China Legalizing the Tools of Repression | Human Rights Watch

Are China's police hamstrung by a lack of power to detain national-security ... Nicholas Bequelin is senior researcher on Asia at Human Rights Watch ...

But the security apparatus has also gotten its way. Under the guise of regulating “residential surveillance,” Article 73 of the revised law would effectively legalize secret detentions and “disappearances” of people viewed as political risks by the government. This would legalize a pernicious practice that has recently been used against the artist Ai Weiwei, the lawyer Gao Zhisheng and the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo. Up to now, such abductions have been technically illegal.

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