Human Rights in China 中国人权 | HRIC
Published on Human Rights in China 中国人权 | HRIC (https://www.hrichina.org)


On the occasion of the sixth anniversary of the 709 Crackdown, Human Rights in China (HRIC) honors Chinese women rights defenders by highlighting the activism of nine notable women who have been steadfast in fighting against suppression by the authorities.  

Some of these women are lawyers and legal advocates who have chosen the difficult path of rights defense on their own. They have suffered harassment, surveillance, torture, and imprisonment, yet they did not retreat and have persevered in the pursuit of fairness and justice.

Others are family members of lawyers and legal advocates targeted by the authorities. These women have their own successful careers and ideals but have been compelled to take up rights defense—as they, too, became the targets of suppression—in order to protect their own freedom and that of their family members.

Faced with sudden and dramatic changes in their lives, including harassment, intimidation, and threats from the authorities, these women have experienced hesitation, grievances, fear, and self-doubt, but they have never given up. As they continue to pursue their own careers and care for their families, they also advocate for the freedom of their loved ones, showing unusual strength in their resistance and great resilience. HRIC pays tribute to them and urges the Chinese authorities to stop persecuting them and their families.

The Women Who Resist

In alphabetical order by pinyin.

Chen Zijuan (陈紫娟)

Chen Zijuan (陈紫娟) was born in 1984 and holds a PhD in microbiology. She graduated from Southwest University in 2007 and received her doctorate degree from the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2015. She underwent her postdoctoral training at the Shanghai Medical College of Fudan University from 2015 to 2019 with a research focus on the immune escape mechanisms of pathogenic microbes and their interactions with the hosts. More recently, she has been conducting research on lung cancer since 2019. To date, she has published, as the primary author, articles in international journals such as Nature Communications, Gut Microbes, and Cellular & Molecular Immunology.

On October 22, 2020, Chen’s husband, Chang Weiping (常玮平), was subjected for the second time to the coercive measure of “residential surveillance in a designated location” (effectively enforced disappearance) on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.” This catapulted her onto the path of rights defense for her husband. Since then, she has been repeatedly threatened and harassed by the Shaanxi police at home and at work. They threatened her with termination of her job if she spoke out or fielded interviews from international media; they even showed up at her home at 12:30 in the morning to pester her. In the span of eight months, she has written around 50 complaint letters in her rights defense efforts.

Chang is held in Shaanxi, a province 2,000 kilometers away from Shenzhen, where she works, and the road to the detention center is treacherous as it straddles the Qin Mountains. But Chen pressed on despite the hardship and did everything she could to advocate for her husband. In her complaints, she accused the Baoji Municipal Public Security Bureau in Shaanxi Province of unlawful acts against Chang, including torture and illegally obtaining evidence in the course of handling the case. In one of her two trips to Shaanxi, she stayed at the Baotai Hotel in Baoji, where Chang was first tortured. She vividly remembers what she felt the first time she saw the place: this is the crime scene—the basement of a hotel in a bustling city cloaked under a veneer of peaceful prosperity.

Chen continues to speak out, file complaints, and appeal for justice for her husband to this day.

Huang Simin (黄思敏)

Huang Simin (黄思敏) was born in 1985 in Wuhan, Hubei Province. She holds a bachelor's degree from Northwest University of Political Science and Law and a master's degree from Wuhan University with a specialization in jurisprudence. She had previously practiced in a law firm in Wuhan and is currently with Guangdong Dena (Wuhan) Law Firm.

