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On June 16, between 18:00 and 21:00, the rights organization Safeguard Defenders (SD) releases its latest report: Behind Bars - A Survey on Detention Centre Conditions in China.

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The event, at Grémio Literário in Chiado, Lisbon, features direct testimony from two former European detainees: Peter Dahlin (Sweden) and Peter Humphrey (United Kingdom). Joining them is Grace Chen (Canada), former legal adviser to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture.

In recent days, there have been at least two attempts to cancel or disrupt the Lisbon event.

In a letter dated June 5, the Embassy urged the American Club of Lisbon to reconsider “offering a platform for actions that vilify China”.

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Days later, on June 12, one of the many X accounts impersonating Safeguard Defenders posted a doctored copy of the event poster. The fake changed the date, time, venue and location to mislead potential attendees. The same account pushed the false details to other users in the China human rights space by direct message.

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The move against the Lisbon event is only the latest in a long line of PRC attempts - many of them successful - to suppress information that exposes widespread, systematic human rights abuse in China. Recent examples include pressure on German cities to drop their support for Tibet, and the cancellation of RightsCon in Zambia after sustained PRC pressure on the local government.

The CCP’s “red line” on any public discussion of its rights record - anywhere - is the flip side of its propaganda and influence machine. To advance an increasingly aggressive agenda at home and abroad, the Party works to set and police every narrative about China. Anything that contradicts it must be silenced.

These efforts violate fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in international treaties, regional instruments, and democratic constitutions. When the PRC suppresses those rights on foreign soil, it commits transnational repression and an unacceptable breach of sovereignty.

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The report

Behind Bars - A Survey on Detention Conditions in China draws on interviews with 84 former detainees. It finds that shocking abuses continue without relent across the country’s 2,600-plus facilities, set for release June 16.

These include police beatings, the illegal denial of access to lawyers, and the use of inmate enforcers to keep order through intimidation and violence.

The report also compares domestic and international law and reviews legal commentary, tracing these abuses to the absence of clear protections for detention centers, exploitable legal loopholes, and weak oversight of detention-center police and practices.

As China’s surveillance state shrinks the pool of public data and makes speaking out riskier, Behind Bars is a vital addition to the evidence on the systematic abuse of detainees - Chinese and foreign alike.

It is the first of two reports. A companion survey on prison conditions in China follows July 18.

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