The number of house arrests in China has increased under Xi Jinping. Furthermore, revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law have allowed the regime in Beijing to weaponize house arrest and use it to target rights defenders and dissidents.
There are times when house arrest, or “residential surveillance,” as it’s officially called, is warranted for certain individuals–such as young mothers, pregnant women, those with illness, or those caring for others—if their crimes aren’t seen as severe. China is no different.
In itself, the underlying logic and its outcomes are nothing new; if the police are given power, even if it’s marked as an exception, they will take it and run with it. Exceptions become the norm in China very quickly.
Need an example? Did you know that the police are allowed to detain someone for only 48 hours, like in most countries, until they need to ask the prosecutor to make the arrest? Probably not, because every time the issue is mentioned in the media, they tend to say that the police can detain you for 37 days before you need to be arrested. And, in a way, they’re right. There are a long string of exceptions that the police can invoke to extend this period, and those are now invoked so regularly, in every conceivable case, that it has become the norm.
The new report, released on Sept. 6, shocked many people when it revealed that Chinese authorities have placed as many as 860,000 people under house arrest since 2013, and that isn’t even counting this year. In fact, house arrest is so regularly used arbitrarily and illegally against rights defenders and dissidents that the real number is likely more than 1 million already. Even if it isn’t, it will pass the 1 million mark very soon.
Although these numbers are shocking, many media reports failed to take note of the legal changes that have driven these changes, and how the nature of house arrests has changed—and it’s there that the real horror lies.
Legal changes—first, in 2012, and later, in 2018—have given the police the power not only to remand someone to house arrest, but to place a long string of restrictions on them. The police themselves apply all these restrictions, and no justification is needed. You can now be locked away in your house, possibly for six months, with all communication cut off, including visitations.
Worse still, police can use this new “tool” in the few instances where their actions are denied by a prosecutor. For example, if the police seek to have someone arrested, which needs to be approved by the prosecutor, and it’s rejected, they can slap house arrest on that person instead of setting them free. The decision to use house arrests is taken by the police itself, with no judicial review or supervision. It has given police the power to run amok and to do so with impunity.
Even though the safeguards that the Chinese judiciary are supposed to provide those detained and arrested are weak, and ignored at will, at least they exist. With house arrest, police have found another tool to circumvent them altogether.
Considering the sheer number of victims—and all indicators point toward its use continuing to expand—Chinese police have managed to turn people’s homes into prisons. With the unrestrained power this gives to the police, it’s hard to see it being reined in, and things are likely to get worse before they can get better.
