China Digital Times

China news tagged with: defending rights (97)

• Life Is A Trial For Chinese Lawyer

  

  From Los Angeles Times:

  For the family of Gao Zhisheng, a maverick lawyer under house arrest for years after confronting the Communist Party head-on, security was so tight that police sometimes sat in the bedroom of their Beijing apartment, insisting the lights remain on all night so they could keep an eye on them.

  In order to keep the family incommunicado, authorities forbade telephones or Internet access. When Gao’s 15-year-old daughter went to school, her classmates were not allowed to carry cellphones lest she borrow one to make a call.

  After more than four years under surveillance, Gao’s wife managed to slip out of the apartment in mid-January with their daughter and 5-year-old son. They traveled nearly 2,000 miles by bus, train, motorcycle and on foot to reach Thailand, from where they were allowed to fly to the United States.

  » Read more
  • May 5, 2009 12:41 AM

• China Human Rights Record Stirs Struggle at Home

  

  From Reuters:

  China defends its handling of human rights under the glare of international scrutiny this week, while homegrown activists are waging their own scrappier battle over secretive detentions in the nation’s capital.

  A meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council starting in Geneva on Monday gives groups and governments a chance to press Beijing on secretive executions and jailed dissidents as well as labor camps and other forms of detention.

  Yet contention over China’s restrictions on its citizens is not confined to international conference rooms. Activists at home have also been galvanized, most recently against what locals call “black jails” — detention centers holding protesters without official procedures or right to appeal.

  “These black jails are clearly against the law. But local officials call them legal study classes, and that shows how they treat the law as just a tool for abusing rights,” said Zhang Jianping, an activist in eastern Jiangsu province who runs a website focused on grassroots rights issues.

  Read this report from The Washington Post.

  » Read more
  • February 9, 2009 8:43 AM

• China Seizes Tainted Milk Parents To Stop Court Visit

  

  From Reuters:

  Chinese police have detained two parents whose children were sickened by drinking tainted milk, to stop them attending the trial of dairy executives implicated in the scandal, one father and fellow activists said on Wednesday.

  The men had planed to travel to northern Hebei province for the expected sentencing on Thursday of key figures from the now bankrupt Sanlu group, accused of producing and selling milk laced with the industrial chemical melamine.

  The travel clampdown comes days after lawyers representing 213 poisoned children sent a bold but probably hopeless plea to the Supreme Court, seeking to sue several companies that produced contaminated milk.

  » Read more
  • January 21, 2009 11:01 PM

• 213 China Families Take Milk Case to Highest Court

  

  From AP:

  More than 200 families whose babies fell ill after drinking tainted infant formula said Monday they are taking their case to China’s highest court after being repeatedly ignored by lower courts.

  The lawsuit involving 213 families poses a challenge to the government’s attempts to end one of the country’s worst food safety crises. The scandal over milk spiked with an industrial chemical has been blamed for the deaths of six babies and the sickening of nearly 300,000 others with kidney stones and kidney failure.

  The 22 Chinese dairies involved have proposed a 1.1 billion yuan ($160 million) compensation plan, but many parents want higher compensation and long-term treatment for their babies.

  » Read more
  • January 19, 2009 10:05 AM

• Father Of Poisoned Baby Rallies Parents In Tainted-milk Fight

  

  From Toronto Star:

  Zhao Lianhai’s tiny apartment, tucked away in a middle-class neighbourhood south of Beijing, doesn’t look like the command centre of an influential lobby group.

  It looks like any apartment, anywhere in the world, inhabited by a 3-year-old boy: awash in building blocks, toy trains, fire engines and a complete set of figures from the Disney movie Kung Fu Panda.

  But it is from these cramped quarters that Zhao, a 37-year-old father, used a computer and his deep personal resolve to build a website and a following to fight a plan to pay off parents whose children were poisoned by tainted milk.

  The Chinese government had hoped the compensation plan – introduced Dec. 27 and funded by 22 dairy companies – would finally lay to rest the explosive poisoned milk scandal that rocked the country last year. The scandal wiped out dairy exports, triggered billions of dollars in losses and shattered international confidence.

  » Read more
  • January 18, 2009 9:08 AM

• Xu Zhiyong: Destined To Fight For Social Justice

  

  It is very unusual for a human rights activist to be profiled by official media in China. The Economic Observer recently published a profile of Xu Zhiyong, a legal scholar and activist who relentlessly seeks social justice. Excerpts translated by CDT’s Linjun Fan.

