A campaign to draw attention to the plight of Chen Guangcheng, the rights lawyer who has been forcibly confined to his home in China’s Shandong Province for more than a year, escalated over the weekend, with dozens of people trying to visit him, human rights advocates said Monday.

As in the past, all those who tried to reach Mr. Chen, who is blind, were violently thwarted by guards before they could get near his home, according to several of the participants and the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Among those who made the trip to Dongshigu village on Saturday were 30 activists from across China who launched 80 paper lanterns into the night sky in an attempt, they said, to let Mr. Chen know about their efforts. The following day when they approached the entrance to the village, the group said they were attacked by as many as 300 people, robbed of their cellphones and cameras, and chased out of town.

Jacobs described the background of the campaign in another New York Times report last week:

They have been pummeled with sticks or chased by rock-throwing security agents. Some have been beaten, robbed and dumped in remote farm fields without cellphones or money.

In the year since the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng was released from jail and promptly imprisoned at home, a trickle of foolhardy souls has been thus rebuffed after attempting to penetrate the cordon of paid thugs who repel visitors from his village in eastern Shandong Province. Foreign journalists and European diplomats who have tried to see him have fared little better ….

However, [the activists'] campaign — Operation Free Chen Guangcheng — is drawing increased attention to a figure that Shandong party officials have for years struggled to silence and is spotlighting the kind of extralegal punishment that Beijing prefers to keep under wraps.

“I couldn’t believe something so dark and evil could happen in my country, so I had to see for myself,” said Hu Xuming, 38, a computer salesman, explaining why he joined a group of five strangers, all of whom were attacked the moment their vehicle pulled up the road leading to the village, Dongshigu.

McClatchy’s Tom Lasseter tried to visit Dongshigu last week, and recounted his own and others’ experiences, also tweeting photos of his brush with the village’s guardians. From The Miami Herald:

Wang Xuezhen, a 30-year-old purchasing agent for a furniture business and online activist, recounted her own recent try to enter Dongshigu.

“A bag was put on my head, I was down on the ground and those people kicked me over and over,” she said ….

As Wang spoke during an interview at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a man with a thick build and a closely cropped haircut sat at the next table and listened intently. Wang, a small woman who keeps her long black hair tucked behind the ears, gestured at the man and said he probably was following her ….

When she asked why she’d been beaten and then detained, Wang recounted with exasperation in her voice, police said that “the villagers had accused me of trying to steal a cow.”

A recent briefing from Chinese Human Rights Defenders described the fortifications in place in and around Dongshigu:

In sum, there are two surveillance points in front and behind Chen’s home, and six other points set up at various locations on the four narrow roads that enter Dongshigu Village. There are a total of six surveillance cameras in the village. Two mobile phone jammers are set up at the homes of Chen’s neighbors to the west and east.

Reportedly, almost 100 hired thugs keep Chen under surveillance, and all are recruited from outside the village. They are divided into two large squads and 12 smaller groups, and maintain radio communication with each other while working around the clock. And like many extensive operations, monitoring Chen and the entire village is also wealth-generating. Given two daily meals, each person pockets 100 RMB a day—far more lucrative pay than the average villager (even the village party secretary earns just 3,000 RMB in salary per year). The guards are led by Gao Xingjian (高兴见), who comes from a nearby village . Gao was appointed as head of the guards after fighting off past visitors on many occasions, and has supposedly amassed a good deal of wealth from filling that role.

While these defenses have yet to be breached, Chen’s supporters appear to have won a return to school for his six-year-old daughter, who had previously been confined to the family home with no toys, books or other educational materials. The apparent victory may further fuel the campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal:

“To obtain this type of progress, Chinese web users and Guangcheng’s supporters have paid a huge price,” said Zeng Jinyan, a human-rights activist.

She says she received confirmation this week that Mr. Chen’s daughter, Chen Kesi, has been allowed to begin attending school, but has been escorted by security guards to and from the family’s home in the village of Dongshigu, near the city of Linyi, about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai on China’s east coast. While the family was under informal house arrest last year, authorities had previously prevented the girl from attending school, Ms. Zeng said. it wasn’t clear when exactly the girl started attending school ….

