China and East Asia
China | Japan | Mongolia | North Korea | South Korea | Taiwan
Serious human rights violations are committed in China. Each year, more people are executed in the country than anywhere else. Prisoners are tortured, protestors are beaten with excessive force and free speech is repressed. Asylum seekers are forced to return to the country they have fled, without their claim being properly assessed. Despite all of this, foreign governments continue to fail in challenging China's disastrous human
rights record.
There are also continuing serious human rights abuses across the East Asia region more widely. Freedom of expression is significantly limited in
South Korea. In North Korea the government fails to uphold its
population's basic right to food and health care. Most East Asian governments,
including Japan, continue to apply the death penalty.
Read more about the countries in this region in our 2011 Annual Report
Support Gao Zhishseng For nearly a decade Gao Zhisheng was one of China's top lawyer. He won awards and was respected by the people and government alike. But he became increasingly outspoken about human rights abuses in the country. And for this he has been severely punished. He was imprisoned without his family knowing where he was. He was brutally tortured. And he and his family were put under illegal house arrest. In 2009 he disappeared and again his family didn't know where he was. In 2011 it was revealed that he was in prison, where he remains to this day. Please show your support for Gao today:
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Free Ni Yulan!
Ni Yulan offers legal support to those at risk of being made homeless by the Chinese government. But in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics, she too became a victim of China's enforced eviction epidemic when her house, along with 1.5 million in others in China, was destroyed. Over the last ten years she has been repeatedly arrested, tortured and detained without charge for her work on housing rights. Right now she is locked in a Beijing detention centre for 'picking quarrels and provoking troubles'.
Chen Guancheng's nephew sentenced
We are relieved that they are now in relative safety after seven years of harassment at the hands of the Chinese authorities. But their ordeal is not over - members of Chen's wider family and the brave individuals who assisted his escape face serious reprisals and Chen's nephew, Chen Kegui, has just been sentenced to three years and three months in prison. |
Further information
- North Korea: Implementing Recommendations to improve Human Rights (Open Letter) 4 October 2010
- Mongolia: Briefing to the Committee Against Torture 1 October 2010
- Japan urged to protect right to protest after anti-whaling activists convicted 7 September 2010
