With rare candor, China's government recently released statistics on people arrested and prosecuted for endangering state security, the most serious political offense in the criminal code. China's top prosecutor, Han Zhubin, revealed that more than 3,400 people were arrested from 1998 to last year for such crimes as subversion, incitement to subversion, espionage and trafficking in state secrets.
Arrests and prosecutions for endangering state security have risen sharply since Sept. 11, 2001. In the two-year period that ended on Dec. 31 last year, more than 1,600 people were prosecuted for endangering state security, most after the terror attacks on the US. Many of those arrested and prosecuted hail from Xinjiang, an autonomous region in the northwest of the country that is home to a large and restive Muslim population.
ILLUSTRATION: YU SHA
China's government has used the war on terror to crack down on those seeking greater autonomy, including those who do so by peaceful means. This includes people like Rebiya Kadeer, a businesswoman imprisoned for sending newspaper articles to her husband in the US, Tohti Tunyaz, a doctoral student in Japan accused of publishing "sensitive documents," and Tursunjan Amat, a poet who recited a pro-independence poem at a public gathering in Urumqi.
Large as the number of such arrests and prosecutions is, the true extent of the government's suppression of independent thought and activity is even greater.
Most members of the Falun Gong and other unauthorized religions are arrested and tried for "using an evil cult to sabotage implementation of the law" -- a crime categorized as "disturbing the social order." Thousands of people are imprisoned for such "evil cult" activities.
Labor leaders are often charged with "organizing an illegal procession" or "disturbing the social order." Dissidents who attempt to fund their activities by conducting private business sometimes find themselves jailed for economic crimes like fraud and illegal publishing. Fang Jue, a reformer who served a four-year term for economic crimes, and Jiang Surang, an underground Catholic priest sentenced to six years for illegally publishing Bibles, were both punished in this way.
Dissidents picked up by the police but not formally arrested sometimes wind up in re-education camps or in psychiatric hospitals run by the public security bureau.
Those sentenced to two- or three-year terms of "re-education through labor" are not included in the statistics on endangering state security released by Procurator General Han.
The names of only a few of the thousands arrested for political crimes are known. An exhaustive search of official and unofficial sources turned up fewer that 150 names of individuals arrested for endangering state security in 1998 to last year, a "transparency rate" of less than 5 percent. Indeed, we know more about the arrests made after the Tiananmen protests of 1989 than about those arrested today.
What we do know about those arrested is as disturbing as the arrests themselves. For example, about one-quarter are non-Han Chinese, principally Tibetans and Uighurs. China is more than 90 percent Han. Sentences for non-Han Chinese are typically longer than those imposed on Han Chinese.
Moreover, almost everyone arrested for endangering state security is convicted. Appeals, when filed, are routinely rejected. In the one or two cases of acquittal, another charge is filed and a conviction obtained. That happened to Yue Zhengzhong, who sent an intercepted letter to the US Embassy praising the 1999 bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade. Prosecuted for inciting subversion, Yue was ultimately convicted of "making a false accusation." He had written that those killed deserved their fate.
Although some of those convicted of endangering state security are charged with violent crimes -- for example, two Tibetans were recent sentenced to death for "inciting separatism" and setting off bombs -- the great majority involve non-violent speech and association.
Dozens of leaders of opposition groups -- most unknown to the outside world -- were imprisoned in recent years. Li Wenshan and Chen Shiqing, leaders of the Chinese Nation's Democratic Party, which has nearly 1,000 members, are serving long sentences in Gansu Province's Linxia Prison.
"Internet dissidents" make up the fastest-growing group of political prisoners. Last month, Huang Qi, an Internet entrepreneur arrested for posting articles criticizing the Communist Party, and four young intellectuals who made up the "New Youth Study Group" to hold online discussions about political reform, were sentenced to long prison terms.
Scholars, too, feel the heat. Xu Zerong, a social scientist trained at Harvard and Oxford, is serving a 13-year sentence in Guangdong Province for photocopying materials on Chinese military tactics during the 1950 to 1953 Korean War.
Many hope that the SARS crisis will encourage China's leaders to become more transparent and accountable. But the way the authorities are handling the epidemic is having the opposite effect. Internal travel restrictions are used to keep lawyers from representing dissident clients. Prisons are closed to outside visitors.
Meetings with foreign governments on human rights -- during which information is provided on political cases -- have been postponed and visits by monitors, including one from the World Psychiatric Association to investigate charges of psychiatric abuse, are on hold.
No one knows when the long-promised visit by the UN Rapporteur on Torture will take place.
We may get a better picture of China's public health system as a result of the SARS crisis, but when it comes to the country's political health, there is little to suggest that criticism will be tolerated or opposition allowed.
Those who attempt to change the way China is governed will be dealt with harshly, their names and fates remaining anonymous.
John Kamm is president of the Dui Hua Foundation.
Copyright: Project Syndicate.
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