209 allegations of torture, drawing a picture of judicial failure: from torture to denial of medical treatment, why responsibility is so prolonged

209 cases covering almost all provinces of China except Macao; 35 per cent of the clients claimed to have been deprived of necessary medical care; (b) At least 16 persons reportedly died in detention because of lack of medical treatment; More than half of the prisoners of conscience accused of torture were eventually imprisoned for “silent practices”. 53-page report </a" published by the Human Rights Defenders Network (CHRD) on 16 September, which does not focus on a prison or police officer, but rather attempts to depict a set of ongoing shipments from pre-trial detention, trial, prosecution to serving a sentence Turning the failure mechanism.

<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/731944.html"target = _blank" rel = `noopener noreferrer' Data-linked-reference= `tru' data-reference-label = `China Digital Age Report Remittance' report examined 209 allegations of torture or other ill-treatment by prisoners of conscience between 2016 and 2025 and interviewed 25 released human rights defenders, families and lawyers. According to CHRD, about one fifth of these involved beatings, 15 per cent involved forced confessions under torture, and charges of electric shocks, solitary confinement, staves, long-term punishments, sleep deprivation and food deprivation, forced labour, etc. The most common and non-traditional “torture” is the denial of medication, non-referral, and non-timely treatment.

This set of data has brought back to the table a long-standing paradox of the rule of law: the Chinese Criminal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the relevant judicial interpretations explicitly prohibit torture and the torture of confessions, and China ratified the Convention against Torture in

1. However, in the case of 209 cases, the CHRD has documented only the initiation of a court investigation into the torture allegations of Ting Jia-hee and Huang Shiqin, and the courts eventually indicated that no evidence of torture was found; In the Zhi Xiaolong case, the court had ruled out a statement that was found to be in the wrong hands, but the case still resulted in a guilty verdict.

The Ding Jia-Chi experience is a typical slice of the report. According to his previous public statements and those of his lawyer, he had been taken away in 2019 and had been subjected to long-term residential arrangements, and had allegedly been kept on a “tiger bench” for continuous interrogations, sleep restrictions, diet and toiletries. According to CHRD, the designated residence is in itself highly non-transparent: detainees may be kept in prolonged isolation from lawyers and family members, and it is difficult to obtain timely medical records, including injuries.

The Yellow Snow Queen case shows another evidentiary dilemma. She served five years of her sentence for “inciting subversion of State power” and completed her sentence this month. Its supporters and human rights organizations have consistently raised allegations of ill-treatment during her detention. The CHRD report listed her as one of the few cases in which the courts had responded to allegations of torture, but the court concluded that there was a long-standing dispute as to whether the court was sufficient to dispel the doubts of the outside world.

The position of lawyers in such cases is equally critical. The report cites one lawyer who claims that most of his complaints of torture “are totally unanswered”, with few receiving only short calls or template responses. For defendants involved in politically sensitive cases, access to lawyers, access to files, copying of interrogation videos and application for exclusion of illegal evidence may be subject to additional restrictions. As a result, the persons who allege torture often lack the most evidence required to prove torture, and the institutions that have surveillance videos, medical records and detention files are part of the complaints system.

In 2025, the Supreme People ' s Procuratorate and the Ministry of Public Security issued new regulations for the monitoring of residences in designated residences; The Prisons Act, as amended in 2026, will also come into force in November. While the official text emphasizes the regulation of the law and guarantees the legitimate rights and interests of detainees, the CHRD considers that the new system does not address the lack of independent investigation, and that some provisions on separate administration, restraint measures may even expand the scope of application of internal coercive measures in prisons.

If 209 cases are to be opened up, different locations, different offences, different law enforcement units will be seen; They are re-collected and the problem is concentrated on three points: first, the investigation of complaints is carried out mainly by institutions that are highly linked to the detention, investigation or prison management system; Second, key evidence is permanently controlled by State authorities; Third, even in cases of unlawful evidentiary disputes, they rarely trace to the individual responsibility of specific law enforcement officials. .

This is what the title of the report means by the system “to cover up”. Whether or not torture has occurred will certainly require a case-by-case determination; But if a system fails to provide complainants with access to evidence for a long time, to allow independent bodies to investigate law enforcement officials and to make public the outcome of accountability, the question is no longer just whether individual police officers are abusing their authority, but whether the entire chain of accountability is truly binding.

The Chinese Government has repeatedly stressed in the past, on United Nations occasions, that the rights of detainees are guaranteed by law and has opposed the politicization of individual cases. At the same time, periodic United Nations reviews of torture in China have been long overdue. The present report of the CHRD advocates the establishment of an independent mechanism for investigating complaints of torture and calls for verifiable and accountable investigations into allegations of torture involving prisoners of conscience.

For any judicial system, the prohibition of torture is not a declaration of value but a set of hard-bargains that must be able to reach the evidence, procedures and those responsible. The 209 cases were most striking, not only in the accounts of beatings, electric shocks and medical deprivation, but when these allegations entered the existing complaints and judicial proceedings, there was little public accountability for their seriousness.