  “We must get rid of the traditional idea that politics merely means revolution and counterrevolution. What we seek is not destruction, but construction. We do not participate in politics to gain power, but to check power. What we pursue is not material wealth, nor the desire to control others. We strive to realize the value of life for ourselves, and help to promote public welfare in the meantime. ”

  This paragraph is quoted from an idealistic article titled Politics Should Be Desirable written by Xu Zhiyong last year.

  Thirty-five-year-old Xu is a legal scholar and activist. He is knowledgeable and enthusiastic, persistent and active. Many young people admire him as a role model, and intellectuals have great expectations for him. He seems to be born with compassion for those in poverty and misery…

  Xu has made a long list of remarkable achievements in fighting for social justice and making changes in politics. He wrote a public letter to the National People’s Congress in the aftermath of the Sun Zhigang Incident; he volunteered to be the defense lawyer for Sun Dawu; he was elected twice as a People’s Representative at Haidian District of Beijing; he conducted research on petitioners in Beijing, etc.

  The Open Constitution Initiative of which Xu is a member is preparing to file a collective lawsuit for victims of the recent milk power poisoning incident, seeking compensation for those who could not afford to hire a lawyer.

  Sitting across the table from me, Xu is quiet and self-contained. He speaks slowly, word by word, carefully expressing his opinions with long pauses. He said it was when he was 14 years old that he set a mission for his life. He was an introverted and ambitious middle school student at that time, harboring a remote dream. He estimated that it would take 20 years for him to realize the dream. Now the dream still remains far away from him after 20 years have passed. But his mission remains unchanged:

  “I strive to be a worthy Chinese citizen, a member of the group of people who promote the progress of the nation. I want to make people believe in ideals and justice, and help them see the hope of change. I have taken part in politics in pursuit of a better and more civilized nation. Through my lifelong deeds of fighting for social justice, I am determined to prove to the citizens across the country that politics should be desirable, that politics should be a cause for public welfare.”

  Xu has visited “black jails” in Beijing four times since the beginning of the year. The so-called black jails are places used by local officials to detain petitioners.

  Xu received a text message on Oct. 12. “This is Ma Xirong from Henan province. I am now detained at the black prison at the backyard of the Youth Hotel at Hufang Road. Can you come to rescue me and the two dozen people detained here? Help!” Xu and several reporters arrived at the hotel the next afternoon.

  Ma came to a window trying to get out to meet Xu, but a guard stopped her. So she talked to Xu on the other side of the window. Ma told Xu that she was stopped by police when she was walking on Wangfujing Street. The police detained her after finding out that she carried a petition letter with her. She was then confined in the hotel yard. As they talked, more and more detainees gathered at the window. The guard pushed Ma back inside.

  Shortly afterward, a minibus suddenly came. Three people jumped down from it, and violently attacked the petitioners. Xu wanted to fight back when he saw his companions being slapped, punched and kicked. “However, I must control myself. I must thoroughly calm down. We didn’t come for a fight. We came to suffer, ” he wrote on his blog that evening.

  “Almost at the same time, my neck, chest and face were punched. The bare-armed guard fiercely kicked me on my knees from behind, trying to knock me down. But I stood there calmly and said to him, ‘I won’t take issue with you.’ He kept cursing me. I just looked at him with sympathy. ”

  They managed to take Ma out of the detention place that afternoon. But she had to go back to her hometown with the officials from her local province. She took out her petition document to give it to Xu. Her son died in a car accident when he was a college student at a well-known university. She disagreed with a court decision on the accident, and has been petitioning since then.

  “She suddenly knelt down before us, and thanked us for our help… I helped her stand up. Actually, I wanted to say to her, ‘Although we have been beaten, we didn’t lose anything. It’s our honor to share some of your misery.’”

  According to Xu’s investigation, there are at least four places in Beijing that local officials from Henan province are using to detain petitioners. The local governments pay a handsome amount of money to rent the places and to hire people to guard the petitioners.

  Xu said that the illegal prisons didn’t show up until after 2003. Petitioners used to be taken into homeless transfer centers and then sent back to their home provinces. After the government banned homeless transfer centers in 2003, local officials created illegal prisons as an alternative place to temporarily detain petitioners.

  “Illegal prisons are much more horrible than illegal brick kilns. The practice must be stopped. I strive to bring sunshine there, even if it’s just a slim ray of light, ” Xu said.

