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Here is the full report: A Formula for Repression – China’s Global Grid for Community Control (pdf)

In 2022, Safeguard Defenders published 110 Overseas and Patrol & Persuade: two reports detailing the activity of over 100 overseas Chinese police stations operating in more than 50 countries.

After the report was published, many of the countries affected denounced the stations’ illegal operations. Some pursued criminal investigations. Beijing responded by claiming they had closed.

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Now a new report exposes Beijing’s claim to be false. Far from closing, the evidence shows expansion.

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Today, more than ten police forces from five Chinese provinces are engaged in the work of a global network of Chinese Communist Party operatives abroad. The police involvement is only the beginning, and these are not isolated initiatives by a few local governments in China.

Since late 2024, five new national policies instruct authorities across China to expand designated liaison activities abroad. The core aim is to export the domestic system of grid management to control the diaspora.

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In China, the Party divides every city, town and village into grids, each square representing a few hundred households, and each with a grid manager who reports upward. The manager has ten tasks, nine of which have to do with surveillance and control. There is a file on every resident.

Anything seen as a threat to Party rule is escalated to a hub where enforcement stands ready to act.

Internationally, this system of mass surveillance, control and suppression is projected through a global grid of united front affiliated organizations or designated liaisons. They are run by the Party's "bridge and bond" to the diaspora: the Overseas Chinese Federation.

These Party liaisons provide the infrastructure other Chinese authorities - police, prosecutors, courts, justice bureaus and others - simply plug into. Or, as the Party calls it: through which they "extend their tentacles".

How the 'grid' extends abroad

The authorities sometimes use the word “grid” themselves when talking about overseas functions. In May 2019, eight months after opening their first “police-overseas-Chinese stations” [警侨驿站] abroad, the Qingtian county police, in Zhejiang Province, reported to the national police newspaper that they had hired 135 diaspora association leaders and chairs as center directors, deputies and liaison officers, and “put together an overseas grid-service informant corps of more than 1,000” [组建了1000余人的海外网格服务信息员队伍] ...

[The report describes how the Chinese grid of police stations extends abroad. It is fairly impossible to paraphrased what the report calls "The machinery: 1 + n + X + Y(y)". Everyone is stronglu encouraged to read the report (pdf).]

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In its new report, the NGO Safeguard Defenders finds nearly 1,250 formally designated liaisons in at least 91 countries which exist to carry out domestic grid functions abroad.

This number is based on a conservative methodology, and a likely underrepresentation of actual activity. The Party numbers its affiliated associations abroad in the tens of thousands, every one of them a potential grid liaison in the waiting.

Included in this number are the very liaison stations Safeguard Defenders exposed years ago and were told "merely" provided services to the diaspora community. Yet the functions of service and control cannot be separated, as the official policies and public statements that form the basis for this report make clear. In fact, the power to provide or deny services directly adds to the Party liaisons’ ability to exercise control.

Every liaison designated and every task carried out by them are breaches of sovereignty. They are transnational repression embodied, affecting entire communities around the world. Their standing order to carry out any task as required by the Party represents an active national security threat.

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Beneath it all sits one structure: the Party’s united front, and its global network of affiliated associations.

The names given to such designated liaisons may change; the underlying structure does not.

Policymakers must urgently devise strategies to confront this superstructure of CCP interference if the stations and their activities are to be shut down for good.

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The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has asked the Chinese government to explain how it protects children aged 16 to 18 from hazardous labor. The question, which is included in the formal List of Issues adopted by the Committee on October 2, 2026, reflects research by the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), an NGO, documenting abuses of vocational school student interns under 18.

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The CHRD report Genuine Free Choice? Child Labor and Mandatory Student Internships in China (opens pdf), published in May 2026. That research focuses on two overlapping issues: abuses within mandatory vocational school internship programs affecting students under 18, and the illegal hiring of children under 16. Despite domestic legislation and China’s ratification of the CRC and key International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions, abuses of child labor persist across industries.

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The List of Issues covers a wide range of children’s rights concerns. The Committee asked the Chinese government critical questions about abuses including discrimination against Tibetan and Uyghur children, restrictions on their religious and linguistic rights, barriers to education, family separation, and reprisals against children who speak out. It also asked about the implications for children of laws adopted since China’s last review in 2013, including Hong Kong’s national security laws and the Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress, in effect since July 1, 2026.

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CHRD’s findings call into question Chinese authorities’ willingness to enforce domestic laws, including the Law on the Protection of Minors and the Regulations on the Management of Vocational School Student Internships, to protect children. The violations also reflect non-compliance with the Chinese government’s obligations under the CRC and ILO conventions.

Chinese authorities should make child labor data publicly available—including complaints received through the national hotline and labor inspection findings on hazardous child labor—and investigate labor dispatch agencies that unlawfully broker student interns, CHRD says.

Reporting channels independent of school administrations are also needed, so that students do not fear that reporting abuse, or withdrawing from an internship, will jeopardize their ability to graduate.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/61323927

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[In September], the case of Sun Meihua (孫美華) rattled China before her name disappeared from the internet. The now 58-year-old Beijing-born woman was found in a village in Cao County, Shandong Province, by a Douyin vlogger, Chuxin (初心). After 26 years, videos of Sun appeared online, looking frail and hungry, eating a plate of noodles Chuxin had handed her.

Sun had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and went missing in August 2000 after her husband allegedly left her at an intersection near her parents’ house, reports the independent media outlet Free Nora (自由娜拉), which monitors human trafficking and abuse against minorities in China. According to another outlet, The Aquarian (水瓶紀元), her family tried to report her disappearance, but the police did not open a case.

Sun was found living with an elderly man villagers call “Uncle Long” (龍叔). In August, villagers told Du Xiaohua (杜小华), a Douyin vlogger who met Sun, that Uncle Long abused her and forced her into prostitution. When Du went to the police to try to file a report, an officer told him that they had found no evidence of abuse and that relocating her was “not their business,” according to Free Nora’s reporting.

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Before media outlets could begin reporting, Chinese social media platforms were already widely discussing Sun Meihua’s case. According to data from Wisers, a media monitoring database, there were dozens to hundreds of posts about Sun every day between September 8 and 11. The number reached 345 in one day on September 9. But from September 13, the number of posts dropped to fewer than 10 per day, Wisers data shows. The posts are now inaccessible, having been either deleted or blocked for violating platform rules.

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In terms of media coverage, Free Nora was the first Chinese media outlet to report on Sun’s case on September 18 [...] The Chinese independent media outlet The Aquarian (水瓶紀元) followed on September 26, but its report on WeChat was deleted. No other Chinese media reports about the case were identified. The Douyin vloggers also deleted all videos related to Sun.

