By Jerome A. Cohen
On August 14, the Australian government was notified that Cheng Lei, an Australian citizen working as a TV anchor for China Global Television Network, was detained in Beijing and is being held under “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL). Although Australian scholarship on comparative law and politics relating to China is impressive, no learned books, law review articles or op-eds can do as much to alert public opinion to criminal injustice in China as recent arrests of Australian citizens who were formerly PRC nationals. They highlight the regime’s resort to RSDL, which vitiates the ordinary protections prescribed in the PRC’s Criminal Procedure Law for up to six months by authorizing the incommunicado detention that has so often fostered torture and coerced confessions. Good luck to those who seek to organize legal assistance for Ms. Cheng Lei!
On August 27, Australian officials held an initial consular visit over videoconference with Cheng. It would be interesting to learn details of the consular visit remotely allowed. Did Australia press for an in person visit but was rebuffed? Was the remote visit different in substance from the usual in person visit? Still the same restrictions against discussing the case that landed the suspect in detention? Generally, one of the few benefits of the PRC’s restricted consular visits is the opportunity for the visiting diplomat to closely observe the physical and mental condition of the suspect and to detect any gestures or reactions that might reveal the true conditions of the suspect’s plight. To what extent was the remote interview satisfactory in this respect or others? I have never been happy with the refusal of the protecting foreign government, the US included, to reveal information about detention of its nationals by invoking rules against violating the detainee’s privacy. My experience in seeking to aid detainees held in China suggests that they often need and want publicity in order to generate public pressure for their release or at least the improvement of the conditions of confinement.