Current Event 3/11/12

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203961204577269422399619502.html

China's parliament unveiled legislation that restricts police powers to detain people at undisclosed locations without informing their families. However activists say that Chinese police rarely observe legal procedure and the new revisions include many loopholes that would allow police to detain people in politically sensitive cases. China's security forces have frequently detained activists at undisclosed locations without informing their relatives especially since online appeals last year for a Chinese version of the Arab Spring events taking place around the world. The increasing use of such detentions without charges raised concerns among Chinese lawyers and liberal academics that China was sacrificing three decades of efforts towards building a legal system for the sake of political stability. Some individuals who have been detained are Mr. Ai who was a critic of the government, Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer who served more than four years in prison for campaigning against forced abortions, and Liu Xia who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, is still under effective house arrest at her apartment still awaiting any charges. Legal experts said the revisions represent a rare example of public and expert legal opinion pushing back China's increasing effort to hold onto political control. This shows how the Chinese government is trying to censor all material and destroy any criticism of the communist government in order to keep their stranglehold on power in the country.