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A familiar pattern

Netizens in China had been here before. The 2022 case of Xiaohuamei, **who later became known as the chained woman,” followed a similar pattern. After videos of a woman chained to a shed in Fengxian County, Jiangsu Province, circulated online, local officials released several statements initially identifying the woman as surnamed Yang, denying trafficking claims and attempting to explain her condition as mental illness-related. The local government blocked media from reporting at the scene before the city of Xuzhou later announced that it had discovered that the woman’s real name was Xiaohuamei, and that she was originally from Yunnan, arresting her husband on suspicion of illegal detention. Like in Sun’s case, authorities cracked down heavily on online discourse about the matter.

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Also familiar in this case is where Sun was found. Cao County is located close to where Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, and Anhui meet, an area identified by researchers as a trafficking “hotspot.” According to court judgments made public in 2024, most victims of human trafficking are rural women with mental or intellectual disabilities.

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What distinguishes the Sun Meihua case from Xiaohuamei’s is the public silence from authorities. As of this writing, no official statement from Cao County or Beijing has been released — what seems to be a deliberate departure from four years ago, when police were forced to backtrack on their previous statements following nationwide online backlash.

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In a column for Deutsche Welle (DW), Chang Ping (長平), editor of the China Digital Times, wrote that during the case of the chained woman, the public had hoped the government would investigate, but the authorities’ top priority was maintaining social stability. Information control today has only intensified. “Those who are punished are often not the traffickers, but the people who expose human trafficking,” he wrote.

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[Edit typo.]

Note: This story will be updated if additional responses are received.

The criticism and warnings are not new, but now they come from within China.

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A recent government-funded study out of Sichuan University's Law School published in the Journal of Sichuan Normal University has triggered a fresh wave of scrutiny regarding China's social credit system. Authored by doctoral candidate Lin Jianxing, the paper cautions that pouring advanced artificial intelligence and predictive algorithms into social rating frameworks risks turning administrative tools into instruments for mass surveillance.

The core issue isn't new, but the source is. Critics from Western nations have flagged privacy concerns for years. Now, internal legal scholars are pointing out the exact mechanical pitfalls from within the system's own academic backyard.

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When the social credit initiative first gained traction years ago, its stated goals sounded straightforward. Officials designed it to build market trust, crack down on corporate fraud, and help banks assess default risks for loans. Think of it as a corporate and financial reliability index, meant to keep bad actors out of public contracts and penalize contract breakers.

Over time, things shifted. Local governments began testing personal credit metrics that tracked minor infractions on public transit, school attendance, and everyday civic habits.

Lin's research highlights a profound transition. By utilizing big data mining and predictive algorithms, administrative bodies can translate everyday online and offline choices into quantifiable scores. This process aims to forecast a person's future actions before they happen. That predictive capability is where convenience crosses the line into surveillance.

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When you hand regulatory decisions over to predictive algorithms, several distinct problems emerge.

• Opaque Logic: When an algorithm lowers a score, finding out why can feel impossible. Citizens face automated restrictions without knowing which specific data point triggered the penalty.
• Amplified Discrimination: Predictive models rely on historical data. If past enforcement favored certain demographics or penalized specific behaviors unfairly, the algorithm bakes those biases into future decisions.
• Massive Surveillance Footprint: Real-time tracking requires constant data collection. Facial recognition feeds, smartphone logs, and financial transactions must flow continuously into a centralized scoring apparatus.

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Internal critiques published in state-funded journals show that policy debates inside the country are far from monolithic. Legal scholars and researchers are actively pushing back against the overreach of automated systems, warning that hyper-efficient administrative control carries a steep societal cost.

If algorithms become the ultimate arbiter of who gets a loan, who boards a train, or who qualifies for public services, trust stops being a social contract between people. It becomes a compliance score issued by a machine.

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Prisoners and detainees do not lose their rights to health or to be treated humanely and with dignity. Restraining a woman during childbirth raises grave concerns about degrading treatment and interference with care, which constitute obstetric violence.

A group of legal services organizations today filed a lawsuit challenging the federal government’s new policy of hiding the locations of thousands of people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The policy unlawfully interferes with communication between detainees, their families, and their lawyers.

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The captain of the French national soccer team and Real Madrid star player Kylian Mbappé has attracted the ire of Beijing by innocently describing, on a French talk show, a meme of his face superimposed on an image of Mao. He said it was the meme that made him laugh the most, describing it as “a video of a guy, I think it’s a Chinese dictator.”

The subsequent furor illustrates three things about the regime in Beijing — as well as the naïveté of people such as Mbappé where China is concerned.

Beijing’s reaction — leading to at least three Chinese corporations dropping sponsorships of Mbappé — shows that the CCP hates the truth about its bloody past and repressive present being exposed; that it has no sense of humor; and that, although it likes to project strength, it is in fact profoundly paranoid, neurotic, and insecure.

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The Chinese foreign ministry, along with the soccer forum Dongqiudi, condemned Mbappé’s comments, saying that they “hurt the feelings of Chinese people.” [Three Chinese companies] announced they would drop sponsorships of Mbappé, and the state broadcaster China Central Television said it would cease featuring content related to the French striker and stop showing Spanish soccer league matches.

But as absurd as the Chinese reaction is,it is the response by Mbappé, Real Madrid, and La Liga — the Spanish soccer league — that is even more troubling. Instead of standing by his factual remarks, Mbappé issued a groveling apology, describing his comment as “ill-judged” and saying he understands that it “hurt many people in China and in Chinese communities around the world.” La Liga also apologized, saying it “deeply regrets the offence that Kylian Mbappé’s recent comments have caused among Chinese fans.” Real Madrid issued a similar statement.

These apologies are profoundly dangerous because they play entirely into the CCP’s hands.

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Mao was, in fact, one of history’s worst dictators. Saying so is not necessarily an insult, but a matter of record.

During his rule over China, from the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949 until his death in 1976, it is estimated that at least 40 million people, and perhaps as many as 70 million, died. His disastrous Great Leap Forward policy, designed to move China from an agrarian to an industrial economy, resulted in a famine causing tens of millions of deaths. This was followed by the decade-long Cultural Revolution, which saw books burned, intellectuals beaten, and several million people killed. Anyone who doubts the scale of the bloodshed under Mao should read historian Frank Dikötter’s powerful trilogy on his era. Mao killed more people than Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler. Calling him a dictator seems, if anything, an understatement.

Mao also paved the way for continued repression in China today.

