A Chinese paramilitary policeman stands guard underneath a surveillance camera at an entrance to the Number Two Detention Center in Beijing
His arms were forcibly bent backward behind the back of a chair, and his wrists were so tightly cuffed that his hands grew swollen.
For 99 days in police detention, Beijing-based lawyer Yu Wensheng was interrogated about 200 times — often late into the night while he was in pain.
“It was so painful I thought it would be better to die than to live,” said Yu, who has represented civil activists and was detained last year by Chinese police on the charge of causing troubles.
The lawyer’s case is one example of how China has failed to live up to its obligations to comply with an international convention against torture, as documented by the human rights group Amnesty International in a report released yesterday — just days before a United Nations panel is scheduled to meet in Geneva to review whether China has followed through on its promises against the use of torture.
While Beijing is expected to tout how it has fulfilled its promises, Amnesty International says the country’s deep-rooted use of torture to extract confessions from suspects has seen little improvement despite measures introduced since 2010 to reform the legal system.
The report has echoed the same findings by the Human Rights Watch group in a May report, as both reports say the unlawful and inhumane practice remains routine in China and that China’s efforts to reform its criminal justice system have done little to curb it.
Amnesty International came to the conclusion after interviewing 37 lawyers throughout China, analyzing 590 court decisions, and parsing judicial rules and procedures.
“For the police, obtaining a confession is still the easiest way to secure a conviction,” said Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International.
While torture is commonly used to force confessions from common criminals, it becomes more brutal against political dissidents, social activists and religious practitioners, said Yu, who was released after he confessed to being a troublemaker.
“The practice of torture is commonplace and deep entrenched,” he said. “It fundamentally lies within a political system that has no checks.”
Despite regular accounts by victims, reports by international human rights groups and exposes in state media, Chinese authorities say the practice is waning or now non-existent.
In April 2014, Zhao Chunguang, a senior public security official overseeing police detention facilities, said there had not been a single case of coercing confessions through torture at the country’s detention centers following new rules aimed at preventing the use of torture.
When responding to the report by the Human Rights Watch in May, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told reporters that Chinese law prohibits torture during interrogations and that anyone found responsible would be punished.
Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Justice did not respond to faxed requests about the use of torture.
In the report, Amnesty International says forms of torture include beatings, long periods of restraining the victims with handcuffs and leg-cuffs, sleep deprivation, withholding food and water, and denial of medical treatment.
In June, Peter Humphrey, a British man convicted of illegally obtaining information and later released on medical grounds and deported from China, told the media that Chinese authorities withheld medical treatment for his prostate problems to pressure him to make a televised confession in 2013.
Chinese journalist Liu Hu told The Associated Press in September that he was deprived of sleep when he was locked up in a detention center in Beijing. Liu never confessed to any wrongdoing.
In a written statement, Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, urged Beijing to be open about the routine use of torture at the upcoming review by the UN Committee Against Torture. Didi Tang, Beijing, AP
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