BEIJING — China is preparing to overhaul a key criminal law amid public confusion - and some dread - over whether the government is about to give police the legal authority to disappear people.
At issue is an amendment to the criminal procedure law that would allow police to secretly detain suspects for months without informing their families.
The effect would be to legalize the secret detentions police increasingly have been using against political critics, activist lawyers and other dissidents.
Activist Hu Jia, himself living under a form of house arrest, has dubbed it the “KGB clause.”
The proposed powers, when first mooted in a draft released last summer, caused an uproar among legal scholars, who called them dangerous, and ordinary Chinese, who posted comments online to the government’s draft by the tens of thousands.
Now, as the national legislature prepares to pass the revised law during its annual session that starts Monday, it isn’t clear whether the proposed changes are still in the bill. New drafts have not been released, as is typical in China.
One well-connected scholar claims the clause has been excised out, but others say it’s uncertain or won’t say.
Chi Shusheng, a lawmaker and lawyer from Heilongjiang province with a reputation for defending human rights, said she last saw the revised law in January.
“I think there’s been some progress,” Ms. Chi said without elaborating.
Members of the National People’s Congress legal committee, who advise the drafting of the law, declined to talk.
“Wait until the final version comes out,” said Zhou Guangquan, a legal scholar and committee member. “It’s not convenient for me to discuss it now.”
Chinese laws generally are crafted by the central government behind closed doors with little public consultation, though there have been experiments with increased transparency in recent years.
The precise reasons for the secrecy aren’t entirely clear, but seem borne out of habit and expediency.
Behind the uncertainty is a tug of war between people who think China needs greater legal protections to keep advancing, and the security establishment and politicians who see a strong Communist Party as the best guarantee of the country’s continuing success.
Chinese society, poor and egalitarian 30 years ago, has been stratified as decades of economic reforms create droves of millionaires and push up a new middle class while leaving behind others. People increasingly turn to the law to protect their rights and to protest when other methods don’t work.
More open Chinese media and the Internet have raised awareness about miscarriages of justice, such as wrongful convictions, and the need for legal safeguards.
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