Unlike in many cases involving imprisoned or detained rights activists in China, it appears domestic outrage is prompting the government to act rather than international pressure.

The huge price Zeng refers to includes the threat of further detention for her husband Hu Jia, whose three and a half year prison term for inciting subversion ended in June. Hu’s recent weibo posting in support of Chen, translated by Siweiluozi, was recently featured on CDT. From AFP:

Police told Hu on Friday that he would be placed under “administrative detention” if he violated “any of the terms of his deprivation of political rights”, Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in a statement ….

“I told the police clearly — I won’t be restricted on issues concerning citizens’ rights and benefits as well as freedom,” Hu said.

“In this country the government is the one that violates human rights, police officers are performing tasks that violate human rights… so I must express my resistance in public, express my condemnation.”

On Google+, Beijing-based lawyer William Farris noted the Oriental Morning Post’s quickly censored response to an editorial in the Chinese-language Global Times (which, Farris notes, differed somewhat from the English version featured on CDT). The Post argued that the Times, having urged Linyi authorities to exercise greater transparency, ought to publish a fuller account of the situation themselves. From Farris’ translation:

Take for example Chen’s so-called “life complications” mentioned in the article – is this to say that he has been sanctioned in accordance with the law, or a public security “extra-legal punishment,” having his rights trampled? If there really is so-called “soft detention,” and where is the legal basis for it? Article 37 of the “Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China says that the personal liberty of citizens of the People’s Republic of China may not be subject to infringement, and prohibits illegal detention and other forms of denying or restricting the personal liberty of citizens. The two words “soft detention” have never existed in China’s law, and “residential surveillance” must be done by the police, and is not something that other civil servants can strictly implement under the Criminal Procedure Law.

Furthermore, on the one hand the Global Times report indirectly admits, the local government’s handling of Chen Guangcheng does not meet “strict law and human rights standards.” On the other hand, it also states that Chen Guangcheng caused “interference that laws and regulations could not accept.” Is it possible for a legal system to have two kinds of standards? That article repeatedly emphasized the so-called “small environment” of the locality, is it possible that they did not know that the nation’s laws should not be twisted for the “small environment” of a locality?

Comrade Mao Zedong says: without investigating, there is no right to opine. The media needs to just objectively and comprehensively tell the public “who is Chen Guangcheng,” and the public will see things clearly.

Farris also reports that Chinese search engines have joined Sina Weibo in suppressing search requests for “Free Guangcheng”. Also on Google+, Catherine Yeung has translated messages of support from a number of scholars and other figures including Wu Jiaxiang:

It’s difficult to image how a regime can be so intimated by a disabled person. Could it be the case that this regime is suffering from even more severe disability? My hope is that even if the rights of normal people cannot be fully respected, at the very least a disabled person will be granted permission to see a doctor when he is ill. Otherwise, history is going to judge you harshly.

… and media commentator Xiao Shu:

What strikes me is that he comes from a genuine grass-root background. And yet his inner strength is far stronger than most fighters and elites that I know. He personifies the infinite latent power of China’s grass-root communities. Not only is he from the grass-roots; what is more, he is blind. He cannot see with his eyes. To him, therefore, the physical world is completely dark. He cannot see anything. However, the power of his conscience, the power of his inner conscience, allows him to gain a better understanding than most people with normal vision of this world, and of the road on which our nation should embark. In this sense, he is the leader of those of us who are embarking on this road. He is walking way ahead of us, way ahead of many people with normal vision. This is why I admire him.

See also Yeung’s translation of Zeng Jinyan’s thoughts on Chen Guangcheng from her blog, Under the Jacaranda Tree, past coverage of Chen and his family’s situation on CDT, and a Change.org petition for their release.

