Authorities in Shaoyang city in central Hunan province told family members of Zhu Chengzhi, 62, last Friday that he would be put under “residential surveillance” under “Article 73″, Zhu’s wife, Zeng Qiulian, told Reuters by telephone on Monday. Article 73 legalizes detaining people in secret.

[…] Article 73 legalizes a practice that began in earnest in 2011. Fearing that anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world could inspire challenges to Communist rule, the government unlawfully held dozens of activists, including artist Ai Weiwei, for weeks or months in secret detention.

[…] Police had charged Zhu with “incitement to subvert state power” after he posted photos online following the death of his friend, Li Wangyang, who was found in a hospital ward in Shaoyang, his neck tied with a noose made from cotton bandages.

Authorities said it was suicide – a verdict that angered thousands of scholars, lawyers and activists.

See more on Li’s case via CDT. Zhu had already been held for over six months since his detention on June 9th, days after Li’s death. A fuller account of Zhu’s story is available at the Dui Hua Human Rights Journal:

Public criticism over the “disappearance clauses” may have ultimately contributed to some salutary changes to the legislation, including the removal of exemptions for providing notification of residential surveillance (but not carrying out residential surveillance in a designated residence). Under the revised CPL, which took effect on January 1, 2013, police are thus required to give notice to relatives within 24 hours of all individuals being subjected to “non-residential residential surveillance.” This limits the ability of police to make an individual disappear without a trace, but the practice of non-residential residential surveillance remains deeply problematic, even though its inclusion in the CPL has given it a veneer of legitimacy.

This situation is illustrated by the case of Zhu Chengzhi, who, according to Zhu’s defense lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan, is likely to be the first person in China to be placed in this form of residential surveillance (the number of the notice issued by local police is “A01”) since the new CPL took effect earlier this month. Zhu, age 62, was detained in June 2012 by police in Shaoyang, Hunan, after he allegedly disseminated information that raised doubts about local authorities’ official finding of suicide in the death of his friend and long-time political prisoner Li Wangyang (李旺阳). After reportedly refusing to sign a guarantee that he would cease his efforts to draw attention to suspicions surrounding Li’s death, Zhu was placed under criminal detention on suspicion of “inciting subversion,” charges for which he was formally arrested on July 25, 2012.

After five months of incommunicado detention, Zhu’s case was transferred to prosecutors on December 25. On January 4 (the first day of business for Chinese government offices following the New Year’s Day holiday), Zhu’s wife, Zeng Qiulian, retained Liu Xiaoyuan to represent her husband. That same day, the Shaoyang People’s Procuratorate handed the case back to police for additional investigation, and police decided to place Zhu under residential surveillance and delivered an official notification (translated below) to his wife.

See more on the controversy over Article 73 and other CPL amendments via CDT, including reactions from cartoonists and weibo users.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, Article 73, criminal procedure law, detention, Hunan, incitement, li wangyang, Liu Xiaoyuan, subversion, Zhu Chengzhi
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Chen’s lawyer, He Huixin, wrote a lengthy defense of his client, citing an argument put forward in support of Chen Duxiu, a Communist Party co-founder charged with similar crimes by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist regime in 1933: that criticism doesn’t necessarily equate to subversion. The government’s case against Chen didn’t seem to prove that he sought to bring down the system, says [Joshua] Rosenzweig: “The underlying weakness was the underlying weakness in most inciting subversion cases—the tendency to see criticism of the Communist Party and its polices as an attempt to undermine the entire political system.”

[…] Still, a widespread relaxation in the way China handles such sensitive cases appears unlikely. “Chinese courts don’t set precedent in the way they do in common-law jurisdictions, so the way this case is handled doesn’t necessarily bind [other] judges,” says Rosenzweig. Sadly, the Chen verdict may prove to be a rare happy outcome.

In a previous report in September, Ramzy described some of Chen’s writings:

[…] Prosecutors in Lanzhou identified 34 in particular as evidence of the charge of inciting subversion. The titles include “I Can’t Bear Humiliation in Silence,” “The Call to Overthrow the Dictators Has Sounded” and “I Want Freedom, Respect and to Live Like a Normal Person.” They all bear the distinct voice of an educated man who once held a respected position in society enraged by the abuse he endures as an outcast hustling for a living on the streets. “Yesterday I saw a gang of fierce, imposing chengguan who drove away a middle-aged shoeshine man,” he wrote in a 2010 essay called “A Weasel Serves the Chickens.” “That shoeshine man wasn’t doing anything to inconvenience pedestrians, so why did they drive him off? If it weren’t for family difficulties or a lack of money, who would subserviently shine shoes like that?”

Chen places much of the blame for the injustices he faced on authoritarian system, and by endorsing the Arab Spring last year he made himself a target for the crackdown that followed in China. In an essay from February 2011, titled “Study the Egyptians, We Don’t Want to Be Fooled Again,” he wrote, “I’m convinced that if we didn’t have the [Communist] Party’s leadership, this society would finally be harmonious and peaceful.” […]

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Post tags: Arab Spring, chengguan, freedom of speech, incitement, Lanzhou, online publishing, police, subversion
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Li Yuanlong, who once worked as a reporter for the state-run Bijie Daily in the city of Bijie in Guizhou province, was taken to the airport along with his wife early Wednesday afternoon and “told to take a vacation” his son, Li Muzi, told China Real Time on Friday.

