[House Hearing, 115 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
GAGGING THE LAWYERS: CHINA'S CRACKDOWN ON HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYERS AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JUNE 28, 2017
__________
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CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
LEGISLATIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Senate House
MARCO RUBIO, Florida, Chairman CHRIS SMITH, New Jersey,
TOM COTTON, Arkansas Cochairman
STEVE DAINES, Montana ROBERT PITTENGER, North Carolina
JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma TRENT FRANKS, Arizona
TODD YOUNG, Indiana RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio
JEFF MERKLEY, Oregon TIM WALZ, Minnesota
GARY PETERS, Michigan TED LIEU, California
ANGUS KING, Maine
EXECUTIVE BRANCH COMMISSIONERS
Not yet appointed
Elyse B. Anderson, Staff Director
Paul B. Protic, Deputy Staff Director
(ii)
CO N T E N T S
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Statements
Page
Opening Statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a U.S.
Representative From New Jersey; Cochairman, Congressional-
Executive Commission on China.................................. 1
Statement of Hon. Marco Rubio, a U.S. Senator From Florida;
Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China.......... 4
Halliday, Terence, Co-Director, Center on Law and Globalization,
American Bar Foundation and Coauthor of Criminal Defense In
China: The Politics Of Lawyers At Work......................... 6
Teng Biao, Chinese Human Rights Lawyer, Visiting Scholar,
Institute for Advanced Study and Co-Founder, Open Constitution
Initiative and China Human Rights Accountability Center........ 9
Xia Chongyu, Son of Imprisoned Human Rights Lawyer Xia Lin and a
Student at Liberty University.................................. 12
Xiaorong Li, Co-editor, Charter 08, a Collection of Essays by
Charter 08 Signers and Supporters; Author, Ethics, Human Rights
and Culture; Founder, Several Human Rights NGOs Focusing on
China; and Occasional Contributor to Philosophy Journals and
Newspapers..................................................... 13
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements
Halliday, Terence................................................ 28
Teng, Biao....................................................... 29
Xia, Chongyu..................................................... 33
Li, Xiaorong..................................................... 39
Rubio, Hon. Marco, a U.S. Senator From Florida; Chairman,
Congressional-Executive Commission on China.................... 42
Smith, Hon. Christopher, a U.S. Representative From New Jersey;
Cochairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China........ 43
Submissions for the Record
Prominent Lawyer Cases........................................... 45
Witness Biographies.............................................. 51
GAGGING THE LAWYERS: CHINA'S CRACKDOWN ON HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYERS AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS
----------
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28, 2017
Congressional-Executive
Commission on China,
Washington, DC.
The hearing was convened, pursuant to notice, at 2:24 p.m.,
in room HVC-210, Capitol Visitor Center, Hon. Christopher
Smith, Cochairman, presiding.
Also Present: Chairman Rubio and Senator Young.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, A U.S.
REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW JERSEY; COCHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-
EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Representative Smith. Good afternoon. The hearing will come
to order. And I want to thank each and every one of you for
being here today. Sorry for the delay, both houses are in very
active mode.
We just had a series of votes. And I know Chairman Rubio is
very much engaged on the healthcare issue, but he will be here
very shortly.
Chinese officials repeatedly tell me that I should focus
more on the positive aspects of China and not dwell so much on
the negative. I have heard it from diplomats, I have heard it
from people when I have traveled in China Beijing as well as in
Shanghai.
That is an extremely difficult task when you read the
horrifying and sadistic accounts of torture and enforced
disappearances experienced by lawyers and rights advocates. It
is hard to be positive when you contemplate Liu Xiaobo's cancer
diagnosis and the fact that China effectively silenced its most
brilliant democracy advocate.
Earlier today, I am happy to say, again, another voice from
the administration at a hearing before the House Committee on
Foreign Affairs, in answer to a question that I posed, Nikki
Haley clearly and unmistakably said he should be free to go
wherever he wants to go and that would include he and his wife
coming to the United States to get the very necessary medical
treatment that he has been denied.
The empty chair at Oslo, and I was there, speaks volumes
about the Communist Party's abiding fear that freedom will
upend the power of the privileged few when they should be
seeing liberty as a path to a greater peace and prosperity.
At a hearing last month in the Subcommittee on Global Human
Rights in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I and my fellow
colleagues heard testimony from the wives of five detained or
disappeared human rights lawyers. The courageous women have
become effective advocates for their husbands and for all those
detained in the 709 crackdown.
They described in horrifying detail the physical, mental,
and psychological torture experienced by their husbands,
including marathon interrogation sessions, sleep deprivation,
beatings, crippling leg tortures and prolong submersion in
water.
Many of their husbands were also forced to take alarming
quantities of drugs, including tranquilizers, barbiturates,
antipsychotic drugs and other unknown substances daily.
What they described was shocking, offensive and morally
inhumane but, frankly, not surprising. It is also possible that
Chinese officials believe the international community will not
hold them accountable.
After the hearing, I wrote the heads of the American
Medical Association, the American Psychological Association,
the World Health Organization, as well as Secretary of State
Tillerson and Ambassador Nikki Haley.
I asked for a condemnation of the practice of torture and
medical experimentation on prisoners of conscience.
I have also asked for investigations so that serious
questions will be asked of the Chinese Government. We know that
those questions have been asked in the past by many, including
special rapporteurs for torture. I remember when Manfred Nowak
made his trip to China, the report was scathing, and yet
nothing has been done to ameliorate this horrific abuse.
Finally, I have asked for accountability. I have asked
Secretary Tillerson to start investigations under the Global
Magnitsky Act, a bill that I led on the House side last year,
so that any Chinese Government officials complicit in torture
should be never allowed to benefit from entry to the United
States or access to our financial system.
The issues of torture and residential surveillance in a
designated location, effectively enforced disappearances, will
be priorities of mine and so many others, and the chairman, our
good friend, Marco Rubio, as this Commission moves forward.
I believe these issues are diverse and multi-level
coalitions could be built to raise issues with the Chinese
Government.
I would also think we need to do more to prioritize the
protection of human rights lawyers and their families.
At the hearing last month, I heard the phrase ``the war on
law'' used to describe the systematic effort to eviscerate the
network of human rights lawyers. That phrase struck me because,
though the number of human rights lawyers in China is small,
what they stand for was nothing less than the rule of law for
everyone, particularly those persecuted or aggrieved by the
Communist Party.
They stand for the right of everyone in China, religious
believers, ethnic minorities, petitioners, women who have been
forced to undergo forced abortions, labor activists, or victims
of corrupt or of the barbaric population-control policies, to
always have a fair hearing, due process and a justice that is
not politicized.
We all remember the case of Chen Guangcheng who fought so
hard for the women in Linyi who were being forced into
abortions and forced sterilizations. And for that, he was
brutalized, as well as his wife.
And, of course, the Communist Party see the idea of fair
hearings, due process and justice as not politicized, as a
dangerous idea. It means that they should be accountable to the
people--imagine that--to hundreds of millions of people, in
fact, seeking redress for persecution and party corruption.
Xi Jinping is feted in Davos for his commitments to
openness and the rule of law, but it is rule of law for the few
and the privileged and rule by law for the rest.
The failure to implement the rule of law to favor a type of
lawlessness in the pursuit of keeping the Communist Party in
power has serious and lasting implications for U.S.-China
relations as well.
We must recognize, after the failure of two-and-a-half
decades of the so-called engagement policies, that China's
domestic repression drives its external aggression, its
mercantilist trade policies and its unimaginable decisions to
keep propping up a murderous North Korean regime.
I know the Chinese Government wants me and others to focus
on positive things. I think one positive development here is
that the spouses and families of rights advocates and lawyers
have given Beijing a rightly deserved headache. They have
refused, absolutely refused to be silent about their spouses'
detentions or disappearances and have used the internet and
media to get out their message.
This trend is something new, something different, something
we need to honor and deeply respect because they are under
great pressure to be silent through intimidation, harassment,
threats and detention.
I want to say to our witness, Chongyu, that we appreciate
your testimony here today and the fact that you are speaking
out on behalf of your father. We know that this Commission is
an advocate for you and your entire family. If you or your
family face reprisals because of your testimony here today, the
Congress will take it as a personal affront to the work of this
body.
I know your petition has gathered 94,000 signatures. Please
make sure that my name is 94,001.
The one thing that gives me hope is that the people of
China long for liberty, justice and opportunity. We saw it in
the hearts and minds of those who braved the tanks, including
Tank Man, during Tiananmen Square, possibilities that turned
into a terrible, terrible tragedy and slaughter. But it was the
heart of the Chinese people that came through. They want
freedom. They want democracy. They want respect for fundamental
human rights.
The need for principled and consistent American leadership
is now more important than ever as China's growing economic
power and persistent diplomatic efforts have succeeded in
dampening global criticism of its escalating repression and
failures to adhere to universal standards.
The United States must be a beacon of liberty and a
champion of individual rights and freedoms. The United States
must also continue to be a voice for those silenced, jailed or
repressed in China.
We cannot and will not forget those in China who bravely
are seeking liberty and justice and the inalienable rights that
we all share here in the United States.
Like China's human rights lawyers, like Liu Xiaobo, those
who bravely seek peaceful change in China, that is our focus,
that is our priority and that is our hopes and prayers are for
them.
I would like to now turn it over to the distinguished
chairman, Senator Rubio.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARCO RUBIO, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
FLORIDA; CHAIRMAN, CONGRESSIONAL-EXECUTIVE COMMISSION ON CHINA
Chairman Rubio. Well, thank you very much. Thank you for
filling in. As you know, the Senate is involved in one big
issue, the healthcare issue, and it delayed us here a little
bit while we were involved in a conversation. So I thank you
for starting it and for taking over and all of you for being
here this afternoon.
This hearing is entitled ``Gagging the Lawyers: China's
Crackdown on Human Rights Lawyers and Its Implications for
U.S.-China Relations.''
We will only have one panel testify today. It is going to
feature Terence Halliday who is the co-director of the Center
on Law and Globalization at the American Bar Foundation and
also the co-author of the book Criminal Defense in China: The
Politics of Lawyer at Work; Teng Biao, a Chinese human rights
lawyer, a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced
Studies and co-founded of the Open Constitution Initiative and
China Human Rights Accountability Center; Xia Chongyu, son of
imprisoned human rights lawyer Xia Lin and a student at Liberty
University; and Xiaorong Li who is an independent scholar
formerly with the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at
the University of Maryland.
We thank you all for being here.
Before we move to the topic at hand, I want to take a
moment to acknowledge the news this week regarding the reported
transfer of 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo from
prison to a hospital for treatment for late-stage liver cancer.
This should not be confused with an act of mercy on the part of
the Chinese Government.
His eight years of imprisonment due to his eloquent appeals
for nonviolent political reform and protection of human rights
remains a travesty of justice and a stain on China's human
rights record.
Dr. Liu's medical parole is not the equivalent of an early
release from his prison sentence or that he has the freedom to
meet with his wife, Liu Xia, and other family members and
friends.
I have urged the President to seek a humanitarian transfer
of Dr. Liu and his wife to the United States to explore what
medical options may be available.
I would also like to briefly read a quote from an editorial
that ran in the Communist Party-controlled Global Times. The
writer gloated, ``China has not collapsed as the West forecast
in the 1980s and 1990s, but has created a global economic
miracle. A group of pro-democracy activists and dissidents lost
a bet and ruined their lives. Although Liu was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, he is likely to face tragedy in the end.''
What a grotesque expression in this Communist Party-
controlled publication.
Any notion that Dr. Liu will receive adequate medical care
under the supervision of his captors is simply absurd. I was
pleased to read this morning that the newly arrived U.S.
