We have been the opposition throughout the last ten years. We oppose authoritarianism, we oppose autocratic culture, and we oppose lies, false accusations, and unscrupulousness whether they are on the part of the power holders or anyone else. We have been pious builders promoting social progress and building rule of law and civil society rationally. In the Investigation on the Mechanism of Letters and Calls in China that we issued, we pointed out that the authoritarian system was the root of the petition problem, and recommended judiciary independence and initiation of political reform through direct election on the county level. In our Report on the Investigation over the Truth about the Death of Qian Yunhui, we published our findings that Qian’s death was a traffic accident despite overwhelming public opinion that believed otherwise, and criticized the unfair land policies that were the underlying causes of the incident. In our Legal Opinions Concerning Compensation for Personal Injury in the High-Speed Train Accident on July 23rd, we criticized the government for offering too little compensation, of RMB 500,000, and recommended compensation over RMB 900,000. Public opinion forced the government to quickly accept our recommendation. In the equal education movement that fought against hukou segregation, our Plan for Children Living with Parents without Local Hukou to Take the National College Entrance Exam Locally has been accepted by most provinces and cities. Just before the ten citizens were arrested in Beijing, we had been preparing to draft a law concerning publishing officials’ personal assets. We are a group of responsible citizens. We oppose for the sake of building.

For ten years we have persevered to build the foundation, next to the decaying palace of the dictatorship, for a lasting democracy and constitutionalism. In our fight for freedom over the last ten years, it has become a commonplace for many of us to lose our own freedom fighting for freedom of strangers. We are proud to be living in this era. From the “citizens’ rights movement” to the “new citizens’ movement,” we have been walking on the same road, the road of conscience, the road toward liberty, justice and love. [Source]

Read more by and about Xu Zhiyong via CDT, including a translation of a recent blog post and essay about the Citizens’ Rights Movement.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, defending rights, lawyers, sun zhigang, Xu Zhiyong
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Who are China’s environmentalists? How would you characterize today’s green advocates?

Journalists and broadcasters founded many of China’s most prominent green NGOs—after all, they witnessed the scale of the unfolding environmental crisis. China actually has a long history of civil society, which was suppressed during the Mao era. But the past 20 years have seen a flourishing of green NGOs. Now there are thousands registered, and many more unregistered. Today all sorts of people get involved in China’s environmental campaigns, from university students and middle-class urban residents protesting against the construction of polluting petrochemical factories or incinerators, to villagers in the countryside angry about pollution ruining their crops and their health.

[…] Why is public participation in environmental issues so important for China?

Without the public pressure to act responsibly, local officials will continue to chase short-term economic gains and disregard environmental concerns. A greener society needs journalists who can expose environmental problems, NGOs who can lobby for conservation measures, and lawyers who can represent communities that have been affected by pollution. That’s why citizens have been at the forefront of China’s environmental movement.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinadialogue, civil society, economic growth, environmental activism, incinerators, journalists, lawyers, local officials, middle class, NGOs, pollution, university students, villagers
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“I also turned down their demand for the original version of those already exposed clips, for the safety of the person from Chongqing’s police bureau who fed me the information,” said Zhu, adding that he is not ready to publish the remaining evidence, as time is needed to authenticate them.

The negotiations came after Zhu claimed some local officials involved in the scandal haven’t yet been netted and accused local police of a coverup and destroying evidence.

[…] Si Weijiang, a Shanghai-based lawyer, told the Global Times there is no crime of withholding evidence, and that the process to compel Zhu to be a witness is not clear. The police have no right to forcibly request the evidence, he said.

The videos were recorded as part of an extortion racket targeting a number of Chongqing officials, 11 of whom have now been dismissed as a result. Former Chongqing Party chief Bo Xilai and his police chief Wang Lijun reportedly covered up an earlier investigation into the case. While Zhu says that his source is associated with the Chongqing police, the police now claim that he may have obtained the videos from a member of the gang itself.

The Washington Post’s Wang Juan highlighted Zhu’s use of social media for protection:

Zhu’s lawyer, Li, said he believed the policemen originally intended to detain Zhu when they tried to get into his house Sunday night but were forced to change their plan once Zhu’s online posts for help and calls to Chinese and foreign media drew widespread attention.

