China criminalizes human rights defenders with laws on Disturbing Social Order, while the top crime category across whole population is Endangering Public Security, an analysis by the Safeguard Defenders has found.
Safeguard Defenders analysed around 1,400 human rights-related court cases in China over the past 15 years. We used it show that the Chinese Communist Party continues to arrest and impose lengthy sentences on religious groups.
Decided criminal cases in courts of first instance as recorded on the Chinese Supreme Court’s National Court Judicial Statistics Bulletin (Gongbao) have grown from 766,746 in 2009 to 1,038,523 in 2022. That’s an increase of more than one third over 13 years. Total decided cases reached a peak in 2019 at almost 1.3 million, according to Safeguard Defenders.
Many of China’s laws are left intentionally vague, allowing the justice system great freedom to define its limits at will, the NGO adds.
Decided cases in courts of first instance in the category Endangering Public Security have risen four-fold from 86,814 in 2009 to 350,290 in 2022.
Obstructing the Administration of Social Order has also more than doubled from 133,639 to 298,803 over the same period.
[Decided cases are close to, but not exactly the same as, convictions. Decided cases are those that have gone to trial and reached a verdict (both guilty and non-guilty) in a court of first instance (that means it does not include appeals). Since convictions in China are near 100%, we can assume that this number is almost the same as first-instance convictions, Safeguard Defenders says.]
[Edit typo.]