By Jerome A. Cohen
Cao Shunli, Courtesy of openDemocracy
Year after year Chinese Human Rights Defenders has done a marvelous job of flagging the PRC’s human rights violations. This most recent report, 5 Years After Death in Custody of Cao Shunli, Human Rights Defenders in China Continue to Face Same Pattern of Abuse, taking off from the anniversary of one of many infamous instances of arbitrary detention and coming on the eve of next week’s UN Human Rights Council session (the Ides of March!), is long but definitely worth the time.
Canada’s just begun extradition proceeding in Vancouver illustrates what the antidote to arbitrary detention should be — a fair and public judicial hearing. The embattled Prime Minister Trudeau was surely right in condemning the PRC for its arbitrary detention of the two Canadians in retaliation for Canada’s civilized legal process. The PRC and every other country that engages in systemic arbitrary detention give new definition to ADD, which should stand for Arbitrary Detention Deficit! For this the PRC should be brought to account in the media as well as in international legal institutions. In our interdependent world, extradition and its functional kin, whatever the label employed such as rendition, repatriation, deportation, removal etc, is intimately related in many ways to ADD, as currently illustrated in the PRC’s relations with not only Canada but also the United States, Sweden, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other jurisdictions. (See my article co-authored with Yu-Jie Chen on how the two questions are closely connected in the context of Taiwan-China cooperation as an example.)