China exporting torture equipment, says Amnesty

Chinese companies are exporting an ever increasing number of electric shock batons, stun guns, spiked metal batons and other gruesome tools of torture, the rights group Amnesty International says in a report.

More than 130 firms were involved in the trade, which was fuelling human rights abuses in Africa and Asia, Amnesty said in its report called “China’s Trade in Tools of Torture and Repression”.

“Increasing numbers of Chinese companies are profiting from the trade in tools of torture and repression, fuelling human rights abuses across the world,” said Patrick Wilcken, security trade and human rights researcher at Amnesty.

China’s top court said last year it would eliminate the use of torture to extract confessions, but human rights defenders regularly complain of torture in custody.

The prominent Uighur academic Ilham Tohti, who was given a life sentence this week for separatist offences, was reportedly tortured while being held by the authorities.

In the report, Amnesty included testimony from one torture survivor, who said police had used an electric baton on his face. “It’s a kind of torture the police call ‘bengbao popcorn’ because your face splits open and looks like popped corn. It smelled horrible, the smell of burning skin,” the survivor said.

“This trade – which causes immense suffering – is flourishing because the Chinese authorities have done nothing to stop companies supplying these sickening devices for export or to prevent policing equipment falling into the hands of known human rights abusers,” said Amnesty.

Inhumane effects

The report also found that 29 Chinese companies were involved in exporting electric stun batons, which allow security officials to apply extremely painful multiple shocks by hand to sensitive areas of the body without long-lasting physical traces.

“While some of the exports are no doubt used in legitimate law enforcement operations, China has also exported equipment that has inhumane effects, or poses a substantial risk of fuelling human rights violations by foreign law enforcement agencies,” the report said.

Among the countries that China has sold devices to were Senegal, Egypt, Ghana, Cambodia and Nepal.