The consecration of President Xi Jinping as China’s most powerful leader for many years took place against the backdrop of a stifling of freedom of expression and information. Authorities increasingly used “national security” as justification for restriction of human rights and detention of activists; the tactic escalated significantly in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) where, under the leadership of new regional Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, authorities put new emphasis on “social stability” and increased technological surveillance, armed street patrols and security checkpoints and implemented an array of intrusive policies violating human rights. Authorities set up detention facilities within the XUAR, variously called “counter extremism centres”, “political study centres” or “education and transformation centres”, in which people were arbitrarily detained for unspecified periods and forced to study Chinese laws and policies. Citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) continued to face a series of grave human rights violations, some of which amounted to crimes against humanity. The rights to freedom of expression and movement were severely restricted, and up to 120,000 people continued to be arbitrarily detained in political prison camps, where they were subjected to forced labour, torture and other ill-treatment. HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS The Chinese authorities continued their unprecedented crackdown on dissent with a ruthless campaign of arbitrary arrests, detention, imprisonment and torture and other ill-treatment of human rights lawyers and activists. The authorities persisted in the use of “residential surveillance in a designated location”, a form of secret incommunicado detention that allowed the police to hold individuals for up to six months outside the formal detention system, without access to legal counsel of their choice, their families or others, and placed suspects at risk of torture and other ill-treatment. This form of detention was used to curb the activities of human rights defenders, including lawyers, activists and religious practitioners. The government also continued to imprison those trying to commemorate peacefully the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 3-4 June 1989 in the capital, Beijing, in which hundreds, if not thousands, of protesters were killed or injured after the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on unarmed civilians. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiabo died in custody in July. In Hong Kong, the repeated use of vague charges against prominent pro-democracy movement figures appeared to be an orchestrated and retaliatory campaign by the authorities to punish and intimidate those advocating democracy or challenging the authorities. PEOPLE ON THE MOVE In Japan, while asylum applications continued to increase, the government reported in February that it had approved 28 out of 10,901 claims in 2016, which was a 44% increase in claims from the previous year. Meanwhile, to address the country’s labour shortage, Japan began to accept the first of 10,000 Vietnamese nationals to be admitted over three years under a labour migration programme harshly criticized by human rights advocates for facilitating a wide range of abuses. In South Korea, deaths of migrant workers raised concerns about safety in the workplace. North Korean authorities continued to dispatch workers to other countries, including China and Russia, although some countries stopped renewing or issuing additional work visas to North Koreans in order to comply with the new UN sanctions on North Korea’s economic activities abroad in response to the country’s missile tests. DISCRIMINATION In China, religious repression remained particularly severe in the XUAR and in Tibetanpopulated areas. Amnesty International Report 2017/18 37