1. Defenders in Prison 

A pattern of abuses against human rights activists, including illegal surveillance, house arrest, arbitrary detention, violent assaults, or imprisonment on groundless or trumped-up charges, demonstrated the escalation of government repression in 2006. According to incomplete records, currently imprisoned human rights activists include the following:  

Arrested, Convicted, or Verdict Upheld in 2006 

Chen Guangcheng (陈光诚): Known as the “barefoot lawyer,” a rural activist on the rights of the disabled and opponent of use of violence in enforcing the one-child policy. He is serving a 4-year and 3-month sentence for “disruption of traffic by gathering a crowd” in Linyi, Shandong Province.  Mr. Chen has been blind since childhood. On March 2006, Chen was taken away from his home, where he had been under house arrest for 6 months, by the Linyi police and lost contact with the outside world. After he had been held incommunicado for three months, Chen's family was notified on June 12 that he was under “criminal detention.” On August 18, Chen's trial commenced in the Beizhai court of Yinan County, Linyi City, Shandong Province. He was charged with “deliberate vandalism” and “disruption of traffic by gathering a crowd.” The court reached no verdict that day, and the hearing caused a controversy - Chen's wife and defense lawyer were not allowed to enter the courtroom, while his legal adviser, Dr. Xu Zhiyong, was arrested the night before the hearing by Yinan public security on larceny charges. Dr. Xu was released after Chen’s trial was over. The court temporarily assigned two lawyers to defend Chen, but the lawyers made no attempt to present a defense. Though Chen clearly rejected the court-appointed lawyers, the court did not follow standard legal procedures by adjourning the trial. On August 24, the Yinan Court convicted Chen Guangcheng as charged and sentenced him to prison for four years and three months. On October 30, the Linyi Intermediate People's Court rejected the county court's decision and requested a retrial. On December 1, the county court re-convicted Mr. Chen of the same crimes and handed him the same sentence. On the January 12, 2007, the Intermediate People's Court of Linyi upheld this verdict. 

Yuan Weijing, Chen Guangcheng's wife, an English teacher, became the victim of retaliation by local authorities after helping her husband to reveal the use of violence in the local birth control campaign and publicly opposing the illegal imprisonment of her husband. Since September 2005, she has been placed under surveillance, beaten, taken in by police for questioning, and eventually put under residential surveillance. In November, after attending Chen's second trial, she was taken away by the police and suffered ill-treatment including insults and threats. She has been officially monitored since then. 

Huang Weizhong (黄维忠): Rural activist who represented local farmers seeking justice and compensation for expropriated land.  On May 17, 2006, The Huangpu District Court in Putian City, Fujian Province sentenced Huang, a representative of farmers who lost land to government backed developers, to three years in prison on charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.” This case was heard on March 20, 2006. Huang had organized petitions, acted as a representative, and applied to hold demonstrations in defense of land rights. On November 10, 2005, he was taken into police custody, and on December 28, 2005, he was formally arrested on suspicion of “gathering a crowd to disturb social order.”  

Since May 2003, several local authorities in Putian of Fujian have taken land from peasants to use for urban development, affecting the livelihood of tens of thousands of farmers. Furthermore, some local authorities sought to profit from the seizures by circumventing the appropriate legal procedures for providing compensation for land expropriation, resettlement fees, and building compensation. This caused discontent among farmers, who began seeking avenues for the legal protection of their land rights. After repeated requests to the Putian city government and related authorities for intervention achieved no result, the farmers chose their own representatives (including Huang and others) to seek administrative and legal redress to their problems.  

The farmers’ efforts were unsuccessful, however, as the officials rejected their cases or tried to avoid addressing them. In desperation, the farmers tried to file an application with the local public security bureau to hold a peaceful demonstration to increase public awareness of their plight, but on August 8, 2005, the Public Security Bureau of Fuzhou (the capital of Fujian) rejected the application on the grounds that “the requested demonstration would seriously damage social order.” The farmers were subjected to threats and surveillance by the local government and relevant authorities, and the farmers’ legal representatives were put under house arrest or charged with crimes. Some of the representatives were detained illegally.  

On November 9, 2005, Huang, acting on the behalf of over 600 farmers, arrived in Beijing to try to submit petitions to the central government asking for its intervention on this case. The same day, Putian police arrested him in Beijing and took him back to Putian City under guard. On November 11, the police imposed a 15-day detention order on Huang for “disrupting social order.” On November 24 he was formally detained for “gathering a crowd to disturb social order,” and on December 28 he was formally arrested on the same charges. 

