Category: East Asia

Detained democracy activist Xu Zhiyong will stand trial for subversion in the eastern Chinese province of Shandong on June 22, lawyers and a rights group said on Friday. “Linyi Intermediate People’s Court has decided that Xu Zhiyong’s case will be heard in Courtroom No. 3 of the Linshu County People’s Court at 9:00 am next Wednesday,” the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said via its website and Twitter account, citing defense attorney Zhang Lei. Xu, who has already served jail time for launching the New Citizens’ Movement for greater official accountability, was detained in early 2020 and held on suspicion of “subversion of state power” alongside Ding and other activists who held a dinner gathering in the southeastern port city of Xiamen on Dec. 13, 2019. Xu’s pretrial conference was held on Friday, with that of human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi scheduled for Monday, lawyers told RFA, citing a document issued by Shandong’s Linyi Intermediate People’s Court. Both men were held incommunicado, denied permission to meet with either family members or a lawyer for two years, under “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL) and criminal detention. They haven’t been seen or heard from since their indictments in August 2021. Trumped-up charges U.S.-based rights lawyer Wu Shaoping said the court has indicated that Xu and Ding will be tried separately. “According to the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Law, the two cases should be tried together, because they both resulted from the defendants attending the Xiamen gathering,” Wu told RFA. “I believe that most of the evidence in their cases is the same,” he said, questioning whether the two men would receive a fair trial, saying that the defense attorneys had been pressured into removing large amounts of “illegal” evidence from their case files in an impossibly short amount of time. “Really, the authorities just want to go through the motions and push this complicated case through a quick trial,” Wu said. Rights lawyer Wang Yu said Xu and Ding are being tried on trumped-up charges. “These are trumped-up charges, and … a lot of people in China want to hear the facts of the case … but the facts will only be established if there is a joint trial,” she said. CHRD had earlier called for Xu and Ding’s immediate and unconditional release, and for an independent investigation into their accounts of torture while in detention. “Xu and Ding have told their lawyers that Chinese authorities subjected them to torture and other ill-treatment,” the group said in a statement on its website. “CHRD reiterates its appeal to the UN experts to urge the [Chinese] government … to launch a prompt and impartial investigation of police officers and/or other state actors accused of subjecting Xu Zhiyong, Ding Jiaxi, and others to torture, and prosecute any individuals who have been found to have violated Chinese law and international law,” it said. Torture details Meanwhile, the Linyi municipal prosecutor’s office has moved ahead with the trial of Xu’s partner, the rights activist Li Qiaochu for “incitement to subvert state power.” The case against Li rests on claims that she wrote and edited Xu’s personal blog and uploaded articles he wrote there. Li, who was recently given the Cao Shunli Memorial Award for her rights activism, was initially detained on Feb. 6, 2021 on suspicion of “subversion of state power,” and held at the Linyi Detention Center, then at a psychiatric facility. Her detention came after she posted details of torture allegations by Xu and Ding. U.S.-based lawyer Teng Biao said that a documentary about Xu’s political activism, made by fellow activist and poet Chen Jiaping, will soon be available outside China. “It documents the whole of Xu Zhiyong’s civil rights protection movement … including many activities before he was imprisoned in 2013 and an interview after he was released from prison in 2017,” Teng told RFA. “Chen Jiaping, the director of the film, was arrested by the Chinese police for a period of time because of the film.” “Given that Xu Zhiyong’s pretrial conference is today, we wanted to let more people know what Xu Zhiyong did,” he said. Teng added: “Xu Zhiyong is a human rights lawyer and a legal scholar who played a very, very important role in the Chinese human rights movement by civil society. He was sentenced to 4 years in prison from 2013 to 2017. Now he is facing trial.” “A lot of citizens have come together in a very difficult and dangerous situation to campaign for basic human rights and the rule of law in China,” Teng said. Xu has never advocated violence, and has paid a very heavy price for advocating for his personal ideals, he said. “This current charge of subversion of state power is totally a case of political persecution … he didn’t commit any crime at all, of course he didn’t,” Teng said. “He is respected and followed by many people.” Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