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Successive CCP dictators following Mao have presided over a system responsible for grave violations of human rights — including, most starkly, the massacre of thousands in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989, atrocities in Tibet, the targeting of Falun Gong practitioners for forced organ harvesting, the persecution of Christians, the crackdown in Hong Kong, and the genocide of the Uyghurs. The China Tribunal and the Uyghur Tribunal, both chaired by British lawyer Sir Geoffrey Nice, who prosecuted Slobodan Milošević, taken together with assessments by [...] other governments and legislatures around the world and independent human rights experts, accuse the CCP of committing mass atrocity crimes for which it should be held to account.

When it feels aggrieved, the CCP usually deploys the line that the “feelings” of the Chinese people have been “hurt.” But in a society that does not allow independent opinion polls, let alone free elections or free speech, how can they know how 1.4 billion people really feel? It is quite likely that many of them, especially those who have suffered under Mao and his successors, would agree with Mbappé that Mao is a dictator — as is China’s current ruler, Xi Jinping.

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Apologizing to Beijing risks whitewashing the CCP’s almost 80 years of mass murder, torture, and repression and will simply embolden the regime to continue to bully and threaten anyone who calls out its bloody record. It also undermines freedom of expression in democratic societies as a result.

The withdrawal of Chinese corporate sponsorships and television audiences will be financially painful for soccer players and their teams for a while. But Mbappé, Real Madrid, and La Liga should have stood their ground and, over time, sought alternative corporate sponsorship, instead of kowtowing. Their fans should feel ashamed, not by Mbappé’s original comments but by the failure to defend them.

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Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL) is a long-established system the Communist Party of China (CCP) uses to torture prisoners into confessing to crimes imagined by the state.

At its heart, RSDL is a form of state-sanctioned disappearance.

• RSDL is a form of secret detention where suspects are held in incommunicado detention for months without access to a lawyer, contact with their family, and with little to no prosecutor oversight, before formal arrest is made.

• RSDL is so secretive that the disappeared are transported to the facility blindfolded or with a black bag placed over their heads.

• The prisoner in RSDL is watched 24 hours a day by two or more guards. They are watched when they are sleeping and they are watched when they are awake. They are watched even when they are on the toilet, denying the prisoner the last vestiges of human dignity.

• The RSDL cell is usually cut off from sunlight for the entire six months.

• In RSDL, interrogations can happen at any time, day or night, and last for hours at a time.

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The latest book edition of "The People’s Republic of the Disappeared" contains new evidence of foreigners disappeared into RSDL. Australian journalist Cheng Lei, Japanese former university lecturer Hideji Suzuki, Taiwanese human rights activist Lee Ming-che - with a foreword penned by Canadian former diplomat Michael Kovrig - reminds people that China is a country without rule of law and that a foreign passport is no protection.

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Alongside their harrowing accounts are testimonies of Chinese RSDL prisoners, where the use of physical torture as well as psychological torture is part of their reality.

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The stories in this book document the immense psychological as well as physical torture that the CCP inflicts on people in RSDL.

Cheng Lei writes:

“I couldn’t sleep. My hair fell out in bunches. I was sore from the endless sitting. I cried many times a day from missing my kids. I was anxious, frightened, lonely, humiliated, intimidated and almost going crazy from boredom.”

In the Foreword to this third edition, Michael Kovrig describes the isolation and mental torment of his RSDL—so intense it can drive prisoners to contemplate suicide. RSDL facility cells are usually suicide-proofed because of this very reason.

“Your captive body becomes an instrument through which the state security organs control your mind. Alone, powerless, humiliated and denied your intrinsic dignity, you begin to doubt your own humanity. The cells are padded because at some point nearly everyone’s mind begins to break down. The pain is too much to bear and you can see no end to it. Death would offer a yearned-for release, but even that choice is taken from you. With no way to die, you can only endure.”

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Lee Ming-che often heard the sounds of gunfire in the early morning. It made him believe he was going to be executed.

“I was in a state of mental confusion, unable to distinguish whether I was thinking or dreaming. Combined with the physical weakness from my disrupted circadian rhythm, I was on the verge of a mental breakdown.”

Hideji Suzuki cried when his guard gave him a glimpse of sunlight through a window. It was the only time he saw the sky in his eight months of RSDL (the legal maximum is six).

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Chinese women’s activist Li Qiaochu writes in her chapter:

“Even if the price of speaking out is losing my freedom again, I do not regret writing about my experiences, because I know that the moment I summoned the courage to tell the truth, those feelings of humiliation and fear the secret police tried to instil in me just disintegrated. If we cannot speak courageously, we cannot act freely. We must speak directly and not shy away from the difficulties. We must talk about the details, our traumas and our weaknesses. The things we avoid mentioning and keep hidden are precisely the truths they fear we might bring out into the open.”

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/61002672

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Gyaltsen Norbu, the “11th Panchen Lama” appointed by China to replace Gedhun Choekyi Nyima – who was kidnapped by it days after being recognized by the Dalai Lama in 1995 – has on Oct 17 presided over a symposium on “ethnic unity” held in western Tibet’s Ngari Prefecture.

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Those who participated in discussions in the symposium were stated to include primary-level representatives from healthcare services, rural communities, public security, schools and monasteries. They were stated to have taken turns to speak, “sharing stories of friendship among ethnic groups and discussing unity and development.”

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China-appointed Gyaltsen Norbu has begun by saying, “Since the new era began, Ngari has made significant progress in both material conditions and people’s mindsets. The prefecture has been designated a national demonstration area for ethnic unity and progress.”

The “new era” apparently referred to China’s armed invasion and illegal occupation of Tibet in the 1950s.

He has attributed what he sees as Ngari’s achievements to “the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the concerted efforts of people of all ethnic groups.”

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The price of not receiving and hosting Gyaltsen Norbu with the honour due to the 11th Panchen Lama could be devastating. In Mar 2025, Tulku Hungkar Dorje Rinpoche, the head lama of Lung-ngon Monastery in Gade Countyof Golog Prefecture, Qinghai province, was declared dead in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, just days after a visiting team of Chinese police team took custody of him. He had fled there after being subjected to severe persecution by Chinese authorities for, among other reasons, not receiving and hosting Gyaltsen Norbu with the honour considered to be due to the Panchen Lama during the latter’s visit.

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On May 17, 1995, Chinese authorities kidnapped a six-year-old Tibetan boy, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, just days after the Dalai Lama recognized him as the Panchen Lama, one of Tibetan Buddhism’s most important leaders. While Tibetans in exile celebrated the Panchen Lama’s 37th birthday last month, neither he nor his parents have been seen in public since China abducted them in 1995.

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[Edit typo.]

