The report said that between 2016 and 2020 there was an eight-fold increase in the number of cases in which exit bans were reported in the legal database of the Chinese Supreme Court. “Exit bans have become one of the many tools used by the Chinese Communist Party to tighten control over people’s lives,” he added.
China has prevented increasing numbers of people from leaving the country, a rights group said on Tuesday, as part of efforts to tighten “control over all aspects of life” under President Xi Jinping.
The Madrid-based rights group Safeguard Defenders said that since 2018, Beijing had passed five new laws and amended others (totaling 15) that would expand its ability to impose so-called exit bans.
“Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, China has expanded the legal landscape for exit bans and has increasingly used them, sometimes beyond legal justification,” the rights group said in a report.
The report said that between 2016 and 2020 there was an eight-fold increase in the number of cases in which exit bans were reported in the legal database of the Chinese Supreme Court. “Exit bans have become one of the many tools used by the Chinese Communist Party as part of the broader effort to tighten control over people’s lives in all aspects,” he added.
He pointed out that “many are not aware that there is an exit ban against them until they reach the border in an attempt to leave the country.”
The group estimates that “tens of thousands” of Chinese nationals are prohibited from leaving at any time.
While stressing that the lack of official data made it difficult to obtain specific numbers, the report estimated that tens of thousands of Chinese citizens were under exit bans.
The organization said that anecdotal evidence from “lawyers and human rights defenders in China” also indicates that “the problem of politically driven exit bans has worsened over the past five years.” She added that dozens of foreigners were also prevented from leaving China in recent years, while the report stated that among them were lawyers, journalists and businessmen.
A study published last year cited by the rights group also found that 128 foreigners, including 29 Americans and 44 Canadians, had an exit ban imposed between 1995 and 2019.
