Immersion in sewage, ripping out fingernails, sleep deprivation, cigarette burns and beatings with electric prods -- these are some of the torture methods used by China's police and prison officers to extract confessions and maintain discipline, a UN investigation has found.
Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said on Friday that abuse of suspects and prisoners remained widespread in China. Treatment was far worse than international norms, despite recent signs of improvement.
Nowak's investigation was the first ever permitted by China and, as such, represents a breakthrough in human rights. Despite this, he said he had been obstructed by security officials, who intimidated some victims and their relatives or prevented them from seeing him.
However, he was able to visit prisons and "re-education" camps in Beijing and the troubled regions of Xinjiang and Tibet, as well as interviewing academics, justice officials and detainees.
Among the prisoners, Nowak said he observed a "palpable level of fear and self-censorship," which he had not seen in missions to other countries.
Human-rights groups say brutality and degradation are common in Chinese prisons, where many of the victims are from the Tibetan and Uighur ethnic minorities, political dissidents, followers of the banned Falun Gong sect and members of underground churches.
Although China outlawed torture in 1996, its definition of illegal acts -- those leaving physical marks -- is so narrow that interrogators can employ a wide range of methods contravening UN standards.
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