In April, the story of Beijing tech company manager Xing Yanjun went viral. He had died after being taken by the police and subjected to RSDL – under which suspects are confined in a designated location and put under constant surveillance.
Xing’s older brother, author of the viral post on Weibo, wrote that police told the family his brother had hung himself, but they refused to believe it and sought the truth.
Follow-up media reports said police in Hulunbuir in Inner Mongolia autonomous region alleged that Xing’s firm operated a casino, and 14 employees of the firm, including Xing, were detained last November.
However, local prosecutors did not approve the arrest.
But instead of releasing the suspects, the police put 12 of them under RSDL in December, the family said, and they found out about Xing’s death four months later.
This case illustrates the controversy surrounding the measure.
Residential surveillance as a type of detention has been in place since the creation of China’s criminal procedure law in 1979. Under this, a suspect may remain at home, and police officers are sent to monitor them.
The RSDL option was introduced in 1996, when a revision to the criminal procedure law specified that suspects without a residence could be assigned a detention location – often a hotel room or similar spot.
The law was again revised in 2012 to expand the use of RSDL beyond minor violations to include those suspected of “endangering national security, terrorist activities and particularly major bribery crimes”. The rationale was that allowing the suspect to stay at their own residence might hinder the investigation.
The criminal procedure law is expected to undergo another round of modifications. It appeared on the legislative plan of the 14th National People’s Congress Standing Committee in September, and will be submitted for review during the top legislature’s five-year term ending in 2028.
In an online discussion held last month by the Hongfan Institute of Legal and Economic Studies, a private liberal think tank based in Beijing, legal experts argued that RSDL had been abused by authorities.
Even though use of the measure has remained low over the years, it has been controversial since the beginning.
When the measure was designed, it was meant to be weaker than detention at a police station, allowing the suspect more rights and freedoms, Chen Yongsheng, a law professor at Peking University, told the Hongfan forum.
But in reality it was the opposite, and some suspects even asked to be put in police detention rather than be subject to RSDL, he said.
During surveillance, suspects were usually under 24-hour watch – even as they slept or went to the bathroom – and were interrogated nonstop, Chen said.
Unlike police detention or arrest, there was no requirement for RSDL to be recorded or videotaped, and the location was often decided by the police with no supervision, increasing the possibility of torture, said Beijing-based lawyer Zhou Ze.
Chen cited cases of torture disclosed in media reports and legal records in recent years, including a man who was blackmailed by an auxiliary police officer during surveillance, and two people who were beaten and starved.
“Reported cases are only a fraction of what happens in reality, so we have reason to believe that the real situation is more severe,” Chen said.
He said RSDL was unconstitutional, could lead to false convictions, and was a “serious violation of human rights”.
But liuzhi is only used in corruption cases, in which suspects legally have no right to a lawyer and are investigated by supervisory and anti-corruption authorities.
Facilities used for liuzhi usually have strict rules that require registration or videotaping.
However, if supervisory authorities cannot obtain a confession within the three-month liuzhi period, they often transfer suspects to the police for RSDL, according to legal analysts. However, instead of a police officer monitoring suspects, the anti-corruption officers often continue interrogations, they said.
Many have suggested abolishing RSDL. Si Weijiang, a human rights lawyer, noted that the 2012 revision of the criminal procedure law expanded the use of RSDL for terrorism, and suggested the measure should only be used for such cases.
“When modifying the law, residential surveillance at a designated location should be scrapped for common cases, and only kept in cases that concern national security crimes,” he said.
Chen, the law professor, said it would be more practical to make changes to the existing measure rather than abolishing it. He suggested the use of surveillance at a suspect’s residence or arresting the person rather than having authorities assign the location.
If a location must be assigned, then conditions should be improved, he said.
Chen suggested having officers monitor from outside the location, rather than being inside and face-to-face with suspects. He also recommended ensuring food and rest for suspects, videotaping the interrogations, and allowing suspects to live with their families.
