Annual Report on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China ...

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<strong>Annual</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China (2009)April 26, 2010Whether weeks of detention in a police facility or years of RTL, the administrativedetention system continues to allow police to detain human rights defenders quickly andquietly without legal representation or a trial.c. Criminal detentionTo send a stern warning to society as a whole and to punish human rights defenderswhose actions more directly challenge the status quo, the government continued to relyon the criminal justice system to prosecute human rights defenders in 2009. The chargesof “inciting subversion of state power,” “subversion of state power,” and “illegalpossession of state secrets” were used to criminalize constitutionally-protected freespeech. In addition, the crime of “gathering a crowd to disrupt social order” was used toprosecute citizens exercising their right to freedom of assembly, while the crime of“making false accusations” was used to imprison activists who exposed corruption andgovernment malfeasance in the media. In many cases during the past year, thegovernment not only convicted human rights defenders of others of these and other nonviolentcrimes, but handed down heavy sentences.Dissidents and political activists received the harshest sentences among human rightsdefenders in 2009, signaling that the government’s overriding concern remained stiflingany perceived challenges to the CCP’s one-party rule. Two political organizers—GuoQuan ( ) and Xie Changfa ( )—were sentenced to 10 and 13 years,respectively, for “subversion of state power” (see also p.5). And, as discussed previouslyin this report, dissident intellectual Liu Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison for“inciting subversion of state power” largely for his role in drafting Charter 08, whichalso calls for the end of one-party rule in China.发长谢泉郭Two other human rights defenders convicted of “inciting subversion of state power,” TanZuoren ( ) and Yuan Xianchen ( ), were sentenced to five and four years inprison, respectively. Tan, who was sentenced in early 2010, was punished for postingarticles commemorating the 20 th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. 172However, it is believed that his work to investigate the deaths of schoolchildren in the2008 Sichuan earthquake was the main cause of the government’s retaliation. Yuan, whowas tried in January and sentenced in March, was convicted of “inciting subversion” foraccepting interviews with foreign news outlets, accepting foreign funding for his work,and distributing articles on constitutional democracy. His conviction came in retaliationfor his legal aid work in Jixi City, Shandong Province, and for assisting the collection ofsignatures for a public petition entitled “We Want Human Rights, not the Olympics.” 173臣显袁人作谭In addition to human rights defenders sentenced to prison in 2009 (see Appendix I forselected cases) CHRD has also documented a number of human rights defenderscurrently involved in pending prosecutions. CHRD also documented cases of humanrights defenders, including Xu Zhiyong ( who were arrested in 2009 but releasedon bail pending trial (qubao houshen).许46), 永志
<strong>Annual</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders in China (2009)April 26, 2010In 2009, the Chinese government utilized administrative, judicial, and extralegal means tocontinue their repression of human rights defenders. While the sentences handed down tohigh-profile activists such as Liu Xiaobo, Tan Zuoren and Huang Qi made headlinesaround the world, the lesser-known activists who were sent to black jails, RTL, andimprisoned round out the larger and more complex story of an environment which wasmore hostile towards human rights defenders than in previous years. Because of thegovernment’s ever-shifting, invisible line demarcating acceptable and unacceptable rightsdefense activities, no human rights defender in China is immune from harassment orretaliation, and those who were singled out and targeted by the government in 2009 oftenfound themselves facing more serious consequences than they might have in the recentpast.Despite Chinese officials’ relentless efforts to stifle human rights activism, they havebeen unable to stop human rights defenders from spreading awareness of the multitude ofrights abuses taking place in contemporary China. As more and more ordinary citizensbecome aware of the negative aspects of the current system—the lack of the rule of law,freedom of expression, and freedom of association, to name just a few—they begin totake actions to promote and defend human rights themselves. This is especially true forthose citizens who personally experienced injustice, and in the process of seekingaccountability and redress discover that they are not alone—that their plight is the resultof government policies and practices, and is one shared by countless others. The desirefor better protection of human rights has long since gone beyond a limited circle ofveteran dissidents and activists, and is now held by many ordinary Chinese citizens whowill be the agents of change for the future.47
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