a. Arbitrary Deprivation of Life and Other Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings

There were numerous reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. In many instances few or no details were available.

On July 13, political prisoner and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo died of liver cancer while in police custody in a Shenyang hospital. At the time of his death, Liu was serving a multiyear prison sentence after a court convicted him in 2009 of “inciting subversion of state power” for his role in drafting the “Charter 08” manifesto calling for political reforms.

Government officials said doctors diagnosed Liu Xiaobo with terminal liver cancer in late May following a routine physical examination. Prison medical checks had shown Liu had liver problems as early as 2010. While the government stated it had provided Liu with regular check-ups, international human rights groups maintained that by denying Liu early treatment and delaying delivery of advanced medical care, the government bore responsibility for his death.

Liu was granted “medical parole” and transferred to a hospital in Shenyang for cancer treatment in June. Foreign governments, international NGOs, and domestic activists called on the government to allow Liu Xiaobo to go overseas for medical treatment. The government refused that request but instead granted two foreign medical experts permission to travel to Shenyang to see Liu Xiaobo in person and “consult” on the case. Upon examining him, the physicians said their institutions could provide care that could prolong his life and ease his suffering. The government refused the offers. Liu died one week later. Liu’s widow, poet Liu Xia, remained under extralegal house arrest even after his death.

A number of violent incidents in the XUAR resulted in multiple deaths. For example, state media reported on January 8 that Hotan public security authorities shot and killed three members of an alleged terrorist group who had offered resistance, without providing details. There had been accusations in previous years of arbitrary killings that were reported as clashes with “terrorists” or “separatists,” but tightened restrictions on news media and other sources of information from Xinjiang, together with the government’s increasingly tight security posture there, made reports difficult to verify (see also the Tibet annex for incidents of abuse.)

On June 4, Akmet, an ethnic Kazakh imam from the Changji Hui Autonomous Prefecture in the XUAR, died in police custody under mysterious circumstances. There were reports police rushed his funeral and forbade clergy from being present. Afterwards, police detained more than 100 persons who posted about the case online.

Although legal reforms in recent years decreased the use of the death penalty and improved the review process, authorities executed some defendants in criminal proceedings following convictions that lacked due process and adequate channels for appeal.

b. Disappearance

There were multiple reports that authorities detained individuals and held them at undisclosed locations for extended periods.

Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng went missing in August. Gao was released from prison in 2014 and had been living under house arrest. In August, Gao’s family and friends reported they lost contact with him. In September, Radio Free Asia reported that Gao’s family said they were told that he was in police custody at an undisclosed location, although authorities did not release any details surrounding his detention, including a reason for his latest disappearance.

Zhao Suli, the wife of China Democracy Party founder Qin Yongmin, remained missing since authorities detained her and Qin in January 2015. Qin was charged with “subversion of state power” but had yet to be tried. Zhao, meanwhile, had not been publicly charged with any crimes, and her family filed lawsuits against the government as a way of trying to find out what happened to her. Her family members told Radio Free Asia that they feared she had died.

Lawyer Wang Quanzhang remained missing throughout the year. Authorities detained Wang in the July 2015 “709” roundup of more than 300 human rights lawyers and legal associates. Since then, while still awaiting trial, Wang was held in an undisclosed location without access to an attorney of his choosing. As of December, Wang’s family had neither seen nor heard from him since his detention, and his friends and family said they did not know whether or not he was still alive. The crackdown primarily targeted individuals who worked as defense lawyers on prominent religious freedom and human rights cases, including the 2008 melamine scandal; the Beijing “feminist five” detentions; the Xu Chunhe case, in which police shot an unarmed man; and cases involving sexual abuse of young girls; members of unregistered churches; and Falun Gong practitioners.

Authorities put on trial a number of prominent “709” detainees, including blogger Wu Gan in Tianjin in August. Prior to the trial, authorities held Wu for more than two years at an undisclosed location, making this a de facto case of disappearance. On December 26, the court sentenced Wu to eight years in prison followed by five years’ deprivation of political rights.

Extraterritorial disappearances occurred during the year. Chinese-born billionaire Xiao Jianhua disappeared from a luxury hotel in Hong Kong in January. Multiple press reports stated he was likely abducted by state security agents from the mainland. Xiao had Canadian citizenship as well as a passport from Antigua and Barbuda.

Swedish bookseller and Hong Kong resident Gui Minhai, who went missing from Thailand in 2015, was released late in the year but was unable to leave the country.

Uighurs and members of other ethnic minorities disappeared in the XUAR. In many cases individuals were detained upon returning home after studying abroad.

The government still had not provided a comprehensive, credible accounting of all those killed, missing, or detained in connection with the violent suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen demonstrations. Many activists who were involved in the 1989 demonstrations and their family members continued to suffer official harassment.

The government made no efforts to prevent, investigate, or punish such acts.

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The law prohibits the physical abuse and mistreatment of detainees and forbids prison guards from coercing confessions, insulting prisoners’ dignity, and beating or encouraging others to beat prisoners. Amendments to the criminal procedure law exclude evidence, including coerced confessions obtained through illegal means, in certain categories of criminal cases. Enforcement of these legal protections continued to be lax.

Numerous former prisoners and detainees reported they were beaten, subjected to electric shock, forced to sit on stools for hours on end, hung by the wrists, deprived of sleep, force fed, forced to take medication against their will, and otherwise subjected to physical and psychological abuse. Although prison authorities abused ordinary prisoners, they reportedly singled out political and religious dissidents for particularly harsh treatment.

There were multiple reports that lawyers, law associates, and activists detained in the “709” crackdown suffered various forms of torture, abuse, or degrading treatment. The lawyers of detained blogger Wu Gan reported that authorities had severely tortured Wu because he refused to cooperate. When authorities released attorney Li Chunfu in January, he was suffering from a mental breakdown and diagnosed with schizophrenia, a condition he had never before experienced. Rights lawyer Xie Yang said in a series of statements he released in January that he was repeatedly tied up and beaten during his lengthy detention in Changsha. He said he “confessed” in his subsequent televised trial only after he was “brainwashed” as a result of the extensive torture he experienced.

In response to these reports, the government accused lawyer Jiang Tianyong of fabricating the torture accounts in coordination with the families of detained lawyers. Jiang’s family said his own cooperation with authorities during his trial broadcast online in August was a result of torture he himself had experienced while in custody.

In January, Swedish citizen Peter Dahlin shared with the Guardian his first-hand account of the torture he experienced during his 23-day detention in early 2016. Dahlin claimed he was blindfolded, deprived of sleep, questioned for hours, and not allowed to exercise. He also said he was connected to a lie detection machine during lengthy interrogations.

In June the government released new regulations on excluding illegally obtained evidence in criminal cases, banning confessions by torture and ending “forced self-incrimination.” The document, issued jointly by the Supreme Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate (prosecutor’s office), Ministry of Public Security, Ministry of State Security, and Ministry of Justice, stated it is “illegal for police or prosecutors to extort confessions through torture, threats or cheating.”

Members of the minority Uighur ethnic group reported systematic torture and other degrading treatment by law enforcement officers and the penal system (see section 6, National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities). Practitioners of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement reported systematic torture more often than other groups.

The law states that psychiatric treatment and hospitalization should be “on a voluntary basis,” but it has loopholes that allow authorities and family members to commit persons to psychiatric facilities against their will and fails to provide meaningful legal protections for persons sent to psychiatric facilities. The law does not provide for the right to a lawyer and restricts a person’s right to communicate with those outside the psychiatric institutions.

According to the Legal Daily (a state-owned newspaper covering legal affairs), the Ministry of Public Security directly administered 23 high-security psychiatric hospitals for the criminally insane. While many of those committed to mental-health facilities had been convicted of murder and other violent crimes, there were also reports of activists and petitioners involuntarily subjected to psychiatric treatment for political reasons. Public security officials may commit individuals to psychiatric facilities and force treatment for “conditions” that have no basis in psychiatry. In April authorities reportedly sent Cai Yinglan to the Ezhou Special Care Hospital in Hubei after local officials accused her of “damaging society through petitioning.” She had been petitioning for payment of unpaid farming subsidies.

In January 2015 the government officially ended the long-standing practice of involuntarily harvesting the organs of executed prisoners for use in transplants. In February former health minister Huang Jiefu publicly announced that the government now had “zero tolerance” for the practice. According to government data, more than 13,000 voluntary transplants and organ donations occurred in 2016. While long criticized for the practice of using prisoner organs, many international medical professionals and credible news organizations, such as the Washington Post, began to note the government’s progress. Some Falun Gong-affiliated organizations continued to question the voluntary nature of the system, the accuracy of official statistics, and official claims about the source of organs. During the year the government further expanded its system for voluntary organ donations.

Prison and Detention Center Conditions

Conditions in penal institutions for both political prisoners and criminal offenders were generally harsh and often degrading.

Physical Conditions: Authorities regularly held prisoners and detainees in overcrowded conditions with poor sanitation. Food often was inadequate and of poor quality, and many detainees relied on supplemental food, medicines, and warm clothing provided by relatives. Prisoners often reported sleeping on the floor because there were no beds or bedding. In many cases provisions for sanitation, ventilation, heating, lighting, and access to potable water were inadequate.

Adequate, timely medical care for prisoners remained a serious problem, despite official assurances that prisoners have the right to prompt medical treatment. Prison authorities withheld medical treatment from political prisoners.

When women’s rights activist Su Changlan was released from prison in October, she was in critical condition, requiring urgent medical care, according to Amnesty International. Her health had deteriorated over the course of her prison term. According to Radio Free Asia, Su had a heart condition and hyperthyroidism. Multiple human rights groups reported that authorities repeatedly denied her medical treatment and reportedly refused her husband’s requests to seek outside medical treatment (see section 2.a.).

Political prisoners were sometimes held with the general prison population and reported being beaten by other prisoners at the instigation of guards. Some reported being held in the same cells as death row inmates. Authorities did not allow some dissidents supplemental food, medicine, and warm clothing from relatives.

Conditions in administrative detention facilities were similar to those in prisons. Beating deaths occurred in administrative detention facilities. Detainees reported beatings, sexual assaults, lack of proper food, and limited or no access to medical care.

Administration: Authorities used alternatives to incarceration for both violent and nonviolent offenders. According to the State Council’s 2016 White Paper on Legal Rights, 2.7 million individuals participated in community correction, with an estimated 689,000 individuals in the program as of September 2016. The same source reported an annual increase of 51,000 individuals in community correction programs.

The law states that letters from a prisoner to higher authorities of the prison or to the judicial organs shall be free from examination; it was unclear to what extent the law was implemented. While authorities occasionally investigated credible allegations of inhuman conditions, the results were not documented in a publicly accessible manner. Many prisoners and detainees did not have reasonable access to visitors and could not engage in religious practices.

Independent Monitoring: Information about prisons and various other types of administrative and extralegal detention facilities was considered a state secret, and the government typically did not permit independent monitoring.

d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention

Arbitrary arrest and detention remained serious problems. The law grants public security officers broad administrative detention powers and the ability to detain individuals for extended periods without formal arrest or criminal charges. Throughout the year lawyers, human rights activists, journalists, religious leaders, and former political prisoners and their family members continued to be targeted for arbitrary detention or arrest.

The law provides for the right of any person to challenge the lawfulness of his/her arrest or detention in court, and the government generally did not observe this requirement.

ROLE OF THE POLICE AND SECURITY APPARATUS

The main domestic security agencies include the Ministry of State Security, the Ministry of Public Security, and the People’s Armed Police. The People’s Liberation Army is primarily responsible for external security but also has some domestic security responsibilities. Local jurisdictions also frequently used civilian municipal security forces, known as “urban management” officials, to enforce administrative measures. Oversight of these forces was localized and ad hoc. By law officials can be criminally prosecuted for abuses of power, but such cases were rarely pursued.

The Ministry of Public Security coordinates the civilian police force, which is organized into specialized agencies and local, county, and provincial jurisdictions. Procuratorate oversight of the public security forces was limited. Corruption at every level was widespread. Public security and urban management officials engaged in extrajudicial detention, extortion, and assault.

Regulations state that officers in prisons face dismissal if found to have beaten, applied corporal punishment to, or abused inmates, or to have instigated such acts, but there were no reports these regulations were enforced.

In the absence of reliable data, it was difficult to ascertain the full extent of impunity for the domestic security apparatus, but anecdotal accounts of abuse were common on social media and sometimes appeared in state media reports as well. Authorities often announced investigations following cases of reported killings by police. It remained unclear, however, whether these investigations resulted in findings of police malfeasance or disciplinary action.

ARREST PROCEDURES AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES

Criminal detention beyond 37 days requires approval of a formal arrest by the procuratorate, but in cases pertaining to “national security, terrorism, and major bribery,” the law permits up to six months of incommunicado detention without formal arrest. After formally arresting a suspect, public security authorities are authorized to detain a suspect for up to an additional seven months while the case is investigated.

After the completion of an investigation, the procuratorate can detain a suspect an additional 45 days while determining whether to file criminal charges. If charges are filed, authorities can detain a suspect for an additional 45 days before beginning judicial proceedings. Public security sometimes detained persons beyond the period allowed by law, and pretrial detention periods of a year or longer were common.

The law stipulates that detainees be allowed to meet with defense counsel before criminal charges are filed. The criminal procedure law requires a court to provide a lawyer to a defendant who has not already retained one, who has various disabilities or is a minor, or who faces a life sentence or the death penalty. This law applies whether or not the defendant is indigent. Courts may also provide lawyers to other criminal defendants who cannot afford them, although courts often did not do so. Lawyers reported difficulties meeting their clients in detention centers, especially in cases considered politically sensitive.

Criminal defendants are entitled to apply for bail (also translated as “a guarantor pending trial”) while awaiting trial, but the system did not appear to operate effectively, and authorities released few suspects on bail.

The law requires notification of family members within 24 hours of detention, but authorities often held individuals without providing such notification for significantly longer periods, especially in politically sensitive cases. In some cases notification did not occur. Under a sweeping exception, officials are not required to provide notification if doing so would “hinder the investigation” of a case. The revised criminal procedure law limits this exception to cases involving state security or terrorism, but public security officials have broad discretion to interpret what is “state security.”

The law allows for residential surveillance rather than detention in a formal facility under certain circumstances. With the approval of the next-higher-level authorities, officials may place a suspect under “residential surveillance” at a designated place of residence (i.e., a place other than the suspect’s home) for up to six months when they suspect crimes of endangering state security, terrorism, or serious bribery and believe that surveillance at the suspect’s home would impede the investigation. Human rights organizations and detainees themselves reported that this practice left detainees at a high risk for torture. Authorities may also prevent defense lawyers from meeting with suspects in these categories of cases.

Authorities used administrative detention to intimidate political and religious activists and to prevent public demonstrations. Forms of administrative detention included compulsory drug rehabilitation treatment (for drug users), “custody and training” (for minor criminal offenders), and “legal education” centers for political and religious activists, particularly Falun Gong practitioners. The maximum stay in compulsory drug rehabilitation centers is two years, including what was generally a six-month stay in a detoxification center.

Arbitrary Arrest: Authorities detained or arrested persons on allegations of revealing state secrets, subversion, and other crimes as a means to suppress political dissent and public advocacy. These charges–including what constitutes a state secret–remained ill defined, and any piece of information could be retroactively designated a state secret. Authorities also used the vaguely worded charges of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” broadly against many civil rights activists. It remained unclear what this term means. Authorities also detained citizens and foreigners under broad and ambiguous state secret laws for, among other actions, disclosing information on criminal trials, meetings, commercial activity, and government activity. Authorities sometimes retroactively labeled a particular action as a violation of state secret laws. A counterespionage law grants authorities the power to require individuals and organizations to cease any activities deemed a threat to national security. Failure to comply could result in seizure of property and assets.

There were multiple reports that authorities arrested or detained lawyers, petitioners, and other rights activists for lengthy periods, only to have the charges later dismissed for lack of evidence. Many activists were subjected to extralegal house arrest, denied travel rights, or administratively detained in different types of facilities, including “black jails.” In some cases public security officials put pressure on schools not to allow the children of prominent political detainees to enroll. Conditions faced by those under house arrest varied but sometimes included isolation in their homes under guard by security agents. Security officials were frequently stationed inside the homes. Authorities placed many citizens under house arrest during sensitive times, such as during the visits of senior foreign government officials or preceding the 19th Party Congress, annual plenary sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, and sensitive anniversaries in Tibetan areas and the XUAR. Security agents took some of those not placed under house arrest to remote areas on so-called forced vacations. Authorities reportedly sent Liu Xiaobo’s widow, Liu Xia, and her brother to Yunnan on a “forced vacation” after Liu Xiaobo’s funeral.

Individuals who staged events to commemorate the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre were themselves targeted. In May and June, police detained at least two dozen individuals who held various ceremonies, attended protests, or assisted others who did so. Some, such as Li Xiaoling, were charged with crimes, while others were released from detention after several weeks.

Despite being released from prison in 2011, activist Hu Jia remained under extrajudicial house arrest.

Pretrial Detention: Pretrial detention could last longer than one year. Defendants in “sensitive cases” reported being subjected to prolonged pretrial detention. Many of the “709” detainees were held in pretrial detention for more than a year without access to their families or their lawyers. Statistics were impossible to obtain, but lengthy pretrial detentions were especially common in cases of political prisoners.

