China's Belligerent Ascent
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| Swedish human rights activist Peter Dahlin. /AFP/Getty |
"In China today, it is no longer enough that police can arrest you, indict you without evidence beyond a coerced confession, and sentence you via courts controlled by the Chinese Communist Party [CCP].""The state's need for complete power made it introduce RSDL [Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location], as an alternative, where police or MSS [the Ministry of State Security] can hold anyone they want for half a year.""The high risk of suicide when kept in solitary confinement for so long means the rooms must be proofed against self-harm."Peter Dahlin, Director of Safeguard Defenders, former RSDL prisoner
Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location results in the chosen victims of China's security establishment being kept in solitary confinement. There is no automatic right to a lawyer as citizens in the West are accustomed to as a normal human right. There is no contact with families. There is the sudden disappearance of an individual and no one knows where they might be since the state feels no obligation to acknowledge where you have been taken. A casual state of secrecy and non-communication is rote.
The use of RSDL has been classified as enforced disappearances by the United Nations. Rooms in such solitary confinement cells have soft-padded walls where even a toilet is installed with thick padding. Two guards are present at all times, their sole function to stare at the prisoner, taking notes continually and ensuring the prisoner takes no action of self-harm. Exit from the cells take place when nightly six-hour interrogations occur, the prisoner strapped into an interrogation chair.
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Latterly, alternatives for disappearances have been introduced with new national security laws permitting convictions based solely on dialogue, not actions. Trials that ensue bear no resemblance to a judicial process, and no evidence need be presented. Most prisoners who are detained are registered under false names to deter their outside identification. And most are never seen again.
The Peoples' Republic of China under its Chinese Communist rule is expanding its RSDL system from a few hundred victims at its initiation soon to record up to ten thousand victims annually, according to an analysis of Chinese court data, by Safeguard Defenders, in a report recently issued. Representing tools of Chinese foreign policy, foreign citizens are being targeted at an accelerated rate.
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Currently, Australia is a key target, but others include Americans, British, Swedish, Canadian, Japanese, Turkish and Belizean citizens who have been arrested by order of the state, many taken into RSDL. In 2020, China has threatened significant punishment, "retribution", to a list of countries, not only smaller countries like Finland, the Czech Republic and Nepal, but also major powers like the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, India and Japan.
All of this as Beijing ships off full steam ahead in establishing its credentials as the new world superpower, while displaying its blueprint for foreign relations including the expected role of other countries in the new world order. Its demands of other countries amount in large part, to transforming them into obedient vassal states expected to adhere to Beijing's demands should they wish to access markets in China.
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| Xi Jinping Photo: Kaliva/Shutterstock |
China is fully prepared to submit countries smaller than itself to the status of tributary states free to go about their business as long as they bear in mind nothing should be attempted that displeases China. All of which should be familiar to the countries in eastern Europe who have seen all of this play out earlier in their history. The world has seen this before, a unique entrapment of satellite nations called the U.S.S.R.
Labels: Beijing, Chinese Communist Party, Global Relations, Hostage Diplomacy
posted by Pieface @ Friday, December 04, 2020
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