Ambassador Terry Branstad has urged the Chinese Government to
allow Dr. Liu to seek treatment overseas.
As the Nobel Committee noted, Dr. Liu exemplifies the long
and nonviolent struggle for human rights in China. That same
spirit animates the work of the Chinese rights lawyers you will
hear about today.
July 9th, 2017 marks the two-year anniversary of the start
of what has been described as an unprecedented nationwide
crackdown on human rights lawyers and legal advocates in China,
an event that has come to be known as the 709 crackdown.
While perhaps unprecedented in scale and coordination,
nearly 300 rights advocates were detained, summoned for
questioning or disappeared, the crackdown began much earlier.
Xi Jinping's rule has been marked by extensive campaigns to
silence political dissent, curtail civil society and ensure
ideological loyalty to and conformity with the Chinese
Communist Party. No sector of society is untouched. Business
leaders, bloggers, social media users, university professors,
journalists, religious adherents have all been targeted, but
China's rights defenders and lawyers have been the tip of the
spear for even longer, as our second witness, Dr. Teng Biao,
can no doubt attest.
This small, but tenacious group is closely linked to the
growth in legal rights consciousness among ordinary Chinese
citizens. China's rights defense movement converged around the
incidents of injustice that resulted from the single-minded
drive of the Chinese Government and the Communist Party for
rapid economic growth without political reform.
The victims of injustice included farmers who lost land
from government expropriation, urban residents forcibly evicted
without fair compensation, migrant workers trying to recoup
unpaid wages, teachers, laid-off workers and army veterans who
lost their pensions, and parents whose children were made ill
from ingesting contaminated milk powder. The movement has
expanded to support free speech, the pro-democracy aspirations
of Hong Kongers, ethnic minority rights and other issues.
Our first witness, Dr. Halliday, has conducted literally
hundreds of interviews with these men and women, a group bound
together by their shared conviction regarding the importance of
protecting basic legal freedoms a system where rule of law
remains aspirational at best.
Among the lawyers featured in his latest book are those
whose names and stories have captured headlines for the last
two years. Their unjust and unexpected detentions nearly two
years ago was, for many, the start of a long and harrowing
ordeal marked by months in isolation, torture, coerced
confessions and other forms of mistreatment.
Some of these lawyers, like Jiang Tianyong, whose wife I
had the privilege of meeting earlier this year, remain in
detention. Others, like Li Heping, are no longer in captivity,
but the brutality they experienced left them visibly,
physically altered. Many have been disbarred and will never
practice law in China again. And still others live under
constant surveillance and harassment.
It is tempting in the face of China's worsening and
increasingly brazen human rights violations to grow
disheartened, which is why I think it is equally important to
spend some time today examining another part of this crackdown
that is unprecedented, and that is the response of some of the
family members of those detained. By their own telling, many of
the wives of these rights lawyers had not previously been
involved in their husbands' efforts to pursue justice and
accountability from their government, but as the present system
conspired against them and their families, they became
advocates in their own right.
In case after case, these women took up the mantle of
advocacy on behalf of their husbands. Their personal accounts
of intimidation and harassment, of landlords refusing them
housing, of children denied entry into local schools, of
movement restricted and lives lived under constant
surveillance, coupled with their compelling public defense of
their husbands' innocence has, in the words of Dr. Halliday,
opened up a, quote, ``new line of struggle that we have not
seen before in China,'' end quote.
Similar courage and boldness is on display today with the
testimony of Xia Chongyu about his father's plight. Even for
those of us who hold steadfastly to the view that the United
States foreign policy must be infused with the principled
defense of human rights and the promotion of basic freedoms,
there remains a notion that change in China will ultimately
come from within. And I agree.
And China's rights defense lawyers are at the vanguard in
pressing for systematic change and seeking accountability and
redress and working toward a day when China is a nation where
the law is used to protect rights, not to suppress them. It is
our duty to stand with them in this monumental task.
And it is our honor to welcome all of you here today.
And we will begin with the testimony of Mr. Halliday.
Thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF TERENCE HALLIDAY, CO-DIRECTOR, CENTER ON LAW AND
GLOBALIZATION, AMERICAN BAR FOUNDATION AND COAUTHOR, CRIMINAL
DEFENSE IN CHINA: THE POLITICS OF LAWYERS AT WORK
Mr. Halliday. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cochairman and
distinguished members of the Commission, I am privileged to be
invited here to participate in this hearing.
I have a longstanding admiration for the work of the
Commission.
In my opening remarks, I address the meaning and the
significance of China's unprecedented crackdown on lawyers
almost two years after its onset in early 2015. My comments are
derived from the empirical research of my research team into
criminal procedure law and criminal defense lawyers over the
past 12 years.
Our findings, published in our book Criminal Defense in
China, conclude that China's legal system and China's legal
profession have come an enormous distance since the enactment
of the 1979 Criminal Procedure Law.
Nevertheless, on a number of issues integral to the defense
of basic legal freedoms, China has turned away from reform both
in its law and in its treatment of a key segment of the legal
profession.
A sudden turning point occurred on July 9, 2015, when China
launched a nationwide crackdown on activist lawyers. The 709
crackdown, as it has been colloquially labeled, has been
unprecedented in scale and severity.
Within days, hundreds of lawyers across China were
detained, disappeared and interrogated. Lawyers have been
intimidated, tortured, charged with serious crimes and
sanctioned severely.
Why did this crackdown occur? Research on activist lawyers
reveals deep grievances held by hundreds of millions of Chinese
who suffer from health-threatening pollution, from takings of
their homes and land, from widening inequality, from religious
controls and persecution, from discriminatory treatment of
minorities, from inadequate protection of workers and women,
and from exploitation and vulnerability of migrant laborers,
among others.
The sheer quantity of disaffected and angry populations can
fuel widespread social unrest. Lawyers often become the help of
last resort when every other channel has failed. Therefore,
over the past several years the Chinese Communist Party has
faced a double threat to its survival. On the one hand,
economic and social problems appear to be multiplying and
intensifying. On the other hand, lawyers increasingly have been
articulating and expressing those grievances through law in
highly visible ways.
What triggered the crackdown on lawyers on July 9, 2015?
Over the last several years, activist lawyers significantly
increased in numbers. Hundreds of new activists, many of them
young and well-educated, signaled their willingness to join the
front line.
Lawyers magnified their ability to mobilize.
Since 2011, lawyers increasingly came together in large
defense teams in difficult trials. Through social media,
activist lawyers could create instant crowds to rush to a
courthouse or defend a lawyer being harassed by police.
Nationwide, online networks could mobilize hundreds of lawyers
for new cases or emergency situations.
The power of social media multiplied the impact of a new
type of lawyer. So-called diehard lawyers actively used the
social media and street theater to activate supporters and
expose problems in defending their clients.
Some lawyers had accumulated thousands or even millions of
followers on Weibo, China's equivalent to Twitter. Clearly,
China's leaders felt vulnerable to activist, diehard and
ordinary lawyers' enhanced powers to mobilize publics.
What motivates these lawyers to exhibit such courage in the
face of a regime that does not hesitate to use inhumane and
even life-threatening measures against its opponents?
Our research reveals that courage for many lawyers arises
from their own life experiences, such as harms to parents
during the Cultural Revolution, participation in the 1989
Tiananmen movement, or shocking experiences in their legal
practices.
Many lawyers build their courageous representation upon
legal ideals that underwrite the good political society.
First, they insist on the protection of basic legal
freedoms, such as the right to be represented by a lawyer, due
process in trials and fair adjudication. They insist upon
freedoms of speech, of association and religion.
Second, they are committed to a vibrant civil society as it
is expressed through voluntary associations and an open public
sphere.
Third, these activist lawyers strongly oppose arbitrary
executive power, and they call for checks and balances within
the state.
Our research documents that many lawyers, notable and
ordinary practitioners, also draw their courage from their
Christian faith. Christian lawyers insist upon the value of
equality. Most importantly, that in the eyes of God and in the
eyes of the law, said one lawyer, ``Chairman Mao is as equal as
me.''
They champion the Judeo-Christian emphasis on a political
and legal order that delivers justice, often quoting, like
Martin Luther King, the Biblical prophets Amos and Micah.
They believe in fairness, that justice should be available
reliably and fairly to all, whether they are Han Chinese or
Tibetan, Party members or Falun Gong members.
Finally, they hold China's law accountable to God's law. I
consider it probable that Party leaders fear Christian lawyer
leaders who have strong relationships with Protestant churches
across China, China's largest civil society group, and some who
have significant international connections.
What does the lawyer crackdown tell the world and us about
China's future? Viewing China through the lens of courageous
lawyers reveals that legal change in China has turned toward
repression, a repression which has taken deeply sobering turns
since 2015.
Nevertheless, deep impetuses for change remain within
China. Repressive actions themselves may be self-subversive.
Notable activists refuse to surrender easily or to go quietly.
Their wives, their comrades spring to their defense.
Significant numbers of grassroots lawyers continue to harbor
visions of alternative legal political futures. The
international community ratchets up its efforts at solidarity,
pressure, and support for lawyers. Where goes China may depend
very considerably on where go its lawyers. Will it follow long,
peaceful paths of reform and the expansion of basic legal
freedoms that are offered by these activist lawyers? Or will
China lurch toward a violent, explosive path that could lead to
fearful, unpredictable outcomes?
For the United States to respond vigorously to China's
repression against lawyers and its deviance with respect to
global norms, may I offer the following recommendations.
(1) The United States Government and the international
community of states, international organizations, and publics
should stand in solidarity with China's activist lawyers and
hold China's practices strictly accountable to global
standards, most importantly those inscribed in U.N.
conventions, principles, and institutions. These are applicable
to all persons, places, and states without exception.
(2) The United States Government should maintain its
leadership position in the United Nations Human Rights Council
and other authoritative international bodies so that China does
not erode or dilute universal norms of law, lawyers, and
rights.
(3) The United States Government should use all means at
its dispoal, including joint statements with other states,
bilateral dialogues, and monitoring by U.S. agencies to press
China to adhere to global standards in its treatment of all its
lawyers, most especially those swept up in the crackdown.
(4) The current administration should strengthen the
capacity of the U.S. Department of State and other executive
agencies to monitor treatment of vulnerable populations in
China and particularly lawyers who represent those populations.
(5) U.S. Government agencies, including the CECC, should
mobilize U.S. firms businesses operating in China to recognize
the dangers their employees and partners face as China offers
less and less protections to persons inside China who cross
invisible lines being drawn and redrawn by China's security
apparatus.
(6) The United States should lead other states in the call
for release of activists being punished for their rights
defense work, and reject the criminalization of their
legitimate exercise of rights protected by Chinese and
international law.
Chairman Rubio. Thank you.
We will recognize our second witness, Teng Biao.
STATEMENT OF TENG BIAO, CHINESE HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER, VISITING
SCHOLAR, INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY, AND CO-FOUNDER, THE OPEN
CONSTITUTION INITIATIVE AND CHINA HUMAN RIGHTS ACCOUNTABILITY
CENTER
Mr. Biao. Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of CECC, I am
honored to be invited to testify at this especially important
hearing.
This coming July 9th, the second anniversary of the 709
crackdown, there will be events in DC., Hong Kong, Taiwan and
some European cities to mark the inaugural China Human Rights
Lawyers' Day, which I have been organizing for months.
Chinese human rights lawyers have since 2003 become one of
the most active and effective forces in China defending rights
and freedom and, inevitably, have been the target of the
government's persecution since the beginning of the rights
defense movement.
Because of my work of promoting human rights and democracy
since 2003, I was disbarred, banned from teaching and
eventually fired, banned from travelling, and kidnapped for
three times by the secret police.