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

Although the law states that the courts shall exercise judicial power independently, without interference from administrative organs, social organizations, and individuals, the judiciary did not, in fact, exercise judicial power independently. Judges regularly received political guidance on pending cases, including instructions on how to rule, from both the government and the CCP, particularly in politically sensitive cases. The CCP Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission has the authority to review and direct court operations at all levels of the judiciary. All judicial and procuratorate appointments require approval by the CCP Organization Department.

Corruption often influenced court decisions, since safeguards against judicial corruption were vague and poorly enforced. Local governments appointed and paid local court judges and, as a result, often exerted influence over the rulings of those judges.

A CCP-controlled committee decided most major cases, and the duty of trial and appellate court judges was to craft a legal justification for the committee’s decision.

Courts are not authorized to rule on the constitutionality of legislation. The law permits organizations or individuals to question the constitutionality of laws and regulations, but a constitutional challenge may be directed only to the promulgating legislative body. Lawyers had little or no opportunity to rely on constitutional claims in litigation.

Media sources indicated public security authorities used televised confessions of lawyers, foreign and domestic bloggers, journalists, and business executives in an attempt to establish guilt before their criminal trial proceedings began or as a method of negotiating release from detention. NGOs asserted such statements were likely coerced, perhaps by torture, and some detainees who confessed recanted upon release and confirmed that their confessions had been coerced. No provision in the law allows the pretrial broadcast of confessions by criminal suspects.

Authorities tried and convicted attorney Jiang Tianyong in August for inciting state subversion in Changsha. The case against him was based on his interviews with foreign journalists and his publishing of articles on the internet, actions that, outside the country, were widely seen as normal for someone in his profession. Jiang was prevented from selecting his own attorney to represent him at a trial that multiple analysts viewed as neither impartial nor fair. Following the trial, Jiang remained in custody at an undisclosed location with no communication to his family. Jiang, who was known for his advocacy on behalf of family members of the “709” detainees, was sentenced on November 21 to two years in prison.

Taiwan prodemocracy activist Lee Ming-Che was convicted in September for “subverting state authority.” The case against him was largely based on the contents of text messages and chat logs with human rights activists. During the trial the court played a clip in which Lee said he had “no objection” to the charges. Lee’s wife told reports that her husband made the statement “under duress” and that the statement was the “result of the Chinese government extracting a guilty confession.” In November the court sentenced Lee to five years in prison.

“Judicial independence” remained one of the reportedly off-limit subjects that the CCP ordered university professors not to discuss (see section 2.a., Academic Freedom and Cultural Events).

TRIAL PROCEDURES

Although the amended criminal procedure law reaffirms the presumption of innocence, the criminal justice system remained biased toward a presumption of guilt, especially in high-profile or politically sensitive cases. An acquittal rate of less than 1 percent has persisted for many years. In November 2016 the procurator general of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, Cao Jianming, said the average acquittal rate since 2013 was 0.016 percent. Some experts called the number “abnormally low.”

In many politically sensitive trials, courts announced guilty verdicts immediately following proceedings with little time for deliberation. Courts often punished defendants who refused to acknowledge guilt with harsher sentences than those who confessed. The appeals process rarely reversed convictions and failed to provide sufficient avenues for review; remedies for violations of defendants’ rights were inadequate.

Regulations of the Supreme People’s Court require trials to be open to the public, with the exception of cases involving state secrets, privacy issues, minors, or, on the application of a party to the proceedings, commercial secrets. Authorities used the state secrets provision to keep politically sensitive proceedings closed to the public, sometimes even to family members, and to withhold a defendant’s access to defense counsel. Court regulations state that foreigners with valid identification should be allowed to observe trials under the same criteria as citizens, but foreigners were permitted to attend court proceedings only by invitation. As in past years, authorities barred foreign diplomats and journalists from attending a number of trials. In some instances the trials were reclassified as “state secrets” cases or were otherwise closed to the public. During the year foreign diplomats attempted to attend at least a dozen public trials throughout the country. In many instances court officials claimed there were no available seats in the courtroom.

The Open Trial Network (Tingshen Wang) broadcast trials online. According to the Dui Hua Foundation, the Open Trial Network had live-streamed at least 316,000 trials, including 775 from the SPC. The majority were civil trials. Only one trial for endangering state security was streamed on Tingshen. A Tibetan monk named Zhou Jiatai was tried for inciting subversion. The trial was held at Qinghai Haidong Intermediate People’s Court on July 6. He was sentenced to one year in prison with one year’s deprivation of political rights.

More often, in criminal trials, especially in cases deemed politically “sensitive,” courts are more likely to broadcast excerpts of trials on the government’s official Weibo account. This was done during the year in the trials of Jiang Tianyong and Xie Yang and previously for Zhou Shifeng, Zhai Yanmin, and Hu Shigen. All were tried for subversion.

In keeping with the CCP Central Committee’s Fourth Plenum decision to reform certain aspects of the judicial system, the SPC issued updated regulations requiring the release of court judgments online. The regulations, which took effect in October 2016, stipulate that court officials should release judgments, with the exception of those involving state secrets and juvenile suspects, within seven days of their adoption. The Dui Hua Foundation reported that the website, China Judgment Online, had collected more than 5,236,539 judgments for criminal cases and more than 20,952,906 judgments for civil cases. Dui Hua found 115 judgments for endangering state security, the majority of which were for espionage. Courts do not post all judgments. They have wide discretion not to post if they find posting the judgment could be considered “inappropriate.” Many important political cases do not have judgments posted, including those of Guo Feixiong, Pu Zhiqiang, and the 709 lawyers (even when the trial itself was live-streamed).

Individuals facing administrative detention do not have the right to seek legal counsel. Criminal defendants were eligible for legal assistance, although the vast majority of criminal defendants went to trial without a lawyer. According to the State Council’s 2016 White Paper on Legal Rights, 4.7 million cases received legal aid from 2012 to 2015.

Lawyers are required to be members of the CCP-controlled All China Lawyers Association, and the Ministry of Justice requires all lawyers to pledge their loyalty to the leadership of the CCP upon issuance or renewal of their license to practice law. The CCP continued to require law firms with three or more party members to form a CCP unit within the firm.

Despite the government’s stated efforts to improve lawyers’ access to their clients, in March the head of the All China Lawyers Association told China Youth Daily that defense attorneys had taken part in less than 30 percent of criminal cases. In particular, human rights lawyers reported that authorities did not permit them to defend certain clients effectively or threatened them with punishment if they chose to do so. Some lawyers declined to represent defendants in politically sensitive cases, and such defendants frequently found it difficult to find an attorney. In some instances authorities prevented attorneys selected by defendants from taking the case and appointed a court attorney to the case instead.

The government suspended or revoked the business licenses or law licenses of those who took on sensitive cases, such as defending prodemocracy dissidents, house-church activists, Falun Gong practitioners, or government critics. Authorities used the annual licensing review process administered by the All China Lawyers Association to withhold or delay the renewal of professional lawyers’ licenses. Other government tactics to intimidate or otherwise pressure human rights lawyers included unlawful detentions, vague “investigations” of legal offices, disbarment, harassment and physical intimidation, and denial of access to evidence and to clients.

In 2015 the NPC’s Standing Committee amended legislation concerning the legal profession. The amendments criminalize attorneys’ actions that “insult, defame, or threaten judicial officers,” “do not heed the court’s admonition,” or “severely disrupt courtroom order.” The changes also criminalize disclosing client or case information to media outlets or using protests, media, or other means to influence court decisions. Violators face fines and up to three years in prison.

Regulations adopted in 2015 also state that detention center officials should either allow defense attorneys to meet suspects or defendants or explain why the meeting cannot be arranged at that time. The regulations specify that a meeting should be arranged within 48 hours. Procuratorates and courts should allow defense attorneys to access and read case files within three working days. The time and frequency of opportunities available for defense attorneys to read case files shall not be limited, according to the guidelines. In some sensitive cases, lawyers had no pretrial access to their clients, and defendants and lawyers were not allowed to communicate with one another during trials. In contravention of the revised criminal procedure law (see section 1.d.), criminal defendants frequently were not assigned an attorney until a case was brought to court. The law stipulates that the spoken and written language of criminal proceedings shall be conducted in the language common to the specific locality, with government interpreters providing language services for defendants not proficient in the local language. Sources noted trials were predominantly conducted in Mandarin Chinese even in minority areas, with interpreters provided for defendants who did not speak the language.

Mechanisms allowing defendants to confront their accusers were inadequate. Only a small percentage of trials reportedly involved witnesses. Judges retained significant discretion over whether live witness testimony was required or even allowed. In most criminal trials, prosecutors read witness statements, which neither the defendants nor their lawyers had an opportunity to rebut through cross-examination. Although the law states that pretrial witness statements cannot serve as the sole basis for conviction, prosecutors relied heavily on such statements. Defense attorneys had no authority to compel witnesses to testify or to mandate discovery, although they could apply for access to government-held evidence relevant to their case.

Under the law, lawyers are assigned to convicted prisoners on death row who cannot afford one during the review of their sentences. The number of capital offenses in the criminal code was reduced to 46 in 2015. Official figures on executions were classified as a state secret. According to the Dui Hua Foundation, the number of executions continued to fall. The Foundation estimated there were 2,000 executions in 2016, down from 2,400 in 2013. The high was 24,000 in 1983. The drop reflected the reform of the capital punishment system initiated in 2007. Dui Hua also reported that an increase in the number of Uighur executions likely offset the drop in the number of Han Chinese executed.

POLITICAL PRISONERS AND DETAINEES

Government officials continued to deny holding any political prisoners, asserting that persons were detained not for their political or religious views but because they violated the law. Authorities, however, continued to imprison citizens for reasons related to politics and religion. Human rights organizations estimated that tens of thousands of political prisoners remained incarcerated, most in prisons and some in administrative detention. The government did not grant international humanitarian organizations access to political prisoners.

Political prisoners were granted early release at lower rates than other prisoners. The Dui Hua Foundation estimated that more than 100 prisoners were still serving sentences for counterrevolution and hooliganism, two crimes removed from the criminal code in 1997. Thousands of others were serving sentences for political and religious offenses, including “endangering state security” and “cult” offenses covered under Article 300 of the criminal code, crimes introduced in 1997. The government neither reviewed the cases of those charged before 1997 with counterrevolution and hooliganism nor released persons jailed for nonviolent offenses under repealed provisions.

Many political prisoners remained in prison or under other forms of detention at year’s end, including writer Yang Maodong (Guo Feixiong); Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti; rights lawyer Tang Jingling; activist Wang Bingzhang; activist Liu Xianbin; pastor Zhang Shaojie; Falun Gong practitioner Bian Lichao; lawyers Wang Quanzhang, Xia Lin, and Jiang Tianyong; blogger Wu Gan; Buddhist monk Xu Zhiqiang (who also goes by the name Master Shengguan); and Shanghai labor activist Jiang Cunde.

Criminal punishments included “deprivation of political rights” for a fixed period after release from prison, during which an individual could be denied rights of free speech, association, and publication. Former prisoners reported that their ability to find employment, travel, obtain residence permits and passports, rent residences, and access social services was severely restricted.

Authorities frequently subjected former political prisoners and their families to surveillance, telephone wiretaps, searches, and other forms of harassment or threats. For example, security personnel followed the family members of detained or imprisoned rights activists to meetings with foreign reporters and diplomats and urged the family members to remain silent about the cases of their relatives. Authorities barred certain members of the rights community from meeting with visiting dignitaries.

CIVIL JUDICIAL PROCEDURES AND REMEDIES

Courts deciding civil matters faced the same limitations on judicial independence as criminal courts. The State Compensation Law provides administrative and judicial remedies for plaintiffs whose rights or interests government agencies or officials have infringed. The law also allows compensation for wrongful detention, mental trauma, or physical injuries inflicted by detention center or prison officials.

Although historically, citizens seldom applied for state compensation because of the high cost of bringing lawsuits, low credibility of courts, and citizens’ general lack of awareness of the law, a white paper on judicial reform released in February stated that courts had paid out more than 699 million yuan ($100 million) from 2013 to 2016. In March the parents of Nie Shubing were awarded approximately 2.68 million yuan ($394,000) for his wrongful execution in 1995 for a murder he did not commit. In 2005 another man had confessed to the murder, and in December 2016 the Supreme People’s Court acquitted Nie, ruling that the previous conviction was based on insufficient evidence. In August the Jiangxi Higher People’s Court stated that four persons who were acquitted from wrongful convictions had each received approximately 2.27 million yuan ($330,000).

The law provides for the right of an individual to petition the government for resolution of grievances. Most petitions address grievances about land, housing, entitlements, the environment, or corruption, and most petitioners sought to present their complaints at local “letters and visits” offices. The government reported that approximately six million petitions were submitted every year; however, persons petitioning the government continued to face restrictions on their rights to assemble and raise grievances.

While the central government reiterated prohibitions against blocking or restricting “normal petitioning” and against unlawfully detaining petitioners, official retaliation against petitioners continued. Regulations encourage all litigation-related petitions to be handled at the local level through local or provincial courts, reinforcing a system of incentives for local officials to prevent petitioners from raising complaints to higher levels. Local officials sent security personnel to Beijing to return petitioners to their home provinces forcibly to prevent them from filing complaints against local officials with the central government. Such detentions often went unrecorded and often resulted in brief periods of incarceration in extralegal “black jails.”

In July, President Xi participated in a national conference devoted to improving the petitioner system, which was marred by corruption. In April the South China Morning Post reported that the former vice chair of the Beijing Bureau for Letters and Calls had accepted nearly 5.5 million yuan ($870,000) in bribes in order to make petition cases disappear. In 2015 a court sentenced him to 13 years in jail.

Despite attempts at improving the system, progress was unsteady. Many petitioners reported they were often detained in black jails when trying to seek redress from the government. In May a group of petitioners traveled to Beijing to get attention during the national One Belt One Road summit. According to human rights activists, police rounded up more than 200 petitioners as they drew close to the Beijing Civil Administration building. They were reportedly held in unmarked buildings for three days during which they said they had no food and no place to sleep. Authorities eventually forced the petitioners to take trains back to their hometowns.

f. Arbitrary or Unlawful Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence

The law states the “freedom and privacy of correspondence of citizens are protected by law,” but authorities often did not respect the privacy of citizens. Although the law requires warrants before officers can search premises, officials frequently ignored this requirement. The Public Security Bureau and prosecutors are authorized to issue search warrants on their own authority without judicial review. There continued to be reports of cases of forced entry by police officers.

Authorities monitored telephone calls, text messages, faxes, email, instant messaging, and other digital communications intended to remain private. They also opened and censored domestic and international mail. Security services routinely monitored and entered residences and offices to gain access to computers, telephones, and fax machines. Foreign journalists leaving the country found some of their personal belongings searched. In some cases, when material deemed politically sensitive was uncovered, the journalists had to sign a statement stating they would “voluntarily” leave these documents behind in China.

According to media reports, the Ministry of Public Security used tens of millions of surveillance cameras throughout the country to monitor the general public. In 2015 the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau announced it had “covered every corner of the capital with a video surveillance system.” Human rights groups stated that authorities increasingly relied on video and other forms of surveillance to monitor and intimidate political dissidents, Tibetans, and Uighurs. The monitoring and disruption of telephone and internet communications were particularly widespread in the XUAR and Tibetan areas. The law allows security agencies to cut communication networks during “major security incidents.”

According to Human Rights Watch, the Ministry of State Security partnered with information technology firms to create a “mass automated voice recognition and monitoring system,” similar to ones already in use in Xinjiang and Anhui, to help with solving criminal cases. According to the company making it, the system was programmed to understand Mandarin Chinese and certain minority languages, including Tibetan and Uighur. In many cases other biometric data such as fingerprints and DNA profiles were being stored as well. This database included information obtained not just from criminals and criminal suspects but also from entire populations of migrant workers and all Uighurs applying for passports.

Forced relocation because of urban development continued in some locations. Protests over relocation terms or compensation were common, and authorities prosecuted some protest leaders. In rural areas infrastructure and commercial development projects resulted in the forced relocation of thousands of persons.

Property-related disputes between citizens and government authorities sometimes turned violent. These disputes frequently stemmed from local officials’ collusion with property developers to pay little or no compensation to displaced residents, combined with a lack of effective government oversight or media scrutiny of local officials’ involvement in property transactions, as well as a lack of legal remedies or other dispute resolution mechanisms for displaced residents. The problem persisted despite central government claims it had imposed stronger controls over illegal land seizures and taken steps to standardize compensation. Redevelopment in traditional Uighur neighborhoods in cities throughout the XUAR resulted in the destruction of historically or culturally important areas. Some residents expressed opposition to the lack of proper compensation by the government and the coercive measures used to obtain their agreement to redevelopment.

The government instituted the “double-linked household” system in the XUAR after using it in Tibet for many years. This system divides households into groups of 10 to watch over each other and report on “security issues” to the government, thus turning average citizens into informers.

The government restricted the rights of men and women to have children (see section 6, Women).

c. Freedom of Religion

See the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report at www.state.gov/religiousfreedomreport/.

