Torture victims and experts on China’s legal and political system came to testify before the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC), chaired by Congressman Chris Smith (NJ-04), at a hearing today entitled China’s Pervasive Use of Torture. The hearing was held to shine a light on the pervasive use of torture in the Chinese criminal justice system, often targeting political dissidents, ethnic minorities, and human rights lawyers, and to urge the U.S. government to make ending torture an urgent priority in bilateral relations.

    “We are here today to shine a light on the brutal, illegal, and dehumanizing use of torture in China,” Smith said. “We shine a light in a dictatorship because nothing good happens in the dark. And, as we will learn today, there are some very dark places in China were torture is used regularly to punish and intimidate political and religious prisoners and their lawyers. We are also here to urge the U.S. government to make ending torture a higher priority in bilateral relations and to urge the Chinese government to fully enforce and implement its own laws. A country with China’s global leadership aspirations should not engage in horrific practices so thoroughly condemned by the international community.

    “As our witnesses will describe today in great detail, the use of torture is pervasive in China’s detention facilities and criminal justice system,” said Smith, who has held more than 50 hearings on human rights violations in China. “Torture is used to extract confession for prosecution and to coerce the televised ‘public confessions’ we have seen too often in the past year. Torture is also used to punish those political prisoners the Chinese security forces view as destabilizing forces. Under Xi Jinping, there has been an expansion in the number of individuals and groups viewed as threats to national security. The victims of torture are very often human rights advocates and lawyers, union activists, members of non-state-controlled Christian churches, Falun Gong practitioners, and members of ethnic minority groups, like the Tibetans and Uyghurs.” Smith’s opening remarks can be found here.

    Witnesses included two victims of torture. Tibetan Buddhist monk Golog Jigme (also known as Jigme Gyatso) discussed the torture inflicted on him in a Chinese prison and provided a picture of the infamous “tiger chair” used to constrain him and other torture victims. Yin Liping, a Falun Gong practitioner, was incarcerated in the notorious Masanjia Labor Camp, an extra-legal detention center used to hold political and religious prisoners. She described months of horrific physical and sexual abuse inflicted on her and her cellmates by prison guards and male prisoners. Additional witnesses included Margaret K. Lewis from Seton Hall University Law School who discussed recent legal reforms in China intended to end the use of torture in detention and the difficulties implementing those reforms, and Sophie Richardson from Human Rights Watch, who discussed recent research on the extensive use of torture in China and made recommendations for U.S. diplomacy with China. Video of the hearing can be found here.

    Witness Yin Liping, a Falun Gong practitioner from Liaoning Province, China testified about her horrific story to the panel.

    “I was arrested seven times in China, tortured to the verge of death six times, and detained in labor camps three times, where I was made to do slave labor for nine months,” she said. “I was sexually attacked and humiliated, and videotaped by a group of male prisoners in police custody, all because I refused to give up my faith in Falun Gong.” Click here to read Yin Liping’s testimony.

    Golog Jigme testified about his multiple detainments and brutal torture.

    “I urge the CECC and the US Congress to continue to pay attention to the human rights situation in Tibet,” he said. “I was tortured continuously. I was forced to sit in the ‘tiger chair,’ (also known as the ‘iron chair’) day and night. This was the worst form of torture I experienced during my three detentions,” noting that he still has scars from the torture device. Click here to hear Golog Jigme’s testimony. Click here to view an illustration of the “tiger chair.”

    Lewis, Professor of Law at Seton Hall University School of Law, said that the nearly one-hundred-percent conviction rate in China underscores that the determination of guilt in practice occurs before a defendant enters the courtroom.

    “Any movement towards establishing a presumption of innocence has been further undermined by the disturbing practice of televised confessions, effectively replacing formal court proceedings with public shaming,” she said. “The United States needs to keep showing up and standing up for the principles that are core both to our country’s values and more generally to international human rights norms. When the Chinese government will not engage, we still need to make our voice heard.” Click here to read Lewis’s testimony.

    Click here to read a statement from CECC Co-Chair Marco Rubio. Witness testimonies and the archived video of the hearing will be made available here.

    Geng He, the wife of tortured prisoner Gao Zhisheng, submitted testimony to the hearing and Smith urged all read it: “It is for Gao Zhisheng, and the many other victims of torture, that we hold this hearing today.” Click here to read Geng’s testimony.

    “ Chinese officials repeatedly tell me I should focus more on the positive aspects of China’s human rights and not on the negative,” Smith said. “That is a difficult task when you read Gao Zhisheng’s story or read the testimony of our witnesses Golog Jigme and Yin Liping. Nevertheless, I want to recognize the changes made recently to China’s criminal procedure law that prohibits the use of confessions obtained through torture and the requirement to videotape interrogations in major cases. According to Human Rights Watch, judges’ videotaped interrogations are routinely manipulated—and police torture the suspects first and then tape the confession.

    “China’s laws are too often either selectively implemented or completely ignored by security forces and the courts,” Smith said. “Security forces, faced with end of labor camps, created new forms of extra-legal detention—such as ‘black jails’ or ‘residential surveillance in an undisclosed location’—where torture can continue without oversight or interruption. Until suspects have lawyers at interrogations, until all extra-legal detention centers are abolished, and police and public security forces are held accountable for abuse, China’s existing laws will continued to be undermined by existing practice. 

    “The U.S. government must find effective ways to address this issue urgently and at the highest levels, because hundreds of thousands of China’s people are victims of shockingly cruel, illegal, and inhumane activities,” the Congressman said.

The CECC, established by the U.S.-China Relations Act of 2000 as China prepared to enter the WTO, is mandated by U.S. law to monitor human rights, including worker rights, and the development of the rule of law in China. Its members are a bipartisan combination of Congress and White House appointees.


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