Wang Qiaoling, October 6, 2023 (Audio on browser) In the long year of 2018, there was a bright spot – that May, we found a school for my eight-year-old daughter. As early as 2016, my daughter was admitted to a bilingual school, which was the same school her brother attended for junior high. It also offered kindergarten and elementary. When the 709 crackdown on human rights lawyers occurred, my daughter was in the senior class of kindergarten. Overwhelmed by the blow and the ensuing scrambling, it was only in May 2016 that I realized she was already about to start elementary school. Parents living in Beijing without Beijing household registration had already been busy obtaining dozens of documents for enrollment in the capital, preparing their […]

Wang Qiaoling, October 3, 2023 (Audio on browser) Since the 709 crackdown on human rights lawyers in 2015, I often introduced myself to others as Wang Qiaoling (王峭岭), wife of 709 lawyer Li Heping. Starting from today, let me introduce myself in a new way. I am Wang Qiaoling, mother of Li Zeyuan (李泽远) and Li Jiamei (李佳美). My son, Li Zeyuan, was 15 years old and had just started high school when the 709 crackdown happened in 2015. When Lawyer Li Heping was taken away by a large group of police, my daughter knew, but my son didn’t. He had been at a classmate’s house, and when he came home to find a throng of uniformed and plainclothes officers, he was visibly shaken. I […]

The 29 Principles and China Change, September 6, 2023    Preface: With the escalating crackdown on China’s human rights lawyers in recent years, the authorities have developed increasingly sophisticated means for repressing attorneys who take on politically sensitive cases. Instances of prolonged detention without trial, trial without judgment, or secret trial have become increasingly common. In cases when lawyers are allowed to intervene, they are required to promise not to accept interviews from the media, and to sign confidentiality agreements before reviewing case documents. Prior to court hearings, lawyers are again required to enter another set of confidentiality agreements that prevents disclosure of case proceedings and defense arguments. When a case is closed, lawyers are prohibited from revealing the verdict. At the same time, authorities surveil […]

China Change, June 17, 2023 Correction: The original post misstated that lawyer Yu Wensheng and his wife were intercepted on their way to German Embassy to meet the visiting German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, whereas the couple was on their way to a meeting at the EU Delegation. On April 13, lawyer Yu Wensheng (余文生) and his wife Xu Yan (许艳) were on their way to the EU Delegation in Beijing for a meeting when they were intercepted on the subway by four plainclothes policemen. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was in Tianjin and due to arrive in Beijing the next day. The police announced that the couple had been summoned and forcibly took them away to Bajiao police station, Jingshan District. The next day […]

July 25, 2022 China Disbars Lawyers to Remove a Perceived Threat / 中國人權律师被剝奪執業權 In a very real sense, the 709 Crackdown is still ongoing. Over the years following the initial campaign to arrest and torture human rights lawyers, China has disbarred over 40 lawyers for representing clients in human rights cases. As recently as in 2021, for example, China disbarred seven lawyers. For the 6th China Human Rights Lawyers Day, we interviewed eight lawyers to discuss the issue — five of them are 709 detainees (Li Heping, Wang Yu, Sui Muqing, Xie Yanyi, and Ren Quanqiu), and three are lawyers who took up the defense of their detained colleagues (Wen Donghai, Lin Qilei, and Lu Siwei). We apologize for the poor visual quality because we […]

Li Fangping, July 9, 2022 Li Fangping started practicing law in China in the mid-1990s, first in Jiangxi and then in Beijing. Over the years since the onset of the rights defense movement in the early 2000s, he has been one of the leading human rights lawyers and has defensed clients in nearly all types of human rights and public interest cases, including political prisoners, activists, rights defenders, victims of food contamination, victims of workplace discrimination, Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, and Tibetan Buddha Buramna Rimpoche. I was in a messaging group with Mr. Li a few years ago and remembered to this day what he once said there: “The police have visited my parents in Jiangxi more times than I have.” He and his family […]

June 16, 2022 The sixth annual China Human Rights Lawyers Day will be held virtually on July 9, 2022, at 9 a.m. EST (U.S.). In 2017, human rights organizations in the U.S., Taiwan, and Hong Kong established July 9th as the China Human Rights Lawyers day to commemorate the mass arrests, detention, and torture of human rights lawyers in mainland China that began on July 9, 2015. Since then, the Chinese authorities have continued to imprison and torture lawyers who dare take on politically sensitive cases, while preventing others from engaging in their legal practice. In the last few years, more than 40 Chinese human rights lawyers have had their licenses suspended or permanently revoked. With far-reaching consequences, the authorities have been successful in suppressing […]

“Rights defense lawyers” emerged at the beginning of the 21st century. From their appearance, to the notorious 709 mass arrests in 2015, to today, the Chinese Communist government has subjected them to intimidation, disappearance, torture, imprisonment, and disbarment, ignoring the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers. This 68-minute documentary film reviews the twenty-year journey of human rights lawyers in China.

February 11, 2022 This wide-ranging, fascinating conversation was initially conducted on The American Bar Foundation’s Rule of Law: World Tour podcast on December 21, 2021. Professor Halliday has since expanded it to include more details of his study of China’s lawyers since 2005, how the work of Chinese lawyers is part of a bigger struggle for basic legal freedoms and how it resonates with lawyers’ roles in other parts of the world, historically and geographically. The original podcast can be found at https://anchor.fm/whoselawisitanyway. – The Editors Host: Welcome back to Whose Law Is It Anyway, an American Bar Foundation podcast. What is the American Bar Foundation? Check us out at http://www.AmericanBarFoundation.org to learn more about our research on the intersection of law and society. In […]

China Change, August 28, 2020 On August 11, 2020, Hunan provincial Justice Department issued a “Notice of Administrative Penal Action” [translation included below] permanently disbarring lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳). Those who have followed the 709 crackdown on human rights lawyers will recall that the then-detained Xie Yang, one of the only two 709 detainees who eventually got to see their own lawyers, spoke to his defense attorney Chen Jiangang (陈建刚) about the horrific torture he had been subjected to. Chen published the transcript of his meetings with Xie Yang in January, 2017, causing an immediate and strong response from the international media and governments, because up to that point (18 months following the 709 arrests), little was known about these lawyers’ situation. Eleven ambassadors in […]

Xie Yang, a lawyer based in Changsha, was one of the 709 lawyers detained and charged with “subversion.” From autumn 2016 to the beginning of 2017, his wife and attorneys exposed the torture he suffered, the first of such revelations that would be echoed later by other 709 detainees. To deny the torture of Xie Yang and fend off international backlash, in March 2017, the Chinese state media launched a massive smear campaign against Xie Yang’s lawyers and wife, who had fled to Thailand but was captured by Chinese agents….

Wang Quanzhang, Citizen of the People’s Republic of China On January 24, 2019, after more than 1,300 days of incommunicado detention, the Tianjin Second Intermediate People’s Court finally convicted me of the crime of subversion of state power; on April 24, 2019, the Tianjin Higher People’s Court quickly issued a ruling upholding the original judgment. The judgment of the trial of first instance and the ruling of the second-instance court involved extremely serious, unlawful operations with respect to both facts and procedure. After they interrogated me dozens of times, the investigators finally extracted and summarized three so-called “crimes” from my professional experience and daily life: 1. Participation in the incident involving meeting detainees at the Jiansanjiang Detention Center;[1] 2. Establishing an overseas company with Peter […]

Terence C. Halliday and Eva Pils, July 8, 2020 In the early hours of the morning on 9 July 2015, China’s security apparatus launched the first strike of its worst ever campaign against practicing lawyers in China.  The forced disappearance of woman lawyer Wang Yu by unidentified black-garbed, masked men signaled the beginnings of a nationwide campaign that would detain and incarcerate, many times disappear and torture, numerous times charge and sentence, more than 300 lawyers in the following months. Their “crimes”? Taking on challenging criminal defense and human rights cases, accompanied by calls for a fair and just legal system that respected the rights of even the most vulnerable. It was an attack unsurpassed globally, if not in terms of its brutality, then in […]

China Human Rights Lawyers Group, July 9, 2020 Neither remorseful nor boastful in the past, human rights lawyers will not be so today, nor in the future.   Five years ago, beginning with the seizure of Lawyer Wang Yu and her husband, the Chinese government launched a campaign to wipe out human rights defenders. Human rights lawyers bore the brunt of the attack, and so this day, July 9, is regarded as “China Human Rights Lawyers’ Day.”  That a calamitous day is treated as a holiday reflects, and is highly compatible with, the spirit and temperament of human rights lawyers’ as a group, their inherent tenacity and optimism, and conscious assumption of responsibility. The course of these five years can be described as a journey […]