The constitution states that “all power in the People’s Republic of China belongs to the people” and that the organs through which citizens exercise state power are the NPC and the people’s congresses at provincial, district, and local levels. In practice the CCP dictated the legislative agenda to the NPC. While the law provides for elections of people’s congress delegates at the county level and below, citizens could not freely choose the officials who governed them. The CCP controlled all elections and continued to control appointments to positions of political power. The CCP used various intimidation tactics, including house arrest, to block independent candidates from standing for local elections.

Elections and Political Participation

Recent Elections: In 2013 the NPC’s nearly 3,000 delegates elected the president and vice president, the premier and vice premiers, and the chairman of the Central Military Commission. The NPC Standing Committee, which consisted of 175 members, oversaw the elections and determined the agenda and procedures for the NPC. The selection of NPC members takes place every five years, and the process is controlled by the CCP.

The NPC Standing Committee remained under the direct authority of the CCP, and all important legislative decisions required the concurrence of the CCP’s seven-member Politburo Standing Committee. Despite its broad authority under the state constitution, the NPC did not set policy independently or remove political leaders without the CCP’s approval.

According to Ministry of Civil Affairs’ 2016 statistics, almost all of the country’s more than 600,000 villages had implemented direct elections for members of local subgovernmental organizations known as village committees. The direct election of officials by ordinary citizens remained narrow in scope and strictly confined to the lowest rungs of local governance. Corruption, vote buying, and interference by township-level and CCP officials continued to be problems. The law permits each voter to cast proxy votes for up to three other voters.

The election law governs legislative bodies at all levels, although compliance and enforcement varied across the country. Under the law citizens have the opportunity every five years to vote for local people’s congress representatives at the county level and below, although in most cases higher-level government officials or CCP cadres controlled the nomination of candidates. At higher levels legislators selected people’s congress delegates from among their ranks. For example, provincial-level people’s congresses selected delegates to the NPC. Local CCP secretaries generally served concurrently within the leadership team of the local people’s congress, thus strengthening CCP control over legislatures.

In September 2016 the NPC Standing Committee expelled 45 deputies from Liaoning Province for violations of the electoral law, including vote buying and bribery. Official media described the case as “unprecedented since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.” More than 500 of the 617 members of the Liaoning Provincial People’s Congress were implicated in the scandal and either resigned or were expelled from the body. The NPC Standing Committee also disbanded the Liaoning Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee and established a preparatory panel to function on its behalf until convening of a new provincial people’s congress.

Political Parties and Political Participation: Official statements asserted that “the political party system [that] China has adopted is multiparty cooperation and political consultation” under CCP leadership. The CCP, however, retained a monopoly on political power, and the government forbade the creation of new political parties. The government officially recognized nine parties founded prior to 1949, and parties other than the CCP held 30 percent of the seats in the NPC. These non-CCP members did not function as a political opposition. They exercised very little influence on legislation or policy making and were allowed to operate only under the direction of the CCP United Front Work Department.

No laws or regulations specifically govern the formation of political parties. The China Democracy Party (CDP) remained banned, and the government continued to monitor, detain, and imprison current and former CDP members. CDP founder Qin Yongmin, detained with his wife Zhao Suli in 2015, remained at the Wuhan No. 2 Detention Center awaiting trial for “subversion of state power.” His wife was still missing.

Participation of Women and Minorities: No laws limit participation of women and/or members of minorities in the political process, and they did participate. Women and/or members of minority groups held few positions of significant influence in the government or CCP structure. Among the 2,987 appointed delegates to the 12th NPC in 2013, 699 (23 percent) were women. Following the 19th Party Congress, one member of the CCP Central Committee’s 25-member Politburo was a woman. There were no women in the Politburo Standing Committee.

The election law provides a general mandate for quotas for female and ethnic minority representatives, but achieving these quotas often required election authorities to violate the election law.

A total of 409 delegates from 55 ethnic minorities were members of the 12th NPC, accounting for 14 percent of the total number of delegates. All of the country’s officially recognized minority groups were represented. The 19th Party Congress elected 15 members of ethnic minority groups as members of the 202-person Central Committee. There was no ethnic minority member of the Politburo, and only one ethnic minority was serving as a party secretary of a provincial-level jurisdiction, although a handful of ethnic minority members were serving as leaders in provincial governments. An ethnic Mongolian woman, Bu Xiaolin, served as chair of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, equivalent to a provincial governor. An ethnic Hui woman, Xian Hui, also served as chair of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

Although officials faced criminal penalties for corruption, the government and the CCP did not implement the law consistently or transparently. Corruption remained rampant, and many cases of corruption involved areas heavily regulated by the government, such as land-usage rights, real estate, mining, and infrastructure development, which were susceptible to fraud, bribery, and kickbacks. Court judgments often could not be enforced against powerful special entities, including government departments, state-owned enterprises, military personnel, and some members of the CCP.

The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) internal disciplinary system used to investigate party members suspected of party rule violations–known as “shuanggui”–continued to operate outside the judicial system and with widespread allegations of torture. According to an HRW report released in December 2016, many accused officials were detained and placed in solitary confinement, repeatedly interrogated, and in some cases tortured, until a confession of wrongdoing was given. Detainees were held outside police stations or official detention facilities, often in hotels or party training facilities. Former detainees reported abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, and being forced to stand or sit in uncomfortable positions for hours and sometimes days. Some were later turned over to the judicial system for criminal prosecution.

“Shuanggui” detainees are not afforded legal procedural rights as protected under international human rights law, or those afforded to criminal suspects under domestic law. According to HRW, prosecutors, responsible for investigating and prosecuting corruption in the formal criminal justice system, often participate in shuanggui interrogations. Known as “joint investigations,” prosecutors may use these interrogation-produced confessions in subsequent criminal investigations. HRW was not aware of any case in which the court acquitted a suspect or overturned a conviction due to misconduct by investigators during shuanggui. In 2016 only two cases were found by HRW in which lower-level interrogators or guards were jailed after torturing and killing shuanggui detainees.

During the 19th Party Congress in October, President Xi announced the government would abolish the “shuanggui” system, to be replaced by new supervisory system that was in development.

Although a 2012 CCDI directive reportedly outlined better protections for detainees, the document was not made public. It was also unknown how often this system was applied. Transparency International’s analysis indicated corruption remained a significant problem in the country.

Corruption: In numerous cases government prosecutors investigated public officials and leaders of state-owned enterprises, who generally held high CCP ranks, for corruption. In March, Procurator General Cao Jianming reported to the 12th NPC that in 2016 the government investigated 47,650 officials for corruption, including 42,882 county-level officials and 445 higher-level officials.

In July the CCDI, the investigative body of the CCP that enforces political discipline–including countering corruption–published statistics stating it had punished more than 200,000 officials for corruption in the first half of the year. According to the report, the CCDI received 1.31 million complaints and opened more than 250,000 cases during that time. This included 38 senior officials from ministries and provincial administrations and more than 1,000 at the prefecture level.

While the tightly controlled state media apparatus publicized some notable corruption investigations, as a general matter very few details were made public regarding the process by which CCP and government officials were investigated for corruption.

In July the CCDI announced it had completed its investigation into Chongqing city CCP secretary and Politburo member Sun Zhengcai. As a result of “serious discipline violations,” Sun was subsequently removed from his post in Chongqing.

In May a court sentenced former National Bureau of Statistics head Wang Bao’an to life in prison for accepting bribes.

In August state media announced former Liaoning provincial CCP secretary Wang Min had been sentenced to life in prison for “embezzlement, accepting bribes, and dereliction of duty” for his association with a bribery and vote-buying scheme involving members of the Liaoning Provincial People’s Congress and Liaoning deputies to the NPC.

In August the CCDI announced a court had convicted two former senior officials, former head of the supervisory body of the China Development Bank Yao Zhongmin and former Henan provincial CCP member Wu Tianjin. Yao was sentenced to 14 years in prison and fined 3.5 million yuan ($530,000) for accepting bribes in exchange for loans and contracts. Wu was sentenced to 11 years in prison and fined one million yuan ($150,000) for “illegally accepting another person’s property” in exchange for providing assistance to businesses.

In some cases individuals who tried to report corruption faced reprisal and retaliation. In July 2016 a real estate developer in Hunan Province, Wu Zhengge, was arrested after he hired a private investigator to find evidence of corruption by several local judges. The judges were presiding over a criminal case against Wu, who hoped to use the evidence to blackmail the judges into dismissing the case. Although the judges were placed under investigation for public corruption, Wu was later arrested and charged with disclosing personal information.

Financial Disclosure: A regulation requires officials in government agencies or state-owned enterprises at the county level or above to report their ownership of property, including that in their spouses’ or children’s names, as well as their families’ investments in financial assets and enterprises. The regulations do not require that declarations be made public. Instead, they are submitted to a higher administrative level and a human resource department. Punishments for not declaring information vary from training on the regulations, warning talks, and adjusting one’s work position to being relieved of one’s position. Regulations further state that officials should report all income, including allowances, subsidies, and bonuses, as well as income from other jobs, such as giving lectures, writing, consulting, reviewing articles, painting, and calligraphy. Officials, their spouses, and the children who live with them also should report their real estate properties and financial investments, although these reports are not made public. They must report whether their children live abroad as well as the work status of their children and grandchildren (including those who live abroad). Officials are required to file reports annually and must report changes of personal status within 30 days.

Women

Rape and Domestic Violence: Rape of women is illegal, and carries a sentence of three years in prison to death. The law does not safeguard same-sex couples or victims of marital rape. In 2015 a separate law on sexual assault was broadened to include male victims, but it has a maximum penalty of five years in prison. Of the reported cases, most allegations of rape were closed through private settlement rather than prosecution. Some persons convicted of rape were executed.

Domestic violence remained a significant problem. The government took a significant step to protect women from domestic abuse through the passage of the Family Violence Law, which took effect in March 2016. NGOs stated that because of the law, more women were willing to report domestic violence incidents to police. Nevertheless, implementation and enforcement of the law remained inconsistent. In February the Washington Post reported that elements of the law, including those related to court protective orders, were not being implemented correctly.

Some scholars said that even under the new law, victims were still encouraged to attempt to resolve domestic violence through mediation. Societal sentiment that domestic violence was a personal, private matter contributed to underreporting and inaction by authorities when women faced violence at home. One government study of divorce records publicized during the year indicated that only 9.5 percent of victims made police reports.

The government supported shelters for victims of domestic violence, and some courts provided protections to victims, including through court protective orders prohibiting a perpetrator of domestic violence from coming near a victim. Nonetheless, official assistance did not always reach victims, and public security forces often ignored domestic violence. Legal aid institutions working to provide counseling and defense to victims of domestic violence were often pressured to suspend public activities and cease all forms of policy advocacy, an area that was reserved only for government-sponsored organizations.

According to women’s rights activists, a recurring problem in the prosecution of domestic violence cases was a failure by authorities to collect evidence–including photographs, hospital records, police records, or children’s testimony. Witnesses seldom testified in court.

Courts’ recognition of domestic violence improved, making spousal abuse a mitigating factor in crimes committed in self-defense.

Sexual Harassment: The law prohibits sexual harassment against women; however, there is no clear definition of sexual harassment under the law. Offenders are subject to a penalty of up to 15 days in detention, according to the Beijing Public Security Bureau. It remained difficult for victims to file a sexual harassment complaint and for judges to reach a ruling on such cases. Many women remained unwilling to report incidents of sexual harassment, believing that the justice system was ineffectual, according to official media. Several prominent media reports of sexual harassment went viral on social media, helping to raise awareness of the problem, particularly in the workplace.

The Law on the Protection of Women’s Rights and Interests empowers victims to file a sexual harassment complaint with their employer, authorities, or both. Employers who failed to take effective measures to prevent sexual harassment could be fined.

Some women’s NGOs that sought to increase public awareness of sexual harassment reported harassment by public security and faced challenges executing their programs. In May police searched the houses of feminists suspected of printing clothing with antisexual harassment slogans. In September 2016 women’s rights activist Shan Lihua was found guilty by the Gangzha District People’s Court in Nantong, Jiangsu Province, of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.” The indictment specifically cited Shan’s activism on a rape case in Hainan Province as evidence, according to media reports.

Coercion in Population Control: There were reports of coerced abortions and sterilizations, though government statistics on the percentage of abortions that were coerced during the year was not available. The CCP restricts the rights of parents to choose the number of children they have and utilizes family planning units from the provincial to the village level to enforce population limits and distributions. A two-child policy was officially implemented as of January 2016. The Population and Family Planning Law permits married couples to have two children and allows couples to apply for permission to have a third child if they meet conditions stipulated in local and provincial regulations. State media claimed the number of coerced abortions had declined in recent years in the wake of loosened regulations, including the implementation of the two-child policy. Citizens are subject to hefty fines for violating the law, while couples who have only one child receive a certificate entitling them to collect a monthly incentive payment and other benefits that vary by province–from approximately six to 12 yuan (one to two dollars) per month up to 3,000 yuan ($450) for farmers and herders in poor areas. Couples in some provinces are required to seek approval and register before a child is conceived.

Under the law and in practice, there are financial and administrative penalties for births that exceed birth limits or otherwise violate regulations. The National Health and Family Planning Commission announced it would continue to impose fines, called “social compensation fees,” for policy violations. The law, as implemented, requires each woman with an unauthorized pregnancy to abort or pay the social compensation fee, which can reach 10 times a person’s annual disposable income. The exact amount of the fee varied widely from province to province. Those with financial means often paid the fee so that their children born in violation of the birth restrictions would have access to a wide array of government-provided social services and rights. Some parents avoided the fee by hiding children born in violation of the law with friends or relatives. In localities with large populations of migrant workers, officials specifically targeted migrant women to ensure that they did not exceed birth limitations. Minorities in some provinces, however, were entitled to higher limits on their family size.

The law maintains that “citizens have an obligation to practice birth planning in accordance with the law” and also states that “couples of child-bearing age shall voluntarily choose birth planning contraceptive and birth control measures to prevent and reduce unwanted pregnancies.” After the transition to a two-child limit, the available mix of contraceptives shifted from mainly permanent methods like tubal ligation or IUDs toward other reversible methods.

Single women are entitled to reproductive rights, and their children are entitled to the same rights as those born to married parents, according to both the Civil Law and Marriage Law. Since the national family planning law mentions only the rights of married couples, local implementation was inconsistent, and unmarried persons must pay for contraception. Children born to single mothers or unmarried couples are considered “outside of the policy” and subject to the social compensation fee and the denial of legal documents, such as birth documents and the “hukou” residence permit. Single women can avoid those penalties by marrying within 60 days of the baby’s birth.

As in prior years, population control policy continued to rely on social pressure, education, propaganda, and economic penalties, as well as on measures such as mandatory pregnancy examinations and, less frequently, coerced abortions and sterilizations. Officials at all levels could receive rewards or penalties based on whether or not they met the population targets set by their administrative region. With the higher birth limit, and since most persons wanted to have no more than two children, it was easier to achieve population targets, and the pressure on local officials was considerably less than before. Those found to have a pregnancy in violation of the law or those who helped another to evade state controls could face punitive measures, such as onerous fines or job loss.

Regulations requiring women who violate the family planning policy to terminate their pregnancies still exist and were enforced in some provinces, such as Hubei, Hunan, and Liaoning. Other provinces, such as Guizhou, Jiangxi, Qinghai, and Yunnan, maintained provisions that require “remedial measures,” an official euphemism for abortion, to deal with pregnancies that violate the policy.

The law mandates that family planning bureaus administer pregnancy tests to married women of childbearing age and provide them with basic knowledge of family planning and prenatal services. Under the law schools are required to provide adolescent and sexual health education at an appropriate level, but in practice information is quite limited. Some provinces fined women who did not undergo periodic state-mandated pregnancy tests.

Family planning officials face criminal charges and administrative sanction if they are found to violate citizens’ human or property rights, abuse their power, accept bribes, misappropriate or embezzle family planning funds, or falsely report family planning statistics in the enforcement of birth limitation policy. Forced abortion is not specifically listed as a prohibited activity. The law also prohibits health-care providers from providing illegal surgeries, ultrasounds to determine the sex of the fetus that are not medically necessary, sex-selective abortions, fake medical identification, and fake birth certificates. By law citizens may submit formal complaints about officials who exceed their authority in implementing birth-planning policy, and complaints are to be investigated and dealt with in a timely manner.

Estimates on maternal mortality and contraceptive prevalence are available at: www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/monitoring/maternal-mortality-2015/en/ .

Discrimination: The constitution states “women enjoy equal rights with men in all spheres of life.” The law provides for equality in ownership of property, inheritance rights, access to education, and equal pay for equal work. However, women reported that discrimination, unfair dismissal, demotion, and wage discrepancies were significant problems.

On average, women earned 35 percent less than men who did similar work. This wage gap was greater in rural areas. Women also continued to be underrepresented in leadership positions, despite their high rate of participation in the labor force.

Authorities often did not enforce laws protecting the rights of women; according to legal experts, it was difficult to litigate sex discrimination suits because of vague legal definitions. Some observers noted that the agencies tasked with protecting women’s rights tended to focus on maternity-related benefits and wrongful termination during maternity leave rather than on sex discrimination, violence against women, and sexual harassment; others pointed to the active role played by the All China Women’s Federation (ACWF) in passing the new domestic violence legislation.

