[10 December 2019]  Today is Human Rights Day. It also marks one year since Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor disappeared in China. Since that day, neither of the men have been allowed to see a lawyer or their family; only sporadic consular visits have been permitted. For the first six months, they were held in secret detention called Residential Surveillance at a Designated Location (RSDL).

Their unjust and arbitrary detentions are widely seen as retaliation for the arrest a week earlier of Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou in Canada in response to a US extradition request.

The UN’s highest official principally responsible for human rights, High Commissioner Michelle Bachelet, should publicly denounce the Hong Kong Government for its systematic violations of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression, and condemn the unnecessary and disproportionate use of force by police in Hong Kong. 

A fully updated and expanded edition of our acclaimed book on China’s growing use of disappearances, The People’s Republic of the Disappeared, goes on sale today (November 1).