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A China-aligned operator used Claude, Anthropic’s generative AI assistant, to track Uyghurs living in Syria and recruit potential informants within the community. The model translated messages, facilitated communication in local dialects, and geolocated people, zeroing in on particularly vulnerable individuals who face financial hardship or separation from family members still in Xinjiang, the autonomous region in northwest China that is home to the majority of the Uyghur population. Claude helped the operators turn scattered digital traces into targeted intelligence, amplifying the reach of China’s surveillance of a persecuted ethnic minority.

The case is one of several examples of AI-enabled digital transnational repression detailed in a recent report by Anthropic’s Threat Intelligence team, published on Sept. 10, 2026. The report gives direct evidence that generative AI is being incorporated into the machinery of cross-border repression, enabling authoritarian governments and their proxies to build scalable workflows for identifying, monitoring, and targeting diaspora activists and exiled dissidents around the world.

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Because these operations target people across jurisdictions and can enable offline coercion, AI companies should treat transnational repression as a distinct threat category, separate from domestic surveillance and influence operations. Frontier AI companies—those building highly capable, general-purpose AI models—should follow Anthropic’s lead and publish detailed reports that specifically track incidents of digital transnational repression. They should also establish protocols for detecting digital transnational repression, publicly notifying affected communities, and preserving evidence captured in the course of their threat investigations. Taking these steps would help curb the misuse of American technology by repressive governments reaching across borders and improve protections for the already vulnerable groups they are threatening.

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First, Anthropic’s report demonstrates how AI lowers operational costs, making repression more accessible. Operations of digital repression have usually depended on language skills, trained intelligence analysts, and software engineers. The cases in the report suggest that AI can substitute for parts of this expertise. In the campaign against Uyghurs in Syria, operators used Claude to profile targets according to their vulnerabilities and craft a recruitment script in Syrian dialect, despite not speaking Arabic themselves. In the case of three state-backed Iranian influence operations, the actors relied on the model to develop complex campaign plans, operation manuals, and persona systems, working in several languages to promote regime narratives and target, among others, the persecuted Baha’i religious minority and Iranian opposition figures at home and abroad.

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Second, AI models are being used to convert digital traces into detailed information that can be used to track specific targets. Diaspora communities generate large amounts of publicly accessible data across social media, messaging platforms, public databases, and organizational websites. AI assistants can take this fragmented data and structure it into detailed intelligence reports. These reports can reconstruct social networks and relations, infer political affiliations, pinpoint locations, and even flag vulnerabilities.

In one case, a commercial intelligence vendor likely working for Arabic-speaking customers in the Gulf region created a platform to analyze the social media activity of diaspora users, mapping their location and categorizing them as pro-government or opposition. Anthropic disrupted this operation before it was deployed.

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Third, Claude is being integrated into standardized workflows that repeatedly collect information about targets across borders. Repressive operators rely on models to build entire surveillance systems and supporting infrastructure, allowing small teams of human operators to oversee recurring, partly automated surveillance reports. In one instance, a Chinese security contractor used Claude to produce daily “public opinion” briefings for government officials that “catalogued dissidents, activists, ethnic minority and Chinese diaspora communities, and foreign media as threats to political stability.” The operator also created a system that enabled the automated review of 15-30 or more foreign media articles per day. The resulting briefings included recommendations for government enforcement action, turning the monitoring of overseas communities into a routine bureaucratic process.

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the report substantiates that AI-enabled surveillance can lead to real-world acts of transnational repression. The technology produces information that can support physical surveillance, coercion, informant recruitment, the deployment of agents, and the disruption of civil society activities. For instance, in the campaign targeting Uyghurs in Syria, the operators used Claude to identify targets’ physical locations and family members that could be used as leverage. Other operations used AI to conduct reconnaissance of the physical spaces where diaspora communities organize. In one China-affiliated operation against religious minorities, Claude helped compile actionable surveillance files, including “floor plans, facades, and structural diagrams” of religious venues. In another, a China-affiliated actor researched a protest route in Vancouver, Uyghur events in Turkey, and the Oslo Freedom Forum. Although the report does not establish that this reconnaissance led to physical attacks, the cases show how AI-assisted analysis can support authorities to monitor, intimidate, and threaten activists beyond their borders.

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When China rebrands Tibet University to "Xizang" University, it is not just changing a label—it is a deliberate political move to replace the traditional name "Tibet" with the Mandarin term "Xizang" in order to reshape global and local perception, aligning the university's identity with state-approved narratives.

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The Chinese government is actively attempting to erase Tibetan identity, including its language, culture, and religion. To enforce this assimilation policy, authorities ban Tibetan language instruction in classrooms, shut down Tibetan-run schools, and arrest local intellectuals, teachers, and professors. Furthermore, the state is systematically replacing traditional names with Mandarin alternatives—such as forcibly rebranding Lhasa's Tibet University as 'Xizang University'—and removing Tibetan scriptures from public shops, restaurants, and schools.

Simultaneously, the Chinese government is attempting to rewrite Tibetan history by manufacturing false state narratives. Authorities actively penalize and accuse Tibetans of "separatism" when they present the truth in literature and cinema. A prominent recent example is Beijing's heavy state-media condemnation of the groundbreaking independent "film Four Rivers Six Ranges". Directed by Shenpenn Khymsar, the historical drama tells the authentic story of ordinary Tibetans who rose up in 1958 and 1959 to defend their homeland, Tibet and protect His Holiness the Dalai Lama's escape to India—a true narrative that Chinese state media has aggressively accused of "distorting historical reality".

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Beyond removing public scriptures and renaming landmarks, the Chinese government is executing a deep, structural rebranding of Tibet by systematically dismantling the physical and spiritual foundations of its civilization. Under the guise of "Sinicizing religion" and enforcing "ethnic unity," Beijing has deployed heavy machinery to demolish thousands of sacred monastic dwellings and stupas at world-renowned Buddhist institutes like Larung Gar, while mandating that ancient Tibetan sacred texts be forcibly translated into Mandarin. Monks and nuns are subjected to intense political re-education, forced to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party, and prohibited from possessing images of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, as the state aggressively asserts its own authority to appoint future spiritual leaders.

The Chinese government forcibly separated nearly one million Tibetan children—accounting for roughly 78% of school-aged youth—from their families and tradition, religion. Inside these highly regulated institutions, children as young as four years old are subjected to a total immersion environment where the Tibetan language is completely banned, traditional customs are restricted, and instruction is conducted exclusively in Mandarin alongside state-mandated political propaganda.

By severing the everyday connection between children and their parents, the state effectively halts the natural intergenerational transmission of Tibetan language, culture, and unique Buddhist spiritual values. This systemic model of forced separation has drawn severe international condemnation from the United Nations and human rights organisations, who warn that the primary objective of these schools is the permanent psychological and cultural re-engineering of the next generation of Tibetans into loyal, fully integrated subjects of the Chinese Communist Party.