China Change, July 4, 2020 The fifth anniversary of the 709 crackdown on the Chinese human rights lawyers is approaching. China’s methodical persecution of human rights lawyers continues to this day and will likely go on for the conceivable future. China Change has written and translated extensively over the past five years on the subject. For your convenience, we have put them all in one place and here are the 72 posts, as of June 30, 2020. You can also download a PDF version. — The Editors Background Crime and Punishment of China’s Rights Lawyers, Mo Zhixu, July 23, 2015. Biographies of Lawyers, Staffers and Activists Detained or Disappeared in the July 10 Nationwide Raid Against Rights Lawyers, China Change, July 23, 2015.   14 […]

Sui Muqing, Yaxue Cao, June 2, 2020 This is the second interview in our How I Become a Human Rights Lawyer series. Today we present our conversation with Guangzhou lawyer Sui Muqing (隋牧青), conducted on May 19, 2020.  — The Editors 1. Tiananmen, 1989 Yaxue Cao: Let’s start from Tiananmen. There are quite a few Chinese human rights lawyers, probably more that I don’t know of. At the very least, there are the ones we call the Generation of 1989 — Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强), Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜), Tang Jitian (唐吉田)… and you, of course. There’s a photo I remember very clearly, that was shared widely online, of you and several classmates singing together. Sui Muqing: I don’t know when this photo was taken. When did I […]

Tang Jitian, April 30, 2020 Tang Jitian (唐吉田) grew up in the mountains of the northeastern province of Jilin, a Korean autonomous prefecture, not too far from Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, and North Korea. He enrolled in the Politics Department at Northeast Normal University in Changchun in 1988, just in time for the 1989 student democracy movement. He became a teacher after college and, a few years later, a prosecutor. He was ill-fit for the latter job — making arguments in favor of death sentences and watching men being executed at point blank range was only part of it. In 2004 he passed the bar exam and started practicing law. He went to Beijing in the most euphoric year of 2008, found the burgeoning […]

China Change, December 4, 2019 On November 21, the Guangzhou Lawyers Association gathered a meeting of all law firm directors, and disseminated the following orders issued “from higher authorities.” These law firm directors were required to then pass on the following points to all the lawyers they employ. From that day [Nov 21] through December 15, inappropriate remarks are not allowed, and lawyers and the directors of their law firms would be punished for any violations of the following: Lawyers are not permitted to express opinions different from those of the Party on the Hong Kong issue; Lawyers must maintain discipline, and even trivial matters of everyday life must be brought under moral supervision; If you read Xi Jinping’s quotations, join the Party, set up […]

July 9, 2019 The world was shocked by the mass detention of Chinese human right lawyers on July 9, 2015 –– in what became known as the “709 Incident.” Following the secret sentencing of “709” lawyer Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), who was tried for the crime of “subversion of state power,” people thought that the “709 Incident,” at least for the time being, should have come to an end. But in fact, the opposite is true. The relevant authorities not only have not ended their persecution of human rights lawyers; on the contrary, they have intensified their efforts. After the roundup of human rights lawyers in the “709 Incident” in July 2015, four additional human rights lawyers, Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) Li Yuhan (李昱函), Yu Wensheng (余文生), […]

China Change, March 31, 2019 Liu Xiaoyuan (刘晓原) stands prominent among China’s human rights lawyers. In 2004, he came to Beijing to practice at the age of 40. In the roughly one decade up to mid-2015, he represented countless rights cases. Some of the more notable of these include the appeal of a death sentence by farmer Li Zhiping (李志平) in Dingzhou, Hebei Province; the Yang Jia (杨佳) police murder case in Shanghai; the case of the three netizens in Fujian (福建三网民); the case of journalist Qi Chonghuai (齐崇淮) in Shandong; and the case of Ji Zhongxing (冀中星), the migrant worker who threw a homemade bomb at the Beijing Capital Airport in 2013. Cases Liu Xiaoyuan has taken on in recent years include the “separatist” […]

September 13, 2018     On September 13, 2013, lawyers Wang Cheng (王成), Tang Jitian (唐吉田), and Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) announced the establishment of the China Human Rights Lawyers Group (中国人权律师团). All three had been disbarred by the Chinese authorities because of their commitment to defending the rights of the Chinese people. In just one year, more than 300 Chinese lawyers joined the Group. Many seasons later, the Human Rights Lawyers Group now marks the fifth anniversary of its founding. On this otherwise ordinary day, we will take inventory of what we have done over the last five years, reiterate the basic principles of the group, and plan our steps for the future. In the past five years, we have gone through hardships and sadness; […]

China Change, August 13, 2018     On August 9, the Beijing Justice Bureau issued a decision to cancel lawyer Cheng Hai’s  (程海) license. Six months ago in February, the bureau cancelled the registration of his small Beijing Wutian Law Firm, claiming that the firm had not accepted the annual review on schedule. According to China’s Administrative Measures for the Practice of Law by Lawyers (《律师执业管理办法》), a lawyer’s license is revoked if they’re not hired by a firm for six months. On August 10, lawyer Cheng Hai filed an Application for Administrative Review, which shows that the authorities were committed to having him disbarred, and refused to view contrary evidence. The application shows that Cheng Hai signed an employment contract with the Beijing Liangzhi Law […]

China Change, August 8, 2018     Until recently, David Missal (@DavidJRMissal) was a graduate student at the School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, on a two-year DAAD scholarship (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst; or German Academic Exchange Service). Two months ago, Missal told RFA, he applied to the Exit and Entry Administration of the Beijing Public Security Bureau for the renewal of his student visa. Under normal circumstances, it takes about 10 days to complete the process. But last Friday, the bureau notified him that his renewal was denied, and he was ordered to leave China within 10 days. The reason they gave is that Missal has engaged in activities not in accordance with his student visa. Missal believes that the denial of visa and […]

July 19, 2018   Lawyer Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), who was disappeared on July 15, 2018 in the Chinese Communist Party’s infamous 709 Crackdown on human rights lawyers, has been held incommunicado for just over three years now. Until recently, almost nothing was known about him, including where he was being held, the conditions under which he was being held, and what charges are likely to be brought against him. Whether he was even dead or alive was unknown until recently. Following are two updates on his situation translated by China Change. The first comes from Wang’s newly appointed lawyer, Liu Weiguo (刘卫国); the second, expressing great concern over Wang’s health, from his wife Li Wenzu (李文足). — The Editors   An Update on Wang Quanzhang’s […]

Terence Halliday, July 9, 2018     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.     In the last days of June 2015 I spent many hours in coffee shops and hotels and restaurants and offices with many of China’s notable rights lawyers. Wang Yu (王宇) and I discussed the extraordinary nationwide attack on her reputation. Yu Wensheng (余文生) described his unbearable torture in the hands of […]

Yaxue Cao, on the second China Human Rights Lawyers’ Day, July 8, 2018, New York   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. Wang Quanzhang is 42 years old. […]

Xie Yanyi, July 8, 2018 My name is Xie Yanyi. I’ve been a lawyer for 17 years. In 2003 I was the first person to bring a lawsuit against Jiang Zemin for violating the constitution by continuing as the chairman of the state Central Military Commission. From that point forward, I attracted the attention of the authorities. In June and July 2015 — around then — due to the Qing’an case and a number of other rights defense cases, numerous rights lawyers and citizens were called in and interrogated by the authorities, some were arrested and paraded on state media. The Qing’an incident was the fuse that lit the 709 crackdown. In the early morning of July 12, 2015, I heard a knock at the […]

Xie Yang, July 6, 2018       My name is Xie Yang. I’m a lawyer at the Gangwei Law Firm, in Changsha, Hunan. On July 9, 2015, I immediately got word of the arrest of Wang Yu, Bao Longjun, and their son. On the morning of July 10, when I was interviewed by an overseas media outlet. They asked me: What do you think of Wang Yu’s whole family getting taken away? I frankly told them my opinion: I said that this is the beginning of the Chinese authorities’ purge of human rights lawyers. I said that a tempest would soon be upon us. The following afternoon, on July 10 — it was a Friday — I went to Huaihua City in Hunan to […]

