AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL REPORT 1991
Said that only 16 civilians and six police officers had been killed. However, local television reportedly said that 50 civilians and eight police officers had died. In Sept- ember the authorities in Xinjiang announced regulations severely restricting religious activities.
Some prisoners of conscience were con- victed on "counter-revolutionary" charges and sentenced to prison terms. Chen Zhixiang, a Guangzhou teacher, received a 10-year sentence in January for allegedly displaying a slogan criticizing government leaders shortly after the 4 June 1989 mas- sacre. Li Haitao, an academic held since June 1989, received a four-year sentence in August for "counter-revolutionary propa- ganda and agitation" and "disrupting traffic": he had circulated information about the 4 June massacre and organized public protests in Wuhan, Hubei Province. Tashi Tsering, from Shigatse, southern Tibet, was reportedly sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for having written "slogans and leaflets” in support of Tibetan independence. He had been arrested in. November 1989.
Few such trials were publicly reported. Most trials publicized by the authorities were of people accused of committing ordi- nary criminal offences during the 1989 protests. However, hundreds of secret trials related to the protests reportedly took place. A report by the Washington Post in January that 800 people were sentenced in such trials was denied by the official New China News Agency. In February, however, the official Beijing Daily said that "more than 200 cases stemming from the "counter-revolutionary rebelliqn" had been tried by the Beijing municipal courts in 1989, without specifying how many defendants were involved in each case. It added that Beijing courts had also hand- led 3,459 cases involving "crimes of seri- ously disrupting social order," some of which may have been related to the 1989 protests.
New reports of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners emerged. Released detainees said that beatings and other abuses, as well as harsh conditions of detention, were commonplace in Beijing after the June 198 ackdown. Cases of torture were also reported in other areas, particularly Tibet. Topgyal, a tailor arrested in April for pos- sessing a video-cassette of the Dalai Lama,
incommunicado in police custody
Lhasa. Lhakpa Tsering, a student arrested in late 1989 and accused of belonging to a "counter-revolutionary" organization, was allegedly beaten to death in December in Drapchi prison, Lhasa. A doctor and judicial officials reportedly examined his body at the request of his family, but no formal inquest was reported by the end of
1990.
la a report presented to the United Nations (UN) Committee Against Torture in April, the authorities acknowledged that torture still existed in China but gave no details of the procedures followed to inves- tigate individual cases. According to
official sources, more than 4.700 cases of "infringement of citizens' rights" were investigated and dealt with in 1988. and 2,900 cases of "perverting justice for bribes, extorting confessions by torture. illegal detention and neglect of duty" were inves- tigated from January to March 1990. Of these. more than 490 "major" cases involved "deaths and injuries as well as serious economic losses".
There was a dramatic increase in the use of the death penalty. The authorities do not publish statistics on the death penalty, but it appeared that several thousand people may have been sentenced to death in 1990. Amnesty International recorded over 960 death sentences, including some with a two-year stay of execution. At least 750 executions were known to have been carried out. There were 270 in June and July alone. following the launch in May of a new campaign "to sternly crack down on crime". Courts were ordered to impose "severe and swift" sentences, using 1983 legislation which provides for summary procedures. The widespread practice of deciding sentences before trial added to the summary nature of the proceedings. Some death sentences were officially described as a means of ensuring "social order" and "stability" before the Asian Games held in Beijing in September. Some prisoners sen- tenced to death were reportedly paraded in public before execution, a practice which in Amnesty International's view consti- tutes degrading treatment and is prohibited under Chinese regulations.
continued
Amnesty International throughout the year to press for the release of prisoners of conscience, for the fair trial or release of other political prisoners, and
However, despite numeron appeal and inquiries to the government, there was no : direct reply.
In May Amnesty International gent the government a list of 700 detainees believed. ' held since June 1989, and requested information about them and other being held. In September it sent the govemment a detailed account of its concerns relating to the death penalty and called for an immediate halt to executions and the intro- duction of fair trial safeguards. In Novem- her it called on the authorities to disclose what had happened to hundreds of politi- cal detainees who had vanished since their arrest the previous year Following reports that leaders of the 1989 protests might soon face secret trials. the organization called on the government to ensure that the trials were conducted in accordance with inter- national standards, and to allow interna- tional observers.
In January Amnesty International sub- mitted to the UN Secretary-General a docu- ment describing its concern at the killings of unarmed civilians in Beijing in June 1989, the large-scale arbitrary arrests car- ried
out subsequently and persistent reports of torture and ill-treatment. This document was included in a report debated in March by the US Commission on Human Rights. In an oral statement to the Com- mission in March. Amnesty International reiterated its concern about extrajudicial executions carried out in June 1989.
Amnesty International again expressed
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Hundreds of people were executed extra- judicially or "disappeared" after being seized by members of the armed forces or paramilitary groups associated with them. Victims included political activists including two presidential candidates and human rights, trade union and church activists. Scores of peasants were arbit- rarily detained. tortured and killed by government troops in counter-insurgency operations. In urban areas "death squad". style killings of suspected delinquents. increased. Political detainees held illegally in army installations were reportedly tor- tured. Most cases of human rights abuses remained unresolved despite investigative efforts by the Procurator General and
¦ some judges. Two army officers were con-
its concerns in China in an oral statement | victed for their part in the killing of 12 to the rx Sub-Commission on Prevention
¡ of Discrimination and Protection of Minori-
ties in August.
The organization also published several reports and documents about human rights violations in China. They included in March. Tibet Autonomous Region: One Year Under Martial Law: An Update on the Human Rights Situation, and in April. Ching The Massacre of June 1989 and its Aftermath, as well as Gotholes Imprisoned in Ching Recent Arrests and Leng term Prisoners and People's Republic of China Torture and Ill-treatment. In May it pub lished List of People Detained for Activitie Related to the 1989 Pro Pemocracy Move ment, and in September three document entitled The Continue Repression. including one on the death penalty and anti-crime campaigns
judicial officials.
Peace negotiations, initiated during 1989 with the gueuilla organization. the Movimiento 19 de Abni (M-19) 19 April Movement, culminated in the group's for- mal surrender of weapons in March after 16 years' armed opposition. Its members. who were granted an amnesty, formed a political party, Alanza Democrática v 19. M-19 Democratic Alliance. Three other guerrilla organizations also entered prace negotiations with the government
The principal remaining urilla forces. Fuerzas Armadas Revolt: romanas de Colombo (ARC). Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and the uite de Liberación Nacional (11%). Nation | Filera- tion Army, maintained their
paigns
of armed opposition throughout the
hey canied out scote of kidnappings