On February 28, 2006, the procuratorate of Chengxiang District in Putian filed an indictment against Huang in the Chengxiang District Court. On May 29, 2006, after Huang’s verdict was upheld, his defense lawyer Lu Guang met with Huang, and Huang asked his lawyers to appeal. A little earlier, on January 12, 2006, when lawyers saw Huang, they noticed he had edema in his legs and his blood pressure was between 60 and 100. They later discovered that Huang had been given bad food and suffered malnutrition as a result. From that time on, Huang’s family has sent him over 600 yuan a month to ensure his improved health. In December 2006, Huang received the international Housing Rights Defender Award. 

Mao Hengfeng (毛恒凤): A Shanghai activist who has been active in defending housing rights and opposing forced evictions and also in promoting women’s reproductive rights. Mao was arrested on January 24, 2006, and detained until February 8. On February 15, she was again apprehended by police and held incommunicado for 45 days. She has remained in jail since. In May 2006, she was formally arrested on charges of breaking a lamp during her last incarceration at a government guest house. Shanghai’s Yangpu District Court sentenced her on January 12, 2007, to two and a half years for “vandalizing public property.” On April 16, 2007, the Shanghai Municipal Intermediate Court rejected her appeal and upheld the verdict. The public prosecutor accused the defendant of breaking two lamps, each valued at 6,000 yuan.  

Mao Hengfeng had been illegally imprisoned multiple times prior to the most recent verdict, having spent more than 10 months in detention in 2006 alone. Mao’s family reported she had been subjected to various forms of abuse during confinement. They said that police forced Mao to wear coverings with strong chemical odors over her mouth to silence her protests. After she entered the prison, they said, guards stripped Mao naked as a means of humiliation and ordered other female inmates to beat her. In her cell, entirely sealed except for a palm-sized window, Mao was long denied a bed and chairs, and sewage ran on the floor of the cell, making it essentially uninhabitable. Mao was prevented from sitting and sleeping as penalty for her “non-cooperation.”  

Mao was previously employed at a Shanghai Soap Factory, but her job was terminated in 1988 for her refusal to abort a third child after having given birth to twins before. Mao repeatedly appealed the decision from 1990 to 2004, during which period she was once forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital. In 2004, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau sent Mao to a Re-education through Labor camp for 18 months, during which time she was subjected to considerable maltreatment. Following her discharge on September 12, 2005, Mao recommenced her legal complaints on the behalf of herself and of other victims of housing rights infringements, for which she has since been continually and unlawfully detained. 

Guo Qizhen (郭启真): A human rights activist and independent Internet writer.  He was detained on May 12, 2006, by the Xinhua branch of Cangzhou City’s Public Security Bureau on suspicion of “inciting subversion against the state.” On May 25, Guo was transferred to the Cangzhou Public Security Bureau. He was formally arrested by the PSB on June 6 and was held in custody at the Cangzhou No. 2 Prison. The Cangzhou Procuratorate issued an indictment on Guo’s case to the Cangzhou Municipal Intermediate People’s Court on July 25, 2006. Following his trial, Guo was sentenced on October 17 to four years in prison and stripped of his political rights for three years.  

Guo appealed the verdict. On March 16, 2007, the Hebei Province Higher People’s Court ruled to reject his appeal and uphold the verdict.  

Guo Qizhen’s defense lawyer Li Jianqiang and his legal representative Guo Guiping (his younger sister) appeared in court at his first trial arguing his innocence. The “criminal facts” the public prosecutor presented included Guo’s publication of various articles in “Democratic Forum” from November 2002 to April 2006, including “Who are the Rival Powers of the Communist Government?”, “A Statement Concerning the Hunger Strike of Lawyer Gao Zhisheng,” “Starvation Protest Diary,” “The Family-Annihilating Winds Currently Wreaking Havoc on the Chinese Mainland,” and “Discussing Japan’s Territorial Expansion from the ‘I Dare Not Say’ Perspective.”  

Guo’s arrest may be connected to his participation in the February 2006 hunger strike protest initiated by lawyer Gao Zhisheng to protest against the maltreatment of human rights activists across the country. Guo’s health is reportedly deteriorating in prison, where he has no access to medical care or treatment. He has multiple symptoms of psychological distress, and disability due to an injured leg from an October 2005 incident, when he protested his persecution by authorities by climbing up the television broadcasting tower of the local Public Security Bureau. He accidentally fell more than 20 meters, causing injuries and shattering his right leg. His family believes that if Guo does not receive necessary treatment promptly, he runs the risk of lifelong paralysis.  