Sources:

Attempted Visits to Chinese Dissident Surge – NYTimes.com
Taking Big Risks to See a Chinese Dissident Under House Arrest – NYTimes.com
China cuts access to lawyer who fought one-child policy – MiamiHerald.com
China Human Rights Briefing October 13-20, 2011 – Chinese Human Rights Defenders
China Loosens Grip on Activist’s Family – WSJ.com
Police warn China activist against speaking out – AFP
Shanghai Newspaper Slams Global Times’ Chen Guangcheng Op-ed, Gets Censored – William Farris – Google+
Prominent scholar Wu Jiaxiang makes a public appeal for Chen Guangcheng – Catherine Yeung – Google+
Xiao Shu, Veteran Media Commentator, makes a public appeal for Chen Guangcheng – Catherine Yeung – Google+
He Warms Our Hearts with “Light” (Guang) and “Sincerity” (Cheng) – Zeng Jinyan – Under the Jacaranda Tree

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Hu was convicted in 2008 for “inciting subversion of state power” for criticizing human rights restrictions in China, and was seen by some supporters as a potential recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize before it went to another jailed Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, last year.

“He is back home with his parents and me,” his wife, Zeng Jingyan, told Reuters in a brief telephone interview.

“I don’t know if he can speak later. At the moment, I want everything to be peaceful. I’m worried that doing interviews at this stage might cause problems. Please understand.”

She and other rights activists have voiced concern in the past that Chinese authorities might impose restrictions on him amounting to a form of house arrest after his formal release.

His wife, Zeng Jinyan, announced his release on Twitter.

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Ms. Zeng, 27, previously lived in Beijing but had moved with her 3 ½-year-old daughter to Shenzhen, an industrial city opposite Hong Kong, in April. “The Beijing police drove me out,” she said in a written exchange over the Internet on Wednesday. “Now Shenzhen authorities are driving me out, too.”

Although Ms. Zeng and her husband were frequently harassed in the past, she said, the reason behind the latest pressure was unclear. “Maybe once again there are some officials who don’t want me under their jurisdiction, or maybe there are bigger political reasons,” she wrote, adding: “If I try to find a job, they threaten my boss. If I try to cooperate with someone, they threaten my partner. If I try to find some part-time work, they tell the human resources of the company to censor me.”

Mr. Hu, 37, was perhaps China’s best-known proponent of civil rights when security officers detained him in December 2007 during a roundup of activists in the months before Beijing’s 2008 Olympics. In tandem with Ms. Zeng, he campaigned in the past decade on a wide range of issues that the government deems sensitive, from human rights to medical care to the environment. The couple were early users of e-mail and the Internet to publicize their causes.

Mr. Hu spent much of the past five and a half years either in prison or under house arrest, but managed until his imprisonment to continue speaking on civil-liberties issues through the Internet. His December 2007 detention came one month after he testified on China’s human rights problems via a video link before a European Parliament committee. He was formally convicted of subversion in April 2008 after a trial in which prosecutors cited his Internet statements, articles and interviews with foreign journalists as proof of wrongdoing.

Follow Zeng Jinyan on Twitter.

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Around 5 pm local time on April 29, Beijing-based human rights lawyer Li Fangping (李方平) was kidnapped by unidentified individuals outside the offices of the health rights NGO Beijing Yirenping Center, of which he is a legal advisor. Li was able to speak briefly with his wife, telling her, “I may be gone for a period of time… can’t talk more.” Further efforts to contact him have been unsuccessful, and his whereabouts are unknown.

The news of Li Fangping’s abduction comes on the heels of reports that prominent human rights lawyer Teng Biao (滕彪) was released earlier that afternoon after 70 days of enforced disappearance . Teng Biao’s wife, who confirmed his return, said she could not comment on his health or any other details of his disappearance. While the timing of Teng’s release initially seemed to signal a positive response by the Chinese government to this week’s U.S.-China human rights dialogue, the disappearance of Li shortly thereafter quickly dampened any hope that pressure on human rights activists in China might be easing. These actions raise renewed questions about the limits of international pressure on the Chinese government, as well as the effectiveness of human rights dialogues.

“In recent months, and especially during this crackdown, we have seen that torture to enforce silence is becoming a frighteningly common experience for those disappeared or detained,” said Renee Xia, CHRD’s International Director. “The Chinese authorities, in the meantime, are resorting to an old trick, the revolving-door approach—one in, one out—to create the impression that things are improving.”

