Chinese rights lawyer Li Baiguang has died suddenly of liver disease in a military hospital. Li was particularly noted for his work defending fellow Christians and victims of forced evictions, for which he received a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in 2006. He subsequently set up a legal hotline for foreign correspondents during the 2008 Olympics in case of "any conflict with the authorities." More recently, he was appointed by family members to represent "Black Friday" detainee and fellow rights lawyer Hu Shigen, but was barred from doing so. Hu was sentenced to seven years in prison for subversion in August 2016.

The Associated Press reported the circumstances of Li’s death, which activists have described as "mysterious":

Li Baiguang was a well-known lawyer who defended farmers and Christian pastors, work that garnered him an award from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy in 2008. He died just hours after being admitted to No. 81 People’s Liberation Army Hospital for a minor stomach ache, a relative of Li’s told Bob Fu, a religious activist who has known the lawyer for over a decade.

[…] Fu and Li attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington together earlier this month. Li’s work defending arrested Chinese pastors often prompted death threats, Fu said. The lawyer had suffered injuries while allegedly being beaten by plainclothes security agents in October.

“We do not know for certain whether those injuries may have contributed to his declining health, but the Chinese government should, as a party to the U.N. convention against torture, conduct a prompt and impartial investigation to determine whether those injuries may have played a role in his untimely death,” said William Nee, a China researcher for Amnesty International.

“The government has the obligation to ensure that lawyers can carry out their professional duties without fear of intimidation or interference, and without being identified with their clients and causes,” Nee said. [Source]

The case has attracted some comparison with others, notably and fatally those of activist Cao Shunli and jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, in which political targets’ health conditions have or may have been used against them to coerce or punish. Li, unlike Cao and Liu, has not recently been in extended detention. A source told Reuters that "he had not done a health check recently, so we do not know if there was a long-term cause" for his death. But Fu and others have expressed skepticism that his condition could have deteriorated so rapidly and without warning after his apparent good health just weeks ago.

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Activist Li Wenzu has embarked on a 60-mile walk from Beijing to Tianjin to seek information about the whereabouts of her husband, "quintessential rights lawyer" Wang Quanzhang, who was detained 1,000 days ago this week. Li is one of several wives and other relatives who have allied to campaign on behalf of "Black Friday" and other political detainees. Wang is the last of those taken in the infamous 2015 crackdown to remain incommunicado, following dozens of releases, trials, and sentencings. From AFP’s Joanna Chiu:

Li and a small group of supporters set off Wednesday on a march from Beijing to the “No. 2 Detention Centre” in the northeastern city of Tianjin, where officials last said he was being held.

They pressed on even during a freak snowstorm and plan to reach Tianjin by next Friday.

“We want to see the president of the court. We want to see the presiding judge. It would be good if someone came out to tell us what Wang Quanzhang’s case was all about. If he committed no sin, they should release him,” she said.

[…] When AFP called the Tianjin No. 2 Detention Centre on Thursday, a man who picked up said: “You should not ask about this matter.” [Source]

Li’s red anorak also bears the slogan "seized for 1,000 days," while she and others in her group are wearing "Free Quanzhang" sweatshirts.

At South China Morning Post sister-site The Inkstone, Xinyan Yu discussed possible reasons for Wang’s continued disappearance:

“He’s probably holding out and saying he’s innocent,” [Amnesty International’s William] Nee said. “The other possibility, although less likely, is that he’s been tortured severely and he looks so different they don’t want to present him yet.”

[…] “He’s very persistent and stubborn,” said Li. “He did his job as a lawyer and he will never think of himself as someone who’s broken the law.”

“Not once in 1,000 days," she emphasized.

[…] “The Chinese government puts a huge emphasis on ensuring that people confess and that the trials go according to plan in a scripted manner,” Amnesty International’s Nee said.

“It speaks a lot to the ‘rule of law’ under President Xi Jinping,” Nee added. “It’s more about manifesting the Party’s power.” [Source]

In a guest column at Jurist last week, Amnesty’s Patrick Poon described the authorities’ harsh treatment of rights lawyers including Yu Wensheng, who was involved in Wang’s defense and lost his law license and was then detained in January after publicly criticizing Xi Jinping and calling for political reform.

These courageous lawyers have often eschewed more lucrative and less controversial roles and instead chose to help people forced from their homes, religious believers facing persecution and many other victims of human rights violations. They only form a small group among China’s 340,000 lawyers but their role in defending human rights is essential. Without these lawyers, many victims of violations will be left without a champion to stand up for their rights.

[…] Their mistreatment strikes at the very heart of the role of defence lawyers in China’s legal system. Is it to defend their clients’ rights or merely to acquiesce to the government’s will? If the latter, lawyers in China are reduced to mere agents of the state. As the number of "post-lawyers" increases, the Chinese government’s claims of "rule of law" ring hollow, exposing the favoured concept of "rule by law with Chinese characteristics" for the sham it is. It is evidenced in former Minister of Justice Zhang Jun’s commentary in the People’s Daily in January 2018 in which he said strengthening the Chinese Communist Party’s role among lawyers is "the core part and fundamental measure" in deepening the reform of the legal system. It bluntly puts the Party above the law.

[…] More than a decade ago, there were less than a dozen known lawyers who took up human rights cases. The number of lawyers taking up human rights cases now, not to mention those who take up the less sensitive public interest cases, has grown to a few hundred, if not a thousand.

Their sheer effectiveness in protecting the human rights of others resulted in the harsh backlash from the authorities. With the government tightening its grip on the legal profession and civil society in general, there are sadly likely to be more ‘post lawyers’ in China. Yet there is hope, for despite everything the government throws at them, these remarkable lawyers remain resolute. [Source]

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“Quintessential rights lawyer” Wang Quanzhang was one of hundreds taken in the “Black Friday” or “709” crackdown in July 2015. Most soon reemerged, with others gradually tried, sentenced, or released over the years since. Now, more than 1,000 days later, Wang is the only one whose situation remains unknown. His wife Li Wenzu, one of several relatives who have allied in support of political detainees, marked that thousand-day milestone last week with a 60-mile march from Beijing to seek information in Tianjin, where Wang is believed to be held. Li has now been intercepted and returned to Beijing, where she has been confined to her home. From Christian Shepherd and Venus Wu at Reuters:

On Tuesday, the seventh day of her march, Li was picked up by plainclothes men and returned to her home in Beijing which they are now preventing her from leaving again, Li and her supporters said in a statement sent to Reuters.

“Li Wenzu has been placed under house arrest, with state security blocking the door,” said Wang Qiaoling, a friend of Li’s, whose husband is also a rights lawyer.

[…] The couple’s fate was a test of China’s assertion it is governed by the rule of law, said Kwok Ka-ki, a Hong Kong lawmaker who organised a protest on Tuesday over their plight outside Beijing’s representative office in Hong Kong.

“Xi Jinping always declares to the world that the Chinese government is ruling by law. What kind of law will (let) a country detain a human rights lawyer without any obvious reason?” he asked in Hong Kong. [Source]

In addition to a statement released through supporters (see update below), Li was also able to tweet a video of herself confronting the crowd below through her window on Tuesday.

Li’s situation now recalls that of Liu Xia, who has endured years of similar house arrest without charge since her husband Liu Xiaobo won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Last week, South China Morning Post’s Mimi Lau reported, she mourned her husband alone at home on the first Tomb Sweeping Day after his death last July.

The festival is traditionally a time for Chinese to visit the graves of their ancestors but Liu Xiaobo’s friends and family could not do so because the authorities cremated and buried him at sea last year, a hasty arrangement supporters said was to stop his grave becoming a focal point for other dissidents.

The Hong Kong-based Information Centre for Human Rights and Democracy said on Thursday that Liu Xia mourned her husband at home as guards continued to watch her house.

[…] She put some of Liu Xiaobo’s favourite books and food by his portrait, [the group’s founder Frank Lu Siqing] said.

According to social media posts, the couple’s supporters also held secret remembrances on beaches in Guangdong and Fujian provinces on Thursday night.

One photo taken in Guangdong showed the outline in the sand of a chair, a reminder of the empty chair that stood in the imprisoned dissident’s place in Oslo, Norway when he was prevented from collecting the Nobel in person in 2010. [Source]

Reuters’ Christian Shepherd reported on Wednesday that early hopes that Liu Xia would be free to leave China after her husband’s death have been frustrated by repeated delays to negotiations:

Since his death, Liu Xia has continued to be closely monitored by government minders and is unable to travel or to speak freely with friends and family, other than in infrequent pre-arranged phone calls and visits, according to friends and Beijing-based Western diplomats.

Now, fears are mounting that no progress has been made toward allowing her to travel outside the country despite the conclusion of the annual meeting of parliament, which Chinese authorities previously said was the reason for delays.

“There are growing doubts that she will be released in the near future,” a Western diplomat involved in the case told Reuters.

[…] “The Chinese authorities are primarily concerned that after she leaves she will openly tell the international community about her and Liu Xiaobo’s plight,” Ye Du, a writer and close friend of the couple, told Reuters. [Source]

Updated at 17:37 PDT on Apr 11, 2018: Human Rights In China has translated a statement from Li:

[…] I am under siege in my house, surrounded by 40-50 people. Friends who came to see me were blocked from coming in. I could only shout through the windows to talk to them.

Wang Quanzhang has been disappeared for 1,006 days, and I’ve been under house arrest for two days. They even blocked our caretaker and our son from leaving the house, and said: if you come out, we’ll kill you. It was only after I called the police that the guards allowed them to leave the house. But a gang of Aunties hurled insults at them, calling them traitors, and made them cry.

If we—mother and son—are disappeared, are killed, we hope our friends everywhere will help us write this tragic episode into history. [Source]

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In January, rights lawyer Yu Wensheng had his law license revoked and was then detained in apparent retaliation for his repeated public criticism of Xi Jinping and calls for political reform. On April 19, Yu was formally arrested for inciting subversion and obstructing public servants. This week, RFA reported that he has dismissed his own defense lawyers, according to a handwritten notice shown to his wife.

Such dismissals have been seen repeatedly in the wake of the 2015 "Black Friday" crackdown on rights lawyers. Supporters of the detainees believe they have taken place under coercion in order to guarantee smoothly choreographed trials and help keep detainees isolated and unable to share details of abuses suffered in custody. This apparent strategy by the authorities follows earlier use of lawyer dismissal as a stalling or protest tactic by defendants in political cases. As a defensive measure, vulnerable figures have increasingly recorded pre-emptive disavowals of lawyer dismissals or other coerced actions such as the forced and televised confessions recently examined in a landmark report by the group Safeguard Defenders. RFA’s report on Yu noted his own use of this measure:

[Yu’s wife Xu Yan] said she was allowed to speak briefly with Yu by video chat on Monday.

"I asked him whether they had told him when he could come home, but Yu Wensheng didn’t say," Xu said. "He was pretty quiet on the question of his statement, too, but towards the end, when we’d been chatting awhile, Yu Wensheng repeated two or three times that he had totally lost his freedom and was incapable of doing anything."

Xu said Yu had warned in a video recording and statement in May 2015 that if he ever "lost his freedom" and fired his own lawyers, it should be assumed that he was acting under duress, or had been tortured.

"If I lose my freedom, and if I sign any kind of statement, confession or guarantee in the absence of a lawyer, then none of the words in such documents can be taken to represent my true intentions," the recorded video statement said. "This statement was signed by Yu Wensheng on May 10, 2015."

Xu said Yu was likely alluding to that statement by the repeating the words "loss of freedom." "There is no way that I am going to accept that Yu Wensheng fired his lawyers of his own free will," she told RFA. [Source]

Yu’s video statement that "I will never accept a lawyer appointed by the authorities unless I am tortured" was released on Thursday:

In a statement this week, Yu’s lawyers Chang Boyang and Xie Yang claimed the legal right to meet with Yu to confirm their dismissal firsthand, and stated that until such confirmation could be obtained, they would regard it as invalid. They also expressed concern about Yu’s treatment, and urged the authorities to retain comprehensive video footage of his detention, adding that they would not accept explanations such as power outages, equipment failure, or limited storage capacity should the footage be incomplete.