In 2011, I was detained in a black jail for 70 days in an
extreme form of solitary confinement, physically and mentally
tortured. My wife and daughter were banned from travelling
abroad, and my wife fired by the company she worked for due to
the pressure from Chinese Government.
Collective punishment is frequently used by Chinese
authorities to maximize intimidation. The purpose of torture
and collective punishment was to make me stop my human rights
work, but I did not.
The persecution of rights lawyers reached its peak in 709
crackdown. Eight lawyers are still in prison, including Jiang
Tianyong and--Wu Gan. Wang Quanzhang has disappeared since July
2015. His family and lawyers do not even know whether he is
alive or dead.
Dozens of lawyers were severely tortured, including
beatings, electric shocks, sleep deprivation, death threats,
months or years of solitary confinement, so on and so on.
Notably, it has been confirmed that many lawyers and
activists were force-fed with medicines which caused them
muscle pain, blurred vision and other physical and mental harm.
The prison conditions and the treatment in detentions are
extremely inhuman and cruel in China. As we know, deliberate
neglect aggravated Liu Xiaobo's cancer.
Now, both Liu Xiaobo and Liu Xia clearly expressed that
they want to go out of China.
The rights defense movement has emerged since early 2000 as
a new focus of the Chinese democracy movement, up to the Xidan
democracy wall movement in late 1970s and the Tiananmen
democratic moment in 1989.
Let us take a brief look at the history of the Chinese
Communist Party. When the Communist Party was facing a deep
legal and economical crisis in the late 1970s after waves of
political campaigns and the brutal Cultural Revolution, they
had to introduce a process of legalization and marketization.
Legalization was necessary for establishing social order
and market economy, and thus was beneficial to the political
system when mass mobilization was not applicable anymore.
Millions of laws and regulations were made, legal
professions were recovered, by the CCP never meant to accept a
democratic transition or rule of law. Opposition of politics is
prohibited, but we lawyers and rights advocates tried our best
to use existing legal channels to defend human rights and
freedom.
Starting with a narrow space, the rights defense movement
attracted more and more supporters, such as lawyers, bloggers,
persecuted religious groups, victims of human rights abuse, and
political dissidents. There are incredible achievements under
such a repressive regime.
For the past 14 years, the development of the rights
defense movement was expressed through at least four trends,
namely, organization, street activism, politicization and
internationalization.
There is a clear limitation to China's legalization, that
is one-party rule, the number-one priority of the CCP. Once the
CCP senses the use of law could be a potential challenge, it
never hesitates to nip it in the bud.
When Xi Jinping took his office, what the CCP was facing
was increasing crisis, political, economical, social and
ideological crisis. The calculation of Xi Jinping is that
without a war on law to destroy the resisting ability of the
social and political movement, a color revolution will occur,
and thus, the monopoly of power of the Communist Party will be
in danger. This is the political background of 709 crackdown.
Once again, the CCP's war on law makes it urgent and
necessary to change U.S. human rights policy toward China.
In 1989, all democracies condemned the Tiananmen massacre,
sanctioned Chinese dictators and supported Tiananmen activists
in jail or in exile. Yet very soon, Western leaders could not
wait to welcome Chinese butchers and dictators, rolling out
their red carpet replete with eager hugs and state banquets.
In 1994, U.S. Government granted permanent most-favored-
nation status to China to delink human rights to trade, despite
protests from human rights groups. Then China was allowed to
enter the WTO and international market.
China was given the opportunity to host Olympics, World
Expo, APEC and the G20. China was voted in as a member of
United Nations Human Rights Council again and again.
Now China has become the second-largest economy and is
playing an active and aggressive role on the international
stage.
Cyberattacks, South China Sea aggression, abducting
overseas booksellers and activists, Confucius Institutes which
erode academic freedom, the list goes on.
China is demanding a rewrite of international norms,
wanting to create a new international order in which rule of
law is manipulated, human dignity is debased, democracy is
abused, and justice is denied. In this international order,
corruption and persecution are ignored, perpetrators are immune
and dictatorial regimes are united and smugly complacent.
I would like to point out that U.S. human rights policy
toward China has long been based on a series of erroneous
theories and mistaken presumptions regarding Chinese politics
and their society.
I do not have time to go into details, but the erroneous
theories cover misunderstandings of China's market,
constitution, international accountability, NGOs, so on and so
on.
Finally, I would like to offer a few recommendations here.
Link human rights to trade and other important issues that
the CCP cares about.
Implement the Global Magnitsky Act to ban Chinese
perpetrators and corrupt officials from entering the United
States.
Punish U.S. and Western businesses which cooperate with
Chinese authorities and participate in human rights abuses.
End the 110 Confucius Institutes in the United States
educational institutions.
Do not fund the oppressor.
Support the real NGOs, not GONGOs.
Name and shame.
Expel China from the Human Rights Council of the United
Nations.
A powerful and autocratic China will bring calamities to
mankind. Supporting democracy and human rights in China not
only corresponds to American-declared values, it will also
benefit American politics, society and economics in the long
term.
Please stand on the side of Chinese people, not on the side
of Chinese Communist Party. China should be represented by the
human rights lawyers, activists, dissidents and all Chinese
people fighting for freedom and democracy, not the illegitimate
party and the government.
Thank you.
Chairman Rubio. Thank you so much for your testimony.
Our third witness is Xia Chongyu. He is the son of a
prominent imprisoned human rights lawyer, Xia Lin. He is
currently a college student at Liberty University, but his
mother still lives in China.
And it is in our view, let me just say this, it is
incredibly important that we make clear that his appearance
here today should not in any way lead to any pressure on him or
harm on him or his family. If such an event exists and happens,
we will view it as a direct attack by Chinese Government and
Communist Party officials as a result of your testimony here
today.
And it is something I want to make abundantly clear, that
it is something we will be watching and strongly condemning and
pointing to and knowing that it is directly related to your
appearance here today. So it is our hope that that is not the
case.
But we thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF XIA CHONGYU, SON OF IMPRISONED HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER
XIA LIN AND A STUDENT AT LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
Mr. Xia. Dear Congressmen and Congressmen, respectful
audience, I am Xia Chongyu, son of Chinese human rights lawyer
Xia Lin.
It is such a great honor to be here to share about my
father's situation and what my family has been through these
past years.
My father dedicates himself to be the voice for the
voiceless and provides pro bono legal assistance to the victims
of human rights violation cases.
On November 8th, 2014 my father was abducted by secret
agents without a warrant. The government did not inform my
mother of my father's arrest until five days after the fact and
denied my father's basic rights to meet with his defense
attorney for three or four months.
Meanwhile, the police kept asking my father about the
politically sensitive cases he represented. My father was
physically and mentally tortured by the police, who used
interrogation techniques such as shining a strong light on his
eyes to keep him awake for days. They tried to break him so
that he would confess to fraud, but all their attempts failed.
After 600 days of imprisonment, he was unfairly tried in a
closed-door hearing. My father was denied a personal statement
in court and none of the witnesses had a chance to testify.
The Second Court of Beijing sentenced my father to 12 years
in prison for fraud, without appropriate evidence. My father's
final sentence was delivered without a fair second trial in
February 2014. No one ever accused my father in person.
I refuse to accept this illegal and unjust verdict. In
April, I presented my petition at a convocation of Liberty
University and the responses were overwhelming. However, when I
tried to deliver my petition with over 14,000 signatures to the
Chinese embassy, no one would even see me. Before I left, I
read my petition aloud at the gate of the embassy.
At this moment, I have collected over 94,000 signatures.
Most of them come from Americans and the rest are from other
countries around the world. I am not alone.
As a rising nation, China's deteriorating human rights
record is unacceptable. When a human rights lawyer cannot
secure his own fundamental rights, I believe every member's
rights in the society are threatened.
Human rights lawyers are the cornerstone of society. I hope
the U.S. Government can increase its involvement in such cases
in the future. Moreover, I wish the Congress of America could
urge the Chinese Government to stop controlling the judiciary
system and stop the persecution against 709 lawyers.
Lastly, I plead that the White House summon the Chinese
ambassador and ask the Chinese Government to respond to me and
my 94,000 petition supporters.
Meanwhile, I recommend the White House or State Department
issue a clear policy regretting this type of case. By making a
clear stance, the U.S. Government would communicate to the
world that human rights violations will not be tolerated.
I appreciate the Congress for organizing this hearing so
that our voice could be heard by the world.
Thank you.
Chairman Rubio. And we thank you for your testimony here
today.
We are going to begin our questions and I am going to turn
it first over--oh, I apologize. I am so sorry. I am so sorry. I
apologize.
So our final testimony--I said ``final'' earlier and that
is what threw me off. There is a seat missing, that is what
threw me off, in between the both of you.
Xiaorong Li is an independent scholar, formerly with the
Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of
Maryland.
And thank you for being here. And we are ready for your
testimony.
The microphone, if you could just push the button. Could
you tell them to push the button for her, please? Thank you.
There we go.
STATEMENT OF XIAORONG LI, CO-EDITOR OF CHARTER 08, A COLLECTION
OF ESSAYS BY CHARTER 08 SIGNERS AND SUPPORTERS, AUTHOR OF
ETHICS, HUMAN RIGHTS AND CULTURE, FOUNDER OF SEVERAL HUMAN
RIGHTS NGOS FOCUSING ON CHINA, AND OCCASIONAL CONTRIBUTOR TO
PHILOSOPHY JOURNALS AND NEWSPAPERS
Ms. Li. Thank you, CECC Commissioners and staff. I am asked
to share a few thoughts about how Congress and the U.S.
Government should respond to the July 9 crackdown on lawyers
and the overall worsening human rights situation in China,
which, under President Xi Jinping, has taken a nose-down dive.
Two days ago, many of us woke up with the heart wrenching
news that Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was
diagnosed with terminal liver cancer, was granted ``medical
parole'' and relocated from prison to a hospital. Except a
brief video call, his wife Liu Xia has not been able to talk
freely. It is now clear that Liu Xiaobo and his family are not
free to choose doctors nor are they free to travel abroad for
possibly life-saving treatment.
Liu Xiaobo is due to be released in 2 years after serving 9
out of an 11-year imprisonment for his role in Charter 08. He
has practically been in secret imprisonment. His wife has been
put under house arrest since 2010. The outside world knows
almost nothing about what happened to him inside the prison
walls. Secrecy created the perfect conditions for abuse--
torture, mistreatment, including medical neglect and
deprivation of adequate care.
Secret detention, persecution of family members by
association, mistreatment in prison including deprivation of
medical treatment are routinely used by the Chinese Government
to punish human rights lawyers, activists, political or
religious dissidents, especially in ethnic minority regions
Tibet and Xinjiang.
Activist Cao Shunli died from denied medical treatment in
detention on March 14, 2014 after she was hospitalized in
critical condition, while authorities had previously rejected
her lawyers' multiple requests for ``medical bail.'' Five days
after Cao Shunli's death, the Tibetan political prisoner Goshul
Lobsang died due to torture and lack of medical treatment in
detention. One human rights organization has kept a Medical
Watch List tracking cases of currently detained or imprisoned
individuals who suffer from deteriorating health and have been
deprived of adequate medical treatment and denied release on
medical grounds.
How should the United States Congress respond to the
Chinese Government's human rights problems? Four suggestions:
1. One stance that Congress can take is also most obvious
one, but often seeming the most difficult one, which I have
previously discussed in this forum. It is simply to be
consistent and steadfast. Let me explain: The CECC and the
State Department both produce carefully-researched annual human
rights reports based on excellent data and expertise analysis.
