In the three decades since the Tiananmen Massacre, the Chinese government’s killing of an untold number of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators around June 4, 1989, human rights activists in China has made tremendous sacrifices in the pursuit of a more just and free country.
Many have been arbitrarily detained, imprisoned, or forcibly disappeared. Some died while in state custody. Some live with permanent physical ailments and mental trauma as a result of torture by the authorities. Some, after suffering years of unrelenting harassment, fled China.
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders saw the protests at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square and across major cities in the spring of 1989 as an existential threat to their rule. One lesson the CCP took away from the event was to nip any independent activism and peaceful criticism in the bud.
For the past 30 years, Human Rights Watch has continually documented the Chinese government’s repression of activists. We covered in detail the arrests and trials of Tiananmen participants; released a report jointly with the nongovernmental organization Human Rights in China that revealed the names of 522 Tiananmen prisoners that few had known existed; and published multiple interviews with protest participants. Human Rights Watch also consistently called for the Chinese government to address the human rights violations related to the crackdown and hold those officials legally accountable for the killings.
Human Rights Watch marks this somber 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre by honoring those across the years who have struggled to stand up to power and advance the rule of law, freedom of expression, and religious freedom in China.
Pre-Beijing Olympics: Lengthy Sentences for Organizing Political Parties, Rise of the Rights Defense Movement
Initially, in the wake of global condemnation following Tiananmen, Beijing made some efforts to present a less brutal posture to the world. In the 1990s and early 2000s, as Beijing sought to court foreign investment, gain entry to the World Trade Organization, and win the bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, it gradually loosened control of some aspects of society. Government decisions such as releasing prominent political dissidents Wei Jingsheng and Wang Dan to exile in 1997 and 1998 respectively, removing the provision on “counterrevolution” from the Criminal Law in 1997, and signing– though never ratifying – the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1998 filled civil society activists with optimism.
Yet the CCP’s zero tolerance toward organized political opposition remained unmistakably clear. When some veterans of the 1989 demonstrations attempted to form political parties, their efforts were met with lengthy prison sentences. In 1993, activist Liu Wensheng was handed a 10-year sentence for organizing the China Social Democratic Party. In 1994, democracy activist Hu Shigen was sentenced to 20 years for trying to establish the China Freedom and Democracy Party.
Some of the activists who tried to form the China Democracy Party received long prison terms. In 1998, Xu Wenli and Qin Yongmin were sentenced to 13 and 12 years respectively, and in 1999, Liu Xianbin was given a 13-year prison term. In June 2002, Chinese authorities abducted party organizer Wang Bingzhangin Vietnam and brought him back to China, where he received life in prison on espionage and terrorism charges.
While political repression persisted, the Chinese economy grew rapidly, society became more open, and people gained more education and international experiences. As a result, people across China became increasingly prepared to challenge authorities over volatile livelihood issues, such as land seizures, forced evictions, environmental degradation, and employment discrimination.
In March 2003, a young migrant worker named Sun Zhigang was beaten to death after being taken to a “custody and repatriation center” by the police for not carrying his residence permit. Sun’s death sent shock waves through the country. Three legal scholars – Xu Zhiyong, Teng Biao, and Yu Jiang – submitted a recommendation to the legislature, arguing that the custody and repatriation system violated the constitution and should be abolished. That June, the government unexpectedly did so. The legal victory brought intellectuals and activists hope for the rule of law in China.
Against such a backdrop, a loose national network of lawyers, activists, and journalists formed the “weiquan” (or “rights defense”) movement. Working within the legal and political constraints, they pushed censorship boundaries, monitored and documented human rights cases, defended victims of abuses in court, exposed official wrongdoing, and called for political reforms.
Post-Beijing Olympics: Crackdowns on Charter 08, Sichuan Earthquake Investigations, ‘Jasmine Revolution’
In the spring of 2008, prominent writer Liu Xiaobo and others drafted Charter 08, an online petition urging China’s leadership to put human rights, democracy, and the rule of law at the core of the Chinese political system. The charter, an earnest effort by activists and intellectuals to rally the society around the common cause of human rights, was signed by more than 300 people from a cross-section of society, and by several prominent figures including retired party officials and former newspaper editors.
For his role in Charter 08, Liu Xiaobo was arrested in December 2008 and later sentenced to 11 years in prison on charges of “inciting subversion.” Previously, Liu had been imprisoned for 21 months for his role in the Tiananmen Square protests and again in a “re-education-through-labor” camp from 1996 to 1999 for criticizing government policies. In 2010, Liu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his long and nonviolent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.” An empty chair marked his absence at the awards ceremony in Oslo.