Frontline Defenders highlighted Yu’s case alongside the similar one of rights activist Zhen Jianghua, who was formally arrested late last month for inciting subversion

On 17 April the lawyers of human rights defender, Zhen Jianghua, were also dismissed after having received a notification similar to that which was given to Yu Wensheng’s lawyers. He had also shared with friends and colleagues a written testimony confirming that he would not voluntarily dismiss his lawyers or accept state-appointed lawyers while in detention. Zhen Jianghua, a human rights activist with over 10 years’ experience working in defence of human rights in China. He is the executive director of Human Rights Campaign in China, an organization that campaigns on behalf of arrested human rights defenders and helps the victims of human rights violations to record and publicize their experiences. Zhen Jianghua has been kept in incommunicado detention since he was first arrested him in his home on 2 September 2017. He was formally arrested on charges of “inciting subversion of state power” on 29 March 2018. Following intense intimidation from the authorities, the human rights defender’s family has been very hesitant to speak out about his case.

Front Line Defenders reiterates its request that the Chinese government immediately release Yu Wensheng and Zhen Jianghua and desist from acting in retaliation of the human rights defenders’ peaceful work in promoting human rights. [Source]

Hear more on Yu from Bill Birtles at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, who described him as "the only lawyer willing to speak on camera about human rights issues when I first arrived here."

Meanwhile, two more televised confessions came this week from alleged associates of rogue billionaire Guo Wengui. From AFP:

Police in the southwestern city of Chongqing held a press conference on Monday to make public the latest allegations against [Guo]. In an unusual move in criminal matters, China’s State Council press office invited foreign reporters to attend ahead of time.

The press conference by Chongqing’s Public Security Bureau also aired video confessions from the two brothers, Chen Zhiyu and Chen Zhiheng, who were allegedly paid by Guo to forge the “secret government documents”.

[…] The twins’ confession videos were subsequently aired later Monday by China’s state broadcaster CCTV.

Officials in Chongqing told the press conference the forged documents were “distributed abroad, misleading the public, and creating an evil impact”, according to the Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily. [Source]

Read more on Chinese authorities’ latest accusations against Guo from Xinhua and The Financial Times. At The Globe and Mail, Nathan VanderKlippe reported that the two men’s Canadian citizenship has drawn Canada "into the ruthless interplay of elite Chinese politics":

“The suspicion that those confessions were made under duress is, I think, valid because this is a highly politicized case. It’s almost Guo Wengui versus the entire Chinese Communist Party,” said Willy Lam, an expert on Chinese elite politics who is a senior fellow with the Jamestown Foundation, a non-partisan research and analysis firm.

“Certainly, Beijing would hope that Ottawa doesn’t do anything,” Mr. Lam said.

But, he said, ”I think Canadian External Affairs are duty-bound, at least, to find out the facts.”

[…] “When it comes to these confessions involving foreign citizens, almost all of these forced confessions are obviously statements of foreign policy,” said Peter Dahlin, a human-rights activist who himself delivered a confession in early 2016 he says was forced and scripted.

He and others have called for foreign governments to sanction Chinese media who broadcast such confessions, including state outlets with offices in places like Canada. [Source]

Dahlin’s account of his detention and confession is featured in the Safeguard Defenders report. He also discussed the experience in a recent op-ed for The New York Times. Whatever the truth of the brothers’ confessions, the report noted that "the broadcast of any confession on state or regional television should be regarded as a violation of human rights and the right to a fair trial and is equally condemned by Safeguard Defenders."

Cornell University’s Magnus Fiskesjö has been another persistent critic of both the televised confessions and of media organizations like the South China Morning Post who have helped create or disseminate them. He addressed the issue again in this quarter’s "Made in China" journal from Chinoiresie:

These fake confessions represent a modernised version of Stalin’s show-trials. They violate both international and Chinese law, and several prominent Chinese judges and legal officials have protested bravely, arguing that legal matters are supposed to be decided in the courts, not on television (Fiskesjö 2017). The spectacles fly in the face of the painstaking effort to build up the ‘rule of law’ in China over the decades since Mao’s death. But today, we no longer hear the admonitions, previously issued by Chinese judicial authorities, to stop police torture and forced confessions (Xinhua 2012). In the increasingly harsh environment inside China, it has become too dangerous to openly criticise these spectacles.

[…] We actually already know a lot about the concrete procedures behind these fake confessions, and in substantial detail. Multiple victims, when regaining a chance to speak freely, have given us accounts of how it works. Recent major examples include Gui Minhai’s heroic colleague Lam Wing-kee and the brave female lawyer Wang Yu—both of whom spoke out despite the immense risk of repercussions (France 24 2018; HKFP 2016). Several foreigners detained and treated according to the same program have also given us similar accounts, including another Swedish citizen, Peter Dahlin (China Change 2017). The victim is intimidated through a series of measures that can be called modern ‘clean’ or ‘stealth’ torture (Rejali 2009): sleep deprivation, extended isolation, being forced to stand for long periods, excessive heat or cold, threats against family members and colleagues on the outside, and so on. These measures will break down almost anyone. In the end, very few of us, if any, would refuse to read the script for the cameras.

[…] We are talking about a political crime wave, orchestrated by a government-run propaganda machine that uses living human beings as props and tools for political influence. To be sure, there are other comparable examples, such as the Islamic State in its infamous victim videos shot just before their execution. But China’s campaign is especially dangerous because of the country’s increasing weight in the world, which it is now throwing around in order to re- define the ‘truth’ by force. We should not let them. [Source]

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Prominent legal scholar and public intellectual He Weifang has been forced into silence after spending decades advocating for constitutionalism and the rule of law in China. He ended his social media presence last year following repeated attempts by authorities to shut down his Weibo, WeChat, and personal blog accounts after he commented on changes to the civil code to protect the image of martyrs and heroes, which has since become law. At The New York Times, Chris Buckley writes that He’s awareness of the winding historical trajectory of legal and political change in China has prepared him to bide his time and wait for the right opportunity to speak up again. 

Mr. He, 57, said life had taught him to take a longer view of the country’s political evolution. His career has followed the twisted path of Chinese liberal reformist hopes over four decades, from the optimistic ferment of the 1980s to the reversals that have accelerated into an avalanche under Mr. Xi.

“Recent developments in China have delivered a big wake-up call to Chinese liberals that nothing will come easily,” he said.

[…] Mr. He emerged in the 1990s as one of China’s most articulate proponents of this legal approach. In 2003, he backed a successful campaign, whose leaders included two former students, to ban the detention and expulsion of migrants moving into Chinese cities who were accused of not having the right permits. The case became a landmark in Chinese hopes of using the law to promote political change.

[…] Since Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, the pressure on Mr. He and other wayward intellectuals has deepened. But he said he was prepared to wait until he would be allowed to roam the country again, giving talks. [Source]

The government’s attempt to silence and sideline He Weifang is in step with President Xi Jinping’s broader aim to curb legal advocacy and roll back freedom of speech and other civil liberties in the country. Rights lawyer Wang Yu, who was the first to be detained in the nationwide “Black Friday” or “709” crackdown on legal activists in 2015, was forced to criticize and reject an award given by the American Bar Association in 2016 in recognition of her dedication to human rights. In a newly released report, Wang described how she was pressured into denouncing the award on national television. From China Change via HKFP:

How, then, did they want me to cooperate? They said all the 709 Crackdown people need to demonstrate a good attitude before they would be dealt with leniently. They said a PSB [Public Security Bureau] boss would come to the detention centre in a few days and they wanted me to say to him that: “I understand my mistake, I was tricked, and I was used. I denounce those overseas anti-China forces and I am grateful for how the PSB has helped and educated me.” After that, they stopped taking me to the interrogation room and moved me to a staff office where they fixed up space for me to eat and memorise the material my interrogator gave me.

[…] In the beginning of July, my interrogator talked to me alone. He said, “Think carefully. If you don’t agree to go on television how will you be able to get out? How will your husband Bao Longjun be able to get out? How will your son ever be able to study abroad?”

I thought hard about it for a few nights. I thought, neither me nor my husband can communicate with anyone from outside. Who knows when it will all end. And my poor son was home without us. We didn’t know how he was doing. Although, my interrogator told me that he had been released and was living in Ulanhot, he might be under surveillance, he didn’t have his parents with him. What kind of future would he have?

[…] So, I decided to accept. I just wanted to see my son so much. I thought, if I couldn’t get out my son would never be able to study overseas. I might get out many years later, but by then what would have happened to my son? If he was harmed now, the trauma would stay with him his whole life. I needed to be with him during this stage of his life. I decided that I would do my best to help my son go to a free country and study. He would no longer live like a slave, suffering in this country. He has to leave, he must leave, I thought. That was the most urgent thing. So I had to do it, even if it meant doing something awful. [Source]

Elsewhere, a Hong Kong journalist has been released after he was detained in Beijing earlier this week while covering the hearing of human rights lawyer Xie Yanyi. Sum Lok-kei at South China Morning Post reports:

Chui Chun-ming, a cameraman for Now TV, was released at 1pm after being hauled away at about 9am. The State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office had “mediated” at the request of the Hong Kong government.

Speaking to Hong Kong media after his release, Chui said he was made to sign a “statement of repentance”.

[…] Chui and other crew members were covering a Beijing Lawyers Association hearing that involved human rights lawyer Xie Yanyi on Wednesday.

The Post understands the hearing related to Xie’s past work defending Falun Gong practitioners. Xie was one of the lawyers arrested in the “709 crackdown” of 2015, during which the Chinese government arrested about 300 lawyers and activists. [Source]

Rights Lawyer Ding Jiaxi was prohibited from boarding a plane to visit his family in the U.S. after authorities cited national security reasons for the travel ban. Ding was involved in the New Citizens’ Movement that called on Chinese officials to publically reveal details of their wealth. He was detained in April 2013 and handed a prison sentence a year later by Beijing’s Haidian District People’s Court for “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order.” From Radio Free Asia:

Ding Jiaxi, who has previously served jail time for calling on top officials of the ruling Chinese Communist Party to reveal details of their wealth, was stopped by police at Beijing International Airport on Thursday as he tried to board a plane to visit his wife and daughter in the U.S.

Ding said he was at the departure gate on Thursday, preparing to board the aircraft, when he was approached by two unidentified officers.

“Two of them came over and announced to me that they had a notification from the Beijing police department that I was a threat to national security, and I was to be prevented from leaving the country,” Ding told RFA.

“At no point during this process did they tell me their names, nor did they show me any official ID,” he said. “They also refused to give me the notification in writing.” [Source]

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Monday was the third anniversary of the beginning of the "709" or "Black Friday Crackdown," in which hundreds of rights lawyers and others were detained. While most were swiftly released, others were accused, in a state media blitz featuring several televised forced confessions, of conspiring to hype and manipulate sensitive cases. Several were prosecuted and sentenced; one victim, lawyer Wang Quanzhang, remains missing nearly 1,100 days after he was taken.

Though a landmark event in itself, 709 was part of a broader "War on Law" designed to lock down the legal system’s role as a tool of the Party, rather than a constraint upon it. Human Rights Watch’s statement on the anniversary described more recent clashes in this long campaign:

In the past year, Chinese authorities have also detained at least two lawyers who represented other lawyers implicated in the 709 crackdown. In October 2017, Shenyang authorities detained Li Yuhan and later charged her with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Li, who suffers from coronary artery disease and other health issues, has been denied bail. Li represented Wang Yu, a human rights lawyer who was detained during the 709 crackdown. In January 2018, authorities detained Yu Wensheng, alleging he had “incited subversion of state power.” Before his detention, the Beijing Bureau of Justice revoked Yu’s license and rejected his application to establish a law firm. Yu had represented Wang Quanzhang.

Chinese authorities have over the past year also revoked or suspended the licenses of a number of lawyers who were detained during the 709 crackdown but later released. Several other lawyers have been unable to find work due to police pressure on employers. According to Ministry of Justice regulations, lawyers’ licenses are cancelled if they have not been employed by a law firm for over six months.

