• China’s Thuggish Para-Police
    Commentary
    May 25, 2012
    The chengguan urban management officers are meant to enforce non-criminal administrative regulations.
  • China: EU Rights Talks Sliding Toward Irrelevance
    Press release
    May 25, 2012
    The European Union needs to hold China accountable for its human rights obligations under international law or face the prospect that its human rights dialogue with the world’s second largest economy will become irrelevant.
  • China: Unaccountable “Chengguan” Forces Fuel Public Resentment
    Press release
    May 23, 2012
    China’s “chengguan,” the para-police agency tasked with enforcing non-criminal urban administrative regulations, is in some circumstances a threat to, rather than a guarantor of, public safety due to the agency’s lack of effective official supervision, training, and discipline.
  • “Beat Him, Take Everything Away” Abuses by China’s Chengguan Para-Police - Report Press Conference
    Press release
    May 16, 2012
    On Wednesday, May 23 2012, Human Rights Watch (HRW) will launch its first China report of 2012: “Beat Him, Take Everything Away” Abuses by China’s Chengguan Para-Police at the Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club.
  • Does the Law Matter in China?
    Commentary
    May 14, 2012
    Does the law matter in China? A cursory look at the two crises that have hit the Chinese government in recent weeks — one at the very top, with the purge of Bo Xilai, and one at the grassroots, with the escape from unlawful house arrest of the blind activist Chen Guangcheng — suggests not.
  • Who is Chen Guangcheng?
    Commentary
    May 3, 2012
    “Who is Chen Guangcheng?” That must be a question some people in China are asking today. Thanks to the country’s blanket Internet censorship, millions of ordinary Chinese are unfamiliar with Chen’s name and are just now learning the long, sad story of the blind legal activist who escaped house arrest and was sheltered in the U.S. Embassy in Beijing last week.
  • China: Beijing’s ‘Assurances’ on Chen Guangcheng Must Be Monitored
    Press release
    May 2, 2012

    Chinese government assurances to the US government about Chen Guangcheng may be insufficient to protect him and his family from a resumption of abuses and persecution they have suffered for extended periods at the hands of the authorities. 

  • Escaping the Chinese government
    Commentary
    May 1, 2012

    Last Sunday, China’s blind human rights defender Chen Guangcheng, held under unlawful detention by plainclothes thugs since September 2010, did something remarkable. He escaped. 

  • State of Injustice
    Commentary
    Apr 30, 2012
    Since local party boss and rising star Bo Xilai's stunning ouster from the Chinese Communist Party in April for "suspected serious violations of discipline," some of the world's best China watchers have been given room in the mainstream press to compare Bo to other top Chinese officials.
  • China: Protect Chen Guangcheng From Extrajudicial Violence
    Press release
    Apr 27, 2012

    The Chinese government should immediately guarantee blind human rights defender Chen Guangcheng’s safety, end its persecution of him and his family, and ensure that he is not returned to any form of detention or subject to any restrictions on his rights.