![]() ![]() In the report embedded above, Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan visits one of these facilities in Beijing where families have come to find their missing relatives, only to find they have been moved to a new secret location. Though the government denies their existence, the country’s “black jails,” as they are known, are no secret in the country. He and other activists note that the authorities have broadly interpreted what constitutes a threat to national security in the past. Relatives will now have to be notified within 24 hours of a suspect’s detention.īut rights group remain concerned, noting a broad exemption for cases that involve “state security or terrorism” or if notifying a family would “obstruct” an investigation. “This is the formalization of detaining people wherever they please,” Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, told CNN. ![]() And it dropped a controversial provision announced last September that would have allowed suspects to be held for up to six months in secret locations without informing their family members. The government says the new laws will safeguard suspects’ rights, curb the power of police and help prevent forced confessions. Yesterday, Chinese lawmakers enacted a number of revisions to the country’s criminal code ostensibly designed to bring some Western-style protections to the country’s legal process.
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