[…] Meanwhile, on July 1, during a national lawyers’ conference, the government-controlled All-China Lawyers Association added language to its charter calling on lawyers to “firmly safeguard the authority of the Communist Party which has comrade Xi Jinping as its core.” The minister of justice, Fu Zhenghua, also said at the same occasion that lawyers’ associations must “unwaveringly uphold the Party’s comprehensive leadership over lawyers’ work.”

[…] “The Chinese government sees the role of lawyers as advancing the interests of the Communist Party, not upholding their clients’ rights,” Richardson said. “The licenses of mistreated lawyers should be restored immediately.” [Source]

In an open letter to Justice Minister Fu Zhenghua, New York City Bar president Roger Juan Maldonado noted similar concerns about ongoing reprisals, adding:

The harassment, intimidation, disappearance, detention, and prosecution of these lawyers and other rights defenders undermines China’s legal reform and commitment to the rule of law and deters the development of a professional and independent bar. Chinese law, in its constitution and in other legislation, guarantees numerous fundamental human rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and association, as well as due process rights, such as the right to be represented by a lawyer. Article 37 of the Lawyers Law of the People’s Republic of China specifically provides that “a lawyer’s right of the person is inviolable,” and affirms that a lawyer is not legally liable for the positions he or she presents on behalf of a client. Despite these provisions, lawyers and other rights defenders are being targeted for the kinds of cases and causes they represent professionally.

China is also under numerous international obligations to protect human rights through international conventions and customary international law. In particular, the ongoing detention and harassment of lawyers as well as the administrative challenges they are facing violate Article 16 of the U.N. Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, which provides that, “[g]overnments shall ensure that lawyers . . . are able to perform all of their professional functions without intimidation, hindrance, harassment or improper interference.” Similarly, Article 9.3(c) of the of the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights Defenders reflects the fundamental right of individuals “[t]o offer and provide professionally qualified legal assistance or other relevant advice and assistance in defending human rights and fundamental freedoms,” free of government interference. [Source]

Nectar Gan examined the crackdown’s goals and the Chinese leadership’s broader attitudes toward the law at The Inkstone:

Fu Hualing, the Hong Kong University professor, said Xi’s administration was dividing the rule of law into two spheres.

The first is an area where the rule of law did not apply, and where the party dictated everything according to political circumstances.

“It’s a space of emergencies, risks, and political dangers. So what’s in that space? You can imagine issues such as Xinjiang, Tibet, Falun Gong, underground churches, and rights lawyers,” he said.

Fu said the rule of law Beijing was promoting lay outside that space: less potentially contentious matters such as contract disputes, divorces, intellectual property and the environment.

But the arbitrary nature of such a system can be dangerous, said Eva Pils, law scholar at King’s College London studying China’s human rights lawyers.

“It’s quite clear that it’s impossible to feel safe in a system in which anyone, any case, could become sensitive, just because the government says so,” she said.

“It’s a completely shifting boundary. In fact, you can ask yourself if there is a boundary at all.” [Source]

In a new paper and Twitter thread, the University of Leiden’s Rogier Creemers examines ways in which "ideology defines the nature of law" as "a tool, controlled by the Party, to [be] applied where it will assist in achieving its aims," and consequently "conditions and constrains legal actors."

China Change has marked the anniversary with a series of posts relaying voices of the crackdown’s victims, beginning with translated excerpts from a recent Epoch Times interview with lawyer Wang Yu. Wang provided new details on the mistreatment of her son, whom interrogators used as leverage to extract a confession that was later broadcast.

Friends told me that when they brought my son back from Burma, they put handcuffs and leg irons on him! People who haven’t been put in handcuffs and leg irons probably don’t know, but wearing them is torture. They did so gratuitously because there was no way my son, so small, could run away with so many police around him. How could they slap handcuffs and leg irons on him? I couldn’t get over it.

According to grandmother, in the Yunnan public security bureau, the police slapped him around, quite a lot, in the face. I cry whenever I talk about this. They made my son frame other people. They told him exactly what he had to say. He didn’t agree, so they hit him, with a thick, long wooden staff. They started at him in the lower back, moving higher and higher, smashing it into his back, while yelling: “If you don’t write what we say, we’re going to go all the way up to your head and smash your skull in.” My son begged for their forgiveness, responding: “Don’t hit me, it hurts too much, I can’t take it anymore; just write what you want and I’ll sign it, isn’t that enough?” This is how badly they beat my son! [Source]

The series continued with translation from another Epoch Times interview, this time with lawyer Jiang Tianyong in 2016. Jiang was not among the initial detainees, but went missing later while visiting the family of fellow lawyer Xie Yang, whose graphic account of torture in detention he was later accused of conspiring to invent. After a "choreographed" trial last August, Jiang was sentenced to two years for inciting subversion.

In the China Change excerpt, Jiang describes what he sees as the inevitability of conflict with the authorities for lawyers who refuse to compromise their duties; the decision for his wife to take his daughter abroad so she could not be used as leverage against him; and his own reasons for staying behind.

I didn’t want to leave China. As a lawyer, if I were to go abroad, it would just be a waste. It’s here in China where I can really do things.

However, in July 2013 I was blocked from leaving the country. I couldn’t visit them. Now my child is an adolescent, it’s a crucial time in her education. I’m very anxious. In any case, I’m not a good husband or a good father. I’ve failed in my duties.

[…] It’s actually very simple: it’s not completely altruism. I don’t want to live like this. I can’t stand it. I don’t want my child to live like this. My parents’ generation swallowed it. I often say, “If you can take it, you take it, but I’m not having it, nor will my child. There are still things for me to do. I still have hope. When I no longer have hope, then I’ll leave. If I can’t leave, then I will just have to wait to die. If we want change, we must remain here and work hard with others to bring about change. We must change it; we must.[" …] [Source]

NYU legal scholar Jerome Cohen commented:

Those who have known Jiang and his idealistic struggle for the past 15 years or so especially appreciate the sincerity of his words and actions. Let’s hope he survives the massive efforts to destroy both his mind and body.

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) July 9, 2018

America’s lawyers as well as others concerned with human rights should be doing much more to alert the world to the ruthless repression of the Chinese Communist Party.

— Jerome Cohen 孔傑榮(柯恩) (@jeromeacohen) July 9, 2018

In the third installment, an anonymous rights lawyer explained how the Party’s "methods of repression" against their colleagues "have been further refined through continuous innovation to form a comprehensive and more deceptive mechanism of control." These include bureaucratic means such as disbarment, blacklisting, and law or business license revocation; "gangster tactics" of obstruction; silencing lawyers on social media; and even criminal prosecution.

I believe that in China the administration of justice is progressively coming under the total control of Domestic Security (国保, a CCP secret police organ) operations. We have seen how Domestic Security has often forced the judiciary to obey its orders. Nowadays, in some places, essential positions in the judicial administration are directly filled by Domestic Security agents. This is becoming more and more common.

The CCP’s ‘rule of law’ is little more than an Orwellian catch-phrase, given the severe repression meted out to human rights lawyers. Even so, there are some who still have hope in the system’s ability to reform. But this possibility, which was small to begin with, is rapidly fading. Lawyers’ attempts to file suit or appeal against the injustice done to them have virtually no chance of success. Wrongdoers are rarely punished, and the powers-that-be are becoming more blatant and arrogant in their abuse. [Source]

Part four is a translated transcript of a video featuring rights lawyer Wen Donghai, who describes in further detail the expansion of pressure and control following the 709 crackdown:

So in early 2017 they began planning things out — how to carry out further suppression. In this case, they primarily set about using administrative sanctions, which they also augmented with a few arrests.

By late 2017 and early 2018 their focus turned to the disbarment and administrative punishment of 709 lawyers and the lawyers who defend them. Targets included lawyer Sui Muqing (隋牧青) from Guangdong, Xie Yanyi (谢燕益) and Li Heping (李和平) in Beijing, Ma Lianshun (马连顺) in Henan, Qin Yongpei (覃永沛) in Guangxi, Yang Jinzhu (杨金柱) in Hunan, and me. All were either 709 lawyers, or defenders of 709 lawyers.

So I think the narrow definition of 709 is the arrest of lawyers, while the broader meaning of it is this campaign of encirclement and annihilation of the human rights lawyers. This takes the form of administrative punishments, criminal arrests, interrogations and warnings, and some other measures — all of it is part of the suppression. I’ve been questioned by them numerous times and have had my freedom restricted for short periods.

As a defense lawyer for 709 lawyers, my own license was canceled in June 2018. According to the logic of their laws, I’m no longer a lawyer.

If this country can’t even tolerate lawyers, then it’s lacking a key feature — which is whether or not the rule of law you have is genuine. Even though I’ll never be a lawyer again, I’ll still be involved in different sorts of legal work. [Source]

Sui Muqing, one of the targets listed by Wen, described his experience in the next part, from his own 147-day detention (including five successive days of sleep deprivation) to his subsequent disbarment. His conclusion echoes Jiang Tianyong’s sentiments:

I think that for my generation, my aspiration in being a human rights lawyer wasn’t as high, grand, and lofty as all that. I really think it’s for our children. We don’t want them to grow up being brainwashed, full of terror, surrounded by corruption, in a country with no rule of law. So, we need to do whatever we can to promote progress in China.

I hope that the international community, and the American and European governments in particular, will speak out about this. Fundamentally, human rights problems cannot be separated from economic issues. When you deal with a country with no regard for human rights, you cannot guarantee that your economic interests will be protected; you can’t protect the economic interests of your citizens [when dealing with these countries.] [Source]

In the next installment, lawyer Xie Yang implies that he had agreed not to speak further about his earlier torture account in exchange for the return of his law license. However, he describes various other forms of ongoing obstruction to his life, work, and travel:

[… O]n the employment front, they’ve established a number of artificial obstructions.

They would come and speak to me directly and tell me that the cases I take on are sensitive, that I can’t keep accepting them. As far as I’m concerned, I’m not going to listen to them, because these demands are unreasonable. They’re hindering my right to practice.

As soon as I was released, I got involved in a series of sensitive cases. For instance, the Wang Quanzhang case, the Yu Wensheng case, and a number of other citizen activist cases. I was proactively involved in all of it. I wanted my license to practice law, but I don’t want to live a compromised life. I’m going to use to use my lawyer’s license to serve society. [Source]

Another account of abuses in detention comes in the next part from lawyer Xie Yanyi, who describes deprivation of food and sleep, use of stress positions, and intimidation:

Over this 18 month period of forced residential surveillance, and arrest and detention, the most painful part of it all was the squandering of life. That is, they completely stripped me of every freedom. They didn’t let me engage in any form of communication. And I had no access to any information. Just like this, days become months, months become years. This kind of life wastage, after it goes on long enough, makes you crazy. During that period of residential surveillance, I even started to contemplate suicide.

So the question is how to overcome this dread, this total desperation? I silently told myself stories in my head. I recounted history, contemplated my beliefs, human nature, historical anecdotes. When I got to the detention center, in order to overcome the mental and physical imprisonment, I started to meditate. I sat cross-legged in meditation every morning and every afternoon, for two hours, every single day. This is how I got through it.

[…] The 709 incident has really catalyzed the awakening of the Chinese public. So, we feel more and more that the collapse and crumbling of the totalitarian system could happen at any point. We now need to think through what happens in the post-dictatorship era. What should we do? I think that making peaceful democracy the consensus of the entire Chinese people — that this is extremely important. [Source]

The penultimate installment is a tribute by editor Yaxue Cao to Wang Quanzhang, the last 709 detainee whose fate remains unknown after nearly 1,100 days. Cao describes the emergence of Wang’s wife, Li Wenzu, as a key figure in the "new front" of resistance opened by relatives of those detained.

As of today, lawyer Wang Quanzhang has been held incommunicado for 1,095 days. Over the 1,095 days, his toddler has grown into a boy who vows to fight the “Monster” that took his father; his wife has metamorphosed from a timid housewife to one of the most recognizable faces of the 709 resistance. With each day, we worry about Wang Quanzhang’s fate: Is he still alive? Has he been so severely debilitated by torture that they can’t even show him? These dreadful thoughts eat at our hearts when we think about Wang Quanzhang, and we don’t know how not to think about him.

