Part II.  SELECTED INDIVIDUAL CASES

Based on the analyses in Part I of the general situation of human rights defenders in China, we have documented some cases of individuals who have been harassed or punished by authorities for acting in various capacities to defend fellow citizens’ human rights.  The individuals profiled in these cases are just a few among the many who have acted to defend human rights and have been, consequently, harassed, threatened, or imprisoned for their activities.  For instance, there are many other courageous and active human rights lawyers than we could document here, such as Teng Biao, Li Heping, Li Subin, Jiang Tianyong, Li Fuchun, Yu Jiang, Tang Jingling, and Guo Yan. We divide these cases into three categories: community activists, human rights lawyers, and human rights workers.  (The cases are listed under each category in alphabetic order):

1. Community Activists:

Ding Zilin（丁子霖）, female, university professor.  Since she lost her 17-year-old son in the 1989 massacre, she has led a group of the family members of victims, “the Tiananmen Mothers,” to seek justice. For the last sixteen years, she has been at the forefront of a network of people who have worked to document the brutal crackdown in a systematic fashion by collecting the names of victims and recording their individual stories. For this, she has been subjected interrogations, threats of violence, periods of detention and house arrest.

In March 2004, Ding Zilin was arrested outside her home in Wuxi, Jiangsu province. Police did not produce any warrants. Two other members of the Tiananmen Mothers in Beijing, Zhang Xianling and Huang Jinpin also were arrested and had their homes searched, and personal items were confiscated. Police told them that "the Tiananmen Mothers Campaign and the Tiananmen Mothers as a group were reactionary organizations through which entities inside and outside of China were conspiring to harm national security and to incite subversion of state power." The authorities also threatened the “Mothers” that they must not submit a video CD presenting the testimonies of six family members of June Fourth victims, through the Hong Kong-based support group, the Tiananmen Mothers Campaign, to the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances in Geneva.

Feng Bingxian （冯秉先） male, detained for acting as a representative of rural investors seeking dialogue with local government to resolve a property rights dispute.  The dispute began in March 2003, when Yulin Municipality and Yan’an Municipality governments took back more than five thousand oil fields that the government had allowed private investors to invest in and develop.  The confiscation caused property loss for more than 1,000 small private enterprises and 60,000 individual investors.  The investors first petitioned the government at higher levels, without receiving any response. Then they tried to engage in dialogue with officials and they were unable to find any room for negotiation.  As they began preparing lawsuits, police arrested their representatives and their lawyer, Zhu Jiuhu.

On May 11, 2005, about 300 representatives of investors in privatized oil fields from six counties in Northern Shanxi gathered in Xi’an. They submitted a “Request to the Shanxi Provincial Central Communist Party” to ask the city governments at Yulin and Yan’an municipalities to correct the illegal administrative actions by county governments in confiscating previously privatized oil fields. Beginning on May 14, some representatives were detained after dialogues stalled. Local officials tried to threaten the investors so that they would not appeal or go to court.  Others were placed under house arrest or went into hiding. A wider manhunt for other representatives was launched. On July 26, Feng Bingxian was arrested after he made an appointment to meet a journalist working for the government Central TV station to meet in Wuhan, where the journalist promised to make a program about the investors’ plight.  Mr. Feng found no journalist at the meeting place, but was surrounded by police from Yulin, Shanxi.

On October 21, Jinbian County Prosecutors’ Office in Shanxi issued an indictment against Feng Bingxian, together with Feng Xiaoyuan and two other representatives who had been released to await trial in mid-September,  on the charge of “gathering crowds to disturb social order.”  The trial of all four has been postponed several times.

Feng Xiaoyuan（冯孝元）, male, 64.  Chief representative of rural share holders in a privatized oil-filed enterprise in Jinbian County, northern Shanxi Province.  The rural share holders petitioned and tried to settle the dispute through meetings with officials who had ordered changing the ownership back to the government, causing share holders to lose their investments. Having failed to gain any response from authorities, they filed a lawsuit. Feng was detained with several others on May 14, 2005, on suspicion of “disturbing social order.”  He was not tried and was detained at the Jinbian Detention Center. In mid-September, he was released on bail.  On October 21, Jinbian County Prosecutors’ Office in Shanxi issued an indictment against Feng Xiaoyuan, along with Feng Bingxian and two other representatives, for “gathering crowds to disturb social order.”  The trial has been postponed several times.

