ber, and hundreds of others were sentenced to reeducation through labor. Late in the year, according to some reports, the government started confining some Falun Gong adherents to psychiatric hospitals (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). The government continued to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses in violation of internationally accepted terms. These abuses stemmed from the government’s extremely limited tolerance of public unrest. The Constitution and laws provide for fundamental human rights however, these rights are often ignored in practice. Abuses included instances of extra-judicial killings, torture and mistreatment of prisoners, forced confessions, arbitrary arrest and detention, lengthy incommunicado detention, and denial of due process(Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). Prison conditions at most facilities remained very harsh. In many cases, especially in sensitive political cases, the judicial system denied criminal defendants basic legal safeguards and due process of the law, merely because authorities attached higher priorities to maintaining public order and suppressing political opposition than to enforcing the legal norms of the country (Amnesty International. “China, violations of human rights). The government infringed on citizens' privacy rights. The government tightened restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press. They also increased controls on the internet, which caused self-censorship by journalists. They severely restricted freedom of assembly, and continued to restrict freedom of association. They continued to restrict freedom of religion, and intensified its controls on unregistered churches (China Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1999). The Government also continued to restrict freedom of movement, meaning they do not permit independent domestic nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in order to ...