  Xu became well-known to the public in 2003, when three legal PhDs of Beijing University, Xu and his classmates Yu Jiang and Teng Biao, sent a joint letter to the National People’s Congress, urging it to review the Act on Housing and Transferring Urban Homeless. The Congress didn’t conduct the review as requested, but the act was rescinded shortly after the letter was submitted. The incident was regarded as a landmark step forward in China’s legal system.

  Xu had studied the law on housing and transferring homeless people a few years before the Sun Zhigang incident. He first started to learn about the army of petitioners when he saw them waiting in front of the reception office of China Central Television in 1997. From talking to them, Xu got to know that many of the petitioners had been forcibly taken into custody and repatriation centers and then sent back to their home provinces.

  He spent a lot of time doing research on the unjust law in 2002 and believed that it would be terminated, during his years of pursuing a Ph.D. in Beijing University. He worked part-time for the rural edition of China Reform magazine, and received petitioners and listened to their grievances every weekend.

  In the same year Xu ran for the position of People’s Representative at Haidian District of Beijing. In an article titled Why I am Running for People’s Representative he wrote, ” Let us cherish the democratic rights the law has given us, and let us treat our laws sincerely. ” .. He was elected by an overwhelming majority at the end of year, and reelected four years later.

  Xu was born in 1973 in a small village by the Yellow River, located in Minquan County, Henan province. Minquan means Civil Rights. Xu is proud of his birthplace. He believes that it’s not a coincidence he was born at a place called Civil Rights County. He believes that he came to the world with a mission. “I am destined to fight for civil rights all my life,” he said.

  Xu was a quiet young man in his middle school years. He wrote about his ambitions in his diary. “Dedicate myself to public service, advocate for social reform, change the tradition of a nation, and help to build an ideal society.” He wished to study journalism in college and expose wrongdoings. However, his wish was not fulfilled and he was accidentally enrolled by the department of law.

  “I get angry whenever I see something unjust. I would try my best to help the disadvantaged, ” he said. He has been swindled a number of times by people who pretended to beggars. He has become more cautious. But he still tries to help beggars as much as he can, and tells them seriously that, “You should not cheat on me” …

  Xu went alone to a village in Liaoning Province to provide legal assistance to farmers there in 2001. The village had received a considerable amount of compensation money after its land was used to build a highway. However, corrupt local officials had squandered all the money themselves without giving any to the farmers. When Xu gathered villagers to discuss how to solve the problem, ten police vehicles drove into the village. A person got out, pointed his fingers at Xu and inquired, “Who sent you here?”

  Xu was pushed into a police car after fierce arguing. Many villagers lay on the ground in front of the car to block it from moving. The conflict could trigger fatal violence. Xu got out of the car, persuaded the villagers to stop the blocking, and returned to the police car. He was then taken to the local police department. Six hours later, Xu was released and promised to leave Liaoning Province, on the condition that he could talk to the villagers before he left. The villagers gathered at a house and waited for Xu. Some seniors burst into tears when they saw Xu again.

  “I said a few simple sentences to them. I said I would continue to help them. And then I left. I was sad. I contacted a few reporters, but failed to get them to report on the case. The farmer who led the protest in the village was put in prison for a year. That was the biggest setback I’ve encountered, ” he said.

  Although Xu is regarded as a rebel by conservatives, he has not stopped trying to enter the political establishment. Xu submitted a unique application letter to join the CCP in 2002. “Joining the party gives me a better chance to work for the government and to serve the public, that’s why I am considering to become a party member, ” he wrote in the letter.

  Xu started to write a book Report on Petitioning in China in 2005. Working together with several friends, he has recently completed the 200,000-word book, which has not yet been published. To conduct in-depth research on the issue, he lived in a neighborhood where petitioners gather on the southern outskirts of Beijing for two months. He shared a room with ten or eight people or stayed in a tiny room in a crowded courtyard.

  A number of people are sent by local governments to block petitioners from talking to officials of the central government. They gather at the hutong where the National Petition Bureau is located. “They disturb everyone. They would even drag a girl if she happens to walk by. They act like rascals. They’ve gone crazy,” Xu said.

  The hutong was full of people the first time Xu went there. He was stopped shortly after entering the lane. “Someone dragged my arm and asked me where I came from. I said I was from Henan province. My words caused a commotion. Several people pulled me over and asked me which part of Henan I was from. I answered Kaifeng. The people who were sent by Kaifeng government swiftly came to me and beat me. ‘Have you petitioned to the local government of Kaifeng?’ they asked. I answered I that I hadn’t. ‘Then you’ve violated the law. You should have gone to the local government first,’ they said while kicking and punching me. My clothes was soon marked with shoe prints.” Xu was actually wearing a suit that day and thought that he could not have been mistaken as a petitioner.