In July 2015, during the 709 Crackdown on human rights lawyers and defenders, Huang was interviewed and summoned by the police for having taken on several “sensitive” cases involving freedom of expression and freedom of belief and was banned from leaving the country on the grounds of “endangering national security.” In 2016, when Lu Yuyu (卢昱宇) and his girlfriend Li Tingyu (李婷玉), citizen journalists, were arrested for documenting mass incidents on their Twitter account @wickedonnaa (非新闻) [1], Huang represented Li as her lawyer. In August 2017, Huang’s law firm ended her employment under pressure from the authorities. After her plan to work in Guangdong was foiled by the province's Department of Justice, she was met with further obstruction when attempting to move to Hunan to practice; the authorities also temporarily suspended her license to practice. During her stay in Guangzhou, she was continuously harassed and coerced by domestic security officers, who even jammed the keyhole of her home. In 2019, she was forced to leave Guangzhou and return to Wuhan.

Huang resumed her practice in 2019. In June 2020, when Guangdong human rights defender Zhang Wuzhou (张五洲) was arrested for holding up a banner that read “Remember June Fourth, Repeal Evil Laws,” Huang served as her defense lawyer. In October 2020, Huang was summoned and detained by Nanhu Police Station of Qingxiu District in Nanning City, Guangxi Province, along with 12 other lawyers, when she went to the provincial Political and Law Commission to report a pyramid scheme case she was working on.

Huang Simin is still practicing law in China and continues to defend “sensitive” cases.

Li Qiaochu (李翘楚)

Li Qiaochu (李翘楚) was born in 1991 in Beijing. She began her studies in the School of Labor and Human Resources at Renmin University of China (Renmin) in 2009 and later received a master’s degree in public policy from the University of York in the United Kingdom. After graduation, she worked as a research assistant at Tsinghua University.

While at Renmin, Li learned of society’s cruel realities during her two-year participation in a research project on the “new generation of migrant workers.” Since then, she has continued to engage in, follow, and conduct research on labor, women's rights, and civil human rights defense issues in mainland China. In 2017, when Beijing authorities cleared out the city’s “low-end populations,” she worked with fellow volunteers to compile and disseminate information about the most affected communities and help expelled migrant workers find new jobs and affordable alternative housing. She was also actively involved in the #MeToo movement in China. Using social media platforms, she was a tireless advocate for justice for arrested rights defenders and their families. However, she was repeatedly harassed by domestic security and public security officers for her long-term engagement in civil society activities.

On December 31, 2019, Li was summoned and interviewed by Beijing police for 24 hours because she is the girlfriend of well-known New Citizens Movement advocate Xu Zhiyong (许志永 [2]) [2]. Xu had gone into hiding as the authorities were rounding up those connected to a private gathering of lawyers and rights advocates on December 26 in Xiamen, Fujian Province, in what came to be known was the “12.26 Citizen Case [3].” After her release, she published an article, “Entering the New Year in Handcuffs: An Account of Being Taken into Custody on New Year's Eve,” [4] online to detail the course of events, calling on people to overcome their fears and support the those affected in “12.26 Citizen Case.” After Xu was apprehended by the police in Guangzhou on the night of February 15, 2020, Li was taken by Beijing police in the early hours of the next morning and was secretly held for four months. After she was freed, she tweeted about her experience of detention and expressed solidarity with the other detainees while continuing to file complaints about the food issues in the detention center where Xu was held. On February 6, 2021, Li was summoned by the Beijing domestic security unit and was taken away by police of Linyi, Shandong Province. She was subsequently criminally detained and was officially arrested on March 15, 2021. Li is being held in the (supervised) “Eastern District” of Linyi People's Hospital in Shandong and has yet to be allowed to meet with a lawyer.

Li Shuyun (李姝云)

Li Shuyun (李姝云) was born in December 1991. She joined Beijing Fengrui Law Firm in 2014 as an apprentice lawyer and assistant to lawyer Zhou Shifeng (周世锋), the head of the firm, and worked on many rights defense cases.