Chinese authorities arrested a young Tibetan language activist six months ago, and his whereabouts remain unknown, even to his family, sources in Tibet told RFA. Lodoe, son of Rigzin, is a university graduate in his 30s from Seshul county (in Chinese Shiqu), part of the Garze (Ganzi) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Sichuan province. As he is fluent in both Chinese and Tibetan, the government offered him a job, which he turned down to advocate for the preservation of the Tibetan language. “Lodoe was arrested unexpectedly by the Chinese authorities six months ago from Seshul County and taken to Chengdu, [Sichuan’s capital],” a Tibetan source in Tibet told RFA’s Tibetan Service, on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “Since then, his whereabouts and condition are unknown. His family has learned from some sources that he will be convicted soon, but they still don’t know where exactly he is being detained at the moment — whether in a prison or a detention center,” the source said. The arrest of Lodoe is part of a larger crackdown by the Chinese government on Tibetan writers, intellectuals and cultural leaders. Authorities arbitrarily imprison them for long periods of time in undisclosed locations, without revealing the exact charges or the dates of their sentences to their families, sources said. “Usually officials from a respective county will come and take individuals away to detention,” the source said. “However, this time Chinese officials from Sichuan province came to arrest Lodoe. Many believe that Lodoe was arrested for having communicated with people in exile and also for advocating for Tibetan language rights. Chinese officials have still not cited any reasons for his arrest,” the source added. “We still don’t know the exact month and date of his arrest [either].” Chinese authorities have frequently detained Tibetan writers and artists who promote Tibetan national identity and culture — with many sentenced to lengthy prison terms — following region-wide protests of Chinese rule that swept Tibet and Tibetan areas in western provinces of China in 2008. Language rights have become a particular focus for Tibetan efforts to assert national identity in recent years, with informally organized language courses typically deemed “illegal associations” and teachers subject to detention and arrest, sources say. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

Authorities across China have begun nationalizing private schools, amid ongoing reforms aimed at bringing all educational institutions under the direct control of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Thirty-eight private primary and secondary schools across more than 10 districts were forced back into public ownership in the northern city of Xi’an, the municipal education bureau announced on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Shanghai municipal government said it had “bought out” around 20,000 places at the city’s private schools, effectively turning at least 30 private schools into free education providers. Former teacher Jia Minling said Shanghai’s government had previously welcomed private education in the city, and the number of private schools had mushroomed, many of them offering extremely high standards of teaching and facilities. “If they are taking back [the private sector] in this way, then it means education will be completely in the hands of the government,” Jia said. “Private schools make efforts to compete for enrollments, and the teachers are very responsible and really serious about improving the children’s grades.” Provincial authorities in the central province of Hunan, eastern province of Jiangsu and the southwestern province of Sichuan have recently all announced they are moving to ensure that private schooling accounts for no more than five percent of the education sector in their province. An education insider in Shanghai who gave only the surname Pan said the nationalization program appears to be gathering momentum across China. “They are gradually bringing them back into the public sector, although they can’t do that all in one go,” Pan said. “Now there are targets being set for each district.” “A lot of Shanghai private schools have reduced their fees … so now, not only do they not make money, they can’t even operate. They call it delisting.” The government has bought out some of the places at private schools, in order to enable students to pay no fees, according to reports, while imposing lower or zero fees on others. More than 17,000 school places have been forcibly bought out by the government, across 87 schools, with 30 schools now charging no fees at all. Eradicating private education Jia said the government was “interfering” with the schools’ private operations. “Private schools are responsible for their own profits and losses,” Jia said. “What right do they have to interfere with that?” “If the tuition is too high, they will not be able to recruit students. They are restricted by the market economy,” he said. “[The government] are building public schools with taxpayer money.” “Private schools are private enterprises that didn’t ask the government to invest a cent when they built their schools, nor were their teachers paid by the education bureau,” he said. “Now they want to take them back into public ownership when they see them doing well.” The ministry of education announced in August 2021 that there will be no more private education in China by August 2023. On June 15, 2021 the ministry set up a new department to monitor off-campus education and training provisions and to implement “reforms to the off-campus education and training sector,” and the CCP leadership then signaled on July 30 that it would crack down on private tuition schools and other measures aimed at slashing homework and out-of-hours educational activities. Training institutions were banned from offering subject-based tutoring on national statutory holidays, rest days, or winter and summer vacations. More than 75 percent of students in primary and secondary education attended after-school tutoring in 2016, the most recent industry figures showed, and the need to hothouse children privately to get them into the best schools was criticized by CCP leader Xi Jinping in March as a barrier to boosting birth rates. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.