Beijing cracks down on family members of detained Chinese dissidents one year after the mass arrest

One year after the “1226 Mass Arrest,” three Chinese human rights lawyers and dissidents are still detained by the Chinese government. Family members of detained human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi said one year after his detention, police continues to delay his trial, but they will continue to speak up for him.

On December 7, 2019, 21 Chinese human rights lawyers and dissidents gathered at a guest house in Xiamen City. They discussed about how to cultivate China’s civil society and other political issues in China and abroad. However, most of them were targeted by Chinese police in a mass arrest, which happened a few weeks later.

On December 26, Chinese human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi and activists Dai Zhen-ya, Li Ying-chun and former college lecturer Zhang Zhong-shun were arrested by police in Beijing, Xiamen, Zhangzhou and Yantai. Other people who attended private gathering in Xiamen, including Xu Zhiyong, Wen Donghai and Tang Jingling went into hiding. Xu was later arrested by police in Guangzhou after he spent a few days hiding at Chinese human rights lawyer Yang Bin’s place.

Weeks after the mass arrest, several of the arrested dissidents were released on bail, but Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi and human rights lawyer Chang Weiping were first put under residential surveillance at a designated location and then charged with “inciting subversion of state power.” One year after they were first arrested, none of them have been officially sentenced and their family members and lawyers have not been able to visit them at detention centers.

According to Ding’s wife Sophie Luo, who lives in the United States with her daughters, Ding’s lawyer visited the police station in Linyi City, where Ding is currently detained, and asked about the status of Ding’s case. The police who is in charge of the case said they have delayed the investigation process to January 19. Luo said this is the third time that the police have prolonged the investigation process in Ding’s case over the last year.

“Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong have been detained for a year, and it’s impossible for them to have committed new crimes,” said Luo. “This means that the police will run out of excuses to prolong the investigation process. However, if they want to find excuses to keep them in detention, there is nothing I can do. I am closely monitoring the date of January 19, because that will be a critical time to determine whether local authorities are going to publicly rule on the case or not.”

According to Chen Yu-jie, an assistant research professor at Academic Sinica in Taiwan, cases of activists and lawyers in China are often delayed because the police are trying to gather more evidence as they have a weak case. “What can happen is that the prosecution doesn’t think the evidence is sufficient to convict, so the prosecution would return to investigation or ask the police to provide more evidence,” Chen said.

“This can go back and forth for a few times, thereby dragging the procedure on.”

Sophie Luo said Ding Jiaxi’s lawyer have tried to visit him at the detention center five times since he was transferred to the detention center in Linyi City on June 19. However, the detention center always rejected his application by claiming that Ding’s case contains “national secret.”

At the same time, information that she has received suggests that Ding might be subjected to torture at the the secret location that he was detained at during the RSDL. According to information that Luo shared on Twitter in July, Ding was reportedly depriving of sleep for a long time. The police would use noise or keep the light in his cell on at all times to prevent him from falling asleep. Additionally, Ding would be asked to sit on an iron chair inside an iron cage while he was interrogated. The police had also deprived him of the right to eat at times.

“Everything that Ding and Xu had done is related to building the civil society, and it doesn’t contain any national secret,” Luo said. “They never thought about overthrowing the government. In order to frame the meeting in Xiamen as an ‘anti-CCP group,’ the Chinese government needs to claim that their cases contain ‘national secret.’”

Luo accused the Chinese government of violating the legal process, because for family members and lawyers, whenever the police use “national secret” as an excuses to prevent them from gaining access to the three detained dissidents, there is nothing they can do.

“We have not been able to receive any updates about their health status since they were detained,” Luo said. “According to relevant laws in China, family members can apply and ask the detention center to share information about their health conditions with us. However, they always use the excuse that ‘these information doesn’t belong to the government’ to deny our request.”

Family members were also “punished”

Ding Jiaxi, Xu Zhiyong and Chang Weiping are not the only three that have been detained or targeted by the Chinese government. Li Qiaochu, who is Xu Zhiyong’s girlfriend, and Chen Chiaping, a documentary director who was working on a documentary about Xu, didn’t participate in the private gathering in Xiamen last year, but they were both put under residential surveillance at a designated location for several months this year.

