Chinese activists appeared in court after being detained for more than a year
Last month, two Chinese citizens who have been detained for more than a year after they archived articles about the early stage of the coronavirus outbreak on a GitHub platform appeared in court for the first time. However, the judge didn’t announce the sentences right away. One family member thinks the whole case reflects the tightening space for freedom of speech in China.
In May, Chen Mei and Cai Wei, who were charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for archiving close to 100 articles about the early stage of the COVID19 outbreak in China on a GitHub platform, showed up in court for the first time since their detention last April. While the judge didn’t announce the final sentences right away, the prosecutor suggested that they each be given 15 months of jail sentences.
According to Chen’s brother, Chen Mei and Cai Wei showed up in court with protective clothing and they had handcuffs on both their wrists and ankles. Their family members couldn’t see their facial expressions clearly. The prosecutor said Cai was the one that set up the platform and Chen was the manager of the platform.
“The prosecutor said the platform contains a lot of false information that instigates people to insult the national leader, creating negative impacts on the leader and the country’s images,” wrote Chen’s brother on Twitter.
His brother said one of the government-appointed lawyers for Chen said he was influenced by western ideologies and got on the wrong path after attending a summer camp held by a nonprofit organization set up by liberal academics in China when he was 18.
“He was my brother’s defense lawyer but he was pleading guilty for my brother,” his brother Chen Kun said. “A responsible lawyer should try his best to help the defendant to avoid being charged even if the defendant committed a huge mistake.”
Ultimately, Chen and Cai pleaded guilty in court, but Chen Kun said his brother told family members that if the final verdict matches with the jail sentence suggested by the prosecutor, he will not appeal the decision. However, if the final verdict is longer than the suggested jail sentence, he will appeal the decision.
The government-appointed lawyer also told Chen’s mother that it is unlikely for the final verdict to be longer than the suggested sentence and the likelihood of Chen receiving a suspension from the judge is also very small. Chen would likely have to serve his jail sentence.
First court appearance after being detained for more than a year
In fact, Chen and Cai have already been detained for more than a year before they appeared in court on May 11. The trial was postponed several times over the last year, according to Chen Kun. On May 7, family members were suddenly informed that the trial had been scheduled for May 11. They were only told on May 8 that each of them can have one family member attending the trial.
“The government gave family members a very short notice intentionally, and they only allowed one family member for each of them to attend the trial,” he said. “If this arrangement was made due to the pandemic, then they shouldn’t let anyone attend the trial. However, there was apparently no major outbreak in China during that time, so I think they were trying to avoid the case from attracting too much attention.”
Chen Kun believes that what Chen Mei and Cai Wei experienced over the last year reflects the typical methods that the Chinese government uses to handle cases related to freedom of expression. According to him, Beijing will typically arrest and detain the defendants and use different ways to force them to confess to their crimes.
“No matter how long the final jail sentence is, truth is that the government has detained these defendants for a long time prior to the trial,” he said. “They have achieved the goal of physically and mentally torturing the defendants.”
Wang Yaqiu, the China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the case shows that Beijing’s way of handling cases related to freedom of expression has changed a lot over the last few years.
“When prominent activist Xu Zhiyong first went to jail, the media would know which day would the court handed down the verdict,” said Wang. “On that day, many people would be gathering outside the court and media would be reporting about it. These things would increase the pressure on Beijing. However, those circumstances no longer exist in China because Beijing has become ‘smarter.’ They no longer share key information about the case with the public, which reduces the chance for the case to be noticed by the public.”
The space for freedom of speech is shrinking in China
Chen Kun said a lot of the articles that Chen Mei and Cai Wei copied onto their platform are published by China’s official media, and the articles were only archived onto their platform after state media removed them.
“Local authorities charged them with ‘picking quarrels and provoking troubles’ and under the crime, there is a specific clause that states if someone knows the information is fake and still try to archive the information or spread the information online, they would be sentenced under the crime if the information caused negative impact to China’s national image,” he said. “However, many of the articles they archived are written by state media so if that content is fake, then what is the standard to determine whether any online content in China is fake or not?”
Wang Yaqiu from Human Rights Watch said this case shows that if anyone is dared to preserve the content that has been removed by the Chinese government, their behaviors can be deemed as crimes by the Chinese government. “You shouldn’t be remembering anything that the Chinese Communist Party didn’t want you to remember,” she said.
She also mentioned the citizen journalists that were detained or forced into disappearance in China for reporting about the initial lockdown in Wuhan. Wang thinks those crackdowns show the Chinese government doesn’t allow any citizen to conduct independent investigations.
“Chen Mei and Cai Wei didn’t even conduct independent investigations, because all they did was to archive content that was deleted from the internet,” she said. “All existing truths need to be approved by the Chinese Communist Party and any attempt to preserve other memories won’t be allowed. Only one type of truth and memory can be tolerated in China.”
Apart from archiving articles related to the initial stage of the pandemic in China, Chen and Cai also archived articles about China’s Metoo movement, the labor rights case in Shenzhen, and the government’s attempt to evict low-income citizens from their residence in Beijing. Those topics are viewed as sensitive issues in China.
“The whole case isn’t about whether the messages are real or fake, and it is about the messages that Beijing doesn’t want anyone to know,” said Chen Kun. “The Chinese government only wants people to know one version of the pandemic, and you can’t search any information online about my brother’s case in China. It’s almost like the case doesn’t exist in China.
“When too many people are paying attention to an issue, the Chinese government will come out and write about it, and everything needs to be based on that one government-published article. All other discussions need to be suspended,” he added.
A young man dedicated to the public good
In the eyes of Chen Kun, his brother is a young man who is very into volunteer works. Since his college years, Chen has been participating in all kinds of volunteer works during his spare time and he would even dedicate some of his daily allowances to charity purposes. “After my brother began to work in Beijing, he was working for a charity organization,” he said. “He still tried to use his specialty in computer science to do charity works.”
When the Chinese government began to evict low-income people from their residence in Beijing, Chen Mei used his expertise in computer science to help archive relevant media reports. “He used to be very active on the internet and he would help preserve some of the important content,” said Chen Kun. “I think establishing the whole online archive has something to do with archiving articles related to the eviction of low-income citizens in Beijing.”
While he began to speak out for his brother, Chen said he was worried about the safety of his family members in China. However, when a family gets involved in a case like his brother’s case, he said no family can be excluded from it and they need to comply with the government’s demands.
“When a family faces something like this, they can no longer pretend that nothing has happened,” he said. “The only thing we can do is to speak up for our detained family members because if we don’t speak out, we will still face a lot of pressure. In other similar cases, if family members abroad are willing to speak out for the defendants, it can sometimes improve the situation of the defendants.”
This piece was first published in Mandarin on DW’s Chinese website.
