SUPPORTERS OF HUMAN RIGHTS in China were heartened when, during her recent visit to Beijing, Assistant Secretary of State Ellen R. Sauerbrey urged the Chinese government to release Chen Guangcheng. Chen, a 35-year-old blind legal advocate from the eastern province of Shandong, had incurred the wrath of local officials in June 2005 when he helped villagers file an unprecedented class-action lawsuit. The suit charged health officials with subjecting the villagers to sterilization and forced abortion in order to meet Beijing’s birth-control quotas.
Assistant Secretary of State Sauerbrey’s plea fell on deaf ears. A mere nine days later, on August 18, Chen Guangcheng was tried in a proceeding that, according to his defense lawyers, is itself illegal under Chinese law.
The night before the trial was scheduled to begin, three lawyers who had traveled from Beijing to defend Chen were accused by police of stealing a wallet and were detained. Two of them, Zhang Lihui and Li Fangping, were released after roughly two hours of questioning. A third lawyer, Xu Zhiyong, was kept in custody.
The next morning, hundreds of police surrounded the courthouse to block Chen’s supporters from attending the trial. With one member of the defense team in police custody and Chinese authorities having twice rejected a request by counsel to consult with their client, Chen’s defense team asked for a postponement of the trial. This request, too, was rejected. Despite strong and repeated protests from the defendant, the court assigned Chen two lawyers whom he had never met.
In an interview with Radio Free Asia following the two-hour trial, Chen’s older brother, one of three family members who attended the trial, described the proceedings as “unbearable.” The prosecutor, he reported, read out loud the offenses while Chen kept silent throughout. The judge then announced that the defendant’s silence amounted to an admission of guilt. Finally, when the two court-appointed defense attorneys were asked by the judge if they had anything to say, they voiced no objection.
Less than two hours after the trial ended, Xu Zhiyong, the lawyer for Chen who had been detained on charges of stealing a wallet, was told that he was free to go. Speaking to Radio Free Asia after his release, Xu, a deputy of a district people’s congress in Beijing, characterized the trial as “utterly absurd.”
Prior to going on trial, Chen had been kept under house arrest in his native village of Dongshigu, Yinan County, since August 2005. On February 5 of this year, between three and four hundred Dongshigu villagers clashed with police in a protest against Chen’s house arrest and the harassment of his relatives. Three police vehicles were overturned by the angry crowd and several protesters were slightly injured.
On March 11, the self-taught jurist, known affectionately as the “barefoot lawyer,” vanished from his home. For three months his family did not know his whereabouts. Repeated inquiries by Radio Free Asia to local police during this time were met with a standard response of “don’t know.”
Three months later, Yinan county officials acknowledged that they had Chen in custody. Chen’s lawyers and supporters began mounting a rescue campaign, which included a press conference scheduled for June 19 in Beijing. However, this event was canceled after would-be participants were harassed and prevented by police from attending. On that same day, Chen’s 70-year-old mother, his three-year-old son, and his older brother were kidnapped outside the home of one of his lawyers in Beijing by some 10 unidentified men and transported back to Dongshigu village.
Two days later, on June 21, Chen’s wife was informed that the state prosecutor’s office had formally approved Chen’s arrest on charges of “willful destruction of public property” and “gathering a crowd to disrupt traffic.” Two defense attorneys, including Li Jinsong, visited him that day at the Yinan County Detention Center. Chen told them he had been warned that “it’s not abnormal for someone to die in a detention center.” Commenting on the death threat against Chen, Li Jinsong told Radio Free Asia that he was making plans to visit Chen’s wife in Dongshigu village in a couple of days, and that he was expecting “trouble.”
And trouble there was. On June 23, Li Jinsong’s taxi was stopped by more than a dozen men before it could enter the village. Li Jinsong, another member of Chen’s defense team, and the cab driver were all forced out of the car and roughed up. After returning to Beijing the next day, Li was advised by an anonymous caller that he was “seeking death.”
