NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Enforced Disappearances Proliferate in China

A recent wave of enforced disappearances today was reported to have taken place in China.

The United Nations human rights experts today voiced serious concern about the recent wave, calling on authorities in the Asian nation to release all those who have been forcibly disappeared.

The five-member UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has received multiple reports from China of "a number of persons" being subject to enforced disappearances including the lawyers Teng Biao, Tang Jitian, Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jingling.

In a press statement issued in Geneva, the working group said that human rights activists, lawyers and students appear to be the targets of the recent disappearances.

"According to the allegations received, there is a pattern of enforced disappearances in China, where persons suspected of dissent are taken to secret detention facilities, and are then often tortured and intimidated, before being released or put into 'soft detention' and barred from contacting the outside world."- Working group

The experts stressed that an enforced disappearance represents a crime under international law.

Source: United Nations