[…] Before leaving his home for the police station on Monday, Zhu posted a picture online of a signed legal document. The document named several people he was officially authorizing as his lawyers and representatives and said that any confession or change of lawyers after he is imprisoned would likely be made under duress. Mindful of several recent high-profile cases in which detainees have been cut off entirely from the outside world and with their lawyers switched out for government-friendly ones, Zhu said in the document that the lawyers he named are the only ones he wants, “even if I later write a letter in blood asking for a change of lawyers.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Beijing, Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Chongqing corruption, drinking tea, extortion, Global Times, journalistic ethics, lawyers, lei zhengfu, police, Si Weijiang, sina weibo, social media, Wang Lijun, Zhu Ruifeng
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That confrontation is likely to center on allegations that Mr. Wu was tortured into signing a confession, which is the crux of the case against him. In a deposition released by his lawyers, Mr. Wu says he was beaten while being hung upside down, deprived of food and water for several days and then given stimulants so he could not sleep. In the end, Mr. Wu says, he signed the declaration of guilt that was placed before him. “They pre-wrote everything,” he told his lawyers, according to the deposition. “If I didn’t sign it, they beat me.”

Mr. Wu’s case, human rights groups say, highlights the problems that even American citizens face in China’s flawed and deeply politicized criminal justice system. Although confessions extracted through torture are technically inadmissible in court, legal experts say the police frequently rely on heavy-handed tactics to win the confessions that often form the basis of convictions. “We’d be pleasantly surprised if the judge even allows the allegations of torture to be discussed in the courtroom,” said Roseann Rife, East Asia director for Amnesty International, which has been publicizing his case.

[...] During an earlier entanglement with Mr. Lin in 2002, Mr. Wu says, he was detained by the police for 11 months, but later released after prosecutors decided that there was insufficient evidence to try him. His family said a ruling in February by the Supreme People’s Court vindicated Mr. Wu’s claims and cemented his ownership of the disputed property, a successful fruit market in the city of Foshan.

Mr. Lin could not be reached for comment, and police officials in Huizhou declined to comment. Kenny Wu, one of Mr. Wu’s sons, said in a phone interview that Mr. Lin warned his father that he would prevail in the end. “ ‘I control the laws in mainland China,’ ” Kenny Wu said Mr. Lin told his father. “ ‘Watch me put you back in prison like I did 10 years ago. Even President Obama and God cannot save you.’ ”

See more on police brutality in China via CDT.

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Post tags: Americans in China, business disputes, Chinese-Americans, forced confessions, lawyers, police brutality, torture
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We’ve learned a hard lesson in Chongqing at the cost of both lives and blood.

[…] If I was to describe how they acted in Chongqing over these past few years, I’d say they were like a crazy mouse on a rollercoaster going to a slippery slide. The newly-appointed leaders of the city’s public security apparatus are strongly opposed to the way that former party chief Bo Xilai and former head of the Public Security Bureau Wang Lijun handled matters in the past.

Now many just causes are gradually being rehabilitated.

But how many people were actually detained during the crackdown? How many were prosecuted? How many were sentenced to death or re-education through labor … we need to be clear on these numbers. We have a duty to history and to the people.

[…] If we don’t reveal what really went on, if we don’t expose their crimes and terrible deeds, many ordinary people will remain in the dark and we will be on the wrong side of history.

Also at Economic Observer, Li’s own lawyer Chen Youxi outlines how Bo’s ‘Chongqing Model’ almost succeeded, the damage it did, and the lessons that should be learned.

After two years of observation and deep thought, I believe that the underlying social foundations that led to the tragedy that occurred in Chongqing, continue to exist and flourish in China today. If we don’t seriously reflect on what happened in Chongqing, the soil which cultivated the tragedy in Chongqing will continue to exist, and if it doesn’t happen in Chongqing again, it just might take place somewhere else.