[…] The Bijie Public Security Bureau could not be reached for comment. A person answering the phone at the Bijie city government propaganda office said Mr. Li was traveling with his wife, citing messages posted to former journalist’s account on the web portal KDnet. “They are very happy now! That’s his own personal matter – why are you asking us?” the person said before hanging up.

[…] Li Fangping, a Beijing-based lawyer who has been keeping track of the situation, said that he had talked to Li Yuanlong when he was on his way to the airport. “I can confirm that he is travelling under control,” the lawyer, who is not related to Li Yuanlong, said.

“This is a way for (the local government) to maintain stability,” he added. “The public still wants more details, even though the local government has already dismissed the relevant people. Because Li Yuanlong is the main information provider, and because he was a reporter who has a lot of friends in the media, they authorities are afraid that people will continue to contact him in search of more clues or that Li might even leak out information about other instances of social injustice.”

Chin had previously explored why this story in particular resonated so deeply with the public. Also from China Real Time Report:

Stories of suffering children are always hard to stomach, but they tend to hit with particular impact in China, where the one-child policy and a strong belief in the family as the most basic unit of society have combined to imbue the young with an aura of unsurpassed importance. In this case, the impact of appears to have been amplified by similarities between what happened to the brothers and the Hans Christian Anderson short story “The Little Match Girl.”

The story, about a poor Danish girl who dies from exposure on New Year’s Eve after running away from her abusive father and trying to sell matches on the street, was once included in Chinese primary school text books as an example of the difficulties faced by the poor in capitalist countries.

[…] Cao Lin, a columnist for the state-run China Youth Daily, [wrote:] “At a time when we’re crowing about the rise of the nation and the creation of a moderately well-off society, to have five children die while seeking warmth in a trash bin is truly bizarre [….”]

Cao Lin was one of many in the state media to ask what had gone wrong, and who was to blame. Eight local officials were swiftly identified and fired. From Lin Xi at Global Times:

Eight local officials including two district chiefs in charge of civil affairs and education were dismissed or suspended from their duties by the Bijie municipal party committee on Monday because of the accident. Some people believe that these boys’ families and society should bear the primary responsibility for the accident instead of the officials. They think that it was the ignorance and indifference from the boys’ relatives and society which caused this tragedy.

However, the officials are not innocent because it is their duty to guarantee every citizen’s safety. The death of the five boys reflects management problems within government.

If the education system was better, these boys would have been taking lessons in warm classrooms instead of leaving school. If the assistance system was more active, they could have been found earlier and may have escaped death. Indeed, governments and officials have done nothing which directly caused this accident. However, it was the officials’ inaction which left the boys to die in the cold.

Many doubted, however that the sacking these eight officials had adequately addressed the root of the problem. From Rachel Wang at Tea Leaf Nation:

[…] As @bll2012 opined: “We are used to finding scapegoats when we encounter problems, then they give you a scapegoat! Then you shut up! You are so pathetic! Why not find the real cause: The failure of the social protection system.” Independent Chinese media Caixin (@财新网) also sounded a note of caution: “The tragedy in Guizhou did not only reflect management loopholes in Bijie alone, but also the defects of the mechanism protecting Chinese children’s rights. China is among the few countries that does not have a professional child welfare department. Administrative systems for child protection and rescue urgently need to be built.”

Therefore, according to the lawyer Li Fangping, Li Yuanlong was detained to prevent the damage from spreading any further. At The Daily Beast, Duncan Hewitt linked his treatment to the cases of Zhai Xiaobing (@stariver) and Ren Jianyu, and suggested—as did Charles Custer at ChinaGeeks—that while local government may be directly responsible, the political climate in which such actions are tolerated and encouraged is one of Beijing’s making:

Li’s detention echoes what is now a common pattern in China, in which sensitive individuals are removed from circulation at sensitive times, and held either under effective house arrest at home, or in what are known as “black [i.e. unofficial] jails.” During the run-up to the recent Communist Party Congress, rights groups say over a hundred people faced such treatment—including the well-known human-rights activist Hu Jia, who was only released from a three-year jail sentence last year.

In some cases the hard line taken against dissidents may be the choice of local authorities rather than necessarily being decreed from the center, says Professor Kerry Brown, executive director of the China Studies Center at the University of Sydney, but he adds that it is nevertheless a sign of the prevailing mood in Chinese political circles:

“The golden rule seems to be that no one gets bad marks for picking on dissidents and others labeled trouble makers,” he says, “while for those who are lenient, on the other hand, the risks if things go wrong are still high.

Furthermore, a Central Propaganda Department directive previously published by CDT suggested that Beijing, while allowing some coverage, had chosen to grant local government considerable control:

[… Y]ou may report moderately on the incident according to Xinhua wire copy and authoritative information released by the local government. Do not put this news on the front page, do not lure readers to the story, do not link to the story, to do not comment on it, and do not dispatch journalists to the scene.