Sui Muqing, July 5, 2018       Hello everyone. I’m lawyer Sui Muqing from Guangzhou. I practiced law in Guangzhou from 1998 to 2017. On July 9, 2015, in the early hours of the morning — I happened to still be online — Wang Yu live-broadcasted her arrest. I was arrested the following night, on July 10. At 11:00 p.m. the property management people rang my doorbell and said that my car had been hit. I suspected a ruse, so I ignored them. A little while later they came back, and again said that someone had hit my car. The problem now was that the sound of the doorbell was extremely loud. My wife and kid were already asleep. It was really loud, you […]

Lü Shijie, July 4, 2018     In China, lawyers who handle cases according to the law and uncover the illegal activities of the authorities have increasingly filled the Chinese Communist Party with dread. Their courage has invited strict surveillance and repression. The methods of repression incorporate not only the past experiences of ‘class struggle,’ but have been further refined through continuous innovation to form a comprehensive and more deceptive mechanism of control. 1. Unlawful ‘Annual Review’ of Lawyers Each year, Chinese lawyers must complete a so-called ‘inspection’ with their local judicial bureau. Those who pass receive a blue seal on their practice license to confirm that they are ‘qualified’ (称职). Over the years, the authorities have used this as a means of muzzling lawyers. […]

Wen Donghai, July 4, 2018       Hello everyone. I’m lawyer Wen Donghai (文东海) from Changsha. In the early hours of July 9, 2015, we first heard Wang Yu’s call for help. She said that unidentified men had charged into their home and were going to take her away. For a long time following that, we didn’t hear any news. In the evening of July 10, the next night, I received a phone call. The caller identified themselves as coming from the police station, and said they wanted to speak to me. After I got there they began questioning me. Their main line of enquiry was about the arrest of Wang Yu and Zhou Shifeng. They said that we shouldn’t pay any attention to […]

Jiang Tianyong, July 3, 2018   Following is an excerpt from Jiang Tianyong’s interview with the Chinese edition of The Epoch Times, published on July 12, 2016, a year into the 709 Crackdown and four months before his own arrest. Also following is a short video his wife, Jin Bianling, who shares the latest news about Jiang, who is now serving a two-year sentence in Xinxiang Prison, Henan (Henan No. 2 Prison). It is believed that Jiang was severely tortured during custody. The excerpt has been edited for brevity. — The Editors         A Patriot By Himself, a Subverter by the Chinese Government The education we receive from childhood to adulthood is that people must be patriotic, must be involved in politics, […]

June 24, 2018     China’s community of human rights lawyers have made enormous sacrifices to defend the rights and freedoms of citizens and promote China’s progress toward the rule-of-law and democracy. As representatives of China’s wider community of lawyers, human rights lawyers have, since the beginning of the rights defense movement in early 2000s, been the constant target of severe government repression. This has included, without letup, cancellation of legal licenses, being stalked, being threatened, being publicly defamed, being kidnapped, being secretly disappeared, and being subject to forced labor, long-term incarceration, or torture. On July 9, 2017, marking the second anniversary of the Communist Party’s most brutal persecution of human rights lawyers with the ‘709 incident,’ 14 human rights organizations held an ‘Inaugural China […]

Xie Yanyi, May 21, 2018   Xie Yanyi, who turned 43 this year, is a lawyer in Beijing who has taken on numerous human rights cases over his career. In April 2015 Xie led a small group of rights lawyers seeking restitution after the police shooting of passenger Xu Chunhe (徐纯合) at the Qing’an railway station in Heilongjiang, and later published a legal investigation of the incident. This case is believed to be one of the fuses leading to the 709 (July 9, 2015) mass arrest of lawyers, and Xie Yanyi was one of the scores of lawyers arrested during that crackdown. He was accused of inciting subversion of state power and detained for 553 days, until being released on probationary bail. Last year Xie […]

China Change, May 14, 2018     Following the ‘709 crackdown’ — a large-scale attack against human rights lawyers that began on July 9, 2015 — China has continued to target this small group (about 0.1% of China’s 300,000 lawyers) who have taken on cases to defend basic human rights and other forms of social injustice. While torture and imprisonment have failed to cowe them, the government is now resorting to simple disbarment, or more subtle techniques, like preventing them from getting work so as to force their licenses to lapse, in order to take human rights lawyers off the field. The government regards this group of lawyers and those they defend a threat to communist rule; their determination to eliminate them is meeting with […]

May 9, 2018       Background On July 9, 2015, Wang Yu (王宇) became the first target in a campaign of mass arrests against human rights lawyers in China. Over the next roughly two weeks, over 300 rights lawyers were arrested, interrogated, detained, and threatened — thus begetting the notorious ‘709 Incident.’ After over a month in secret detention at a black site in Beijing, Wang Yu was transferred to Tianjin for a continuation of her detention, then under so-called ‘residential surveillance at a designated place’ (指定居所監視居住). For over a year she was not allowed to see her lawyer, family, or communicate with the outside world. Another 20 or so lawyers and activists, including Wang Yu’s husband Bao Longjun (包龍軍), were given similar treatment. […]

Li Wenzu, April 12, 2018   Li Wenzu (李文足) is the wife of 709 lawyer Wang Quanzhang (王全璋). On April 4, the 1000th day of her husband’s disappearance on July 10, 2015, she and a group of 709 lawyers’ wives began a march from Beijing to Tianjin, about 130 kilometers, where Wang Quanzhang is supposedly being detained. Along the way, other activists joined them on and off. On the sixth day of their march, their march were broken up by scores of plainclothes police officers, and Li Wenzu was taken back home to Beijing by force. Human Rights in China translated Li Wenzu’s account of her first day back. We offer you a translation of her account of the second day. However, as we prepare […]

March 2, 2018     Minister Zhang Jun: We are among the lawyers who have been disbarred or prevented from practicing as a result of coordinated suppression by the Ministry of Justice in the year 2017. We are well aware that open letters are regularly received by ministries, commissions, and high officials in the Party, state, and military — some angry, some polite, some beseeching… letters of every kind imaginable. There are simply too many people who, unable to find redress anywhere else, will put their hopes in making direct appeal to officials. Whereas local officials may occasionally respond to letters, writing to high-ranking officials in Party Central is like tossing a rock into the ocean. There are also many, in particular human rights lawyers, […]

China Change, January 24, 2018       On Monday evening the Guangzhou-based lawyer Sui Muqing (隋牧青) was notified by his law firm that government officials from the provincial Justice Department would inspect the firm the following morning and that Sui, in particular, must be present. He felt a nervous chill and began to suspect that his communications on a series of human rights cases he has represented had upset high-level officials. On Tuesday morning (January 23), two officials from the Justice Department arrived, announcing on the spot that Sui’s law license had been revoked. The written announcement cited two incidents as cause of the punishment: that he disrupted court order while defending New Citizen Movement activists on April 8, 2014, by quitting the court […]

Yaxue Cao, January 15, 2018       As of January 15, 2018, human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang (王全璋) had been held incommunicado for 920 days. This makes him the only 709 detainee who hasn’t been heard from since the notorious 709 Crackdown began in July 2015. Last Friday, two lawyers, a former client, and three wives of 709 victims travelled from Beijing to arrive early morning at the First Detention Center in Tianjin, a half hour ride by high-speed train. The sun had risen, and a rich orange hue cloaked everything. A large-character slogan ran the length of the walls of the Detention Center: “Be Loyal to the Party, Serve the People, Enforce the Law with Fairness.” They were the first visitors waiting for […]

January 10, 2018   Since 2009 Wu Gan has arguably been the best known, and certainly the most recognizable, activist in China for his bold and innovative tactics. Wu Gan was arrested on May 19, 2015, and looking back, he was in fact the first detainee of what became the 709 Crackdown. As with all other 709 detainees, he was held in secret detention for months, where he was tortured. He was tried behind closed doors on August 15, 2017, without a verdict. On December 26, the court sentenced him to eight years in prison for “subverting state power.” The evidence against him were 12 occasions where he had campaigned, in his colorful style, to correct injustice in one form or another. According to his […]

Huang Yu, January 5, 2017   Zhen Jianghua has been placed under secrect detention known as “residential surveillance at a designated place,” his lawyer Ren Quanniu was told over the phone on December 13, 2017. Zhen continues to be denied access to his lawyers. — The Editors        Zhen Jianghua (甄江华) hadn’t yet gone to bed at midnight on September 1, 2017, when police burst into his apartment and put him in handcuffs. As he was being led out, he was unperturbed, and simply told his roommate: “Make sure you tell Xiao Li (小丽) to check Taobao and pick up my packages.” Xiao Li is Zhen Jianghua’s ex-wife. The phrase was code to say that she should spread the news of his arrest. […]

