China’s new terrorism law provokes anger in U.S., concern at home
© REUTERS
A student takes part in an anti-terror training given by police at a campus in Beijing, June 11, 2014.
BEIJING — A new draft counterterrorism law here is provoking
unusually strong condemnation, from multinational companies trying to do
business in China to domestic dissidents trying to stay out of jail and
from global human rights groups to foreign health workers.
Governments
around the world have dealt with the threat of terrorism by increasing
surveillance and curtailing civil rights, but China’s government,
critics say, has exploited a genuine terrorist threat to further empower
its repressive state-security apparatus. It is, they say, invoking the
dangers of violent extremism to justify and expand an already harsh
crackdown on civil rights and to punish foreign information technology
companies that refuse to play by its rules.
Human Rights Watch calls the draft law a
“recipe for abuses.”
President Obama focused his ire on provisions in the law that would
affect U.S. technology companies doing business here and force them to
hand over the keys to their operating systems to Chinese surveillance.
The
new law is symptomatic of the gulf between China and the West over
human rights, and it is widening a serious rift between Washington and
Beijing over cyberspace.
In an
interview with Reuters this week, Obama said he had raised his concerns with China’s President Xi Jinping.
“We
have made it very clear to them that this is something they are going
to have to change if they are to do business with the United States,” he
said.
The state news agency Xinhua called Obama’s criticism
“utterly groundless” on Wednesday, adding it was “another piece of evidence of the arrogance and hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy.”
China blames
escalating violence
in its far-western province of Xinjiang on Islamist extremists bent on
violent jihad; it says terrorists use the Internet to organize and to
spread their ideas. It frames the new legislation as part of its efforts
to counter that threat and to govern the country according to the “rule
of law.” It is asking for international support and approval for its
approach.
[Read: China sees jihadist inspiration coming from abroad by way of the Web]
Julia
Famularo, who has been studying the law for the Project 2049 Institute,
an Arlington-based think tank devoted to Asian security issues, said
every government has to strike a balance between fighting terrorism and
citizens’ rights.
“We could argue whether the United States,
Britain and other countries have been able to strike that balance — but
what we are really concerned about in China is that these measures are
incredibly broad, and we are worried they can be used to attack
dissidents,” she said.
One of those dissidents, Hu Jia, under
house arrest since last June, said the law might appeal to people angry
at terrorist attacks, but it was fundamentally designed to extend a
comprehensive system of control introduced by President Xi.
“Once
you want to exercise your political rights as a citizen, you will touch
the red line and be caught in the net,” he said in a telephone
interview. “According to criminal procedure law, your right to a lawyer
will be restricted if you are accused of endangering state security or
terrorism. And because the government controls propaganda, if they say
you are a terrorist, then you are.”
In Xinjiang, China stands accused of a
wide-ranging crackdown
on the religious, political and civil rights of the mainly Muslim
Uighur people, of torture and enforced disappearances and widespread
socio-economic discrimination.
Now, as the arrest and imprisonment of
moderate Uighur academic Ilham Tohti demonstrated
last year, anyone attempting to criticize government policy or assert
an independent Uighur identity runs the risk of a being branded a
separatist and, by association, a terrorist.
Indeed, the law
offers a broad definition of terrorism that includes not only “activity”
but also “opinion” that “generates social panic, threatens public
security or coerces a state organ or international organization.”
It
conflates terrorism with what China defines as “religious extremism,”
including, for example, the forcing of children to take part in
religious activities.
Although the Chinese government has a right
and responsibility to provide public order, says Sophie Richardson of
Human Rights Watch, the law, and the security mind-set it lays bare, “is
just as likely to fuel unrest and violence as it is to mitigate it.”
Richardson says an “incredibly broad spectrum of behavior” can be construed as criminal, “with no avenues to challenge it.”
“Even
in perfectly ordinary, non-controversial criminal cases, the right to a
fair trial in China is a rare thing already,” she said. “Add on that
veneer of terrorism, and you have very little hope of a meaningful
opportunity to defend yourself.”
The first draft of the law also
demanded that IT companies operating in China hand over encryption
codes, install security “backdoors” in their products to Chinese
authorities, and keep servers within the country.
Obama said it
would essentially force foreign companies “to turn over to the Chinese
government mechanisms where they can snoop and keep track of all users
of their services.”
In China, it is not only Xinhua that accuses
Obama of hypocrisy. Beyond the lack of due process at Guantanamo Bay or
the extended government powers granted under the Patriot Act, China
points out, Western governments often request that tech companies hand
over encryption codes.
Western free-speech advocates counter that
China lacks effective constraints to state power, in the form of an
independent judiciary, a feisty legislature, a business sector willing
to stick up for itself or an independent media.
That, they say, makes government over-reach in China potentially much more dangerous.
At
a news conference Wednesday, Fu Ying, spokeswoman for the National
People’s Congress, China’s largely rubber-stamp parliament, said the law
had been modified to reflect some of those concerns during a second
round of drafting last month.
In particular, she said, there were
“hot discussions among legislators” on how to “better balance the
relation between counterterrorism measures and safeguarding human
rights.”
She said the articles relating to IT companies had been
“improved” to include “strict conditions and limits” on when data could
be obtained. In particular, the law would only be used to prevent or
investigate terrorist activity, she said, and after “a strict review and
approval procedure.”
Richardson, of Human Rights Watch, says the
only revision worth making to the first draft would be “to rip it up and
start again.”
As a crackdown on nongovernmental organizations has
intensified under Xi’s presidency, the new counterterrorism law also
includes a section mandating the central bank and civil administration
to supervise and inspect financial flows into foundations, social
organizations and foreign NGOs.
[Read: Hong Kong erupts even as China tightens screws on civil society]
“Everyone
is very concerned,” said a manager at an international NGO, who
requested anonymity for fear of inviting problems. “This puts us into a
very different purview. We are no longer civil society, now we are
potential terrorists.”
Gu Jing, Xu Yangjingjing, Liu Liu and Xu Jinglu contributed to this report.
