The New York Times Sunday Review has an important article--In China, the Brutality of ‘House Arrest’--by Steven Lee Myers featuring excerpts from three of the twelve essays in the new book “The People’s Republic of the Disappeared” organized and edited by Michael Caster. They all are about personal experiences in the torture chamber parading under the bland title “Residential Surveillance at a Designated Place” (see below for an explanation of the RSDP in relation to the world-renowned artist Ai Weiwei’s 2011 detention*).
Ex-law professor/lawyer Teng Biao, himself one of the victims of these official kidnappings, contributed the Foreword to the book. One of the most chilling of many quotable statements comes from human rights activist Tang Zhishun:
“At times the guards warned me that my wife and child, despite being in the United States, were not as safe as I might think they were. Chinese agents could still kill them. They said the same thing about my mother.”
I used to regard such often irresistible warnings as mere interrogators’ threats, but no longer, and they are reminiscent of the words and deeds of the KMT as recently as the late 1970s!
I hope this NYT Review, even though buried in the Sunday paper on Thanksgiving weekend, will enhance interest in a deserving book that is likely to be ignored by the media without this kind of help.
* Residential Surveillance at a Designated Place (RSDP) and Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei, who suffered RSDP in the spring of 2011 before it was even formally authorized for people who maintain residence in the jurisdiction, has done a lot through imaginative art and theater to publicize RSDP’s true nature. The publicity efforts of some of us about his case and the massive foreign petition from the foreign art community that the publicity inspired provided some of the pressure (there was also domestic pressure) that caused Party legislators to deal with RSDP in the 2012 new criminal procedure code.
Since Ai was supposedly investigated and detained for alleged tax violations, he could not be legally detained via RSDP on similar charges even today since that charge does not fall within the three circumstances ( i.e., cases involving national security, terrorism or serious bribery) that have authorized RSDP since the 2012 new criminal procedure code (Art. 73) was enacted. Of course, all the police need for “justification” is a suspicion that his conduct might be against “national security”, a suspicion the reasonableness of which cannot be effectively challenged in the PRC today.