In a landmark case, Sweden’s Supreme Court on July 9 ruled against the extradition of one of China’s most sought after corruption suspects.

Qiao Jianjun, a Chinese Communist Party member and mid-level state official, is being pursued by Beijing under its Operation Fox Hunt program for returning fugitives from overseas. Qiao is suspected of embezzling funds back home.

Sweden held Qiao in detention for nearly a year, until the Supreme Court held a hearing on 18 June following which Qiao was freed, pending a decision.

With the detention and placement into ‘Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location’ (RSDL) of foreign citizens by China in several high-profile cases, such as Michael Kovrig, Michael Spavor and Yang Hengjun, it merits a closer look at the use of solitary confinement within China’s RSDL system, and if and if so why, it constitutes torture under international law, in particular the Convention Against Torture, one of the few key human rights treatises both signed and ratified by China.

On February 28, 2019, a complaint will be filed by Safeguard Defenders to the UK’s TV regulator Ofcom, concerning systematic violations of the UK’s rule concerning due impartiality and due accuracy in TV broadcasts (standards section five), calling on Ofcom to investigate the broadcast of known and provable lies and intentional distortions in newscasts. The full complaint uses eight different broadcasts by CCTV/CGTN to show the systematic nature of these violations.