On June 27, Li Jinsong and another lawyer traveled again to Yinan County in Shandong province. This time, the car they were traveling in was overturned and their cameras smashed by some 20 men. Li Jinsong was then taken in for questioning. In an interview with Radio Free Asia after his release, Li said the police were present during the assault but did not intervene.
Chen Guangcheng’s defense team learned on July 7 that his trial had been scheduled for July 17. The trial date was then moved to July 20. On the morning of July 20, two hundred of Chen’s supporters, some visually impaired, gathered outside the courthouse in Yinan County in a show of solidarity. Some wore T-shirts with Chen’s picture. A scuffle ensued, during which individuals who appeared to be plainclothes policemen smashed the protesters’ cameras and camcorders. Meanwhile, Chen’s lawyers learned at the last minute that the trial had once again been postponed; this time because, according to Li Jinsong, the prosecution demanded more time to collect evidence.
On August 15, Chen’s defense team learned that the trial had been rescheduled for August 18.
Chen Guangcheng’s case highlights some of the problems facing China today: a judicial system that lacks due process and an increasingly murky, and at times violent, alliance between local bureaucrats and criminal elements. Even more important, Chen’s case underscores one of the most significant developments in China in recent years: the emergence of rights consciousness at the grassroots level. People across all sectors of society are becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that they are citizens, ostensibly with legal rights and protections, and they have grown increasingly vocal in asserting these rights.
On an almost daily basis there are unruly protests in China for one cause or another. Some of these are met with government-sanctioned violence. In some rural areas it is peasants protesting against land-expropriation schemes that offer inadequate compensation. In other venues, villagers have blocked the construction of power plants that they believe will pollute the local environment. Teachers have staged sit-ins demanding better pay and benefits. Cab drivers go on strike over escalating license fees. Retired workers hold demonstrations for more generous pensions. Families of miners who died in industrial accidents demand greater restitution from mining companies. People forcibly evicted from their homes to make room for urban renewal projects band together to petition the central government. According to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, there were as many as 87,000 such “mass incidents” last year alone.
Chen Guangcheng took a different approach. He advised his clients to seek redress of their grievances through peaceful, legal means, rather than by taking to the streets in collective protest.
This past April Chen was named by Time magazine as one of the year’s “Top 100 People Who Shape Our World,” but he is just one of many legal crusaders in China. Another notable example is Gao Zhisheng, a Christian who openly called upon Chinese leaders to stop persecuting followers of the spiritual movement Falun Gong. Gao, who had his law license suspended and had been under round-the-clock police surveillance for more than eight months, was taken into police custody on August 15 in Shandong while visiting with his sister. The official Xinhua News Agency reported that Gao was being held “for questioning for his suspected involvement in criminal activities.” Gao Zhisheng is also a vocal supporter of Chen Guangcheng.
Guo Feixiong, a Guangdong lawyer who provided legal advice to Taishi residents in their attempt to recall an elected village chief on grounds of corruption, is another member of this new breed. Guo was assaulted on three separate occasions over the last six months by thugs and plainclothes police.
Prominent Beijing lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who is representing two journalists being sued by an official for libel, was interrogated by the authorities on June 3, the eve of the 17th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.
By protecting and defending the rule of law, Chen Guangcheng and his fellow legal activists play a potentially critical role in the development of civil society in China. They provide an alternative to China’s current model of conflict resolution–violent street protests. These brave lawyers represent the hopes of many Chinese for a society in which basic individual rights will be ensured, and where disputes can be resolved peacefully by legal means, rather than through the arbitrary decisions of corrupt local officials.
Chinese government propagandists claim to want a “harmonious society,” rather than one in which civil disturbances and violent confrontations are increasingly common. One step in that direction would be to listen to people such as Chen Guangcheng, rather than locking them up in prison.
UPDATE: According to Xinhua News Agency, Chen Guangcheng was sentenced today to four years and three months in prison for “willfully damaging property and organizing a mob to disturb traffic.” Jennifer Chou is the director of Radio Free Asia’s Mandarin Service.