Gao Yaojie（高耀洁）, female, 74, a retired gynecologist and HIV/AIDS activist, began treating people with HIV and AIDS and taking action to expose the officially covered-up epidemic in 1996 in the villages of Henan Province.  She has been harassed, threatened, and barred from meeting journalists or traveling abroad to receive an award.

In the 1990s, impoverished farmers in Henan sold their blood at government-run blood collection centers. In the rush to maximize profits, safety precautions were largely ignored.  The blood, untested for diseases, was pooled and re-injected into the sellers. The result was a high rate of cross infection. In some villages, the HIV infection rate was estimated at 65%.

Dr. Gao, who traveled to the villages to treat the villagers, discovered this and tried to alert authorities about the epidemic. She used her small retirement pension to treat patients and educate the farmers about HIV/AIDS, often under harassment by authorities who denied responsibility in the spread of HIV/AIDS and tried to cover it up.

After Dr. Gao spoke to foreign reporters about the blood-borne epidemic in Henan, she was warned not to disclose “state secrets” to “foreign, anti-China forces.” And Chinese reporters were warned not to report on the scandal.

On 31 May 2001, Dr. Gao was unable to receive the Jonathan Mann Health and Human Rights award in Washington, DC.  The Chinese government denied her permission to travel abroad.

Li Minying（李民英）, male, 60, journalist.  Founder and former editor-in-chief of The Southern Metropolitan News.  He was also on the editorial board of the Southern Daily, another outspoken newspaper. He was arrested on January 15, 2004 and sentenced on June 15, 2004 by the Intermediate Court of Guangzhou City to six years imprisonment and fines of RMB 100,000 yuan on unsubstantiated charges of “accepting bribes.”  He is now imprisoned at Guangdong Panyu Prison.

The Southern Metropolitan News was once the mouthpiece of the government and in dire economic situation.  Since Li Minying and others took over management, the paper became widely popular due to its reporting on social ills and exposing of corruption officials.  It gained the fame of a paper with “social conscience.”  As readership grew, the paper also became financially viable.  Some of the paper’s famous reports include its exposure of discrimination based on the hukou (household registration) system and the Custody and Repatriation detention system.

Liu Feiyue（刘飞跃）, male, 35, a school teacher in Suizhou city, Hubei province, pro-democracy activist and campaigner for basic health and education rights. Liu has been harassed by authorities for his activities.  In 1996, he was detained by Suizhou Public Security Bureau for 15 days for writing about official corruption. In September 2005, he was sent to a village school as punishment for his active role in drawing attention to lack of protection of rural children’s education rights.

Since 1997, Liu has been involved in activities organized by the banned China Democracy Party.  In early 2004, he openly criticized government hospitals that use various pretexts to charge patients numerous fees and collude with drug companies to raise drug prices.  Liu collected over 500 hundred signatures on the streets of Suizhou City on a petition to demand more government spending on rural medical care.  Liu also championed rural education rights.  In July 2005, he traveled to villages and towns of Suizhou and investigated complaints about problems with schooling for children from rural families.  He called for public support and collected more than 600 signatures on a petition sent to the State Council and the Ministry of Education, demanding that the government cut the numerous fees levied by schools and ease the burden of paying for basic education on rural families .  In early 2005, Mr. Liu began publishing online “Monitoring Citizens’ Rights to Basic Living” (min sheng guancha).  Mr. Liu is under constant police surveillance and his phone calls and Internet activities are monitored closely. 

Liu Fenggang（刘凤刚）, 45, was detained on 13 October 2003.  Subsequently, Xu Yonghai (徐永海), 44, and Zhang Shengqi (张胜棋), 30, were detained in November 2003. All three were charged under Article 111 of the PRC Criminal Law with “providing state secrets to foreign organizations,” and tried in secret on 16 March 2004 by Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Zhejiang Province.

The three Christians were detained during an intensified crackdown against unofficial churches in Zhejiang Province, launched by the authorities in March 2003. In July 2003, more than a dozen house churches were reportedly destroyed and at least 300 Christians arrested, some were reportedly ill-treated and beaten.

In its indictment against the three men, the procuratorate stated that the charge of “providing state secrets to foreign organizations” was made in connection with Liu Fenggang’s decision to write, disseminate and publicize several reports written over a two-year period, documenting the destruction of churches and the harsh treatment suffered by members of underground congregations. According to the indictment Xu Yonghai, a doctor, sent these documents to a US-based Chinese-language magazine, Christian Life Quarterly, while Zhang Shengqi, a computer technician, e-mailed the reports overseas.

