Torture
Further information: Re-education through labour and black jailsAlthough China outlawed torture in 1996, human rights groups say brutality and degradation are common in Chinese arbitrary detention centres which utillise Re-education through labour methods and CPC-operated black jails, which allegedly utillise brutal torture methods, although the Communist party and other authorities of the PRC strongly deny facillatating the operation of black jails whatsoever.
In May 2010, the PRC Authorities officially passed new regulations were in attempt to nullify evidence gathered through violence or intimidation in their official judicial procedures and to reduce the level of torture administered upon prisoners already in jails, although there isn't much that is known about how procedures may or may not have been modified in black jails, which are not officially part of the judicial system. The move came after a public outcry following the revelation that a farmer, convicted for murder based on his confession under torture, was in fact innocent. The case came to light only when his supposed victim turned up alive and the defendant had spent 10 whole years in prison. International human rights groups gave the change a cautious welcome.
Read more about this topic: Political Repression In The People's Republic Of China
Famous quotes containing the word torture:
“Suffering is by no means a privilege, a sign of nobility, a reminder of God. Suffering is a fierce, bestial thing, commonplace, uncalled for, natural as air. It is intangible; no one can grasp it or fight against it; it dwells in time—is the same thing as time; if it comes in fits and starts, that is only so as to leave the sufferer more defenseless during the moments that follow, those long moments when one relives the last bout of torture and waits for the next.”
—Cesare Pavese (1908–1950)
“One line typed twenty years ago
can be blazed on a wall in spraypaint
to glorify art as detachment
or torture of those we
did not love but also
did not want to kill.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Imagine that it is you yourself who are erecting the edifice of human destiny with the aim of making men happy in the end, of giving them peace and contentment at last, but that to do that it is absolutely necessary, and indeed quite inevitable, to torture to death only one tiny creature, the little girl who beat her breast with her little fist, and to found the edifice on her unavenged tears—would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?”
—Feodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881)