(Continued)

Part II.  SELECTED INDIVIDUAL CASES

3. Human Rights Workers:

Chen Guangcheng（陈光诚）, male, 34, a self-taught lawyer.  Briefly kidnapped and detained on September 6, and since then put under house arrest by Shandong police for exposing family planning violence in Linyi and providing legal aid to villagers who were to take legal action regarding these abuses against local authorities.

Chen has a long history of campaigning for the rights of farmers and the disabled. Blind due to a high fever from the age of one, Chen was educated at home till he was 18, but then attended the Linyi Primary School for the Blind and then Qingdao School for the Blind. He assisted local villagers to solve drinking water pollution problem when he was attending Nanjing Chinese Medicine University in 2000.  He created and ran the “Rights Defense Project for the Disabled” under the auspice of the Chinese Legal Studies Association between 2000 and 2001.  Since 1996, he has provided free legal consultation to farmers and the disabled in rural areas.  In 2003, he was sponsored by the “International Visitors Project” to visit the US.  In 2004, he ran a “Citizen Awareness and Law for the Disabled Project” supported by NED and the Monica Fund.

Since March 2005, Mr. Chen has been assisting villagers in bringing legal action against the Linyi city authorities for alleged illegal activities in implementing government birth quotas. According to Linyi residents, in March 2005 the local government began forcing parents with two children to be sterilized and women pregnant with a third child to undergo abortion. Officials detained family members of those couples who fled, beat them and held them hostage. The villagers’ lawsuit was due to be heard on October 10, but the court date was postponed several times. Only four villagers are reportedly still pressing for the lawsuit while others have pulled out after being harassed and threatened or bribed.  Police also allegedly forced them to testify against Chen Guangcheng, saying that he fabricated the reports of abuses.

By the end of August, Chen had evaded police surrounding his village and went to Shanghai, then to Beijing, to seek help from lawyers.  In Beijing, friends arranged for him to meet foreign journalists, diplomats, and international legal experts, to discuss the lawsuits. On September 6, he was detained in Beijing by police from Shandong Province, who took him back to Linyi and released him into house arrest the following day.  Since then, his house has reportedly been surrounded by up to 30 men and many cars; his landline and mobile phone services have been cut off, and his computer has been seized. On October 4, law lecturer Xu Zhiyong, lawyer Li Fangping, and another lawyer attempted to visit Chen and negotiate with local officials to have his house arrest lifted. The lawyers were stopped on their way to the house. Chen reportedly managed to leave his house and spoke with them briefly, but was then forcibly taken back. When he resisted, he was beaten up by men surrounding his house. The lawyers tried to go to Chen’s house, but they were stopped and reportedly beaten up and taken to a police station where they were interrogated.  They were told that the case now involved “state secrets” and escorted back to Beijing.

On October 10, Chen Guangcheng’s cousin Chen Guangli and another villager, also surnamed Chen, who had been giving interviews about Chen Guangcheng’s situation to foreign reporters were reportedly detained. On October 24, two other Beijing scholars and friends of Mr. Chen went to visit him.  As Mr. Chen ran out to greet them, he was stopped and beaten by more than 20 men stationed outside.  The visitors were quickly escorted away.  Authorities did not release Mr. Chen even after the UN Special Rapporteur called his relatives from Beijing during the Rapporteur’s visit in late November 2005.

Guo Feixiong （郭飞熊），penname Yang Maodong （杨茂东）, 39, Beijing-based writer and scholar, independent publisher. Guo Feixiong disappeared on September 12, 2005, and was later confirmed to be in police custody.