Li Fangping is a prominent Beijing-based human rights lawyer who in recent years has represented a number of high-profile victims of political and religious persecution, including, among others, Chen Guangcheng, Yang Chunlin (杨春林), Hu Jia (胡佳), and Zhao Lianhai (赵连海). He has faced frequent harassment from officials, and, on December 27, 2006, was severely beaten and suffered head injuries after he and another lawyer were assaulted en route to visit Chen Guangcheng in a Shandong Prison.

See also CDT posts on Li’s involvement in issues such as Green Dam Internet filtering and tainted milk.

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Baobao’s questions about her father’s incarceration are becoming too difficult to handle, says Ms. Zeng, 28.

“She’s asking, ‘Why do those men have guns? Who are they going to shoot? Why is daddy in a uniform with an identity card on his shirt? Is my daddy a policeman?”’ Ms. Zeng said in a recent telephone interview. “I find it really hard to answer to answer these questions, so I think I won’t bring her along anymore. Hu Jia is coming out soon, anyway.”

Jailed for nearly all Baobao’s life, Mr. Hu has not gotten to know his daughter well. That may change after he’s released — perhaps more than the family bargained for. Expectations are growing among human rights advocates that Mr. Hu will be subjected to house arrest, or “soft detention,” a form of extrajudicial punishment increasingly used by the authorities to control well-known dissidents.

[...] The parallels with the past are eerie, and instructive.

During the Song dynasty, house arrest was legal, but its legality was blurred by the practice of detaining victims indefinitely after they had served their — usually two — years. Much as Mr. Hu could find himself under extrajudicial house arrest after serving his court-ordered time in June, a person convicted of criticizing the emperor or court during the Song was often kept under surveillance long after his sentence had expired.

As was the case 1,000 years ago, “soft detention” centers on the home, but the physical radius can vary, said Ms. Wang. Targets might be allowed to go to work under police scrutiny, or to travel within a fixed perimeter.

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This tension was highlighted in report released by UNAIDS last year that found that two-thirds of HIV-infected people in China have not sought treatment because of fear, ignorance and discrimination. UNAIDS’ director, Michel Sidibe, said then that China needed to “break the conspiracy of silence” surrounding HIV/AIDS.

But clearly, it is not just the Chinese government that needs to break the conspiracy of silence; it is also the international donor community. It would be wise to listen to what inmates at any of the approximately 700 compulsory drug detention centers in China have to say.

Human Rights Watch’s research has found that the roughly 500,000 people at these centers are routinely beaten, forced to work for up to 18 hours a day without pay, have no access to drug dependency treatment and are denied even basic medical care. Under China’s 2008 anti-drug law, drug users, even first-time users, are locked up for three to six years, without trial, in “treatment” centers that have a relapse rate of as high as 90%. Our research found that some detention center guards provided drugs to “patients”; and one guard admitted using the mandatory HIV test results to determine which female drug users to have sex with.

The Global Fund, as part of its more than $1 billion in HIV funding to the Chinese government, supports a variety of programs in these centers, including “provider-initiated” HIV testing and training of detention center staff members. The United States supports similar programs in China and Vietnam, without any, as one senior U.S. official admitted, “rules of engagement.” United Nations agencies, such as UNICEF and UNODC, have also funded programs in detention centers in the region.

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Zeng Jinyan told AFP that her application for the early release of her husband on medical grounds had been turned down and that her husband had been taken back to prison after a stint in hospital.

“The head of the medical institute of the Beijing prison told Hu Jia’s mother by phone that Hu Jia’s… cirrhosis does not conform to regulations on medical parole,” Zeng explained on her blog.

Hu was taken to hospital on March 30 because of suspected liver cancer, she said.

Prison officials have refused to give the family Hu’s written medical report despite her request, Zeng said.

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Zeng Jingyan has applied for permission for her husband to be released from prison early so he can return home for treatment.

Mr Hu was sent to jail for three-and-a-half years in 2008 for inciting subversion.