On 6 August 2004, the court sentenced Liu Fenggang to three years, Xu Yonghai, to two years and Zhang Shengqi to one year. These sentences included the period of time that they had already served in pre-trial detention. Zhang Shengqi should therefore have been released in November 2004, and Xu Yonghai in November 2005, although there has been no official confirmation of their release. Liu Fenggang and Xu Yonghai are imprisoned in Hangzhou Xijiao Prison.

Liu Fenggang was a member of the state-sanctioned Protestant church but became critical of restrictions imposed on the church by the authorities, and chose to join the Beijing Christian Sacred Love Fellowship, an unofficial religious group. As a result, he was dismissed from his job as a worker in a medical equipment factory.

Liu Zhengyou (刘正有), male, 53, farmer, construction worker, owner of a rural machine tool factory, based in a village in Hongqi township, Zigong city, Sichuan province. Activist and petitioner for farmers’ land rights.

In 1993, Zigong officials began seizing more than 2,500 acres of farm land, including private and collective properties, on which 30,000 farmers had farmed and lived for generations. Local government seized the land for building a “New High Tech Development Zone.” The farmers were offered small living stipends and what they considered inadequate compensation for their houses and farming land – about one sixth of what it would cost to buy houses and land in Zigong at the time. Farmers who refused to relocate and organized sit-ins were forced by armed police and guards to move.  Police came to the villages many times to “clean out” villagers. The farmers designated Liu as their leader. During these clashes, more than 40 people were beaten up by police, among them, four died and a dozen were left permanently handicapped. Twenty-one were arrested. Over the next several years, clashes with local officials escalated. Officials intermittently blocked roads and shut off water and electricity in the villages. Some farmers said their houses were torn down during days they were away. One of the largest confrontations occurred July 4, 2003, when about 1,000 police descended on Hongqi Township and, using sticks and electric prods (crowd-control devices that give electric shocks), scattered a large gathering of protesters, according to Chinese media reports.

Liu Zhengyou and three other farmers (and their families) were among those who refused to leave.  Between 1998 and 2000, the Zigong government ordered about 600 police and officials to force them out.  They used bulldozers and explosives to destroy their houses.  More than 20 people have since been left homeless.

Some farmers got jobs in township-owned factories in the mid-1990s, but most of those factories failed within a few years. The farmers were left with no livelihood. Those who left town became migrant workers.

The farmers filed lawsuits in local courts six times without receiving any response. Between 1995 and 2005, Liu Zhengyou petitioned the government for investigation and review of the Zigong land rights abuse three times, mailed more than 300 letters to local, provincial, and central government administrative and judicial offices, without receiving any response. 

On April 20, 2005, more than 2,000 villagers from Hongqi village, Weiping village and other villages of Zigong city tried to hand in a petition to Zigong Mayor Wang Hailin. They were stopped by 700 police and officials. During the altercation with police, several villagers were badly injured including Liu. They were taken to the hospital for treatment, after which Liu and four others were detained and later released.

Lu Banglie（吕邦列）, male, 34, a farmer from Hubei province, an elected deputy to local People’s Congress.  He is active in monitoring rural elections in other villages across China. He was reportedly beaten on October 12, 2005, for trying to assist Taishi villagers in Guangdong province to impeach a village chief suspected of corruption.  

Lu was praised by the Communist Youth League-owned China Youth Daily last year for mobilizing villagers in his own village to impeach the chief suspected of corruption despite harassment by local officials and thugs in 2003. When his campaign forced his village chief to resign, the paper said, Lu emerged as "the front runner of peasant grassroots democracy."

A flood of the Yangtze River in 1998 left 200 fellow villagers homeless. Lu says because of local corruption, not all the government assistance reached the families. He began actively campaigning for local villagers’ rights. In 2001, Lu bought a copy of China Reform-Rural magazine, which educates peasants on their legal rights. He contacted its editors and was later invited to a conference on farmers’ rights with legal scholars. Lu decided to use the Village Committee Organization Law to impeach his village chief, which he did in 2003.  He also ran as an independent write-in candidate and was elected a deputy to his township’s People's Congress.

In March 2005, Lu moved to a factory in the Pearl River Delta region.  He got a job packing Christmas trees for export to the US. There, he met with legal reformers assisting Taishi villagers.  Lu decided to help. On July 31, he went to Taishi and talked to villagers.