Guo graduated from Huadong Teachers’ College with a philosophy major in 1988 and was assigned a job in a medical school in Wuhan. He resigned in 1991 and went to Guangdong.  Between 1993 and 2001, he ran a small independent publishing house.  Since then, he became a freelance writer.  His writings can be found at http://www.yannan.cn/homepage/guofeixiong.htm

Guo went to Guangzhou and assisted villagers involved in land disputes with local officials in Nanhai, Guangdong Province in June 2005.  He sent daily briefings reporting developments and the villagers’ demands on the Internet.  He was detained while working with villagers at Taishi, Guangdong Province, where he had been advising villagers in their legal campaign to impeach an elected village committee chief who the villagers suspected of embezzling funds from selling collectively-owned farm land. The campaign in Taishi began in July 2005.  In mid-August, Guo was invited by local activists to provide legal counsel.  After the villagers’ requests to follow legal procedures to implement their motion was repeatedly rejected or ignored by government, villagers staged sit-ins and hunger strikes.  Since mid-September local officials have allegedly taken coercive measures to block the process. All seven elected members of the re-election oversight committee resigned, some citing official pressure or threats, following clashes with police. Dozens of villagers have reportedly been detained. There have also been reports of harassment and violent attacks on journalists and lawyers.

Guo was detained at an Internet café in Guangzhou on September 13 but was confirmed to be in police custody 11 days later.  Guo’s lawyers were not able to meet with him due to the harassment and threats the lawyers faced.  Guo was detained at the Panyu Detention Center on suspicion of “gathering crowds to disturb social order.”  While in detention, he went on hunger strike for 59 days and doctors at the detention center force-fed him to keep him alive.

On December 27, 2005, Guo was released by Panyu District Public Security Bureau. On the same day, other detained Taishi villagers were also freed.  According to Guo, on September 25, security personnel from the Guangdong provincial Public Security Bureau tortured him in an attempt to extract information.  They abused him verbally.  After he reported the abuses to the procuratorate’s office and protested openly, however, the interrogators refrained from using torture as an interrogation tactic.

Hou Wenzhuo（侯文卓）, female, 35, a former scholar, founder and director of Empowerment and Rights Institute China (EARI, ren zhi quan, http://www.earichina.org) based in Beijing.  Since the group was established in 2004, she has been monitored and sometimes harassed by police.  In recent months, the EARI office has been searched and was eventually forced to close down. During the visit of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, at the end of August 2005, Hou was put under house arrest in an attempt to prevent her from attempting to meet with the Commissioner.

Hou has been working on migrants’ rights, rural elections, and land rights in the past few years.  She participated in a training with the UN in Geneva in 2003.  After her return, she set up EARI mainly to focus on rural petitioners who come to Beijing to request that the central authorities to investigate their grievances.  EARI followed the land dispute and farmers’ protests in Nanhai County, and later the Taishi villagers’ sit-ins demanding removing a corrupt village chief.  Between June and September 2005, EARI associates filed daily briefings and urgent calls for public/international media attention to violent crackdowns by local police.  Some of them were questioned, at least one person remains in custody, another was severely beaten outside Beijing. In October, Hou was followed and questioned by police while trying to collect information in Guizhou Province about complaints from dislocated villagers due to a dam project.  Under threats, Hou Wenzhuo left China for the US in November 2005.

Hu Jia（胡佳）, male, 31, AIDS activist based in Beijing.  Hu focuses on the health rights of persons living with HIV/AIDS in Henan province.  Due to his criticisms of the government’s failures in AIDS prevention and care, he has been repeatedly harassed, often put under house arrest, and beaten by police.  He was placed under house arrest on May 28, 2004, after publicly stating his intention to light a candle in Tiananmen Square in memory of those who were killed during the June 1989 crackdown. He reported that he was beaten when he tried to leave his apartment building.  He was again detained after he tried to participate a gathering to mourn the deceased former leader Zhao Ziyang in February and in late August during the visit by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour.  In the latest round of harassment, Hu Jia was detained on November 7 by Zhengzhou police in Hunan, while he was assisting HIV/AIDS petitioners trying to bring their cases to the attention of officials attending an AIDS conference there.

Li Boguang（李柏光）, male, 37, legal scholar with a Ph.D from Beijing University, taught law at Hainan University from August 1997 to April 1998.  He is now a senior advisor at Beijing Anping legal service company.

