Submission to UN on Hu Jia – March 15, 2013
Comments Off on Submission to UN on Hu Jia – March 15, 2013To:
Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders
Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
Special Rapporteur on the right to health
Allegation of Torture and other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment, Arbitrary Detention, Reprisal against Free Expression,
On behalf of Human Rights Defender, Hu Jia, Citizen of People’s Republic of China, a Hepatitis B Patient,
by Chinese Human Rights Defenders
On March 14, 2013, police from Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau (PSB) Tongzhou District Station summoned Hu Jia, male, 39, for questioning, citing suspicion of “causing troubles.” When police took him from his home, where he had been put under house arrest since February 26, 2013, to the police station at Beijing PSB Tongzhou District Zhongchang Station (通州区中仓派出所), they interrogated Hu Jia for eight hours. During the interrogation, police insulted him, beat him repeatedly and so severely that he sustained injury to his skull and back. And he was bleeding on his skull and suffering severe pain in his lower back afterwards.
Police interrogated Hu Jia about details of the organizing and his involvement in the surprise visit of Liu Xia (the wife of jailed writer Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner), who has been under house arrest since October 2010, when a group of activists went into Liu’s apartment while the guards took a break from guarding her. Police also interrogated Hu Jia about his recent Tweets and online postings in which he expressed his political views about the new Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders and called the People’s Congress “the emperor’s new clothes.”
From the beginning of the interrogation, one tall, plain-clothed security police kept insulting Hu Jia, trying to provoke him. Hu Jia tried not to respond. At one point, the police started to insulting Hu Jia’s 76-year-old mother. Hu could no longer control himself, he threw the paper cup with cold water at the policeman. This gave the policemen in the room the pretext to physically attach him. Two policemen pushed him down on the ground from behind, pushing his head again the ground, injuring his skull, causing bleeding.
Then, they threw him into a chair, pushing his face against the wall and his stomach against the back of the chair, lifting his arms from behind his back, pinching his fingers, causing severe pain. They kept him in this position while the interrogation continued. During which, the tall plain-clothed policeman charged at Hu Jia, trying to kick his private parts, only missed his target, kicked the chair instead, which flew out and hit the wall, while Hu Jia fell on the ground. The policeman was furious. He grabbed a cup full of tea, threw that at Hu Jia’s face, in such force that the policeman’s Buddhist arm brace made of beads was thrown off, broken when hit the floor. The insulting went on while Hu was in the painful position, his glasses broken, but he stared hard at the tall policeman in silent protest.
When police brought him home, back to house arrest, they warned him not to go to the hospital and his house arrest would continue until the National People’s Congress annual session was over. Hu Jia could hardly walk up the stairs to his apartment due to the back injury. He put some band-aid on his skull, which remains swollen.
Hu Jia was diagnosed in 2006 with cirrhosis of the liver. He has Hepatitis B and needs access to medication or hospital visits.
For more information about Hu Jia, please see CHRD previous submissions to the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention: https://www.nchrd.org/2010/04/un-work-on-cases-hu-jia-april-9-2010/