Women’s rights advocates indicated that in rural areas women often forfeited land and property rights to their husbands in divorce proceedings. Rural contract law and laws protecting women’s rights stipulate that women enjoy equal rights in cases of land management, but experts asserted this was rarely the case due to the complexity of the law and difficulties in its implementation.

Gender-biased Sex Selection: According to the National Bureau of Statistics of China, the sex ratio at birth was 113 males to 100 females in 2016. Sex identification and sex-selective abortion are prohibited, but the practices continued because of the traditional preference for male children and the birth-limitation policy.

Children

Birth Registration: Citizenship is derived from parents. Parents must register their children in compliance with the national household registration system within one month of birth. Unregistered children could not access public services, including education.

Education: Although the law provides for nine years of compulsory education for children, many children did not attend school for the required period in economically disadvantaged rural areas, and some never attended. Public schools were not allowed to charge tuition, but many schools continued to charge miscellaneous fees because they received insufficient local and central government funding. Such fees and other school-related expenses made it difficult for poorer families and some migrant workers to send their children to school. The gap in education quality for rural and urban youth remained extensive, with many children of migrant workers attending unlicensed and poorly equipped schools.

Child Abuse: The physical abuse of children is ground for criminal prosecution. The Domestic Violence Law also protected children. Sexual abuse of minors, particularly of rural children, was a significant problem. In 2016 the Economistreported that millions of children suffered from sexual abuse. The government increasingly encouraged state media to report on the problem and allowed NGOs to combat child sexual abuse. Pilot programs were underway in three major provinces to develop and implement child protection laws and protocols for protection and treatment, including mandatory reporting.

Early and Forced Marriage: The legal minimum age for marriage is 22 for men and 20 for women. Child marriage was not known to be a problem.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: The minimum legal age for consensual sex is 14. Persons who forced girls under the age of 14 into prostitution could be sentenced to 10 years to life in prison in addition to a fine or confiscation of property. In especially serious cases, violators could receive a life sentence or death sentence, in addition to having their property confiscated. Those who visited girls forced into prostitution under age 14 were subject to five years or more in prison in addition to paying a fine.

Pornography of any kind, including child pornography, is illegal. Under the criminal code, those producing, reproducing, publishing, selling, or disseminating obscene materials with the purpose of making a profit could be sentenced to up to three years in prison or put under criminal detention or surveillance in addition to paying a fine. Offenders in serious cases could receive prison sentences of three to 10 years in addition to paying a fine.

The law provides that persons broadcasting or showing obscene materials to minors under the age of 18 are to be “severely punished.”

Infanticide or Infanticide of Children with Disabilities: The law forbids infanticide and it was unknown if the practice continued. Parents of children with disabilities frequently left infants at hospitals, primarily because of the cost of medical care. Gender-biased abortions and the abandonment and neglect of baby girls were believed to be in decline, but continued to be a problem in some circumstances due to the traditional preference for sons and the birth-limitation policy.

Displaced Children: The number of street children was unknown (estimates as high as 1.5 million), but governmental efforts to identify and provide care for these children greatly intensified. In 2013 the ACWF estimated that more than 61 million children under the age of 17 were left behind by their migrant-worker parents in rural areas. The most recent government census found approximately nine million rural children who were left behind by both parents who migrated to urban areas for work.

Institutionalized Children: The law forbids the mistreatment or abandonment of children. According to some sources, by the end of 2015, the country had 502,000 orphans, of which 92,000 were up for adoption. The vast majority of children in orphanages were girls, many of whom were abandoned. Boys in orphanages usually had disabilities or were in poor health. The government denied that children in orphanages were mistreated or refused medical care but acknowledged that the system often was unable to provide adequately for some children, particularly those with serious medical problems. Adopted children were counted under the birth-limitation regulations in most locations. As a result couples who adopted abandoned infant girls were sometimes barred from having additional children. The law allowed children who are rescued to be made available for adoption within one year if their family is not identified.

International Child Abductions: The country is not a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at travel.state.gov/content/childabduction/en/legal/compliance.html.

Anti-Semitism

The government does not recognize Judaism as an ethnicity or religion. According to information from the Jewish Virtual Library, the country’s Jewish population was 2,600 in 2016. In September 2016 the New York Times reported that members of the Kaifeng Jewish community in Henan Province came under pressure from authorities. Approximately 1,000 Kaifeng citizens claimed Jewish ancestry. Media reports stated that authorities forced the only Jewish learning center in the community to shut down, blocked the community’s ritual bath, and barred foreign tour groups from visiting.

Trafficking in Persons

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

Persons with Disabilities

The law protects the rights of persons with disabilities and prohibits discrimination, but in many instances conditions for such persons lagged behind legal requirements and the government failed to provide persons with disabilities access to programs intended to assist them. The Ministry of Civil Affairs and the China Disabled Persons Federation (CDPF), a government-organized civil association, are the main entities responsible for persons with disabilities.

According to the law, persons with disabilities “are entitled to enjoyment of equal rights as other citizens in political, economic, cultural, and social fields, in family life, and in other aspects.” Discrimination against, insult of, and infringement upon persons with disabilities is prohibited. The law prohibits discrimination against minors with disabilities and codifies a variety of judicial protections for juveniles.

The Ministry of Education reported there were more than 2,000 separate education schools for children with disabilities, but NGOs reported that only 2 percent of the 20 million children with disabilities had access to education that met their needs.

Individuals with disabilities faced difficulties accessing higher education. The law permits universities to exclude candidates with disabilities who would otherwise be qualified. A regulation mandates accommodations for students with disabilities when taking the national university entrance exam.

In May the government revised the 20-year-old law covering access to education for persons with disabilities. The revisions reaffirmed a commitment to ensure education for children with disabilities, broadened vocational education for persons with disabilities, and aimed to prevent discrimination in school admissions. The updated law encourages schools to accept more students, and places the responsibility to expand school access at the county level, calling on local governments to prioritize establishing special education resources in mainstream schools.

Some observers said the law was aspirational and vague, but still an improvement over prior regulations. Others noted that parents too often were forced to resort to bribing school officials to have their child with a disability accepted into mainstream schools.

Nearly 100,000 organizations existed, mostly in urban areas, to serve those with disabilities and protect their legal rights. The government, at times in conjunction with NGOs, sponsored programs to integrate persons with disabilities into society.

Misdiagnosis, inadequate medical care, stigmatization, and abandonment remained common problems. Parents who chose to keep children with disabilities at home generally faced difficulty finding adequate medical care, day care, and education for their children. According to the government, many persons with disabilities lacked adequate rehabilitation services.

Unemployment among adults with disabilities, in part due to discrimination, remained a serious problem. The law requires local governments to offer incentives to enterprises that hire persons with disabilities. Regulations in some parts of the country also require employers to pay into a national fund for persons with disabilities when employees with disabilities do not make up a statutory minimum percentage of the total workforce.

Standards adopted for making roads and buildings accessible to persons with disabilities are subject to the Law on the Handicapped, which calls for their “gradual” implementation; compliance was limited.

The law forbids the marriage of persons with certain mental disabilities, such as schizophrenia. If doctors find a couple is at risk of transmitting congenital disabilities to their children, the couple may marry only if they agree to use birth control or undergo sterilization. In some instances officials continued to require couples to abort pregnancies when doctors discovered possible disabilities during prenatal examinations. The law stipulates that local governments must employ such practices to raise the percentage of births of children without disabilities.

National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Government policy called for members of recognized minorities to receive preferential treatment in birth planning, university admission, access to loans, and employment. A government white paper about development in Xinjiang published in June asserted that cultural and religious rights were provided for, including the use of minority languages and the protection of cultural heritage and religious practice. The substance and implementation of ethnic minority policies nonetheless remained poor, and discrimination against minorities remained widespread. Xi Jinping directed the Communist state to “sinicize” the country’s ethnic and religious minorities: ethnically based restrictions on movement curtailed the ability of ethnic Uighurs to travel freely or obtain travel documents; authorities in Xinjiang increased surveillance and the presence of armed police; and new legislation restricted cultural and religious practices.

Minority groups in border and other regions had less access to education than their Han Chinese counterparts, faced job discrimination in favor of Han Chinese migrants, and earned incomes well below those in other parts of the country. Some claims cited the banning of minority language education, including the Uighur language in the XUAR, as signs of progress in the provision of basic education for some ethnic groups involved. Government development programs and job provisions disrupted traditional living patterns of minority groups and in some cases included the forced relocation of persons and the forced settlement of nomads. Han Chinese benefited disproportionately from government programs and economic growth in minority areas. As part of its emphasis on building a “harmonious society” and maintaining social stability, the government downplayed racism and institutional discrimination against minorities, which remained the source of deep resentment in the XUAR, the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the TAR, and other Tibetan areas.

The government’s policy to encourage Han Chinese migration into minority areas significantly increased the population of Han in the XUAR. Han Chinese officials continued to hold the majority of the most powerful CCP and many government positions in minority autonomous regions, particularly the XUAR. The rapid influx of Han Chinese into the XUAR in recent decades has provoked Uighur resentment.

According to a 2015 government census, 9.5 million, or 40 percent, of the XUAR’s official residents were Han Chinese. Uighur, Hui, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and other ethnic minorities constituted 14.1 million XUAR residents, or 60 percent of the total population. Official statistics understated the Han Chinese population because they did not count the more than 2.7 million Han residents on paramilitary compounds (bingtuan) and those who were long-term “temporary workers,” an increase of 1.2 percent over the previous year, according to a 2015 government of Xinjiang report. As the government continued to promote Han migration into the XUAR and filled local jobs with domestic migrant labor, local officials coerced young Uighur men and women to participate in a government-sponsored labor transfer program to cities outside the XUAR, according to overseas human rights organizations.

The law states that “schools (classes and grades) and other institutions of education where most of the students come from minority nationalities shall, whenever possible, use textbooks in their own languages and use their languages as the medium of instruction.” Despite provisions to ensure cultural and linguistic rights, in June state media reported that the Department of Education in Hotan, a Uighur-majority prefecture, issued a directive requiring full instruction in Mandarin beginning in preschool and banning the use of Uighur in all educational activities and management. Similar measures were implemented throughout the XUAR, according to international media. There were reports private Uighur-language schools were shut by authorities without any transparent investigation under the pretense that they promoted radical ideologies.

Officials in the XUAR intensified efforts to crack down on the government-designated “three evil forces” of religious extremism, ethnic separatism, and violent terrorism, including a concentrated re-education campaign to combat what it deemed to be separatism. XUAR Communist Party secretary Chen Quanguo, former Communist leader in the TAR, replicated in the XUAR policies similar to those credited with reducing opposition to CCP rule in Tibet, increasing the security budget by more than 300 percent and advertising more than 90,800 security-related jobs. Authorities cited the 2016 XUAR guidelines for the implementation of the national Counterterrorism Law and a “people’s war on terrorism” in its increased surveillance efforts and enhanced restrictions on movement and ethnic and religious practices.

In April the XUAR government also implemented new “Deradicalization Regulations,” codifying efforts to “contain and eradicate extremism,” according to Xinhua. The broad definition of extremism resulted in the disappearance, jailing, or forced attendance at re-education classes of tens of thousands of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities, according to international media. This included many of those ordered to return to China from studying abroad. The regulations prohibit “abnormal” beards, the wearing of veils in public places, and the refusal to watch state television, among other behaviors. The regulations banned the use of some Islamic names when naming children and set punishments for the teaching of religion to children. Authorities also conducted daily house-to-house checks to distribute a list of banned books to local residents in Karamay City while confiscating the actual books, overseas Uighur media reported in May. In March, Radio Free Asia reported that Uighurs in Hotan were required to turn in to authorities “unsanctioned” religious publications, items with the Islamic star and crescent logo, and religious attire, such as burkas. Authorities searched Uighur homes and punished those still in possession of items on a list of “illegal items,” according to the report. Banned items include any Quran published before 2012.

Some security raids, arbitrary detentions, and judicial punishments, ostensibly directed at individuals or organizations suspected of promoting the “three evil forces,” appeared to target groups or individuals peacefully seeking to express their political or religious views. Detention and punishment extended to expression on the internet and social media, including the browsing, downloading, and transmitting of banned content. Authorities arrested a woman in May for posting Quranic verses to a chat site; local officials confirmed it was illegal to post to the internet anything from the Quran or mentioning Allah. Officials continued to use the threat of violence as justification for extreme security measures directed at the local population, journalists, and visiting foreigners. According to Xinhua news, officials used surveillance and facial recognition software, biodata collection, and big data technology to create a database of Uighurs in Xinjiang for the purpose of conducting “social-instability forecasting, prevention, and containment.” Security forces frequently staged large-scale parades involving thousands of armed police in cities across the XUAR, according to state media.

Uighurs and other religious minorities continued to be sentenced to long prison terms and in some cases executed without due process on charges of separatism and endangering state security. The government constructed new prisons in Xinjiang in order to alleviate the overcapacity of existing facilities, according to credible sources. Hundreds of police recruits were hired to staff the new prisons, according to government reports. Economist Ilham Tohti remained in prison, where he was serving a life sentence after his conviction on separatism-related charges in 2014.

The law criminalizes discussion of “separatism” on the internet and prohibits use of the internet in any way that undermines national unity. It further bans inciting ethnic separatism or “harming social stability” and requires internet service providers and network operators to set up monitoring systems to detect, report, and delete religious content or to strengthen existing systems and report violations of the law. Authorities reportedly searched cell phones at checkpoints and during random inspections of Uighur households, and those in possession of alleged terrorist material, including digital pictures of the East Turkistan flag, could be arrested and charged with crimes.

Authorities increased surveillance and the collection of personal information as part of overall security measures in the XUAR. The government enhanced efforts to build archives of voiceprint information, facial recognition, fingerprints, blood samples, and DNA samples, according to Xinhua news and overseas media. Monitoring of social media and the internet increased, and officials described their use of “big data” to forecast, prevent, and contain social instability in Xinjiang. In July, Xinjiang residents were ordered to install on mobile phones a surveillance application to report the viewing of “terrorist information” and prevent them from accessing it, according to the Hong Kong Free Press. The application monitors “illegal religious” activity and “harmful information,” according to authorities.

Huang Shike, a Hui Muslim living in Xinjiang, was sentenced to two years in prison for discussing Islam on the social media platform Wechat.

Ethnic Kazakh Chinese were also targeted, RFA and other international media reported in August. In August, Kazakh students were arrested in Xinjiang for wearing Islamic clothing and praying at a university. Kazakhs were also prevented from moving freely between China and neighboring Kazakhstan, and some were detained when returning to China.

The government pressured foreign countries to repatriate or deny visas to Uighurs who had left the country, and repatriated Uighurs faced the risk of imprisonment and mistreatment upon return. Some Uighurs who were forcibly repatriated disappeared after arrival. Family members of Uighurs studying overseas were also put under pressure to convince students to return to China, and returning students were detained or forced to attend re-education camps, according to overseas media. In July, Egyptian authorities detained scores of Chinese Uighur students to be interrogated by Chinese security personnel, and some of them were repatriated against their will, according to Uighur activists outside of China. In August state media reported that Hebibulla Tohti, a member of the Chinese Islamic Association, was arrested upon his return from studying at Egypt’s al-Azhar University. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison for unauthorized preaching, attending a conference in Saudi Arabia in 2015, giving speeches on the importance of Uighur culture, and failing to endorse the government’s policies in the Uighur region.

Freedom of assembly was severely limited during the year in the XUAR. For information about abuse of religious freedom in Xinjiang, see the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report at www.state.gov/religiousfreedomreport/.

For specific information on Tibet, see the Tibet Annex.

Acts of Violence, Discrimination, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

No laws criminalize private consensual same-sex activities between adults. Due to societal discrimination and pressure to conform to family expectations, however, most lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) persons refrained from publicly discussing their sexual orientation or gender identity. Individuals and organizations working on LGBTI issues continued to report discrimination and harassment from authorities similar to that experienced by other organizations that accept funding from overseas.

Despite reports of domestic violence among LGBTI couples, the regulations on domestic violence and the Family Violence Law do not include same-sex partnerships, giving LGBTI victims of domestic violence less legal recourse than heterosexual victims.

A court in Henan Province in July ruled that a mental hospital in Zhumadian City owed a gay man named Wu 5000 yuan ($735) in compensation over being forced against his will in 2015 into “conversion therapy.” Hospital employees forced Wu to take medicine and injections for 19 days after diagnosing him with a “sexual preference disorder.”

NGOs working on LGBTI issues reported that although public advocacy work became more difficult for them in light of the Foreign NGO Management Law and the Domestic Charity Law, they made some progress in advocating for LGBTI rights through specific antidiscrimination cases. In July a court ruled in favor of a transgender man in his suit against his former employer for wrongful termination.

Xi’an police detained nine members of the gay advocacy group Speak Out hours before the conference it was hosting was slated to start.

HIV and AIDS Social Stigma

Discrimination against persons with HIV remained a problem, impacting individuals’ employment, educational, and housing opportunities and impeding access to health care. The law allows employers and schools to bar persons with infectious diseases and does not afford specific protections based on HIV status. During the year state media outlets reported instances of persons with HIV/AIDS who were barred from housing, education, or employment due to their HIV status.