[…] So what choice do we have but to remain strong, and forge ahead? We have a monster to slay, or our dignity, our freedoms, and indeed, our humanity, will be in peril. [Source]

Li spoke to the BBC’s John Sudworth about the continued silence surrounding her husband, her efforts to explain his absence to their son, and her efforts to obtain information from the authorities:

China Change closed the series with some defiantly optimistic comments from the American Bar Foundation’s Terence Halliday, from his address at the Second China Human Rights Lawyers’ Day on July 8 in New York:

Again and again, across history and across regions, lawyers stand in the vanguard of change. In Britain in the 1600s, in France in the 1700s, in Germany in the 1800s, in India and Brazil in the 1970s, in Egypt and Pakistan in the 1990s, in Zambia and Kenya, and, not least in South Korea and Taiwan over the last generation, and in many other places.

Time and again lawyers and their allies – workers, women’s groups, religious believers, the media – have been defeated, and time and again they have fought back from defeat. The struggle is never over, even in countries where lawyers’ ideals have been instituted for decades or centuries.

Hope is still alive among China’s activists. Now is a dark hour, a moment when defeat seems possible. The darkness may last a long time, years, decades, longer, but the end is never in doubt. Victories and defeats have already been the experience of China’s lawyer activists. And defeats and victories will continue.

Today, the Second Day for China Human Rights Lawyers’ keeps hope alive. [Source]

Around the anniversary, several suggestions have been raised for how best to counter the "War on Law." Human Rights Watch’s Sophie Richardson proposed a freeze on legal exchanges:

Chinese Human Rights Defenders urged U.S. sanctions against a key figure in the 709 Crackdown, along the lines of those placed on former Beijing police chief Gao Yan in December for his part in the death of activist Cao Shunli. Further sanctions, CHRD argued, would demonstrate Washington’s continued commitment to human rights following its withdrawal last month from the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which was widely described as a victory for China.

This May, CHRD submitted evidence under the US Global Magnitsky Act, calling on the US Government to sanction Zhao Fei, the former director of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, for his role in the crackdown on Chinese lawyers. The absence of both justice for victims and accountability on the part of Chinese authorities who ordered or carried out the arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, and acts of torture, have gone hand-in-hand with escalating persecution of lawyers since the crackdown was launched. Lawyer Wang Quanzhang remains forcibly disappeared after nearly three years in custody, and there have been numerous forced confessions and convictions.

Zhao Fei is currently a Tianjin Municipal Standing Committee Member and the Secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Politics and Law Committee, both prominent Communist Party positions. In the three years he headed the Tianjin PSB, from July 2014 to July 2017, Zhao presided over the enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and torture of lawyers and activists, who were mostly detained in Tianjin or transferred there and then disappeared. Nineteen individual cases involving serious human rights abuses can be directly linked to the Tianjin PSB while Zhao was the police chief. [Source]

U.S. State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert commented on the anniversary:

We continue to call on Chinese authorities to release immediately all lawyers and rights defenders detained during the campaign that began on July 9, 2015, including Wang Quanzhang, who has been detained for three years without trial and whose whereabouts remain unknown. #China

— Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) July 9, 2018

We urge China drop the charges against these individuals, end the harassment of their family members, and allow them to reunite with their families. #China

— Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) July 9, 2018

A statement by the British Embassy on Weibo, meanwhile, was targeted with reposting restrictions:

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Post tags: Black Friday 2015, Black Friday trials, Cao Shunli, Fu Zhenghua, Jiang Tianyong, lawyers, legal system, Li Heping, rights lawyers, rule of law, torture, Wang Quanzhang, Wang Yu, xie yang, Xie Yanyi, Yu Wensheng
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Liu Xia’s departure from China to Berlin three weeks ago appeared sudden after almost a year of frustrated hopes for her release from house arrest. As Mimi Lau describes in detail at South China Morning Post, however, it was the result of an "aggressive 15-month campaign of quiet German diplomacy" that began soon before the death of her husband, imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.

“[The Chinese] always say quiet diplomacy works best to resolve differences, so if you stay quiet in public, they promise to stay cooperative,” [Katrin Kinzelbach, associate director of the Berlin-based Global Public Policy Institute] said.

But for quiet diplomacy to work, some concrete actions had to be taken “to prove that it is working, to convince your interlocutors that it is worth the effort” and “to keep the diplomatic apparatus busy and somehow satisfied”, she said.

“Of course, if there is no public pressure, then there is no incentive to act, and nothing happens. That means, you need to skilfully combine quiet diplomacy with public pressure – you really have to show that you are willing and able to escalate the problem. That’s precisely what the German ambassador did in the case of Liu Xia.”

[…] “I believe when Merkel came to China in May, she made it clear that Liu Xia’s case was a personal concern.

“At the level of chancellor, Germany can only raise utmost priorities, usually this means just one single case. She directly talked with Xi Jinping during her last visit. I would imagine she did it in a non-confrontational manner but the fact that she did it at all probably shocked him. No one else is doing it,” she said. [Source]

Amnesty International’s Patrick Poon discussed the combination of diplomacy and public pressure in a recent essay at Foreign Policy. His colleague Joshua Rosenzweig commented that "while ‘quiet diplomacy’ may have its place […] it usually succeeds only when there are others outside making lots and lots of noise."

If the strategy that led to Liu Xia’s release is viable in only a few, highly targeted cases, a blog post by NYU’s Jerome Cohen last week highlighted another approach that may be more widely if less decisively applicable: sanctions against individual officials under the U.S. Global Magnitsky Act and equivalent legislation elsewhere.

Amnesty has just issued a plea for urgent action on behalf of what remains of lawyer Jiang Tianyong. Amnesty’s announcement seems understated despite the large cap title. Jiang is exposed to more than the “imminent risk of torture and other ill-treatments”. He has in actuality long been suffering from such abuse that is designed to break him as a person, to destroy him both mentally and physically. And, as we know from many cases including those of Gao Zhisheng and Wang Quanzhang, this calculated campaign to end China’s human rights lawyering seems to be gradually thinning the ranks of human rights lawyers. The many, sometimes bizarre, procedural violations in Jiang’s case are a reminder of the realities of Chinese justice when it comes to those who challenge the regime. His captors should be investigated on charges of what may well amount to “attempted murder”.

[…] Despite Chinese Government maneuvers to gain control over the international human rights institutions and the current relative indifference of the U.S. Government to human rights issues, greater efforts must be made to try to stop the PRC campaign against human rights lawyers. One important, if largely symbolic, response would be for the U.S. to impose Magnitsky Act sanctions against those Chinese officials who are directly responsible for executing this notorious campaign, starting at the top of the Communist Party. [Source]

Magnitsky sanctions were also among Cohen’s prescriptions, posted on Tuesday, for pushing back against China’s current program of mass "re-education" in Xinjiang, alongside pressure at international bodies like the U.N.:

We are purposely being kept in the dark about the unique, massive detentions in Xinjiang, which have confined many hundreds of thousands of closely-settled people on many specious charges. Perhaps the last time so many people have been detained outside the formal criminal process was in the 1957-59 “anti-rightist” campaign where RETL was first used.

[…] Individual countries, of course, can take actions, which is why I recommend that the U.S. Government adopt Magnitsky Act sanctions against those responsible for Xinjiang, starting with Xi Jinping.

Various concerned countries can also act in concert outside the UN, for example excluding China from major economic and political meetings. It is a particular disgrace that Turkic, Muslim countries and their organizations have done so little to condemn China for what it is doing to their kinsmen.

There should also be many public protests by ordinary citizens, i.e., NGOs and popularly-inspired meetings in free countries whose people support human rights. [Source]

Use of the Magnitsky Act against Xinjiang officials was previously proposed in April by Congressional-Executive Commission on China chair Marco Rubio and co-chair Chris Smith. Such sanctions had already been deployed in December against former Chaoyang police chief Gao Yan over his role in the death of detained activist Cao Shunli. Gao had been named last September alongside former Beijing police chief Fu Zhenghua (now Minister of Justice) and his deputy Tao Jing by a coalition of rights organizations calling for sanctions against individuals from 15 different countries. In January 2017, several prominent Chinese activists formed a new group, the China Human Rights Accountability Center, to promote the use of Magnitsky sanctions against Chinese officials. Proposed targets, from them and others, include state media staff involved in the broadcast of forced confessions; officials involved with the death of Liu Xiaobo; and Zhao Fei, a former director of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau who oversaw several key detentions after the 2015 709 Crackdown on rights lawyers.

At The Washington Post last week, Vladimir Kara-Murza described the origins and impact of Magnitsky legislation:

[…] In 2008, [American investor Bill Browder’s] Moscow lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered a tax scam involving government officials that defrauded Russian taxpayers of $230 million. He did what any law-abiding citizen would, reporting the crime to the relevant authorities. In return, he was arrested and held in detention without trial for almost a year. He was beaten and died on Nov. 16, 2009, at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison under mysterious circumstances. Officials involved in his case received awards and promotions. In a chilling act worthy of Kafka, the only trial held in the Magnitsky case was a posthumous sentencing of himself — the only trial against a dead man in the history of Russia.

It was then that Browder turned from investment to full-time advocacy, traveling the world to persuade one Western parliament after another to pass a measure that was as groundbreaking as it would appear obvious: a law, commemoratively named the Magnitsky Act, that bars individuals (from Russia and elsewhere) who are complicit in human rights abuses and corruption from traveling to the West, owning assets in the West and using the financial system of the West. Boris Nemtsov, then Russia’s opposition leader (who played a key role in convincing Congress to pass the law in 2012), called the Magnitsky Act “the most pro-Russian law in the history of any foreign Parliament.”

[…] Volumes of research, hours of expert testimony and countless policy recommendations have been dedicated to finding effective Western approaches to Putin’s regime. The clearest and the most convincing answer was provided, time and again, by the Putin regime itself. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin tasked his foreign ministry with trying to stop; it was the Magnitsky Act that was openly tied to the ban on child adoptions; it was the Magnitsky Act that was the subject of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-linked lawyer; it is advocating for the Magnitsky Act that may soon land any Russian citizen in prison. It was the Magnitsky Act that Putin named as the biggest threat to his regime as he stood by Trump’s side in Helsinki. [Source]

Also last week, Mother Jones’ Kevin Drum speculated about the possible vulnerability of U.S. Magnitsky legislation under the Putin-friendly Trump presidency, citing an earlier piece on its original Russian context by Julia Ioffe at The Atlantic last year. At the European Council on Foreign Relations, the University of Valencia’s Clara Portela examined prospects for an E.U.-wide Magnitsky Act, following the adoption of similar laws by several individual member states. Canada, meanwhile, has seen some frustration with the slow pace of implementation following its own law’s passage last year.

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Post tags: Angela Merkel, Gao Zhisheng, Germany, Germany relations, human rights policy, Jerome cohen, Jiang Tianyong, liu xia, Magnitsky sanctions, rights lawyers, Russia, Vladimir Putin, Wang Quanzhang, Xinjiang
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CDT is expanding its wiki beyond the Grass-Mud Horse Lexicon to include short biographies of public intellectuals, cartoonists, human rights activists, and other people pushing for change in China. The wiki is a work in progress.

滕彪

Teng Biao. (Source: Wikipedia)

Teng Biao, born on August 2, 1973 in Jilin Province, is a human rights lawyer, activist, and former professor who is dedicated to exposing China’s human rights abuses and fighting against its use of the death penalty. After being repeatedly detained for his work, Teng moved to the U.S. in 2014, where he has continued his life’s work as a visiting scholar at institutions such as Princeton, Harvard, and New York University.

Teng obtained his Doctor of Law from Beijing University in 2002 before joining the faculty of the China University of Political Science and Law as a lecturer. He later served as a visiting scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Yale University. He swiftly entered the fore of high-profile legal cases, including but certainly not limited to the Sun Zhigang incident in 2003, serving as counsel for activists Chen Guangchengand Hu Jia, and death penalty cases such as the Leping case in Jiangxi Province.

