China detains activists in year-end crackdown

January 2, 2020 Comments Off

Originally published by AFP on January 2, 2020

BEIJING – Over a dozen Chinese lawyers and activists were detained or went missing in the final days of 2019 in a crackdown on participants of a private democracy gathering, rights groups said Thursday.

The Chinese government has severely reduced the space for civil liberties since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012, rounding up rights lawyers, labor activists and even Marxist students.

The latest crackdown was linked to a December gathering in the eastern coastal city of Xiamen in Fujian province, where participants discussed “democratic transition in China,” said Human Rights Watch researcher Wang Yaqiu.

The period around Christmas and New Year’s is traditionally when China chooses to sentence dissidents in an effort to minimize international media attention, “so it is not a surprise that they chose this particular time to launch a manhunt of activists,” Wang said.

The meeting involved a small group of people “peacefully discussing politics in a private space,” she said.

Ding Jiaxi, a prominent Beijing-based disbarred lawyer previously jailed for protesting against official corruption, was among the activists known to have been detained across the country since Dec. 26, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) .

At least seven people, including disbarred Shandong-based lawyer Liu Shuqing, were released after being detained for questioning.

Other civil society figures, including pro-democracy activist Xu Zhiyong and human rights lawyer Tang Jingling, have gone missing or are currently unreachable, CHRD said.

At least two of the people detained, activists Dai Zhenya and Zhang Zhongshun, are suspected of “subverting” or “inciting subversion” of state power, a charge often used to silence dissidents in China.

The crackdown showed how the authorities have “zero tolerance of even just private discussion on issues like democracy and human rights,” Amnesty International researcher Patrick Poon said.

According to CHRD, five activists were taken in for questioning by Jinhua city police in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, on Dec. 29, after having had dinner with someone who attended the Xiamen gathering.

Another lawyer, Lu Tingge, was held overnight for questioning on New Year’s Eve by police in the northern city of Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, CHRD said.

Police in Shandong province, as well as Jinhua and Shijiazhuang police, did not respond to requests for comment.

“This round of detentions and harassment is the continuation of the larger crackdown on civil society,” Wang said.

On Monday, a court in southwest China’s Chengdu sentenced Wang Yi, the leader of an underground Protestant church, to nine years in prison for “incitement to subvert state power.” The People’s Intermediate Court said Wang was also convicted of illegal business operations, fined and had his personal assets seized.

The United States on Tuesday called on China to release Wang.

“I am alarmed that Pastor Wang Yi, leader of Chengdu’s Early Rain house church, was tried in secret and sentenced to nine years in prison on trumped-up charges,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter.

“Beijing must release him and end its intensifying repression of Christians and members of all other religious groups,” Pompeo said.

State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus described Wang’s arrest as “yet another example of Beijing’s intensification of repression of Chinese Christians and members of other religious groups.”

Ortagus called for his “immediate and unconditional release.”

“We continue to call on Beijing to uphold its international commitments and promises made in its own constitution to promote religious freedom for all individuals, including members of ethnic and religious minorities and those who worship outside of official state-sanctioned institutions,” she said.