But these reports bear little relevance to U.S. polices toward
China, where human rights tend to be overpowered by trade
business or regional strategic interests. Data and facts in
these congressional and government reports about China's
worsening human rights problems often do not have a voice in
such polices. I know this may sound naive and simplistic. But
being consistent and sticking to one set of human rights
standards in Congressional resolutions, whether it concerns
Cuba or Iran or North Korea or China, is what gives U.S. human
rights polices a measure of credibility.
2. My second thought is that Congress should continue to
support programs or organizations that assist victims of rights
abuses. For instance, right now, Congress should press the
Administration to issue a standing invitation to Liu Xiaobo and
his family immediately and make contingency plans to make sure
that he receive the best treatment and care this country can
offer, if the Chinese Government let them go. The EU funds
``emergency relocation and shelter programs'' that evacuate and
assist human rights defenders at high risk. Congress must guard
our political refugee programs against xenophobia.
3. Congress must urge the Administration to comply with the
Global Magnitsky Accountability Act to seek accountability for
rights abuses. Congress passed this Act and it was signed into
law last year. It is a brave new tool that the U.S. Government
must use to hold perpetrators and corrupt officials in the
Chinese Government accountable. For years, critics of economic
sanctions argued that they'd hurt the average Chinese and many
of us have realized that U.S.-China human rights dialogues have
produced no real impact. Now, this new law can be used to
target abusive officials, with no quota restriction on how many
from which countries could be designated, as long as credible
evidence against them can be presented. But the decision is
with the Administration, where such decisions might very well
be subjected to the whims of other priorities. Congress should
make sure that the President's other interest in China do not
get in the way of holding Chinese officials accountable for
human rights abuses.
4. One other suggestion is that Congress should support
U.S. actions holding the Chinese Government accountable for its
failures to live up to its international human rights
obligations. China is a member of the Human Rights Council. It
has signed or ratified 7 of the 10 major human rights treaties,
such as the Convention against Torture, which China ratified 29
years ago. Yet the Chinese Government continues to derail rule
of law reforms, undercut any independence of the judiciary, and
disregard legal safeguards for detainees from torture.
As China becomes a raising world power, the government's
systematic human rights abuses raise serious questions about
its credibility or fitness to take global leadership in areas
where the United States is retreating. The Chinese Government
has a clear track-record of signing up for international human
rights treaties while violating them outright back home and in
countries where it's investing, lending money, and building
infrastructures. It's important to lay bare this track record
of deceit and hypocrisy. A government that can't honor its own
commitments, can't keep its own promises, has no credibility.
Congress should urge the Administration to actively engage
other member states at the United Nations to keep out
governments with worsening human rights conditions from the
Human Rights Council. Dig in, do not retreat from that
multilateral battleground to fight abusive government and stand
up for victims.
Chairman Rubio. We thank all of you for being here today.
We will now begin to the questions, to all four of them,
right? [Laughter].
All right. I am going to let--we are going to hear first on
the question round from the Cochairman.
And we thank you for opening the hearing today.
Representative Smith. Thank you for your leadership, Mr.
Chairman, which has been extraordinary for many, many years.
Let me just--there was an excellent and incisive op-ed in
The Washington Post on June 27th, co-wrote by Yang Jianli, who
is here, who has testified before this Commission on several
occasions, and Jared Genser.
And just very briefly reading from it, and you will see why
I am raising it in a moment, they pointed out, ``As China's
power and influence have increased, Western democracies have
collectively engaged on self-censorship on human rights,
choosing to prioritize what they have clearly believed to be
their more important interests over their purported values. In
the past five years, since Xi became president, discussions of
human rights have been relegated to fruitless dialogues with
the Chinese foreign ministry, which has never had any power
over domestic concern.''
``President Barack Obama,'' they went on, ``led the West in
playing down concerns with China on human rights and was
conspicuous by his unwillingness to help Liu, his fellow Nobel
Peace Prize laureate. He raised Liu Xiaobo's case publicly only
once after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And whatever
he might have said privately clearly had no impact. At the same
time, he did not join the 134 Nobel laureates to a letter to Xi
Jinping and did not publicly condemn Liu Xia's detention under
house arrest, and even threatened to veto a bill passed by the
Senate to rename the street in front of the Chinese embassy Liu
Xiaobo Plaza.''
Finally, ``Chinese security officials even exploited the
United States' repeated refusal to help the Lius in torture
sessions with detained Chinese dissidents. They explained to
their victims that they surely must have observed that
Washington had refused to help the world's only imprisoned
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and his wife--so what hope could
they expect when they disappeared, tortured or imprisoned? The
American refusal of support to Liu Xiaobo gave Xi Jinping
license to act with total impunity to repress domestic
dissent.''
In 1994 on one of many trips to the People's Republic of
China, I met with Wei Jingsheng for dinner. He had just been
let out of prison in an attempt by the Chinese Government, one
high-value political prisoner, to get Olympics 2000. They did
not, he got rearrested and was brutalized, finally came here on
humanitarian parole, near death.
He told me something I will never forget. When you are weak
and vacillating and kowtowing to this dictatorship, they beat
us more in the prison camps, in the laogai. When you are tough,
predictable, with professionalism, they beat us less.
We have seen eight years of retreat by the Obama
administration. As the chairman knows, he and I have co-chaired
hearings over these years pleading with the Obama
administration to take a tougher stance.
I believe and hope the long overdue sea change in support
for human rights in China may be changing. The President, of
the United States Donald Trump, has already denied funding to
the United Nations Population Fund, because of their horrific
complicity in the coercive population control program, a
program that began in 1979. There are now 62 million missing
girls. That is the disparity; there are far more that have been
killed simply because they are girls.
And yesterday, Secretary Tillerson named China as a tier-
three country, egregious violator of human trafficking.
We had hearing after hearing asking the previous
secretaries of state and the Obama administration to name China
tier three and sanction them and they would not do it. There
was one automatic downgrade that was required by the law, but
they would not do it because of the facts.
We think, I think that we may be seeing a change of heart
by the U.S. Government, which bodes well for the human rights
lawyers, the political prisoners, the religious prisoners. And
that is our hope.
Two things already: The President's administration, I said
before, Nikki Haley has said, yes, we do want him to be allowed
to leave along with his wife, Liu Xiaobo, and hopefully that
will be the case.
So, I do have just one question, and if there is time
permitting I have many more to follow after the distinguished
chairman.
But, Dr. Teng, you are one of the founders of the Human
Rights Accountability Center which is aiming at using the
Global Magnitsky Act to bring sanctions against China's human
rights violators. What has been your experience so far with the
new administration?
It is a new law, obviously. But is there an openness to
singling out and holding individuals to account for torture and
other gross violations of human rights?
Mr. Teng. Thank you very much. After the Global Magnitsky
Act enacted, we have founded the China Human Rights
Accountability Center this January. And we tried our best to
collect the information, the evidence of the human rights
abusers and corrupt officials, including the current minister
of public security.
And we have provided materials to the State Department. And
we have established a website.
So first is, it is difficult to collect some information
and sometimes it is hard to meet the requirement of the
American government.
And second, we understand that the President of the United
States has discretion power to use this Magnitsky Act more or
less. So, I do hope the American Congress, the CECC, can send a
clear message now to give pressure to the White House and the
President. Now it is very, very important to implement the
Global Magnitsky Act, especially regarding Chinese corrupt
officials and perpetrators because the United States should not
be a safe haven to Chinese perpetrators and corrupt officials.
Thank you.
Chairman Rubio. This is a general question for the whole
panel. If you speak to people involved in setting policy in the
new administration, their argument is they do want to raise
human rights issues, but they believe they are best raised one-
on-one in private meetings in an effort to allow the Chinese
Communist Party officials to save face, in essence to not be
embarrassed publicly, that they respond better to a private,
one-on-one settings as opposed to public denunciations of the
kind that we are conducting here today.
The flipside of it is, I know that one of the arguments
oppressors make, not just in China, but all over the world to
the oppressed is nobody cares about you, everyone has forgotten
about you, you might as well give up because you are just not
important enough, and the United States is not going to harm
their relations with us because of your case.
What is your view on, number one, the idea that somehow
human rights are best raised with the Chinese officials
privately versus the sort of more open, you know, more open
highlighting of these cases for the world to see?
And second, is what we do here, irrespective of the
administration, is what we do here, whether it is on this
Commission, on the Senate floor, on the House floor, in our
letters and our resolutions, does it matter, does it make a
difference?
I certainly know they read it in the Chinese Government
because I know they get upset about it, but what about the
activists? What impact does it have? Because it is important
for our colleagues sometimes to understand the impact that what
we do here is not simply symbolic. And if it is, I want to know
that, too, obviously.
So two separate questions: Is there the view of the private
versus public? And second, what about our role here in Congress
and when we have meetings on this Commission or make statements
or do resolutions, does that have an impact, does that matter?
And if you want to go first, Mr. Halliday.
Mr. Halliday. I cannot say what kind of efficacy there is
in private interventions, but China's government seems much to
prefer these.
However, in my empirical research and the work of our team,
speaking to many activist lawyers over many years, there is
absolutely no doubt in their minds that China must be spoken to
publicly and China must be publicly shamed.
I have no doubt that when the world speaks out loud and
publicly, China listens. China has a very thin skin.
When the American Bar Association awarded its international
human rights prize to detained lawyer activist Wang Yu, within
48 hours, the Global Times had an editorial trying to rebut
that recognition. That tells me that not only was China
listening, but China felt it had to respond.
And finally, the point that you made, Mr. Chairman, is that
in our interviews with notable activists, time and again they
have said that when there is a public call for their release or
public call for news about them, their treatment is improved.
They can perceptibly point to the day, the week, or the month
when their treatment changes as the international community
turns the spotlight publicly on their plight.
Mr. Teng. Yes. I think both private and public pressure
dialogues are useful. But I think, this kind of pressure should
not be only lip service. It should be giving real pressure to
the Chinese Government and there should be a follow up. So you
should send a clear message to Chinese Government that this
human rights issue or at least the political prisoners or one
certain case, you know, really matters. And it should have a
negative consequence if you do not respect your own
constitution or the international human rights standard.
And when I was detained and tortured the United States is
my important hope. So if the United States refuses to pay
attention to Chinese freedom and human rights and the people in
the prison, the people would be very hopeless.
Mr. Xia. I think that both private and publicly is needed.
Because for the private part, I think for the individual cases,
like Chen Guangcheng, the American government can talk to the
Chinese Government personally to save those individuals in
specific cases.
And for the public, sort of for the underprivileged people
who are under threat. So, I think the private should work for
the lawyers and human rights defenders who are already
persecuted and the public ways working for the underprivileged
people to protect them in the future.
And I think that the Congress is definitely working. It is
not just our voice being heard. But for example, I went to the
Chinese embassy with my petition and my signatures, but as a
Chinese legal citizen nobody would even see me. But I can talk
through here, and the Congress has the power to talk with the
White House, and the White House has the power to summon the
Chinese ambassador to respond to my petition. So, I definitely
think that Congress is doing some work.
Thank you very much.
Ms. T4Li. I think it is just a matter of accountability.
Like, whatever is privately said, nobody knows who is going to
hold people accountable, both the Chinese officials and the
United States officials. We do not know what was promised, what
was raised. And how can you hold anybody accountable if nothing
happens afterwards?
And the other issue is the information in bans. In China,
there is already so much secrecy, secret detentions, secret
interrogations, disappearances, and now they just revised the
government public information disclosure to make it practically
no information would be disclosed. So we already do not know so
many things and then we are going to advocate further secrecy
in human rights discussions?
I think we are not on the playing field when we are talking
about United States officials meeting with Chinese officials.
So, I think abusers of human rights are mostly afraid of the
sunshine, they are afraid of information, they are afraid of
the people knowing what they did and afraid of being asked to
change their behaviors.