China Change, December 26, 2017     On the morning of December 26 courts in Tianjin and Changsha announced the verdicts respectively of Wu Gan, a seminal activist, and Xie Yang, a human rights lawyer. Xie Yang was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power” while Wu Gan’s refusal to cooperate led him to receive the more severe “subversion of state power.” Both were “convicted,” but Xie Yang was exempt from punishment, while Wu Gan was handed a heavy sentence of eight years. In a live broadcast, Xie Yang was made to once again deny that he had been tortured, and to thank all parties for a “fair” trial and for “safeguarding” his rights. The first time he was forced to make this false […]

China Citizens Movement Outstanding Citizenship Award Selection Committee, December 10, 2017                                                                                                                                                                    Introducing Li Wenzu Li Wenzu (李文足) was born in Badong, Hubei, on April 5, 1985. She is the wife of Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), a human rights lawyer who was arrested during the 709 crackdown. She worked as a tour guide and did business. After losing contact with her husband in July, 2015, she became a housewife, taking care of her son and working to rescue Wang as well as other lawyers and activists arrested in the 709 Incident. During the two years since Wang’s disappearance, Li and other 709 families have stood by each other in the face of harassment, threats, detentions, and even physical violence. They persevered even as their children […]

Teng Biao, December 7, 2017   This is the Foreword to The People’s Republic of the Disappeared: Stories From Inside China’s System for Enforced Disappearances, a newly published book about China’s “Residential Surveillance at a designated location.”       Those holding unchecked power often seek to hide their cruelty behind euphemisms. In China, classic examples range from “land reform” to the “Cultural Revolution.” You can’t easily see the cruelty from the surface of such words. Expressions like “the three year natural disaster,” used by the Communist Party to describe the Great Leap Forward of 1958 to 1961 in which tens of millions died, or the “6/4 counterrevolutionary riot,” the description of the Tiananmen Democracy movement, are shameless acts of misrepresenting history and reversing right […]

Wang Yu, November 13, 2017   Wang Yu (王宇), born 1971 in Inner Mongolia, was a lawyer with Beijing Fengrui Law Firm when she was abducted in the early morning of July 9, 2015. The date of her detention marks the beginning of, and gives name to, the most notorious human rights event over the last two years – the 709 Crackdown. She was released on bail on August 2016, but until recently Wang Yu, her husband and son have been sequestered in an apartment in Ulan Hot, Inner Mongolia, under severe surveillance. The family returned to their home in Beijing recently. Below is an excerpt of Wang Yu’s account of her first two months in Beijing from July to September, 2015. She is currently […]

China Change, November 13, 2017     Today in Tianjin, lawyer Wang Yu’s 18-year-old son Bao Zhuoxuan (包卓轩) was again blocked from leaving China. He was due to fly to Tokyo. The border control in Tianjing told him and his parents that he is “a national security threat,” and mutilated his passport on spot (see photo above). According to Wang Yu, her son has passed IELTS and is awaiting admission from the University of Melbourne.  On July 9, 2015, Bao Zhuoxuan, on route to Australia to study, was stopped and detained in Beijing Capital Airport along with his father who accompanied him. That same night, his mother was abducted from home, marking the beginning of the 709 Crackdown. The community of Chinese human rights lawyers responded to […]

China Change, November 6, 2017     Wen Donghai (文东海) is a 43-year-old lawyer in Changsha, Hunan Province. He grew up in a mountainous village and became a policeman in the Changsha Municipal Public Security Bureau. Bored and unfulfilled, he quit his job, went to graduate school and became a lawyer in 2009. He came into contact with human rights lawyers in 2014, and in 2015 was a defense lawyer in the case of three Guangzhou activists promoting non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. That was the first human rights case he took on. When the July 9, 2015 (709) crackdown on human rights lawyers began, he became the defense lawyer for Wang Yu, the first of scores of lawyers arrested that day and afterward.  But […]

China Change, October 31, 2017     On the afternoon of October 31, lawyer Li Yuhan’s (李昱函) family revealed that she had been criminally detained by Shenyang Public Security Bureau. The charges against her are unclear. She was last heard from on October 9 when she texted her younger brother that she had been taken away by police from Shenyang PSB Heping District. Over the past three weeks, her relatives called the municipal government offices for her whereabouts. She is one of the two lawyers who have represented lawyer Wang Yu (王宇), the first human rights lawyer detained during the massive 709 Crackdown on human rights lawyers. During Wang Yu’s detention, lawyer Li made numerous trips to Tianjin to try to meet her client but […]

Xie Yanyi, October 15, 2017   Xie Yanyi (谢燕益) is one of the twenty or so 709 detainees during China’s sweeping, still ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists. He was held incommunicado  from, July 12, 2015 to January 18, 2017, in Tianjin. As a human rights lawyers, Xie Yanyi’s career spans from 2003 to the time when he was detained, representing dozens of cases involving religious freedom, freedom of speech, forced expropriation of land and property, corruption, local elections, political prisoners, and more. Meanwhile, he has been known for passionately advocating democratic transition in China. During the 553 days of disappearance, his wife gave birth to a baby girl, and his mother died without him knowing it. In September he posted a book […]

The China Human Rights Lawyers Group, September 13, 2017     Today, September 13, 2017, marks the fourth anniversary of the founding of the China Human Rights Lawyers Group. Even though it is the obligation of government to respect and safeguard human rights based on international treaties and the Constitution, it is also the natural and professional duty of lawyers. Four years ago today, the China Human Rights Lawyers Group was founded to provide an open platform for professional cooperation. Over the past four years, we have set foot across the country and worked tirelessly against constant obstacles to protect freedom of expression, freedom of belief and other basic civil and political rights. Among us, some have lost their freedom and even their lives. Since […]

Safeguard Defenders, August 28, 2017     The Human Rights Tulip is an award by the Dutch government for courageous human rights defenders. Wang Quanzhang (CHINA) is a lawyer, father and husband whose work to defend and protect persecuted religious groups, especially Christians and Falun Gong practitioners, has made him a target himself. He is also a defender who understands that broader change in China must come from developing a wider movement of rights defenders. Since 2008, Wang has worked to develop institutions and mechanisms to train, teach, and offer support to the greater rights defense community, from other rights defense lawyers, “barefoot” lawyers working locally, or victims themselves. Wang is the co-founder of an NGO that established training programs, training many hundreds of lawyers […]

Mo Zhixu, August 16, 2017 The Chinese original was first published in December, 2015.       The importance of Wu Gan “the Super Vulgar Butcher” has been widely recognized for some time, and the most direct testament to his importance comes from none other than the party-state itself.   On May 18, 2015, Wu Gan left for Nanchang, the capital of Jiangxi, to support lawyers in the Leping wrongful conviction case.* That evening, he joined the lawyers’ sit-in at the gate to the Jiangxi High Court, demanding the lawyers’ right to access the case files. On May 19, in a performance typical of Wu Gan, he set two roll-up signs in front of the court calling out court president Zhang Zhonghou (张忠厚). Soon after, Nanchang […]

China Change, August 13, 2017     On Monday one of China’s most well-known rights defense activists, Wu Gan (known by the moniker “The Super Vulgar Butcher” online) will be put on trial in the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court. The court says that the case involves “state secrets” and has announced that it will be a closed hearing. For days now, activists and lawyers around the country have been warned not to travel to Tianjin to try to attend the trial or congregate outside the courthouse. Last December, Wu Gan was charged with subversion of state power. Since the Deng Yujiao case in 2009, he has been an active in the public sphere. All the way until he was arrested in May 2015, […]

Wu Gan, August 9, 2017   Wu Gan (吴淦), arguably the most celebrated activist in recent years in China’s struggle for justice and human rights, and a seminal user of online mobilization and peaceful direct action, was the first detainee of what has come to be known as the 709 Crackdown. Wu Gan became known for his role in mobilizing public support in the Deng Yujiao case (邓玉娇案) in 2009, and in the years following was involved in countless cases, both large and small. He became well known for his audacity and creativity. He also wrote three guides for potential activists and petitioners: Guide to Butchering Pigs (《杀猪宝典》) , Guide to Drinking Tea (《喝茶宝典》) and Guide to Petitioners Fighting Against Forced Demolition of Homes (《访民杀猪宝典》). […]