  He saw an old lady with white hair another time he was visiting the hutong. “I was a few meters away from her. I saw her being cornered. Someone punched her to the ground, and then several people encircled her and kicked her. I was astonished. I hit someone on the head. They hit back and pushed me down to the ground. They then ran away. I got up and chased after them, ” Xu said.

  Xu exploded with rage that day. “I cursed these people. I said that you guys are animals. The lady is older than your mothers. Why the hell do you beat her? ” These people were dumbfounded at my words. No one said anything back to me.

  After this article was available online, some readers also posted interesting comments:

  —Admirable. Is it worthwhile to do all this for this country?
  —Of course. I can’t do it myself. That’s why I admire him even more. The more people like Xu we have, the better chances we have to make a change in the political system.
  —Does he know that what he will be faced with? He won’t have money. He won’t have a private life. If even a woman is willing to follow him, they will have to wander around and could never settle down. He won’t have children. And his parents will live in constant fear because of him. Of course he knows all about this. But most importantly, I believe what he is doing is completely useless. He would be murdered on the street someday.
  —I think his actions will gradually make a difference. At least those unscrupulous ones know that there are people who oppose them.

  » Read more
  • November 26, 2008 12:02 AM

• Chinese Lawyers Who Called For Bar Elections Are Fired

  

  From AP:

  At least seven Chinese lawyers who signed a petition calling for open elections in a government-controlled bar association have lost their jobs because of official pressure, several lawyers said Thursday.

  The seven were among 35 attorneys who signed the petition in August, said Cheng Hai, a leader of the campaign for direct elections in the Beijing Lawyers’ Association.

  Activist lawyers in the tightly controlled Chinese legal system have been at the forefront of the fight to use the rule of law to press for civil liberties and combat abuse of power. But they say they have faced official interference, obstruction and even physical harassment.

  » Read more
  • November 6, 2008 9:43 PM

• China Milk Victim Lawyers Say Pressed To Quit

  

  From Reuters:

  Chinese lawyers seeking redress for infant victims of toxic milk say they are facing growing official pressure to abandon the efforts, blaming growing government sensitivity over the health scandal.

  Scenes of thousands of parents crowding hospitals, seeking help for babies ill from toxic dairy powder, have stoked widespread public dismay in China.

  Reflecting that anger, local rights advocates and lawyers have mobilized to support families seeking redress, possibly by suing dairies or officials who failed to disclose the problem.

  But on Sunday, organizers of the campaign and some of the lawyers said officials in some provinces have pressured volunteers or their bosses to give up the campaign.

  » Read more
  • September 28, 2008 4:31 AM

• Chinese “House” Church Seeks To Sue Government

  

  From Reuters:

  A “house” church in China is seeking to sue a local religious affairs authority for shutting down a service in what activists called a breakthrough challenge.

  The Qiyu Blessings Church in the southwest province of Sichuan is one of thousands of once-banned self-organised Christian groups the ruling Communist Party warily tolerates as it encourages believers to join larger state-sanctioned churches.

  The church leader now wants to take the Shuangliu County Bureau of Religious Affairs to court for stopping a service in early May, the New York-based group Human Rights in China reported in an email on Friday.

  Read also Chengdu House Church Files First Suit in China Against Government Religious Authority from Human Rights in China.

  » Read more
  • September 22, 2008 6:10 AM

• A Rare Tibetan Critic Sues China’s Government

  

  From AP:

  The poet Woeser has long been a rarity — a Tibetan living in China who doesn’t flinch from publicly criticizing the Chinese government. Now the activist is taking another unusual step.

  After being repeatedly denied a passport for three years, the Beijing resident has sued the government demanding to be given the document she needs to travel outside the country, hoping the fight will draw more attention to China’s tight grip on Tibet and its people.

  Woeser’s willingness to openly confront authorities makes her stand out. Most Tibetans are reluctant to do that, even more so than environmental and human rights activists. If they complain at all, they often do so in hushed tones and under the cloak of anonymity.

  » Read more
  • July 23, 2008 1:41 AM

• China Rights Lawyer In One-man Crusade For Fairer Future

  

  From AFP:

  In a small courtyard building a stone’s throw from Tiananmen Square and the political centre of China, veteran rights lawyer Mo Shaoping dreams of the day his nation will be ruled by law and not by men.