Prior to moving to the U.S. in 2014, Teng was subject to multiple instances of police harassment. In 2008, he was detained for two days before being released following widespread calls from both domestic and foreign advocates; in 2010, he was detained for visiting a human rights lawyer under house arrest; in 2011, as those in China began to call for their own Jasmine Revolution, he was detained for ten weeks; in 2013, he was detained for attending Hu Jia’s birthday dinner.

In 2014, Teng relocated to the U.S., where he has continued observing and criticizing Chinese government practices. These include presenting a sobering view on the true nature of Xi Jinping’s corruption crackdown, expressing concern for detained fellow rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, and calling for President Obama to pressure China on human rights at his last G20 summit appearance.

Teng again roused attention in 2016 when the American Bar Association abruptly cancelled publication of his book “Darkness Before Dawn,” a detailing of his 11-year career as a rights defender in China. The cancellation has been one of many cases of foreign entities who have either bowed to Chinese pressure for fear of upsetting the Chinese government or proactively curried favor for the sake of economic gain.

Over the course of his career, Teng has spearheaded multiple initiatives. He has co-founded two NGOs: Beijing’s China Against the Death Penalty, and the Open Constitution Initiative (Gongmeng), an organization composed of lawyers and academics that advocates for the rule of law in China. From the U.S., Teng co-founded the China Human Rights Accountability Center alongside rights defenders such as Zhou Fengsuo and Chen Guangcheng following the passage of the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act under the Obama Administration. The act authorized the president to sanction foreign individuals who commit human rights violations or are engaged in significant levels of corruption. The Center aims to help the U.S. to enforce the Act and introduce similar legislation in other democratic countries.

Teng has been awarded the Human Rights Prize of the French Republic (2007), the NED Democracy Award (2008), Human Rights Watch Hellman/Hammett Grant (2010), Prize for Outstanding Democracy Activist (China Democracy Education Foundation, 2011), and the Religious Freedom and Rule of Law Defender Award (2012).

Follow Teng on Twitter, or read more from and about Teng Biao, via CDT.

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Post tags: rights lawyers, Teng Biao, word of the week
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Rights activist and former lawyer Jiang Tianyong was sentenced to two years in prison for inciting subversion on Tuesday, three months after what supporters dismissed as a “choreographed” trial complete with apparently orchestrated online commentary. From The Washington Post’s Emily Rauhala and Simon Denyer:

The court in the central Chinese city of Changsha said Jiang tried to “overthrow the socialist system” by publishing articles on the Internet, accepting interviews from overseas media outlets, smearing the government and over-publicizing certain cases.

His defenders maintain his actions are all normal for his job as a lawyer.

The trial and sentencing are seen by human rights experts as an attack on what remains of the country’s legal activist community and on liberal politics in general, as President Xi Jinping moves to bolsters the Communist Party and purge its critics.

“This case has been an absolute travesty from the beginning, sustained by nothing other than pure political persecution, not facts or broken laws,” said Sophie Richardson, China director of Human Rights Watch. “By putting Jiang Tianyong behind bars, China does him, his family and itself irrevocable harm.”

[…] Xie Yanyi, a Chinese rights lawyer, called Jiang in a statement the “soul of the 709 rescue effort” for his determination to help colleagues in trouble. Jiang “spared no effort” when it came to defending China’s most vulnerable groups, Xie said. [Source]

Jiang was detained in the course of this “rescue effort” following 2015’s Black Friday or 709 crackdown. He disappeared while traveling to Changsha last November to visit Chen Guiqiu, wife of detained lawyer Xie Yang. He later confessed on television, under suspected coercion, to having helped Xie fabricate and disseminate graphic reports of torture in custody. Chen Guiqiu and Jiang’s wife Jin Bianling are among several relatives of political detainees who have emerged as a “new front” of activism in the face of collective punishment including evictions, obstructed education, surveillance, and travel restrictions. Chinese authorities have long either punished family members in order to pressure activists, or else recruited them as agents of dissuasion. NYU law scholar Jerome Cohen has noted that the emergence of 709 relatives as a coherent voice appears to be a reaction to official policies of collective punishment. Some of these relatives were present outside the courthouse for Jiang’s sentencing, where they were reportedly mistreated by security personnel:

As the AFP’s Becky Davis highlighted, authorities apparently worked to divide Jiang’s own family:

Jiang’s wife, Jin Bianling, said none of the lawyers she had hired were allowed to see him and she only learned in August that the court had appointed one.

“I contacted him continuously, but as soon as he heard I was Jiang Tianyong’s wife, he would immediately hang up the phone,” Jin, who fled to the US in 2013, told AFP by telephone.

She said the court had tried to pit Jiang’s parents against her, telling them she had been “brainwashed by the West” and to cut off contact.

His father was allowed into the courtroom Tuesday, but his sister was blocked from attending, she added. [Source]

Others also commented on the sentencing on Twitter, including U.S.-based law scholar Teng Biao:

“My good friend, rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, has been sentenced to two years for inciting subversion. Subverting this kind of regime is not criminal, but honorable.”

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Post tags: Black Friday 2015, Black Friday trials, Jiang Tianyong, legal system, political prisoners, prisoners, rights lawyers, sentencing, subversion, xie yang
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Two weeks ago, rights activist and former lawyer Jiang Tianyong was sentenced to two years in prison for inciting subversion. This followed a trial which supporters dismissed as "choreographed," carried out to the accompaniment of apparently orchestrated online commentary, as well as a suspected forced confession on state TV in March. Amnesty International’s William Nee told AFP at the time that Jiang’s case "epitomises many of the worrying aspects of the lawyers’ crackdown […:] harassment of family members, not letting the accused access their lawyer, prosecution based on charges that don’t comply with international standards, blocking the public from attending."

After the sentencing, a panel of U.N. human rights advisors protested that Jiang’s trial "clearly fell short of international standards and his conviction represents an unfair and arbitrary punishment of a human rights lawyer and defender, whose only crime was to exercise his rights to free speech and to defend human rights." NYU law scholar Jerome Cohen, a friend of Jiang’s, wrote that "his prosecution/persecution has been a tragic farce from the day he was detained a year ago." A Washington Post editorial similarly commented that it exemplified China’s approach to rule of law, in which "the Communist Party holds the upper hand and crushes individuals who dare to question its monopoly on power."

At China Law and Policy this week, Elizabeth M. Lynch focused on another aspect of the case:

Although much of Jiang’s ordeal calls into question the Chinese government’s commitment to the rule of law, respect for human rights and why it must continue to abuse its own people, another deeply troubling trend has emerged: the Chinese government’s anti-foreign rhetoric. In reporting on the Jiang’s sentencing last month, the state-run Legal Daily blamed the “foreign, anti-China” forces influencing Jiang for much of his behavior. It is that paranoia of anything foreign that is the most dangerous to the current world order. With the U.S. retreating from its position of global, moral leader, China is seeking to rise and promote its type of leadership. From the trial of Jiang Tianyong, that moral leadership model seeks to create societies that are not just unresponsive to its own people, but shut off from connections with the rest of the world. But it is those connections between cultures and people that have long been a driving force of the post-WWII model and have helped to maintain the peace in much of the world these last 75 years.

But in blaming these elusive, foreign, anti-China forces, the Chinese government ignores the real reason why these civil rights activists exist: the injustices in Chinese society. It is Jiang’s own life that is a testament as to why the Chinese government’s efforts to suppress these civil rights activists will ultimately fail. For a long time Jiang was just an ordinary guy; after graduating from college, Jiang was a teacher for almost 10 years. But in 2004, wanting to pursue greater justice for others, he gave up teaching to become a civil rights lawyer, passing the bar exam in 2005. People like Jiang are not motivated by foreign forces or other entities; they are motivated to correct the injustices and sufferings of others to make their society better. The Chinese government cannot stop people from feeling that way and the real question is – why would they want to. [Source]

The Washington Post’s editorial similarly argued that the authorities have counterproductively misidentified the root of Jiang’s and others’ activism:

To not just round up dissidents but stalk their lawyers, too, is a harsh tactic, to be sure. But it has failed to squelch dissent; even as they grow more single-minded, China’s leaders can’t or won’t grasp the simple fact that dissent is not a passing whim to be eradicated by more police and arrests. It is a profound and enduring response to tyranny. Mr. Jiang was described as the "soul of the 709 rescue effort" by Chinese rights lawyer Xie Yanyi, and there will be more souls to follow in his footsteps.

Mr. Xi declared in his report at the party congress that China would "take center stage in the world." He may shoulder his way onto that stage. But as long as he practices rule by fear and force, he will earn little respect in the spotlight. [Source]

Supposed collusion with "hostile foreign forces" has been a focus in several recent political prosecutions, including those of Jiang’s fellow rights lawyers. One, Xie Yang, was videoed confessing (under suspected coercion) to having been "brainwashed" during training sessions in Hong Kong and South Korea, and urging others to cut off contact with foreign media. Interviews with foreign media and acceptance of overseas funding were also a focal point in the prosecution of Jiang’s former colleague Li Heping. Similar points arose in the cases of Zhou Shifeng and Wang Yu.

Beyond the crackdown on rights lawyers, Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-che said in his final statement at trial in September, again under suspected coercion, that he had been led astray by "biased and malicious reports about the Chinese mainland by media in the West and Taiwan." Lee was later sentenced to five years in prison for subversion. Suspicion of outside meddling has also arisen in trials of labor organizers and interrogations of feminist activists. A series of videos that accuse Western forces of trying to engineer a color revolution in China has repeatedly been promoted by officially affiliated social media accounts, sometimes focusing on the attendance of diplomats at politically sensitive trials. The tentacle-marks of foreign conspiracy against China have also been seen everywhere from the Panama Papers leaks to a graduation-day proposal by two lesbian students in Beijing.

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The European Union delegation to China issued a statement on Friday ahead of International Human Rights Day expressing deep concerns regarding the outlook for human rights in the country. From AFP:

The EU noted “significant improvements in the Chinese people’s standard of living and in access to social services such as health and education,” according to a statement on its website.

“However … during the past year, we have been deeply troubled by the deterioration of the situation with respect to freedom of information and freedom of expression and association, including with respect to online activity,” it said.

[…] The EU delegation also said it regrets the death in detention in July of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, and called for the release of imprisoned human rights defenders, including lawyer Jiang Tianyong and Uighur scholar Ilham Tohti.

[…] The delegation’s statement was not formally endorsed by all 28 EU member states, and there was no immediate response from Beijing. [Source]

The Chinese government has intensified its crackdown on civil society under President Xi Jinping. Hundreds of human rights lawyers and activists were targeted in 2015 in one of the most extensive assaults on rights advocates that the country has seen in recent years. In Hong Kong, the forced disappearance of five staff members of Causeway Bay Books in late 2015 shocked the city and raised fears of eroding human rights conditions in the former British colony. Repression in Xinjiang and Tibet continues as Chinese authorities ramp up efforts to curtail political activity and suppress all expressions of ethnic and religious identity.

At the inaugural South-South Human Rights Forum held in Beijing on Friday, China called for the protection of people’s right to development and laid out its own vision for human rights governance centred on growth and the reduction of poverty. In a letter sent to commemorate the opening of the forum, President Xi asked that the will of developing countries be respected when it comes to human rights development. From Xinhua:

“Developing countries should pay special attention to safeguarding people’s right to subsistence and right to development, especially to achieve a decent standard of living, adequate food, clothing, and clean drinking water, the right to housing, security, work, education, health and social security,” the declaration said.

[…] Xi said that human rights worldwide could not be achieved without the joint efforts of developing countries, which account for more than 80 percent of the world’s population. He stressed that human rights must and can only be promoted in light of specific national conditions and people’s needs.

Xi called on developing countries to uphold both the universality and particularity of human rights and steadily raise the level of human rights protection.

“The Chinese people would like to work in concert with people in other developing countries and beyond to advance development through cooperation, promote human rights through development, and build a community with a shared future for human beings,” the message read. [Source]

In response to Beijing’s message, Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) pointed to the failings of China’s model of human rights development and warned against Beijing’s attempt to compromise human rights norms in the international community. Gao Shan at Radio Free Asia reports:

“In the past few decades, this ‘China model’ has left behind countless people in China, victimized by breakneck growth at the expense of basic protection from discrimination, exploitation, and abuse of power,” CHRD said in a report issued ahead of Human Rights Day on Dec. 10.