While Li was released on bail in June, she continues to be monitored and harassed by local police in Beijing. She has also been banned from contacting the outside world. On November 26, she lost contact with her friends again after being summon to the police station in Beijing for a routine interrogation.

One day after she went missing, people familiar with her case were told that the police asked Li’s parents to go pick her up at the police station the next day. They also reportedly force Li’s parents to sign a document and promise not to let Li keep speaking up about Xu’s ongoing detention, or else she would also be imprisoned.

Li was put under de facto house arrest by her parents for more than 10 days and she recently moved back to her own place. However, since she is still experiencing tremendous pressure and risks, she can’t really conduct interviews with foreign media.

On the other hand, Chang Weiping, who also participated in the private gathering in Xiamen last year, was briefly detained for 10 days after being charged with “inciting the subversion of state power.” Even though he was released on bail after 10 days, his family or lawyers weren’t able to visit him for more than 10 months after his release.

On October 16, Chang uploaded a video to Youtube, detailing how he was tortured during his 10-day detention in January. Six days after he published that video, Chang was once again put under RSDL for “violating the law.”

Chang’s parents staged a protest outside the local police station in Baoji City on December 14, but in less than five minutes, they were taken into the local police station with Chang’s father-in-law. Chang’s brother-in-law was interrogated by local police and another brother-in-law was asked to take Chang’s father and mother home. While he was a principal at a local school, he was asked to work from home so he could monitor Chang’s father and mother on the 24-hour basis.

According to Sophie Luo, these incidents show that the Chinese government is increasing their crackdown on Chinese dissidents’ family members and friends. “In recent years, the Chinese government would usually target both the Chinese dissidents and their family members,” said Luo. “Take Chang Weiping’s case as an example, his brother-in-law was ordered to surveil his father and mother. This shows that the Chinese government is trying to turn the relationship between dissidents’ family members into unreasonable threat and intimidation.”

However, Chen Yu-jie at Academia Sinica said it is not a new method for the Chinese government to also target dissidents’ family members and friends. Over the last 20 years, family members of Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng and Chen Guangcheng were also harassed and monitored by the Chinese government. However, Chen thinks Beijing has used this method more frequently in recent years.

Revealing the deteriorating human rights conditions in China

Over the last year, Sophie Luo used all the time outside of her regular work to advocate for her husband Ding Jiaxi. Apart from explaining his case to U.S. lawmakers, she also tries to study how the Chinese government tries to crack down on dissidents. “Over the last year, I realized how bad the human rights situation in China is,” Luo said. “I gradually understood the pain that many people are experiencing through my conversation with the family members of other dissidents.”

Luo said since she read about how Beijing is putting other dissidents under RSDL or sentencing them to years in prison through secret trials, she feels like she has the responsibility to let the world know about the deteriorating human rights conditions in China.

“I’m not only speaking up for Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong, but I’m also raising awareness about the deteriorating human rights conditions in China,” Luo said. “While I can’t physically be in China to support my husband, family members of other Chinese dissident are experiencing even tougher situation in China.”

Luo vows to use her advantage of being abroad to keep telling the world about what’s really happening in China. “Wherever I go, I will bring Jiaxi’s story to that place,” Luo said. “I will keep revealing the truth about China’s oppression of human rights.”

Apart from Luo, Ding’s daughter, Caroline Ding, has also been speaking up for her father through writing and media interviews. She says while she didn’t fully realize how bad and serious the human rights situation was in China when she was younger, she is now able to understand a lot more through her father’s case. As a result, she thinks she has the responsibility to speak up for her father.

“Whenever me and my mom are chatting, our conversation will always circle back to my father’s case,” said Ding. “Since we know that there will probably not be any breakthrough when it comes to my father’s case in the near future, we always feel the pressure to keep speaking up for him. It’s very difficult for us to find a break.”

Even though she thinks the prospect of her husband’s case looks pretty grim, Sophie Luo isn’t ready to give up on his case yet. “I believe that he would eventually be released,” Luo said. “Even though I can’t go back to China now, I still believe that I can return to that country one day. I need to fight for Jiaxi’s freedom, and I believe the day will come when Jiaxi can freely travel between China and the U.S.”

This piece was first published in Mandarin on DW’s Chinese website.