  Mo, 50, only has a tiny office situated between the Forbidden City and the Communist Party leadership compound of Zhongnanhai, but for years it has been his base for challenging the mighty state in defence of famous dissidents.

  Most of them have been either jailed or sent into exile, largely for opposing the ruling party, advocating democracy or accusing powerful politicians of corruption.

  But Mo is undeterred.

  “It is really simple. I defend these people because a lot of lawyers refuse to take cases that are sensitive or deal with human rights, even though in China everyone is entitled to legal counsel no matter what the crime,” he said.

  » Read more
  • July 5, 2008 3:41 AM

• Chinese Seek a Day in Court

  

  From The Wall Street Journal:

  The earthquake that rocked Sichuan province is emerging as an unexpected test of China’s evolving legal system.

  Parents in Sichuan whose children were killed when schools collapsed in the May 12 quake are already demanding justice. Huang Lianghe, who lost his son in the collapse of the Dongqi Middle School in Dujiangyan, believes the quality of the school’s construction was at fault and, with other parents, is looking for a good lawyer to take up his cause.

  That Mr. Huang has that much faith in China’s courts says much about rising expectations that ordinary Chinese enjoy basic legal rights, including the right to sue their government.

  On television and the Internet, a new generation of Chinese lawyers teaches ordinary Chinese people to invoke their rights. At camps for survivors of the quake, volunteers recently distributed “law promotion” handbooks published by the Chengdu Justice Bureau that explain the laws that victims can use to sue government officials for certifying the building codes for thousands of classrooms that crumbled in the quake.

  Read also Excerpts: Lawyer Liu On China’s Legal System.

  » Read more
  • July 1, 2008 7:26 AM

• Farmer-Turned-Activist Plants Seeds of Reform

  

  The Washington Post, as part of its “Innovators” series, profiles rural activist Lu Banglie:

  Although China’s peasants have repeatedly resorted to violence in recent years, most confrontations have been spontaneous uprisings over local land seizures, unconnected to eruptions elsewhere. But Lu, under the guidance of Beijing-based democracy advocates, sought to apply the experiences of his own village to the struggles of others, taking his activism national.

  His main weapon was Chinese law, the letter of which offers many guarantees that, in practice, are often set aside by party leaders. In a country where the Communist Party crushes any attempt at forming associations outside its control, Lu’s goal of spreading the word on how to use law books to oppose local leaders amounted to a relatively novel political challenge.

  His passage from pumpkins to politics was not without cost. Lu has been severely beaten twice by thugs who he said were dispatched by local party authorities eager to cash in on land transactions at the expense of farmers. The Public Security Bureau, he said, still keeps a close watch on his home village of Baoyuesi, near Yichang, about 320 miles southwest of Beijing.

  » Read more
  • June 26, 2008 2:59 PM

• Chinese Lawyers Unable To Renew Licenses

  

  From AP:

  Mainland Chinese lawyers known for defending rights have been unable to get their licenses renewed ahead of an annual deadline, a Hong Kong group said Friday.

  China Human Rights Lawyers’ Concern Group chairman Albert Ho identified three of the lawyers at a news conference in Hong Kong on Friday, and said there were others whom he didn’t want to name because he didn’t want to jeopardize their status.

  Ho said it wasn’t clear exactly how many lawyers were still unable to renew their licenses before the Saturday deadline.

  The three lawyers who Ho said agreed to be identified were Teng Biao and Li Heping from Beijing and Zhang Jiankang from the northern city of Xian.

  Read also China: Rights Lawyers Face Disbarment Threats by Human Rights Watch, and Translations: Three Mainland Human Rights Lawyers on the Amended PRC Law on Lawyers from China Human Rights Lawyers’ Concern Group.

  » Read more
  • May 30, 2008 7:52 PM

• Lawyer’s Plight Highlights Perils of Fighting China’s System

  

  From AP:

  He wanted to go to church — the only chance for a brief escape from house arrest. But Zheng Enchong knew the police by the elevator might stop him, so he decided to try something new.

  He dialed China’s equivalent of 911, hoping other police officers might help him get out of the building. Instead, he was ignored.

  “I wanted to see what would happen,” the activist lawyer explained in a rare interview at his home. “You can say I still believe in the law.”

  That belief has been sorely tested. In the years since he started looking into possible land-related corruption at Shanghai’s highest levels, the balding, bookish 57-year-old has been beaten, imprisoned, refused a passport, stripped of his right to practice, and now confined indefinitely to his 14th floor apartment in a blue-collar district of Shanghai.

  » Read more
  • May 12, 2008 9:56 PM

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