Flights to unknown countries in Africa are scheduled as early as Wednesday, relatives detail

Relatives of gravely ill detainees at two Florida immigration jails say authorities are about to deport their loved ones to unknown countries in Africa despite worsening medical conditions.

Flights are scheduled as early as Wednesday, according to the families and the immigration advocacy group the Workers Circle, which has been monitoring conditions and speaking with detainees inside two Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities in south Florida.

The group said multiple sick detainees with varying conditions had been targeted for imminent deportation, and learned about the operation only in the last few days.

“I received a call from several detainees letting me know that men were being pulled in to interviews with deportation agents, where they were being informed that because of their medical conditions, Mexico would not be accepting their entry, and they will be sent to Africa,” Arianne Betancourt, the group’s immigrant rights organizer, said at a Tuesday night press conference.

“We know that once they are deported and sent to these third countries, they are not receiving medical care in detention. They have difficulties getting medicine.”

The affected detainees are at the Krome North processing center in Miami, which was found to be experiencing severe overcrowding by a government inspector’s report last month, and the Broward transitional center in Pompano Beach. Both facilities are privately run on behalf of ICE.

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Travelers to China be warned: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) just doubled down on regulations that could subject innocent travelers and citizens to exit bans or detention. China’s new entry and exit regulations expand immigration officials’ power to halt travelers and allow the state to impose exit bans for broadly defined “national security” concerns. Of course, these regulations are not the first to permit exit bans. Rather, they formalize and complement a sprawling web of legislation in China that permits the CCP to restrict the movement of citizens and visitors alike on the basis of vague political or national security interests.

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Because Chinese laws such as the Criminal Code, the Counter-Espionage Law, the Law on the Protection of State Secrets, and the Ethnic Unity and Progress Law provide only vague definitions of terms like “espionage” or “state security,” CCP officials have wide discretion in categorizing innocent behaviors as criminal or otherwise banning them. Take, for example, the recent detention of American academic Min Zin, who traveled to China “at the invitation of the Chinese government,” according to the US State Department, to attend a conference. Zin’s family stopped hearing from him shortly after he arrived on June 3, and later discovered that he had been detained on vague accusations of engaging in “espionage,” with Chinese officials claiming he posed a “national security” threat. Although Zin has not been formally arrested or charged, the CCP is reportedly holding him in a windowless, constantly lit room and subjecting him to long interrogations.

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A new report, Risks Beyond Wrongdoing: Traveling to China, also warns, travelers may face an exit ban not because they are accused of wrongdoing, but because restricting them creates leverage over another person, an investigation, or a foreign government. US government guidance warns that relatives of people under investigation — including minors — may themselves be prevented from leaving.

For example, Gao Zhen, a lawful US resident, was detained in China during a holiday trip, and his son, a US citizen, was also unable to leave due to an effective travel ban on Gao’s wife. Therefore, travel risk cannot be assessed solely by examining the traveler’s own conduct. Relatives and close associates of human rights defenders, dissidents, people sought by the Chinese government, or individuals involved in politically sensitive proceedings may have a higher risk exposure than ordinary travelers.

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Travelers should not assume they are safe from the CCP. China’s web of laws can ensnare nearly anyone, and most travelers do not discover they are subject to an exit ban until they arrive at the airport. In a national context that represses ethnic groups and silences dissent, innocent activities like conducting research, working as a journalist, or simply posting to social media could be categorized as criminal. Individuals who have relatives that the CCP deems a threat may be at higher risk, along with those who previously held Chinese citizenship. The CCP does not recognize dual citizenship, so the state could choose to deny consular access or other rights afforded to foreign nationals.

[...]

At least three of the protesters wore shirts that said “Rowling Money Kills” and one activist used a bullhorn to read a statement, sometimes unintelligible through the noise and shouting of the moment, to those present.

“She would rather police women’s space than support her trans sisters when they are under attack,” that person can be heard saying.

Archived

[...]

Rushan Abbas, an Uyghur human rights activist and founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs and chair of the Executive Committee of the World Uyghur Congress, explains how the danger of China's repression followed her into exile.

[...]

"[The repression] hit my family directly. In the early 1990s, as soon as I started working with US politicians, my father, a high-level academic in Ürümchi, lost his job at 59 in retaliation for my advocacy. In 2018, just days after I spoke publicly at the Hudson Institute, a Washington DC think tank, about the mass detentions, Chinese authorities abducted my sister Gulshan Abbas. She’s a retired physician, a mother of two and a grandmother of four, and she had never been political."

In December 2019, Chinese state media outlet CGTN denied my sister existed and accused me of making up cases and spreading rumours overseas. In December 2020, the authorities finally acknowledged Gulshan had been secretly sentenced to 20 years in prison, obviously on fabricated charges. Her case is one of the clearest examples of how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses kin punishment and transnational repression to silence Uyghurs. My sister turned 64 this June. She’s still in a Chinese prison because I exercised my freedom of speech. We have no picture or video of her. No one has been able to visit her and we have received no independent report on her health or wellbeing.

[...]

Transnational repression has followed me ever since, in the form of cyberattacks, defamation, fabricated court documents, harassment and intimidation. A video appeared on YouTube calling for my execution and that of my husband, Abdulhakim Idris. I have received emails asking what colour rifle I would prefer to be shot with. After I published my memoir, fake books claiming to tell my life story appeared on Amazon. My organisation, Campaign for Uyghurs, has experienced persistent cyberattacks. My case is not unique. Uyghurs in the diaspora and those who speak out continue to suffer transnational repression.

[...]

Governments should use existing sanctions tools, including the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows sanctions on individual human rights abusers, to hold officials responsible for the genocide accountable.

Governments should also refuse to extradite Uyghurs to China. No one should be sent back to a country where they may face genocide.

Governments and international institutions must keep individual cases and the broader human rights crisis on the agenda. They should keep existing official genocide determinations in place and secure the release of political prisoners such as my sister. Human rights should never be treated as secondary to broader relations with Beijing.

[...]

The CCP imposes forced labour, mass arbitrary detention and imprisonment, mass surveillance and restrictions on cultural and religious life. In 2025, there were 3.36 million forced labour transfers and over a million children were placed in state-run boarding schools, where they are raised cut off from their cultural heritage. The Uyghur language is banned in schools. Uyghur books and religious texts have been burned. Uyghur women are subjected to forced abortion, sterilisation and marriage to men from the dominant Han ethnic group.

China’s government claims these policies bring stability, but stability for who? This is a system where the government exercises unchecked power to detain, punish, silence and watch people for their beliefs, their identity and their demands for human dignity.

[...]