[…] If Wang Lijun hadn’t defected to the U.S. embassy and set off a series of other problems, it’s likely the Chongqing Model would have been copied across the country. If that happened, what would China’s rule of law be like? The more we think about it, the more we still feel have fears even after the events in Chongqing.

[…] In fact, the Chongqing’s problems are national problems that were concentrated and exposed in one municipality. It showed us the serious consequences of not continuing to deepen reform and also the great possibility and danger of the extreme-left making a comeback.

Reflecting on Chongqing is meaningful for the whole nation.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: abuse of power, Bo Xilai, Chongqing, Chongqing Model, corruption, lawyers, Li Zhuang, murders, organised crime, rule of law, strike black, torture, Wang Lijun
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“This is a case that tramples on the rule of law. It is a declaration of war against fairness and justice in the world. I absolutely cannot accept this and am very, very angry,” said Chen Guangcheng in an interview from his home in New York where he has been studying English and law. “There is no doubt that this is a kind of retaliation against me.”

[…] Since Chen Kegui disappeared into police custody in May, Yinan authorities have not officially notified his family about the prosecution nor have they let family members see him or hire their own lawyers to defend him. Lawyers were instead appointed to him, and one of them told his father Chen Guangfu about the trial only on Friday morning.

[…] “I feel very disappointed,” the father said. “I had believed that once the new generation of leaders came to power there would be improvements in the rule of law, but now it looks like the situation is still the same.”

Activist Hu Jia, a close friend of Chen Guangcheng and one of the first people he met with after his escape, described Chen Guangfu’s predicament on Twitter as the trial was underway:

陈克贵的父亲陈光福自始至终没能直接和法院工作人员交涉上，他一进入法院大门就被沂南县的警察围住，警察们明确告知大哥只能做证人，在大哥拒绝作证人的情况下，他们不让大哥旁听。现在十余名警察围着陈光福，有些曾参与过陈光诚案。他在法庭的路对面等待庭审结束的消息。 #陈克贵

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) November 30, 2012

Chen Kegui’s father, Chen Guangfu, has at no point been able to make direct representations to the courthouse staff: as soon as he set foot through the door, he was surrounded by Yinan county police who bluntly informed him that he could only be present [if he testified] as a witness, and that if he refused they would not let him attend the trial. Now ten or so policemen are surrounding him, some of whom previously took part in Chen Guangcheng’s case. He’s waiting across the road from the courthouse for word of the hearing’s result.

11月30日，光福大哥会是最难受的人。上午主持祭奠父亲，然后马不停蹄赶到法院，想要见到身处牢狱别离218天的儿子。但却只能见证儿子被枉法审判。

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) November 30, 2012

Chen Guangfu may be the unhappiest person of all today. In the morning, he directed the memorial ceremony for his father; afterwards, he immediately dashed to the courthouse, hoping to see in person the son who’s been away in prison for 218 days. But in the end he could only witness his son’s twisted trial.

Chen explained to The Guardian that “I hoped they would tell me early so that I could prepare, but since they didn’t, there is nothing I can do. I have not heard from my son, and the lawyers appointed by government didn’t tell me anything.” Following the trial, The Guardian’s Tania Branigan reported reactions from the family’s preferred lawyers:

Chen Wuquan, who was hired by Chen Kegui’s family to defend him but rejected by the court, said: “I can’t accept the result. Chen Kegui is not guilty at all. His behaviour was legitimate self-defence, not the crime of intentional injury. From a legal perspective, the result is unacceptable.”

[…] Teng Biao, another lawyer rejected by the court, said holding the case at such short notice ensured that they had no time to reach Yinan to help the family with legal advice.

Teng added that the defendant’s relatives had not seen him since his detention, noting: “No one has a clue about his condition.”

Human rights organisations have given scathing assessments of the trial. From Amnesty International’s Roseann Rife and Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardson, respectively:

“Chen Kegui was today tried by the same court that in 2006 sentenced his uncle Chen Guangcheng to prison on trumped up charges. The family has since suffered a catalogue of abuse at the hands of local authorities which central authorities have failed to investigate despite promises to the contrary.

“The sentence is appalling. It is clear that Chen Kegui’s trial was not fair. We are concerned that sentencing him to imprisonment for something that many consider self defence is nothing more than retaliation for his uncle’s escape.”

