threatened with having their suicide staged by the authorities? 6. Is it common for the authorities to have detainees sign agreements prior to their release from detention? 7. Is it common for the authorities to give a detainee a bus ticket to travel home? RESPONSE 1. Do the authorities in China listen in on the phone calls of citizens? Little information was found on whether Chinese authorities monitor international telephone calls into China. Sources do confirm that police monitor domestic telephone calls, without specifying in great detail which individuals are put under this form of surveillance. The US State Department in its current Country Reports on Human Rights Practices on China states that ―Former political prisoners and their families frequently were subjected to police surveillance, telephone wiretaps…During the year authorities monitored telephone conversations, facsimile transmissions, e-mail, text messaging, and Internet communications. Authorities also opened and censored domestic and international mail…Some citizens were under heavy surveillance and routinely had their telephone calls monitored or telephone service disrupted‖ (US Department of State 2008, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2007 – China, 11 March, Section 1f: ‗Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence‘ – Attachment 1). Research Response CHN31495 of April 2007 also sought information on Chinese monitoring of international telephone calls. It found only brief references to the Chinese monitoring of international telephones calls in, for example, a 2004 Human Rights Watch report on forced evictions. This response also examined the Chinese government‘s so called ―Golden Shield‖ system intended to monitor its citizen, with reports indicating that part of this system is being aimed at the automated surveillance of telephone conversations (see question one of RRT Country Research 2007, Research Response CHN31495, 5 April – Attachment 2; for a reference to monitoring of international telephones, see Human Rights Watch 2004, Demolished: Forced evictions and the Tenants’ Rights Movement in China, March, Vol. 16, No. 4(C), p. 4 – Attachment 3). 2. Is it likely that an individual would be arrested and detained for protesting to a local government official? According to the sources provided below, it is not uncommon for those who lead protests and demonstrations against Chinese government authorities to be detained and/or arrested. One example was also found of worker representatives being arrested during protests over government inaction on the misappropriation of funds after a factory bankruptcy. According to Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advice dated 19 August 2005, ―Authorities often detain, without proceedings to formal arrest, the leaders of public demonstrations and sometimes detain those who are robust in making complaints to the authorities‖ (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 2005, DFAT Report 399: RRT Information Request: CHN17444, 19 August – Attachment 4). A similar conclusion is reached by Kevin O‘Brien and Lianjiang Li, in their Rightful Resistance in Rural China: …from imperial days to the present, protest leaders have always paid the highest price when collective action backfired, while followers have been protected by their numbers, their relative anonymity, and the authorities fear of alienating a broad swath of the population. In fact, a common outcome has been arrest and imprisonment of ringleaders followed by concessions on the subject of the protestors demands (O‘Brien, K.J & Li, L. 2006, Rightful Resistance in Rural China, Cambridge University Press, New York, p. 87 – Attachment 5). Lianjiang Li has also written elsewhere that ―Numerous peaceful petitioners, especially leaders of collective petitioning, have experienced harsh crackdowns over the past two decades‖ (Li, L. 2006, ‗Driven to Protest: China‘s Rural Unrest‘, Current History website, 14 August, p.253 http://www.currenthistory.com/org_pdf_files/105/692/105_692_250.pdf – Accessed 11 October 2007 – Attachment 6). Thomas Lum in a 2006 report for the US Congressional Research Service, Social Unrest in China, includes three examples of the arrest of protest leaders involved in village demonstrations in Guangdong and Zhejiang provinces (pp.3-5). The author goes on to describe the general pattern in government reactions to protests: Experts have noted a pattern whereby government authorities allow demonstrations to grow, and even publicly sympathize with protesters, while taking time to identify group leaders. Arrests of activists often take place only after some efforts have been made to mollify aggrieved individuals by meeting some of their demands. According to reports, public security agents typically use both torture and rewards to extract expressions of wrongdoing or guilt and to pit activists and neighbors against each other. Scare tactics — the use of arbitrary detention and the employ of untrained security agents (―hired thugs‖) to beat up protest leaders — help to quell further protest activity. When demonstrations get out of hand, the government strictly controls reporting of them, although in many cases, news leaks through the Internet. News of events in Dongzhou spread, despite a blackout on media coverage, through the use of disguised language on the Internet, smaller bulletin board sites, and access to English and overseas Chinese websites. … Some analysts argue that the PRC government‘s common response to mass demonstrations, which is to appease protesters, punish organizers, and do little about underlying causes — also known as ―buying stability‖ — encourages civil disobedience as the only effective means of winning redress (Lum, T. 2006, Social Unrest in China, US Congressional Research Service, 8 May, pp. 8-10 http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/rl33416.pdf – Accessed 12 December 2006 – Attachment 7). An article dated July 2003 in The China Labour Bulletin describes the detention and arrest of worker representatives during demonstrations following alleged malpractice and misappropriation of funds that led to the bankruptcy of a factory in Liaoyang. Workers in this instance were also protesting ―against retrenchment or long-standing arrears of wages, pensions‖. The article provides useful information on why the protests occurred and how they were dealt with by the local government authorities: On 11 March 2002, several thousand workers from the Liaoyang Ferro-Alloy Factory in Liaoning Province marched in Democracy Road, the main street of Liaoyang City, to the headquarters of the city government. They were demanding government action to investigate the malpractice and misappropriation of funds that had led to the bankruptcy of their factory. Several thousand more workers from other factories who held similar grievances soon joined the Ferro-Alloy workers‘ demonstration. The workers, many of whom were in their fifties and older, were all protesting against retrenchment or long-standing arrears of wages, pensions and other basic living subsidies. The Ferro-Alloy workers were unusually well organized and had a core of representatives who were prepared to negotiate with government officials. Six days into the daily street demonstrations, by now involving over 10,000 workers, the Liaoyang police detained several of the workers’ representatives. These arrests triggered more demonstrations by even greater numbers of workers, who now demanded the release of their representatives as well. On 18 March, 30,000 workers were reported by the foreign press to have marched in the streets of Liaoyang, protesting against retrenchment, arrears and the recent police arrests. …In Liaoyang, the policy pendulum swung between attempts to show a degree of latitude and tolerance towards the workers and the more hard-line tactics of police intimidation and repression. From the outset, a continuous stand-off between the local government and the protestors emerged, marked by numerous and regular street demonstrations led by the Ferro- Alloy workers and aimed at securing both their original demands and the release of their arrested representatives. For their