In June a Guangzhou court ruled against a food inspection laboratory for violating the contract of an employee upon learning he was HIV positive by sending him home “to rest” indefinitely. While he was still paid his full salary, he sued, asserting it was not lawful for his employer to prevent him from working. After he sued, his contract expired and was not renewed. The court ruled that the employee did not consent to this change in his contract, making it a violation of the Employment Contract Law. They also ruled that his employer had to allow him to return to work.

Other Societal Violence or Discrimination

The law prohibits discrimination against persons carrying infectious diseases and allows such persons to work as civil servants. The law does not address some common types of discrimination in employment, including discrimination based on height, physical appearance, or ethnic identity.

Despite provisions in the law, discrimination against hepatitis B carriers (including 20 million chronic carriers) remained widespread in many areas, and local governments sometimes tried to suppress their activities.

Despite a 2010 nationwide rule banning mandatory hepatitis B virus tests in job and school admissions applications, many companies continued to use hepatitis B testing as part of their preemployment screening.

a. Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining

The law does not provide for freedom of association, and workers are not free to organize or join unions of their own choosing. Independent unions are illegal, and the law does not protect the right to strike. The law allows for collective wage bargaining for workers in all types of enterprises. The law further provides for industrial sector-wide or regional collective contracts, and enterprise-level collective contracts were generally compulsory throughout the country. Regulations require the government-controlled union to gather input from workers prior to consultation with management and to submit collective contracts to workers or their congress for approval. There is no legal obligation for employers to negotiate or to bargain in good faith, and some employers refused to do so.

The law provides legal protections against antiunion discrimination and specifies that union representatives may not be transferred or terminated by enterprise management during their term of office. The law provides for the reinstatement of workers dismissed for union activity as well as for other enterprise penalties for antiunion activities. The law does not protect workers who request or take part in collective negotiations with their employers independent of the officially recognized union. In several cases reported during the year, workers faced reprisals including forced resignation, firing, and detention.

The All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) is the only union recognized under the law. All union activity must be approved by and organized under the ACFTU, a CCP organ chaired by a member of the Politburo. The ACFTU and its provincial and local branches continued aggressively to establish new constituent unions and add new members, especially among migrant workers, in large, multinational enterprises. The law gives the ACFTU financial and administrative control over constituent unions empowered to represent employees in negotiating and signing collective contracts with enterprises and public institutions. The law does not mandate the ACFTU to represent the interests of workers in disputes.

The ACFTU and the CCP used a variety of mechanisms to influence the selection of trade union representatives. Although the law states trade union officers at each level should be elected, the ACFTU-affiliated unions appointed most factory-level officers, often in coordination with employers. Official union leaders often were drawn from the ranks of management. Direct election by workers of union leaders continued to be rare, occurred only at the enterprise-level, and was subject to supervision by higher levels of the union or the CCP. In enterprises where direct election of union officers took place, regional ACFTU officers and local CCP authorities retained control over the selection and approval of candidates. Even in these cases, workers and NGOs expressed concern about the credibility of elections.

The law provides for labor dispute resolution through a three-stage process: mediation between the parties, arbitration by officially designated arbitrators, and litigation. Employers are required to consult with labor unions or employee representatives on matters that have a direct bearing on the immediate interests of their workers. Three new labor-dispute arbitration rules aimed at streamlining the dispute settlement process were implemented during the year. One measure that took effect June 1 states that workers should seek assistance from the official union in the arbitration process. Civil society organizations alleged that these revisions effectively exclude independent labor nongovernmental organizations from representing workers in labor disputes.

The law does not expressly prohibit work stoppages, and it is legal for workers to strike spontaneously. Authorities appeared most tolerant of strikes protesting unpaid or underpaid wages. Unofficial records from the Hong Kong-based labor rights NGO China Labor Bulletin showed that between January and June the majority of strikes and collective protests were due to unpaid wages.

In some cases local authorities cracked down on such strikes, sometimes charging leaders with vague criminal offenses, such as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” “disturbing public order,” “damaging production operations,” or detaining them without any charges. The only legally specified role for the ACFTU in strikes is to participate in investigations and assist the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security in resolving disputes.

Despite the appearances of a strong labor movement and relatively high levels of union registration, genuine freedom of association and worker representation did not exist. The ACFTU constituent unions were generally ineffective in representing and protecting the rights and interests of workers. Workers generally did not view the ACFTU as an advocate, especially migrant workers who had the least interaction with union officials.

Enforcement was generally insufficient to deter wide-scale violations. Labor inspectors lacked authority and resources to compel employers to correct violations. While the law outlines general procedures for resolving disputes, procedures were lengthy and subject to delays. Local authorities in some areas actively sought to limit efforts by independent civil society organizations and legal practitioners. Some areas maintained informal quotas on the number of cases allowed to proceed beyond mediation.

There continued to be reports of workers throughout the country engaging in wildcat strikes, work stoppages, and other protest actions. Bus drivers from a Guangdong municipality reportedly began a strike on June 27. They approached the local authority to protest unbearably low wages and benefits, mounting workloads, and increasing living costs. More than two-thirds of the bus services were suspended, and the drivers said they would continue to strike until they receive the government’s reply.

The number of labor disputes rose steadily in recent years, and local and provincial governments responded. For example, the Guangdong government implemented the new Guangdong Provincial Labor and Human Resources Mediation Measures on May 1 to cope with the rapid increase of labor disputes.

Coordinated efforts by governments at the central, provincial, and local levels, including harassment, detention, and the imposition of travel restrictions on labor rights defenders and restrictions on funding sources for NGOs, disrupted labor rights advocacy. The Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court sentenced labor activist Liu Shaoming to four and one-half years’ imprisonment on July 7 after finding him guilty of “inciting subversion of state power.” A veteran of the 1989 prodemocracy movement, Liu was initially detained in May 2015 for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” then formally arrested in July 2015 for the more serious charge of inciting subversion.

On September 3, authorities released Meng Han, who had been convicted in November 2016 for “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.”

b. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

The law prohibits forced and compulsory labor, and where there were reports that forced labor of adults and children occurred, the government reportedly enforced the law. Although domestic media rarely reported forced labor cases and the penalties imposed, the law provides a range of penalties depending on the circumstances, including imprisonment, criminal detention, and fines. It was unclear whether the penalties were sufficient to deter violations.

Persons with mental disabilities were subjected to forced labor in small workshops and factories. Police raided two workshops in Heilongjiang Province in the northeast in July and freed more than 30 enslaved laborers, according to media reports.

In 2013 the NPC abolished the Re-education through Labor system, an arbitrary system of administrative detention without judicial review. Some media outlets and NGOs reported that forced labor continued in some drug rehabilitation facilities where individuals continued to be detained without judicial process. It was not possible to independently to verify these reports.

Also see the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

c. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment

The law prohibits the employment of children under the age of 16. It refers to workers between the ages of 16 and 18 as “juvenile workers” and prohibits them from engaging in certain forms of dangerous work, including in mines. The government did not effectively enforce the law.

The law specifies administrative review, fines, and revocation of business licenses of enterprises that illegally hire minors and provides that underage working children be returned to their parents or other custodians in their original place of residence. The penalty is imprisonment for employing children under age 16 in hazardous labor or for excessively long hours, but a gap remained between legislation and implementation despite annual inspection campaigns launched by local authorities across the country. It was unclear whether the penalties were sufficient to deter violations.

Abuse of the student-worker system continued; as in past years, there were allegations that schools and local officials improperly facilitated the supply of student laborers.

e. Acceptable Conditions of Work

There is no national minimum wage, but the law generally requires local and provincial governments to set their own minimum wage rates for both the formal and informal sectors according to standards promulgated by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. It also prohibits overtime work in excess of three hours per day or 36 hours per month and mandates premium pay for overtime work.

The State Administration for Work Safety sets and enforces occupational health and safety regulations. The law requires employers to provide free health checkups for employees working in hazardous conditions and to inform them of the results. The law also provides workers the right to report violations or remove themselves from workplace situations that could endanger their health without jeopardy to their employment.

Regulations state that labor and social security bureaus at or above the county-level are responsible for enforcement of labor laws. Companies that violate occupational, safety, and health regulations face various penalties, including suspension of business operations or rescission of business certificates and licenses.

The government did not effectively enforce the law. Penalties were not adequate to deter violations and were seldom enforced. The number of inspectors was insufficient to monitor working conditions and did not operate in the informal sector. Although the country’s worker safety record improved, there were a number of workplace accidents during the year. Media and NGO reports attributed them to a lack of safety checks, weak enforcement of laws and regulations, ineffective supervision, and inadequate emergency responses.

Nonpayment of wages remained a problem in many areas. Governments at various levels continued efforts to prevent arrears and to recover payment of unpaid wages and insurance contributions. It remained possible for companies to relocate or close on short notice, often leaving employees without adequate recourse for due compensation.

Unpaid wages have been an acute problem in the construction sector for decades due to the prevalence of hiring subcontracted low-wage migrant workers. This informal hiring scheme made rural laborers susceptible to delayed payment or nonpayment for their work, prompting them to join in collective action. Workers occasionally took drastic measures to demand payment. In January the ACFTU claimed its national network helped more than 2.2 million migrants recover a total of 22 billion yuan ($3.3 billion) in unpaid wages owed in 2016.

Workers in the informal sector often lacked coverage under labor contracts, and even with contracts, migrant workers in particular had less access to benefits, especially social insurance. Workers in the informal sector worked longer hours and earned one-half to two-thirds as much as comparable workers in the formal sector.

According to government sources, only an estimated 10 percent of eligible employees received regular occupational health services. Small and medium-sized enterprises, the country’s largest group of employers, often failed to provide the required health services. They also did not provide proper safety equipment to help prevent disease and were rarely required to pay compensation to victims and their families.

According to several official documents published during the year, occupational diseases were prevalent. Patients came from many industries, including coal, chemical engineering, and nonferrous metals. Data from the State Administration for Work Safety showed that occupational diseases were rampant in more than 30 industries, threatening 30 percent of the country’s enterprises, and newly reported cases, especially of pneumoconiosis, or black lung disease, were on the rise.

The number of workplace accidents and fatalities in the country decreased on a year-on-year basis. From January to November, the number of workplace accidents dropped 26.9 percent compared with the previous year, while fatalities in those accidents dropped 20.6 percent.

The coal mining industry was extremely deadly. On May 7, a gas leak caused an explosion at the Jilinqiao colliery in Hunan Province, killing 18 miners, according to media reports. On August 11, a landslide occurred at an open-pit coalmine in the north, in Shanxi Province. Media reported local government officials visited the site twice to investigate internet reports of casualties, but the coalmine company denied all the rumored casualties. Authorities then detained the author of the online report for “fabricating information online.” The company head later turned himself in to police and confessed that 10 workers were killed in the accident.

Work accidents also remained widespread in other industries. On June 1, a fire raged for 12 hours at a paper company in the Tianjin port. Even though no casualties were reported, local residents were reminded of the chemical plant only two miles away where a series of explosions in 2015 left 165 persons dead and nearly 800 injured. On August 16, an explosion at a petrochemical company in the east, in Shandong Province, killed 10 persons.

READ SECTION: China (above)| Tibet | Hong Kong | Macau

a. Arbitrary Deprivation of Life and Other Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings

There were no reports the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.

b. Disappearance

On January 27, individuals suspected of being central Chinese government security service officers escorted businessman Xiao Jianhua, one of the country’s richest persons, out of a hotel in the SAR and then transported him to the mainland, according to media reports. Xiao’s family reported him missing on January 28 but withdrew the report the next day. Xiao’s company published a front-page advertisement in a local newspaper stating he had not been abducted but rather was “recuperating abroad.” As of June central government authorities had not responded to the SAR government’s request for information about the case, according to the South China Morning Post. Xiao’s abduction renewed fears that mainland security services did not respect the SAR’s high degree of autonomy specified under the “one country, two systems” framework.

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The law prohibits such practices, but there were isolated reports of degrading treatment in prisons. There were also some reports police used excessive force.

There were no reports of death in custody due to excessive police force.

In February a court sentenced seven police officers to two years in prison for assaulting Ken Tsang, a prodemocracy activist, in 2014. The officers were suspended from duty. All were later released on bail, pending their appeals. Video footage taken during 2014 protests showed plainclothes police officers abusing Tsang. Prosecutors separately charged Tsang with assaulting and obstructing police officers, and in May 2016 Tsang was found guilty of assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest and was sentenced to five weeks in prison.

Prison and Detention Center Conditions

There were some isolated reports regarding prison or detention center conditions that raised human rights concerns.

Physical Conditions: There were no major concerns in prisons and detention centers regarding physical conditions.

Administration: The government investigated allegations of problematic conditions and documented the results in a publicly accessible manner. There was an external Office of the Ombudsman. Several activists and former inmates claimed prisoners suffered abuses. For example, prodemocracy activist Joshua Wong publicly claimed that prisoners were forced to squat naked while answering questions and that five prison staff members pressured him to retract complaints while he was in juvenile detention. Activists urged the government to establish an independent prisoner complaint mechanism in order to protect inmates from retaliation for complaints.

Independent Monitoring: The government permitted media outlets, legislators, and human rights groups to conduct prison visits. Justices of the peace visited prisons and may make suggestions and comments on matters, such as the physical environment of facilities, overcrowding, staff improvement, training and recreational programs and activities, and other matters affecting the welfare of inmates.

Improvements: In January the partial redevelopment of Tai Lam Center for Women added space for 128 women inmates, alleviating the overcrowding problem for women in high-security prisons.

d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention

The law prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention and provides for the right of any person to challenge the lawfulness of his/her arrest or detention in court, and the government generally observed these requirements.

ROLE OF THE POLICE AND SECURITY APPARATUS

The Hong Kong Police Force maintains internal security and reports to the SAR’s Security Bureau. The People’s Liberation Army is responsible for external security. The Immigration Department controls the entry of persons into and out of the SAR as well as the documentation of local residents. Civilian authorities maintained effective control over the police force, and the government had effective mechanisms to investigate and punish abuse and corruption.

Multiple sources reported that mainland operatives in the SAR monitored some prodemocracy movement figures, political activists, lawyers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and academics who expressed criticism of the central government’s policies. Media also reported that police intimidated, arrested, and assaulted activists and protesters during President Xi Jinping’s July visit to the SAR. During the visit, some activists said they were assaulted by pro-Beijing groups. There were no reports of impunity involving the security forces during the year.

Members of focus groups expressed concern that the chief executive appointed all Independent Police Complaints Committee members, according to a South China Morning Post report. Activists previously noted the committee’s lack of power to conduct independent investigations limited its oversight capacity.

ARREST PROCEDURES AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES

Police generally apprehended suspects openly with warrants based on sufficient evidence and issued by a duly authorized official. Arrested persons must be charged within 48 hours or released, and the government respected this right. Interviews of suspects are required to be videotaped. The law provides accused persons with the right to a prompt judicial determination, and authorities effectively respected this right.

Detainees were generally informed promptly of charges against them. There was a functioning bail system, and authorities allowed detainees access to a lawyer of their choice. Suspects were not detained incommunicado or held under house arrest.

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

The law provides for an independent judiciary, and the SAR government generally respected judicial independence and impartiality.

TRIAL PROCEDURES

The law provides for the right to a fair and public trial, and an independent judiciary generally enforced this right. Trials were by jury except at the magistrate and district court level. An attorney is provided at public expense if defendants cannot afford counsel. Defendants had adequate time and facilities to prepare a defense. Defendants have the right to be informed promptly and in detail of the charges against them and the right to a trial without undue delay, and defendants could confront and question witnesses testifying against them and present witnesses to testify on their own behalf. Defendants have the right of appeal, the right not to be compelled to testify or confess guilt, and the right to be present at their trial.

Defendants enjoy a presumption of innocence except in official corruption cases. Under the law a current or former government official who maintained a standard of living above that commensurate with his or her official income, or who controls monies or property disproportionate to his official income, is considered guilty of an offense unless he can satisfactorily explain the discrepancy. The courts upheld this ordinance. The government conducted court proceedings in either Chinese or English, the SAR’s two official languages. The government provided interpretation service to those not conversant in Cantonese or English during all criminal court proceedings.

The SAR’s courts are charged with interpreting those provisions of the Basic Law that address matters within the limits of the SAR’s autonomy. The courts also interpret provisions of the Basic Law that relate to central government responsibilities or on the relationship between the central authorities and the SAR. Before making its final judgments on these matters, which are not subject to appeal, the Court of Final Appeal may seek an interpretation of the relevant provisions from the central government’s Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC). The Basic Law requires that courts follow the NPCSC’s interpretations where cases intersect with central government jurisdiction, although judgments previously rendered are not affected. On five occasions in the past, the NPCSC issued interpretations of the Basic Law. The most recent interpretation was issued without any request for interpretation from a SAR court. Activists and other observers expressed concerns that the central government had encroached on the judiciary’s independence through the NPCSC’s interpretations of the Basic Law.

POLITICAL PRISONERS AND DETAINEES

There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees.

CIVIL JUDICIAL PROCEDURES AND REMEDIES

There is an independent and impartial judiciary for civil matters and access to a court to bring lawsuits seeking damages for, or the cessation of, human rights violations.

f. Arbitrary or Unlawful Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence

The law prohibits such actions, and there were no reports the SAR government failed to respect these prohibitions. There were reports mainland security services monitored prodemocracy and human rights activists.

c. Freedom of Religion

See the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report at www.state.gov/religiousfreedomreport/.

