China's use of psychiatric hospitals to imprison activists without due process remains routine, a rights group has said, accusing doctors and the healthcare system of colluding with authorities in punishing dissidents.

Beijing authorities for decades used the country's system of psychiatric hospitals, known as Ankang, to punish political prisoners.

A report released Tuesday by Madrid-based NGO Safeguard Defenders said the practice continues, despite reforms in the early 2010s that required medical assent and increased judicial oversight over China's psychiatric care system.

The majority of the data in the report comes from interviews with victims and their families posted online by Chinese NGO Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch (CRLW), an organisation founded by activist and citizen journalist Liu Feiyue.

The data looks at the cases of 99 Chinese people forced into psychiatric hospitalisation for political reasons between 2015 and 2021.

"In 2022, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is still routinely locking up political targets in psychiatric hospitals despite implementing legal changes to stop this barbaric practice more than a decade ago," the group said.

"The CCP is able to remove petitioners and activists entirely out of the justice system, with no hope of seeing a lawyer or going to trial, while 'diagnosing' them with mental illness so that they are socially isolated even after release," it added.

"Doctors and hospitals collude with the CCP to subject victims to medically-unnecessary involuntary hospitalizations and forced medication."

Most of the victims were petitioners, it said, "people who often struggle on the lowest rungs of the social ladder in China and are thus powerless and easy targets."

"Such numbers indicate that sending political prisoners to psychiatric wards is widespread and routine in China."

Detainees were often subject to physical and mental abuse, the report said, citing claims by prisoners that they had been subject to beatings, electroshock therapy and solitary confinement.

Among those detained were a young girl who had live-tweeted herself splashing paint on a portrait of Chinese President Xi Jinping, a man who had petitioned Beijing for medical compensation for an injury sustained serving in the army and longtime pro-democracy activist Song Zaimin, it added.

Beijing's health ministry did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

China is a global leader in locking up political opponents, a practice critics say has intensified under President Xi, the country's most hardline ruler in decades.

Beyond dissidents and petitioners, rights groups say at least one million people, mostly members of Muslim minorities, have been incarcerated in "re-education camps" in the western Xinjiang region and face widespread abuses, including forced sterilisation and forced labour.

China says it is running vocational training centres in the region designed to counter extremism.

Non-jury trial ordered for Hong Kong's largest security case
Hong Kong (AFP) Aug 16, 2022 - Hong Kong's justice minister has ordered a non-jury trial for the city's largest national security case to date in which dozens of pro-democracy politicians face up to life in prison, according to documents seen by AFP.

Trial by jury has been used by Hong Kong's common law legal system for 177 years but legislation imposed by China in 2020 to curb dissent allows cases to be heard by dedicated national security judges.

Some 47 defendants including democratically elected lawmakers, unionists and academics have been charged with "conspiracy to subversion" for organising an unofficial primary election among democrats two years ago.

An order signed by new Secretary for Justice Paul Lam dated Saturday cited the "involvement of foreign elements" in the case as a reason to depart from the tradition of jury trial.

It also cited the "personal safety of jurors and their family members" and a "risk of perverting the course of justice if the trial is conducted with a jury".

Instead the trial will be heard by three judges who have been handpicked by the government to try national security cases.

The documents seen by AFP showed preparatory hearings for the trial would be conducted before a panel of three judges in an open court in September and November.

AFP has asked Hong Kong's Department of Justice for comment.

The trial is the second national security case to be handled without a jury in Hong Kong.

In the first last year, motorcyclist Tong Ying-kit was sentenced to nine years in jail after losing a judicial challenge against the non-jury arrangement.

Trial by jury has been described by the justice department as one of the Hong Kong judiciary's "most important features".

But a national security law imposed in 2020 states that a jury can be excluded if there is a need to protect state secrets or the safety of jurors and their families, as well as if "foreign forces" are involved.

The 47 defendants in the present case are political figures ranging from modest reformists to radical localists.

Their case was first brought to court in March last year when most of the group were denied bail after a marathon four-day hearing before a security magistrate.

Journalists have been prevented from reporting on most of the pre-trial hearings.

Climate change driving unprecedented forest fire loss
Paris (AFP) Aug 17, 2022 - Forest fires supercharged by climate change are burning twice as much global tree cover as 20 years ago, according to a data Wednesday showing the equivalent of 16 football pitches are now lost every minute.

The research showed in unprecedented detail how wildfires have progressed over the past two decades, with the blazes claiming an estimated three more million hectares each year -- an area the size of Belgium -- compared with 2001.

The study showed that the majority of tree cover loss is occurring in the boreal forests that blanket much of Russia, Canada and Alaska, which are among the largest storers of carbon on Earth.

Researchers from the University of Maryland used satellite imagery to map areas of tree cover lost, including that burned by what are known as stand-replacing forest fires.

These are fires that kill all or most of the forest's canopy and which cause long-term changes to forest structure and soil chemistry.

The data showed 2021 to be one of the worst years for forest fires since the turn of the century, causing 9.3 million hectares of tree cover loss globally.

That was more than a third of all the forest lost last year, according to the data, compiled by Global Forest Watch and the World Resources Institute research group.

"Forest fires are getting worse worldwide," James McCarthy, research analyst at Global Forest Watch, told AFP.

The European Union's satellite monitoring service said last week that western Europe had experienced record fire activity so far in 2022, with tens of thousands of hectares of forest lost in France, Spain and Portugal.

The researchers said that climate change was likely a "major driver" in increased fire activity, with extreme heat waves that render forests tinder dry already five times more likely today than a century and a half ago.

These drier conditions lead to higher emissions from fires, further exacerbating climate change as part of a "fire-climate feedback loop", they said.

- 'Best defence' -

The vast majority -- some 70 percent -- of fire-related tree cover loss over the last two decades occurred in boreal regions, likely because high-latitude regions are warming at a faster rate than the rest of the planet.

Last year, Russia lost 5.4 million hectares of tree cover due to fires, the highest on record at an increase of 31 percent over 2020.

"This record-breaking loss was due in part to prolonged heatwaves that would have been practically impossible without human-induced climate change," said the study.

The team warned that increased changes to climate and fire activity could eventually turn boreal forests from a carbon sink into a source for carbon emissions.

"In these boreal regions carbon has accumulated in the soil over hundreds of years and has been protected by a moist layer on top," said McCarthy.

"These more frequent and serious fires are burning off this top layer and it's exposing that carbon in the soil."

This century, fire-related tree cover loss in the tropics has increased round five percent -- some 36,000 hectares -- a year, the study showed.

Fire is not the principal cause of forest loss in these regions, with deforestation and forest degradation the main drivers.

But the researchers said that forest loss from deforestation was making it more likely that forests would be lost to fire, as the practice leads to higher regional temperatures and drier vegetation.

They called on governments to improve forest resilience by ending deforestation and limiting local forest management practices that include controlled burning, which can easily burn out of control particularly during dry spells.

"Forests are one of the best defences we have against climate change," said McCarthy.

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