Human rights report flawed by omissions and bias

The New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch issued its World Report 2012 on Jan 22, observing China's human rights conditions from angles of defendant rights, judicial reform, freedom of speech and religious freedom. The report seriously lacks in objectivity and impartiality. Its conclusion intentionally distorts China's human rights conditions. Its observation of China's judicial reform is extremely inconsistent with facts and one-sided.

The report says the public security departments dominate the criminal justice system and rely excessively on the defendant's confession. The weak courts and seriously limited rights of defense mean forced confession is still universal and judicial partiality is common. This is serious distortion.

It is known that China's criminal justice system is not controlled by public security departments, but consists of investigation and procuratorial organs as well as people's courts. China's Criminal Procedural Law clearly stipulates the labor distribution among the three parties. They work with and check against one another.

The proposal for prosecution by public security departments must be examined by procuratorial organs before it is recommended to the court to initiate a public prosecution. The public prosecution of the investigating organs must go through the court's open and fair trial, during which the defendant's opinions and all kinds of testimony must be verified, before becoming part of the court's decision.

In this process, it is common for the procuratorial organs to require public security departments to file a case (or not), the procuratorial organs decide to prosecute (or not), and the people's courts declare the accused guilty (or not). These possibilities all restrict the power of public security departments.

In judicial practices, public security departments must follow or respond to the procuratorial organs' procuratorial proposals and supervision of filing a criminal case. According to the Supreme People's Procuratorate's work report to the National People's Congress in 2011, all procuratorial organs proposed 33,863 times and cases to correct the public security departments' illegal practices of investigation.

The number of cases in which the procuratorial organs do not ratify an arrest, do not prosecute, withdraw a lawsuit, and the people's courts decide the accused innocent, is increasing proportionally year by year. All of these actions are restricting the public security departments' power effectively.