Beijing, China - China continues to use torture on prisoners to force confessions, including beatings and the withholding of medical care, a human rights group said on Wednesday.
China's opaque justice system has long been criticized over the disappearance of defendants, the targeting of dissidents, and regularly forcing confessions through torture.
The latest report by the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) group examined the cases of 209 prisoners between 2016 and 2025 who alleged they were tortured and ill-treated while in detention in China, despite legal prohibitions on such practices.
A fifth of the prisoners said they had been beaten, while 15% said they were tortured as a way to force their confessions. 35% of prisoners interviewed by the CHRD said they were deprived of adequate medical care, with 16 dying behind bars as a result.
Jailed petitioner Yin Dengzhen, a former vegetable seller serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" was denied release on medical grounds, despite being unable to eat or walk normally, her daughter Xia Beibei told AFP.
The 58-year-old, who sought repeatedly to expose local corruption, has lymphoma and was hospitalized after dropping to just over 80 pounds in temporary detention while awaiting sentencing.
But authorities said a medical exam conducted after Yin's sentencing found she was "in good health," according to her daughter, and thus fit to be transferred to a women's prison in Wuhan.
"What I find most unacceptable is that even when my mother was critically ill and possibly facing death at any moment, authorities… maliciously concealed my mother's condition and said she had no serious diseases," Xia said.
In the months before her sentencing Yin was very pessimistic, said Xia, who communicated with her mother through a lawyer.
"She believed authorities' reasoning for putting her in jail was to let her die there," she said.