Archived

Six years after China imposed its national security regime, Hong Kong’s democracy movement has been forced behind bars or into exile, and the authorities are targeting the ties between people in exile and those in Hong Kong, says Frances Hui, a Hong Kong activist in exile and policy and advocacy manager at the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation.

Exiled activists are pressing states and international organisations to show support for Hong Kong’s political prisoners.

[...]

Joshua Wong is a prominent activist whose release was in sight, now faces a new sentence for past international advocacy. has been behind bars since November 2020. He was first jailed over protest-related convictions. He was then sentenced to four years and eight months for subversion in the Hong Kong 47 case, which targeted 47 pro-democracy figures for taking part in an unofficial primary election. He was due for release in January 2027, but in June 2025, national security police arrested him inside Stanley Prison, where he was serving his sentence, on a new charge of conspiring to collude with foreign forces.

[...]

The National Security Law was imposed by China on Hong Kong on 30 June 2020, bypassing the city’s legislature. It created four offences: collusion with foreign forces, secession, subversion and terrorism. Each is defined broadly enough to cover peaceful speech and activism, and each carries a sentence of up to life imprisonment. Under the law, judges designated by the chief executive, the city’s leader, have heard cases without juries.

Authorities have used the National Security Law to dismantle civil society. They have prosecuted community organisers, journalists, opposition politicians, students and trade unionists, and dozens of groups have disbanded, citing legal risks. Self-censorship is now embedded across society.

[...]

It has never been clearer that the government aims to keep a symbol of my generation’s democracy movement out of public life. It also wants to wear down his spirit through years of isolation. That’s why prosecutors waited nearly five years to bring this charge, until Joshua had almost finished his sentence.

The case also shows the government using the law even more aggressively against people it can still physically reach, to punish ties with those it cannot reach. Prosecutors linked Joshua to Nathan Law, an exiled activist with a bounty on his head. They treated their years of shared international advocacy, including meeting foreign lawmakers, giving media interviews and calling for international pressure, as a continuing criminal conspiracy.

This turns years of lawful political advocacy into a crime.

"That is the work I, and many Hongkongers in exile, do every day, and it was once part of civic life in Hong Kong, protected by the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution," Frances Hui says.

"The message for Hongkongers is chilling: cut every tie with those abroad or become the next target."

[...]

Frances Hui urges Governments to say plainly that this prosecution is political and call for Joshua’s release.

"He should not lose the rest of his life for peaceful political advocacy. The release of political prisoners should be a priority in engagement with China, not an afterthought."

[...]

Hong Kong’s prison population is at a 20-year high, and Stanley Prison, where Joshua is held, runs at around 144 per cent of capacity. Jimmy Lai is held alone in a windowless cell and his health is deteriorating. Chow Hang-tung, a human rights lawyer who helped organise Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen Square Massacre vigils, has been transported in metal restraints that caused her sustained pain. The authorities coerce almost every political prisoner into a political ‘rehabilitation’ programme that aims at ‘psychological reconstruction and re-establishment of values’.

[...]

People with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD) are less likely to receive organ transplants than peers without IDD,1 partially because of disability-based discrimination. There is a growing national momentum to enact and enforce policies to improve equitable access to organ transplants for all patients, including those with IDD.2 ,3 Forty US states have laws prohibiting disability-based discrimination in the organ transplant process (eTable 1 in Supplement 1). These laws differ in the inclusion of 2 specific strengthening provisions: (1) private right of action, which allows private individuals (instead of the government or other federal regulator) to file lawsuits in defense of their rights, and (2) expedited case review, which allows legal cases filed under these statutes to be heard by the court faster given the time-sensitive nature of transplant. We examined the extent to which antidiscrimination laws, and their associated provisions, mitigate disparities in rates of transplant evaluation and receipt for patients with end-stage kidney disease (ESKD) with IDD vs without IDD.

Discussion

This study adds to a national discourse about the need for transparency and equal access to organ transplant for all, including people with IDD and other populations. While antidiscrimination laws are important in advancing equity for patients with ESKD and IDD, these laws are not associated with more equitable rates of evaluation or receipt of kidney transplant.

Our findings may reflect challenges in translating legal protections into clinical practice changes. Discriminatory treatment can be difficult to identify and prove, even when legal protections exist. Awareness of protections and resources to challenge potential discrimination may vary among people with IDD and their families. Consequently, legislation alone may be insufficient to eliminate disparities without complementary efforts to improve transparency, accountability, and oversight.

Proposed strategies to mitigate disparities for other marginalized populations may also be beneficial for people with IDD.5,6 For example, electronic health record–based registries may be able to systematically identify and automatically refer eligible candidates for evaluation to circumvent potential physician biases at the referral stage.6 Improving transparency in the transplant committee selection process by allowing patient or advocate participation has also been posited as a solution.5 Finally, there is a need for data registries to monitor candidates’ progress through the transplant care pathway by social determinants of health to identify systemic and structural barriers to transplant access.

Limitations include a lack of measures of transplant appropriateness or social support. We could not ascertain whether patients chose not to pursue evaluation or transplant but could have. Other limitations were related to cohort identification, data capture, and measurement of transplant access.

Advocacy efforts that strengthen antidiscrimination legislation, reduce clinician implicit bias, and mandate transparency in transplant center decision-making are needed to create equitable access to this lifesaving therapy for kidney transplant candidates with IDD. Ensuring equitable access to organ transplant requires that people with IDD are holistically evaluated for eligibility without IDD-specific contraindications or bias.

Archived

[...]

[China's] decades-old petitioning system (called xinfang or letters and visits) in China provides a framework for the public to lodge complaints of official misconduct or seek dispute resolution outside of the legal system. However, petitioners are one of the most persecuted groups in China with local authorities often using hired thugs or police to harass and punish them to prevent them from filing their grievances.

Safeguard Defenders interviewed a number of local human rights lawyers in China to get their responses to these new rules. Here’s what they told us along with additional analysis from our research.

[...]

The two key changes in “Measures of the State Bureau for Letters and Visits on Further Standardizing the Registration of Public Visits” that went into force 1 July 2026 are:

• Article 4, which bars petitioners from registering their complaints in Beijing if they do not have paperwork showing they have already completed the petitioning process with lower (up to provincial-level) petition offices. And,

• Article 6, which bars repeated petitioning, gives police powers to “educate” or “guide” those who do so, and potentially criminalizes “disruptive” or “persistent” attempts to petition in Beijing allowing police to handle the matter “in accordance with the law”.

The main impacts of these are to keep petitioners out of Beijing and force local governments to handle the huge numbers of complaints, say the lawyers.

[...]