“Prosecuting Chen Guangcheng’s nephew was a test of China’s respect for the rule of law, and both the nephew, Chen Kegui, and the rule of law lost [….] This case bore the same disturbing hallmarks as Chen Guangcheng’s persecution – incommunicado detention, denial of lawyers of his choice, and a politicized and closed trial.”

[…] “Chen Kegui’s case not only violated Chinese and international legal standards, it also suggests that the new leadership in Beijing can’t or won’t follow through on commitments to investigate local officials implicated in wrongdoing and egregious human rights abuses [….] And that in turn is a worrying indication of what lies ahead.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Amnesty International, Chen Guangcheng, chen kegui, Hu Jia, human rights watch, lawyers, Teng Biao, trials
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At the end of December, on the day of the Laba Rice Congee Festival, when Chinese families typically eat congee, a type of rice porridge, Mr. Song wanted to deliver some congee to the petitioners. I told him that if he distributed it in the evening, I could go with him. But he said that in accordance with Northern custom, the congee should be eaten at lunchtime and so Mr. Song did it on his own. On his way, he was stopped by the police, and the porridge was confiscated. On the day of the Lantern Festival, which marked the end of the annual Chinese New Year holiday, Mr. Song was detained once again, because he gave the petitioners glutinous rice dumplings.

[...] After the coldest months of the winter had passed, I contacted Mr. Song and learned that he’d turned his focus toward rescuing petitioners who were being illegally detained in the infamous black jails, ad hoc detention centers that were set up in hotels to hold “troublemakers” from outside of Beijing until they could be returned forcibly to their hometowns.

[...] After the escape of the blind, barefoot lawyer Chen Guangcheng from his farmhouse in Shandong Province, where he’d been under illegal house arrest, Mr. Song took an even more dangerous risk. He drove to Dongshigu, Mr. Chen’s village, and helped the wife of Mr. Chen’s nephew, who had also been arrested, to escape to Beijing, where she went into hiding to avoid being abused by the local government.

Song's lawyer Liang Xiaojun gives a detailed account of their meeting in a detention center before Song's disapperance. From Yaxue Cao at Seeing Red in China:

I asked how he had been taken to custody and what the interrogation had been like. He spoke fast and clear: He was seized by policemen in the morning of May 4th while waiting in Beijing South Railway Station for a petitioner who had called and asked for his help in what now looked like a premeditated trap. He was then interrogated by policemen from Fengtai District Public Security Bureau and Beijing Headquarters respectively from the afternoon to early next morning. And as Xu Zhiyong predicted, it was about his visit to the black jail in Beijing set up by Chenzhou municipality, Hunan (湖南郴州) and his rescue of petitioners there, but also his online posts to help the petitioners. He was also asked his relationship with Xu Zhiyong—how he met him and how he became a volunteer for Citizen. On May 5, he was charged with “provoking disturbances” (寻衅滋事罪) and transferred to the Fengtai detention center.

[...] After that I was taken up by other obligations. I felt that Song Ze would be released soon, because, legally I couldn’t think of anything that he could possibly be convicted with. His detention was based on charges of “provoking disturbances” (寻衅滋事) as defined by Article 293 of China’s Criminal Law. They refer to the followings: beating another person at will; chasing, intercepting or hurling insults to another person; forcibly taking or demanding, willfully damaging, destroying or occupying public or private property; creating disturbances in a public place. As far as I could see, Song Ze had simply done what a citizen should have done, and he displayed no behaviors punishable by law.

Looking back now, I was too optimistic.

[...] On June 12 I went to Fengtai District detention center again. The officer in charge of the case told me that Song Ze had been switched to residing under surveillance and taken away by people from Beijing PSB a few days ago. He said he didn’t know which department of the PSB they were from, nor did he know where they had taken Song Ze. All he could tell me was that Fengtai District was no long on the case anymore.

