The human rights situation seriously deteriorated in China last year. The authorities have carried out the most wide-ranging crackdown on peaceful dissent in a decade. The crackdown and other serious human rights violations continue. Torture and ill-treatment are prohibited by Chinese law, but are nevertheless commonplace. Criminal suspects are often beaten, kicked, hung by the arms, shackled in painful positions, deprived of food and sleep and given electric shocks.
China has the highest level of executions in the world.
More than 60 crimes, many of them non violent, can be punished by death under the law. Many death sentences are imposed following trial proceedings which can only be described as summary. In the Xinjiang and Tibet autonomous regions, nationalist opponents and sympathisers continue to be the target of harsh repression. In the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, many political prisoners have been executed after summary trials and there are reports of arbitrary killings by the Chinese security forces. The human rights situation in Kosovo continues to be critical and Serbs, Roma and other minorities have become the main victims of persistent human rights abuses.