The Basic Law limits the ability of residents to change their government through free and fair elections. Article 45 of the Basic Law establishes as the “ultimate aim” direct election of the chief executive through “universal suffrage upon nomination by a broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures.” The residents of Hong Kong, the SAR government, and the PRC central government have vigorously debated the nature, scope, and pace of democratic and electoral reforms.

Voters directly elect 40 of LegCo’s 70 seats by secret ballot. Thirty-five seats are designated as “geographic constituencies” (GCs) and 35 as “functional constituencies” (FCs). All 35 GCs are directly elected, while only five of the FCs are directly elected. The remaining 30 FC seats are selected by a subset of voters from FCs representing various economic and social sectors, most of whom are supportive of the central government. Under this structure a limited number of individuals and institutions were able to control multiple votes for LegCo members. In 2016 the constituencies that elected these 30 FC LegCo seats consisted of 232,498 registered individual and institutional voters, of whom approximately 172,820 voted, according to the SAR’s election affairs office’s statistics. The five FC seats in the district council sector, known as “super seats,” were directly elected by the approximately five million registered voters who were not otherwise represented in another FC and therefore represented larger constituencies than any other seats in LegCo. The government has previously acknowledged the method of selecting FC legislators did not conform to the principle of universal suffrage, but it took no steps to eliminate the FCs during the year.

Under the Basic Law, LegCo members may not introduce bills that affect public expenditure, the political structure, or government policy; only the government may introduce these types of bills. The SAR sends 36 deputies to the mainland’s National People’s Congress (NPC) and had approximately 250 delegates in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference–bodies that operate under the direction of the Chinese Communist Party and do not exercise legislative independence. The approval of the chief executive, two-thirds of the LegCo, and two-thirds of the SAR’s delegates to the NPC are required to place an amendment to the Basic Law on the agenda of the NPC, which has the sole power to amend the Basic Law.

Voters directly elected all 431 of the SAR’s district council seats in 2015 following the government’s elimination of appointed district council seats. Previously the chief executive used his authority to appoint 68 of the 534 members of the district councils, the SAR’s most grassroots-level elected bodies.

Elections and Political Participation

Recent Elections: In March the 1,194-member Chief Executive Election Committee, dominated by proestablishment electors, selected Carrie Lam to be the SAR’s chief executive. Lam received 777 of 1,163 valid votes. The central government’s State Council formally appointed her, and on July 1, President Xi Jinping administered Lam’s oath of office.

In December 2016 representatives of various commercial sectors, professions, religious organizations, and social service providers as well as political representatives elected the 1,194 electors who cast ballots in the chief executive election. Residents expressed concern these small-circle elections were open to participation by a very small number (230,000) of the SAR’s 7.5 million residents. Moreover, although the 2016 Election Committee election saw an historically high voter turnout of 46 percent and a record number of contested seats across industrial, professional, grassroots, and political sectors, local political observers noted that 300 members–approximately 25 percent–of the committee were elected without a poll or other transparent election process to represent 12 uncontested subsectors and one sub-subsector.

In September 2016 SAR residents elected representatives to the 70-member LegCo. The election, which saw a record high turnout of 2.2 million voters, was considered generally free and fair according to the standards established in the Basic Law. The government acknowledged that election observers and other residents filed approximately 1,200 petitions concerning election misconduct with the Elections Affairs Committee following the conclusion of the LegCo election. Promainland and proestablishment candidates won 40 of 70 LegCo seats, while prodemocracy candidates won 30, an increase over the 27 the opposition camp held from 2012 to 2016.

Political Parties and Political Participation: In July 2016 the government announced for the first time that all LegCo candidates must sign a confirmation form pledging their allegiance to the SAR and their intent to uphold the Basic Law, including three provisions stating that Hong Kong is an inalienable part of the PRC. Legal scholars and prodemocracy activists criticized the government’s use of the confirmation form, noting the LegCo had not approved changes to election procedures or the qualifications needed to run for legislative office. In August 2016 the government disqualified proindependence LegCo candidate Edward Leung, of the Hong Kong Indigenous party, from running in the election in the New Territories East District. An elections officer refused Leung’s candidacy even though Leung had signed the confirmation form and said he would drop his proindependence stance. Leung and another candidate filed judicial review applications charging that the use of the confirmation form was not in accordance with the SAR’s laws. Leung also filed an election petition in September 2016 alleging his disqualification from the race was unlawful.

In August the Court of Final Appeal upheld a November 2016 court ruling that disqualified Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung, two opposition legislators-elect who used their oath-swearing ceremonies to make proindependence gestures, from serving as LegCo members because they improperly took their oath of office. The November 2016 ruling came after the NPCSC earlier that month issued an unsolicited interpretation of the Basic Law that preempted the ability of the SAR’s independent judiciary to rule on the matter. It marked the first time that the NPCSC issued such an interpretation while a SAR judge was still deliberating the case in question and the second time it had done so in the absence of a request from SAR authorities.

In December 2016 then chief executive Leung and then secretary for justice Yuen filed a legal challenge to the legitimacy of four other opposition legislators–veteran activist “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, former Occupy protest student leader Nathan Law, university lecturer Lau Siu-lai, and university professor Edward Yiu–over the manner in which they took their oaths. In July the court granted the government’s request to disqualify the four legislators. Two of them filed appeals against their disqualification.

Asymmetric systemic obstacles make it harder for pandemocratic parties to secure a majority of seats in the LegCo or have one of their members become chief executive. Of the LegCo’s 70 members, 30 were elected by functional constituencies, most of which were supportive of the central government; representatives from 12 of these constituencies ran unopposed. Moreover, the central government and its business supporters provided generous financial resources to parties that supported the central government’s political agenda in the SAR, ensuring that these organizations would control the levers of government and senior positions. According to local press reports, several political groups expressed concern that the Central Government Liaison Office (CGLO) interfered with legislative campaigns, lobbying for pro-Beijing candidates and threatening or harassing others. In August 2016 Liberal Party candidate Ken Chow suspended his campaign for a LegCo seat, alleging CGLO affiliates had harassed him and threatened the safety of his family. The Independent Commission Against Corruption, the Liberal Party, and the SAR government undertook investigations into Chow’s allegations.

Participation of Women and Minorities: No laws limit participation of women in the political process, and they did participate. In March, Carrie Lam was elected to be the SAR’s first female chief executive.

There is no legal restriction against ethnic minorities running for electoral office, serving as electoral monitors, or participating in the civil service. Most elected or senior appointed positions require that the officeholder have a legal right of abode only in the SAR. There were no members of ethnic minorities in the LegCo, and members of ethnic minorities reported they considered themselves unrepresented. The government made efforts to increase the hiring of ethnic minorities by reducing the level of Chinese-language ability needed to qualify for some jobs.

The law provides criminal penalties for corruption by officials, and the government generally implemented the law effectively. Although the SAR continued to be viewed as relatively uncorrupt, there were isolated reports of government corruption during the year.

Corruption: In February former chief executive Donald Tsang was sentenced to 20 months in jail for misconduct while in public office in connection with a below-market lease. Tsang appealed the sentence.

Financial Disclosure: The SAR requires the 27 most senior civil service officials to declare their financial investments annually and the approximately 3,100 senior working-level officials to do so biennially. Policy bureaus may impose additional reporting requirements for positions seen as having a greater risk of conflict of interest. The Civil Service Bureau monitors and verifies disclosures, which are available to the public. There are criminal and administrative sanctions for noncompliance.

Women

Rape and Domestic Violence: The law criminalizes rape, including spousal rape. Activists expressed concerns that rape was underreported, especially within the ethnic minority community, and that conviction rates were low, according to a South China Morning Post report.

The law does not directly criminalize domestic violence, but the government regarded domestic violence against women as a serious concern and took measures to prevent and prosecute offenses. The law allows survivors to seek a three-month injunction, extendable to six months, against an abuser. Abusers may be liable for criminal charges, depending on what acts constituted the domestic violence. The government effectively enforced the law regarding domestic crimes and prosecuted violators.

The law covers abuse between married couples, heterosexual and homosexual cohabitants, former spouses or cohabitants, and immediate and extended family members. It protects victims younger than 18, allowing them to apply for an injunction in their own right, with the assistance of an adult guardian, against abuse by their parents, siblings, and specified immediate and extended family members. The law also empowers the court to require that the abuser attend an antiviolence program. In cases in which the abuser caused bodily harm, the court may attach an arrest warrant to an existing injunction and extend both injunctions and arrest warrants to two years.

The government maintained programs that provided intervention, counseling, and assistance to domestic violence victims and abusers.

Sexual Harassment: The law prohibits sexual harassment or discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status, and pregnancy. The law applies to both men and women, and police generally enforced the law effectively, though the EOC reported it saw signs that sexual harassment was underreported in the social services sector.

Coercion in Population Control: There were no reports of coerced abortion, involuntary sterilization, or other coercive population control methods. Estimates on maternal mortality and contraceptive prevalence are available at: www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/monitoring/maternal-mortality-2015/en/ .

Discrimination: Women enjoy the same legal status and rights as men. The SAR’s sexual discrimination ordinance prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex or pregnancy status, and the law authorizes the EOC to work towards the elimination of discrimination and harassment as well as to promote equal opportunity for men and women. While the government generally enforced these laws, women faced discrimination in employment, salary, welfare, inheritance, and promotion.

Children

Birth Registration: All Chinese nationals born in the SAR, on the mainland, or abroad to parents, of whom at least one is a PRC national and Hong Kong permanent resident, acquire both PRC citizenship and Hong Kong permanent residence, the latter allowing the right of abode in the SAR. Children born in the SAR to non-Chinese parents, at least one of whom is a Hong Kong permanent resident, acquire SAR permanent residence and qualify to apply for naturalization as PRC citizens. Registration of all such statuses was routine.

Child Abuse: The law mandates protection for victims of child abuse (battery, assault, neglect, abandonment, and sexual exploitation), and the government enforced the law. The law allows for the prosecution of certain sexual offenses, including against minors, committed outside the territory of the SAR.

The government provided parent-education programs through its maternal and child health centers, public education programs, clinical psychologists for its clinical psychology units, and social workers for its family and child protective services units. Police maintained a child abuse investigation unit and, in collaboration with the Social Welfare Department, ran a child witness support program.

Early and Forced Marriage: The legal minimum age of marriage is 16; parents’ written consent is required for marriage before the age of 21.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: There were reports girls younger than 18 from some countries in Asia were subjected to sex trafficking in the SAR.

The legal age of consensual sex is 16. Under the law, a person having “unlawful sexual intercourse” with a victim younger than 16 is subject to five years’ imprisonment, while having unlawful sexual intercourse with a victim younger than 13 carries a sentence of life imprisonment.

The law makes it an offense to possess, produce, copy, import, or export pornography involving a child younger than 18 or to publish or cause to be published any advertisement that conveys or is likely to be understood as conveying the message that a person has published, publishes, or intends to publish any child pornography. Authorities generally enforced the law. The penalty for creation, publication, or advertisement of child pornography is eight years’ imprisonment, while possession carries a penalty of five years’ imprisonment.

International Child Abductions: The SAR is a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at travel.state.gov/content/childabduction/en/legal/compliance.html.

Anti-Semitism

The Jewish community numbered 5,000 to 6,000 persons. There were no reports of anti-Semitic acts.

Trafficking in Persons

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

Persons with Disabilities

The law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities and the government generally enforced these provisions. The government generally implemented laws and programs to provide persons with disabilities access to buildings, information, and communications, although there were reports of some restrictions.

The law on disabilities states that children with separate educational needs must have equal opportunity in accessing education. Some human rights groups reported that the SAR’s disability law was too limited and its implementation did not promote equal opportunities. Activists said that ethnic minority students with disabilities had a particularly high dropout rate. There were occasional media reports about alleged abuses in educational, correctional, and mental health facilities.

The Social Welfare Department provided training and vocational rehabilitation services to assist persons with disabilities, offered subsidized resident-care services for persons considered unable to live independently, offered places for preschool services to children with disabilities, and provided community support services for persons with mental disabilities, their families, and other local residents.

The law calls for improved building access and sanctions against those who discriminate. Access to public buildings (including public schools) and transportation remained a serious problem for persons with disabilities.

National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Although ethnic Chinese made up 94 percent of the population, the SAR is a multi-ethnic society with persons from a number of ethnic groups recognized as permanent residents with full rights under the law. The law prohibits discrimination, and the EOC oversees implementation and enforcement of the law. The EOC maintained a hotline for inquiries and complaints concerning racial discrimination. Although the government took steps to reduce discrimination, there were frequent reports of discrimination against ethnic minorities.

The government has a policy to integrate non-Chinese students into SAR schools. Nonetheless, the EOC reported it continued to receive complaints from ethnic minority parents who found it difficult to enroll their children in kindergarten because school information and admissions interviews at some schools were provided only in Cantonese. Students who did not learn Chinese had significant difficulty entering university and the labor market, according to government and NGO reports.

Acts of Violence, Discrimination, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

No laws criminalize consensual same-sex sexual conduct between adults. While the SAR has laws that ban discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, disability, and family status, no law prohibits companies or individuals from discriminating on grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. There are also no laws that specifically aid in the prosecution of bias-motivated crimes against members of the LGBTI community.

In April a court ruled that a gay civil servant’s husband, whom he had married in a foreign country, was entitled to the same benefits as a heterosexual spouse. In May the government appealed that decision, and the appeal was pending.

LGBTI professionals are permitted to bring foreign partners to the SAR only on a “prolonged visitor visa.” Successful applicants, however, cannot work, obtain an identification card, or qualify for permanent residency.

a. Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining

The law provides for the right of workers to form and join independent unions without previous authorization or excessive requirements and to conduct legal strikes, but it does not protect the right to collective bargaining or obligate employers to bargain. Trade unions claimed the lack of collective bargaining rights allows employers simply to refuse to bargain. The law explicitly prohibits civil servants from bargaining collectively.

Trade unions must register with the government’s Registry of Trade Unions and must have a minimum membership of seven persons for registration. Workers were not prevented from unionizing; however, the law restricts members and officers of unions to those who are “ordinarily resident” in the SAR and have been employed or engaged with an industry or occupation related to the union.

The law provides for the right to strike, although there are some restrictions on this right for civil servants. The law prohibits firing an employee for striking and voids any section of an employment contract that would punish a worker for striking. The commissioner of police has broad authority to control and direct public gatherings in the interest of national security or public safety. According to the law, an employer cannot fire, penalize, or discriminate against an employee who exercises his or her union rights and cannot prevent or deter the employee from exercising such rights.

The government effectively enforced the law. Penalties for violations of antiunion laws included fines as well as legal damages paid to workers, and penalties were sufficient to deter violations. An employee who is unreasonably and unlawfully dismissed (including on the grounds of the employee exercising trade union rights) is entitled to reinstatement or re-engagement, subject to mutual consent of the employer and the employee, or monetary compensation for unreasonable and unlawful dismissal.

b. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

The law does not prohibit all forms of forced or compulsory labor, nor do laws specifically criminalize forced labor. Instead, the SAR uses its Employment and Theft Ordinances to prosecute labor violations and related offenses. Penalties for these offenses were not sufficient to deter violations.

NGOs expressed concerns some migrant workers faced high levels of indebtedness assumed as part of the recruitment process, creating a risk they could fall victim to debt bondage. The SAR allows for the collection of placement fees of up to 10 percent of the first month’s wages, but some recruitment firms required large up-front fees in the country of origin that workers struggled to repay. Some locally licensed employment agencies were suspected of colluding with agencies in the Philippines and Indonesia to profit from a debt scheme, and some local agencies illegally confiscated the passports, employment contracts, and automatic teller machine cards of domestic workers and withheld them until their debt was repaid.

There also were reports some employers illegally forbade domestic workers from leaving the residence of work for non-work-related reasons, effectively preventing them from reporting exploitation to authorities. SAR authorities said they encouraged aggrieved workers to file complaints and make use of government conciliation services as well as actively pursued reports of any labor violations.

Also see the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

c. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment

Regulations prohibit employment of children younger than 15 in any industrial establishment. The law prohibits overtime in industrial establishments with employment in dangerous trades for persons younger than 18. Children 13-14 years of age may work in certain nonindustrial establishments, subject to conditions aimed at ensuring a minimum of nine years of education and protection of their safety, health, and welfare.

The Labor Department effectively enforced these laws and regularly inspected workplaces to enforce compliance with the regulations. Penalties for violations of child labor laws include fines and legal damages and were sufficient to deter violations.

There were reports that girls from some countries in Asia were subjected to commercial sexual exploitation (see section 6, Children).

e. Acceptable Conditions of Work

On May 1, the statutory minimum hourly wage was readjusted to HK$34.50 ($4.41). In September the SAR increased domestic workers’ minimum monthly wage from HK$4,310 ($552) to HK$4,410 ($564) and increased their minimum monthly food allowance from HK$1,037 ($133) to HK$1,053 ($135). The government requires employers to provide foreign domestic workers with housing, worker’s compensation insurance, and a travel allowance. In its explanation of why live-in domestic workers (both local and foreign) would not be covered by the statutory minimum wage, the government explained “the distinctive working pattern–round-the-clock presence, provision of service-on-demand, and the multifarious domestic duties expected of live-in domestic workers–made it impossible to ascertain the actual hours worked so as to determine the wages to be paid.”