During the 709 Crackdown on rights lawyers and activists that began in July 2015, Li, then 24, was not spared. She was taken away on July 10, and her whereabouts remained unknown for the next six months. On the sixth day of her disappearance, her family members, in Henan, went to Beijing to look for her, and reported her disappearance to the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, the Office of Letters and Visits, and her local police station. Later, on three separate occasions, they also went to Tianjin to look for her, inquiring at the Municipal Public Security Bureau, the Office of Letters and Visits, as well as the detention center, to no avail. It was not until January 12, 2016, that Li’s sister, who works at Tsinghua University in Beijing, received a notice from the Tianjin Municipal Public Security Bureau that Li had been officially arrested on January 8, on suspicion of "subversion of state power," and had been held in the city’s First Detention Center. Up until that point, Li had been subjected to “residential surveillance in a designated location” (RSDL)—a form of enforced disappearance—by the Tianjin police. On April 8, 2016, Li was released on bail pending trial; a year after that, she was released from her bail condition.

In 2017, Li revealed to the world the torture she had suffered [5] during her nine months in detention. She was under secret house arrest in an airtight room with a formaldehyde stench for six months; interrogated and insulted; made to stand for 16 hours straight as punishment; made to sit on a stool and not move for seven days; forced to take medicine for seven months; and made to sleep next to death row prisoners, etc. The ordeal caused her to develop symptoms including depression and muscle aches.

But she also said that “overcoming fear is the only way to bravery” and cheered for lawyer Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), who was then still in custody, and his wife Li Wenzu (李文足). According to reports, Li Shuyun has been pursuing further education, but there is no publicly available information about her current situation.

Related Resources:

  • “Human rights defender Li Shuyun released on bail [6],” Front Line Defenders, April 11, 2016.
  • “Li Shuyun (李姝云) [7],” Chinese Human Rights Defenders, March 8, 2016.
  • “China formally arrests secretly held rights lawyers for subversion [8],” Reuters, January 12, 2016.
Li Yuhan (李昱函)

Li Yuhan (李昱函) was born in 1957, in Shenyang, Liaoning Province. She qualified as a lawyer in 1990 and began practicing law in Liaoning in 1991. In 2006, Li suffered reprisal from the police in the Shenyang’s Heping District after she reported on heads of the Shenyang mafia; she was forced to leave for Beijing in 2009. She worked as a lawyer at the Beijing Dunxin Law Firm.

After lawyer Wang Yu was detained in 2015 during the 709 Crackdown on lawyers and activists, Li took on Wang’s case and repeatedly asked for meetings with her client. As a result, Li became a thorn on the side of the authorities. On October 9, 2017, when she was heading to Shenyang to handle the case, she was taken away at the railway station by the police at the Heping District branch of the Shenyang Public Security Bureau and was detained on suspicion of "picking quarrels and provoking trouble." She was officially arrested on November 15, 2017 on the same charge and held in the No. 1 Detention Center in Shenyang. In the detention center, she was tormented daily by female prisoners who had been instigated by the police: she was verbally abused with personal attacks; denied her medication when she was ill; made to bathe in cold water when it was sub-zero temperatures; given only one bun at mealtime when others got two; had the persimmons and cucumbers she bought urinated on, and so on. In March 2018, it was reported that Li had been on hunger strike in the detention center for several days in protest against being forced to confess and other ill-treatment. In March 2018, she was additionally charged with the offence of "fraud."

In a meeting with her lawyer in March 2021, Li said that the two charges against her were unfounded—they were tactics used by the persecution intended to break her: the charge of "picking quarrels" was based on her petitioning in Beijing several times; and the “fraud” charge stemmed from her application for local government subsidies for herself and her son—subsidies that were originally used by the authorities as a means to “stabilize” her from petitioning. The “Notice of Change of The Period of Detention” issued by the Shenyang Municipal Heping District Court shows that the case was adjourned until May 27, 2021, with the approval of a higher court. Li suffers from various illnesses, including cardiovascular disease and stomach ailments. And the forced feeding during her hunger strikes has resulted in aggravated problems with the heart, stomach, liver, meniscus in both knees, and spine. Her lawyers have sought medical parole for her but were repeatedly denied.

Li is a recipient of the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law in 2020 [9].  She has been in custody for nearly four years without trial.

