Xu Zhiyong, January 1, 2020 This is the New Year’s message from a civil society leader who is, at this very moment, on the run to elude arrest by the Chinese authorities. A report on this new and ongoing wave of crackdown is forthcoming. — The Editors Enter 2020 in the march of history: another wave of crackdown against civil society is sweeping across China: NGO worker Cheng Yuan (程渊) in Changsha has been arrested; Pastor Wang Yi (王怡) in Chengdu was handed a heavy nine-year prison sentence; the last few days have seen the detentions of Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜), Zhang Zhongshun (张忠顺), Dai Zhenya (戴振亚), Li Yingjun (李英俊), Huang Zhiqiang (黄志强).   Where is China heading? Can it sail through the historical gorges and move […]

The China Human Rights Lawyers Group, January 1, 2020 One hundred years ago, when the New Culture Movement sang the praises of democracy” and science, nobody could have imagined that a century later, in the China of today, democracy has failed to flourish, while science has become a powerful tool aiding a totalitarian dictatorship. Seventy years ago, a new political order rose amidst the struggles and ravages of war that had been visited upon the great East Asian land and its people. Yet the people’s hopes for peace were quickly dashed: what lay in store for the Chinese were still greater human tragedies in an unending chain of cataclysmic political campaigns: The Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, the sent-down of youth, and more. Thirty […]

December 31, 2018 China is at a crossroads. History will remember 2018. In March, Xi Jinping amended the Constitution to everyone’s chagrin, paving the way to life in power. It’s an anachronism to go back to permanent power in the 21st century. More than that, it’s a subversion of civilization; it’s a shame for the country and for all Chinese nationals.   Xi Jinping has imposed his will on the entire Chinese population. In order to hold onto power, he has to strip the Chinese of their rights and dignity and enslave them. Xi Jinping is building a new model of totalitarianism that directly threatens freedom of movement and property rights. Each person lives in fear. Xi Jinping attempts to monopolize all the resources and gain […]

The China Human Rights Lawyers Group, January 1, 2019             2018, the year of Wuxu (戊戌), is slipping into history. Over the past 120 years, Wuxu has always been an eventful year. In 1898, four years after China had lost the First Sino-Japanese War, the Hundred Days’ Reform failed, and six of its chief advocates, among them Tan Sitong (谭嗣同), paid the price in blood at their public beheading. In 1958, another year of Wuxu, the Great Leap Forward and the people’s communes was to bring on the world’s greatest famine that would result in tens of millions of deaths.  Indeed, China in the year 2018 bears little resemblance to the China of 1958 and 1898. Four decades of economic reform have seen China’s GDP […]

Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group, January 1, 2018   It is with a heavy heart and a sense of desolation that we begin our New Year’s dedication, just as China is shrouded in smog and enveloped in haze. But regardless of the challenges and suffering of the past year, we have not cowered. We continue to hope that 2018 will bring us closer to freedom. We also wish that our own hope will become infectious, and that the citizens of China will together fight for a free, beautiful future and country. 2017 was again a year of no shortage of injustice and wanton violations of the law by the country’s judicial organs. Ugly words such as suffocation, shackles, and dungeons tested our resolve; deaths, disappearances, […]

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 […]

— New Year Greetings from the 300-member Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Group     Times goes on, but the laws of nature are the same. As the first rays of the morning sun will surely burst through the darkness, we cast our gaze, brimming with hope, upon a new year. The China Human Rights Lawyers Group (中国人权律师团) hereby imparts to everyone our most sincere New Year’s greetings! 2015 was a year replete with manmade disasters: A capsized boat on the Yangtze River, the Tianjin explosion, and the Shenzhen landslide one after another. And in each case the truth of what happened was concealed by the miasma of official power, forming a deep and dark human rights black hole. 2015 was also a year when Chinese […]

I would have written this post yesterday, but some how sitting in my office all day, didn’t help me remember that it was a “holiday.” So last night I planned on taking a bunch of photos and videos for you all to enjoy, but then, nothing happened! At our school that sets of fireworks pretty much weekly, there was nothing to see. We could only just make out the rumbling in the distance. My wife was surprised that I had forgotten how unimportant it is here. So here is something a bit more fun. This is how we celebrated the New Year in Longzhou, and why I always expect New Year’s Eve in China to be crazy. Students with fireworks and massive groups of students […]