In early August, Taishi residents surrounded their village committee building to prevent the removal of accounting books, which they said would prove corruption. On Sept. 12, police drove the villagers away. Police arrested about 30 people and 10 remain in custody. Several dozen thugs that Taishi residents believe were hired by local officials harassed villagers and attacked anyone who tried to contact the villagers, including activists like Lu, and lawyers.

Lu was taken back to his home town in Hubei to recover from injuries. He has apparently and continues his activism.  In early November, he traveled to Beijing to a meeting with lawyers who are helping the detained Taishi villagers. He also tried to enter Taishi village to collect eyewitness testimony, but was stopped and escorted home by police.

Ma Yalian（马亚莲）, female, 42.  Former employee of the Shanghai Tools Company. On February 19, 2004, she was arrested for her active role in petitioning the government to address grievances involving forced evictions. On March 16, 2004, the Shanghai Reeducation Through Labor Management Committee decided to send her to a RETL camp for one year and six months for “disturbing social order and security.” She was detained at the Huangpu District Detention Center in Shanghai and was released on August 19, 2005 after serving her full term at the RETL camp.

Ma herself had made repeated complaints after her family was evicted as a result of an urban redevelopment plan in Shanghai. For her actions, she was sentenced in August 2001 to one year in a RETL camp. She had reported being beaten while serving her time.

Ma Yalian was punished for a second time apparently for posting articles on the Internet exposing failings in China’s administrative complaint and adjudication system. At about the same time the authorities tightened up censorship and surveillance on the Internet. Ma posted articles about harassment and abuses both on the legal professional website http://chineselawyer.com.cn and on the overseas website www.dajiyuan.com, which is run by Falun Gong activists. In these postings, for example, Ma disclosed that there were incidents of individuals committing suicide in front of government petitioning offices.

Mao Hengfeng（毛恒凤）, female, ruled by authorities to be sent to a “Re-education Through Labour” (RETL) camp for 18 months after she repeatedly protested official abuses of her rights.  She was released on September 12, 2005. Since then, she has continued her protests and has suffered further abuses along with her husband, Wu Xuewei, who has also been subjected to beatings and may face criminal charges. Both are at risk of persecution, including arbitrary detention and torture or ill-treatment. 

Mao, the mother of twins, was reportedly dismissed from her job in 1988 because she became pregnant for a second time with a third child, in violation of China’s “one child” family planning regulations. Mao Hengfeng refused to undergo an abortion and she was subsequently incarcerated at a psychiatric hospital, where she was forcibly injected with various drugs. She nevertheless continued the pregnancy, giving birth to a baby girl prematurely on February 28, 1989. She was then notified in March 1989 that she had been dismissed from her job for missing sixteen days at work.

Mao won an appeal to authorities about her dismissal according to regulations under China’s Labour Law.  She got her job back according to a ruling by the Shanghai Municipal Labour Arbitration Committee. However, the soap factory where she worked disputed the ruling, and appealed to Shanghai Yangpu District Court. Mao was seven months pregnant with her fourth child at the time of the appeal hearing. The judge reportedly told her that if she terminated her pregnancy, he would rule in her favor.

Mao Hengfeng was detained after she traveled to Beijing to petition state authorities at the time of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress in March 2004.  Authorities ruled that her petitioning “disturbed social order.” Her welfare allowances were discontinued when she was sent to the RETL camp in April 2004, leaving her family in severe financial difficulties.

Several days after her release, Mao Hengfeng and her family were reportedly held under a form of “house arrest” from 23-27 September, 2005.  Officials tried to prevent her from contacting a UN office in Beijing about the abuses she had suffered.  She was placed under house arrest again from September 29, to October 11, 2005 during the National Day holidays and the fifth plenary session of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

Yao Fuxin（姚福信）, male, 55, and Xiao Yunliang（肖云良）,  male, 59.  Yao, a factory worker at Liaoyang City Steel Mill and an activist for labor rights.  Arrested for “illegal demonstrations and protests with others” after joining Liaoyang workers in a strike on March 29, 2002.  On June 25, 2003, the Liaoning Provincial Higher Court upheld a lower court’s decision to sentence him to seven years imprisonment and three years of deprivation of political rights for “subversion against the state.”  He is now imprisoned at the No. 2 Prison in Linyuan City, Liaoning Province. Xiao was sentenced to four years in prison on May 9, 2003 on charges of subversion. He was detained after leading peaceful worker demonstrations in Liaoyang City, Liaoning Province, in March 2002. 