Li, the primary remaining conduit of information on the case, had long been a thorn in the side of local authorities. In 2006, he was sentenced to two years in prison for allegedly inciting subversion in a series of articles posted to overseas Chinese websites. From the Committee to Protect Journalists’ report on his trial in May 2006:

“Like many committed reporters in China, Li Yuanlong began posting his articles online after facing censorship at his newspaper,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. “He is guilty of nothing more than expressing his criticism of official actions and should never have been brought to trial. We call for his immediate and unconditional release.”

Li reported for Bijie Ribao on rural poverty and unemployment in his native Guizhou province and had frequently been censored in recent years because of complaints by local officials embarrassed by his reports, according to the New York-based advocacy group Human Rights in China and CPJ sources.

[…] Li pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and his lawyer rejected the notion that his criticism threatened state authority.

“He only criticized wrongdoings of some Communist Party officials or local governments,” the lawyer told Reuters. “The Communist Party and state power is not the same concept.”

At EastSouthWestNorth, Roland Soong translated one of Li’s essays, On Becoming an American Citizen in Spirit, originally posted to exile site Boxun under the pen name Ye Lang (Night Wolf). In it, Li pecked at the raw nerve of China’s ‘crucifixion’ by foreign imperialists, defending former Peking University professor Jiao Guobiao‘s suggestion that it would have been better for the U.S. to “liberate” China from Communist rule at the end of the Korean War:

[…] If America really sent its soldiers to drive for Beijing, then this is more than ‘interfering internal politics of other countries’ and it is really the invasion by the ‘world police.’ I have been pondering why interfering in the internal politics of other countries and being the world police man have become terms of denigration that are natural and indisputable in “our” vocabulary. If your internal politics is a totalitarian regime covered up by dark curtains, then why should not the police in charge of maintaining world peace come and show you? As a common example, I am beating my wife and kids at home and someone else (such as the police) comes to stop me. I yell: “I’m beating my wife and my kids. What is this to outsiders? Why are you entitled to mind my family business?” Is that acceptable? As another example, a Chinese person falls into the river, or his house catches fire. There is an American on the side, but the patriots won’t let the Chinese person accept the help of the American. Instead, the Chinese person must wait for other Chinese to save him. The Chinese person will have to “sacrifice himself for the greater good.” Is this not the modernized version under the cover of patriotism of the old saying “It is a minor matter to starve to death; it is a major matter to lose your chastity”?

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: central propaganda department, china youth daily, Committee to Protect Journalists, Global Times, Guizhou, Hu Jia, illegal detentions, jiao guobiao, journalists, Korean War, Li Fangping, Li Yuanlong, local government, local officials, Ministry of Truth, poverty, poverty alleviation, subversion, vacation-style treatment
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Some initial reactions from Twitter:

CPL reflects balance of power in pol institutions: Security apparatus did not get everything they wanted, but still increase their powers.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) March 14, 2012

(See ‘Legalizing the Tools of Repression‘ for context.)

The threat of up to six months of incommunicado detention in a police ‘guesthouse’ now hangs over the head of every government critic. Grim.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) March 14, 2012

当不义写进法律，则反抗就成为义务。

— 北风（温云超） (@wenyunchao) March 14, 2012

Wen Yunchao: “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”

包括秘捕条款在内许多侵犯人权行为的刑诉法，最终以赞成2639 反对160 弃权57获得通过。这些短视的橡皮图章共同构筑的疯狂，会被经济不景气这个即将到来的大浪掀得东倒西歪。再严苛的管控，都无法解决制度不良造成的就业形势艰难、贫富差距加大、通货膨胀攀升等要命大难题

— 冉云飞 (@ranyunfei) March 14, 2012

Ran Yunfei: “The Criminal Procedure Law, whose secret detention provisions contain numerous infringements of human rights, has finally passed with 2,639 votes for, 160 against, and 57 abstentions. The madness that these short sighted rubber-stampers have built together will be wrecked by the coming wave of economic recession. The perilously great problems that have arisen from systemic failures—poor employment prospects, an expanding gap between rich and poor, rising inflation, and so on—cannot be resolved by means of ever-harsher controls.”

历史上最长的年头是1984，苏联在1984徘徊了74个春夏秋冬。我共朝的1984也已持续63个四季。“严冬已经来临，春天还会远吗？”

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) March 14, 2012

Hu Jia: “The longest year in history is 1984. In the Soviet Union, 1984 dragged on for 74 springs, summers, autumns and winters. Under our current dynasty, it’s already lasted 63 years. ‘If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’ [the closing line of Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind']“

For more on the amendment, see CDT’s previous coverage: most recently, ‘Does China’s New Detention Law Matter?‘, ‘Al Jazeera: Inside China’s “Black Jails”‘ and ‘Chatting with China’s Security Apparatus‘.

See also some satirical cartoons on the subject: ‘Article 73 in an Iron House‘, ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…’ by Hexie Farm for CDT, and another at Hexie Farm’s own site.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, criminal procedure law, criminal rights, Hu Jia, legal reform, national security, NPC, Ran Yunfei, subversion, terrorism, Wen Yunchao
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A Chinese court has sentenced a dissident writer to seven years in prison over a poem he wrote urging his countrymen to gather at a public square, a human rights group said Friday.