Chairman Rubio. In the past when we have interacted with
rights activists and others in China, a number of them have
told us that they have experienced some level of harassment,
even when here in the United States, even on Capitol Hill
actually by those working on behalf of the oppressors.
But more importantly, the sort of implied threat that they
could reach them anywhere in the world, that if they had to
reach out and affect their lives in some way, they could do it,
that they really were not safe anywhere, these sort of threats.
I just wanted to ask because all of you have been so vocal
and open on some of these issues. Have any of you, if you are
comfortable sharing obviously, ever felt as if you have been
the subject of that sort of implied or direct threat of
intimidation, either here while present in the continental
United States, even perhaps because of your appearance here
today?
And if you are not comfortable saying, then obviously that
is an answer, too.
Mr. Xia. I would like to share some of my experience. After
my father was arrested, he was completely missing. We did not
receive any word, so we do not know where they took them or who
took them. That is one of the pressures we got.
And the police also summoned my mom to ask her to divorce
my father. And I was on a certain list, my mom, that is the
reason why my family sent me here to keep me safe.
But I think the first two years, I was threatened by the
government and I kept silent.
Chairman Rubio. I apologize. The first two years while you
were still in China or while you were here?
Mr. Xia. Here, yes. My first two years here.
Chairman Rubio. How were you threatened?
Mr. Xia. For example, the lawyer Wang Yu, his family
members just taken away by the secret agents in the airport.
And also, the police officers went to my family friends and
other family members to threaten them. And me and my mom kind
of got isolated. So, I am just worrying about everything and I
was scared. I just kept silent here.
But I have learned what is right to do and what is justice,
I would say, so the pressure turned to my power and I would
have a chance to speak here.
Chairman Rubio. So to be clear, while you were here already
for the--how long have you been here now?
Mr. Xia. Two years.
Chairman Rubio. In the two years that you have been here,
there were times where you chose, at least initially, to be
careful what you said or spoke out for fear of retribution
against friends and/or loved ones in China?
Mr. Xia. Yes. So, yes, basically, they just went to my mom
and I was scared. Yeah. Because when the police officer broke
into my house, I was there, I saw everything. And honestly, my
family did not share with me all the political stuff when I was
a child. So, I was scared badly, yes.
Chairman Rubio. Mr. Biao.
Mr. Teng. I have a lot of stories that my friends,
including Chen Guangcheng and some activists in the United
States, were intimidated by the Chinese Government when they
were here, even including some activists were attacked
physically when they were in a protest.
I myself, when I was----
Chairman Rubio. Attacked physically here in the United
States?
Mr. Teng. In California, yes, by some unidentified persons.
And obviously, they were hired by the Chinese Government or
Chinese embassy.
And when I was in Boston at Harvard Law School, my wife and
one of my daughters were banned from going to the United
States, so we were separated for nearly one year. Obviously,
the purpose of their travel ban is to silence me.
And last winter, my wife was fired by the company she was
working for because of the clear pressure from the Chinese
Government. So they use all kinds of collective punishment to
marginalize, to silence, to intimidate the human rights
activists in the United States.
Chairman Rubio. Okay. I know the Cochairman has further
questions.
Representative Smith. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Can I just ask you, Mr. Teng, you might want to speak to
this, how the crackdown on lawyers, and maybe, Mr. Halliday,
you as well, the crackdown on lawyers, how has it impacted on
civil society? It seems when you go after lawyers, the impact
has to be even more profound.
We know the NGO law, the religious freedom crackdown that
has gotten even worse on Xi Jinping, tightening the screws,
making it harder and harder.
And then when you are the last resort, and, Dr. Li, you
might want to speak to this as well, does this just chill civil
society?
Mr. Teng. Yes. Internally, there are altogether 300,000
lawyers, but only several hundred human rights lawyers. And
during the 709 crackdown, almost all active and famous human
rights lawyers were either arrested, disappeared, or
interrogated. So for the whole civil society, it is harder than
before to find a human rights lawyer to represent their cases,
so the vulnerable groups, the Tibetans, Uyghurs, Falun Gong and
other religious groups, the petitioners.
So they were also targeted, many of these other activists.
And I know house churches were arrested and sentenced. And
lawyers have more risk than before to take these sensitive
cases.
So the chilling effect of the roundup of human rights
lawyers is very strong. And many lawyers have to give up and
have to keep silent. But on the other hand, some new lawyers
can still stand up to join the human rights movement and some
new activists are courageous enough to stand up, to speak out.
So what the government wants to achieve is some total
silence, but I do not think the Communist Party can destroy the
whole civil society, the whole movement completely.
Thank you.
Representative Smith. Let me just--yes, Dr. Halliday?
Mr. Halliday. May I add that civil society comprises a vast
number of people in China. And following Dr. Teng Biao, the
Communist Party's apparent belief that it is possible
indefinitely to repress hundreds and hundreds of millions of
people who want to be able to express their views or who want
legal representation, seems highly questionable.
If you imagine the Christians alone, 80 million to 100
million Christians, China's largest civil society group, can
you entirely cut them off from any kind of connection or
leadership with these notable activist lawyers or grassroots
lawyers more broadly.
But it does seem clear to me that the intent of the Party
is to take lawyers who were previously able to represent people
in the kinds of grievances that Dr. Teng Biao has just
mentioned and suddenly change the minds of the Chinese people
about the role that these lawyers play.
As one eminent China specialist has said, in the past,
lawyers were seen as representatives of people who were
vulnerable and had grievances. Now, with charges of subversion
against lawyers China's leaders are saying that lawyers are
enemies of the state, lawyers are enemies of the Party, lawyers
are enemies of China.
So there seems a very deliberate effort simultaneously to
crush civil society, which I cannot believe can continue
indefinitely, and at the same time to disconnect civil society
from the kind of leadership offered by activist lawyers.
Representative Smith. Yes, Dr. Li.
Ms. Li. In fact, the crackdown on lawyers is shorthand
because a lot of them are not lawyers. For example, Teng Biao
mentioned Wu Gan who is still in detention facing trial. And
several of them have already been sentenced, like Hu Shigen
and--as I said, yes, these people are also--crackdown on
lawyers.
And the second point I think you brought up is the overseas
NGO law. You know, we have a lot of international NGOs
protesting. But in fact, the law most directly impacts domestic
Chinese NGOs because several leaders of those NGOs have been
detained, they have been interrogated and incriminated for
taking foreign funding or working with foreign organizations.
We should particularly mention Wang--and those are local
human rights NGO directors.
And the third point I want to say is, China has
systematically been revising or putting out new laws, like the
national security law, the international security law, the
anti-terror act, and one by one further restricting space for
civil society and using state security to persecute people in
not only physical space for organizing, for freedom of
association, but the online space for speech and information.
So what we are looking at, it is not only the unusual quiet
of civil society, but also the infrastructure changed to
further repress any development of civil society.
Representative Smith. I just have one more question and one
comment, if I could.
If there are any lobbyists or lawyers representing the
Chinese embassy here today, you do not have to stand up, but it
would be nice if you would. But I would ask you, and I mean
this with respect, would you be willing to take the petitions
with some 90,000 signatures back to the Chinese embassy?
Come and see me or one of the witnesses or Chairman Rubio
before the hearing is over. But it would be nice if you would
consider doing that.
I, too, have gone to the Chinese embassy to deliver
petitions. And we stood outside and never even got in through
the door. It was appalling, lack of diplomatic civility.
My final question would be to Dr. Li or anyone who would
like to speak to it. Back in the 1980s, I traveled, I have been
here since 1981, with Armando Valladares who Ronald Reagan so
wisely picked to be our head of delegation, made an ambassador.
He had spent, as Marco Rubio knows, who has been absolutely
tenacious in fighting against human rights abuse all over the
world, but including Cuba.
Armando Valladares wrote a book "Against All Hope" which
revealed the absolute and horrific use of torture and all kinds
of repression by the Castro brothers and the entire regime.
And my takeaway from that trip, besides pushing for human
rights in Cuba, was the hypocrisy of the United Nations Human
Rights Commission. That was replaced by the Human Rights
Council, which was with promises and bells and whistles about
how it would be different. And yet, rogue players, including
Cuba today, China today, sit on that panel and spend most of
their time criticizing Israel while China, even during its
periodic review, gets through almost unscathed.
On one of those more recent trips to Geneva for a Human
Rights Council meeting, I went to the press conference being
hosted by the Chinese and asked one question after another of
their ambassador who finally just shut down and left and walked
out the door because they did not want to answer any real
questions. They wanted softballs by a compliant press, kissy-
faced diplomacy by people who say, oh, are you not just great
and making progress, while people are being tortured and
treated with impunity.
My question would be, and, Dr. Li, you might want to speak
to is, as backers of the Convention Against Torture, Manfred
Nowak, I may be wrong on this, was the last one to actually get
into China as a special rapporteur. And that was, what, 2005?
And yet, we get all this talk and this talk of transparency and
openness, and yet special rapporteurs cannot get in to look at
the torture situation.
And I would just say parenthetically, when I was pushing
against what Google was doing in censoring the internet and
doing just what the Chinese Government wanted it to do, when
you went and put in ``torture,'' and I did it myself in a cafe
later on, years later in an internet cafe in Beijing, you write
in ``torture'' and you get Gitmo and you get what the Japanese
did, which was horrific, to the Chinese during the Second World
War. Nothing about Manfred Nowak's work or any of the other
commentaries on the pervasive use of torture by the Chinese.
How do we get the United Nations Human Rights Council--I
have brought it up personally with Prince Zeid, the high
commissioner for human rights, and said the respectability of
your group and the council itself as well as your bureaucracy
are compromised when you look the other way. And that is what
is happening through these horrific offenses now against human
rights defenders by human rights abusers with the prevalent use
of torture.
How do we reform the Human Rights Council and get the
United Nations to finally step up and say--as was said earlier
in testimony they are thin-skinned. When that ambassador walked
off the stage, it was, like, let us engage, however long it
takes, show me where I am wrong. You know, and I, of course,
have had a lot of documentation in my hand I handed to one of
his deputies as he walked out the door.
Ms. Li. When China was being voted for the last Human
Rights Council membership, among 193 countries, 185 voted for
China. The number could be 184, 186, but it is about that many.
So do the math, where are the pro-democracy, pro-human rights
governments? What are they voting? Whom are they voting?
So it is very difficult to fight at the United Nations for
human rights abusers, just as here, in this country,
everywhere. But that is not a reason for us to back down.
And the way I am saying this is, first, when the United
Nations high commissioner for human rights sends out a
statement about lawyers, about Liu Xiaobo, about Tibet, China
protests immediately. That means it matters. It matters when
voices are coming out of that forum.
During any kind of treaty review of China's obligations to
not only the Commission Against Torture, but socioeconomic
rights, rights of the child, they would send a huge delegation.
To do what? To work on the members of the treaty committees
one-on-one to issue threats, to basically just try to get them
to talk differently. And this did not work in most cases, I
think, as the members are pretty independent.
So what it means is that the Chinese Government does care
about face and they do not want to lose face in those forums.
That means it is important for us to present solid evidence at
the same time while the government is trying to influence those
reviewing processes, including the Universal Periodic Review.
Civil society should also use that forum. Other governments
should also use that forum to fight them nail and tooth to
really be using that forum rather than saying, OK, we give up,
when this forum is discredited, we are out of here.
Then you know what is going to happen? China is increasing
its donation to the United Nations and they are becoming ever
more active in the Human Rights Council and all the United
Nations human rights forums. And they are going to buy, they
are going to lobby, they are going to get votes from other
countries. And they are going to not only get away from their
human rights violations, but change that institution.
