SCMP Sunday, October 7, 1984 HK Prisoners in China part1

 

南華早報專題報導  Ann Quon  

SCMP  Sunday, October 7, 1984

HK Prisoners in China

Disappearance raises key questions

By Ann Quon

 

Mr. Liu Sanqing boarded a train at Hunghom station on Christmas Day 1981 for a short visit to Canton to see relatives of two political prisoners.

It was the last time he would be seen in public.

 After repeated efforts by his father to obtain information from the Canton authorities, it was disclosed in March last year, fully 26 months after Mr. Liu's disappearance, that he had been tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison on counter-revolutionary charges. The Chinese authorities have never released details of the trial, but in letters to a Hongkong activist group that campaigned for his release, they made it clear that although the computer sales engineer was born in Hongkong, they considered him a Chinese national.

As such, he was found guilty of collaborating with others to overthrow the Government.

 Mr. Liu (30) is one of 24 people adopted by the human rights group Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience in China. But his is the only case involving a Hongkong-born Chinese.

The implications are important for Hongkong because despite the guarantees, in 13 years we could be living in that system, says a civil rights activist

Amnesty believes there are tens of thousands of political prisoners who, like Mr. Liu, are being held in prisons and labour camps throughout many without being charged or tried, in conditions described as cruel, inhuman and degrading. While there is no evidence of torture, in its report on human rights violations in China, Amnesty says prisoners are often held in solitary confinement for prolonged periods, sometimes shackled for weeks and forced to stand motionless without food for 24 hours.

Beatings are not unusual, it says. The human rights group also believes the numbers in prison have risen sharply in the past 13 months as a result of the country's anti-crime campaign.

Although China has not released statistics on the numbers arrested or executed during the campaign, Amnesty charges that more than 10,000 were executed between August last year and January this year. "Our main concern is to appeal to the Chinese to abolish the death penalty it is a basic violation of human rights," says Miss Sreelata de Costa, Amnesty's London based Asian regional officer, who is in Hongkong as part of a touch-base tour.

Since 1981, China has almost doubled to 44 the number of offences that are punishable by death, ranging from murder and rape to robbery and plotting to overthrow the Government. Amnesty has also appealed to Peking to free prisoners jailed for their beliefs.

Official statistics on the number of Hongkong residents being held in Chinese prisons for their beliefs are not available in Hongkong, where the Government treats the matter as an internal Chinese affair.

However, our inquiries have uncovered several cases of Hongkong residents who have gone missing and been imprisoned in recent years -- some, for reasons that have never been fully explained, others for beliefs and activities that in Amnesty's view, would label them as prisoners of conscience.

 

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「聖英士提反義學」與「保羅書院」兩所學校的開館（開學）告示

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