It cited the mass evictions of thousands of migrant workers from their accommodation in Beijing, and widespread discrimination against ethnic minority and religious groups, people with HIV/AIDS or hepatitis, women, persons with disabilities, and LGBTQ groups.

“The path of China’s ‘success’ is littered with ruined lives,” the report said.

[…] “Beijing has always viewed human rights as the right to existence, but the most basic human rights have to do with the political and civil rights of citizens,” Liu told RFA. “That includes freedom of expression, association, and publication.”

[…] It warned that China’s foreign policy objective of becoming a “leading global power” means that it will seek to change world opinion about human rights, rather than to comply with it. [Source]

Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pressed China’s leaders on a number of human rights issues, including Canada’s opposition to the death penalty and consular cases involving imprisoned Canadians, during his recent trip to the country that was intended to center on trade. Alex Ballingall at The Star reports:

“It’s a little unrealistic for Canada to use a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach in trade talks with countries whose conditions and aspirations are greatly different,” said He Weiwen, deputy director of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing and a former commerce ministry official. Both countries “have a positive attitude” toward a potential free trade deal, “however practicality needs to be applied when it comes down to actual negotiation.”

[…] The trip began in Beijing, where Trudeau and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang abruptly canceled a joint press conference Monday after they were unable to set a framework to launch formal trade negotiations. Talks continued throughout the week to no avail.

Trudeau is in uncharted territory. Canada wants a new class of trade agreement altogether — and that’s not something that China has experience with, according to Eva Busza, vice president of research at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. “There’s probably going to have to be a lot more dialog around this and many other issues,” she said in an interview.

The prime minister spent the trip’s last day refining his globalist message and emphasizing his approach. “If we move forward with simply straight and classic trade deals that focus only on tariffs and barriers and don’t think about the impact it’s going to have on citizens and communities and people, then we are going to find ourselves in a world where protectionism and inward thinking is the only option,” Trudeau said Thursday at the Fortune Global Forum in the southern city of Guangzhou. [Source]

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As 2017 comes to a close, CDT editors have looked back at coverage of China over the past year and selected links that highlight some of the most important stories posted on CDT or elsewhere. Happy New Year from the CDT team!

CDT Editors’ Picks for 2017:

Sandra Fu, CDT Chinese Senior Editor:

• 【图说天朝】一个都不剩：北京某村欲用花样收费赶走外地人 from CDT – In the light of Beijing’s “low-end population” evictions, it’s worth it to revisit some early signs of the craziness. In July 2017, facing higher authority’s “zero migrant” requirement, a village in now infamous war-zone like Daxing district came up with a plan to kick migrants out by charging everyone of them at least ¥2000 a month.
• 我，志愿加入“银河护卫队” from Douban- Did you know that fans of Li Yinhe call themselves “Guardians of the Galaxy”? That’s the cutest thing I’ve seen on Chinese social media this year.

 
Sophie Beach, CDT English Executive Editor:

• Jeremy Brown: How the Party Handles Accidents – In an interview with CDT’s Samuel Wade, Simon Fraser University’s Jeremy Brown puts the recent spate of accidents in a broader historical context by looking at the patterns of government response from the Mao era until today. The interview provides a useful frame of reference when reading news reports about the too frequent industrial accidents and natural disasters in China. “Instead of being transparent, or treating accident victims compassionately, the impulse is to cover it up, and target them for surveillance and crackdowns. Because that’s what you do to a protest, right?” Brown asks.
• The Passion of Liu Xiaobo by Perry Link in the New York Review of Books – Link offers an eloquent and personal commemoration of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, who died in July of liver cancer while serving an 11-year-sentence. Link asks: “Two hundred years from now, who will recall the names of the tyrants who sent Mandela, Havel, and Suu Kyi to jail? Will the glint of Liu Xiaobo’s incisive intellect be remembered, or the cardboard mediocrity of Xi’s?”
  • Runners-up: Lao Gan Ma: The Story of China’s Most Spicy Godmother Tao Huabi from What’s on Weibo, and Why Is It So Hard to Get Sichuan’s World-Famous Peppers in America? from Slate – the fascinating stories behind two of China’s most beloved condiments.

 
Samuel Wade, CDT English Deputy Editor:

• Li Xuewen’s Tea Drinking Diary, posted in English at CDT, offers a tense but sometimes disarming account of a visit from Domestic Security Department officers who ordered him and his girlfriend, lawyer Huang Simin, to leave Guangzhou for the six months leading up to this month’s Fortune Global Forum. Undeterred by the visit, Li helped organize memorial activities for the late Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo this summer, and was detained last week as an apparent result.
• Michael Caster’s new book “The People’s Republic of the Disappeared: Stories from inside China’s system for enforced disappearances” presents 11 accounts of secret detention which bring home the cruel reality behind the innocuous sounding official term “residential surveillance,” showing the unfolding psychological effects of this mistreatment, and occasionally putting a human face on the victim’s immediate captors. Supplemental materials from Caster and a foreword from lawyer Teng Biao add vital and insightful context. Excerpts are available at China Change and The New York Times.
  • As a bonus pick, I want to highlight ethnographer Tricia Wang‘s 2011 blog post Street Vendor Life in China. It describes her time living and working with a family of migrant food vendors, whose precarious and exhausting existence came back to me amid the eviction campaign in Beijing this winter.

 
Josh Rudolph, CDT English Translations Editor:

• Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Four Big Critiques from CDT. 2017 saw the long anticipated official consolidation of Xi Jinping’s power with the addition of his name and ideological contributions to Party doctrine enshrined in the CCP charter. Months prior to that addition, CDT translated prefaces to Chinese Academy of Social Sciences collections. The introductions represent the spirit of Xi Jinping’s drive to reinforce ideological orthodoxy throughout the Party, and combat the undesirable ideological trends that have been a top priority of Xi’s tenure.
• Global concerns over Beijing’s well-funded global influence campaigns swelled in 2017, leading to the coining of the term “sharp power” to describe innovations in international influence techniques being co-led by China. In September, New Zealand-based scholar Anne Marie-Brady published the Wilson Center policy report “Magic Weapons: China’s political influence activities under Xi Jinping”. The report uses New Zealand as a case study, and provides a thorough description of how the United Front Work Department—a domestic and foreign lobbying organization that reports directly to the CCP Central Committee—has been substantially expanded under Xi Jinping.
  • Runner-up: Despite Censorship, Netizens Remember Liu Xiaobo from CDT. Translations of moving tributes to Liu Xiaobo by netizens, despite government efforts to scrub his existence from cyberspace.

 
Xiao Qiang, CDT Founder and Editor-in-chief:

• 【诗】小众童网 | 有个人快死了 – A poem to Liu Xiaobo.
• 郭文贵全球爆料信息发不会首场！（文字版节选一） – Guo Wengui’s expose, an insider’s look at how power, money and sex work at the highest levels of Chinese power.
• 中央党校党史教研部学习习近平讲话座谈会纪要 – These are internal notes taken during the discussion of “Xi Jinping’s speech at the Central Party School on July 24, 2010” at the Party History Department of the Central Party School, leaked on Chinese social media in 2017. This note touches on almost all “sensitive subjects” and explains “why the Party should not let people to know the truth (of Party history)” through the words of the faculty of the Central Party School. (An English translation of this document is forthcoming on CDT.)

CDT Chinese editors have also picked their ten top stories from the year. Look for an English translation of their list on CDT in the next few days.

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Prominent Chinese human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, who has vocally criticized Xi Jinping’s rule and CCP authorities’ ongoing crackdown on rights advocacy and activism, tweeted a copy of a letter he received on Monday from the Beijing Bureau of Justice informing him that his legal license has been revoked:

Lawyer Yu Wensheng’s professional certification cancelled! A new starting point! A new beginning!

BBC News reports on the official reason given for the revocation. Yu believes his license was truly revoked in retaliation for an open letter he penned to the delegates of the 19th Party Congress as it convened last October:

A Chinese human rights lawyer says his licence has been revoked three months after he wrote an open letter criticising the ruling Communist Party.

[…] He is among hundreds of human rights lawyers who have recently been detained and interrogated by authorities. [See CDT coverage of the 2015 “Black Friday” or “709” crackdown on rights lawyers and activists.]

According to the letter, Mr Yu’s licence was cancelled because he had not been employed by a licensed legal firm in the past six months.

[…] Mr Yu’s wife, Xu Yan, said in a statement that her husband had tried setting up an independent legal practice after he left his old firm last year.

But he had received another letter on 12 January in which the Beijing municipal authority refused his application to set up a practice. […] [Source]

Yu’s letter, dated October 18, 2017—the day that the CCP 19th Party Congress convened—called on Party delegates to remove Xi Jinping from the seat of General Secretary of the CCP in order to allow political reform and a free and democratic China. Human Rights in China posted a summary and the Chinese text of the letter, which CDT has translated in full and added links for context:

Suggestion that Xi Jinping Be Dismissed by the CCP 19th Party Congress, and that Comprehensive Political Reform be Put Into Effect

–Open Letter, Lawyer Yu Wensheng

Delegates of the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party:

Since the CCP 18th Party Congress in 2012, China’s human rights have worsened, the rule of law has declined, torture has spread unchecked, and miscarriages of justice have grown without restraint. CCP authorities speak of freedom, democracy, equality, and rule of law; in reality China has no freedom, no democracy, no equality, no rule of law, and some in power have let corruption run amuck.

In 2013 CCP authorities suppressed the “New Citizens Movement,” mass-arresting citizens who had called for “officials’ public disclosure”; in 2014 CCP authorities cracked down on the Hong Kong “Occupy Central” movement, and on Beijing and Guangzhou citizens who supported that movement; in 2015’s “709” crackdown incident, CCP authorities detained “human rights lawyers” and “human rights defenders” on a large scale. Over the past five years, CCP authorities have sadistically assaulted innocent compatriots in the “Qing’an incident,” the “Lei Yang incident,” and etc., and the assailants are still at large and outside of the law. Over the past five years CCP authorities have continued the persecution of “Falun Gong,” their destruction of crucifixes, and their suppression of religious liberty. Over the past five years there has been a rampage of “vicious laws,” including the “National Security Law”, the “Cybersecurity Law,” etc., suppressing the defense of rights for dissenting citizens, punishing them for their expression while safeguarding the interests of the elites.

Over the 97-year history of the CCP, over the 68-year history of their establishment of political power, autocracy has centralized power and corruption has spread thoroughly, with inhuman offenses committed to govern the people’s fate.  

Holding power as top leader of the CCP for the past five years, Xi Jinping has broken with historical trends, reversing history and strengthening totalitarian rule; he is not suitable to continue holding power.  Acting as a lawyer in China, Yu Wensheng strongly suggests that China’s 19th Party Congress dismiss Xi Jinping from office, and conforming with historical trends implement comprehensive reform of the political system to establish a China of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Return politics to the people.

Lawyer Yu Wensheng

10.18.2017

[Chinese]

Coverage from Reuters’ Christian Shepherd describes recent legal reforms that critics say aim to restrict lawyers’ rights defense activities, and quotes Yu, who has pledged to continue his rights activism despite his current lack of a legal certification:

Yu told Reuters on Monday that he believed the revoking of his legal license was part of reprisals for penning the open letter, but that it only made him more determined to persevere with his rights activism.

“It won’t slow me down,” he said.

[…] A set of measures on the practice of Chinese law firms and lawyers was revised in late 2016 to include higher levels of scrutiny of the speech and conduct of lawyer, as well as greater requirements of political loyalty for firms and practitioners.

Rights groups say the revisions were aimed at preventing the legal community from taking on sensitive rights cases or speaking out against political prosecution of legal work.

Yu had also been involved in attempting to defend a fellow rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang, who was detained during a spate of lawyer detentions in July 2015. Authorities have blocked his attempts to meet Wang. […] [Source]

Wang is the last remaining detainee from the 2015 Black Friday crackdown, and has now been held incommunicado for over 920 days. At China Change, Yaxue Cao this week described Wang’s work, lengthy detention, and alleged torture.

