(b) Defenders at risk 

While imprisonment is the severest form of retribution, many more defenders faced intimidation, surveillance, and restricted movement in 2006. Harassment increased during politically sensitive periods of time, such as during the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing.  Between August 2006 and February 2007 (when local elections to the people’s congresses were underway), then between late February and mid-March 2007 (the time of the NPC meeting), Beijing police restricted people’s freedom of movement, in some cases putting people under house arrest or residential surveillance, often without even bothering to invoke any legal procedures.  Those subjected to restrictions included independent writers, scholars, activists, and lawyers, more than 100 in Beijing alone, including Liu Xiaobo, Zhang Zuhua, Jiang Qisheng, Hu Jia, Zeng Jinyan, Wang Lixiong, Wei Se, Teng Biao, Zhang Xingshui, Li Heping, Jiang Tianyong, Li Baiguang, Fan Yafeng, Zhang Lihui, Li Fangping, Li Jinsong, Liu Jingsheng, Li Subin, Hou Wenzhuo, Li Hai, Liu Di, Qi Zhiyong, and Gao Zhisheng. 

While the harassment of well-known dissident writers and professionals such as lawyers has drawn international attention, and thus affords them a certain degree of support and protection, the less-known, local, independent activists, who often act alone due to severe punishments for organized activism, are the most vulnerable to such harassment and are often subjected to harsher treatment, including physical violence and torture.  The following are a few examples:  

Ma Yalian (马亚莲): female, Shanghai housing rights activist. Ms. Ma continued to join others in petitioning against or protesting forced evictions in Shanghai in 2006.  She lives under police surveillance and, at times, her freedom of movement is restricted.  She was questioned by police several times in connection to her activism. Ma was previously an employee of a utensil company in Shanghai. On February 29, 2004, she was detained for her active role in a protest by forcibly-evicted residents in the city.  She was sentenced on March 16, 2004, to 18 months of Reeducation Through Labor by the Shanghai Reeducation Through Labor Management Committee for “disrupting social safety and order.” She was imprisoned at the Huangpu District Reeducation Through Labor Camp until her release on August 19, 2005.  She had previously served one-year Reeducation starting in August 2001. According to Ma, she was subjected to torture and cruel punishment, as well as prolonged detention in a psychiatric ward. Her second instance of Reeducation was due to her posting on the Internet writings that criticized China’s judiciary and administrative detention systems. She has posted articles on the Chinese Lawyer Network (http://chineselawyer.com.cn) and Dajiyuan, an overseas publication by Falun Gong (http://www.dajiyuan.com) that revealed the situation of some unsuccessful petitioners who, with no way to make their voices heard, committed suicide outside government buildings. 

On December 5, 2006, Ms. Ma and six other activists promoting land/housing rights were awarded the “Housing Rights Defenders Award” by the Geneva-based Center on Housing Rights and Evictions. The other 6 award winners include Fu Xiancai, Liu Zhengyou, Zheng Enchong, as well as three imprisoned activists Huang Weizhong, Xu Zhengqing and Chen Xiaoming. 

Lu Banglie (吕邦列): Male, 34, rural democracy activist, a farmer from Hubei Province and former elected deputy to the Zhijiang Municipal People’s Congress. In 2006, Lu re-entered the election race for the Zhijiang People’s Congress as an independent candidate, but lost after much harassment from the police and other illicit interference by local authorities. For the past few years, Lu actively promoted local elections by traveling through rural areas.  He was beaten and injured on October 12, 2005, when he was advising villagers in Taishi, Guangdong, to follow legal procedures to recall their village leader who was suspected of corruption (see also the case of Guo Feixiong above). According to news reports, his injuries were life-threatening.  

In defending the rights of farmers, Lu has endured a variety of harassment from government authorities.  In 2003, he and other villagers in his home village succeeded in an effort to remove a corrupt village director through legal procedures, and Lu was honored by the Chinese Youth Daily (an official news publication affiliated with the Communist Youth League) as a “vanguard warrior of grassroots rural democracy.” 

A heavy flood in 1998 left more than 200 people in Lu’s village homeless, for which the local government promised each household 16,000 yuan in compensation. According to Lu, due to rampant corruption amongst government officials, not all of this money reached the flood victims. Lu therefore began seeking accountability. In 2001, Lu read a rural edition of the magazine China Reform, a publication that sought to educate farmers on how to protect their own rights. Deeply impressed by its contents, Lu contacted the editors of the magazine; he was later invited by the magazine to attend a discussion forum of legal academics on the issue of farmers’ rights. Following the forum, Lu decided to employ the Organic Law Villager Committees to recall village leaders suspected of corruption. In 2003, Lu took part in the Zhijiang Municipal People’s Congress election, and was elected as an independent candidate. 

