Abductions by Chinese authorities detailed in US-published book

“Residential surveillance at a designated location” doesn’t sound so bad. It hints at house arrest, the sort of detention you might get if your transgression doesn’t warrant a prison sentence or perhaps while the authorities determine the nature of your crime. But if those who have provided first-hand accounts in The People’s Republic of the Disappeared are to be believed, it is far more sinister than that.

“I never really thought that the government would kidnap people like this. And that is what the RSDL is: just plain kidnapping. How shameful!” contends one contributor, Guangzhou-based lawyer Sui Muqing.

Published in November, the book is edited by Michael Caster, a human rights advocate and senior adviser to the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group, which states its mission as being to strengthen the rule of law in China. The book brings together the accounts of 12 people who have been held under RSDL, a form of detention introduced into Chinese criminal law in 2012, with the amendment of Article 73 of the Criminal Procedure Law, to allow the authorities to detain people for reasons of state security or terrorism.

Sui’s account comes towards the end of the book, by which time the reader is familiar with RSDL, which, it is alleged, typically begins with an abduction and quickly descends into physical and psychological abuse, isolation, threats to family and friends and sleep deprivation.

“Early on the fifth or sixth morning of sleep deprivation, the tiredness started to hit me. My consciousness felt vague, followed by a pain I felt all over my body. It was like being roasted by a fire, while at the same time feeling extremely cold. It was a kind of pain that I had never experienced before. Faintly, I felt that I was dying,” writes Sui, who is known for his work defending other rights activists, including fellow lawyer Guo Feixiong.

RSDL allows the holding of detainees for up to six months in “designated locations” without legal process. And, according to Tang Zhishun, even the six-month rule seems flexible. Tang, who trained as an engineer, became involved in civil rights activism after facing – and stopping – the illegal demolition of his home. He came to the aid of other victims of forced evictions and was assisting the teenaged son of a detained human rights lawyer flee the country. He was released after more than a year in secret detention, 6½ months, he says, spent under RSDL.