China Change, August 2, 2017     According to a recently published video made by Chen Guiqiu (陈桂秋), a professor of environmental science and the wife of human rights lawyer Xie Yang, Hunan authorities are setting up a large security door equipped with a fingerprint reader, effectively functioning as a prison cell door, outside the family apartment in Yuelu District, Changsha. As the large metal gate in the hallway is being put up, the Special Task Group in charge of Xie Yang’s case has also rented out the adjacent apartment for a permanent security presence to watch over him. Chen Guiqiu explained in the video that the building is a residence for Hunan University professors, and that she owns the title to their apartment. “They’re […]

By Wu Gan, July 31, 2017 Writing from a detention center in Tianjin, well-known activist Wu Gan (吴淦) is among the last of the 709 detainees. — The Editors     I recently heard the news of Liu Xiaobo’s (刘晓波) death in prison from liver cancer. I also heard of the videos of medical experts treating him, supposedly showing what a “happy life” he led in jail, where he was even allowed to play badminton. I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist — but who benefited the most from his contraction of liver cancer? It certainly is a beautiful resolution to the hot potato of an annoying Nobel Peace Prize laureate. There have been other deaths in prison — that of Li Wangyang (李旺阳) […]

The China Human Rights Lawyers Group, July 9, 2017   In the early hours of the morning on July 9, 2015, the Beijing-based lawyer Wang Yu and her husband and son, Bao Longjun (包龙军) and Bao Zhuoxuan (包卓轩), were suddenly illegally arrested by the police. Before long, Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), Li Heping (李和平), Xie Yanyi (谢燕益), Zhou Shifeng (周世锋), Xie Yang (谢阳), Sui Muqing (隋牧青), Li Chunfu (李春富), Xie Yuandong (谢远东), Liu Sixin (刘四新), Gao Yue (高月), Zhao Wei (赵威), Li Shuyun (李姝云) and dozens of other lawyers and their assistants were also arrested. At around the same time, Wu Gan (吴淦 known online as “The Butcher”), an activist who was in Nanchang protesting the Jiangxi High Court’s refusal to allow a lawyer to examine […]

China Change, July 7, 2017   “Wang Yu (王宇) was at home by herself that night, having just seen off at the airport her husband Bao Longjun (包龙军), and their son Bao Zhuoxuan (包卓軒). A group of men began idling about outside her home, and when she yelled out asking who they were, they shrank away and kept quiet. About an hour later, when she was unable to raise her husband and son on the phone, and just beginning to get anxious, the lights in her apartment suddenly went out. Her internet was also cut. The harsh buzz of an electric drill shattered the silent darkness and within a few minutes the lock had been drilled out, falling to the ground. A gang of men […]

Wen Donghai, July 6, 2017        With the second anniversary of July 9, 2015 approaching, and as someone who has witnessed it first hand and served as the defense lawyer for one of the prominent 709 detainees, I’ve racked my brains about what to say. I feel that I have so much to say — but at the same time, it seems that only being as quiet and still as a mountain could truly encompass the full meaning of the 709 Crackdown. Naturally, the first people I was worried about when the crackdown began were my client Wang Yu (王宇) and her family. Prior to 709, she was extremely active as a human rights lawyer, gaining the nickname “Goddess of War” (战神) for […]

July 4, 2017       China’s human rights lawyers have since 2003 become one of the most active and effective forces in the country advancing the ideals of universal values, because of their unique role and professional positions. Their work defending the civil rights and liberties of Chinese citizens extends from the internet to the streets, from courtrooms to jails. They’ve fought hard to promote the rule of law and democracy in China. As prominent representatives of Chinese lawyers, human rights lawyers have been the target of the Chinese government’s persecution since the beginning of the rights defense movement. They’ve had their licenses to practice law revoked, they’ve been followed, threatened, publicly slandered by state media, abducted, disappeared, sent to forced labor camps, imprisoned […]

China Human Rights Lawyers Group, June 23, 2017   This year, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) is partnering with the International Bar Association (IBA) to mark the annual “International Day in Support of Victims of Torture” on June 26. Through storytelling, social media campaigns, and a panel discussion, they hope to advance their “shared ambition for the absolute prohibition of torture.” This year and the year before, we have begun to learn, with horror, about the torture of Chinese human rights lawyers during the 709 Crackdown. Below is a letter from the China Human Rights Lawyers Group addressed and delivered to OHCHR and IBA. — The Editors   To the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for […]

Wang Qiaoling, May 26, 2017 This interview was conducted on May 5, 2017, three days before lawyer Li Heping returned home. – The Editors     Host: Hello everyone and welcome to “Surveying China,” (放眼大陆); I’m Huang Juan (黄娟). From July 9, 2015, for the next two months, about 300 lawyers, rights defenders, and dissidents were subject to mass disappearances; they were summoned by police, detained, and some have eventually been sentenced and jailed. This became the “709 Crackdown” that shocked the world. It’s been almost two years. Some victims have been imprisoned, others have been released on probation, still others have been given suspended sentences. It would seem that what family members want most is for the victims to be released, no matter what […]

Xu Xiaoshun, father of Wu Gan, May 22, 2017 On May 20, 2015, while supporting lawyers on the “Leping Wrongful Conviction Case” at the Jiangxi Provincial Higher People’s Court, Wu Gan (aka “The Butcher”) was detained by the Nanchang municipal police. Several days later he, a native of Fujian province, was charged by the Fujian police with the crimes of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and “defamation,” and jailed in Yongtai County Detention Center. During his detention in Fujian he was able to meet with lawyers several times. But then he was suddenly forbidden meetings, and on February 1, 2016, it was learned he’d been transferred to the custody of Tianjin municipal police as part of the 709 (July 9, 2015) case, or the now […]

Chen Guiqiu, May 8, 2017   Over the weekend, ahead of the trial of human rights lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳) on Monday, his wife Chen Guiqiu (陈桂秋) published an article detailing, for the first time, how she first learned about her husband’s torture during the 6-month “residential surveillance at a designated place” and then in the Changsha 2nd Detention Center. Xie Yang, during the three-hour show trial for subversion and disrupting court order, denied being tortured as part of an apparent deal with the government. He looked gaunt in photographs. He was represented by a government appointed lawyer, and no witnesses were called. A handwritten statement by Xie Yang on January 13, sealed with red wax thumbprints, foretold this unfortunate “denial”: “If, one day in […]

May 4, 2017     We have learned that, around 1 pm on May 3, 2017, Beijing lawyer Chen Jiangang (陈建刚), his wife and two young children, as well as their friends Zhang Baocheng (张宝成) and his wife, were forcibly taken into custody by local police while the company was on a tourist trip in Jinghong, Yunnan province (云南景洪). In doing so, the police did not present any legal warrant. Lawyer Chen Jiangang and the company have now been in custody for over 19 hours, and their belongings have been confiscated. [As of the publication of the translation of this statement, they have been detained for over 30 hours.] We are acutely aware that lawyer Chen Jiangang has riled the authorities for revealing the torture […]

China Change, May 3, 2017     (Chen Jianggang’s video statement on March 3: “If I lose my freedom.”)   Lawyer Chen Jiangang (陈建刚), on a holiday driving tour with wife, two young children (six and three), and two friends, were detained in a police station in Jinghong, Yunnan (云南景洪) around 1:00 p.m. on May 3. Jinghong is part of Xishuangbanna (西双版纳), a popular tourist destination. The two friends are Zhang Baocheng (张宝成) and Zhang’s wife Liu Juefan (刘珏帆). Around 5:00 p.m., all six were taken away in vehicles by a dozen or so armed police, according to a handwritten note by Chen Jiangang, circulating on WeChat. The note said: 1. Before I signed [a list of confiscated belongings], no one showed me any proper […]

China Change, April 28, 2017     Late Friday, evening time Beijing, Wang Qiaoling (王峭岭) and Li Wenzu (李文足) issued the following video statement. China Change offers our audience a translation:   Statement by Wang Qiaoling and Li Wenzu Wang Qiaoling: This morning at 11:00 a.m. I was walking out the first floor entrance of our apartment building with my daughter when I found myself surrounded by a large group of state security agents. Among them were Beijing state security agents, Tianjin state security agents, chief of the Tianjin Jiaguasi (挂甲寺) police station, and the neighborhood property management people. As they closed in on me, the state security officers demanded that we discuss Li Heping’s case. I thought it was a standard attempt to threaten […]