Luo Shengchun (罗胜春)

Luo Shengchun (罗胜春), born in 1968, is originally from Shanggao County, Jiangxi Province. After completing her Master’s degree in engineering at Beihang University, she worked at the 304 Institute of the Ministry of Astronautics Industry as a researcher and in 2000 went abroad to further her studies. After returning to China in 2004, she worked at Alstom China Investment Co. Ltd., where she served as the quality manager of the high-speed train project, field operations manager, and later the traction system project manager. In June 2013, she was transferred to Alstom Transportation Inc. in the United States and has served as the traction system project manager there ever since.

In April 2013, Luo’s husband, lawyer Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜), was detained, and later imprisoned for his human rights work. His ordeal prompted Luo to actively follow the human rights situation in China, and she wrote articles to advocate for her husband after arriving in the United States. Despite a hectic work schedule, overwhelming psychological burden, and a period of silence following Ding’s imprisonment, she has continued, through various channels, to pay close attention to China’s human rights issues, including the 709 Crackdown and the resistance by the victims’ families.

In October 2016, Ding was released after completing his sentence. He visited his family in the United States for two months, from September to October in 2017, and then returned to China. In May 2018, Ding was barred from leaving China to attend his daughter’s graduation in the U.S. On December 26, 2019, in what came to be known as the “12.26 Citizen Case [3],” Ding Jiaxi was forcibly disappeared in connection with his attendance at a gathering in Xiamen, Fujian Province, where lawyers and other citizens discussed current affairs and China's future and shared their experiences in promoting the construction of civil society. His enforced disappearance has prompted Luo to step forward again to fight for justice for her husband.

Luo currently lives in upstate New York with her two daughters, both of whom are in college. Aside from work, she devotes all her energy to advocating for her husband, Ding Jiaxi, and helping family members of Chinese rights defenders.

Shi Minglei (施明磊)

Shi Minglei (施明磊) was born in 1986 and graduated from Zhengzhou University in 2007 as an e-commerce major. She has worked in e-commerce operations management for the past decade with a good income. She is passionate about her work, driven by a sense of professional accomplishment. She feels that the rapid development and innovation of the Internet keep her thinking fresh, active, and youthful.

On July 22, 2019, Shi’s husband Cheng Yuan (程渊) was taken by state security police right in front of her and their three-year-old daughter. She also had a black hood forced on her, was handcuffed, and was interrogated for nearly 20 hours. Her identification documents, mobile phone, and computer were all seized, and her bank account was frozen. She was put under residential surveillance for 180 days on the charge of “subversion of state power.” Shi was left with nothing—yet had a mortgage to pay off, bills to pay, and a child to raise. Despite her tremendous fear, she began a long and arduous struggle for justice and has filed one complaint after another against the unlawful and unjust treatment her family has been subjected to.

The authorities continued to harass and intimidate her and her social networks. Her employer was harassed and pressured, and she was made to resign. The church school that her daughter was attending was forced to close. In early 2021, Shi fled China with her daughter through a journey of untold hardships. They currently live in the United States.

Related Resources

  • Human Rights in China, “Three Changsha Anti-Discrimination Advocates Face Subversion Charges, Wife is Put Under “Residential Surveillance [10],” HRIC Bulletin, August 9, 2019.
  • Shi Minglei, “Complaint Filed by Wife of Cheng Yuan, One of Three Detained Changsha Rights Activists [11],” Citizens’ Square, Human Rights in China, August 3, 2019.
Wang Yu (王宇)

Wang Yu (王宇), born in 1971, is a native of Ulanhot, Hinggan League, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Wang graduated from the China University of Political Science and Law with a major in legal education. She began practicing law in Beijing in May 2004, at Beijing’s Fengrui Law Firm.

