Category Archives: Headlines

Wang Quanzhang: China jails leading human rights lawyer

Wang Quanzhang went missing in a 2015 crackdown

China has sentenced prominent human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang to four and a half years in prison for state subversion.

Wang, 42, had defended political campaigners and victims of land seizures, as well as followers of the banned spiritual Falun Gong movement. Continue reading

Women’s Rights Have Been Repeatedly Violated in China

A Protest Statement about Persecution of Female Writers Including ICPC Member Liu Yanli

The Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC)
November 28, 2018

The Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) was shocked to learn that Ms. Liu Yanli, ICPC member and well-known blogger was summoned by the police in Jingmen City, Hubei Province on November 21 2018. Her family was informed the next day that she was beaten up and sent to the hospital for emergency treatment. Her father and other family members then rushed to Jingmen. At the entrance of the Second People’s Hospital of Jingmen City, they were surrounded by several public security personnel and refused to enter the hospital to visit her. Immediately after that, the news was spread out that Liu Yanli was officially arrested with the approval by the procuratorate. Continue reading

PEN International: Resolution on the People’s Republic of China (2018)

 (Approved by the Assembly of Delegates of PEN International, meeting at its 84th World Congress, in Pune, India from 25-29 September 2018)

PEN International has for many years expressed concern about serious and sweeping restrictions on freedom of expression in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including through resolutions adopted at its annual Congresses, most recently at its 83rd World Congress in September 2017. Continue reading

Final Verdict on Qin Yongmin from the Hubei Provincial High People’s Court

On September 26, 2018, the Hubei Provincial High People’s Court upheld a lower court’s ruling on veteran rights activist Qin Yongmin’s case: conviction of subversion of state power, a 13-year prison term, and three years of post-release deprivation of political rights. Continue reading

Qin Yongmin: Prominent Chinese dissident jailed for 13 years

Chinese dissident Qin Yongmin, who is now 64, pictured in 1993–AFP/Getty Images

One of China’s highest-profile democracy campaigners has been sentenced to 13 years in prison for “subversion of state power”.

Qin Yongmin, 64, has already spent a total of 22 years behind bars. Continue reading

Briefings on the Eighth Congress of ICPC and Its Administration Change

Never Ever Put Our Pens Down

Briefings on the Eighth Congress of ICPC and Its Administration Change

ICPC Secretariat

(May 2nd, 2018)

From March 28 to April 9, 2018, the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC) held the eighth congress of its membership assembly in its online community. 115 of its 213 voting members were recorded to attend the congress. The membership assembly held four sessions, amended the “Charter of Independent Chinese PEN Center” and the “Independent Chinese PEN Center’s Rules of Procedure of Membership Assembly”, and approved the work report and financial report submitted by the Board of Directors. The Membership Assembly reelected the board of directors according to its Charter. Among 12 candidates, 9 were elected as board members. They are Mr. WANG Jinbo, Ms. Tienchi MARTIN-LIAO, Ms. GAO Yu, Mr. ZHAO Shiying, Mr. HE Depu, Ms. QI Jiazhen, Mr. LI Hai, Ms. LIU Di and Mr. DU Daobin. Among them, seven are based in China. It is worth mentioning that Ms. GAO Yu, a famous dissident who had been jailed three times for freedom of speech, Mr. HE Depu and Mr. WANG Jinbo who were jailed due to founding the Democratic Party of China in the 1990s, have brought in new blood to the Board of Directors. Mr. PAN Yongzhong and Mr. XU Yonghai were elected as alternate board members. Continue reading

‘Emaciated, unrecognisable’: China releases human rights lawyer from custody

by Tom Phillips in Beijing

Li Heping was held in secret for two years and deprived of all contact with his family but is now back home

Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping (right) is released from custody

Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping (right) is released from custody after two years in which he was tried in secret. Photograph: Handout Photograph: Handout

Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping (right) is released from custody after two years in which he was tried in secret. Photograph: Handout
Chinese human rights lawyer Li Heping (right) is released from custody after two years in which he was tried in secret. Photograph: Handout Photograph: Handout

The last time Terry Halliday saw Li Heping, just a few days before he was snatched by police in the summer of 2015, he remembers sitting down to lunch with a stimulating, thoughtful and physically fit man.

“Slim, yes, but not emaciated. A man clearly in his 40s … A man who was fully present,” the American Bar Foundation scholar recalled.

Just days later Li, a crusading Chinese human rights lawyer, was spirited into secret custody at the start of an unprecedented government crackdown on his trade that has drawn widespread international condemnation.