In May 2008, a devastating earthquake shook the southwest province of Sichuan. An estimated 70,000 people died, many of them schoolchildren whose shoddily built schools collapsed. Authorities mercilessly repressed parents and activists’ demand for information about quake-related deaths and damages. Police harassed and beat renowned artist Ai Weiwei after he initiated an independent survey of the student deaths. In 2009, a court in Chengdu sentenced human rights activist Huang Qi to three years in prison in response to his investigation of poor school construction. In 2010, literary editor and environmental activist Tan Zuoren was sentenced to five years on charges of “subversion” related to his compilation of a list of children killed during the earthquake.
In February 2011, an online appeal calling for people in China to emulate the Arab Spring uprisings resulted in small gatherings of curious onlookers in Beijing and several other cities. The authorities reacted by rounding up over a hundred of the country’s most outspoken critics, including artist Ai Weiwei, human rights lawyers Teng Biao and Jiang Tianyong, and forcibly disappearing them for weeks outside of any legal procedure. Upon their release, some of those individuals reported being subjected to forced sleep deprivation, abusive interrogations, and threats while in custody. Beijing’s disproportionate response to a nonexistent “revolution” indicated a fundamental fear of independent activism.
Even as human rights lawyers and activists became increasingly adept at using the legal system to protect human rights, the government continued to signal its no-tolerance policy for outspoken political dissent through sham prosecutions. In December 2011, courts in Guizhou and Sichuan provinces sentenced pro-democracy activists Chen Xi and Chen Wei to 10 and 9-year prison term respectively for “inciting subversion of state power.” The convictions were based on articles they had published on various websites criticizing China’s one-party rule.
Xi Era: Clampdowns on Rights Defense Movement, Independent News Websites, Minority Rights
In November 2012, Xi Jinping ascended to power as general secretary of the CCP. His tenure as China’s top leader has been marked by ever-increasing control of all aspects of society and harsh crackdowns on human rights activism.
In July 2013, authorities arrested Xu Zhiyong, a prominent rights activist and co-founder of the New Citizen Movement, an initiative to develop civil society in China within the confines of the one-party political system. Xu was later sentenced to four years in prison.
In March 2014, longtime activist Cao Shunli died in a hospital in Beijing, a month after being transferred from a detention center when she fell into a coma. Cao was arbitrarily detained by police at the Beijing Airport in September 2013, while trying to leave to participate in a training session on human rights at the United Nations in Geneva.
In April 2014, the Beijing police detained veteran journalist Gao Yu for “illegally obtaining” “Document No. 9,” an internal Communist Party document warning its members against “seven perils” including “universal values,” civil society, and a free press. Gao was later sentenced to seven years in prison for leaking state secrets. The harsh crackdowns on free speech following the issuance of the document in April 2013 suggested its significance in the CCP’s ideological trajectory.
Beijing’s ruthlessness on human rights activism was particularly evident in its treatment of activists from ethnic and religious minority groups. In September 2014, Ilham Tohti, a highly-regarded ethnic Uyghur economist and peaceful critic of the government, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of “separatism” – an approach he had explicitly rejected. He had worked for two decades to foster dialogue and understanding between Uyghurs and Han Chinese and sought reconciliation based on a respect for Uyghur culture, which has been subject to severe repression.
The Fight Goes On
Human rights activists are now enduring their worst persecution since peaceful protesters took to Tiananmen Square and streets across China in 1989. Yet, despite the suffocating political environment, the fight for a democratic, rights-respecting China continues. The spirit of freedom lives on, passing from one generation to the next.
While 64-year-old Qin Yongmin is serving his 13-year sentence in a Wuhan jail for “subverting state power,” 22-year-old Yue Xin is being detained in an undisclosed location for defending worker’s rights. In October 2016, after more than 27 years behind bars, Miao Deshun, a former factory worker and the last prisoner held for the Tiananmen Square protests, was released. According to fellow prisoners, Miao had refused to admit to any wrongdoing, and as a result, was tortured and periodically put in solitary confinement.
As prominent activist Hu Jia said, “I won’t change, because this is based on feeling. I don’t believe the Chinese Communist Party is made of iron. I have never lost faith. I don’t think the power of evil can last forever. It won’t.” Every year ahead of the Tiananmen Anniversary, Hu is sent on an enforced “vacation” outside of Beijing, during which he is closely monitored. It is one of the ways authorities silence dissent during holidays and political events – and yet, the dissenters will not be silenced.
Human Rights Watch will continue to speak out against abuses pertaining to the Tiananmen Massacre until those responsible for the killings and persecutions are held to account.
-Reported by Human Rights Watch. Link to the article here.