Thousands of workers from more than 20 factories in Liaoyang City had demonstrated against official corruption and demanded basic living allowance for laid-off workers, payment of pensions and unpaid wages.

The two were also active in the Democracy Party organizing activities in the late 1990s.  Yao was reportedly to be the coordinator of a proposed "Liaoning Preparatory Committee of the China Democracy Party." But the party-organizing activities were soon discovered by the police and many of the participants arrested.

Yao Fuxin, Xiao Yunliang and others were accused of organizing workers of the Liaoyang factories to assemble and demonstrate in March 2002, without applying for legal permits, for “disturbing functions of state organs,” and for giving “inflammatory speeches.” They were also accused of contacting “hostile separatist organizations” overseas and foreign reporters.

Ye Guozhu（叶国柱）, male, 50.  Arrested on September 15, 2004, for leading efforts to petition the government to address grievances by residents forced to relocate without fair compensation.

After his own house was demolished after he had been forcibly evicted, Ye Guozhu began to take an active role in defending his own and fellow citizens’ housing rights.  Many years’ petitioning of government authorities did not succeed in getting an official hearing for their grievances. In the process, he met many people who had suffered from similar violence and heard many sad stories.  He began to take on their cases with the hope that his efforts could assist these people in seeking administrative and legal remedies.

Gradually, he also began helping people with other kinds of grievances to petition the government and get their stories into the media. Mr. Ye, living in poverty himself, provided food and other assistance to petitioners who traveled from rural areas. 

On 24^th August 2003, Ye helped organize the “September 18 March” to call for social justice. The activities were planned according to legal regulations.  The organizers applied for a permit from the Beijing Municipal Security Bureau, where they were required to submit a list of the participants.  But the application was rejected by the PSB.  On August 27, the Beijing Dongcheng district police detained him and subsequently charged him with the crime of “disrupting social order.” He was formally arrested on September 15, 2004. On February 2, 2005, the No. 2 Beijing Municipal Intermediate Court sentenced him to four years in prison for “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”  He is imprisoned at the Tianjin Cha Dian Qing Yuan Prison.

Zhang Shanguang（张善光）, male, 53, a former middle school teacher, an activist for workers' rights. In 1998, Mr. Zhang tried to form the Alliance for Defending the Rights of Laid-off Workers in Hunan Province.  He gave information to foreign journalists about rural and urban labor unrest in Hunan province. As a result, he was detained in July 1998 and sentenced five months later to ten years in jail for "providing state secrets to overseas organizations." There have been reports that Zhang Shanguang has been abused in prison.  He was reportedly beaten, shackled, and forced to engage in hard labor for long hours after he refused to undergo forced labor. He suffers from tuberculosis which he contracted while he was previously imprisoned for seven years for criticizing the government for the June 4^th 1989 crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations. Following international campaigns, authorities have allowed family to send medicine to the prison.  Reportedly, his tuberculosis is under control, but he remains very weak.

Zhao Yan（赵岩）, male, 43.  Formerly a researcher for the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.  He has been in custody since September 17, 2004. On October 20, 2004, he was arrested on charges of fraud and on “suspicion of providing state secrets to an overseas organization.”  He has not been tried and is now confined at the Beijing State Security Bureau Detention Center.

Previously, Zhao was a reporter for various newspapers and journals, including the Chinese magazine China Reform.  He was known for his bold investigative reports on official corruption, citizens taking government officials to court, and farmers’ grievances and rural unrest.  Between 2003 and 2004, he was instrumental in assisting citizens campaigning to remove corrupt mayors or deputies to the People’s Congress. He also played an active role in helping farmers to seek compensation for land forcibly confiscated by authorities and in obtaining the release of wrongfully convicted persons in some of the most celebrated cases in the country.

Zhao has not been allowed to see his lawyer or family. He was alleged to have revealed to his employer, the New York Times, that former president Jiang Zemin was resigning as head of the Central Military Commission before the official announcement had been made. The New York Times has denied the allegation. The newspaper carried an article about the resignation on September 7, 12 days before the official announcement. Zhao Yan’s lawyer said Zhao could be accused of "treason", a charge for which the death penalty can be imposed.

Zhao Yan studied at the Department of Chinese Language in Heilongjiang University in 1982.  Between 1989 and 2002, he worked as a journalist for the Shekou Communication Newspaper, Hong Kong Special Region Newspaper, Chinese Lawyers Newspaper, and the China Reform Journal. He began working for the New York Times in May 2004.