In 2003 and 2004 Li Boguang helped to defend the rights of hundreds of thousands of villagers and ethnic minorities in several provinces who were being forcibly relocated due to the expropriation of their land. He provided legal counsel and training to the affected people, helped with their public petition campaigns, assisted their efforts to force the resignation of local officials and hold business perpetrators accountable.  He also gave advice on rural elections in Liaoning province. He has been a legal adviser to local rights activists such as Chen Guangcheng in Linyi, Shandong province.

Li Boguang was arrested on December 14, 2004, when he was working as a legal advisor to local farmers in Fujian province.  He was released on probation, waiting for trial, for one year on January 21, 2005.

In February 2005, he represented Liu Lie, a farmer from Heilongjiang province, who had come to Beijing to seek an administrative review of her land dispute with local officials by the Legal Office at the State Council after she had exhausted legal channels at the provincial level. The state farm violated the land contract by taking back the land which she leased for agriculture and was making a profit. This celebrated case became the first constitutional law case involving the State Council. This case has now been ruled in Liu Jie’s favour.

Li Guozhu（李国柱）, male, 48, former state employee, activist.  Detained for his investigation into a violent incident in Henan province. In November 2004, Li spent two days in Zhongmou county in Henan province, an area where the government declared martial law after violent clashes between Han Chinese and Hui Muslim minorities. After Li did some interviews with eyewitnesses and tried to provide assistance to victims, he sent foreign journalists copies of his interviews along with photographs of restaurants damaged in the riots. 

On November 12, 2004, after Li returned to Beijing, eight police officers and the local village chief went to the office of Sanchun Dadi (Mountain Spring on the Land), a non-governmental advocacy group located on the outskirts of Beijing where Li worked as a volunteer, to question him about his Henan trip. The group had assisted farmers who came to Beijing to petition central authorities to seek redress or report on corrupt officials, property seizures, and other abuses. Li Guozhu was then detained. Officials made no statements on his whereabouts or any charges against him. 

Li, a former officer at a prison management bureau in Heilongjiang province, is married and has a three-year old son. His wife is partially disabled. On December 2, Li’s wife, who had no information about her husband after his detention, traveled to Beijing to seek information. Police from Heilongjiang came to the capital and detained and escorted her home. 

In 2004, Li became increasingly visible in the growing numbers of street protests organized by rural petitioners who traveled to Beijing. During his years in Beijing, trying to petition for review of a Heilongjiang case, Li became resourceful and played a leading role in assisting other petitioners with their cases, offering practical advice and legal aid. He often spoke to national and international media about the petitioners’ grievances and demands. In August and September 2004, police from Heilongjiang detained him in Beijing, took him back to Heilongjiang, and then released him without formal charges.

Li Jian（李健）, male, 41, a former worker at a state petrolium facility and human rights activist based in Dalian City, Liaoning Province.  His activities have been closely monitored and he has often been harassed due to police restriction on his travels.  The surveillance is intended to intimidate him and stop him from carrying out his work.

Li Jian was a former worker at Daqing oil factory, a state owned enterprise. Since 2002, he has been involved in public petitions and other human rights campaigns.  He was instrumental in organizing the online signature campaign for the release of the Internet writer Liu Di, a university student detained for her writings posted on the Internet.  Liu was sentenced to jail on charge of “leaking state secrets.”  She was released early. He was actively involved in the “Spring Bud Action,” a project aimed at raising funds to support rural girls’ schooling. But this project was forced to shut down by authorities. In April 2003, he set up the “Civil Rights Defense Net” (gongmin weiquan wang), which publicizes news and petitions on the website www.gmwqw.org.  Mr. Li helps victims of rights abuses seek legal aid and solve their problems through legal procedures, as well as pushing for reform of the system.  The “Civil Rights Defense Net” website was twice blocked by officials.  Mr. Li filed a law suit against authorities for violating his right to freedom of expression and press.