The lawyers came up with two main reasons why they think the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) released these new regulations:

• reduce the overall number of petitions,

• keep petitioners and potential violent incidents out of Beijing by making local governments take more responsibility.

[...]

According to two of the lawyers, the system is overloaded with complaints, and the CCP wants to reduce the number of new petitions, especially in Beijing. The current system was clearly not working (and has not been for many years) with inspection teams bogged down with huge numbers of petitions, petitioners stuck in endless procedures, more people travelling to Beijing to petition and heavy pressure on local governments to stop them (which is expensive).

[...]

By drastically limiting who can petition in Beijing, the authorities can now not only control the numbers of petitioners in the capital, they can also shift the responsibility for unresolved petitions to local governments. If petitioners become desperate and angry from years of fruitlessly appealing for justice, they are less likely to protest in the capital.

[...]

In principle, petitioning is a legal activity but because local governments are afraid of being punished for having too many complaints (see below), they have often engaged police to target petitioners on trumped-up public order charges, such as using the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” to sentence them to yearslong jail terms.

Another tactic has been to illegally hold them in psychiatric hospitals, also sometimes for years on end. But there is a danger that the wider public could view these actions by the police as extralegal and illegitimate.

That is why, historically, governments often hired thugs from security firms to kidnap and threaten petitioners to stop them petitioning in Beijing. By using thugs with no public connection to the government, they had plausible deniability that they were involved in the persecution, a system which scholar Lynette Ong calls “outsourcing repression”.

[...]

One lawyer believes petitioners will now face more pressure and become more fearful. They can more easily be arrested—and it’s possible they may be used as examples to scare others off from petitioning.

The Beijing route—which used to be so important for them—is now mostly closed off.

[...]

Archived

[The NGO] Hong Kong Watch addressed an online meeting for stakeholders ahead of the 103rd Pre-Sessional Working Group of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on China, presenting evidence of the detention, mistreatment and ideological education of children in Hong Kong under the National Security Law. The meeting forms part of the Committee’s preparations for its review of China’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

During the meeting, our Policy Director Megan Khoo set out how, since the National Security Law took effect in 2020, more than 10,000 people have been imprisoned on protest-related charges, including children. In December 2025, a sixteen-year-old boy was sentenced to forty-two months in prison for attending online meetings and sharing social media posts. The court rejected his age and his autism as grounds for leniency, despite the UN Human Rights Office reminding Hong Kong that Article 37 of the Convention requires child imprisonment to be a last resort.

[...]

Mrs Khoo also highlighted conditions inside juvenile facilities. A September 2025 report, ‘We Were Made to Suffer’: Systemic Abuse and Political Control Inside Hong Kong’s Prisons', by the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation documents systemic abuse, including beatings, extortion and sexual assault by inmates given privileges by guards. The department that runs the prisons controls the complaints process, those who complain describe retaliation, and no independent international body can currently inspect these facilities.

[...]

Beyond the prison walls, national security education is compulsory from the age of six. Books have been stripped from libraries, including 146 titles on Tiananmen Square and the 2019 protests, and a record seventy-one teachers were disqualified in 2024 over lesson content.

Mrs Khoo stressed that these are not isolated incidents but a pattern of violations engaging Articles 3, 13, 17, 19, 37 and 40 of the Convention, and put forward two asks to the Committee:

1. Disaggregated data: Request data on every person under eighteen detained on national security grounds, so the scale of child imprisonment can be understood.

2. Independent monitoring: Recommend that independent monitors be granted access to Hong Kong’s juvenile facilities, given credible allegations of abuse and the absence of any independent complaints mechanism.

[...]

Dictatorial regimes are retaliating against democratic activists who talk to foreign governments and international bodies.

Archived

On September 2, prominent Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong pleaded guilty to charges under the territory’s notorious National Security Act—the second time he has faced prison time under the Beijing-imposed law. Having already been imprisoned since November 2020, he now faces the possibility of another lengthy sentence simply for demanding that Hong Kongers have a voice in their own government. Joshua’s detention has been widely recognized as emblematic of the Chinese Communist Party’s increasing restrictions on freedom in and the autonomy of Hong Kong.

However, his case is also an example of an important but less visible phenomenon: to hide truth about their abuses, dictatorial regimes are criminalizing the act of talking to the outside world. The allegations against Joshua included meetings in the United States with Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and then Senator Marco Rubio. Unfortunately, activists around the globe are facing similar charges. The following cases highlight the efforts of repressive regimes to shut down engagement with foreign democracies and international bodies that have made protecting democracy part of their mission.

[...]

Vietnamese journalist Pham Chi Dung was detained after petitioning members of the European Parliament (EP) to pressure Vietnam over its human rights record. In 2019, he wrote to EP members asking them to postpone ratification of the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement until Vietnamese authorities made human rights improvements, and made a similar appeal in a video featured at an event hosted by a British EP member. Two days later, he was arrested. UN experts noted that the arrest “appears to be an act of reprisal for his human rights advocacy.” Dung was later sentenced to 15 years in prison for “conducting antistate propaganda,” and he remains imprisoned today.

Mohammad Seifzadeh, a human rights lawyer in Iran, wrote a letter with other human rights activists to UN Secretary General António Guterres in December 2022, asking him to respond to the Iranian regime’s execution of peaceful protesters. Just a few months later, as a result of the letter, he was convicted of “propaganda against the system” and “spreading false information” and sentenced to a year in prison (though his sentence was eventually suspended for medical reasons).

Azerbaijani activist Anar Mammadli, chair of the Election Monitoring and Democracy Studies Centre (EMDS), was arrested in 2024 a few weeks after calling on Azerbaijani authorities to release political prisoners and respect fundamental rights at events hosted by the UN Human Rights Council and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). A group of UN officials expressed “serious concerns that Mammadli’s detention and prosecution may be in retaliation for his human rights work and his engagement with UN mechanisms.” In 2026, Anar was sentenced to 13 years in prison on a variety of baseless charges.

In November 2020, three staff of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, including Executive Director Gasser Abdel Razek, were arrested a few days after discussing human rights issues with 13 foreign ambassadors and diplomats. While they were released a few weeks later, they were placed under a travel ban that remains in place to this day.

[..]

Opinion piece by Victor Madrigal-Borloz, a human rights lawyer and trustee at the UN’s fund for torture victims.

Archived

[...]

The UN is in deep structural debt. The US alone withholds $1.5bn in dues, while many countries pay late or not at all, with little or no consequence. UN80 reforms have significantly shrunk operations. The UN secretary general António Guterres has warned of looming financial collapse.