On Tuesday afternoon, after almost two years languishing behind bars, Li finally emerged, having been secretly tried and handed a suspended sentence for “subversion of state power” at the end of last month.

Photographs and a brief video clip posted online showed the Christian attorney, now 46, being reunited with his wife and daughter, Wang Qiaoling and Li Jiamei, at their family home in Beijing.

“I have to say I didn’t recognise him in the [photo],” said Halliday, the author of a book on China’s human rights lawyers, who like many was disturbed at the toll incarceration appeared to have inflicted on his friend.

“[He looked] very thin. He’s aged about 20 years. His hair has gone grey. He’s gone through a torturous time, I would say,” Halliday added. “I would defy anybody … to imagine that so much transformation could have occurred over two years.”

“The only thing that I recognised was his smile: that wonderful smile of his that has always been a reflection of his warmth and his kindness.”

As news of Li’s release spread on social media, friends and supporters expressed a similar mix of relief and outrage.

“This is Li Heping? Almost unrecognizable!” Liu Xiaoyuan, a prominent rights lawyer who clients have included the dissident artist Ai Weiwei, tweeted alongside an image of the lawyer’s homecoming.

“Hair completely white,” tweeted Zhang Dajun, a Chinese legal scholar.

“Visibly emaciated,” tweeted human rights researcher Ye Shiwei alongside footage of Li’s first hug with his wife and daughter in more than 600 days.

A photo of a printed family photo of Li Jiamei-her father and imprisoned lawyer Li Heping and her mother Wang Qiaoling at home in Beijing

A photo of a printed family photo of Li Jiamei, 6, her father and imprisoned lawyer Li Heping and her mother Wang Qiaoling at home in Beijing, China. Photograph: Adam Dean/THE GUARDIAN

Zhong Jinhua, a former judge and government critic, wrote: “Thank God!” Li Heping finally [back] home.”

Halliday said he was delighted, relieved and gratified by Li’s release despite his obvious physical deterioration.

“Friends and supporters and NGOS and governments and churches have been hoping and praying for this since [he was taken on] 10 July 2015,” he said.

“I think this demonstrates how sensitive China’s government is to the unrelenting pressure that has come from all sides,” over its so-called “war on law” crackdown.

However, Halliday cautioned against interpreting Li’s release as a sign that Beijing was showing leniency or mercy to a man who has been held without charge for nearly two years on what supporters and diplomats believe were politically-motivated charges.

“We have got to be very sober that this is no release by the standards of any rule-of-law country. He is going to be … quarantined with his family. There will be cameras outside his building and outside his apartment. There will be security people on mattresses or chairs sitting outside his front door. They may be under audio or video surveillance inside their apartment. They won’t be able to go anywhere at all without having security people accompany them, whether it is to the grocery store or the park.”

Halliday added: “He’s lost his income and his living. He’ll be kept away from his church. He will be shielded from other lawyers, from his Christian friends. So while I’m very glad that he is no longer in a formal jail, many of us who watch this … believe that China has substituted the formal jail for an invisible prison in the hope that the optics will be better for international audiences.”

Chinese authorities claim that at his secret trial Li pleaded guilty to using social media and interviews with foreign media to attack China’s political and legal systems and having colluded with “individuals engaged in illegal religious activities”.

In the nearly two years since her husband was seized, Li’s wife Wang Qiaoling has emerged as a feisty and sharp-witted campaigner who has refused to be cowed into silence by pressure from China’s security services.

During a meeting with the Guardian last May she burst into laughter when asked what she most missed about her husband. “What do you think I most miss about my husband?” she replied.

On Wednesday morning, Wang again appeared in high spirits although she said she had been shocked when she first set eyes on her husband who she hardly recognised.

“He has changed completely, his appearance, his physical looks… [he is] so different from the husband I remember,” she said by phone.

Wang said her husband seemed “fine mentally” but had “wasted away”. She said he had told her of the “sufferings” he had endured while in prison. “I am pretty sure he was treated with great cruelty.”

Despite his release, Wang said her husband was “absolutely not free” and could not be interviewed at this stage.

“We are now being followed by six or seven tall, burly men. They simply follow us wherever we go,” she complained.

Additional reporting by Wang Zhen

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/10/emaciated-unrecognisable-china-releases-human-rights-lawyer-from-custody

China Jails Tiananmen Protest Veteran For Four Years After Grave Visit

A court in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan on Friday handed down a four-year jail term to a veteran rights activist detained after visiting the grave of a 1989 Tiananmen massacre victim in 2015, finding him guilty of a public order offense. Continue reading