The official poverty line was half of the median monthly household income before tax and welfare transfers, based on household size. For a one-person household, the poverty line was set at HK$3,800 ($486), for a two-person household HK$8,800 ($1,126), for a three-person household HK$14,000 ($1,791), and so on.

There is no law concerning working hours, paid weekly rest, rest breaks, or compulsory overtime for most employees. In the absence of such legislation, labor rights groups previously reported most SAR residents worked approximately 56 hours per week. An online survey of foreign domestic workers showed that 76 percent worked more than 12 hours per day and 17 percent worked more than 16 hours per day.

Laws exist to provide for health and safety of workers in the workplace. Workers may remove themselves from situations that endanger health or safety without jeopardy to their employment. No laws restrict work during typhoon or rainstorm warnings. The Labor Department issued a “code of practice” on work arrangements in times of severe weather, which includes a recommendation that employers require only essential staff to come to work during certain categories of typhoon or rainstorm warnings. Many businesses closed during extreme weather. Employers are required to report any injuries sustained by their employees in work-related accidents.

The government generally enforced the law, and the Labor Tribunal adjudicated disputes involving nonpayment or underpayment of wages and wrongful dismissal. Penalties for violations of minimum wage or occupational safety and health violations include fines, payments of damages, and worker’s compensation payments. These penalties were sufficient to deter violations.

The Occupational Safety and Health Branch of the Labor Department is responsible for safety and health promotion, identification of unsafe conditions, enforcement of safety management legislation, and policy formulation and implementation; it enforced occupational safety and health laws effectively.

In December 2016 a High Court judge ruled the government failed to protect adequately the human rights and safety of a Pakistani man trafficked to the SAR and forced into unpaid labor for several years. The government’s appeal of the case was pending at year’s end.

In 2016 the Labor Department recorded 35,768 occupational injuries and 203 workplace fatalities. In March the chief executive of the Association for the Rights of Industrial Accident Victims claimed the Highways Department had disregarded worker safety on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge construction project. According to the organization, as of March, 10 workers had died and more than 600 were injured while working on the bridge since 2010.

READ SECTION: CHINA | TIBET | HONG KONG (above) | MACAU

a. Arbitrary Deprivation of Life and Other Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings

There were no reports the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.

b. Disappearance

There were no reports of disappearances by or on behalf of government authorities.

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The law prohibits such practices, and there were no reports government officials employed them.

Prison and Detention Center Conditions

There were no significant reports regarding prison or detention center conditions that raised human rights concerns.

Physical Conditions: There were no major concerns in prisons and detention centers regarding physical conditions.

Administration: The law allows prisoners and detainees to submit complaints to judicial authorities without censorship and to request investigation of alleged deficiencies, and judges and prosecutors made monthly visits to prisons to hear prisoner complaints.

Independent Monitoring: According to the government, no independent human rights observers requested or made any visit to the prison in the SAR.

d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention

The law prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention and provides for the right of any person to challenge the lawfulness of his/her arrest or detention in court, and the government generally observed these requirements. Activists expressed concern that the SAR government abused prosecutorial procedures to target political dissidents, while police said they charged those they arrested with violations of the law.

ROLE OF THE POLICE AND SECURITY APPARATUS

Civilian authorities maintained effective control over the Public Security Police (general law enforcement) and the Judiciary Police (criminal investigations), and the government had effective mechanisms to investigate and punish official abuse and corruption. There were no reports of impunity involving the security forces.

ARREST PROCEDURES AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES

Authorities detained persons with warrants issued by a duly authorized official based on sufficient evidence. Detainees had access to a lawyer of their choice or, if indigent, to one provided by the government. Detainees had prompt access to family members. Police must present persons in custody to an examining judge within 48 hours of detention. Authorities informed detainees promptly of charges against them. The examining judge, who conducts a pretrial inquiry in criminal cases, has wide powers to collect evidence, order or dismiss indictments, and determine whether to release detained persons. Investigations by the prosecuting attorney should end with charges or dismissal within eight months, or six months when the defendant is in detention. The pretrial inquiry stage must conclude within four months, or two months if the defendant is detained. By law the maximum limits for pretrial detention range from six months to three years, depending on the charges and progress of the judicial process; there were no reported cases of lengthy pretrial detentions. There is a functioning bail system; however, judges have often refused bail in cases where sentences could exceed three years. Complaints of police mistreatment may be made to the Commission for Disciplinary Control of the Security Forces and Services of the Macao SAR, the Commission Against Corruption, or the Office of the Secretary for Security. The government has also established a website for receiving named or anonymous complaints about irregular police activity or behavior. There were no reports of deaths in police custody.

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

The law provides for an independent judiciary, and the government generally respected judicial independence and impartiality.

The SAR’s unique, civil-code judicial system is derived from the judicial framework of the Portuguese legal system. The courts may rule on matters that are the responsibility of the PRC government or concern the relationship between central authorities and the SAR, but before making their final judgment, which is not subject to appeal, the courts must seek an interpretation of the relevant provisions from the National People’s Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC). The Basic Law requires that courts follow the NPCSC’s interpretations when cases intersect with central government jurisdiction, although judgments previously rendered are not affected, and when the NPCSC makes an interpretation of the provisions concerned, the courts, in applying those provisions, “shall follow the interpretation of the Standing Committee.” As the final interpreter of the Basic Law, the NPCSC also has the power to initiate interpretations of the Basic Law.

TRIAL PROCEDURES

The law provides for the right to a fair public trial, and an independent judiciary generally enforced this right. A case may be presided over by one judge or a group of judges, depending on the type of crime and the maximum penalty involved.

Under the law, defendants enjoy a presumption of innocence and have a right to appeal. The law provides that trials be public except when the court rules otherwise to “safeguard the dignity of persons, public morality, or to provide for the normal functioning of the court.” Defendants have the right to be informed promptly and in detail of the charges (with free interpretation), be present at their trials, confront witnesses, have adequate time to prepare a defense, not be compelled to testify or confess guilt, and consult with an attorney in a timely manner. The government provides public attorneys for those financially incapable of engaging lawyers or paying expenses of proceedings. The law extends these rights to all residents.

POLITICAL PRISONERS AND DETAINEES

There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees.

CIVIL JUDICIAL PROCEDURES AND REMEDIES

There is an independent and impartial judiciary for civil matters, and citizens have access to a court to bring lawsuits seeking damages for, or cessation of, a human rights violation.

f. Arbitrary or Unlawful Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence

The law prohibits such actions, and the government generally respected these prohibitions, but activists critical of the government reported the government monitored their telephone conversations and internet usage.

c. Freedom of Religion

See the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report at www.state.gov/religiousfreedomreport/.

The law limits citizens’ ability to change their government through free and fair periodic elections, and citizens did not have universal suffrage. Only a small fraction of citizens played a role in the selection of the chief executive, who was chosen in 2014 by a 400-member Election Committee consisting of 344 members elected from four broad societal sectors (which themselves have a limited franchise) and 56 members chosen from and by the SAR’s legislators and representatives to the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Elections and Political Participation

Recent Elections: In 2014 a 400-member selection committee re-elected Chief Executive Fernando Chui Sai-On. Chui ran unopposed and won 97 percent of the vote. The most recent general election for the 14 directly elected seats in the 33-member Legislative Assembly occurred in September. A total of 186 candidates on 24 electoral lists competed for the seats. The election for these seats was generally free and fair, although strict campaign laws limited the ability of political newcomers to compete in the election.

There are limits on the types of bills legislators may introduce. The law stipulates that legislators may not initiate legislation related to public expenditure, the SAR’s political structure, or the operation of the government. Proposed legislation related to government policies must receive the chief executive’s written approval before it is introduced. The Legislative Assembly also has no power of confirmation over executive or judicial appointments.

A 10-member Executive Council functions as an unofficial cabinet, approving draft legislation before it is presented in the Legislative Assembly. The Basic Law stipulates that the chief executive appoint members of the Executive Council from among the principal officials of the executive authorities, members of the legislature, and public figures.

Political Parties and Political Participation: The SAR has no laws on political parties. Politically active groups registered as societies or limited liability companies were active in promoting their political agendas. Those critical of the government generally did not face restrictions, but persons seeking elected office were required to swear to uphold the Basic Law. The Legislative Assembly, in a secret ballot, voted to suspend Sulu Sou from the Legislative Assembly after prosecutors charged him with “aggravated disobedience” to police authorities during a peaceful protest against the chief executive’s decision to donate 123 million patacas ($15.4 million) to a mainland university on whose board the chief executive sits. Sou is a member of the New Macau Association, a political group generally critical of the government, and critics claimed his prosecution and suspension were politically motivated.

Participation of Women and Minorities: No laws limit participation of women and members of minorities in the political process, and they did participate.

The law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, and there were few reported cases of officials engaging in corrupt acts.

Corruption: The government’s Commission Against Corruption (CAC) investigated the public and private sectors and had power to arrest and detain suspects. The Ombudsman Bureau within the CAC reviewed complaints of mismanagement or abuse by the CAC. An independent committee outside the CAC–the Monitoring Committee on Discipline of CAC Personnel–accepted and reviewed complaints about CAC personnel. In July the SAR’s former top prosecutor, Ho Chio-meng, was sentenced to 21 years in prison after he was convicted of multiple crimes, including illegally awarding contracts to local businessmen in exchange for improper personal benefits worth at least 44 million patacas ($5.5 million).

Financial Disclosure: By law the chief executive, cabinet, judges, members of the Legislative Assembly and Executive Council, and executive agency directors must disclose their financial interests upon appointment, promotion, retirement, and at five-year intervals while encumbering the same position. The information is available to the public on the website of the Macau Courts. The law states that if the information contained in the declaration is intentionally incorrect, the declarant shall be liable to a maximum imprisonment of three years or a minimum fine of six months’ remuneration of the position held. Furthermore, the declarant may be prohibited from appointment to public office or performing public duties for a maximum of 10 years.

Women

Rape and Domestic Violence: The law criminalizes rape, including spousal rape, and domestic violence, but same-sex couples were not covered by the domestic violence law. The government effectively enforced these laws. The domestic violence law stipulates that a judge may order urgent coercive measures imposed upon the defendant individually or cumulatively, and the application of these measures does not preclude the possibility of prosecuting the perpetrators for criminal responsibilities as stipulated in the criminal code.

The government made referrals for victims to receive medical treatment, and medical social workers counseled victims and informed them of social welfare services. The government funded NGOs to provide victim support services, including medical services, family counseling, and housing, until their complaints were resolved. The government also supported two 24-hour hotlines, one for counseling and the other for reporting domestic violence.

Sexual Harassment: In June the Legislative Assembly passed a sex crime bill that amended the Penal Code to make sexual harassment a crime. Under the new law, police may take action against a suspect if the victim files a criminal complaint and a convicted offender may be sentenced to a maximum of one year in prison.

Coercion in Population Control: There were no reports of coerced abortion, involuntary sterilization, or other coercive population control methods. Estimates on maternal mortality and contraceptive prevalence are available at: www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/monitoring/maternal-mortality-2015/en/ .

Discrimination: Equal opportunity legislation mandates that women receive equal pay for equal work. The law prohibits discrimination in hiring practices based on gender or physical ability and allows for civil suits. Penalties exist for employers who violate these guidelines. Gender differences in occupation existed, with women concentrated in lower-paid sectors and lower-level jobs. However, per government statistics, between 2011 and 2016, the wage gap between men and women dropped from 2,500 patacas ($312) in 2011 to 1,700 patacas ($212) in 2016.

Children

Birth Registration: According to the Basic Law, children of Chinese national residents of the SAR who were born inside or outside the SAR and children born to non-Chinese national permanent residents inside the SAR are regarded as permanent residents. There is no differentiation between these categories in terms of access to registration of birth. Most births were registered immediately.

Early and Forced Marriage: The minimum legal age of marriage is 16 years; however, children between 16 and 18 years who wish to marry must obtain approval from their parents or guardians.

Sexual Exploitation of Children: The law specifically provides for criminal punishment for sexual abuse of children and students, statutory rape, and procurement involving minors. The criminal code sets 14 years as the age of sexual consent. In June the Legislative Assembly outlawed procurement for prostitution of a person younger than 18 years. The law also prohibits child pornography.

International Child Abductions: The SAR is a party to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. See the Department of State’s Annual Report on International Parental Child Abduction at travel.state.gov/content/childabduction/en/legal/compliance.html.

Anti-Semitism

The Jewish population was extremely small. There were no reports of anti-Semitic acts.

Trafficking in Persons

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

Persons with Disabilities

The law prohibits discrimination against persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and mental disabilities, and the government generally enforced these provisions. The law mandates access to buildings, public facilities, information, and communications for persons with disabilities. The government enforced the law effectively and has a plan running through 2025 to improve services and access for persons with disabilities. The Social Welfare Bureau was primarily responsible for coordinating and funding public assistance programs to persons with disabilities. There was a governmental commission to rehabilitate persons with disabilities, with part of the commission’s scope of work addressing employment.

Acts of Violence, Discrimination, and Other Abuses Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

There are no laws criminalizing sexual orientation or same-sex sexual contact and no prohibition against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex (LGBTI) persons forming organizations or associations. There were no reports of violence against persons based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. The law prohibits discrimination in employment on the grounds of sexual orientation.

a. Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining

The Basic Law provides workers the right to form and join unions, but the Legislative Assembly had not passed legislation to regulate this right. Workers may join labor associations of their choice, but PRC authorities wield considerable influence over some of the most powerful associations. The law does not provide that workers can collectively bargain, and, while workers have the right to strike, there is no specific protection in the law from retribution if workers exercise this right. The law prohibits antiunion discrimination, stating employees or job seekers shall not be prejudiced, deprived of any rights, or exempted from any duties based on their membership in an association. The law does not require reinstatement of workers dismissed for union activity.

Workers in certain professions, such as the security forces, are forbidden to form unions, take part in protests, or to strike. Such groups had organizations that provided welfare and other services to members and could speak to the government on behalf of members. Vulnerable groups of workers, including domestic workers and migrant workers, could freely associate and form associations, as could public servants.

In order to register as an association, the government requires an organization to provide the names and personal information of its leadership structure.

The government generally enforced the relevant legislation. The law imposes financial penalties for antiunion discrimination. Observers have previously noted this may not be sufficient to deter discriminatory activity.

Workers who believed they were dismissed unlawfully could bring a case to court or lodge a complaint with the Labor Affairs Bureau (LAB) or the CAC, which also has an Ombudsman Bureau to handle complaints over administrative violations. The bureau makes recommendations to the relevant government departments after its investigation.

b. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor. Penalties range from three to 12 years’ imprisonment, with the minimum and maximum sentences increased by one-third if the victim is younger than 14 years of age. Observers have previously noted these penalties generally were considered sufficient to deter the use of forced labor. The government has a special, interagency unit to fight human trafficking, the Human Trafficking Deterrent Measures Concern Committee. In addition to holding seminars to raise awareness about human trafficking, the committee operates two 24-hour telephone hotlines, one for reporting trafficking and another to assist trafficking victims.

Children and migrants were vulnerable to forced prostitution and labor including in construction and domestic work. The government investigated cases, but there were no convictions during the year.

Also see the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

c. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment

A law prohibits minors younger than 16 years of age from working, although minors between 14 and 16 years of age may work in “exceptional circumstances” if they obtain a health certificate to prove they have the “necessary robust physique to engage in a professional activity.” Under the law, “exceptional circumstances” are defined as: the minor (younger than 16 years old) has completed compulsory education and has the authorization of the LAB after hearing the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau’s opinions; minors between 14 and 16 years of age may work for public or private entities during school summer holidays; minors of any age may be employed for cultural, artistic or advertising activities upon authorization of the LAB after hearing the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau’s opinions and when such employment does not adversely affect their school attendance. Local laws do not establish specific regulations governing the number of hours children younger than 16 years old can work. The law governing the number of working hours (eight hours a day, 40 hours a week) was equally applicable to adults and legal working minors, but the law prohibits minors from working overtime hours. According to the civil code, minors who are 16 years old can acquire full legal capacity if they marry.

The law prohibits minors younger than 16 years of age from certain types of work, including but not limited to domestic work, employment between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m., and employment at places where admission of minors is forbidden, such as casinos. The government requires employers to assess the nature, extent, and duration of risk exposure at work before recruiting or employing a minor. These regulations are intended to protect children from physically hazardous work, including exposure to dangerous chemicals, and jobs deemed inappropriate due to the child’s age.

The LAB enforced the law through periodic and targeted inspections, and prosecuted violators. Regulations stipulate LAB inspectors shall be trained to look for child labor in order to carry out their responsibilities. Employers are obligated to provide professional training and working conditions appropriate to a minor’s age to prevent situations that undermine his/her education and could endanger health, safety, and physical and mental development.