Xu Zhiyong also expresses his concern about Song Ze's plight and explains the operation of black jails and surveillance in China. Translation by Hannah at Seeing Red in China:

Black prisons are places where local governments illegally detain petitioners. If the petitioners try to go to the Prime Minister’s house or foreign embassies near Dongjiaominxiang (东交民巷), Wangfujing Street (王府井大街) or other places where they are not supposed to petition, they could be taken away by police. During the so-called sensitive time of Two Meetings each year, they could be apprehended just passing through Chang’an Street (长安街) and being found carrying petitioning materials. All these are labeled “irregular petitioning” and the petitioners who have been rounded up are sent to Jiu Jing Zhuang (久敬庄), the detention and deportation center run by the State Bureau of Letters and Calls. Jiu Jing Zhuang would order local governments’ Beijing offices to take away petitioners from their jurisdictions on the same day they arrive in Jiu Jing Zhuang. However, most petitioners cannot be dispatched back to their homes that same day. They must wait to be sent home, perhaps needing a few days or a few weeks, and this turns into a profiteering opportunity for some people.

People running the black prisons are those who have connections with officials in the State Bureau of Letters and Calls or local governments’ Beijing offices. They rent hotel basements, hire thugs, forcibly take the petitioners from Jiu Jing Zhuang, illegally detain them, and then order the local governments to come to get the petitioners and pay a fee for the latters’ stay. They fetch 80 to 200 RMB per petitioner per day.

[...] In reality, residing under surveillance is more formidable than imprisonment. According to the new Criminal Procedure Law, the authority may designate the location for residing under surveillance, but it shall notify their relatives. But China being China, Song Ze’s family has not received any notification. He can still meet with his lawyer when detained in the detention center, but it’s been more than 40 days since he was put under residential surveillance, no one has been able to see Song Ze; and the PSB has refused to answer any questions on his whereabouts.

See more on China's criminal procedure law and black jails via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, black jails, civil society, criminal procedure law, illegal detentions, lawyers, surveillance, Xu Zhiyong
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Bo’s immediate family has been warned not to hire any lawyers, according to two people close to his wife’s family. And two lawyers retained by his mother-in-law on his behalf have been unable to visit the formerly powerful party chief, they said, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal.

[…] According to others involved, the lawyers plan to go to Bo’s prison in coming days in a last-ditch effort to see him if authorities do not respond to their request for access to him.

Rejecting such face-to-face meetings has become a standard way for the Chinese government to thwart independent representation in politically sensitive cases that could embarrass the party.

Wan adds that Bo’s wife Gu Kailai, who has already received a suspended death sentence, has also been kept in a secret location and denied family visits.

See more on Bo Xilai via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, Chongqing, gu kailai, lawyers, legal defense, legal system, political scandal, trials
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Interference is not limited to high-profile cases, however, and is not always so aggressive. At Caixin, criminal defence lawyer Zhang Yansheng recalls advising a client through a frosted plastic partition, which blocked effective communication for much of their meeting.

As a professional criminal defense lawyer, I have been to detention centers everywhere. They are of course all different, but at a recent visit with an inmate, we were separated by pane of frosted glass.

[…] It has been more than a month since I came back from Foshan City, but I just can’t wipe that blurred face and muddy voice from my memory. A colleague laughed at me by saying, “You were not there on a date. What does it matter that you didn’t see the person’s face?”

But yes, we are often forced reluctantly to work under such conditions and people much too often accept it as normal. But has anyone thought about how many wrong verdicts have come about because of such tough conditions? How many have lost their lives unjustly because of these restrictions?

In the detention center, ripping away those plastic boards and replacing them with steel bars would have transformed the way the lawyers meet their clients and would have made the meeting much more productive. Effective communication would be beneficial to the criminal proceedings themselves, but would also show criminal suspects that they are fairly treated. Would the detention center ever think to allow that?