The hefty sentence comes ahead of next week’s visit to the U.S. by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping— widely expected to be China’s next leader — where he is likely to face questions on human rights.

A court in Hangzhou city sentenced dissident Zhu Yufu on Friday in a hearing attended by his ex-wife and son, said the Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Zhu’s ex-wife and lawyers could not immediately be reached.

Zhu is among a group of writers and intellectuals targeted by Chinese authorities in a crackdown aimed at preventing Arab Spring-style popular uprisings.

Three other dissidents have received nine- and 10-year prison terms for subversion or inciting subversion over the last few months.

The Guardian has quoted Zhu’s son, who describes the activities that landed Zhu in court:

Zhu Yufu was jailed for “inciting subversion of state power” by a court in Hangzhou, eastern China, after a trial hearing on 31 January when prosecutors cited a poem and messages he had sent on the internet, his son Zhu Ang told Reuters.

The poem said: “It’s time, Chinese people! It’s time. The Square belongs to all.” References to a “square” might evoke memories among many Chinese people of Tiananmen Square in Beijing, though the poem did not mention it or the 1989 pro-democracy protests.

Prosecutors also cited text messages that he sent using Skype. There was no suggestion that the online chat service helped police to collect evidence.

[...]He [Zhu Ang] said the verdict cited his father’s online calls for mobilisation in the name of democracy.

An English translation of the entire poem can be seen on Bruce Hume’s blog.

BBC further quotes Zhu’s son, and gives a brief outline of Zhu’s earlier clashes with the State:

“Basically, the only chance that my father had to say anything was when he was being taken out after the hearing, and he stopped and said, ‘I want to appeal’.”

Mr Zhu, a veteran activist who turns 59 this month, was involved in the 1979 Democracy Wall movement, which pressed for faster change in China.

He has been jailed twice before for his activism – in 1999 for seven years and in 2007 for two years.

Zhu’s incarceration comes just as Vice President Xi Jinping prepares to visit the U.S. The sentencing happened in spite of a recent meeting between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden (who will be Xi Jinping’s host) and China focused human rights activists. From the Taipei Times:

In the meeting, Biden and the activists “discussed the deterioration of China’s human rights situation, prospects for reform and recommendations for US policy,” a White House statement said.

“The vice president underscored the administration’s belief in the universality of human rights and its commitment to human rights as a fundamental part of our foreign policy,” it said.

“He reiterated his view that greater openness and protection of universal rights is the best way to promote innovation, prosperity and stability in all countries, including China,” it said.

An AFP report describes U.S. State Department appeals on Zhu’s behalf:

“We are deeply concerned about these reports that he has been found guilty of inciting subversion of state power and sentenced to seven years in prison for writing a poem,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

[...]“We call on the Chinese government to release Zhu Yufu and all others detained for exercising their rights and to respect the universal human rights of all their citizens,” she added.

© josh rudolph for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activism, dissidents, political prisoners, subversion, Zhu Yufu
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The Wukan protest, in particular, resonates with many great uprisings in China’s history such as the Leiyang rebellion of 1844. In the early 1840s, local intellectuals in Hunan’s Leiyang County adamantly petitioned higher authorities against local tax abuses. The arrest and torture of a leading petitioner unleashed an armed revolt in which villagers seized the county seat and set up their own local government, which was short-lived and was crushed by imperial government forces. After the crackdown, the grievances against the Qing state continued to brew in the area and prepared many locals to embrace the Taiping Rebellion that shook the very foundation of Qing rule in the 1850s.

Despite their democratic demand and parallel with uprisings in Chinese history, we should also notice the Wukan protesters’ emphasis of their loyalty to the central government and their begging for mercy and aid from the highest authorities. In the Haimen protest, we likewise see protesters kneel during their action to beg for intervention from higher authorities to stop the construction of a second power plant. In this regard, these protests are not much different from most other recent local protests that are militant against local authorities but submissive toward the central government. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, China watchers rested much hope on such confrontational local protests and cast them as precursors to larger-scale movements that could radically change the status quo. But these waves of unrest came and went and the party-state remained in control.

In my book, which surveys thousands of cases of protests in China’s imperial past, I found that similar waves of violent resistance against local governments, coupled with humble petitions to the power center (such as the wave in the early nineteenth century), cannot be explained simply by contingent political-economic factors, but had much to do with a deep-rooted Confucianist conception of authority and justice. Under this conception, abused subjects have a right to fight corrupt officials by any means necessary, but they should also count on the emperor as the loving grand patriarch to redress the injustice, just like children abused by their parents should look to their grandparents or lineage elders for paternalist protection. Sometimes the imperial authorities would compromise to the most submissive protesters as a way to exemplify mercy and increase legitimacy.

See also previous CDT coverage of the Wukan incident and analysis published in its aftermath (in reverse chronological order):

- Land Grabs: Why Take The Risk?