From July 2016 to June, LAB inspectors found two violations of child labor laws resulting in fines of 40,000 patacas ($5,000).

e. Acceptable Conditions of Work

Local labor laws establish the general principle of fair wages and mandate compliance with wage agreements. There was no mandatory minimum wage, except for a minimum wage for security guards and cleaners, which was set at was 30 patacas ($3.75) per hour. The SAR does not calculate an official poverty line, and its median monthly income is 15,000 patacas ($1,875). The law provides for a 48-hour workweek (many businesses operated on a 40-hour workweek), an eight-hour workday, paid overtime, annual leave, and medical and maternity care. The law provides for a 24-hour rest period each week. The law does not define “temporary contract” or “short-term contract.” It states only that a labor contract may be either for a defined term or of indefinite duration. All workers employed in the SAR, whether under a term contract or an indefinite contract, are entitled to such benefits as specified working hours, weekly leave, statutory holidays, annual leave, and sick leave.

The law includes a requirement that employers provide a safe working environment, and the LAB sets industry-appropriate occupational safety and health standards. The law prohibits excessive overtime but permits legal overtime (up to eight hours, and irrespective of workers’ consent) in force majeure cases or in response to external shocks, at the discretion of the employer.

All workers, including migrants, have access to the courts in cases in which an employee is unlawfully dismissed, an employer fails to pay compensation, or a worker believes his/her legitimate interests were violated. If an employer dismisses staff “without just cause,” they must provide economic compensation indexed to an employee’s length of service.

The LAB provides assistance and legal advice to workers upon request, and cases of labor-related malpractices are referred to the LAB.

The LAB enforced occupational safety and health regulations, and failure to correct infractions could lead to prosecution. The number of labor inspectors in the country was adequate to enforce compliance. Health Bureau guidelines protect pregnant workers and those with heart and lung diseases from exposure to secondhand smoke by exempting them from work in smoking areas, such as casinos. In August and September, hundreds of Galaxy Entertainment employees complained to the LAB of working conditions at the time Typhoon Hato struck the SAR, with staff complaining of unpaid overtime and insufficient rest time, according to media reports.

The law allows workers to remove themselves from hazardous conditions without jeopardy to their employment.

From July 2016 to June, authorities recorded 24 workplace fatalities, and workplace injuries permanently incapacitated 31 persons.

READ SECTION: China | Tibet | Hong Kong | Macau (above)

a. Arbitrary Deprivation of Life and Other Unlawful or Politically Motivated Killings

There were no reports that the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings. There were no reports that officials investigated or punished those responsible for such killings that had previously taken place.

b. Disappearance

Authorities in Tibetan areas continued to detain Tibetans arbitrarily for indefinite periods.

The whereabouts of the 11th Panchen Lama, Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the second-most prominent figure after the Dalai Lama in Tibetan Buddhism’s Gelug school, remained unknown. Neither he nor his parents have been seen since Chinese authorities took them away in 1995 when he was six years old.

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

According to credible sources, police and prison authorities employed torture and degrading treatment in dealing with some detainees and prisoners. There were reports during the year that Chinese officials severely beat some Tibetans who were incarcerated or otherwise in custody. In the past, such beatings have led to death.

On January 25, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported that in December 2016, police detained Khedrup, a Tibetan doctor from Machu (in Chinese: Maqu) county of Gannan TAP in Gansu Province. Police suspected that he sent photos and video clips of Tibetan Tashi Rabten’s self-immolation to international media. The report noted that police interrogated, tortured, beat, and applied other forms of mistreatment to Khedrup during his detention, which lasted more than one month.

On March 22, TibetanReview.net reported that public security officials and local police severely beat and tortured approximately 10 relatives of Tibetan farmer Pema Gyaltsen (or Pegyal) of Nyagrong (Chinese: Xinlong) county, Kardze (Chinese: Ganzi) TAP, Sichuan Province after they inquired about Pegyal’s conditions following his self-immolation on March 18. After beating them, police forced these relatives to stand the entire night, resulting in acute pain in their legs and spinal cords. Authorities released them only when officials of their townships provided letters vouching for their future good conduct.

Prison and Detention Center Conditions

Prison conditions were harsh and potentially life threatening due to physical abuse and inadequate sanitary conditions and medical care.

There were reports of recently released prisoners permanently disabled or in extremely poor health because of the harsh treatment they endured in prison (see Political Prisoners and Detainees subsection below). Former prisoners reported being isolated in small cells for months at a time and deprived of sleep, sunlight, and adequate food. According to individuals who completed their prison terms during the year, prisoners rarely received medical care except in cases of serious illness. There were many cases of detained and imprisoned persons being denied visitors. According to local contacts, authorities detained Thewo Kunchok Nyima, a well-known monk scholar of Drepung Monastery, in 2008 for acting as the “ring leader” and the main instigator of protests in Lhasa. Kunchok Nyima has reportedly been serving a 20-year sentence, but the government has not granted his family permission to visit him in prison. His whereabouts remained unknown.

d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention

Arbitrary arrest and detention was a problem. Public security agencies are required by law to notify the relatives or employer of a detained person within 24 hours of their detention, but they often failed to do so when Tibetans and others were detained for political reasons. With a detention warrant, public security officers may legally detain persons throughout the PRC for up to 37 days without formally arresting or charging them. Following the 37-day period, public security officers must either formally arrest or release the detainee. Security officials frequently violated these requirements. It was unclear how many Tibetan detainees the authorities held under forms of detention not subject to judicial review.

According to the India-based Tibet Post International, in January Chinese security officers in Serta County, Kardze (Chinese: Ganzi) TAP of Sichuan Province arrested Sonam Tashi, a Tibetan man in his twenties, after he publicly advocated for freedom in Tibet and called for His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s return to Tibet. Tashi’s whereabouts and health conditions remained unknown following his arrest.

On March 21, Phayul.com reported that Dukpe, a Tibetan mother of two from Ngaba’s Raru Township, was arrested for shouting slogans such as “Long live the Dalai Lama” and “Freedom in Tibet.” Her whereabouts and health conditions remained unknown.

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

Legal safeguards for detained or imprisoned Tibetans were inadequate in both design and implementation. Prisoners in China have the right to request a meeting with a government-appointed attorney, but many Tibetan defendants, particularly political defendants, did not have access to legal representation. In cases that authorities claimed involved “endangering state security” or “separatism,” trials often were cursory and closed. Local sources noted that trials were predominantly conducted in Mandarin, with government interpreters providing language services for Tibetan defendants who did not speak Mandarin. Court decisions, proclamations, and other judicial documents, however, were generally not published in Tibetan.

TRIAL PROCEDURES

In its annual work report, the TAR High People’s Court stated its top political tasks as firmly fighting against separatism, cracking down on the followers of “the 14th Dalai (Lama) clique,” and maintaining social stability by, among other things, sentencing those who instigated protests, promoted separatism, and supported “foreign hostile forces.” The report also stated the court prioritized “political direction,” which included absolute loyalty to the core party leadership.

In May the TAR Justice Department announced its decision to hire Chinese judicial personnel from outside the TAR. Among the requirements for new employees are loyalty to the CCP leadership and a willingness to combat separatism in the region.

Security forces routinely subjected political prisoners and detainees known as “special criminal detainees” to “political re-education” sessions.

POLITICAL PRISONERS AND DETAINEES

An unknown number of Tibetans were detained, arrested, and sentenced because of their political or religious activity. Authorities held many prisoners in extrajudicial detention centers and never allowed them to appear in public court.

Based on information available from the political prisoner database of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, as of October 1, there were 507 Tibetan political prisoners known to be detained or imprisoned, most of them in Tibetan areas. Observers believed the actual number of Tibetan political prisoners and detainees to be much higher, but the lack of access to prisoners and prisons, as well as the dearth of reliable official statistics, made a precise determination difficult. An unknown number of persons continued to be held in detention centers rather than prisons. In the 143 cases for which there was available information on sentencing, sentences ranged from two years’ to life imprisonment. Of the 143 persons, involved in those cases, 68 were monks, nuns, or Tibetan Buddhist reincarnate teachers.

Tibetan exiles and other observers believed Chinese authorities released Tibetan political prisoners in poor health to avoid deaths in custody. On May 1, authorities released Jampal, a Tibetan man from Machu County of the Tibetan area in Gansu Province, after he served eight years of his 13-year sentence for leading a protest in front of government offices in 2008. Many speculated that authorities granted him early release due to his poor physical condition. While in prison, he was reportedly tortured and suffered head and leg injuries, which negatively affected his ability to walk.

According to several local contacts, Jigme Gyatso, a monk of Labrang Monastery in Gansu Province, was released from prison in October 2016 due to poor health. He reportedly received permission to travel freely within China to receive medical treatment for the severe torture and beatings that he endured during his imprisonment.

Tibetan Self-Immolations

Five Tibetans are thought to have self-immolated during the year, including one Tibetan Buddhist monk and three laypersons. There have been 145 such immolations since 2009, with the number per year decreasing from 83 reports of self-immolations in 2012, to seven in 2015, and three in 2016. Local contacts reported the decline in reported self-immolations was due to tightened security by authorities, the collective punishment of self-immolators’ relatives and associates, and the Dalai Lama’s public plea to his followers to find other ways to protest Chinese government repression. Chinese officials in some Tibetan areas withheld public benefits from the family members of self-immolators and ordered friends and monastic personnel to refrain from participating in religious burial rites or mourning activities for self-immolators. According to an April 15 RFA report, security officials detained at least five Tibetans, three of whom were severely beaten, for possessing the mobile phone of Wangchuk Tseten, a Tibetan man who reportedly self-immolated in Nyagrong (Chinese: Xinlong) county, Kardze (Chinese: Ganzi) TAP, Sichuan Province on April 15.

Self-immolators reportedly viewed their acts as protests against the government’s political and religious oppression. The Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and the Ministry of Public Security’s joint 2012 Opinion on Handling Cases of Self-immolation in Tibetan Areas According to the Law criminalized various activities associated with self-immolation, including “organizing, plotting, inciting, compelling, luring, instigating, or helping others to commit self-immolation,” each of which may be prosecuted as “intentional homicide.”

Authorities in Gannan TAP in Gansu Province imposed restrictions on the family of Chagdor Kyab, a 16-year-old student who self-immolated on May 2 in the Bora Township to protest against “Beijing’s rule in Tibetan areas.” He called for Tibetan freedom and the return of the Dalai Lama to Tibet. Authorities prevented Chogdar’s family from holding prayer services and blocked visits by relatives and friends. In June local contacts reported that authorities ordered Chogdar’s family to receive “political education training” and threatened to discontinue the family’s public benefits should they defy the orders.

f. Arbitrary or Unlawful Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence

Since 2015 the TAR has strengthened the punishment of Communist Party members who follow the Dalai Lama, secretly harbor religious beliefs, make pilgrimages to India, or send their children to study with Tibetans in exile. Authorities continued to monitor private correspondence and search private homes and businesses for photographs of the Dalai Lama and other politically forbidden items. Police examined the cell phones of TAR residents to search for “reactionary music” from India and photographs of the Dalai Lama. Authorities also questioned and detained some individuals who disseminated writings and photographs over the internet.

Since November 2016 the TAR CCP has strictly implemented a real-name user identification system for landline telephones, mobile phones, and the internet. It has also launched attacks and specialized campaigns to counter and ferret out “Tibetan independence” and promote the proliferation of party media into every home to oppose those who support the Dalai Lama.

The “grid system” (also known as the “double-linked household system”) continued. The grid system involves grouping households and establishments so that they can watch each other for societal issues and report transgressions to the government. While this allows for greater provision of social services to those who need them, it also allows for easier crackdowns on “extremists” and “splittists.”

In August the Central Tibet Administration in India reported that Jampa Choegyal from Drakyab County, Chamdo Prefecture of the TAR, was arbitrarily detained, interrogated, and subjected to beatings for contact with his relative in India via his mobile phone.

According to reports, Gendun, a Tibetan man from Sershul County in the Kardze (Chinese: Ganzi) TAP of Sichuan Province was detained and severely beaten for storing photos of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the banned Tibetan national flag in his WeChat account.

c. Freedom of Religion

See the Department of State’s International Religious Freedom Report at www.state.gov/religiousfreedomreport/.

According to the law, Tibetans and other Chinese citizens have the right to vote in some local elections. The Chinese government, however, severely restricted its citizens’ ability to participate in any meaningful elections.

Since 2015 the TAR and many Tibetan areas have reinforced implementation of the Regulation for Village Committee Management, which stipulates that the primary condition for participating in any local election is the “willingness to resolutely fight against separatism;” in some cases, this condition is interpreted to require candidates to denounce the Dalai Lama. Several sources reported that newly appointed Communist Party cadres have replaced more than 90 percent of traditional village leaders in the TAR and in Tibetan areas outside the TAR over the last two years, despite the lack of village elections.

The law provides criminal penalties for corrupt acts by officials, but the government did not implement the law effectively in Tibetan areas, and officials often engaged in corrupt practices with impunity. There were numerous reports of government corruption in Tibetan areas during the year, and some low-ranked officials were punished.

Women

Rape and Domestic Violence: There was no confirmed information on the incidence of rape or domestic violence.

Coercion in Population Control: Population and birth planning policies permitted Tibetans and members of some other minority groups to have more children than Han Chinese. Estimates on maternal mortality and contraceptive prevalence are available at: www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/monitoring/maternal-mortality-2015/en/ .

Discrimination: There were no formal restrictions on women’s participation in the political system, and women held many lower-level government positions. Nevertheless they were underrepresented at the provincial and prefectural levels of government.

Children

Many rural Tibetan areas have implemented China’s nationwide “centralized education” policy, which forced the closure of many village and monastic schools and the transfer of students, including elementary school students, to boarding schools in towns and cities. Reports indicated many of the boarding schools did not adequately care for and supervise their younger students. This policy also resulted in diminished acquisition of the Tibetan language and culture by removing Tibetan children from their homes and communities where the Tibetan language is used.

According to observers, by November the government had replaced the European founders and assumed management control of the Lhasa-based Braille without Borders preparatory school for blind students and its associated vocational farm. Observers speculated the change was part of China’s wider effort to crackdown on foreign nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).

Trafficking in Persons

See the Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons Report at www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/.

National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

Although the 2010 TAR census figures showed that Tibetans made up 90.5 percent of the TAR’s permanently registered population, official figures did not include a large number of long-, medium-, and short-term ethnic Chinese migrants, such as cadres, skilled and unskilled laborers, military and paramilitary troops, and their respective dependents. Tibetans continued to make up nearly 98 percent of those registered as permanent residents in rural areas, according to official census figures.

Migrants to the TAR and other parts of the Tibetan Plateau were overwhelmingly concentrated in urban areas. Government policies to subsidize economic development often benefited ethnic Chinese migrants more than Tibetans. In many predominantly Tibetan cities across the Tibetan Plateau, ethnic Chinese or Hui migrants owned and managed most of the small businesses, restaurants, and retail shops.

Observers continued to express concern that development projects and other central government policies disproportionately benefited non-Tibetans and resulted in a considerable influx of Han Chinese and Hui persons into the TAR and other Tibetan areas. Many major infrastructure projects across the Tibetan Plateau were engineered and implemented by large state-owned enterprises based in other provinces, and they were managed and staffed by professionals and low-wage temporary migrant workers from other provinces rather than by local residents.

Economic and social exclusion was a major source of discontent among a varied cross section of Tibetans. Some Tibetans continued to report discrimination in employment. Some Tibetans reported it was more difficult for Tibetans than ethnic Chinese to obtain permits and loans to open businesses, and that many Chinese, especially retired soldiers, were given incentives to move to Tibet. Restrictions on both local NGOs that received foreign funding and international NGOs that provided assistance to Tibetan communities increased during the year, resulting in a decrease of beneficial NGO programs in the TAR and other Tibetan areas.

The government continued its campaign to resettle Tibetan nomads into urban areas and newly created communities in rural areas across the TAR and other Tibetan areas. Improving housing conditions, health care, and education for Tibet’s poorest persons were among the stated goals of resettlement, although there was a pattern of settling herders near townships and roads and away from monasteries, which were the traditional providers of community and social services. A requirement that herders bear a substantial part of the resettlement costs often forced resettled families into debt.

Although a 2015 media report noted that Tibetans and other minority ethnic groups made up 70 percent of government employees in the TAR, the top CCP position of TAR party secretary continued to be held by a Han Chinese, and the corresponding positions in the vast majority of all TAR counties were also held by Han Chinese. Within the TAR, Han Chinese also continued to hold a disproportionate number of the top security, military, financial, economic, legal, judicial, and educational positions. Han Chinese were party secretaries in eight of the nine TAPs, which are located in Gansu, Qinghai, Sichuan, and Yunnan Provinces. One TAP in Qinghai Province had a Tibetan party secretary. Authorities strictly prohibited Tibetans holding government and CCP positions from openly worshipping at monasteries or otherwise publicly practicing their religion.

Government propaganda against alleged Tibetan “pro-independence forces” contributed to Chinese societal discrimination against ordinary Tibetans. Many Tibetan monks and nuns chose to wear nonreligious clothing to avoid harassment when traveling outside their monasteries and throughout China. Some Tibetans reported that taxi drivers throughout China refused to stop for them and hotels refused to provide rooms.

a. Freedom of Association and the Right to Collective Bargaining

N/A

b. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

N/A

c. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment

N/A

e. Acceptable Conditions of Work

N/A

READ SECTION: CHINA | TIBET (above) | HONG KONG | MACAU