In March 2005, as a migrant laborer, Lu Banglie worked in a factory at the Zhujiang Delta region, packaging Christmas trees to be exported to the US. While there, Lu met several people who tried to provide legal aid to Taishi villagers. Relating his own experiences, Lu decided to help. On July 31, 2005, Lu traveled to Taishi and spoke to the villagers about local democratic activism. On September 12, when the protest was broken up by the police, Lu was beaten by thugs and was sent back to a hospital in his hometown in Hubei. After recovery, he began engaging once more in farmers’ rights defense. 

Hu Jia (胡佳): Beijing activist on environmental protection, support for people with HIV/AIDS, founder of the Beijing NGO Ai Yuan (The Source of Love, an AIDS orphans care group), and freelance reporter of human rights news. Hu spent most of 2006 under illegal house arrest and police surveillance. For more than a month, he “disappeared” after being taken away by security police.  

On May 28, 2004, Hu was detained at his home because of his public proposal to light a candle in Tiananmen Square to commemorate the 1989 “June Fourth Massacre.” In February 2005, during the mourning period for Zhao Ziyang, former reformist leader, and at the end of August when the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights visited China, Hu Jia was put under residential surveillance. On November 7, 2005, Hu was assisting HIV-positive villagers to submit a petition to officials attending an AIDS conference in Zhengzhou, Henan, when he was detained by local police. During his “disappearance” in February-March, 2006, his wife Zeng Jinyan (曾金燕), harassed by police herself, made public her efforts to search for Hu. She documented her experiences online, attracting widespread attention to the harassment of rights activists. Zeng Jinyan is also an activist advocating for the rights of HIV-positive villagers and AIDS orphans in Henan. Her experiences of speaking up and confronting police to seek the whereabouts of her husband encouraged her to undertake more efforts to help families whose loved ones had been detained or “disappeared.”  

Huang Qi (黄琦), pseudonym Nan Bo (难搏): Human rights activist in Chengdu, Sichuan, and director of “June 4^th Tianwang,” now “Tian Wang Human Rights Center.” In 2006 Huang was monitored, questioned by police, and denied permission to travel abroad for a conference. Huang, born on April 7, 1963, studied telecommunications technology at Sichuan University. In October 1998, Huang and his wife Zeng Li founded China’s first organization helping family members of missing persons. In April 1999, they put their service and operation online at a website called Tianwang Searching for the Disappeared.  Within a year’s time, they had helped over two hundred families to reunite. In 1999, Tianwang was ranked as one of nine most popular websites in China. In November 1999, Huang launched the Protest Website (Nahan wangzhan), which allowed underprivileged people to air their grievances.  Some of these grievances drew the attention of the government or led to government investigation. In February 2000, Huang was beaten by police; in late March, Tianwang was shut down; in April, with the support of a US-based server, Tianwang website moved abroad and continued its functions. On June 3, 2000, Huang was arrested.  

On September 5, 2003, Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court convicted Huang of “inciting subversion against the state,” sentencing him to five years’ imprisonment and one year deprivation of political rights. Huang’s arrest led to a widespread outcry. In April 2003, at the Annual Internet Freedom and Privacy Conference, hundreds of Internet experts from around the world called attention to Huang’s situation. In June 2004, the international press freedom organization “Reporters without Borders” awarded Huang its 2^nd Annual Internet Freedom Award. On June 2005, Huang finished his sentence and was released. While recovering from physical abuses in prison, Huang Qi restarted the Tianwang website and toward the end of 2006, launched the China Tianwang Human Rights Center, resuming human rights information and monitoring work. 

Li Jian (李健): Founder of Citizens Rights Net (www.gmwq.org), a Web-based rights monitoring studio. In 2006, Li continued to engage in civil rights activities. He was questioned several times and warned to stayi= away from rights actions. Since 2003, Li Jian has played an active role in the promotion of civil rights. He has done extensive work on raising citizens’ awareness and investigating abuses such as a death penalty case in Pingle, Jiangxi Province; violence used in birth control campaigns in Linyi, Shandong Province; and a case involving state agencies taking back ownership of a privatized oil fields in Shaanxi. Citizen Rights Net was illegally shut down by the Beijing Communications Management Bureau on November 21, 2003. Li attempted to sue the office, going through two hearings in court with no results. In August 2004, “Citizen Rights Net” was re-launched on a server abroad, but it was then blocked on the Mainland. After working at Daqing Petroleum Chemical Factory from 1980 to 1987, Li went into business. In November 2002 he started to engage in civil rights activities, using the internet as a platform.  

