Report: Torture is routinely used in China to obtain confessions and silence human-rights lawyers

Human-rights lawyers, activists, and people accused of crimes are regularly tortured, detained, and subject to other forms of mistreatment, according to a report released Thursday by Amnesty International.

For the report, Amnesty interviewed 37 lawyers practicing in China and multiple experts in the Chinese criminal-justice system, as well as analyzed 590 court decisions involving torture claims and "forced confessions."

China's response has been schizophrenic at best.

The country voluntarily joined the UN Convention against Torture, or UNCAT, in 1986 and has made efforts in recent years to put an end to torture and forced confessions through a series of legal initiatives, amendments, and regulations. The most notable reform was the ending of the "reeducation through labor" system in 2013.

This summer, Chinese President Xi Jinping launched a sweeping crackdown on human-rights lawyers, detaining nearly 250 of them in a move that many saw as a warning to any would-be activists.

Hong Lei, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told The New York Times in response to the new report that Chinese law expressly forbids obtaining confessions through torture.

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