By Beijing Yirenping Center, April 14, 2015
On April 14, Hong Lei, the Spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), stated publicly that our organization, Beijing Yirenping Center (BYC), “has allegedly violated the law, and will be punished.” Our organization’s response is as follows:
1. We welcome MOFA in its open discussion on BYC, as this is an improvement upon the break-in raid into our office, in the early hours of March 24.
2. BYC will take the accusation from MOFA seriously. We will hire legal counsel to respond in accordance with China’s laws, as well as pursue the March 24 office raid.
3. Since BYC’s founding in 2006, we have been the target of rigorous “solicitude” from various departments and levels of the police force. We have reason to believe that, should BYC have broken the law in any way, the police would have raised the issue long ago, rather than leaving it to be picked up by the foreign affairs agency. The fact remains that no one in the police force has ever pointed out any illegality in BYC’s work; on the contrary, across the board they see BYC’s work as meaningful. We are now unsure which of these two divergent opinions to believe.
4. We have noticed that, starting last year, other anti-discrimination groups in China have run into a series of crackdown that is without legal basis or warning. In July 2014, Zhengzhou Yirenping, an organization whose mission is eliminating discrimination against disability, was raided; in March 2015, Weizhiming, a Hangzhou group whose mission is eliminating gender discrimination, saw the same thing happen.
5. As the first professional public interest group against discrimination in China, BYC has, in collaboration with many other players, consistently pushed the envelope on anti-discrimination and promotion of equal rights. After many years of hard work, the concept of “anti-discrimination” is increasingly gaining currency within the entire society. In the communique issued after the 4th Plenary Session of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee, “the elimination of all employment discrimination” was also raised. The government declares the intention to fight discrimination on the one hand, and on the other raids the office of anti-discrimination organizations and makes accusation of “illegality.” It is hard for people to know whether the government policies are real, uniform or consistent.
6. The “Five Feminist Sisters” just released are all peers and good friends of BYC, and three of them either are or used to be our colleagues. They were arrested without justification by the police for organizing a legal education drive to fight sexual harassment on public transportation, and we joined everyone else both in China and abroad as a matter of course to protest these arrests and to advocate for them. On April 13, we were relieved and overjoyed at their release. However, we do not flatter ourselves that BYC had made any out-of-the-ordinary contribution to the advocacy campaign, nor can we prove that the March 24 raid of our office and the MOFA accusation constitute “retribution” against us.
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Related:
China accuses prominent NGO of ‘breaking the law’, Reuters, April 14, 2015
China Raids Offices of Rights Group as Crackdown on Activism Continues, New York Times, March 26, 2015.
(Translated by China Change)
Chinese original, not yet available on the web.
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