Wang represented many well-known rights defense cases, including Suzhou resident Fan Mugen [12]’s “intentional injury” case, Beijing activist Cao Shunli [13]’s “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” case, Hubei activist Yin Xu'an [14]’s “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” case, and Uyghur scholar Ilham Tuhti [15]’s “splittism” case. She has also represented numerous Falungong practitioners charged for practicing Falungong. In 2014, she actively participated in the  Jiansanjiang [16] rights defense activities.

Wang Yu was the first lawyer detained in 2015 after authorities launched a major crackdown on rights lawyers and activists. She was taken from her home by two or three police officers at around 4 a.m. on July 9, in what came to be known as the 709 Crackdown. Her husband Bao Longjun (包龙军) and son Bao Zhuoxuan (包卓轩) were also taken away by the police at the capital’s airport on the same day, as Bao Zhuoxuan was en route to Australia for his studies. While holding her in custody, the authorities cut off Wang Yu’s contact with the outside world and denied her meeting with her appointed lawyers appointed and visits by her family despite numerous requests. On January 8, 2016, Wang was arrested on charges of "subversion of state power" and was held in the First Detention Center in Tianjin. On August 1, 2016, the online version of Hong Kong's Oriental Daily suddenly published a video of an exclusive interview with Wang Yu, in which Wang Yu admitted guilty. A month earlier, in July 2016, Wang had been granted bail pending trial in July 2016, and the Tianjin Public Security Bureau only lifted the mandatory measures for her bail conditions in July 2017. Wang later disclosed to the media that she had been tortured and that the authorities had used her son as a bargaining chip to force her to "confess" her crimes. In November 2020, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice terminated Wang Yu's practicing license [17] on the grounds that her law firm had been shut down and she had not been employed by other law firms.

Wang Yu has received several international awards for her rights defense activism, including the 2021 U.S. State Department International Women's Courage Award [18], the 2016 Ludovic-Trarieux International Human Rights Prize [19], and the 2016 American Bar Association's first International Human Rights Award [20].

Zhang Zhan (张展)

Zhang Zhan (张展) was born in 1983 in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province. She is a Christian. She graduated from Southwest University of Finance and Economics with a bachelor’s degree in insurance and a master’s degree in finance. In 2010, she moved to Shanghai and obtained her household registration there through the city’s talent introduction program. She worked as a lawyer before having her license revoked for being involved in rights defense activities and for participating in a signature campaign petitioning for amendments to the Administrative Measures for the Practice of Law by Lawyers.

After the COVID-19 outbreak, Zhang arrived in Wuhan from Shanghai on February 1, 2020. As she traveled to the frontline of the epidemic—visiting Wuhan’s residential areas, hospitals, transportation stations, and funeral homes—she shared, through text and video, her eyewitness accounts of the situations on the ground, via WeChat, Twitter, and other social media platforms. She also fielded interviews with overseas media outlets and came to be known as a “citizen journalist.” On May 14, she was taken by Shanghai police in Wuhan back to Shanghai. The following day, she was criminally detained on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” at the Pudong New District Detention Center. On June 18, she was officially arrested on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and was subsequently indicted on the same charge. While in detention, Zhang went on a hunger strike.  She was subjected to force-feeding and other restraints, causing her physical condition to weaken severely. On December 28, 2020, Zhang was sentenced by the Shanghai Pudong New District Court to four years’ imprisonment for the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” During the court hearing, Zhang did not accept the charges in the indictment, and her defense lawyer challenged the ruling on the ground of jurisdiction and flawed evidence, arguing that Zhang’s posts were a record of her first-hand experiences in Wuhan, not fabricated false information. Zhang is currently serving her sentence in Shanghai Women’s Prison.

Previously, Zhang Zhan had been repeatedly interviewed, summoned, and threatened by the Shanghai police for her critical comments online on one-party dictatorship, corruption, and abuse of power. In 2019, she was held in criminal detention for 65 days on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for supporting the anti-extradition protests in Hong Kong.