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Rights lawyer Yu Wensheng was detained on Friday while walking his son to school, The Guardian’s Tom Phillips reports:

[Yu’s wife Xu Yan] said her son had seen at least four police vehicles and a dozen officers involved in the operation, including a SWAT team. “They surrounded Yu,” she said, adding: “None of Yu’s actions were illegal.”

[…] “I’m shocked he has been taken,” said Patrick Poon of Amnesty International. He suspected the detention of Yu, whose legal license was revoked days earlier, was retaliation for a recent article attacking the party’s top brass: “The message is clear: don’t ever criticise state leaders … or you will end up in jail.”

Michael Caster, an activist who knows Yu, said: “Escalating repression in today’s China gives rise to serious concern for his well-being.”

[…] In a 2015 interview with the Guardian, Yu insisted he would not be cowed. “Somebody has to make the sacrifice … I’m much happier facing oppression than standing by watching the wrongdoing and not trying to change it.” [Source]

Yu suspected that the revocation of his law license was a response to his authorship of an open letter—translated in full by CDT—to last October’s 19th Party Congress. In it, he outlined the deterioration of human and civil rights in China over the past five years, writing that under Xi Jinping “the rule of law has declined, torture has spread unchecked, and miscarriages of justice have grown without restraint.” He therefore urged delegates to unseat Xi and “implement comprehensive reform of the political system to establish a China of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Return politics to the people.” Instead, Xi’s signature “Thought for the New Era of Socialism With Chinese Characteristics” was enshrined in the Party constitution. On Friday, state media reported plans to incorporate it into the national constitution as well. Earlier in the week, Yu had posted another open letter, reiterating his call for reform. From the AFP:

“Designating the nation’s president, as head of state, through a single party election has no meaning as an election,” he wrote.

“It has no power to win confidence from the nation, civil society, or the world’s various countries.”

[…] Yu has defended prominent civil rights lawyers targeted by the government and people detained for supporting Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.

Yu has said that in 2014 authorities imprisoned and tortured him for 99 days for allegedly “disturbing public order”.

He is perhaps best known for being one of six lawyers who attempted to sue the Chinese government over the country’s chronic smog.

At the time, he scoffed at concerns that he might be detained for his actions, telling AFP last year: “If we do things according to the law and still get detained… it will be just the thing to show people the true nature of our so-called ‘rule of law’.” [Source]

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Rights lawyer and former “Black Friday” detainee Sui Muqing has been stripped of his law license as punishment for his role in two politically sensitive cases, Hong Kong Free Press’ Catherine Lai reports:

Sui told HKFP on Tuesday: “I’m afraid the reason is that I’ve represented clients in too many human rights cases – the things I’ve said about my cases cannot be tolerated by the party.”

[…] Sui was given a notice by the Guangdong Department of Justice that said he was in violation of rules, citing past instances. It claimed that, when defending fellow lawyer Ding Jiaxi in court in 2014, Sui stood up, walked, and spoke without permission many times, and did not comply with the court’s orders.

It also claimed that Sui had violated rules by bringing his cellphone into a meeting with his client – Sichuan activist Chen Yunfei – at a detention centre. It said he tried to bring out two photos and eight documents, and did not cooperate with police when they tried to stop him.

[…] During the visit with Chen cited by the notice, Sui was trying to photograph injuries his client had sustained from alleged mistreatment. [Source]

Sui’s case is the latest of a long line of reprisals against rights lawyers, including alleged torture, and comes amid continued efforts to enforce Party control of the legal system and demand loyalty from legal workers. It also follows news that fellow rights lawyer Yu Wensheng’s license was revoked last week in what he claimed was retaliation for an open letter, translated by CDT, criticizing top leader Xi Jinping. On Friday, Yu was detained by armed police while walking his 13-year-old son to school after issuing another open call for political reform. His own lawyer, Huang Hanzhong, described the claim that Yu was “disrupting public service” as “absurd” on Saturday. This week, state media and seemingly coordinated social media accounts posted edited video of Yu being detained in an apparent attempt to discredit him. From Catherine Lai at HKFP:

In it, a man is seen arguing with about half a dozen people, including some wearing protective gear and one filming the scene on his phone. The man can be heard saying: “I won’t cooperate, I won’t cooperate… You can use violence. I won’t cooperate.” Later, he swings a punch at a man ordering him to get into a car. After a jump cut, the other men appear to roughly push him into a van as he swears at them.

Citing information from Beijing police, The Paper said that Yu was uncooperative with police summons and injured two officers by kicking one in the knee and biting another’s finger. It said he was suspected of “disrupting public service.”

[…] Yu’s wife Xu Yan told HKFP that the police did not produce documents when they seized Yu.

[…] “This was not the complete video – what did Yu Wensheng experience at the time? They should release the entire video.”

[…] Ou Biaofeng, a Hunan rights activist, said on Twitter that the media outlet was being untruthful and “acting as an accomplice to the villain” by framing Yu Wensheng. He also pointed out that the video had been edited and cuts between footage from different cameras and timecodes. [Source]

Campaigners from Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have expressed similar skepticism.

China Change describes the measures against Yu and Sui as apparent parts of “a deliberate and determined campaign to remove and deter human rights lawyers.” Among the other recent cases it cited:

[… Last] week, Shanghai-based lawyer Peng Yonghe (彭永和) lost his law license for demanding financial transparency from the Shanghai Lawyers Association and for a letter he was involved in calling for the crime of subversion of state power to be abolished.

In December, 2017, the Yunnan provincial Justice Department revoked the licenses of lawyers Wang Liqian (王理乾) and Wang Longde (王龙得). For years the two had fought hard for their right to meet clients under judicially-stipulated conditions. They also challenged the legitimacy of the local Lawyers Association, which amasses large fees from members but seldom defends their rights.

[…] In September 2017, Shandong lawyer Zhu Shengwu (祝圣武)’s license was revoked for defending a man who made disparaging comments about Xi Jinping on WeChat.

[…] Human rights lawyers across China are regularly summoned by provincial and local Justice Departments, who issue receive warnings and threats. The regime’s Justice Departments at all levels have an office that “manages” lawyers. Lawyers go through a mandatory annual review by the departments, which renew their licenses — a mechanism designed to keep lawyers on a short leash and ensure they submit to the state, lest they lose their livelihoods. [Source]

Read more from Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

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Chinese rights lawyer Li Baiguang has died suddenly of liver disease in a military hospital. Li was particularly noted for his work defending fellow Christians and victims of forced evictions, for which he received a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush in 2006. He subsequently set up a legal hotline for foreign correspondents during the 2008 Olympics in case of "any conflict with the authorities." More recently, he was appointed by family members to represent "Black Friday" detainee and fellow rights lawyer Hu Shigen, but was barred from doing so. Hu was sentenced to seven years in prison for subversion in August 2016.

The Associated Press reported the circumstances of Li’s death, which activists have described as "mysterious":

Li Baiguang was a well-known lawyer who defended farmers and Christian pastors, work that garnered him an award from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy in 2008. He died just hours after being admitted to No. 81 People’s Liberation Army Hospital for a minor stomach ache, a relative of Li’s told Bob Fu, a religious activist who has known the lawyer for over a decade.

[…] Fu and Li attended the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington together earlier this month. Li’s work defending arrested Chinese pastors often prompted death threats, Fu said. The lawyer had suffered injuries while allegedly being beaten by plainclothes security agents in October.

“We do not know for certain whether those injuries may have contributed to his declining health, but the Chinese government should, as a party to the U.N. convention against torture, conduct a prompt and impartial investigation to determine whether those injuries may have played a role in his untimely death,” said William Nee, a China researcher for Amnesty International.

“The government has the obligation to ensure that lawyers can carry out their professional duties without fear of intimidation or interference, and without being identified with their clients and causes,” Nee said. [Source]

The case has attracted some comparison with others, notably and fatally those of activist Cao Shunli and jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, in which political targets’ health conditions have or may have been used against them to coerce or punish. Li, unlike Cao and Liu, has not recently been in extended detention. A source told Reuters that "he had not done a health check recently, so we do not know if there was a long-term cause" for his death. But Fu and others have expressed skepticism that his condition could have deteriorated so rapidly and without warning after his apparent good health just weeks ago.

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Activist Li Wenzu has embarked on a 60-mile walk from Beijing to Tianjin to seek information about the whereabouts of her husband, "quintessential rights lawyer" Wang Quanzhang, who was detained 1,000 days ago this week. Li is one of several wives and other relatives who have allied to campaign on behalf of "Black Friday" and other political detainees. Wang is the last of those taken in the infamous 2015 crackdown to remain incommunicado, following dozens of releases, trials, and sentencings. From AFP’s Joanna Chiu:

Li and a small group of supporters set off Wednesday on a march from Beijing to the “No. 2 Detention Centre” in the northeastern city of Tianjin, where officials last said he was being held.

They pressed on even during a freak snowstorm and plan to reach Tianjin by next Friday.

“We want to see the president of the court. We want to see the presiding judge. It would be good if someone came out to tell us what Wang Quanzhang’s case was all about. If he committed no sin, they should release him,” she said.

[…] When AFP called the Tianjin No. 2 Detention Centre on Thursday, a man who picked up said: “You should not ask about this matter.” [Source]

Li’s red anorak also bears the slogan "seized for 1,000 days," while she and others in her group are wearing "Free Quanzhang" sweatshirts.

At South China Morning Post sister-site The Inkstone, Xinyan Yu discussed possible reasons for Wang’s continued disappearance:

“He’s probably holding out and saying he’s innocent,” [Amnesty International’s William] Nee said. “The other possibility, although less likely, is that he’s been tortured severely and he looks so different they don’t want to present him yet.”

[…] “He’s very persistent and stubborn,” said Li. “He did his job as a lawyer and he will never think of himself as someone who’s broken the law.”

“Not once in 1,000 days," she emphasized.

[…] “The Chinese government puts a huge emphasis on ensuring that people confess and that the trials go according to plan in a scripted manner,” Amnesty International’s Nee said.

“It speaks a lot to the ‘rule of law’ under President Xi Jinping,” Nee added. “It’s more about manifesting the Party’s power.” [Source]

In a guest column at Jurist last week, Amnesty’s Patrick Poon described the authorities’ harsh treatment of rights lawyers including Yu Wensheng, who was involved in Wang’s defense and lost his law license and was then detained in January after publicly criticizing Xi Jinping and calling for political reform.

These courageous lawyers have often eschewed more lucrative and less controversial roles and instead chose to help people forced from their homes, religious believers facing persecution and many other victims of human rights violations. They only form a small group among China’s 340,000 lawyers but their role in defending human rights is essential. Without these lawyers, many victims of violations will be left without a champion to stand up for their rights.

[…] Their mistreatment strikes at the very heart of the role of defence lawyers in China’s legal system. Is it to defend their clients’ rights or merely to acquiesce to the government’s will? If the latter, lawyers in China are reduced to mere agents of the state. As the number of "post-lawyers" increases, the Chinese government’s claims of "rule of law" ring hollow, exposing the favoured concept of "rule by law with Chinese characteristics" for the sham it is. It is evidenced in former Minister of Justice Zhang Jun’s commentary in the People’s Daily in January 2018 in which he said strengthening the Chinese Communist Party’s role among lawyers is "the core part and fundamental measure" in deepening the reform of the legal system. It bluntly puts the Party above the law.

[…] More than a decade ago, there were less than a dozen known lawyers who took up human rights cases. The number of lawyers taking up human rights cases now, not to mention those who take up the less sensitive public interest cases, has grown to a few hundred, if not a thousand.