There is evidence that the crisis is intentional. A 2025 investigation by the International Service for Human Rights documented how a bloc led by China and Russia used budget committees in New York to systematically block and cut funding for the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the Human Rights Council, while the US’s neglect to pay compounds the damage. These efforts are consistent with longstanding strategies: weaken the institution until it appears irrelevant, then occupy its remains with regressive actors.

[...]

Strip the funding, and that accountability disappears – this is already visible with treaty bodies and special procedures forced this year to reduce sessions and country visits. The voluntary fund dropped by 88 per cent from 2025 to 2026, leaving thousands of torture victims without the psychosocial support they need.

[...]

Dag Hammarskjöld famously said that the UN was meant to keep us from hell, not deliver heaven. But human beings deserve more than purgatory: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights promises a world in which we are all born free and equal in dignity and rights. We must not settle for less.

[...]

Archived

early one in three people in Myanmar now needs humanitarian aid, five years after the military’s 2021 coup plunged the country into civil war, exposing more than 90% of the population to violence within five kilometres of their homes. More than 8,200 people have been killed and over 31,500 arrested by the military since the takeover, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a Myanmar rights group.

[...]

Su Mon Thant, Asia-Pacific senior analyst at ACLED - Armed Conflict Location & Event Data, an independent, impartial global monitor that collects, analyses, and maps data on conflict and protest - has spent years tracking the war’s toll on civilians. In this ZMINA interview, she explains the pattern behind the military’s near-total impunity, how China and Russia help shield it from accountability, and what the international community could still do.

[...]

Deadly conflict has been raging across Myanmar ever since the military coup in 2021. But fighting between the military and ethnic armed groups isn’t new – the military has been clashing with one group or another since independence in 1948 ...

Support from the governments of China and Russia has helped the junta continue its operations. The military has managed selective bilateral ceasefires with a few ethnic armed organisations, but those deals haven’t turned into any kind of real peace process. Right now, there’s still no credible or inclusive political path forward that can tackle the root causes of the conflict and finally bring the fighting to an end ...

Resistance to the coup – the Spring Revolution [in 2021] – started as nationwide peaceful protests with people from all walks of life [...] calling for a return to democracy – asking that the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi [but] the military responded with brutal force.

[...]

The military improved its ability to counter drones used by resistance groups and strengthened its air-defence capabilities, with military support from Russia and China contributing to this adaptation.

[...]

There is a clear pattern of the air strikes [by the military] targeting gatherings of civilian [at] places where displaced people seek shelter, children go to school, and ordinary civilians gather. They may also be places where people injured in fighting receive medical treatment.

[...]

The military has also targeted social and cultural events, including festivals, donation ceremonies, New Year celebrations, which take place on different dates among Myanmar’s ethnic communities, and weddings.

[...]

The international community should [...] be careful not to interpret the regime’s decades-long strategy of regular symbolic releases of limited numbers of political prisoners as evidence of a genuine political opening or an end to repression.

[...]

China and Russia have been crucial in keeping Myanmar’s military regime afloat by backing them with diplomacy, weapons, tech and funding. That support makes a huge difference: it lowers the regime’s costs of repression and helps it withstand relentless armed resistance.

[...]

On the global stage, China and Russia shield the military at the United Nations, blocking attempts to apply stronger international pressure or coordinated action against them.

[...]

Chinese software and digital technologies have reportedly enhanced the military’s surveillance capabilities

[...]

Through regional cooperation mechanisms such as the Lancang–Mekong Cooperation framework, China has helped maintain the junta’s international connections and reduce its diplomatic isolation. These relationships may also facilitate regime access to essential resources, including oil and gas, through connections with countries such as Iran.

[...]

China’s and Russia’s support should be understood not as isolated acts of assistance but as part of a broader system that enables the junta to maintain military capacity, suppress opposition, and resist international efforts to weaken its rule.

[...]

Archived

Here is the full report: "Swept Under the Rug”: Systemic Failures to End Torture in the People’s Republic of China (pdf)

[...]

"In cases involving human rights defenders, it is normal for Chinese authorities to employ torture to extract confessions, fabricate evidence, violate legal procedures, manufacture wrongful convictions, and subject individuals to criminal persecution." - Family member of currently imprisoned rights activist, April 20261

Beatings, electric shocks, solitary confinement: although the Chinese government signed the United Nations Convention against Torture forty years ago, and adopted some domestic prohibitions against these abuses, periodic reviews by international bodies and documentation from independent civil society demonstrate that torture by those authorities persists. Prisoners of conscience are at especially grave risk.

[...]

“The Chinese government’s ongoing reliance on torture isn’t a function of gaps in law or process—it’s a political choice,” said Sophie Richardson, Co-Executive Director of CHRD. “When every safeguard against torture is ignored—year after year, nationwide—impunity for police, courts, and officials is all but guaranteed.”

One in five of the cases CHRD examined included allegations of beatings by authorities. Others reported being subjected to electric shocks and solitary confinement. 35 percent described deprivation of adequate medical care—the most common form of torture—and 16 died in detention as an apparent result. More than half of prisoners of conscience alleging torture had been imprisoned for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a charge United Nations human rights experts have called vague and imprecise; the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for it to be repealed.

[...]

Chinese authorities torture and ill-treat prisoners of conscience with near-total impunity, the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders said today in a new report. Drawing on 209 cases of alleged torture between 2016 and 2025 across the country, and interviews with 25 human rights defenders (HRDs), family members, and lawyers, the 53-page report, “Swept Under the Rug”: Systemic Failures to End Torture in the People’s Republic of China, finds that authorities persist in their use of torture, typically to extract confessions, and fail to investigate allegations of ill-treatment.

CHRD found reference to courts conducting investigations into torture allegations in only two of the 209 cases, those of rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi and journalist Huang Xueqin. Those courts subsequently claimed they found no evidence of torture. In the case of HRD Ji Xiaolong, the court agreed to exclude his confession on the grounds it was obtained through ill-treatment—the only such exclusion CHRD found among the 209 cases—but convicted him anyway, stating that his lack of a confession made him a “recidivist” deserving harsher punishment.

[...]

Despite having ratified the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1988, Chinese authorities have failed to engage reviews with the goal of eradicating torture. At China’s last review, in 2015, the Committee against Torture (CAT) concluded that these abuses remain “deeply entrenched.” The Chinese government delayed submitting its most recent periodic report for five years and as a result is significantly overdue for review by the committee, one of the few remaining avenues of redress for torture survivors. Chinese authorities are increasingly combative in rejecting international scrutiny, telling the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2021 that “the risk of being ‘subjected to torture’… does not exist” in China.

[...]

“Chinese authorities have had four decades to make good on their promises to end torture,” Richardson said. “Must prisoners of conscience pay with their health—and, in some cases, their lives—for Beijing’s intransigence?”

[...]