Congressional-Executive Commission on Ch

China's Pervasive Use of Torture Congressional-Executive Commission on Ch

China uses torture and maltreatment in its criminal justice system. Torture experts have concluded that the lack of a definition of torture in China's legal code is highly problematic. There are also well-documented cases of the frequent use of "tiger chairs" during interrogation and other forms of torture to coerce confessions from criminal defendants and political prisoners alike; reports of deaths in custody and the lack of adequate medical treatment in detention; and the abuse and mistreatment in detention of individuals from China's ethnic minorities, including Tibetans and Uyghurs. There have been changes made recently to China's Criminal Procedure Law that purport to prohibit the use of confessions obtained through torture and the requirement to videotape interrogations in major cases. According to Human Rights Watch, however, judges' videotaped interrogations are routinely manipulated, and police torture the suspects first and then tape the confession.