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Bo Xilai, Chen Guangcheng, detention, Foshan, gu kailai, Guangdong, Jerome cohen, lawyers, legal defense, legal system, Liu Xiaoyuan, prisoners' rights, pu zhiqiang
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Like other high profile victims of the Chinese government’s hostility to peaceful dissent, Ni has been motivated in her work by a powerful sense of injustice. Ni focused on the epidemic of forced evictions and demolitions across vast swathes of Beijing, which accelerated in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

In September 2002, that activism, and particularly her filming of a forced eviction, gave her a year in prison for “obstructing official business,” along with the revocation of her lawyer’s license. Undaunted, Ni continued to denounce illegal evictions and unfair compensation after her release. Just before the Beijing Olympics, Ni was sentenced to two years in prison after trying to stop the demolition of her own home. While in prison, she was tortured and denied adequate medical care.

[…] As the ruling Chinese Communist Party undertakes its historic transition from the era of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao to presumed successors Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, pundits will spill no shortage of ink trying to define the fruits of the Party’s 62-year monopoly on power and its future direction.

Ni Yulan, unbowed in her prison cell, could give them an earful.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Beijing Olympics, Beijing, forced demolitions, Hu Jintao, human rights watch, lawyers, leadership transition, Li Keqiang, Ni Yulan, Wen Jiabao, Xi Jinping
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Prosecutors said previously that Ni had swindled a person out of 5,000 yuan ($780) for “fabricating her identity as a lawyer”. [Ni's license to practice was revoked in 2002.]

The court ruled that the contributions to Ni were donations, the couple’s lawyer Cheng Hai told Reuters by telephone.

“We’ve won partially,” Cheng said. “It wasn’t easy. But if everyone persists, there’s still hope. The path of the rule of law, no matter how tough it is, is still improving.”

Cheng also reported that Ni appears “terribly malnourished”. The verdict follows US-China human rights talks in Washington earlier this week, in which Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner says Ni’s case was raised. Human Rights Watch’s Phelim Kine pointed out on Twitter, however, that while he is “Glad Ni Yulan got fraud charge tossed, [… the] spurious ‘disturbance’ conviction keeps her in prison until late 2014“. The disturbance charges, for which her husband Dong Jiqin is also serving a two year sentence, related to their refusal to check out of a hotel which Ni claims was actually a black jail.

See also Paul Mooney’s 2011 profile of Ni Yulan, and more on the activist via CDT.

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Post tags: black jail, forced demolitions, fraud, human rights watch, lawyers, Michael Posner, Ni Yulan
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Today, China still has not been able to leave behind authoritarianism, power monopolies, rampant corruption, the wealth disparity, violent housing demolitions, education imbalance, and the black hole of social security … the root of these weighty social problems is autocracy; the Chinese nation needs to move with the historic tide of great civic movements, moving from bottom to top, from political and social to cultural, from the awakening of individual citizens to the revitalization of the entire Chinese civilization.

[…] The goal of the New Citizens’ Movement is a free China ruled by democracy and law, a just and happy civil society with “freedom, righteousness, love” as the new national spirit.

The core of the New Citizen’s Movement is “the citizen.” This is an individual concept as well as a political and social concept. The citizen is not a subject; the citizen is an independent and free entity, and he or she obeys the communal contract and legal process. He or she does not have to kneel down to any given person. The citizen is not a layman — the citizen is the master of the country. The ruler’s power must come from election by the entire citizenry, bidding farewell to the barbaric logic of the “barrel of the gun regime.” Citizens are neither docile nor a mob; citizens are happy to share in the order of justice and the responsibility to have integrity, magnanimity, moderation, and rationality.

Read more about Xu Zhiyong via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: citizens' movement, civil society, lawyers, Xu Zhiyong
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Having traveled for about half an hour, first on highway and then over a bumpy road, we arrived and got out of the car. Intuitively I tried to remove the black cover over my head when a man huffed, “Don’t!” and two men seized me by the arms.

We got into a room, as I sensed, and I was pressed down into what seemed to me like the corner of a sofa. I was stripped of my belt, my shoe laces and everything I had with me. People were shuffling in and out of the room. One voice said to me, “For now, think what you have done lately. Think hard! We’ll ask you questions in the afternoon!” I sat still and said nothing.

Xu recalls that last year he was detained by security police for organizing “a relatively large-scale petition for equal rights for education”. He was taken to a hot-spring resort but refused to cooperate with security police in this so-called “tourism”. On both occasions, Xu protested his illegal detention by refusing to accept the meals provided by security officers.

