Methodology

The research on which this whitepaper is based was conducted by Human Rights in China from 2008 to 2011. Primary sources include: normative documents and public statements of the SCO, including materials of the SCO’s Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure, in English, Chinese, or Russian; Chinese legal materials and official statements; UN Security Council materials, including reporting of the SCO member states to the Security Council pursuant to its counter-terrorism resolutions, and materials issued by the Counter-Terrorism Committee and the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate; UN General Assembly materials, including resolutions and deliberations; reporting, conclusions, and recommendations associated with international treaty body reviews of SCO member states; and reports of UN Special Rapporteurs.

This whitepaper also draws upon interviews of government officials, NGOs, and asylum seekers conducted by staff of Human Rights in China and the International Federation for Human Rights during a June 2009 fact-finding mission to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan to investigate the situation of asylum seekers and migrants⁵; English, Chinese, and Russian media reports; and research and policy papers related to or regarding the SCO. (See Appendix F for a select bibliography of references.)

The analytical framework of this whitepaper takes international law, including human rights, humanitarian, and refugee law, as the normative foundation of its assessment of the SCO and its counter-terrorism efforts. This echoes and conforms to the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy, and, more broadly, international recognition of the primacy of that strategy’s human rights pillar for peace, security, and sustainable development. However, a number of methodological obstacles limit analysis of the SCO’s impact on human rights. Despite the SCO’s assertions of transparency, the SCO and its counter-terrorism operations unit RATS do not publicly release detailed information concerning member state cooperation, e.g., statistics regarding extraditions between member states, parameters of the shared RATS database, etc. The information that the SCO does make public is in many instances available only in Russian – for example, the RATS website appears to be most complete and current in its Russian form, with the last entry in the English version dated July 27, 2005.⁶

It is important to note as well that media reports coming out of SCO member states in which the media is largely controlled by the government, such as China, often do not provide a full and accurate picture of relevant details. China’s state secrets system presents an additional hurdle, as a great deal of information pertaining to, for example, ethnic minorities, is classified as top secret under the state secrets regime.

Within these existing constraints, Human Rights in China presents a detailed introduction to the SCO and an analysis of the human rights impacts of its structure, policies, and practices in the region and on the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy and framework, and specific recommendations directed at a range of actors. In light of the limitations outlined, Human Rights in China has also flagged a number of areas about which little is known, including SCO practices related to extraditions, blacklisting, and intelligence cooperation, for further consideration and investigation.

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