Document #1232737
HRW – Human Rights Watch (Author)
(New York) – The Chinese judicial system’s failure to release three high-profile key activists detained in recent months – public intellectual Guo Yushan, lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, and legal activist Guo Feixiong – reflects progressively harsher suppression of civil society, Human Rights Watch said today.
There is no publicly available credible evidence of illegal behavior in any of their cases, yet all three are likely to advance in the coming weeks as judicial personnel handle these cases with instructions from Communist Party authorities.
“Under Xi Jinping’s leadership, the crackdown on dissent has netted some of China’s most respected critics known for their innovative activism developing the rule of law,” said Sophie Richardson, China director. “Prosecuting and imprisoning these well-established public figures indicates near-zero tolerance for independent activism.”
Over the past decade, the three have been at the forefront of China’s human rights movement, pushing officials for greater adherence to the law and devising new methods to advance their cause:
Officials had to an extent tolerated Guo’s and Pu’s work prior to their detention. Both pushed boundaries and aided fellow activists, including blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, without being jailed – an ever present risk for rights activists. Guo’s Transition Institute operated for nearly eight years, though with periodic official harassment; Pu had been frequently featured and quoted in official publications. Guo Feixiong, however, was jailed between 2006 and 2011 for his leadership role in Taishi Village.
All three focused on social issues recognized to be important by the government, including the rule of law, the fight against corruption, and inequality. All have carefully and painstakingly adhered to peaceful and lawful means in their activism. During a demonstration in January 2013 against the censorship of Southern Weekly, Guo Feixiong ensured the demonstrators did not block the gate of the publication, the road, or the pedestrian path, and that they left the demonstration promptly by the end of the workday.
“For years activists could mostly predict what kind of work or degree of pressure on authorities would eventually get them into trouble,” Richardson said. “But if these experienced and skillful moderates are prosecuted for their work, all bets on where the repression ends appear to be off.”
The detentions in this long crackdown are also characterized by procedural violations that are so blatant as to appear politically sanctioned. Despite senior officials’ pledges at an October 2014 Communist Party plenum to upholding the rule of law, Guo Yushan was not allowed access to lawyers until January 8, 2015, more than three months from his detention, although the law normally requires the detention center to arrange the meeting within 48 hours of the lawyers’ application. Detention center staff told Guo’s lawyers that he could not meet with his lawyer because his case involves either “state secrets, terrorism, or major corruption,” three crimes for which police approval is required prior to the lawyer-client meeting according to the law. Yet Guo’s charge is manifestly unrelated to any of these situations.
Pu Zhiqiang “had been subject to inhuman mental and physical torment,” including daily interrogations for up to 10 hours a day over a period of several months, according to a December 19, 2014 open letter from his wife to President Xi Jinping. Guo Feixiong has not been allowed out of his overcrowded cell once in the past 17 months in detention, although article 25 of the Detention Center Regulations requires that detainees be allowed out of their cells to exercise every day.
In a particularly alarming move, authorities have also detained Guo Yushan’s and Pu Zhiqiang’s defense lawyers, Xia Lin and Qu Zhenhong. Xia is detained on allegations of “extortion,” and Qu for “operating an illegal business.” While the government has frequently arrested lawyers for their activism in the past, it rarely arrested defense lawyers while they were handling prominent cases. Both Xia and Qu have also been denied access to their defense lawyers.
The detentions of Guo Yushan, Pu Zhiqiang, and Guo Feixiong are consistent with the broader crackdown since mid-2013, when Xi Jinping formally assumed power. The police have detained, arrested, and disappeared at least hundreds of activists since then, targeting those who were involved in the New Citizens Movement spearheaded by legal scholar Xu Zhiyong in 2013, and those who are suspected of supporting the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong between September and December 2014. Another wave of detentions also took place around the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre of pro-democracy protesters. Many have since been prosecuted and imprisoned following unfair trials, while others have been released.
Of those who were detained in this latest wave of crackdown against suspected supporters of the pro-democracy Hong Kong protests, 29 remain in custody, according to the NGO Chinese Human Rights Defenders. Those detained include the Transition Institute’s current director, Huang Kaiping, and its administrative director, He Zhengjun. The authorities have also detained Liu Jianshu, the former deputy director-general of another NGO with close relations to the Transition Institute, called Liren Rural Libraries.
Some of these individuals, including Huang Kaiping, have been effectively disappeared for over a month, as police have not yet informed families of the detentions, or of the detainees’ whereabouts despite legal requirements to do so. Police have also refused to acknowledge their detention to their lawyers when the latter went to make enquiries at the detention centers. The use of enforced disappearances against activists is reminiscent of the disappearances and torture of dozens of activists during the government’s clampdown on civil society in the spring of 2011, when an anonymous call for a Jasmine Revolution in China was posted online.
“If these three people are sent to jail, there can be no more illusions about the nature of the current leadership in Beijing,” Richardson said. “Those who claim worldwide to defend civil society – from US President Barack Obama to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon – need to immediately and publicly call for these activists’ release.”