HRIC actively develops a wide range of bilingual resources and tools to promote information sharing, digital security awareness and best practices, local activism, and research on human rights-related issues.
Chinese Law
HRIC’s legal resources focus on the laws, regulations, and policies that most directly impact human rights in China. In addition to providing full texts of the relevant laws, in both Chinese and English where available, we include analysis and reports on key issues and developments such as China’s state secrets framework, the 2012 revision of the Criminal Procedure Law, challenges facing lawyers and civil society organizations, and Re-education-Through-Labor. These resources are provided to support defenders, activists, and other individuals asserting rights protected under Chinese law. They are also valuable for assessments of China’s domestic legal implementation of its international obligations.
For more than two decades, HRIC has been tracking and participating in the United Nations’ processes that monitor China’s progress in implementing its international human rights obligations. Through informed and concrete recommendations, HRIC presses for measurable progress that addresses systemic human rights challenges. We advance this work by contributing to a wide range of UN treaty bodies, special mechanisms, and mandate holders, including those focused on: arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture, racial discrimination, women, children, and persons with disabilities. HRIC additionally monitored and contributed to China’s Universal Periodic Reviews in 2009 and 2013.
In addition to legal and multimedia resources, HRIC produces reference materials including resource guides, annotated bibliographies, and glossaries. Resources are currently available on: technical terminology, the Hong Kong-Mainland China relationship, Open Government Information, and the 1989 Democracy Movement.
June Fourth refers to the June 3-4, 1989 government military crackdown that ended the large-scale, peaceful protests in Beijing and other cities that spring and early summer. Despite persistent citizen demands for the truth and an accounting of the bloodshed, the authorities have offered nothing beyond their characterization that the protests were “counterrevolutionary riots.” Since the June Fourth crackdown, HRIC has provided advocacy support and solidarity to individuals and groups who have worked to hold the Chinese authorities accountable for their violence against unarmed and peaceful civilians.