Guo was born in Cangzhou city on May 10, 1958.  He graduated from Chinese Literature and Correspondence Polytechnic College. On May 16, 1995, the Cangzhou Xinhua District People’s Court sentenced Guo to one-year imprisonment and one year of deprivation of political rights for “intentional assault.” 

Zeng Jianyu (曾建余): Officially arrested by the Lu County Public Security Bureau on December 25, 2006 on suspicion of fraud, and now detained at the Luzhou City jail, Sichuan province. On February 15, 2007, Mr. Zeng was convicted of “fraud” by Lu County People’s Court and sentenced to two and half years in prison.  He last his appeal on April 23, when the Luzhou Municipal Intermediate People’s Court ruled to uphold the verdict. 

The Lu County PSB violated legal procedures by failing to notify Zeng’s family and work unit within 24 hours of his arrest. Since December 12, 2006, when Zeng went missing, police only confirmed that he had been secretly captured one week later. At the time, his family had been looking for him but without success. The police denied any knowledge of his whereabouts several times. On December 18 Lu County police finally called Zeng’s wife, Gui Qin, informing her that Zeng had been detained since the 13^th and asking her to bring him bedding, clothes, and other necessary items. Soon after, the police searched Zeng’s home again, taking a few receipts, an address book, CDs, business cards, and other materials. One of Zeng’s attorneys, Pei Jiaqin, contacted the police but was not permitted to visit Zeng in jail. Pei was not informed of the alleged victim of Zeng’s crime or what fraud Zeng was accused of committing. On January 8, 2007, Zeng was denied permission to meet with his attorney again. Zeng’s wife also lost contact with two lawyers who had agreed to take the case. In addition, the authorities continued to pressure her. She went to the jail to request to visit with her husband but was repeatedly refused.  

Zeng, male, 55 years old, was elected a deputy to the Luzhou City People’s Congress in 1992 and continued to hold the position until 1997. Over his seven years as a deputy, Zeng focused on environmental protection, citizenship rights, and monitoring of the local law enforcement department, displeasing regional officials. In 2003, he became the vice director of the Sichuan Institute of Rights Protection for Enterprises. This research institute was founded in the 1990s and is a nongovernmental organization. In recent years, Zeng Jianyu participated in many rights protection activities, including cases of expropriation of Luzhou farmland and the Luzhou Jiangbei power plant pollution case. He has also helped 50,000 workers who were deceived into terminating their employment contracts early fight for their legal rights from the Sichuan Oil Management Bureau.  In early December 2006, the national Environmental Protection Bureau confirmed that the Jiangbei power plant is among the country’s top 15 sources of pollution. Family members believe Zeng’s exposure of the Jiangbei power plant’s pollution and land practices caused the authorities to seek revenge against him. Zeng had been imprisoned for one year in 2001 on a trumped-up charge of fraud. He was released in September 2002. 

Yan Zhengxue (严正学): an artist and independent Internet writer/activist, who used his art to draw attention to China’s arbitrary detention system and official corruption. Detained on October 19, 2006, and formally arrested November 15 of the same year for “subversion of state power.” Defense lawyer Li Jianqiang met with Mr. Yan in the Zhejiang Taizhou Municipal Detention Center on January 16, 2007. Mr. Yan went on trial on April 5, 2007, at the Taizhou Municipal Intermediate People’s Court.  The court announced its verdict on April 13: the court rejected the “subversion against the state” charge against Mr. Yan and cleared him off the accusation of “secretly joining the Democracy Party.”  Instead, the court found him guilty of “inciting subversion against the state” and sentenced him to three years in jail, with deprivation of political rights for one year. Mr. Yan said he would not appeal.   His lawyer had feared that he faced a potential sentence of over 10 years of imprisonment, the usual punishment for “subversion” crimes. 

Yan was born in 1944 in Haimen, Zhejiang province. He graduated in 1966 from a high school affiliated with Zhejiang Fine Arts College; over the next 20 years, Yan traveled throughout mainland China as a painter. In July 1988, Yan held an exhibition at the National Art Museum titled “Yan Zhengxue, Yan Yinghong: Exhibit of Paintings by a Father and Daughter,” and in 1992 he joined the Beijing Yuanmingyuan Painters’ Village, creating art and being elected the village head.  In 1993, as a deputy to the Jiaojiang People’s Congress, Yan was beaten by police; his ensuing lawsuit against the Public Security Bureau attracted the attention of both domestic and international media. Later, Yan was falsely accused of stealing a bicycle and sentenced to two years of Re-education through Labor at the Beijing Shuanghe Labor Reeducation Center in Heilongjiang Province. Upon his release, Yan wrote the 45,000 character “Strange Roads to Yin and Yang” and began his work in defense of citizens’ rights with litigation against officials where he acted as legal representative for fellow citizens. In 2003-4, Yan visited the US. 

When Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) initiated a hunger strike to protest against the authorities maltreatment of human rights activists in February 2006, Yan was one of the first to respond, supporting the strike in Tiananmen Square. He was then forcibly returned to Taizhou by police. Since May 2006, Yan had helped residents of the Wenling area establish farmers’ associations, alarming the local government. 

Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄): Real name Yang Maodong (杨茂东), a scholar, writer, activist and legal adviser, detained since September 2006. On January 20, 2007, Yang was transferred to Shenyang city, Liaoning Province, for investigation of local dealing of his “illegal business transactions.”  Two month later, he was transferred back to Guangzhou at the end of March 2007.  The Tianhe District prosecutors in Guangzhou filed received additional evidence from police investigations in early April.  The prosecutors, according to law, must decide to file an indictment against him with the court or to drop the charges by mid-May. 

Guo is known for his work assisting a failed effort in the village of Taishi, Guangdong Province, in late 2005, to remove the village chief.  He was detained for three months for providing legal aid to Taishi villagers seeking the removal, through a recall motion, of a village director on suspicion of corruption. After his release in December 2005, police monitored and harassed Guo, including beating him up three times.  Harassment continued after he returned home from a visit to the US in summer 2006.  In early August 2006, he was brutally beaten again on a train to Beijing, where he was going to look for a job. He was forced to return to Guangzhou by the police. Mr. Guo then devoted himself to providing legal aid to the Beijing lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was detained in August 2006.  

On September 14, 2006, Guangdong police detained Guo on charges of suspected illegal business dealings. He was formally arrested on September 30.  On December 26, Guangzhou Municipal Public Security Bureau issued a “Notification to Authorized Defense Lawyer,” which was sent to Mr. Guo at the detention center on December 28.  The Guangzhou PSB spent two months investigating the case and then sent the case to the Tianhe District Procuratorate in Guangzhou for prosecution.  The Procuratorate returned the case twice to the police for additional investigation.  On September 29, 2006, Mr. Guo’s lawyers Mo Shaoping and Hu Xiao met him for the first time.  Guo told his lawyers that he had been on hunger strike, refusing to take food and water, and that he was being interrogated continuously for many hours.  On January 11, 2007, Hu Xiao and one other lawyer from the Beijing Mo Shaoping Law Firm were able to visit Guo for the second time at the Guangzhou Municipal No. 1 Detention Center. According to what Mr. Guo told his lawyers, he had been struck on the head by his interrogators and once bound to a wooden bed by his hands and feet for as long as 40 days in order to force him to confess.  To protest his ill-treatment, he had continued his hunger strike.  After that visit, Guangzhou PSB transferred Guo to a detention center in Shenyang City, Liaoning Province, citing the need to facilitate investigation.

Tan Kai (谭凯): Environmentalist, rights activist, a resident of Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province. Because of his role in founding the NGO “Green Watch” and aiding villagers detained for protesting polluting factories, Tan was sentenced by a Hangzhou local court on August 11, 2006, to one and a half years’ imprisonment on charges of “illegally obtaining state secrets.” As a staff member of a computer repair company, on October 13, 2004, Tan was assigned to bring in a computer with a malfunctioning screen for repairs.  The computer belonged to an official at the Zhejiang’s Propaganda Department and Tan was instructed not to “touch” the machine’s stored files. In the process of restoring the device, Tan perused its contents and moved a copy to his personal laptop. He did not delete the original files. Tan was arrested on October 19, 2005, together with five other members of the now-banned environmental protection group, Lai Jinbiao, Gao Haibing, Yang Jianming, Wu Yuanming and Qi Huiming. The latter five were immediately released, and Tan alone was held and then formally arrested. “Green Watch” was declared illegal following Tan’s arrest. Police investigators said the files were secret documents and used this claim in the indictment against Tan. Tan appealed his sentence to the Hangzhou Intermediate Court. On May 15, 2006, the Hangzhou West Lake District Court held a closed trial to consider the charges against Tan. Tan served his full term in prison and was released in late April 2007. His father, who confirmed the release, declined to make any public comments, citing that it was not convenient for Tan to make public comments either.

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