- Wukan Protest Leader Named Party Chief

- Wang Zhanyang on Wukan and Village Autonomy

- Wukan and the Rule of Law

- The Third Wheel: China’s Legal System

- Wu Si on Wukan and Civil Rights

- Hu Deping on Wukan and Land Rights

- “Wukan” on Sina Weibo: Unblocked as Protest Postponed (Update)

- Government Backs Down to Wukan Villagers

- More Protests in Guangdong as Wukan Delays March (Updated)

- Organized Wukan Villagers Plan Next Steps

- With Roadblock Strengthening, Wukan Remains Defiant

- Netizens Show Support for Wukan Revolt

- Wukan Honors Martyr Amid Siege

- Wukan Rejects Ransom, Siege Continues (Updated)

- Villager dies, Wukan Under Siege (Updated)

- Land Grab Protest in S. China Simmers for 4th day

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chinese history, Confucianism, subversion, Wukan
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First off, you’ll see that the two offenses involve different sorts of behavior: “organizing, plotting, or carrying out” subversive acts on the one hand versus “inciting others” to do so “by spreading rumors or slanders or any other means.” In other words, “subversion” is primarily an offense of association or concrete action—the individual must be personally involved with actions designed to lead to overthrow of the political system—whereas “inciting subversion” is an offense of expression in which the danger lies in the alleged potential for that expression to lead others to want to overthrow the political system.

As a rule of thumb, then, individuals involved in any kind of organization like the China Democracy Party or the New Youth Study Society will most likely be charged with subversion. Individuals who have published articles critical of the government are usually punished with inciting subversion. Unfortunately, that distinction doesn’t alway hold in practice (a point to which I’ll return below) ….

The problem is that the offenses of “subversion” and “inciting subversion” were written into law before the Internet came along and destroyed the clear distinction between speech and association. Many Internet cases involve a combination of association and expression. If I post articles advocating the need for an opposition party to a group of people in a chat room, is that organization or incitement? If my articles focus more on the structure or goals of my opposition party, then it might be argued that I’m organizing a subversive group. If my articles focus more on criticizing the tyranny of one-party rule, then it could very likely be construed as incitement.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: China Democracy Party, criminal law, legal system, new youth study group, sentencing, subversion
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The court in Wuhan in central China tried Li Tie in April last year but only declared him guilty on Tuesday of “subversion of state power ,” the relative , who declined to be named for fear of retribution, told Reuters by telephone.

The charge is more serious than the one of incitement, often used against critics of the ruling Communist Party.

“He said in court: ‘I’m not guilty. When have I subverted state power?’” the relative said.

“The state has made this conclusion against him,” the relative said. “You can’t understand it. Under these circumstances, you’re helpless. But this is our reality. He sat in front of the computer subverting state power.’”

Li becomes the third activist in less than a month to receive a long jail sentence for online writings, as the Chinese government continues to tighten its grip on free expression amid concerns over the domestic fallout from last year’s Arab Spring protests. His family told the Associated Press that the court in Wuhan refused to allow Li to choose his own lawyer and instead appointed one for him:

“From the beginning to the end, it has been all nonsense,” said the family member. “The question of subverting state power does not exist.”

Li will appeal the sentence if the family is able to hire a lawyer, the relative said.

A man at the Wuhan court office who answered the phone hung up as soon as he heard the caller was from The Associated Press. Subsequent calls rang unanswered.

As The New York Times reported Tuesday, the pipeline of cases against dissidents remains robust: Officials have charged Zhu Yufu, a writer and democracy advocate, with subversion in Hangzhou over a poem he wrote last year:

The poem at the heart of the indictment, “It’s Time,” appears to have drawn the authorities’ attention for its timing around the Jasmine Revolution controversy. By one translation, it states, in part:

It’s time

It’s time, Chinese people!

It’s time,

The square is ours,

The feet are ours,

It’s time to use our feet to go to the square and make a choice.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Arab Spring, dissidents, free expression, jail sentence, Li Tie, subversion
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I don’t disagree that the recent sentences are heavy. I’m less convinced, however, that the sentences themselves are clear evidence of a crackdown on dissent in China. This is because the length of the sentences in each of these cases can be attributed in large part to mandated penalty-intensification under Chinese law ….

Note that I’m not saying that there is no crackdown underway or that the punishments that were handed down are justified. I believe that China’s use of criminal sanctions against “inciting subversion” is a clear violation of international human rights law protecting free expression.

What I am saying is simply that Liu Xianbin, Chen Wei, and Chen Xi were given heavy punishments not simply because of any ongoing crackdown but more because of their persistent and long-standing political activism, for which each of them has spent a considerable amount of the past two decades behind bars. I think it gives us a better understanding of how the government cracks down on dissent to recognize that it’s precisely these kinds of veteran activists whom the authorities want “off the grid” and that the legal system is designed to enable them to do so.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chen xi, crackdown, legal system, Liu Xianbin, prisoners, subversion
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A court in the southern city of Guiyang found Chen Xi guilty of the charge of “incitement to subvert state power” for 36 essays he wrote and posted online, his wife said by phone.