In May 2021, Zhang was awarded the Honorary Title for Freedom of Expression by the Université libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel [21], and the 2020 Lin Zhao Freedom Award [22] by ChinaAid. In June, she was honored with the 21st Youth China Human Rights Award set up by a group of Chinese activists who went into exile after the 1989 Democracy Movement.

Send Your Message of Support to Human Rights defenders [23]
[24]
Send Your Message of Support to Human Rights defenders [24]

Human rights defenders play a critical role in ensuring peaceful exercise of rights and promoting an independent civil society. As China’s civil society faces increasingly steep restrictions, human rights defenders have become the targets of draconian and comprehensive crackdowns. For their efforts, many human rights defenders have lost their jobs, family members, and personal freedom; many suffer mistreatment and torture in prison.

In these dark times for so many of them, HRIC honors their work, their spirit of dedication, and the great price they continue to pay in promoting the progress of civil society. Please take a moment to send messages to the imprisoned and detained rights defenders—to show your concern, solidarity, and support.

In Their Own Words
Related Resources
  • HRIC, “Fifth Anniversary of 709 Crackdown: Updated Chart of Persecution of Lawyers and Legal and Rights Advocates [25],” July 9, 2020
  • HRIC, “12.26 Citizen Case [3]”
  • HRIC, “Changsha Three [26]” (Chinese only)
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Source URL: https://www.hrichina.org/en/sixth-anniversary-709-crackdown-tribute-women-who-resist

Links
[1] https://twitter.com/wickedonnaa
[2] https://www.hrichina.org/en/defenders/xu-zhiyong
[3] https://www.hrichina.org/en/1226-citizen-case
[4] https://www.hrichina.org/en/citizens-square/entering-new-year-handcuffsan-account-being-taken-custody-new-year-eve
[5] https://twitter.com/Suyutong/status/863398271489904641
[6] https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-li-shuyun
[7] https://www.nchrd.org/2016/03/li-shuyun/
[8] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-rights/china-formally-arrests-secretly-held-rights-lawyers-for-subversion-idUSKCN0UQ1DS20160112
[9] https://defendlawyers.wordpress.com/tag/franco-german-prize-for-human-rights-the-rule-of-law/
[10] https://www.hrichina.org/en/press-work/hric-bulletin/three-changsha-anti-discrimination-advocates-face-subversion-charges-wife
[11] https://www.hrichina.org/en/citizens-square/complaint-filed-wife-cheng-yuan-one-three-detained-changsha-rights-activists
[12] https://www.hrichina.org/chs/node/12204
[13] https://www.hrichina.org/en/press-work/hric-bulletin/lawyers-and-activists-urge-police-make-public-cao-shunlis-condition
[14] https://wqw2010.blogspot.com/2015/04/blog-post_8
[15] https://www.voachinese.com/a/lawer-li-met-with-detained-ilham-20140626/1945278
[16] https://www.hrichina.org/en/citizens-square/jiansanjiang-case-chronology-events-and-actions-carried-out-lawyers-citizens-and
[17] https://twitter.com/wangyulawyer/status/1334813307623059457/photo/1
[18] https://www.state.gov/2021-international-women-of-courage-award-recipients-announced/
[19] https://www.ludovictrarieux.org/uk-page3.callplt2016.htm
[20] https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/chinese_lawyer_wang_yu_given_inaugural_aba_international_human_rights_award
[21] https://press.vub.ac.be/vub-and-ulb-award-chinese-and-belarusian-women-journalists-8hvnjq
[22] https://www.chinaaid.org/2021/05/chinaaid-awards-2020-lin-zhao-freedom
[23] https://www.hrichina.org/en/node/27721
[24] https://www.hrichina.org/en/honor-human-rights-defenders-send-messages-imprisoned-and-detained-human-rights-defenders-show-your
[25] https://www.hrichina.org/en/press-work/press-release/fifth-anniversary-709-crackdown-updated-chart-persecution-lawyers-and-legal
[26] https://www.hrichina.org/chs/chang-sha-gong-yi-sa
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