They wanted to rewrite the treaties, they wanted to do all
that to get away from basically. So, I think all this means it
is a very important battleground, we should not give up on it.
Mr. Halliday. Mr. Cochairman, may I also say that as a U.S.
citizen and as an observer of international influences on
China, I feel it is imperative that the U.S. Government should
maintain its leadership position in the United Nations Human
Rights Council.
I know you raised the question of reform and I know that
there are issues there. Nevertheless, it is critical that China
does not erode or dilute universal norms of law or lawyers or
rights.
And the Human Rights Council, despite its defects, is
nevertheless a prominent forum. It is a prominent forum not
only for states that will be outspoken and bold in support of
the international moral and political order, but it is a
crucial forum for non-state organizations to be able to bring
their observations into this United Nations forum. It asserts
global norms and maintains some kind of level of
accountability.
I would say, frankly, that for the United States to
surrender to an authoritarian country like China would be
defeatist and, indeed, ultimately, it will be
counterproductive, both for the foreign policy of the United
States, but also for the international moral and legal order.
Thank you.
Representative Smith. Thank you.
Chairman Rubio. I just have one follow-up question on that.
And that is, for example, about two weeks ago we saw the nation
of Panama break its relations with Taiwan for purposes of
appeasing a position that China had exerted influence.
I have had cities in my home state come to me and ask for
us to open the way for Chinese consulates. But, of course, the
price of opening a Chinese consulate in a city is the closure
of a Taiwanese one. So we know that these efforts that you have
described in terms of pressure diplomatically, they also exert
on nations outside that context and even here domestically.
And I was just curious whether anyone here had had an
experience here in the United States where you were either not
allowed to speak or disinvited at a university, to a business,
at a media outlet, anywhere where you felt that perhaps your
voice, that your potential hosts were dissuaded from giving you
an opportunity to participate because of pressure from China
here in the United States.
Mr. Teng. Yes. So, I have two examples. My scheduled
speeches were canceled by universities in the United States.
Chairman Rubio. Which ones, which universities?
Mr. Teng. One is Harvard.
Chairman Rubio. Harvard.
Mr. Teng. Yes.
Chairman Rubio. Why did they tell you they canceled the
speech?
Mr. Teng. I think two years ago when the president of
Harvard was visiting China and Chen Guangcheng and I were going
to give a speech at Harvard and they canceled it.
And I think last time when I was here, I gave a testimony
about my own book, it was canceled by ABA, American Bar
Association. So they invited me to write a book and I signed
the agreement, but they later rescinded the proposal saying
that publishing my book will endanger their programs in China.
Chairman Rubio. So the American Bar Association, which
represents lawyers and, therefore, defenders of justice,
canceled the publication of a book that they invited you to
write because they were afraid it endangered their programs in
China?
Mr. Teng. Yes.
Chairman Rubio. We did write a letter in that regard, but I
want people to hear that so that they understand that this is
not something happening halfway around the world. They are
doing it to people and organizations in the United States with,
I imagine, the threat of being unable to participate in
activities in China, either economic or other repercussions.
Is there any other--do you have another one, or those are
the two that come to mind? You said there were two
universities. Do you remember what the second one way?
Mr. Teng. No, no, just----
Chairman Rubio. Harvard.
Mr. Teng. Yes. So there are some other examples. They tried
to invite me, but because I am sensitive, I am going to talk
about human rights, politics, and they refuse to invite me.
And a lot of experiences that when I was giving a talk in a
university, the other department, like Chinese department or
Confucius Institute, they refuse to forward the posters and
they told their students not to come to my presentation.
Chairman Rubio. Did someone else have something to add? I
thought I--anyone else have a similar experience that they
could share?
Well, do you have any further questions?
Representative Smith. No, just thank you again, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Rubio. Well, I thank you all for being here. I
know at varying degrees, but across the board it takes some
level of real courage, we have heard, not just about the
threats of cancellation, but the real risks to family. And we
are blessed to live in this republic where oftentimes the worst
thing that happens is somebody says something really mean about
us on Twitter.
And these hearings are a good reminder that in many parts
of the world, including the most populous nation on earth, the
consequences of speaking out or dissent are significantly
higher. And I think it speaks to the essence of who we want to
be as a nation, as a people. Is America simply a geographic
territory? Or is it also an idea? And if we are an idea, then
that idea is that we believe all human beings are entitled to
rights that are given to them at birth by their Creator and
government's job is to protect them, not to decide them and
certainly not to deny them.
And we seek not to impose our point of view on the world.
Some people would disagree with that statement, but I am not.
Nor do we seek to contain China. China is an ancient,
revered culture with thousands of years of contribution to
mankind, some of the greatest inventions and innovations in
human history came from China. It is a nation with an
incredible history and I believe an incredible future.
I welcome China's rise in many ways. I do not welcome a
totalitarian state's rise. I do welcome China's rise because I
believe its people have the opportunity to contribute. And we
seek partnership with the people of China to solve--just think
about the problems in the world today. If somehow there was a
Chinese Government that cared about the rights of all mankind,
combined with it could work together with us, I think we would
be a lot further along on some of the major issues confronting
this country.
But when you do not care about the rights of your own
people, why would you care about the rights of anybody else?
And that is our problem with the Chinese Communist Party and
its leadership, not its people.
And I remain hopeful that that will change. But in the
interim, we will continue hopefully to speak on behalf of those
who agree with us, but do not have the opportunity to express
it openly in the nation of their birth.
So we are just grateful to all of you for being here and
for your time, for your testimony, for your contribution. We
look forward to sharing your testimony with our colleagues and
continuing to address these issues time and again.
And with that, thank you for starting the meeting today,
again, to our cochairman.
With that, our hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:55 p.m. the hearing was concluded.]
A P P E N D I X
=======================================================================
Prepared Statements
----------
Prepared Statement of Terence C. Halliday
june 28, 2017
introduction
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cochairman, and distinguished Members of the
Commission, I am privileged to be invited to participate in this
hearing. I have a long-standing admiration for the work of the
Commission.
In my opening remarks, I address the meaning and significance of
China's unprecedented crackdown on lawyers almost two years after its
onset in early July, 2015.
My comments are derived from the empirical research of my research
team into criminal procedure law and criminal defense lawyers over the
past twelve years. Our findings, published in our book, Criminal
Justice in China, concludes that China's legal system and legal
profession have come an enormous distance since enactment of the 1979
Criminal Procedure Law. Nevertheless, on a critical number of issues
integral to the defense of basic legal freedoms, China has turned away
from reform both in its law and its treatment of a key segment of the
legal profession.
A sudden turning point occurred on July 9, 2015 when China launched
a nationwide crackdown on activist lawyers.
The `709 crackdown,' as it has been colloquially labeled, has been
unprecedented in scale and severity. Within days, hundreds of lawyers
across China were detained, disappeared and interrogated. Lawyers have
been intimidated, tortured, charged with serious crimes and sanctioned
severely.
Why did this crackdown occur?
Research on activist lawyers reveals deep grievances held by
hundreds of millions of Chinese who suffer from health-threatening
pollution, from takings of their houses and land, from widening
inequality, from religious controls and persecution, from
discriminatory treatment of minorities, from inadequate protection of
workers and women, and from exploitation and vulnerability of migrant
laborers, among others.
The sheer quantity of disaffected and angry populations can fuel
widespread unrest. Lawyers often become the help of last resort when
every other channel has failed. Therefore, over the past several years
the Chinese Community Party has faced a double-threat to its survival:
on the one hand, economic and social problems appear to be multiplying
and intensifying; on the other hand, lawyers increasingly have been
articulating and expressing those grievances through law in highly
visible ways.
What precipitated the crackdown on lawyers on July 9, 2015?
1. Over the last several years, activist lawyers significantly
increased in numbers. Hundreds of new activists, many of them young and
well-educated, signaled their willingness to join the frontline.
2. Lawyers magnified their ability to mobilize. Since 2011 lawyers
increasingly came together as large defense teams in difficult trials.
Through social media, activist lawyers could create instant crowds to
rush to a courthouse or defend a lawyer being harassed by police.
Nationwide online networks could mobilize hundreds of lawyers for new
cases or emergency situations.
3. The power of social media multiplied the impact of a new type of
lawyer . So-called ``die-hard'' lawyers actively used social media and
street theatre to activate supporters and expose problems in defending
their clients. Some lawyers had accumulated thousands or even millions
of followers on Weibo, China's equivalent to Twitter.
Clearly, China's leaders felt vulnerable to activist, die-hard and
ordinary lawyers' enhanced powers to mobilize publics.
What motivates these lawyers to exhibit such courage in the face of
a regime that does not hesitate to use inhumane and even life-
threatening measures against its opponents?
Our research reveals that courage for many lawyers arises from
their own life experiences, such as harms to parents during the
Cultural Revolution, participation in the 1989 Tiananmen student
movement, or shocking experiences in their legal practice.
Many lawyers build their courageous representation upon legal
ideals that underwrite a good political society. First, they insist on
protection of basic legal freedoms, such as right to be represented by
a lawyer, due process in trials, and fair adjudication. They insist
upon freedoms of speech, association and religion. Second, they are
committed to a vibrant civil society as it is expressed through
voluntary associations and an open public sphere. Third, these activist
lawyers strongly oppose arbitrary executive power and call for checks
and balances within the state.
Our research documents that many lawyers, notable and ordinary
practitioners, draw their courage also from their Christian faith.
Christians insist upon the values of equality, most importantly, that
in the eyes of God and the eyes of the law, said one, ``Chairman Mao is
as equal as me.'' They champion the Judeo-Christian emphasis on a
political and legal order that delivers justice, often quoting, like
Martin Luther King, the biblical prophets Amos and Micah. They believe
in fairness--that justice should be available reliably and fairly to
all, whether they are Han Chinese or Tibetan, Party members or Falun
Gong members. Finally, they hold China's law accountable to God's law.
I consider it probable that Party leaders fear Christian lawyer-
leaders who have strong relationships with Protestant churches across
China and some who have significant international connections.
What does the lawyer crackdown tell the world about China's future?
Viewing China through the lens of courageous lawyers reveals that
legal change has turned toward repression, a repression which has taken
deeply sobering turns since mid-2015.
Nonetheless, deep impetuses for change remain within China.
Repressive actions may be self-subversive. Notable activists refuse to
surrender easily or to go quietly. Their wives, their comrades, spring
to their defense. Significant numbers of grassroots lawyers continue to
harbor visions of alternative legal-political futures. An international
community ratchets up its efforts at solidarity, pressure and support
for defense of lawyers.
Where goes China may depend very considerably on where go its
lawyers. Will it follow long peaceful paths of reform and the expansion
of basic legal freedoms offered by the activist lawyers. Or will China
lurch towards a violent explosive path that could lead to fearful
unpredictable outcomes?
recommendations
The United States Government and the international community of
states, international organizations, and publics should stand in
solidarity with China's activist lawyers and hold China's practices
strictly accountable to global standards, most importantly those
inscribed in U.N. conventions, principles, and institutions. These are
applicable to all persons, all places and all states without exception.
The United States Government should maintain its leadership
position in the United Nations Human Rights Council and other
authoritative international bodies so that China does not erode or
dilute universal norms of law, lawyers, and rights.
The United States Government should use all means at its dispoal,
including joint statements with other states, bilateral dialogues, and
monitoring by U.S. agencies to press China to adhere to global
standards in its treatment of all its lawyers, most especially those
swept up in the crackdown.
The current administration should strengthen the capacity of the
U.S. Department of State and other executive agencies to monitor
treatment of vulnerable populations in China and particularly lawyers
who represent those populations.
