shuanggui<\/em>.<\/p>\nA number of high-profile cases this year reflected a renewed zeal for silencing prominent activists. In June, Pu Zhiqiang, one of country\u2019s best-known lawyers, was arrested on public order grounds. His lawyer fears that three additional charges will be brought against Pu as the procurator considers his indictment. In September, a court in Xinjiang sentenced Uighur economist Ilham Tohti to life in prison on spurious charges that he was a \u201ccovert separatist\u201d who had coaxed his students into stirring up inter-ethnic conflicts. Seven of his students were tried in late 2014. Liu Xia, the wife of the imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, continues to be held under extra-legal house arrest.<\/p>\n
The most significant legal trend in 2014 has been the government\u2019s effort to further strengthen an already powerful, unaccountable state security apparatus. It adopted an overly broad counter-espionage law and the publication of a draft counterterrorism law that equates peaceful dissent with terrorism, strengthens control over civil society groups that receive foreign funding, and appears to target specific ethnic minority groups.<\/p>\n
The Chinese government\u2019s hardline approach was particularly discernible in Xinjiang and Tibet, areas that are nominally autonomous. Indiscriminate anti-separatism campaigns fueled rising tensions, resulting in several clashes on the Tibetan plateau \u2013 including at least one in which security forces used live fire against unarmed demonstrators \u2013 and a marked increase in violence in Xinjiang. In separate incidents Uyghur assailants attacked crowds, detonated bombs, and targeted Urumqi\u2019s South train station, causing dozens of casualties. Security forces used lethal force in almost all incidents, as well as in a series of poorly documented clashes in southern Xinjiang in which dozens of people the government labeled as \u201cterrorists\u201d were killed.<\/p>\n
On August 31, the central government issued a decision allowing all eligible Hong Kong voters to cast a ballot in the chief executive elections, but retaining control over the process by which candidates are chosen. This decision violates basic human rights guarantees and reneges on the promise of the basic law, the territory\u2019s constitution. The Hong Kong government\u2019s use of teargas and pepper spray against initial groups of people protesting Beijing\u2019s decision triggered massive demonstrations, followed by sustained \u201coccupation\u201d of thoroughfares in Hong Kong. The government refused to meaningfully engage with the main organizers of the movement, and police repeatedly used excessive, and at times brutal, force against demonstrators to clear protest sites. The Chinese government banned an undisclosed number of students and protesters for traveling to the mainland, cancelling their \u201chome return\u201d permits, and detained more than a hundred people in China who had expressed their support for the demonstrators, often through internet postings.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s World Report<\/em> also flagged weakening international concern about human rights abuses in China. Some, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, instead praised the government for \u201cits contributions to the promotion of \u2026 human rights.\u201d China continues to refuse meaningful engagement with UN human rights mechanisms and voted down resolutions spotlighting abuses in Belarus, Iran, North Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Ukraine. China repeated its calls for \u201cpolitical solutions\u201d in Syria, Sudan, and South Sudan in 2014, but took steps that prolonged human rights crises in all three.<\/p>\n\u201cChina under Xi Jinping is escalating hostility to human rights and democratic pressures, at home and abroad, yet the international community remains largely silent,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cAbetting the systematic suppression of basic freedoms is a short-sighted and dangerous policy, one that only encourages Beijing\u2019s growing intransigence.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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2014 Sees Crackdown on Critics, Party Rivals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1610,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"topic":[],"class_list":["post-1611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1611"},{"taxonomy":"topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iuhrdf.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/topic?post=1611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}