Zan Aizong (昝爱宗): Independent-minded journalist, former reporter for the China Ocean News, was detained by the Hangzhou Public Security Bureau on August 11, 2006, for “spreading lies and disrupting social order” after he reported on the demolition of a building used by an unofficial Christian church in Xiaoshan City. He was held for seven days. On July 29, Xiaoshan authorities forcibly demolished the church building, which resulted in a standoff between thousands of local Christians and policemen for prolonged periods of time. Policemen began removing the civilians by force, and dozens of Christians were brutally beaten. Several dozens were also detained. By late 2006, eight of them had received heavy prison sentences. Zan also lost his job with China Ocean News as a result. He filed a lawsuit against authorities. When the local court opened hearing on this case, Zan was illegally detained by the police outside the city, and prohibited from being interviewed about this case by foreign media.  

In 1999, Zan had published a book titled, The Fourth Type of Power – From Media Control to News Power, which details how independent media is one of the crucial elements in civil society and politics. He argued that independent media exerts a “fourth type of power” beyond that of legislation, administration and the judiciary. He called for the enactment of a press law to establish legal protection for reporters. Soon after, the CCP Propaganda Bureau banned this book and also prohibited mention of the phrase “the fourth type of power” in any media.  

In 2001, Zan, who was then the bureau chief of the magazine Fang Yuan (Square Circle) in Zhejiang Province, posted an article titled “Severe Crackdown – A New Form of Terrorism” in the “Legal Community Forum.”  He described how the “harsher crackdown on criminal activities” launched by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s was an illegal act that resulted in numerous cases of injustice and grievance. The local Hangzhou City Public Security Bureau charged him with violating the Regulations Regarding Security and Management of Information Technology and the Internet by “using the internet to produce, replicate, broadcast, and fabricate lies that disrupt social order,” and then proceeded to issue a Public Security Administrative Punishment Order. Zan was warned by the authorities and fined 5,000 yuan. When Zan tried to appeal and seek legal recourse, the authorities rejected his applications. Thereafter, Zan also lost his job with the Square Circle magazine.

Liu Zhengyou (刘正有): Rural rights activist, representative of farmers fighting for proper compensation for the loss of their land in Zigong City, Shandong Province. On August 22, 2006, after calling upon the local government to equitably resolve local land disputes at a peaceful gathering, Liu was attacked in clear view of policemen by a gang of unidentified assailants. He was badly bruised. In mid-June, on a trip to Geneva for a human rights seminar, he was intercepted by policemen at the airport in Beijing and brought back to Sichuan on the grounds that he was under criminal investigation for his leadership role in local protests by villagers who lost land/housing to developers without being fairly compensated.

Liu, 53, a farmer and former construction worker, once owned a machine parts factory in Hongqi Village, Zigong City, Sichuan Province.  For the past several years, Liu helped disenfranchised farmers seeking redress.  In 1993, the Zigong City Party Committee and local government forcibly seized 2,500 mu of land, including both collectively-owned and private farmland and housing properties, resulting in the loss of livelihood and housing for over 30,000 rural residents. The land was expropriated for a High Tech and Innovation Zone. Local officials gave the landless farmers compensation that did not even cover their basic living costs (approximately one-sixth of their land/property value and income).  After the farmers rejected the deal, officials moved in bulldozers escorted by police, which resulted in clashes with farmers. The farmers began a sit-in protest. However, they were removed by armed policemen. In the clashes, over 40 villagers were beaten, four subsequently died, a dozen were injured, and at least 21 were arrested.

Villagers decided to petition the government and file a lawsuit.  Liu Zhengyou was nominated to represent them. He traveled to the capitals of the province and the nation to try to hand in petitions to the government Letters and Visits Offices.  He sought out legal aid for filing lawsuits.  He studied the law on his own and tried to provide legal advice to the farmers.  Between 1995 and 2005, Liu Zhengyou petitioned the government on countless occasions. He wrote over 300 letters to officials, but has received no response. On April 20, 2005, more than 2,000 villagers organized a protest against the Mayor of Zigong City. They were intercepted by approximately 700 policemen. Many were injured in the conflict (including Liu Zhengyou). Liu Zhengyou and three other farmers were detained briefly.

With the help of legal scholars, journalists, and activists, Liu Zhengyou drew national and international attention to the Zigong farmers’ plight.  But the petitions and lawsuits have so far been dismissed or ignored by the various government agencies. 

[1] [2] 下一页