Chen Jiangang, April 24, 2017 This article was written in December, 2015. Between then and now, the 45-year-old but youthful looking human rights lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳) performed a rare act of courage: revealing his torture in full detail while still behind bars, and despite the perpetrators’ repeated threats. The author Chen Jiangang (陈建刚), a friend, became Xie Yang’s defense lawyer in December 2016, recording the torture in a series meetings earlier this year. Then in an equally courageous action, Chen published them. The revelations caused an international stir, providing a rare but clear glimpse of  the “709 Crackdown” on human rights lawyers, while also showing how the Chinese authorities routinely use unspeakable torture to extract confessions. “[Xie Yang’s] thought was that he wanted to […]

China Change, April 21, 2017     Since the publication in early January of the “Transcript of Interviews with Lawyer Xie Yang,” made by lawyer Chen Jiangang (陈建刚), detailing a series of meetings with Xie Yang (谢阳) at the Changsha 2nd Detention Center, the Xie Yang case has taken many bizarre turns. The revelations of torture in the interviews, the first meticulously-recorded and lengthy account of the abuse meted out to a human rights lawyer, offer a shocking view of the “709 crackdown” since mid-2015. As of now, four human rights lawyers and a number of activists are still in detention, and in the case of lawyer Li Heping (李和平) and Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), have been denied access to their lawyers for well over 600 […]

Chen Guiqiu, April 9, 2017 Since February 27, four weeks after the much-reported torture of Chinese human rights lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳). who has been imprisoned since July 2015, the two family-appointed lawyers of Xie have repeatedly been denied meetings with him. The last time they saw him was February 6. According to Chinese law, lawyers are free to meet their clients any time during the trial stage. Rattled by the coverage of torture and responses by international legal professionals as well as foreign governments, China took extraordinary steps in early March to deny the torture and attempt to discredit the report, in an all-out propaganda assault. They forced lawyer Jiang Tianyong to confess to the “fabrication” on national television, and threatened Xie Yang’s lawyer […]

Yaxue Cao, March 28, 2017     When on March 1 Chinese media launched a sudden and all-out smear campaign claiming that the torture of human rights lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳) was a fabrication, and that Western media coverage of it was “fake news,” many of us wondered what this outburst was all about. A UN Human Rights Council meeting? The German Chancellor’s planned visit? Now we know. On February 27, diplomatic missions in Beijing from 11 countries wrote a letter, expressing their “growing concern over recent claims of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in cases concerning detained human rights lawyers and other human rights defenders.” The letter also urged China to abandon the practice of secret detention known as […]

Wu Gan, March 24, 2017 Well-known human rights activist Wu Gan (吴淦) was arrested in May 2015. After a brief period of custody in his home province Fujian, he was taken to Tianjin as part of the 709 arrests. According to a complaint filed by his lawyer, on August 1, 2015, Wu Gan was forced to participate in a video interview with CCTV host Dong Qian (董倩) in which he was supposed to confess his guilt. He refused to follow the script. Yesterday his lawyer posted online Wu Gan’s letter to Ms. Dong Qian, dated March 8. — The Editors     Dear Ms. Dong Qian, I write this letter to you because I still have a thin thread of hope in your basic humanity. […]

Chen Jiangang, March 22, 2017 The public didn’t know until yesterday that ambassadors from 11 countries wrote a letter to China’s Minister of Public Security on February 27, 2017, expressing their grave concern over recent reports of torture of human rights lawyers, and China’s use of secret detention known as “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL). In light of our knowledge of this letter, China’s massive smear campaign beginning on March 1 — two days after the letter was received — becomes much more disturbing. China made lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) “confess” on camera that he had made up the reports of Xie Yang’s (谢阳) torture; Jiang was forcibly disappeared on November 21, 2016, and subsequently placed under RSDL, and thus could not have […]

China Change, March 9, 2017   On March 1, Chinese state-run print and television media launched a massive campaign to discredit reports that human rights lawyer Xie Yang was severely tortured during his detention, from July 11, 2015 to the present. The propaganda apparatus paraded on camera Jiang Tianyong, another human rights lawyer kidnapped by state security in November 2016, “confessing” that he had fabricated the details of torture to capture the attention of Western media and governments, who are said to be implacably biased against China. Jiang Tianyong is believed to have been tortured to subjection. The next day, the official Weibo account of the Chinese Communist Party’s Youth League trotted out a four minute video that, in addition to repeating the same smears, […]

March 7, 2017 On February 28, 2017, and then again on March 6, police in Changsha refused to allow the defense counsel of detained human rights lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳) to meet with him. In between, starting March 1, China’s state propaganda apparatus launched a smear campaign telling the world that the widely-reported torture of Xie Yang was a fabrication. Former lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇), who had been disappeared on November 21, appeared on state television confessing that he had somehow made up the torture details. The authorities’ specious narrative makes it abundantly clear who is doing the fabricating. The smear campaign clearly aims to rein in the defiant human rights lawyers and to misinform the world. Given this, there is now a credible fear […]

Chen Jiangang, March 3, 2017 When lawyer Chen Jiangang published the “Transcript of Interviews with Lawyer Xie Yang,” the revelations of torture garnered a great deal of attention in the international press and legal profession. To name a few among the many media and professional organizations that covered the transcripts or lamented the lawlessness of Chinese authorities: The Washington Post, the American Bar Association Journal, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, El País, Agencia EFE, The Guardian, The Irish Times, Brussels Diplomatic, and Le Monde. Twenty-nine respected lawyers and judges from around the world penned a letter demanding that China respect the rule of law, while the European Union issued a rare statement expressing concern over the reported torture of human rights lawyers. […]

Chen Jinxue, Qin Chenshou, March 1, 2017   On March 1, 2017, the Global Times, led by Hu Xijin (胡锡进), published a report claiming that it has interviewed Jiang Tianyong. As Jiang Tianyong’s defense lawyers, we make the following statement:   1. Defense lawyers have applied no fewer than three times to meet Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) since his disappearance on November 21, 2016, to no avail. The reason given to us is that meeting our client would obstruct the investigation or possibly divulge state secrets — yet apparently unrelated parties, and Global Times journalists, claim to have seen Jiang Tianyong. Our position has always been: lawyers meeting their clients cannot possibly obstruct the investigation or divulge state secrets, and according to the Criminal Law, when […]

Wang Qiaoling, Li Wenzu, Chen Guiqiu, Jin Bianling, March 1, 2017   The following letter was recently delivered to: U. S. Senator Marco Rubio and Congressman Chris Smith, co-chairs of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China; Congressman James McGovern and Joseph Pitts, co-chairs of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission of the U. S. Congress; Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany; Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the President of Germany; Sigmar Gabriel, the Foreign Minister of Germany; François Hollande, the President of France; Bernard Cazeneuve, the Prime Minister of France.   We thank you for your sustained attention to the human rights situation in China, especially on the matter of the “709 lawyers,” who have been targeted from July 9, 2015 to this day. The case began with the mass […]

January 25, 2017   Lawyer Li Heping (李和平) is one of China’s earliest human rights lawyers and no stranger to torture. In an interview with the artist Ai Weiwei in 2010, he recounted how he was abducted one day in 2007 by Chinese domestic security police, beaten savagely, and thrown onto a hill outside Beijing in the middle of the night. In recent years he ran an anti-torture education program in Beijing, which was likely the reason for his arrest, along with scores of other lawyers, in July 2015, in what is now known as the “709 Incident.” Last week, lawyer Chen Jiangang (陈建刚) published his interviews with lawyer Xie Yang (谢阳) detailed horrific torture the latter was subjected to during a period of “residential […]

Xie Yang, Chen Jiangang, January 22, 2017     Continued from Part One, Part Two and Part Three   [The interview began at 9:47:50 a.m. on January 6, 2017] Chen Jiangang (陈建刚, “CHEN”): Let’s continue our conversation. What happened after you refused the attempts by Yin Zhuo (尹卓) to get you to implicate others? XIE: I tend to be constipated and need to eat fruit; otherwise the condition can get rather serious. I couldn’t even drink water while I was locked up, so my constipation got very serious and I was in extreme pain. I asked them to give me some fruit to eat. They didn’t give me any at first, but later they wanted me to trade. I would have to write a statement […]