His wife believes that under Chinese law he could be allowed home because he has already served more than two years.

“My appeal asks the authorities to release Hu Jia on medical parole to allow him to come home so that I can look after him,” she said.

Ms Zeng, who is also an activist, said her husband was diagnosed with cirrhosis in 2006, but his health has now deteriorated.

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The activists, who include one of China’s foremost artists and a Tibetan student in the United States, came forward after Google announced it had suffered a “highly sophisticated” cyber attack in December, whose goal was to gain access to its email service, Gmail… Ai Weiwei, who is best known in the West for having helped design the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, said that two of his Google email accounts had been hacked by “unknown visitors” who read and copied his emails.

Mr Ai, who is also a vociferous activist, said he had no proof that the Chinese government had been behind the hacking attempt.

Teng Biao, a law professor at the University of Political Science and Law in Beijing and a human rights lawyer, said his emails had been hacked into in 2007. “Many of my friends told me they received entrapment emails from the email address I was using at the time: against.teng@gmail.com,” he wrote on his blog… Zeng Jinyan, an activist and the wife of Hu Jia, a jailed dissident, also said that her email had been hacked. Tenzin Seldon, a 20-year-old student in the US whose parents are Tibetan exiles said that Google had called her in to check her computer and confirmed it had been hacked.

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In her blog entry of April 25, Zeng Jinyan discusses how on April 22 she went with their one-year-old child to visit her husband, activist Hu Jia, at the prison where he is being held on the outskirts of Beijing.

“After filling out some paperwork, I went to the waiting room. Hu Jia was already waiting. The police officer at his side changed. The electronic signboard on the wall said Hu Jia, window 4. We spoke by telephone at window 4. The sound wasn’t good and it was cut-off several times.

The window was very dirty and made for a fuzzy affect as if there were many, many layers of glass. I could see Hu Jia, but I couldn’t see him completely clearly. He had gotten a lot thinner, his face looked a bit pointy. He said he hadn’t been able to eat, so he got thinner. I asked him why he didn’t eat eggs. He replied he gets one or two eggs a week. He doesn’t eat with the other prisoners, the prison gives him vegetarian food. He can’t eat well and sleeps poorly. I asked him about the results of his physical, he said he doesn’t know and the prison personnel don’t know either. They said they will have to wait for the results from the hospital. But this is normal, not getting the results within a week!

I had to worry, thinking back to that first physical after he had disappeared for 41 days in 2006. The B sonogram showed signs of a hardening of the liver. Other test results can back within 4 – 5 days, showing everything was normal. That time I put too much confidence in the those test results that came back with some delay, thinking everything was fine. Who know that in April 2006, he gradually had less and less appetite, then couldn’t get out of bed. I thought he was too tired and sent him to the hospital for treatment, only to find out that he was in very serious condition and needed immediate medical treatment.

Now it is April and we have been waiting for the medical exam results for two months and his antiviral medicines have already stopped for three months. Now he can’t eat and is suddenly getting thinner. Could there be some physical problem? I believe that the prison is monitoring our conversations more and more tightly. His letters home have been returned twice for rewriting. All the books I have given him, except for some examination preparation books, have been rejected. Has Hu Jia been protesting to the prison officials? There is no hot water in the prison, has he caught a cold again?

There is so much to say, but I don’t know where to start. There are so many ears listening. It is hard to talk about family matters. The child went to see her father. The guards with Hu Jia this time weren’t as friendly as last time and she got scared. So she came back to me. We can’t go through that door but the innocent child sometimes go through to see her father.

The phone suddenly cut off. They said the half hour was up. The police officer told Hu Jia to go back. I was full of regrets since I hadn’t really said anything and the child didn’t really have a chance to get close to her father. Talking like this is like not talking at all, better to let father and daughter play for half an hour.

When I got back home, my mother-in-law asked me, he is getting so thin, what can we do?

What can we do? What can we do?

