Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) is a network of Chinese human rights activists and groups, open to international supporters. CHRD’s objective is to build the capacity of those involved in defending human rights in China, to monitor the Chinese government's adherence to its obligations under international law and China’s constitution and to aid victims of rights abuses and assist them in seeking redress. CHRD encourages efforts to achieve these objectives through democratization and rule of law reform. Our activities include consultation, dissemination of information, facilitating international exchange, supporting a program of small grants to human rights work in China, research assistance and other services.

Thus the work of CHRD extends beyond the research and documentation presented in this Yearbook. We are also active in pressing the Chinese government for greater protection of human rights by mobilizing international and domestic pressure.

“Human Rights and Olympics” Campaign

In the past year, we initiated this campaign in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics. At the start of the Campaign in August 2007, CHRD circulated and publicized an open letter, “One World, One Dream…and Universal Human Rights”^[i] (“同一个世界，同一个梦想”: 同样的人权), signed by prominent citizens and public intellectuals in China and calling for better protection of human rights prior to and during the Olympic Games. The original Chinese letter, which CHRD translated into English, Italian, German and French, received hundreds of signatures of support from around the world.

The Chinese government imprisoned a number of individuals in the past year for criticizing China’s human rights record prior to the Games. In response to their imprisonment, CHRD initiated the “Free Olympics Prisoners Campaign”^[ii] (释放奥运良心犯), publicizing their cases and calling for their unconditional release.

CHRD also established a bilingual resource center (2008 Olympics Watch 奥运观察)^[iii] on our website to document rights-related information during the one-year countdown to the Games. CHRD conducted in-depth studies of patterns of abuses in preparations for the Olympics and published them throughout the year as a “Special Series on Human Rights & the Olympics.” These reports and studies are collected here in the Yearbook.

1. Providing Direct Support to Human Rights Defenders: Small Grants

CHRD’s “Rights Defense Small Grants Program”^[iv] (维权小型资助项目) provides direct and effective support to non-governmental human rights activities in China. CHRD provides funding to grantees and also works with them to improve their project design and research skills, devise implementation strategies and evaluate the success of their projects. Some of the projects funded by CHRD in the past year include:

• A human rights information and monitoring center;
• An online forum and information bulletin for activists;
• An assistance and information center for petitioners, which focuses on monitoring torture and arbitrary detention of petitioners;
• A research and educational project on county-level People’s Congress elections in selected regions;
• A research project on the situation of migrant workers in urban centers;
• A project which provides legal consultation for migrant workers;
• An educational publication to raise human rights awareness among Chinese citizens; 
• An investigative project on the state of government control of the print media;
• A research project on RTL camps;
• A research project on the state of government control and surveillance of the internet and other telecommunications;

As part of its small-grants program, CHRD also provided legal aid to victims of rights violations and emergency humanitarian aid to human rights activists.  Legal aid cases we supported included:

·         Defense services for a political dissident arrested on trumped-up criminal charges; 

·         Defense services for an activist imprisoned for “inciting subversion of state power;”

·         Support for legal work for an administrative review and an administrative lawsuit against a decision to send a petitioner to an RTL camp; and

·         Defense services for a rural activist imprisoned for expressing criticism of the Olympics.

CHRD also provided humanitarian aid to:

·         Former Tiananmen prisoners who were recently released after serving long prison sentences, in order to assist them with medical and other difficulties;

·         A petitioner and activist sent to RTL camp; and

·         A former political prisoner for medical treatment.

2. Monitoring, Research and Advocacy

CHRD publishes human rights information regularly in both Chinese and English (维权动态 and China Human Rights Briefing).^[v] For more urgent or serious human rights violations, we send out press releases (公告 and Statements)^[vi] with policy recommendations to inform and influence the international community and draw attention to the plight of those suffering rights abuses. 

Based on its own documentation, CHRD produced in-depth research and investigative reports, some available in both English and Chinese.^[vii] The English reports released in the past year are included in this Yearbook.  More reports in Chinese can be found on CHRD’s website. In addition to news on human rights conditions in China, updated daily, our bilingual website is constructing a “Human Rights Defenders in Prison” (人权个案)^[viii] database. 

CHRD frequently sends its findings and policy recommendations to relevant government officials in China and submits proposals for legislative reforms to the National People’s Congress, China’s national legislative body. One example is the legislative proposal CHRD sent to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee in February 2008, “Inciting Subversion of State Power”: A Legal Tool for Prosecuting Free Speech in China (终止使用“煽动颠覆国家政权罪”惩罚言论自由).^[ix]

3. Justice and Rule of Law Program

CHRD believes that the establishment of an effective and impartial judicial system and the promotion of rule of law are essential to realizing the protection of human rights in China. To this end, in the past year, CHRD provided direct support to Chinese lawyers who served as legal counsel or representatives of activists or victims of rights abuses. Lawyers in CHRD’s network provided legal consultation to imprisoned activists and their families, held public forums to promote greater awareness of legal rights and represented individuals and groups of defendants in human rights cases.

CHRD also helps victims of human rights violations to seek justice by accessing international human rights mechanisms. CHRD regularly submits individual cases of human rights violations to the UN Special Procedures through the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. CHRD also translates or directs activists to specific international human rights documents and provides consultation on ways to access and use the legal tools. Some of the resources are available on CHRD’s website (see for example, 国际人权 “International Human Rights” and 维权手册 “Handbooks on Defending Rights”).^[x] To update Chinese human rights activists on the latest developments in the international human rights movement, CHRD also publishes a monthly newsletter in Chinese, 国际人权简讯 (International Human Rights Briefing).^[xi] CHRD also publishes the Chinese-language journal 公民 (Citizens),^[xii] a monthly compilation of articles contributed by Chinese authors on a wide range of human rights and civil rights issues. While International Human Rights Briefing is available online, Citizens is available both online and in print, with printed copies distributed in China.

 4. Linkage to International Human Rights Movement

CHRD works to connect Chinese human rights activists to the international human rights community. Twice in the past year, CHRD organized week-long training programs which covered a range of topics, including United Nations human rights mechanisms and reporting procedures and techniques for human rights investigation. The workshops brought together a wide range of human rights defenders, thus acting as venues for them to meet each other and their foreign counterparts in order to discuss strategies for effective human rights work.