China backs down from legalising secret detentions

China has abandoned controversial plans to make it legal to "disappear" people without trace, in a move hailed as a victory for judicial reformers. A list of proposed amendments to China's existing criminal law, being debated this week by the National People's Congress, or parliament, originally included a clause that would legalise secret detentions. Activists said the clause -- which stipulated those suspected of terrorism or endangering national security could be taken away to secret locations without their families knowing -- equated to legalising rights violations. But in the final draft of the amended Criminal Procedure Law seen by AFP on Thursday, that clause had been removed. "The removal of the disappearance clause is a victory for legal reformers in China and a defeat of the security apparatus' attempt to further cement its power," said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. "The revisions point in the right direction, and, should Beijing decide so, offer a concrete avenue for progress in the administration of justice." There are three different ways of locking up suspects in China before trial -- formal arrests, detentions and residential surveillance at home or in other locations. In the first two cases, suspects are locked up in formal areas of detention such as police stations or prisons, which people know about. But in cases of "residential surveillance" in other locations, suspects can be taken away to places such as guesthouses or hotels and held there for months. If the controversial change had been included in the amended law, police would not have had to notify family members of the whereabouts of a suspect being held in an undisclosed location in terrorism or national security cases. "If they hold you in a police station or prison, it's not good," said Bequelin. "But it's still very different from being kidnapped in the middle of the night, and put in a guesthouse somewhere and kept there for months." The practice of these so-called "enforced disappearances" already exists in China, but the amendment would have given it legal clout. The proposal triggered an uproar when it was first publicised in August, and prominent activist Hu Jia compared it to methods used by the former Soviet Union's KGB secret police.