Xie Yang, Chen Jiangang, January 21, 2017     Continued from Part One and Part Two   [The interview began at 2:49:55 p.m. on January 5, 2017.] Chen Jiangang (陈建刚, “CHEN”): Let’s continue. Xie Yang (谢阳, “XIE”): Okay. CHEN: Other than not letting you sleep, were there other ways they used to coerce you? XIE: Yes. They have a kind of slow torture called the “dangling chair.” It’s like I said before—they made me sit on a bunch of plastic stools stacked on top each other, 24 hours a day except for the two hours they let me sleep. They make you sit up there, with both feet unable to touch the ground. I told them that my right leg was injured from before, and […]

Xie Yang, Chen Jiangang, January 20, 2017     Continued from Part One   (The interview started at 9:23:32 a.m. on January 5, 2017) Chen Jiangang (陈建刚, “CHEN”): Today Lawyer Liu Zhengqing (刘正清) had to go back. Let’s continue our interview. XIE: Okay. CHEN: At the time you were put in Room 207, you hadn’t slept for all of the 11th and half a day on the 12th—that’s at least 30 hours. Did you ask for time to sleep? Were you tired? XIE: Very tired! But they always had someone coming in, so I couldn’t even shut my eyes. CHEN: Describe what happened after you got to the room. XIE: After I got to the room, police kept coming in one after another to ask […]

Xie Yang, Chen Jiangang and Liu Zhengqing, January 19, 2017 In a series of interviews, the still incarcerated human rights lawyer Xie Yang provided a detailed account of his arrest, interrogations, and the horrific abuses he suffered at the hands of police and prosecutors, to his two defense lawyers Chen Jiangang (陈建刚) and Liu Zhengqing (刘正清). This revelation, and the extraordinary circumstances of it, mark an important turn in the 709 crackdown on human rights lawyers. This group, seen as the gravest threat to regime security, has not been crushed, but instead has become more courageous and more determined. This is the first of several installments in English translation. — The Editors       Date: January 4, 2017, 3:08:56 p.m. (interview start) Location: Interview Room 2W, Changsha Number […]

Wang Qiaoling, January 17, 2017 Since Li Chunfu was released from the custody of China’s security forces on January 12, his family has been providing updates on his condition to the outside world. Their notes make clear that Li was left a broken man, suffering both physically and mentally. China Change calls on the United Nations to investigate the treatment of Li Chunfu in custody, and we call for immediate access on the part of legal counsel to Li Heping and Wang Quanzhang, as well as Jiang Tianyong who has been held in secret detention since November 21, 2016. The circumstances of all these individuals are now of grave concern given Li Chunfu’s condition. — The Editors   These last few days I’ve been staying […]

Wang Qiaoling, January 15, 2017 Li Chunfu, a rights lawyer arrested during the 709 incident and the younger brother of lawyer Li Heping, was released “on bail” on January 12, mentally disturbed and physically frail. He has been diagnosed as having symptoms of schizophrenia and hospitalized. We learned from relatives that he was subjected to severe torture during his six months of “residential surveillance at a designated place,” China’s term for secret detention, including being locked up in a bed-sized metal cage for several stretches of time. More details to come. Once again, we urge the international human rights community to immediately begin an investigation into the extreme abuse that Li Chunfu, Li Heping, Wang Quanzhang, Wu Gan, Jiang Tianyong, and others targeted in the […]

Wang Qiaoling, January 14, 2017 *** Latest on January 14: Li Chunfu has been diagnosed today as having symptoms of schizophrenia and hospitalized. We learned from relatives that he was subjected to severe torture during his six months of “residential surveillance at a designated place,” China’s term for secret detention. More details to come. Once again, we urge the international human rights community to immediately begin an investigation into the extreme abuse that Li Chunfu, Li Heping, Wang Quanzhang, Wu Gan, Jiang Tianyong, and others targeted in the 709 arrests have suffered. – The Editors   *** Hours ago China Change posted Wang Qiaoling’s first report of her brother-in-law, lawyer Li Chunfu, who was released “on bail” after being detained incommunicado for 18 months as part of the […]

Wang Qiaoling, January 13, 2017 Li Chunfu (李春富) is a human rights lawyer and the younger brother of the well-known rights lawyer Li Heping (李和平). On August 1, 2015, he was taken into custody (less than a month after his brother was also detained on July 10) and put under residential surveillance for six months. In January 2016 he was formally arrested on charges of “subversion of state power.” On January 5, 2017, he was granted China’s version of bail awaiting trial, and on January 12 returned home by police. Following is the first report by Wang Qiaoling (王峭岭), Li Heping’s wife, of the homecoming. We know from multiple cases of personal testimony, both published and privately relayed, that the 709 detainees have been subjected […]

January 12, 2017     Tianjin Municipal People’s Procuratorate Number Two Branch Bill of Indictment TJ 2d Br Proc Crim Indict (2016) No. 10001   Defendant Wu Gan (吴淦), male, [redacted], identification card number [redacted], Han ethnicity, high school graduate, a native of Xiamen city Fujian province, administrative employee of Beijing Fengrui Law Firm (北京锋锐律师事务所), registered address [redacted], residence [redacted], placed under criminal detention by Public Security Bureau of Siming precinct of Xiamen municipality, Fujian province, on May 27, 2015, on suspicion of picking quarrels and provoking trouble and defamation. With the approval of this procuratorate, arrested by the Xiamen Public Security Bureau on July 3, 2015, on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power and picking quarrels and provoking trouble. His period of detention […]

January 11, 2017   Hunan Province Changsha Municipal People’s Procuratorate Bill of Indictment CS Proc Crim Indict [2016] No. 85   Defendant Xie Yang (谢阳), male, [redacted], Han ethnicity, master’s degree education, was a practicing lawyer at Hunan Gangwei Law Firm, [redacted]. On July 12, 2015, he was put under residential surveillance by the Changsha Municipal Public Security Bureau on suspicion of the crimes of subversion of state power and disrupting court order. On January 8, 2016 this procuratorate approved his arrest on suspicion of the crime of subversion of state power. The arrest was executed the following day by the Changsha Municipal Public Security Bureau. The Changsha Municipal Public Security Bureau has concluded its investigation of this case and, on August 8, 2016, referred […]

January 8, 2017     July 9, 2015, marked the beginning of a large number of arrests of human rights lawyers and rights defenders in China. Dozens of lawyers and human rights defenders have been disappeared, and hundreds of lawyers and defenders have been called in for intimidating “chats” with the police, or been temporarily detained. The campaign has extended to 23 provinces, shocking both China and the world alike, and is now known as the “709 mass arrest.” The “709 mass arrest” is the most severe attack on the rule of law and human rights in China for the last decade. This is shown clearly in how it has turned lawyers into imaginary enemies, making their lawful activities a primary target of attack. They’ve […]

Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group, January 2, 2017     Time sweeps by, the seasons change, and another year is upon us. As we bid farewell to the old and welcome the new, China’s human rights lawyers greet 2017. We bore witness to too much in 2016. We saw the hidden poverty that lies behind the bright and orderly image of the nation. Due to poverty, a 13-year-old in Jinchang, Gansu, leapt from a building to her death after being humiliated. She had pilfered and eaten a few chocolates at the local market — the first time in her life that she’d savored the taste. Due to poverty, a student from Linyi, Shandong, who had matriculated but not yet begun college, died after falling into […]

December 22, 2016 On December 20 the official Weibo account of the Communist Youth League Central Committee posted a short video (YouTube) targeting human right lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇). Jiang was disappeared on November 21, and the Chinese government has not formally notified his relatives of his whereabouts, which violates China’s own laws. As the Party’s propaganda juggernaut churns out videos like this, the word “shameless” fails to describe it. The Chinese narration of the video is presented, interspersed with the images and corresponding text in italics. — The Editors     As the population of society has continued to grow, the number of people using fake identities to commit crimes has increased in large numbers. Thus, the real name-registration system is an important feature […]

China Change, November 29, 2016 “A lawyer who was born at just the right time; a lawyer who’s willing to take any case; a lawyer hated by a small political clique; a lawyer who wants to win the respect of regular folk; a lawyer who kept going even after being stripped of his law license.” – Jiang Tianyong’s Twitter bio     Lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) has been incommunicado for nine days as of today, and repeated attempts by his wife and lawyers to confirm his whereabouts and the circumstances of his disappearance have been met with obstruction. He’s believed to have been abducted by the Chinese government and fear is mounting that he is now, once again, being subjected to brutal treatment. On November […]

Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group, September 13, 2016     On September 13, 2016, Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group marks the third anniversary of its founding. Over the last three years, the Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group has been an open platform for lawyers, offering them a channel to get to know one another, exchange their thoughts, and put out calls for mutual aid. It has also become the main force in “effective criminal defense,” Chinese-style. We deeply believe that behind these achievements lies the fact that human rights is not a dull, abstract idea, or some unfathomable theory — the universality of human rights is already deeply rooted in the hearts of the Chinese people. They spring every moment from the human experiences of […]

Li Heping, Ai Weiwei, August 21, 2016 This is a translation of an Ai Weiwei interview of lawyer Li Heping (李和平) in July 2010 (here, here, here, and here) that was released only recently. Beginning from his first involvement in “sensitive” cases around 2002, Li Heping went through the trajectory of his years as one of China’s earliest rights lawyers, including police brutality against him in 2007. Over the past decade or so, many early rights lawyers have withdrawn from the scene under duress, but Li Heping is one of the few who have persevered. He was arrested in July, 2015, as one of dozens of rights lawyers in what is known as the “709 Crackdown” of human rights lawyers and activists. After a year […]

August 14, 2016 Following the news of Xie Yang’s case being sent to the prosecutors for possible indictment, details of Xie Yang’s torture were brought to light by lawyers who met with police at the end of July. In recent days, family and lawyers’ requests for meeting Xie Yang (谢阳) have been repeatedly denied. Xie was taken away by police on July 11, 2015, while he was on business trip in Huaihua, western Hunan Province. Later he was placed under “residential surveillance at a designated place,” China’s term for secret detention, for “disturbing courtroom order” and “inciting subversion of state power.” Xie Yang was among the lawyers arrested in July, 2015, as part of a nation-wide crackdown on human rights lawyers and activists. Show trials […]

August 6, 2016     Over the last week, we all wondered whether the American Bar Association would go ahead with conferring its inaugural International Human Rights Award to the Chinese human rights lawyer Wang Yu. On August 1 she appeared on camera in China, repenting her courageous work fighting for justice and the rule of law, and repudiating the ABA award because she is a Chinese person and loves her country — as though receiving the award would be a betrayal of China. It was indeed Wang Yu speaking, but from an undisclosed location, after nearly 13 months in secret detention, to three people whose faces and identities were hidden. We cannot begin to fathom what has happened to her and dozens of other […]

August 4, 2016 This is indeed an extraordinary week. In a beguiling internet style, the Weibo account of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Youth League posted another 4-minute video on August 4, obviously shot by domestic security police, a day after posting one that portrays rights lawyers and dissidents as part of a vast American conspiracy undermining China. In addition, under the hashtag #警惕颜色革命 (“Beware of Color Revolutions”), the Youth League account also posted numerous music videos and articles attacking the United States, rights lawyers, activists, President Tsai of Taiwan and internet freedom. This wave of propaganda is not just for a domestic audience; it aims to intimidate the U.S. and the free world too. A transcript of the narration in the […]

August 3, 2016 This video was posted this week by the official Weibo accounts of the Supreme People’s Procuratorate of the PRC, as well as the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Youth League. The claims are false and distorted, ludicrously so, but the world view behind it is real and has consequences. We provide an English translation of the script. — The Editors     Beware of Color Revolutions   Not long ago, a little Iraqi girl was filmed speaking on camera, and her story saddened countless people around the world. “What’s your name?” “I don’t know.” “Where is your father?” “He died.” “Where? Where did he die?” “In Hadabah.” “Have you had breakfast, lunch, or supper? Tell me.” Of course, there is him […]

Ren Bumei, August 2, 2016 In 2005, when Hu Shigen was serving the 13th year of his 20 year prison sentence for forming the Chinese Free Democratic Party, he was awarded that year’s Outstanding Democracy Activist Award by the California-based Chinese Democracy Education Foundation. This is an excerpt of a speech given by exiled dissident Ren Bumei (任不寐) titled “Hu Shigen and the Highest Aspirations of Our Age” (《 胡石根与我们时代的精神高度》), upon accepting the award on Hu’s behalf. Hu, among the first four of the July 9, 2015 detainees to be indicted, is being put through a show trial today (August 3, Beijing Time) in the Tianjin Second People’s Intermediate Court. This is our first post in a series about Hu Shigen. — The Editors.   […]

Liang Xiaojun, July 25, 2016 Xie Yanyi (谢燕益) is a human rights lawyer, and one of the 709 detainees. – The Editors   It was probably somewhere around the end of 2008 that I started receiving occasional group emails from someone writing under the name Liang Buzheng (梁不正)—“Crooked Beam.” Sometimes the emails would contain this person’s views on politics, while other times they would describe the actions he was taking in the legal sphere. In those days much of my time was spent handling commercial cases in order to make a living, so I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to public interest law or human rights issues. As a result, I would often simply skip over those emails from “Crooked Beam” without really reading […]

Jiang Tianyong, July 17, 2016     Recently I’ve been thinking: Leading up to 1949, the Chinese Communist Party had been able to steadily grow its strength partly because of the United States. And a major reason the Party has become the disruptive and powerful giant it is today is because of the greed and appeasement of the United States, Europe, and other Western countries. This became particularly clear with regard to the “709 Crackdown” last year, when the new communist boss, “Xitler,” directed a massive campaign of arrests in just a few days, targeting the most influential and active human rights lawyers and activists. As the only country with the actual leverage to exert pressure on the Communist Party (leverage being only one of […]

China Change, July 15, 2016   On late Friday afternoon on July 15, the Second Branch Procuratorate of the Tianjin People’s Procuratorate announced on its official Weibo account that four of the several dozen lawyers and activists detained since July 2015, in what is known as the “709 Incident” or “709 Crackdown,” have been indicted. The message was quickly re-posted and reported by People’s Daily and other mouthpiece media: On July 15, 2016, the Second Branch Procuratorate of the Tianjin People’s Procuratorate, upon review, has decided according to law to indict Zhou Shifeng, Hu Shigen, Zhai Yanmin, Gou Hongguo respectively in the Tianjin Second People’s Intermediate Court for the alleged crime of subversion of state power. Zhou Shifeng is the director of Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, and […]

Gao Zhisheng, July 14, 2015     The legal profession is weak under the tyrannical Chinese Communist Party, yet there has been no lack of individual lawyers who stick to the law and principles. Because of their profession, lawyers witness or experience countless incidents of injustice or suppression bred by the cruel system itself. As the saying goes, the great waves sift the sand. In the face of this injustice and suppression, most lawyers simply try to get on with their lives. Some, acting as puppets, even join forces with the tyrants for selfish gains. But there is one group who instead have developed the towering wish to change the fate of the Chinese nation and people, and shoulder the special historic role of relieving […]

By Eva Pils, July 8, 2016   In April and early May 2016, I got the chance to speak to some twenty-odd old and new acquaintances amongst the targets of the so-called 709 Crackdown – the latest and largest crackdown yet on China’s already beleaguered human rights lawyers.  Named after the 9th of July, the date it began with the night-time detention of Lawyers Wang Yu and Bao Longjun and their sixteen year old son, Bao Zhuoxuan, the 709 Crackdown mainly targeted three groups connected to rights advocacy: rights lawyers and assistants connected to Fengrui Law Firm;’ Lawyer Li Heping and his colleagues (with some overlap between these groups); and another group around activist Hu Shigen that included rights lawyers as well as more ‘grassroots’ […]

Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group, July 8, 2016     Like the rest of us, they traveled around the country through rain and shine and choking smog, assisting the most vulnerable. Like the rest of us, they were exhausted looking after their parents’ health and finding a school for their children. Like the rest of us, they embraced the lofty China Dream, believing in “governing the country according to the law,” and stepping into the role of defending justice and human rights, committed and tireless. But that dream was shattered on July 9, 2015.   It began with the arrest of lawyer Wang Yu’s entire family in the early hours of July 9, 2015. Thereafter, the state’s machine of coercion shifted into full gear, raiding […]

By relatives, defense counsels, and concerned lawyers, published: March 4, 2016     To the deputies, presidium, and delegations attending the 4th plenary meeting of the 12th Session of the National People’s Congress: We are a group made up of defense lawyers and family members of individuals taken into custody during the “July 9 Crackdown,” together with other lawyers and citizens who care about this incident. We are concerned about protecting the rights and interests of the detained and troubled even more by the current state of China’s rule of law and human rights. The “July 9 Crackdown” refers to the sweeping arrests that took place on July 9, 2015, and the several days that followed. Under the direction of the Ministry of Public Security, […]