The United Nations Human Rights office said it was alarmed by the sentence handed down to Chen and other similarly harsh sentences given to other Chinese dissidents in recent days.

Chen maintained his innocence but will not appeal the verdict, said his wife, Zhang Qunxuan.

“This is utterly absurd,” Zhang said. “Chen Xi told the court it did not take into consideration the things he has written as a whole, and has interpreted his words out of context. But they have power and they don’t listen.”

The Time blog has more on Zhang’s reaction to her husband’s sentence:

Chen’s wife, Zhang Qunxuan, told Reuters he was convicted over the content of 36 essays that he had published on overseas websites that were critical of China’s ruling Communist Party. “To subvert you – can he do that?” Zhang said, according to Reuters. “Does he have any army? Does he have a police force? Does he have courts? With a piece of paper and a pen, can he subvert you? Are you so fragile?”

In an editorial, the Washington Post questions why the West has not reacted more forcefully to these two recent sentences:

China’s Communist rulers do not feel compelled to account for their actions, so the motivation for the crackdown is a subject of speculation. Most China-watchers believe the authorities have been spooked by the popular uprisings in the Middle East. They may also be more nervous than usual as they prepare for an equally opaque leadership change next year. A top security official reportedly said that crackdowns on “hostile forces”(government code for peaceful advocates of democracy) and “illegal religious organizations” (code for Christians, Falun Gong followers and others who choose to worship without government approval) will be a priority in the coming year.

The human rights crackdown has drawn relatively little attention or condemnation from the West. Perhaps this is because the allure of Chinese investment and the Chinese market is too strong. Perhaps the crackdown seems so out of keeping with popular images of bustling, modern, capitalist Shanghai that outsiders have a hard time believing it is going on.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, chen xi, dissidents, political prisoners, subversion
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Chen, 42, was one of hundreds of dissidents, rights activists and protest organizers swept up in a crackdown on dissent from earlier this year, when the ruling Communist Party sought to stifle potential protests inspired by anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world …. Chen’s defense lawyer, Liang Xiaojun, confirmed that Chen is accused of “inciting subversion of state power” for 26 essays he published online and for an overseas magazine …. Chen, who was detained February, signed the “Charter 08″ manifesto for democratic reform that was co-written by Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Two other dissidents from Sichuan detained at about the same as Chen — Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao — have been released.

Human Rights in China has more details and background:

The procuratorate charged in its indictment that, between March 2009 and January 2011, Chen published “inciting articles” on overseas websites, including Democratic China (民主中国), Human Rights in China (中国人权), and China E-Weekly (议报), to subvert state power. The articles cited in the indictment include “The Illness of the System and the Antidote of Constitutional Democracy” (制度之疾与宪政民主之药), “The Growth of the Civil Opposition Is the Key to China’s Democratization” (民间反对派的成长是中国民主化的关键要素), “The Traps of Harmony and the Absence of Equality” (和谐的陷阱与公平的缺席), and “Sentiments from a Hunger Striker on International Human Rights Day” (人权日绝食的感悟) …. Chen has not been permitted to see his family since being detained. His wife, Wang Xiaoyan (王晓燕), and other family members have been repeatedly summoned and harassed by the police, who warned their employers to “watch out for these people.” Authorities also attempted to keep Wang from hiring Liang Xiaojun as defense counsel and then set various obstacles to prevent Chen from meeting with his lawyers—to date, Chen has been able to meet with Zheng Jianwei only twice and with Liang Xiaojun once. Chen’s wife, brother, and sister have also not yet received permits to attend Chen’s trial.

See also news of Chen’s formal charging in March, via CDT.

Update: Chen received a sentence of nine years’ imprisonment, according to The Associated Press:

Liang [Xiaojun] said the trial at a court in the city of Suining in southwestern China lasted about two and a half hours and that the sentence was handed down 30 minutes after the trial concluded.

“We pleaded not guilty. He only wrote a few essays. We presented a full defense of the case, but we were interrupted often, and none of what we said was accepted by the court,” Liang said.

Liang said that after the sentence was handed down, Chen said: “I protest, I am innocent. The governance of democracy must win, autocracy must die.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Charter 08, freedom of expression, jasmine revolution, legal rights, Liu Xiaobo, online activism, Ran Yunfei, subversion, trials, writers
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We are very disturbed by reports in China’s state-run media about a Beijing court’s decision to replace human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng’s extensive period of probation with a full three-year prison sentence. Just a few days before the five-year probation period expired, the Court decided that Gao must now serve his full suspended sentence for violating the probation rules, with no credit for the time he has already spent under the control of the authorities.

For the past 20 months, Gao has been subject to strict monitoring measures by the Public Security Bureau in what appears to be a form of house arrest in an unknown location. This case is illustrative of a trend of secret detention and disappearances of human rights defenders which the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other UN human rights bodies have already criticized on several occasions in recent years. The High Commissioner has raised the specific case of Gao, along with a number of others, with the Chinese authorities twice in the past seven months.