U.S. Government agencies, including the CECC, should mobilize U.S.
firms operating in China to recognize the dangers their employees and
partners face as China offers less and less protections to persons
inside China who cross invisible lines being drawn and redrawn by
China's security apparatus.
The United States should lead other states in the call for release
of activists being punished for their rights defense work, and reject
the criminalization of their legitimate exercise of rights protected by
Chinese and international law.
______
Prepared Statement of Teng Biao
june 28, 2017
Mr. Chairman, Mr. Cochairman, and distinguished Members of CECC,
I'm honored to be invited to testify at this specially important
hearing. The coming July 9, the 2nd anniversary of 709 crackdown, there
will be events in DC, HK, Taiwan and some European cities to mark the
inaugural china human rights lawyers day, which I have been organizing
and coordinating for months.
Chinese human rights lawyers have since 2003 become one of the most
active and effective forces in China defending rights and freedom, and
inevitably, have been the target of government's persecution since the
beginning of the rights defense movement in China. Gao Zhisheng and
other lawyers were put into prison and brutally tortured. Because of my
work of promoting human rights and democracy since 2003, I was
disbarred, banned from teaching and eventually fired, banned from
travelling, and kidnapped for three times by the secret police. In 2001
I was detained in a black jail for 70 days in an extreme form of
solitary confinement, physically and mentally tortured. My wife and
daughter were banned from travelling abroad, and my wife was fired the
company she worked for due to the pressure from Chinese government.
Collective punishment is frequently used by Chinese authorities to
maximize intimidation. The purpose of torture and collective punishment
was to make me stop my human rights work but I didn't.
The persecution of rights lawyers reached its peak on July 9, 2015,
known as the ``709 crackdown.'' More than 320 human rights lawyers were
kidnapped, detained or interrogated. Eight of them are still in prison.
Wang Quanzhang is still disappeared since July 28, 2015,his family and
lawyers don't even know whether he's alive or dead. Dozens of lawyers
were severely tortured, including beatings, electric shocks, sleep
deprivation, prolonged interrogations, death threats, months or years
of solitary confinement, humiliation, forcible televised confessions,
so on and so on. Notably, it has been confirmed that many lawyers and
activists were force-fed with medicines which caused them muscle pain,
blurred vision and other physical and mental harm.
The prison conditions and the treatment in detentions are extremely
inhuman and cruel in China. Just the day before yesterday we received
news that Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo has been diagnosed with late-stage
liver cancer. Ill treatment in custody may well have contributed to the
disease; we know for certain deliberate neglect aggravated the cancer,
given how advanced the disease appears. I request sincerely that you
esteemed members of the Commission and all people who support freedom
in China, please do something to urge Chinese government to
immediately& unconditionally allow Liu Xiaobo to obtain medical
treatment wherever he wants.
Suppression has increased markedly not only against human rights
lawyers, dissidents and NGOs, but also against media, churches,
religious groups labeled ``evil cults'' including FalunGong,
petitioners, activist netizens, liberalized scholars and artists. In a
report published in February 2017, Chinese Human Rights Defenders
(CHRD) documented the deteriorating situation of rights defenders and
NGOs. Many new and ongoing cases of enforced disappearance, arbitrary
detention, and acts of torture were reported, and the number of
criminal detention and conviction, especially the use of ``endangering
state security charge'' were increased. A human rights activist felt
the difference, ``There are no more `gray areas.' To advocate for human
rights in China today, you must be willing to accept the reality that
the government views your work as `illegal'.'' (CHRD 2017) Chinese
government has obviously tightened control over information
dissemination, teaching materials, publishing and social media. Some
laws and regulations, with a clear purpose of controlling and
oppressing the rights defense movement and civil society, were put into
effect. State Security Law, Foreign NGO Management Law, Charity Law,
Cyber security Law, etc, have already curtailed the development of
rights activism and civil society, putting fundamental rights and
freedom in danger.
The ``Rights Defence Movement'' (weiquan yundong) has emerged since
early 2000s as a new focus of the Chinese democracy movement, after the
Xidan Democracy Wall movement in late 1970s and the Tian'anmen
Democracy movement in 1989. The main political-social factors behind
the rise of China's rights defence movement are as follows: recovery of
legal professions, new ideological discourse, new space for traditional
media and the rise of the internet and social media, the development of
the market economy, and China's entry to global economy; the
dissemination of liberalism ideas and expanded consciousness of civil
rights.
Let's take a brief look at the history of the Chinese Communist
Party. When the CCP was facing a deep political and economical crisis
in the late 1970s after waves of political campaigns and the brutal
Cultural Revolution, it had to introduce a process of legalization and
marketization. Legalization was necessary for establishing social order
and market economy and thus was beneficial to the political system when
mass mobilization was not applicable to the political-social situation
any more. Millions of laws and regulations were made, legal professions
were recovered, but the CCP never meant to accept a democratic
transition or a system with rule of law. Oppositional politics is
prohibited, but as an unintended consequence, we lawyers and rights
advocates tried our best to use existing legal channels to defend human
rights and freedom. Starting with a narrow space, the rights defense
movement attracted more and more supporters, such as lawyers, bloggers,
pro-democracy scholars, petitioners, persecuted religious groups,
victims of human rights abuse, and political dissidents. These are
incredible achievements under such a repressive regime, for the past 14
years, the development of the rights defense movement was expressed
through at least four trends, namely, organization (zuzhi hua), street
activism (jietou hua), politicization (zhengzhi hua) and
internationalization (guoji hua).
There is a clear limitation to China's legalization, that is one-
party rule, the number one priority of the CCP. Once the CCP senses the
use of law could be a potential challenge, it never hesitates to nip it
in the bud. Not long after the emergence of the rights defense
movement, the Chinese government saw it as a real threat to the regime
and never stopped its crackdown. When Xi jinping took his office, what
the CCP was facing was increasing crisis: political, economical, social
and ideological crisis. The calculation of Xi jinping and top CCP
leaders is that without a ``war on law'' to destroy the resisting
ability of the social and political movement a color revolution will
occur and thus the monopoly of power of the CCP will be in danger. This
is the political background of ``709 crackdown'', the worst crackdown
on lawyers since the recovery of judicial system in late 1970s.
Upon the more brutal suppression and tighter social control under
Xi Jinping's rule since 2013, some analysts asserted ``the end of the
rights defense movement'', but, in my opinion, the idea of the rights
defense movement is still showing its exuberant vitality, the spirit of
the rights defense movement is still gaining moral and social support,
and the persistence of the rights defense movement is still shaping
China's politics like unstoppable lightning in the darkness.
Once again, the CCP's war on law makes it urgent and necessary to
change U.S. human rights policy towards China.
In 1989, the CCP crushed a non-violent democracy movement with
machine guns and tanks, killing hundreds of students and civilians. 28
years have passed since the Tiananmen massacre and it is a shock to
many people when they take a retrospective look at what happened to the
relationship between China and the rest of the world. In 1989, all
democracies condemned the Tiananmen massacre, sanctioned Chinese
dictators and supported Tiananmen activists in jail or in exile. Yet
very soon Western leaders couldn't wait to welcome Chinese butchers and
dictators, rolling out their red carpet, replete with eager hugs and
state banquets. In 1994 U.S. Government granted permanent most-favored-
nation (MFN) status to China to delink human rights to trade, despite
protests from human rights groups. Then China was allowed to enter the
WTO and international markets. China was given the opportunity to host
Olympics, World Expo, APEC and G20. China was voted in as a member of
United Nations Human Rights Council again and again.
Now China has become the second largest economy. China is playing
an active and aggressive role on the international stage. The Asian
International Investment Bank (AIIB), ``One Belt One Road'', South
China Sea aggression, internet sovereignty, cyber attacks, abducting
overseas booksellers and activists, Confusion institutes which erode
academic freedom--the list goes on. China is demanding a re-write of
international norms, wanting to create a new international order in
which rule of law is manipulated, human dignity is debased, democracy
is abused, and justice is denied. In this international order,
corruption and persecution are ignored, perpetrators are immune, and
dictatorial regimes are united and smugly complacent.
China then gained the clout to say no to the West and the West
kowtows to China through self-censorship and a policy of appeasement.
Besides short-term pragmatic interests, I would like to point out that
U.S. human policy towards China has long been based on a series of
erroneous theories and mistaken presumptions regarding Chinese politics
and Chinese society. I don't have time to go into details but the
erroneous theories cover misunderstandings of China's market,
constitution, rule of law, international accountability, NGO, so on and
so on.
I'd like to offer a few recommendations here:
Link HR to trade and other important issues that the
CCP cares about.
Implement the Global Magnitsky Act to ban Chinese
perpetrators and corrupt officials from entering the United
States.
Punish U.S. and western business which cooperate with
Chinese authorities and participate in human rights abuses.
End the 110 Confucius Institutes in the United States
educational institutions.
Don't fund the oppressor.
Support real NGOs not GONGOs.
Name and shame.
Expel China from the United Nations Human Rights
Council.
A powerful and autocratic China will bring calamities to mankind.
Supporting democracy and human rights in China not only corresponds to
American declared values; it will also benefit American politics,
society and economics in the long term. Please stand on the side of
Chinese people, not on the side of Chinese Communist Party. China
should be represented by the human rights lawyers, activists,
dissidents and all Chinese people fighting for freedom and democracy,
not the illegitimate Party and government.
june 28, 2017
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Prepared Statement of Xiaorong Li
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Prepared Statement of Hon. Marco Rubio, a U.S. Senator From Florida;
Chairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China
june 28, 2017
Good afternoon. This is a hearing of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China. The title of this hearing is ``Gagging the
Lawyers: China's Crackdown on Human Rights Lawyers and Its Implications
for U.S.-China Relations.''
We will have one panel testifying today. The panel will feature:
Terence Halliday: Co-director of the Center on Law &
Globalization at the American Bar Foundation, and Co-author of
the book Criminal Defense in China: The Politics of Lawyers at
Work;
Teng Biao: Chinese human rights lawyer; Visiting
Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study; and Co-founder of
the Open Constitution Initiative and China Human Rights
Accountability Center;
Xia Chongyu: Son of imprisoned human rights lawyer Xia
Lin (pronounced SHAH LIN) and student at Liberty University;
and
Xiaorong Li: independent scholar; formerly with the
Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy at the University of
Maryland.
Thank you all for being here.
Before we move to the topic at hand I want to take a moment to
acknowledge the news this week regarding the reported transfer of 2010
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo from prison to a hospital for
treatment of late-stage liver cancer. This should not be confused with
an act of mercy on the part of the Chinese government. His eight years
of imprisonment--due to his eloquent appeals for non-violent political
reform and protection of basic rights--remain a travesty of justice and
a stain on China's rights record. And Dr. Liu's medical parole is not
the equivalent of an early release from his prison sentence or that he
has the freedom to meet with his wife, Liu Xia, other family members
and friends. I've urged President Trump to seek the humanitarian
transfer of Dr. Liu and his wife to the United States to explore what
medical options may be available.
I'd like to briefly read a quote from an editorial that ran in the
Communist-Party controlled Global Times. The writers gloated, ``China
has not collapsed as the West forecast in the 1980s and 1990s, but has
created a global economic miracle. A group of pro-democracy activists
and dissidents lost a bet and ruined their lives. Although Liu was
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he is likely to face tragedy in the
end.'' Any notion that Dr. Liu will receive adequate medical care under
the supervision of his captors is absurd. I was pleased to read this
morning that newly arrived U.S. Ambassador Terry Branstad has urged the
Chinese government to allow Dr. Liu to seek treatment overseas.
As the Nobel Committee noted, Dr. Liu exemplifies the ``long and
non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.'' That same
spirit animates the work of the Chinese rights lawyers we will hear
about today.
