More than a year ago, Chinese authorities detained Phan Phan-Gillis, an American business consultant, for alleged espionage in a case that her husband and both governments have little about publicly.
A panel of United Nations experts is now raising concerns about apparent human-rights violations during her detention. The panel considers Ms. Phan-Gillis to be in “arbitrary detention” because Chinese officials haven’t brought her before judicial authorities or given her access to legal counsel since detaining her in March 2015.
The panel’s opinion, released last week, marked the first time that the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in its 25-year history has deemed a U.S. citizen to be arbitrarily detained by China, according to rights advocates. A detention is considered arbitrary if detainees are deprived of basic rights such as a fair trial and access to legal representation.
Ms. Phan-Gillis, a 56-year-old naturalized American who was born in Vietnam and is of Chinese descent, ran her own business consultancy in Houston. She was taken into custody while traveling through the coastal city of Zhuhai as part of a business delegation from the Texas city, her husband and lawyers told The Wall Street Journal in September. She was then transferred to the inland city of Nanning for investigation into allegations of spying and stealing state secrets, her husband and lawyers said.
Her case has added complications to U.S.-China relations, which were already soured by differences over economic and trade policy, cybersecurity issues and tensions in the South China Sea and elsewhere.
“This woman is the poster-child for U.S.-China relations,” John Kamm, a San Francisco-based rights lobbyist, said of Ms. Phan-Gillis, who moved to Houston from Vietnam in the late 1970s, and has since visited China regularly to promote bilateral business links.
A spokesman for China’s foreign ministry said Ms. Phan-Gillis was detained by the relevant authorities for allegedly “engaging in activities that endangered China’s national security.” The spokesman said she is well-treated and enjoys “ample guarantees for all her rights.”
“China is a country with rule of law, and the relevant departments handle cases in strict accordance with the law,” ministry spokesman Hong Lei said in a faxed response to queries. He said Beijing hopes the U.N. panel will “respect China’s judicial sovereignty, and stop making thoughtless remarks about the lawful work carried out by the relevant Chinese departments.”
Efforts to reach the Ministry of State Security weren’t immediately successful.
Officials in Guangxi province, where Ms. Phan-Gillis is detained, declined comment. A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Beijing said he didn’t have an immediate comment.
Ms. Phan-Gillis has been unreachable for comment since her detention. Her husband, Jeff Gillis, previously said that his wife “isn’t a spy or a thief.”
Ms. Phan-Gillis remains in detention in Nanning and has been denied access to lawyers and direct contact with her family, though she is allowed a monthly meeting with U.S. consular officials, according to her husband and other people familiar with her case.
“The non-observance of the international norms relating to the right to a fair trial and to liberty and security…is of such gravity as to give the deprivation of liberty of Ms. Phan-Gillis an arbitrary character,” the U.N. panel said in its opinion, dated April 20 and released last Wednesday.
The panel said Ms. Phan-Gillis should either be released immediately or be allowed access to legal counsel.
In its report, the panel provided new details on her case, citing information provided by the Chinese government in mid-April. Chinese authorities, it said, formally arrested Ms. Phan-Gillis in September and charged her with “assisting external parties to steal national intelligence.” The panel was also told that Ms. Phan-Gillis was cooperating with the investigation, which was ongoing.
The U.N. panel has previously ruled arbitrary detention in China for cases that involved U.S. green-card holders, but not citizens, according Mr. Kamm, executive director of the Dui Hua Foundation.
The panel said it reviewed Ms. Phan-Gillis’s detention using information supplied by a source whom it didn’t identify and who alleged that Chinese authorities had flouted domestic law in their handling of the case.
These violations include the Chinese authorities’ failure to notify Ms. Phan-Gillis’s family of her detention within 24 hours, or to provide a legal basis for placing her under “residential surveillance,” a form of detention without formal charges, from March to September 2015.http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2016/07/05/u-n-panel-raises-concerns-about-detention-of-american/
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