I went to jail for handing out feminist stickers in China

The backlash is painful, as women activists manage – slowly – to bring about a change in attitudes
By Li Maizi

Li Maizi, right, with her fellow women’s rights advocate Zheng Churan. 

I often think of the day I was detained in Beijing. 

On the night of 6 March 2015, the police knocked on my door and took me to the station, where I was questioned nonstop for 24 hours. 

Later I was sent to a detention centre, where I was held for 37 days.
I was not alone. 

Four other female activists were also arrested. 

Though we had planned to hand out stickers on the Beijing subway to raise awareness about sexual harassment, we hadn’t expected our actions to attract the attention of the Public Security Bureau.
Fellow Chinese feminists quickly responded to our detention: they bravely took to the streets with our pictures in the hope of showing the public that we were in danger. 

Thanks to their efforts, Free the Five became an international campaign. 

While communist China has officially always promoted gender equality, this incident reveals a different story.
Two years later, is there any hope for the Chinese feminist movement? 

Definitely, yes. 

Since my arrest, there has been both progress and a backlash against women’s rights. 

On the one hand, the first legislation against domestic violence was passed in December 2015, an event of huge significance. 

Women who have been beaten by their husbands or partners now have the law on their side.
On the other hand, state surveillance of NGOs and feminist activists is increasing, and those who have tried to hold the government to account on human rights abuses have faced crackdowns.
An example of how progress and backlash can coexist is what happened after a well-publicised allegation of sexual abuse. 

When a young girl called Xiao Zhu in Jiangxi province revealed on Xinlang Weibo – a social media platform often compared to Twitter – that she had been sexually assaulted by her father for four years there was an outpouring of sympathy and outrage. 

Two women’s rights groups, Women Awakening Network and Yuanzhong Gender Development Centre, gave her legal support.
Local government officials found the attention from activists intolerable and, in less than a week, control of the case was taken over by the local branch of the Communist Youth League. 

The father faces up to three years in prison if found guilty, but the priority of the authorities is not justice for victims but social stability.
However, despite the pushback against grassroots organisations, and thanks to women’s issues becoming more prominent on social media, women are becoming more active in the fight against gender discrimination. 

When I was released from detention, I faced a tough decision: should I continue my activism, or give up? 

I chose to continue. 

Because of China’s two-child policy, abortions are readily available. 

If you get pregnant with a third child, abortion is compulsory. 

But I don’t see our free access to abortion as a sign of progress, as reproductive rights only apply to married women. 

If you are unmarried, it is illegal to give birth and you will face heavy fines. 

Some NGOs are calling on the government to grant single women their reproductive rights.
In the era of the one-child policy, the reproductive rights of single women were denied as a means of controlling population growth. 

But now, even as propaganda encourages straight couples to reproduce, the state continues to discriminate against single women.
Until recently, single Chinese women over 27 were described as “leftover women”. 

In 2007, the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF), the government body dealing with women’s issues, called on women to marry as soon as possible. 

This year, however, the ACWF’s newspaper China Women’s News urged the media to stop referring to women as the leftover, a remarkable shift that I believe can be credited to feminist activism.
For activists such as me, it is difficult to work out where the boundaries are. 

Last month the Weibo account Feminist Voices was suspended for 30 days.

Our first reaction was to make a big noise so the authorities would feel our rage about this censorship.
The Beijing government continues to push back the boundaries of acceptable resistance to the point where there is little room left, but at least women’s issues are being discussed. 

That’s why there is hope for feminism in China.

China eliminating civil society by targeting human rights activists

Report details use of torture by Chinese security agencies – including beatings, stress positions and sleep deprivation – to force activists to confess ‘crimes’
By Benjamin Haas In Hong Kong

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society. 

China’s human rights situation further deteriorated last year as police systematically tortured activists and forcibly disappeared government critics while state TV continued to broadcast forced confessions, a new report shows.
A creeping security state also attempted to codify much of its existing behaviour on paper, giving the police legal authority to criminalise a host of NGOs deemed politically sensitive by the authorities, according to the report by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).
“The Chinese government seems intent on eliminating civil society through a combination of new legislation restricting the funding and operations of NGOs, and the criminalisation of human rights activities as a so-called threat to national security,” Frances Eve, a researcher at CHRD, told the Guardian.
“What stands out is the institutionalised use of torture to force defenders to confess that their legitimate and peaceful human rights work is somehow a ‘crime’.”
Since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping has overseen a sweeping crackdown on civil society. 

In 2015, police targeted almost 250 rights lawyers and activists in a “war on law”, and the effects of that campaign continued to be felt throughout last year.
Reports of torture while in detention in 2016 were rampant, with methods including beatings, attacks by fellow inmates on the orders of prison guards, stress positions, deprivation of food, water and sleep, inhumane conditions and deprivation of medical treatment.
In some cases, human rights activists were prevented from receiving medical care even once they were released.
Huang Yan, who was detained in November 2015, was suffering from ovarian cancer and diabetes. Police confiscated her diabetes medication, and despite an exam done at a detention facility in April 2016 showing the cancer had spread, she was not treated and was denied medical bail.
When she was finally released, Huang was scheduled to undergo surgery last November to treat her cancer, but the authorities pressured the hospital and the team of surgeons declined to treat her.
Torture also took more overt forms. 

Last year reports also emerged that rights lawyer Xie Yang was subject to beatings and stress positions in detention, with interrogators warning him: “We’ll torture you to death just like an ant”.
In November 2016, Jiang Tianyong, a respected Christian attorney, disappeared while about to board a train and police waited weeks to confirm he had been detained. 

Jiang’s whereabouts are still a mystery nearly three months later.
In a rare strongly-worded statement, the European Union called for his immediate release along with several other lawyers.
China also continued the practice of airing confessions on state television, a move that is reminiscent of internal Communist party political purges.
In one of the most prominent cases, Swedish NGO worker Peter Dahlin was paraded on the national broadcaster after three weeks in detention, declaring: “I have violated Chinese law through my activities here. I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.”
The confessions air before detainees ever see the inside of a courtroom, and in Dahlin’s case he was promptly deported.
For those activists that do go to trial, in at least 15 cases last year police attempted to pressure activists into accepting government-appointed lawyers. 

In cases where state-appointed lawyers represented human rights activists, little defence was mounted and the accused pleaded guilty and promised not to appeal their cases.
The report also outlined two laws passed in 2016 that are likely to curb civil society: legislation regulating charitable giving and a law on foreign NGOs. 

The charity law, while not explicitly requiring all NGOs to register with the government, makes it difficult for unregistered organisations to raise funds domestically.
The foreign NGO regulations require overseas groups that give money to Chinese organisations to be registered with the police.
“Together, these laws will hamper the development of Chinese civil society by restricting their funding,” the CHRD report said.
“There are no more ‘grey areas’,” an unnamed human rights activist said in the report. 

“To advocate for human rights in China today, you must be willing to accept the reality that the government views your work as ‘illegal’.”