In relation to this case, one provision included under proposed amendments to China’s Criminal Law Procedure, which are currently being considered by the National People’s Congress, raises further concerns, as it would permit the legalization of secret detention. OHCHR is of the view that this will represent a major setback, running counter to a number of important efforts made over the past decade by the Government of China towards the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

British Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne expressed similar concerns in a statement on Wednesday:

I am deeply concerned by reports that Chinese lawyer and human rights defender Gao Zhisheng, whose probation period was due to expire this week, has been returned to prison for three years. Gao has now been missing since March 2010. I am concerned by reports that Gao has suffered torture and mistreatment, and by the apparently extra-legal nature of his detention. I repeat calls previously made by the UK Government for the Chinese authorities to provide, as a matter of urgency, information regarding Gao’s wellbeing and location.

As in the case of Chen Guangcheng, whose family members have shared his house arrest since late 2010, Gao’s family has also been subjected to intense pressure by the authorities. Gao’s wife, Geng He, fled to the US with their children in 2009. At The Wall Street Journal, Paul Mooney describes their escape, based on a recent interview:

Ms. Geng’s story began in 2008, when a vegetable-seller slipped a note into her hand with the change. “We will protect you—don’t worry,” said the message, which she believes was from a member of the Falun Gong.

Matters reached a head when her daughter, Gege, now 17, was told to transfer to a new high school for her freshman year, a heavy emotional blow for the teenager. Seeing the effect of the government’s campaign against Mr. Gao on the family, Ms. Geng turned to the vegetable seller asking for help. This set in motion the escape.

Shortly after, the seller told her to proceed to the Beijing West Train Station one evening. She was to take her young son Tianyu, six years old at the time. Gege was to leave on her own. Ms. Geng had no opportunity to tell her husband she was leaving. “When we left our apartment, I didn’t look in any direction,” she recalls. “We just left with the clothes on our backs.”

Human Rights in China, meanwhile, reports the release of activist Wang Lihong following the completion of a nine-month prison sentence for “gathering a crowd to disturb social order”.

Wang Lihong (王荔蕻), a well-known rights defender from Beijing, was released in the early morning of December 20 from the Chaoyang District Detention Center in Beijing, where she completed a nine-month sentence for “picking quarrels and provoking troubles.” Wang’s son Qi Jianxiang (齐健翔) posted a public message on Twitter Tuesday asking that those planning to greet Wang outside the detention center not go there, saying that Wang is temporarily staying “another place to recuperate for a couple of days” (暂时在别处静养一两天).

She was detained on March 21, 2011, tried by the Chaoyang District People’s Court of Beijing on August 12, and convicted on September 9. The prosecution’s charge was based on Wang’s role in organizing a protest outside a courthouse in Fujian on April 16, 2010, where the “Three Netizens,” Fan Yanqiong (范燕琼), You Jingyou (游精佑), and Wu Huaying (吴华英), were tried after they helped expose a police cover-up of a rape and a murder. The government alleged that the protest resulted in disorder inside the courtroom and traffic confusion in the area.

HRIC also notes two other recent releases, those of Zheng Yichun and Bo Xiaomao, who served seven and twelve years respectively for “inciting subversion of state power”.

On his China Blues blog, Paul Mooney notes Wang’s release, and translates an essay on her activism and detention by Ai Xiaoming. The following excerpt is Wang’s defiant written response to official demands for a “letter of guarantee” during her three-month house arrest a year ago:

. . . [F]rom a legal point of view, making a citizen write a guarantee letter pledging to not do things that are not illegal in order to have freedom of movement is illegal and a mockery of the law.

I am a citizen of the People’s Republic of China. I have the right to live on the land of my own country and the right to freely move around.

I am a person with conscience and I cannot guarantee that I will remain silent in the face of suffering. I cannot guarantee that, when I face the stories of Qian Yunhui, Tang Fuzhen, Li Shulian . . . I will pretend not to see. . . .

If I remain silent when confronted with suffering and wickedness, then I will be the next person beaten down by evil. You as law enforcers, the restriction you place on my freedom is illegal and has seriously affected my life. I hope that law enforcement and related departments and personnel will quickly correct their illegal actions and give me back my freedom.

See also CDT coverage of Wang’s trial, which her lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan claimed was distorted by a number of procedural irregularities.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, Gao Zhisheng, house arrest, illegal detentions, prisoners, subversion, UN, UNHCHR, United Kingdom, Wang Lihong
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The Chinese government’s demonstrable disdain for human rights over the plan’s two year duration speaks volumes about its intentions. In 2009-1010, the government systematically continued to violate many of the most basic rights the plan addressed. It took unambiguous steps to restrict rights to expression, association and assembly. It sentenced high-profile dissidents to lengthy prison terms on spurious state secrets or “subversion” charges, expanded restrictions on media and internet freedom as well as tightened controls on lawyers, human rights defenders, and nongovernmental organizations. It broadened controls on Uighurs and Tibetans, and engaged in increasing numbers of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions, including in secret, unlawful detention facilities known as “black jails.”

