levels to strictly control the production, promotion, trade, transfer3 and use of policing and other law enforcement equipment. In 2005 Amnesty International and Omega were instrumental in the EU’s adoption of regulations that ban the production and export of specific “tools of torture” and strictly control trade in other equipment which, while intended for law enforcement, can easily be misused for torture or other ill-treatment.4 Amnesty International and Omega continue to campaign for these regulations to be strengthened in the EU and adopted globally. Amnesty International and Omega are calling on the Chinese authorities to bring China’s national regulation of law enforcement equipment into line with this emerging international framework. The Chinese authorities should prohibit the production, use and export of “tools of torture”. China must also reform its export licencing system for law enforcement equipment, making the system transparent and publicly accountable. Strict, human rights-based criteria must be applied and met before export licences are issued. More broadly, there must be a greater understanding of the potential problems associated with law enforcement equipment, and the rationale behind the regulation of its design, transfer and use. Concrete steps need to be taken by all states, not only China, to combat the misuse of legitimate law enforcement equipment by law enforcement agencies around the world. Methodology Amnesty International and the Omega Research Foundation have collaborated in the research and writing of this report. The report draws upon the detailed field investigations and analysis of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment as well as unnecessary and excessive use of force in China and other countries, undertaken by Amnesty International’s researchers around the world over the past five years. It also draws upon research by Amnesty International on conditions in China’s recently abolished Re-education Through Labour (RTL) detention system, which included interviews with over 60 detainees conducted between May 2009 and November 2013, as well as the on-going monitoring of violations of the rights of human rights defenders, ethnic minorities and religious groups in China. The dataset of information about companies involved in the law enforcement equipment trade on which this report draws has been maintained and updated by Omega, which has researched the global police and security equipment market since 1990. Omega carries out market surveying on a continuous basis and gathers current as well as historical market, product and trade data from a wide range of open and commercial sources. These include company-produced information from websites and product brochures; industry sector publications; government publications; company and financial information from national company registries; government- and commercially-produced trade statistics; media organizations; and credible reports and publications by NGOs and international governmental organizations (IGOs). Unless otherwise stated, data about the size, scope and evolution of China’s manufacture of law enforcement equipment is taken from Omega’s datasets. The data in this report concerns Chinese entities manufacturing and trading law enforcement equipment and is a subset of data held by Omega on the global trade in these products and services. Although this report is principally concerned with state actors’ use of and trade in security equipment for law enforcement and detention, many companies also supply equipment for use by private security providers. As China does not publish information about the export of security and police equipment it is often difficult to ascertain the level of these exports. For this reason, this report draws upon data from Chinese companies themselves, Chinese shipments, media reports from various sources, and photographic evidence of Chinese equipment being used outside China by foreign security personnel. 4 China’s Trade in Tools of Torture and Repression Amnesty International – Index: ASA 17/042/2014