Li Weiping（李卫平）, scholar.  He graduated with an advanced degree from Zhongnan University. He participated in the 1989 pro-democracy movement.  He was sentenced to three years in prison for his involvement in organizing a political party.  In April 2005, he and Liu Jingsheng obtained a permit to open a for-profit business, the Beijing Hua Xia Citizens’ Rights Consultation Center. The Center had planned to assist citizens in seeking to protect their legal rights and to raise awareness of human rights, training civil servants and influencing government policy on human rights. As they were to hold a press conference on April 18 to announce the opening of the center in Beijing, they were threatened by police and pressured to cancel all their activities, and they eventually handed back their legal permit.

Liu Jingsheng（刘京生）, political dissident, detained for six months in 1979 for participating in the 1978 Democracy Wall Movement, publishing the magazine Tansuo (Exploration) with Wei Jingsheng. After the June 1989 crackdown, Liu and other activists established the China Freedom and Democracy Party and the Chinese Free Labor Union of China. Because of these activities, Liu was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He began serving his term on May 28, 1992.  Liu was released from prison on November 27, 2004, two and half years before the end of his sentence. But he was deprived of his political rights for another year as part of his sentence.  In April 2005, after he and Li Weiping had obtained a permit to open a for-profit business, the Beijing Hua Xia Citizens’ Rights Consultation Center. (See above.) In October 2005, Liu Jingsheng opened “Jingsheng Studio” (Jingsheng gongzuo shi) in Beijing to assist Chinese citizens in defending their rights.

Wan Yanhai（万延海）, doctor, founder and director of the Beijing AIDS Information and Action Consultation Center (formerly Beijing Action Project), who was instrumental in exposing HIV/AIDS epidemic in rural Hunan resulting from the unsafe commercial blood business.  His group has worked to push the government towards greater transparency and more effective action to prevent and treat AIDS. He was detained in August 2002 for a month on suspicion of "illegally leaking state secrets" when he published a government document in the group’s email listserve on the extent of the epidemic in Henan Province. Dr. Wan was awarded the Canadian AIDS and Human Rights Award in 2002.  The group is not permitted to register as a non-profit NGO and is forced to register as a for-profit business corporation. The group’s activities continue to be restricted and monitored by the police.

Zhao Xin（赵昕）, male, 38.  Zhao has advocated for the rights of people living with HIV/AIDS and petitioners who traveled to the capital to complain about corruption and abuses by local government.  He wrote articles online and offered legal aid. Zhao also assists victims of the 1989 massacre by collecting testimonies and evidence and raising funds for the support of victim’s families. He also campaigned for citizens’ rights to political participation and participated in organizing the China Democratic Party.

Zhao was a student leader during 1989 student protest and was arrested on June 17, 1989, and imprisoned at Qincheng Prison in Beijing for one year. Zhao was arrested again on February 2, 1992, for organizing an event to mark 1,000 days since the June Fourth crackdown. He was sent to Beijing Haidian Detention Center, where he was beaten. As a result he suffers from permanent memory loss and chronic pain in his lower back. After attempting to organize a memorial event for Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party Secretary who was sympathetic to the 1989 student protests, Zhao Xin was detained on January 21, 2005. Zhao is currently out on probationary release awaiting possible trial.

Zhao Xin began working for the Empowerment and Rights Institute in Beijing.  He is currently the Executive Director of the group.  On November 17, 2005, Zhao was severely beaten by unidentified thugs in Sichuan province, where he was visiting with his parents, while plain-clothed police, who had followed him all the way from Beijing, seemed to look on.  He was beaten in the hotel where he was staying, in plain view of other guests and hotel staff.  He was told by one of the attackers that they had sought him out for beating.  He was severely injured with one broken leg, several fractured ribs, and 11 stitches on his head.  He is now hospitalized at the Chengdu Army 8.1 Hospital.  In late November, Zhao Xin met with the visiting UN Special Rapporteur against Torture.  Since then, local officials have also visited Zhao in the hospital, promising to bring those who beat him to justice. But authorities have not agreed to help Zhao Xin to pay his huge medical bills.