Wang Chen’s assessment of the plan makes no mention of such abuses. Instead, his assessment is larded with irrelevant statistics (“By the end of 2010, China had formulated 236 laws … 690 administrative regulations and more than 8,600 local rules and regulations”), meaningless ambiguities (“Over the past two years, China has perfected laws and regulations to protect the rights and interests of ethnic minorities”), and bald-faced lies (“extorting confession by torture and illegal detention by law enforcement personnel has been strictly forbidden”). This does not bode well for the next plan, slated to run from 2012-2015 ….

The success of any human rights action plan will ultimately hinge on ensuring government officials and security forces choose to obey and uphold the law rather than reflexively ignore, subvert and abuse it. At a time of rising popular unrest related to China’s yawning rural-urban wealth gap, growing labor unrest, tension in its ethnic minority regions, and simmering public resentment over rampant corruption and illegal land evictions, the Chinese government’s disregard for rule of law is an increasingly dangerous formula for instability.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, freedom of expression, human rights defenders, human rights watch, illegal detentions, land disputes, lawyers, subversion, torture, wealth gap
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It was the first time Bai Dongping, 47, had ever been arrested though he was taken out of Beijing “on holiday” by police or told to stay inside his home during high-profile events such as the Olympics, said his wife, Yang Dan, said by telephone Tuesday.

Bai was taken away Saturday, Yang said, and Beijing police called her Sunday to tell her why. China often uses the vaguely worded charge of subversion to lock up activists who are seen as troublemakers.

“I’m really scared. That’s such a strong charge. It’s the first time I’d ever heard of such a thing,” Yang said.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1989 protests, activists, Bai Dongping, online activism, subversion
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The sentencing of Liu Xiaobo comes despite international appeals for his release, which China sternly rejected as interference in its internal affairs.

Liu was the co-author of an unusually direct appeal for political liberalization in China called Charter 08. He was detained just before it was released last December. More than 300 people, including some of China’s top intellectuals, signed it.

The verdict was issued at the No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing after a two-hour trial Wednesday where prosecutors accused Liu of ”serious” crimes.

”All I can tell you now is 11 years,” the defendant’s wife, Liu Xia, told The Associated Press. Diplomats said they were told by Liu’s lawyers that he had been deprived of his political rights for a further two years.

See also a Reuters report and this news on the web, via

The Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department has issued an order to all Chinese search engines to block search results for the term “11 years.” But some netizens have just opened a Baidu forum under the keyword “11 years” here. Almost all comments are in support of Liu Xiaobo.

On Chinese Google, “Liu Xiaobo” and “Case of Liu Xiaobo” are among top ten fastest rising search terms.

Updates:  On Twitter, thousands of Twitterers put yellow ribbons on their profiles to show support for Liu Xiaobo. CDT translated a few tweets as examples:

@aiww: The sentence is only on Liu Xiaobo, but the slap slams across every Chinese person’s face. Ai Weiwei

这刑是加在晓波身上，可耳贴子是煽在每一个中国人的脸上。

@leungmantao: I was going to stay away from blogs and micro-blogs, but I really can’t help it today.

From now on, “Merry Christmas” is a coded greeting among Chinese, it means: Remember Liu Xiaobo.

本想遠離微博和博客，但今天忍不住了。從此之後，「聖誕快樂」是中國人的一句暗語，它的意思是記住曉波。

@cuiweiping: Thirty years ago, Wei Jingsheng was sentenced to 15 years. Thirty years later, Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years.  We spent thirty years in exchange for  four years of progress.

30年前魏京生判了15年，30年后刘晓波判了11年，我们用30年的时间，换来4年的进步。

@ye_du: According to sister Gao Yu, Charter 08 has 4024 characters. 4024 divided by 11 comes to 365. So Xiaobo is jailed one day for each Chinese character of Charter 08.

高瑜大姐刚刚和我说，她刚计算出：零八宪章4024个字，除以11正好等于365，为了宪章，晓波要一个字坐一天监狱。

@zhangfacai: I have finished reading the indictment. I could not tell if it was indicting Xiaobo or f**king indicting themselves.

看完审判书了，也他妈不知道是审判刘晓波还是审判他们自己。

@mashaofang: He is already sentenced, so let me tell something true.  Last November, inside  Beijing Wansheng Bookstore, Xiaobo, Liu Xia [wife of Liu Xiaobo] and Professor He Weifang talked about Charter 08.  I said, the cost will be someone going to jail.  I do not want Xiaobo to go to jail again.  Xiaobo said, if the cost for peacefully signing onto a Charter is imprisonment, I will do this without hesitation.  His wife said: He is not afraid.  I support him firmly!

人已被判，我就说个真事。去年11月，北京万圣书店内，晓波师，刘霞师母，还有卫方老师。当时说到宪章的事，我说，这可能会被抓的，我不想晓波师再坐牢，晓波师说，若是和平宪章签署都要坐牢，我就坚决去坐。师母说：他已无畏，我坚决支持！

@my1989: I just received a response from the signature group of Charter 08: Thank you for your support. Greetings to the veteran of the Square. Fighting for tomorrow. I am also a veteran from the Square.

收到宪章签名小组回执：谢谢支持。向老兵问候！为明天奋斗！ 签名整理小组 也是老兵

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Charter 08, grass-mud horse, Jia Lianchun, Liu Xiaobo, political prisoners, subversion
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