Their sheer effectiveness in protecting the human rights of others resulted in the harsh backlash from the authorities. With the government tightening its grip on the legal profession and civil society in general, there are sadly likely to be more ‘post lawyers’ in China. Yet there is hope, for despite everything the government throws at them, these remarkable lawyers remain resolute. [Source]

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Post tags: Black Friday 2015, Black Friday trials, detention, lawyers, protests, rights lawyers, Tianjin, Wang Quanzhang, Yu Wensheng
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The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

Regarding the dispute that occurred between Guangzhou lawyer Sun Shihua and local police, the Guangzhou public security bureau and the Guangzhou Lawyers Association recently published authoritative information on the investigation. Following up on this, no websites shall independently gather or report news or commentary. If authorized to report, use only official information from Guangzhou municipal and related departments, play down this topic. (October 16, 2018) [Chinese]

On September 20, Guangzhou-based lawyer Sui Muqing called the police to report that his wife, human rights lawyer Sun Shihua, had been beaten and illegally detained at the Hualin, Liwan district police substation in Guangzhou while handling a petitioner’s case.  On October 9, Sixth Tone reported on a WeChat post about the incident, noting that the Guangzhou police station had denied that Sun was assaulted or humiliated.

According to her post, Sun had accompanied a client, Li Xiaozhen, to the station on Sept. 20 to help her apply for bail for her husband, a long-time petitioner who had been criminally detained for “disturbing the work of state organs” while trying to take grievances to higher authorities in Beijing. When one officer told Li to send the bail application to the station by mail, with no explanation for why this more time-consuming process was necessary, Sun said she asked for his name and badge number — and that he then began shouting at her.

“All of a sudden, he threw his work ID card at me,” Sun said in a phone interview with Sixth Tone on Tuesday. “I was taken aback, and raised my arms to defend myself. That’s when he started yelling, ‘She’s attacking the police!’” Sun said several staff then seized her, and the officer who had been shouting at her, surnamed Chen, put his hands around her throat and began strangling her. “For a while, I lost consciousness,” she said. In their announcement on Wednesday, the police disputed Sun’s account, claiming she had grabbed the officer’s ID card.

Zhang Wuzhou, a 49-year-old petitioner who was at the police station with her 4-year-old nephew, witnessed the incident and recorded videos with her phone. “Her eyes were rolling back in her head because she was choking,” she told Sixth Tone, referring to Sun. Zhang said her phone was later taken by the police, who deleted the videos.

[…]  Li and the witness, Zhang, told Sixth Tone that they, too, were subjected to strip searches the same day. Zhang said that when she refused to delete the videos she had recorded of the male officer choking Sun, she was called in for interrogation, and that when she refused to be searched, officers began forcibly removing her clothes. They didn’t succeed in fully stripping her but were able to confiscate her phone. […] [Source]

Radio Free Asia provided more on the incident, including context on a wider crackdown on the legal profession in China, on October 12:

Sui repeatedly called the police to report the incident, but was threatened with detention for interfering with police work, it said.

Sun was finally released at the time of Sui’s post, and had been traumatized by the incident, which included a strip search, ostensibly for “hidden weapons,” Sui told RFA.

“Now she gets very anxious whenever she sees anyone in a uniform,” he said. “Sometimes she cries out in her sleep … I’m really not sure if she’s going to be able to carry on doing this job.” […] [Source]

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth

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Post tags: Directives from the Ministry of Truth, Guangzhou, illegal detentions, legal defense, rights lawyers
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Rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang was put on trial in Tianjin on subversion charges Wednesday, after being held in incommunicado detention for almost three and a half years. No verdict has been announced. Wang was the last remaining lawyer to be held without trial as part of the 2015 “Black Friday” crackdown in which more than 100 lawyers and activists were detained. Wednesday’s trial was closed to the press and diplomats, and Wang’s wife Li Wenzu was prevented from attending. Wang, a former staff member of the now shuttered Fengrui Law Firm, handled many human rights cases, including those of Falun Gong practitioners, rural petitioners, and democracy advocates.

Christian Shepherd from Reuters reports from Tianjin:

Investigators said he had “for a long time been influenced by infiltrating anti-China forces” and had been trained by overseas groups and accepted their funding, according to a copy of the indictment seen by Reuters.

[…] “There are serious human rights concerns about the way Wang Quanzhang’s case has been handled so far, including today’s closed-door proceedings – which we understand marked the first time he has seen a judge since he was detained more than three years ago,” U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told Reuters.

Police turned non-Chinese journalists and Western diplomats away from the heavily guarded court in the northern port of Tianjin and denied entry to Wang’s supporters and family.

The court had decided, in accordance with the law, to hold a closed trial as the case involved state secrets, it said in a statement, adding that the verdict would be released at a later date. It gave no other details. [Source]

Wang reportedly fired his state-appointed lawyer just as the trial started, possibly in protest of the official judicial process. Mimi Lau and Guo Rui report for the South China Morning Post:

According to a text message conversation between Li and Liu Weiguo – the lawyer appointed by the government to represent Wang in court – and seen by the South China Morning Post, the defendant made it very clear that he would not require the services of a state-sponsored legal representative.

“I was sacked in the first minute, as the hearing began,” Liu said in a text. “I walked out of the courtroom … I don’t know what happened afterwards.”

Cheng Hai, who was Li’s choice to represent Wang but was prohibited by the authorities from doing so, said Liu’s dismissal was indicative of Wang’s mistrust of state-appointed lawyers.

“[Liu] probably failed to represent Wang’s legal rights properly in court but this could also be his [Wang’s] attempt at trying to get a better defence,” he said. [Source]

Supporters who protested Wang’s arrest were harassed or detained by security outside the court. From AFP:

Just before 10 am, Agence France-Presse journalists witnessed a man getting arrested after he protested outside the court in Tianjin, where Wang’s trial is believed to be underway.

“A refined scholar has been detained by you lot this way that even members of the public can’t see him,” shouted Yang Chunlin, a rights activist from Heilongjiang.

“This is fascist rule, it’s absurd. The Chinese people need to stop living in fear, we need to stand up to oppression and be brave.” Shortly after, several plainclothes officers set on Yang and bundled him into a waiting black SUV. [Source]

Wang’s wife, Li Wenzu, has consistently campaigned on his behalf and has herself been placed under house arrest. In November, she was honored with Sweden’s Edelstam Prize for her human rights work on behalf of her husband and other detained lawyers. Security officers prevented her from leaving her house to attend her husband’s trial. Lily Kuo reports for The Guardian:

On Wednesday, hours before the trial was to begin, Li walked down the seven flights of stairs of her apartment block in Beijing to find more than a dozen plainclothes police and four cars awaiting her outside. She had already been warned by public security agents not to attend her husband’s trial at a courthouse in the northern Chinese city of Tianjin.

After three years of protesting and calling for the release of her husband, on trial for subverting the state, a charge often used for dissidents, Li is used to the police restricting her movements.

“Every time it feels different. Today is Wang Quanzhang’s court hearing, which means there could be a verdict. So I am very worried about that as well as his health,” she said.

Li was quickly surrounded by a crowd of journalists and security agents, holding up their phones to film her. A man who refused to show his identification offered to drive her the 120km to Tianjin but she refused. As she tried to move, the crowd of security agents blocked her way. It was clear they were not going to let her leave. [Source]

Earlier this month, Li and the family members of other detained lawyers shaved their heads in a show of defiance against the arrests. Chris Buckley of The New York Times interviewed Li about the trial:

“This whole process has been illegal, so how could I expect an open and fair trial?” Mr. Wang’s wife, Li Wenzu, said in a telephone interview before the hearing. “But my demand is still that he be freed as not guilty, because that’s what he is.”

[…] In the face of official pressure and rebuffs, Ms. Li and the families of other detained lawyers coalesced into a determined and creative resistance.

They have protested using red buckets, attempted walking to the detention center where Mr. Wang was held, and this month they shaved their heads to protest what they said was judges’ failure to enforce Mr. Wang’s rights under Chinese law. (The Mandarin Chinese word for hair (fa) sounds similar to the word for law.)

“In Chinese, having no hair sounds like having no law,” Ms. Li said. “We meant that we can do without our hair, but we can’t do without law.” [Source]

AP’s Gerry Shih notes the collateral damage from a case like Wang’s, where many of his colleagues and associates have also been detained:

Wang’s indictment accused him of, among other offenses, working with a foreign NGO, China Aid. The co-founder of China Aid, Peter Dahlin, had himself been detained and deported from China in 2016. Dahlin issued a statement on the charges against Wang:

[…] The very mission of ‘China Action’ was to strengthen enforcement of China’s law,s the very opposite of claims that it was in any way or form working to violate or break Chinese law. There is no legal basis for the prosecution of Wang Quanzhang as presented by the prosecutor, and the court should, without delay, have Wang Quanzhang set free. Likewise, the prosecution of Wang for participating in the now famous Jiansanjiang case have no merit in law, and any legal violations were perpetrated by Jiansanjiang police, not any of the many lawyers involved.

The evidence, as indicated by the prosecutor – according to an older, sealed, indictment, includes testimony from several other people, all but one which was effectively disappeared during their interrogations, placed into ‘residential surveillance at a designated location’ (RSDL). The indictment names Wang Yu, Chen Songzhu, Xing Jianshen and myself, Peter Dahlin. All were held in solitary confinement, without access to a lawyer, incommunicado, and as testimony released before has shown in some of those cases, some received physical and mental torture. Any ‘evidence’ collected through such interrogations should be inadmissible, as per Chinese law. […] [Source]

A statement from Amnesty International called Wang’s trial “a cruel charade,” while the Hong Kong Bar Association also called for his release.

The timing of Wang’s trial also brought to mind similar high-profile sentencings around the Christmas season, when many foreign reporters and diplomats are not available to cover them. In 2017, activist Wu Gan was sentenced to eight years in prison on December 26, while in 2009, late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years on Christmas eve. Last year, Sarah Cook of Freedom House wrote about China’s “stealthy holiday crackdowns.” At her China Law and Policy blog, Elizabeth Lynch writes about why the timing of Wang’s trial may portend a harsh sentence:

Make no mistake, the Chinese government’s choice of the day after Christmas for Wang’s trial was intentional. And does not bode well for Wang. Knowing that much of the Western world shuts down between Christmas and New Year’s, the Chinese government has used that time to sentence some of its most famous advocates to harsh – and unjustified – prison sentences. As RFI has pointed out, Nobel Laureate Liu Xiaobo, who eventually died in a Chinese prison, was sentenced to 11 years on Christmas Day 2009. And on December 26 of last year, human rights advocate Wu Gan, another victim of the Chinese government’s 2015 crackdown, was given an eight-year sentence.

For Wednesday, expect another severe sentence for Wang Quanzhang who has been charged with the serious crime of subverting state power. Not only has Wang refused to “confess” in exchange for leniency and agreeably participate in a show trial, the Chinese government has vilified Wang by name in the press, including naming him as a ringleader. It also has alleged that because of the alleged influence of “foreign forces,” specifically the use of foreign NGO funds, these lawyers, including Wang, are national security risks. And don’t expect the passage of time to soften the government’s view of Wang, especially as China’s economy slows down, threatening the current regime’s stability and power. [Source]

As Reuters’ Christian Shepherd points out, when media organizations and embassies are short-staffed at holidays, the lower-profile cases get even less attention than Wang’s:

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Post tags: Black Friday 2015, Black Friday trials, due process, Peter Dahlin, rights lawyers, Wang Quanzhang
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The following censorship instructions, issued to the media by government authorities, have been leaked and distributed online. The name of the issuing body has been omitted to protect the source.

All websites: the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court will deliver its sentence on the Wang Quanzhang case. Without unified prior arrangement, do not gather news or report, do not comment or reprint.  (January 25, 2018) [Chinese]

On December 26, rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang stood trial for subversion in Tianjin after being held in detention for nearly three and a half years without access to legal representation or family. The trial was closed to press and diplomats, and even Wang’s wife was barred from attending. Wang, one of over 100 rights lawyers and activists detained in the 2015 “Black Friday” crackdown, was the last to be held without trial.

Since directives are sometimes communicated orally to journalists and editors, who then leak them online, the wording published here may not be exact. Some instructions are issued by local authorities or to specific sectors, and may not apply universally across China. The date given may indicate when the directive was leaked, rather than when it was issued. CDT does its utmost to verify dates and wording, but also takes precautions to protect the source. See CDT’s collection of Directives from the Ministry of Truth since 2011.

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Post tags: Black Friday 2015, Black Friday trials, Directives from the Ministry of Truth, rights lawyers, Wang Quanzhang
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