The next day, my mother-in-law called the Public Security Domestic Security Detachment (Guobao). I called the prison several times. The people in charge weren’t in, so we could only just keep on calling. Shouldn’t they have informed the person who had the physical and their family members long ago? Are they going to give Hu Jia his medicine? Should they not guarantee that they are going to promise to give Hu Jia nutritious food? Should they not guarantee freedom of communications for us? Should they be preventing his family members from sending him books and necessities for daily life? Shouldn’t the prison provide hot water as a basic humanitarian and health necessity?

了 了园

April 25, 2009 at 10:42 am · Filed under 杂谈
北京的四月，才是真正的春天。一夜冷雨，竟叫无数野花喷发，干巴巴的枝条，居然几天就绿得茂盛起来。

春是升发的季节。如果胡佳在身边，他定会如此说。

4月22日，周三。像过节一般，早早起来，梳洗，给孩子穿上昨晚准备好的衣服，又脱下，怕午饭前弄脏了，带了一包的小衣服备用。对宝宝说：今天看爸 爸去！宝宝马上指墙上的照片，脸上笑眯眯。到了爷爷奶奶那儿，一说看爸爸，她就往墙上看，找照片。

中午一点，上了京开高速，和婆婆聊天，不小心错过了高速出口——去北京市监狱好多趟，第一次出这样的错误很不应该。到六环交界处下了高速往回走。

团河，清代是是皇族的行宫所在地，现在是北京市监狱所在地。

办完手续走进监狱会见室，胡佳已经在里面等了。他身边的警员又换了一个。墙上电子屏幕显示：胡嘉，4号。我们在4号窗口通过电话交谈。电话音效不 好，几次中断。

玻璃很脏，已经模糊，中空玻璃之间，似乎还有万重的迷雾，我能看见胡佳，却不能完全看清。他瘦了许多，短短一个月时间，脸似乎尖了。他说吃 不下东西，所以瘦了。我问能不能吃到鸡蛋，他说一个星期大概有一个或两个鸡蛋。他不和其他人一样吃饭，是监狱另给的素食。吃不下东西，睡觉也不好。我问他 知不知道3月份以来体检的结果，他不知道，我也不知道，问监狱的工作人员，也说不知道，说要等医院给了才知道。可是常规的情况，一周内就能得检查结果啊！

我免不了又担心，2006年他失踪41天，回来第一次做体检，当天拿的B超结果怀疑他肝硬化，其他生化化验结果，隔了四五天才拿到，显示 一切正常。我们当时大意了，太过相信这些迟到的体检报告，以为一切平安。谁知06年的4月份，渐渐地胡佳不吃东西，后来竟不愿意起床，我以为他太过疲劳， 送到医院才知道病重需马上住院治疗。

如今又是四月，两个月的检查结果我们都不知道，他的抗病毒药已经停用三个多月了，他突然吃不下东西，突然消瘦，会不会又是身体出了状况？ 监狱对我们的交流审查，我认为是越来越严，他的家信往往要几次退回重写，我给他带的书，除了考试教材，其他也都送不进去。胡佳是不是在监狱向他们抗议了？ 监狱没有热水洗澡，是不是他又感冒了？

千言万语，不知从何说起，那么多耳朵在听，时事不让说，家事不便说，孩子淘气，一会儿走到门口去看父亲。这次她父亲身边的警员不如上次的那人和善， 她又恐惧，一会儿跑回我的身边。那道门，我们相互无法跨越，只有孩子，天真无邪，偶尔穿过，亲近她的父亲。

突然电话断了，说是半个小时已经过去。警员催促胡佳回去。我心中万般懊悔，什么也没说，孩子也没有好好和父亲亲近，早知如此，不如不要说话了，让他 们父女俩好好玩半个小时。

回家婆婆问我：他这么消瘦，怎么办呢？

怎么办？怎么办？

隔日，婆婆告诉我她给国保打电话了，我给监狱几次去电话，管事的人都不在，只有继续打电话，胡佳的体检报告，是不是早该告知家属和他本人？ 是不是要给胡佳用药治疗？是不是该保障胡佳的饮食营养？是不是该保障我们的通信自由？是不是不该限制家属给他送书、文具和一些基本的生活用品？监狱是不是 该从人道及基本的卫生保健考虑，提供热水洗澡？

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