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Police remove a sign from Elsa Wu, foster mother of activist Hendrick Lui, who was protesting her son's conviction under the National Security Law outside the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts building, Hong Kong, November 19, 2024.  © 2024 David Chan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

(Bangkok) – The Chinese government maintained its systematic suppression of human rights across the country in 2024, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2025. Repression was especially severe in Tibetan areas and for the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, and the authorities further dismantled Hong Kong’s basic freedoms.

For the 546-page world report, in its 35th edition, Human Rights Watch reviewed human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In much of the world, Executive Director Tirana Hassan writes in her introductory essay, governments cracked down and wrongfully arrested and imprisoned political opponents, activists, and journalists. Armed groups and government forces unlawfully killed civilians, drove many from their homes, and blocked access to humanitarian aid. In many of the more than 70 national elections in 2024, authoritarian leaders gained ground with their discriminatory rhetoric and policies.  

“From freedom of expression to religious freedoms, the Chinese government has kept a chokehold over the country throughout 2024,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. “The Chinese government has further tightened abusive laws and imprisoned critics and rights defenders, while making it increasingly difficult to report on government abuses throughout the country.”

  • The Chinese government revised the State Secrets Law and published the implementing regulations, expanding the law’s already overly broad scope. Previously tolerated topics, such as criticisms of the economy, have become off limits.
  • The Chinese government continued to imprison human rights defenders, including human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife, rights activist Xu Yan, who were both taken into custody while going to meet European Union representatives visiting China. Courts sentenced the feminist journalist Huang Xueqin and the labor rights activist Wang Jianbing to prison.
  • In March, the Hong Kong government introduced a new national security law, the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, which criminalizes peaceful activities, expands police powers, and weakens due process rights. In November, a Hong Kong court handed down baseless and harsh sentences against 45 democracy advocates.
  • Hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are still arbitrarily detained and imprisoned, with abuses against them among the Chinese government’s crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. In August, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that “many problematic laws and policies” that the UN’s 2022 report on Xinjiang documented, remain in place.
  • Tibetan exile media obtained footage showing hundreds of monks and villagers in Derge county, Sichuan, protesting the construction of a hydroelectric dam that will submerge historic monasteries and numerous Tibetan villages. Hundreds of protesters were reportedly detained; while most have been released, an unknown number including monks and village leaders remain forcibly disappeared.

The Chinese government should immediately release Uyghurs and others wrongfully imprisoned, revoke Hong Kong’s two national security laws, allow independent observers access to Tibet and Xinjiang, and free detained human rights defenders throughout China, Human Rights Watch said.

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