After an officer threatened to prosecute Xu for “inciting subversion of state power”, Xu argued that “all of our efforts are to protect the liberty and human rights of each and every Chinese …. No one will be able to reverse the historical tide, so don’t overdo it.”

Xu attributed the relatively humane treatment he received to “wide attention” from the outside world, contrasting this with other cases of illegal detention involving physical abuse and even deaths. He expressed gratitude towards the “new citizens” who are concerned with human rights conditions in China. He ascribed his detention and harassment to his endless efforts to promote civil rights and stated that he would be willing to “pay a price for the freedom of the people”. From Seeing Red in China:

The new civil movement calls individual citizens to spread the principles of democracy and rule of law, to abide a civil code of actions, to reject privileges and corruption. And we advocate liberty, justice and love, which is the spirit of the new civic movement. Our mission is to end, from the root, the cycle of regime change through violence and give freedom back to each and every Chinese. This is the reason for which I lost my own freedom for the time being.

Xu signed his blog post “Citizen Xu Zhiyong”: his organisation, ‘Citizen’, has been distributing pins bearing the Chinese characters for the term, 公民 gongmin, in Sun Yat-sen’s handwriting. A recent post on CDT described the “decapitation” of Sina Weibo users who had adopted these characters as their avatars.

Xu was accused of tax evasion in 2010, but the case was dismissed soon afterwards. Read more about Xu Zhiyong on China Digital Times.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: civil society, human rights conditions, illegal detentions, lawyers, Xu Zhiyong
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Five times a week, under the guidance of an English tutor at New York University’s law school, Chen has been using the Declaration of Independence as a makeshift textbook. The 236-year-old document can make for difficult reading, but for a man who spent most of the past decade imprisoned in China while fighting for the rights of his fellow villagers, it resonates deeply. And so he persists, breaking down the syllables into manageable parts.

[…] Today, the 40-year-old self-taught lawyer and his family are still adjusting to the change — from being confined to the bare-walled room where they were watched by authorities in rural Shangdong province to a new three-bedroom apartment in bustling Lower Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, supported by tutors, law professors, PR managers, interpreters and security personnel.

The international spotlight on them has faded, but its glare is still felt in the form of entreaties from agents, politicians, reporters and activist groups. Chen and his wife have received calls from the well-meaning (disability groups wanted to give him a guide dog, Chinese American Christians offered their vacation homes) and from those with less altruistic aims (Hollywood producers are pushing to buy the movie rights to his story and a raft of TV news producers are vying to book him).

Chen is determined not to be sidetracked, however. His main focus remains on China, and most urgently on his own family and supporters who remain there. From Erik Eckholm at The New York Times:

In an interview Monday, Mr. Chen, 40, a blind, self-taught lawyer, displayed anger at the Beijing government for failing so far to investigate the local officials who persecuted him and beat his relatives. He and his wife, Yuan Weixing, said they remained desperately worried about the harsh treatment of those they left behind in Shandong Province.

In previous statements, Mr. Chen expressed hopes for rapid legal changes in China and said he took Beijing officials at their word when they promised to punish provincial officials who he said had exceeded their powers.

On Monday, he repeated his belief that the rule of law is inevitable. But he has seen no signs, he said, of an honest inquiry into what many experts call his blatantly illegal treatment over the years, retaliation for agitating on behalf of the disabled, farmers and women who were forced to have abortions. Sounding more defiant than he did right after his arrival on May 19, he threatened to embarrass the Chinese government severely if they did not act soon.

“If they don’t open an investigation in a timely manner, I will quickly make my next step,” he said. “Then the central government will not have an opportunity to be the good guy.”

Chen would not give details of this “next step”, but told Radio Free Asia in an interview last month that “there are things that I still have not made public—I don’t feel it is yet the time. The day I do so, those with any conscience at all will be shocked.”

Foreign Policy, meanwhile, has published an interview with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, conducted immediately after the fraught negotiations which ultimately secured Chen’s passage to the US. Details of her account are scattered throughout the article, which concludes with some speculation on China’s long-term political motives for the deal.