July 9, 2017, marks the two-year anniversary of the start of what
has been described as an unprecedented nationwide crackdown on human
rights lawyers and legal advocates in China--an event that's come to be
known as the ``709'' crackdown.
While perhaps unprecedented in scale and coordination--nearly 300
rights advocates were detained, summoned for questioning, or
disappeared--the crackdown began much earlier.
Xi Jinping's rule has been marked by extensive campaigns to silence
political dissent, curtail civil society, and ensure ideological
loyalty to and conformity with the Chinese Communist Party. No sector
of society is untouched--business leaders, bloggers and social media
users, university professors, journalists and religious adherents have
all been targeted.
But China's rights defenders and lawyers have been the ``tip of the
spear'' for even longer--as our second witness, Dr. Teng Biao, can no
doubt attest. This small, but tenacious group is closely linked to the
growth in legal rights consciousness among ordinary Chinese citizens.
China's ``rights defense'' movement converged around incidents of
injustice that resulted from the single-minded drive of the Chinese
government and the Communist Party for rapid economic growth without
political reform.
The victims of injustice included farmers who lost land from
government expropriation; urban residents forcibly evicted without fair
compensation; migrant workers trying to recoup unpaid wages; teachers,
laid-off workers, and army veterans who lost their pensions; and
parents whose children were made ill from ingesting contaminated milk
powder. The movement has expanded to support free speech, the pro-
democracy aspirations of Hong Kongers, ethnic minority rights, and
other issues.
Our first witness, Dr. Halliday, has conducted literally hundreds
of interviews with these men and women--a group bound together by their
shared conviction regarding the importance of protecting basic legal
freedoms in a system where rule of law remains aspirational at best.
Among the lawyers featured in his latest book are those whose names
and stories have captured headlines for the last two years. Their
unjust and unexpected detentions nearly two years ago was, for many,
the start of a long and harrowing ordeal marked by months in isolation,
torture, coerced ``confessions'' and other forms of mistreatment. Some
of these lawyers, like Jiang Tianyong--whose wife I had the privilege
of meeting earlier this year-- remain in detention. Others, like Li
Heping, are no longer in captivity, but the brutality they experienced
left them visibly physically altered. Many have been disbarred and will
never again practice law in China. Still others live under constant
surveillance and harassment.
It is tempting in the face of China's worsening and increasingly
brazen human rights violations to grow disheartened. Which is why I
think it is equally important to spend some time today examining
another part of this crackdown that is unprecedented--and that is the
response of some of the family members of those detained.
By their own telling, many of the wives of these rights lawyers had
not previously been involved in their husband's efforts to pursue
justice and accountability from their own government. But as the
present system conspired against them and their families, they became
advocates in their own right. In case after case, these women took up
the mantle of advocacy on behalf of their husbands. Their personal
accounts of intimidation and harassment--of landlords refusing them
housing, of children denied entry to local schools, of movement
restricted and lives lived under constant surveillance--coupled with
their compelling public defense of their husband's innocence, has, in
the words of Dr. Halliday, opened up, ``new line of struggle that we
have not seen before in China''.
Similar courage and boldness is on display today with the testimony
of Xia Chongyu about his father's plight.
Even for those of us who hold steadfastly to the view that U.S.
foreign policy must be infused with a principled defense of universal
human rights and the promotion of basic freedoms, there remains the
notion that change in China will ultimately come from within. I agree.
And China's rights defense lawyers are at the vanguard in pressing for
systemic change, in seeking accountability and redress, and in working
toward a day when China is a nation where the law is used to protect
rights not suppress them. It is our duty to stand with them in this
monumental task.
______
Prepared Statement of Hon. Christopher Smith, a Representative From New
Jersey; Cochairman, Congressional-Executive Commission on China
june 28, 2017
Chinese officials repeatedly tell me I should focus more on the
positive aspects of China and not dwell so much on the negative.
That is an extremely difficult task when you read the horrifying
and sadistic accounts of torture and enforced disappearances
experienced by lawyers and rights advocates.
It is hard to be positive when you contemplate Liu Xiaobo's cancer
diagnosis and the fact that China effectively silenced its most
brilliant democracy advocate.
The empty chair at Oslo speaks volumes about the Communist Party's
abiding fear that freedom will upend the power of the privileged few
when they should be seeing liberty as a path to greater peace and
prosperity.
At a hearing last month in the Subcommittee on Global Human Rights
in the House Foreign Affairs Committee, I heard testimony from the
wives of five detained or disappeared human rights lawyers. These
courageous women have become effective advocates from their husbands
and for all those detained in the ``709'' crackdown.
They described in horrifying detail the physical, mental, and
psychological torture experienced by their husbands, including marathon
interrogation sessions, sleep deprivation, beatings, crippling leg
tortures, and prolonged submersion in water.
Many of their husbands also were forced to take alarming quantities
of drugs including tranquilizers, barbiturates, antipsychotic drugs,
and other unknown substances daily.
What they described was shocking, offensive, immoral, and inhumane.
It is also possible that Chinese officials believe the international
community will not hold them accountable.
After the hearing, I wrote to the heads of the American Medical
Association, the American Psychological Association, the World Health
Organization, as well as to Secretary of State Tillerson and Ambassador
Nikki Haley.
I have asked for condemnation of the practice of torture and
medical experimentation on prisoners of conscience. I have also ask for
investigations so that serious questions will be asked of the Chinese
government.
Finally, I have asked for accountability. I have urged Secretary
Tillerson to start investigations under the Global Magnitsky Act, a
bill that I lead on the House side last year, so that any Chinese
government officials complicit in torture should never be allowed to
benefit from entry to the United States or access to our
financialsystem.
The issues of torture and ``residential surveillance in a
designated location''--effectively enforced disappearances--will be
priorities of mine and of this Commission moving forward. I believe
these are issues where diverse and multi-level coalitions can be built
to raise issues with the Chinese government.
I would also like to do more to prioritize the protection of human
rights lawyers and their families. At the hearing last month I heard
the phrase ``The War on Law'' used to describe the systematic effort to
eviscerate the network of human rights lawyers.
That phrase struck me because, though the number of human rights
lawyers in China is small, what they stand for was nothing less than
the rule of law for everyone--particularly those persecuted or
aggrieved by the Communist Party.
They stand for the right of everyone in China--religious believers,
ethnic minority, petitioners, labor activists, or victim of corruption
or a barbaric population control polices--to have a fair hearing, due
process, and a justice that is not politicized.
The Communist Party sees this as a dangerous idea. It means that
they should be accountable to the people--to hundreds of millions of
people in fact seeking redress for persecution and Party corruption.
Xi Jinping is feted in Davos for his commitments to openness and
the rule of law, but it is rule of law for the few and privileged and
rule by law for the rest.
The failure to implement the rule of law, to favor a type of
lawlessness in the pursuit of keeping the Communist Party in power, has
serious and lasting implications for U.S.-China relations.
We must recognize, after the failure of two and half decades of the
engagement policies, that China's domestic repression drives its
external aggression, its mercantilist trade policies, and its
unimaginable decisions to keep propping up a murderous North Korean
regime.
I know the Chinese government wants me to focus on positive things.
I think one positive development here is that the spouses (and
families) of rights advocates and lawyers have given Beijing a rightly
deserved headache. They have refused to be silent about their spouse's
detentions or disappearances and have used the Internet and media to
get out their message.
This trend is something new, something different, something we need
to honor because they are under great pressure to be silent--through
intimidation, harassment, and detention.
I want to say to our witness Chongyu that we appreciate your
testimony here today and the fact that you are speaking out on behalf
of your father. We want you to know that this Commission is an advocate
for you, your family, and your father.
If you or your family face reprisals because of your testimony here
today, the Congress will take it as a personal affront to the work of
this body.
I know your petition has gathered 94,000 signatures, please make
sure that my name is 94,001.
The one thing that gives me hope is that the people of China long
for liberty, justice and opportunity.
The need for principled and consistent American leadership is more
important than ever, as China's growing economic power, and persistent
diplomatic efforts, have succeeded in dampening global criticism of its
escalating repression and failures to adhere to universal standards.
The United States must be a beacon of liberty and a champion of
individual rights and freedoms. The United States must also continue to
be voice for those silenced, jailed, or repressed in China.
We cannot . . . will not . . . forget those in China bravely
seeking liberty and justice and the unalienable rights we all share.
Like China's human rights lawyers--and like Liu Xiaobo--those who
bravely seek peaceful change in China.
It is their stand for liberty, human rights, and the rule of law
that remain the best hope for a peaceful and prosperous future for the
United States and China.
Submissions for the Record
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``Gagging the Lawyers: China's Crackdown on Human Rights Lawyers and
Implications for U.S.-China Relations''
JUNE 28, 2017
Witness Biographies
Terence Halliday, Co-Director of the Center on Law and
Globalization and Research Professor at the American Bar
Foundation
Terence Halliday is Co-Director, Center on Law and
Globalization, and Research Professor, American Bar Foundation;
Honorary Professor, School of Regulation and Global Governance,
Australian National University; and Adjunct Professor of
Sociology, Northwestern University. His most recent books are
Criminal Justice in China (2016) and Global Lawmakers: How
International Organizations Shape World Markets (2017). He has
consulted with the World Bank and China's State Council Office
on Restructuring the Economic System and has written
extensively on China's corporate bankruptcy law. He leads a
research team on domestic and international mobilization for
basic legal freedoms in China.
Dr. Teng Biao, Chinese Human Rights Lawyer, Visiting
Scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, Co-Founder of the
Open Constitution Initiative and the China Human Rights
Accountability Center
Dr. Teng Biao is a well-known human rights lawyer, a
visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, and co-
founder of both the Open Constitution Initiative and China
Human Rights Accountability Center. Dr. Teng holds a Ph.D. from
Peking University Law School and has been a visiting scholar at
Yale Law School. His research interests are in human rights,
judicial systems, constitutionalism, and social movements. As a
human rights lawyer, Dr. Teng is a promoter of the Rights
Defense Movement and a co-initiator of the New Citizens'
Movement in China. In 2003, he was one of the ``Three Doctors
of Law'' who submitted a petition to the National People's
Congress about the unconstitutional detentions of internal
migrants. Since then, Dr. Teng has provided counsel in numerous
other human rights cases, including those of Chen Guangcheng,
rights defender Hu Jia, and many other religious freedom and
death penalty cases.
Xia Chongyu, Son of imprisoned human rights lawyer Xia Lin
and Student at Liberty University
Xia Chongyu is a student at Liberty University. As of June
2017, a petition he initiated urging the Chinese government to
release his father, had generated more than 90,000 signatures.
His father, Xia Lin, is a human rights lawyer with more than 20
years' experience working on public interest and politically
sensitive cases. His clients have included prominent artist Ai
Weiwei; public interest lawyer Pu Zhiqiang; and Guo Yushan, a
think tank founder who helped Chen Guangcheng escape to the
United States Embassy Beijing, among others. The Beijing No. 2
Intermediate People's Court convicted Xia of ``fraud'' in
September 2016 and sentenced him to 12 years in prison. The
sentence was reduced to 10 years on appeal in April 2017.
Xiaorong Li, Independent scholar and former researcher at
the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the
University of Maryland
Xiaorong Li is an independent scholar and former researcher
at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the
University of Maryland focusing on ethics and theories of human
rights and democracy, with a regional focus on Asia/China. She
is the author of the book Ethics, Human Rights, and Culture and
has written numerous articles on human rights, international
justice, and women's rights, including on China's horrific
population control policies. Her writing has been published in
the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism and NYR Daily, the blog of
The New York Review of Books. She is also one of the founding
members of several non-government human rights organizations.
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