China Rights Forum, Spring 1997
Li Hai, 42, was sentenced to nine years in prison and two years' deprivation of political rights merely for compiling a list of individuals in Beijing who were convicted for offenses related to the June Fourth, 1989 protests.
The Beijing Chaoyang District Court handed down its decision on December 18, 1996, finding Li guilty of "prying into and gathering the following information about people sentenced for criminal activities during the June 4, 1989, period: name, age, family situation, crime, length of sentence, location of imprisonment, treatment while imprisoned." According to the court's verdict, these data are "high-level state secrets."
Li was a graduate student in philosophy at Beijing University when the 1989 protests began. He became a leader in the student democracy movement and spent more than a year in Qincheng prison after the crackdown without ever being charged. After his release he was never able to resume his studies or to find employment. Despite financial difficulties, relentless police harassment and repeated short-term detention without charge, Li pushed forward with his pro-democracy work and became one of China's principal human rights activists. Along with dissidents such as Qin Yongmin and Liu Nianchun, he was one of the nine initiators of the November 1993 "Peace Charter," a landmark document aimed at promoting nonviolent political reform in China, inspired largely by the Czechoslovak "Charter 77" movement. In 1995 Li participated actively in the May petition drive, signing "Draw Lessons from the Blood of June Fourth" and an appeal for the abolition of administrative sentences under the Reeducation Through Labor system, among other open letters.
But Li's greatest contribution was the list of names he compiled. From 1991 to 1995, Li conducted the most assiduous and comprehensive effort yet to document the fate of the unknown people punished in the crackdown on the protest movement, going from family to family throughout Beijing collecting information, building networks, providing emotional support and soliciting and distributing financial aid to those in trouble. Before he was apprehended on May 31, 1995, Li reportedly managed to gather the facts on 800-900 cases, primarily individuals sent to Beijing No.2 Prison and Qinghe Farm. Some of the individuals on his lists had been convicted of "counterrevolutionary" charges but most involved common criminal charges related to the "rioting," such as "arson," "disrupting traffic" and "hooliganism." In some cases, Li's investigations pointed to major miscarriages of justice: for example, one man convicted of "stealing weapons" had merely picked up a few bullets he had found on the street. Such detail was not possible to obtain in most cases, but it is clear that in the prevailing political climate of the time few, if any, of these individuals received a fair trial.
Li documented the fate of an unprecedented variety of Beijing residents, focusing primarily on those who had received harsher treatment because they had no connections with the outside world and were thus unknown to human rights groups outside China. Li investigated not only the cases of imprisoned students and intellectuals but those of workers, peasants, anyone who was on the streets demonstrating in May-June 1989.
When apprehended Li was accused of "hooliganism," but the charge was quickly changed to "leaking state secrets." Almost a year later, on May 21, 1996, he was given what the court claims was an open trial; in fact, despite repeated appeals, not a single family member was permitted to attend. His family has not even been able to visit Li since he was detained in 1995.
The court ultimately admitted that the prosecutor's charge of "leaking state secrets" was groundless but still found Li guilty of "prying into and gathering" them. The scope of "state secrets" in China is extremely broad and indeterminate: according to Ministry of Public Security regulations, virtually all figures on the operation of the criminal justice system may only be published when explicit permission has been granted. However, given the court's concession in Li's case, the nine-year sentence seems disproportionately heavy. The Chinese government has already demonstrated, particularly in the cases of Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan, that it considers dissenting speech equivalent to concrete subversive action. Taking this logic one step further, Li Hai's harsh sentence makes clear that the government's aim is to suppress any efforts to gather systematic information, even through entirely legal means, on human rights abuses.
Written by Mark Goellner.
Li Hai