Until our conversation, Clinton had said virtually nothing publicly about the case of Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident whose fate had become the object of a week of frenetic negotiations when his escape from village house arrest to the U.S. Embassy collided with a visit to Beijing by Clinton herself. Amid the unfolding drama, the secretary had smiled and nodded her way through elaborately choreographed high-level annual talks and a variety of photo ops at which she gamely recited paeans to constructive dialogue and plugged cut-rate cookstoves for the developing world.

But Clinton had in fact spent the last few days in hard-nosed deal-making with the Chinese that nearly ended in an embarrassing failure, until she personally intervened, twice, with her counterpart, Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo: the first time to reassure Dai about a deal to allow Chen to stay in China and study law; then, when Chen balked at that, to secure agreement that he and his family could leave for the United States. “We were in a very difficult position because we had pushed their system just about to the breaking point,” recalled a senior official who was present. “We knew it, they knew it, and they knew we knew it.”

Other US officials have previously disclosed their version of events to The Washington Post (via CDT).

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, Dai Bingguo, Hillary Clinton, lawyers, legal system, new york city
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Last weekend, overnight, the security presence vanished. From Didi Tang at the Associated Press:

So thorough was the cleanup this past weekend that locals said the surveillance cameras trained on Chen home had been removed and the high voltage street lamps dimmed. Two adjoining huts built at the village’s entrance to house the guards — and where outsiders trying to visit Chen had been beaten — had been torn down. Even the trash they piled up had been taken away.

“It was as if the whole thing evaporated,” said Chen’s older brother, Chen Guangfu, who lives in the village with several others in the Chen family. “I feel liberated.”

[…] Rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, a friend of Chen Guangcheng, said local authorities likely got rid of the surveillance to destroy evidence ahead of a promised investigation by the central government.

“If Beijing wants to go through the motion, it can do so” with the absence of evidence, Jiang said. “But if Beijing wants a real investigation, it can still do so because there are plenty of witnesses.”

Such an investigation is one of two urgent remaining tasks in Chen’s case, argues Ng Tze-wei at the South China Morning Post.

[…] The second is guaranteeing the fair handling of the prosecution of Chen Kegui, the activist’s nephew, who was arrested and charged with “killing with intent” after he waved a knife and injured three officers who barged into his house on April 26 in Linyi, Shandong, after his uncle’s escape came to light.

Beijing lawyer Ding Xikui said the last time Chen Kegui’s wife heard from him was via text message in the early hours of April 27, when he asked her to help him hire a lawyer. But when Ding and another renowned defence lawyer from Shanghai, Si Weijiang, tried to approach the police bureau in charge of the case, they were told that Chen Kegui had already requested legal aid counsel, so neither Ding nor Si could see him.

Assigning government-friendly lawyers in sensitive cases has become a common tactic for mainland authorities in recent years – even though it is against the spirit of the law, as it strips the defendant of the right to select a lawyer.

In this case, the appointment of a legal aid lawyer is particularly ridiculous because legal aid exists to protect of the rights of defendants who cannot afford a lawyer. It should be granted only when a defendant can’t afford a lawyer, rather than be used as an excuse to prevent a defendant hiring a lawyer of his choice.

While the grip on Dongshigu may finally have relaxed, politics and money continue to drive the expansion of extra-legal security operations against “perceived troublemakers” elsewhere. From Charles Hutzler at the Associated Press:

While China has long been a police state, controls on these non-offenders mark a new expansion of police resources at a time the authoritarian leadership is consumed with keeping its hold over a fast-changing society.

“Social activists that no one has ever heard of have 10 people watching them,” said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. “The task is to identify and nip in the bud any destabilizing factors for the regime.”

Mostly unknown outside their communities, the activists are a growing portion of what’s called the “targeted population” — a group that also includes criminal suspects and anyone deemed a threat. They are singled out for overwhelming surveillance and by one rights group’s count amount to an estimated one in every 1,000 Chinese — or well over a million.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, Dongshigu, human rights watch, illegal detentions, Jiang Tianyong, lawyers, legal aid, linyi, security guards, Shandong, surveillance
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