China's war on law: victims' wives tell US Congress of torture and trauma

Women whose husbands were targets of Communist party crackdown on human rights lawyers call for US sanctions
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Chen Guiqiu (3rd L), the wife of detained human rights lawyer Xie Yang, with other wives of detained human rights lawyers wearing the names of their husbands on their dresses in 2016. 

The wives of some of the most prominent victims of Xi Jinping’s crackdown on civil society have stepped up their campaign for justice, backing calls for US sanctions against Chinese officials involved in barbaric cases of torture and abuse.
Addressing a congressional hearing in Washington on Thursday, the women, whose husbands were among the key targets of a Communist party offensive against human rights lawyers, detailed the physical and psychological trauma inflicted by China’s war on law.

Chen Guiqiu, who fled to the United States in March, told of how her husband, the attorney Xie Yang, had been imprisoned and brutally tortured because of his work defending victims of land grabs, religious persecution and dissidents.

She described her husband’s ordeal as an example of China’s lawlessness and claimed that at his recent trial Xie had been forced to refute detailed claims that he had been the victim of sustained and brutal campaign of torture.
Wang Yanfeng, the wife of Tang Jingling, a lawyer and democracy activist who was jailed in 2016 in what campaigners described as “a gross injustice”, said her husband had suffered repeated spells of abuse, threats and torture. 

“Today other [lawyers and political prisoners] are still suffering from such torture,” Wang said, calling on Donald Trump to challenge China over such abuses.
In a video message, Li Wenzu, the wife of lawyer Wang Quanzhang, said she had heard nothing from him since he was seized by police at the start of the campaign against lawyers in July 2015. 

“I am deeply concerned about my husband’s safety. I don’t know how his health is. I don’t know whether he has been left disabled by the torture. I don’t even know whether he is alive.”
Wang Qiaoling, whose husband, Li Heping, recently emerged from a 22-month stint in custody, said he returned home looking “20 years older” and had told of being forced to sit for hours in stress positions and being shackled with chains. 

“He suffered from very cruel and sick torture,” Wang added.
Also giving testimony was Lee Chin-yu, whose husband, the Taiwanese human rights activist Lee Ming-che, vanished into Chinese custody in March after travelling to the mainland. 

“I stand alone before you today to plead for your help for my husband,” Lee said, calling on Washington to pressure China to end her husband’s “illegitimate detention”.
Since China’s crackdown on lawyers began almost two years ago, its victims’ wives have emerged as a relentless and forceful voice of opposition, often using humorous online videos and public performances to champion their cause. 

They say they have done so in defiance of a campaign of state-sponsored intimidation that has seen them trailed by undercover agents, struggle to enrol their children into schools or be evicted from their homes.
Terry Halliday, the author of a book about China’s human rights lawyers, said the lawyers’ wives had opened up “a new line of struggle that we have not seen before in China”.
“These women have become a very powerful and visible public presence both of criticism of the government, of appeals for the release of their loved-ones but also impugning China in the eyes of the world. It is remarkable.”
“It’s a whole new front,” Halliday added. 

“It is not so easy for the government to silence wives and daughters.”
Thursday’s hearing was part of a push by human rights groups to convince the Trump administration to use a law called the Magnitsky Act to bring sanctions such as travel bans or property seizures against Chinese officials involved in human rights abuses.
“We should be seeking to hold accountable any Chinese officials complicit in torture, human rights abuses and illegal detentions,” said Chris Smith, the Republican congressman who chaired the session and said he was compiling a list of potential targets.
Smith said he hoped such action could help end the “shocking, offensive, immoral, barbaric and inhumane” treatment of Chinese activists that has accelerated since Xi Jinping took power in 2012.
“While Xi Jinping feels feted at Davos and lauded in national capitals for his public commitments to openness, his government is torturing and abusing those seeking rights guaranteed by China’s own constitution,” Smith said.

Taiwan ready to review Chinese activist's asylum request

By Faith Hung

Chinese dissident Zhang Xiangzhong
TAIPEI -- Taiwan said on Monday it was prepared to review a petition for asylum from a Chinese activist who left his tour group in Taiwan without notice last week.
Local media reported on Sunday that Zhang Xiangzhong, whose whereabouts remain unknown, has said he will make an asylum request on Tuesday with the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), Taiwan's China policy-making body.
"If he submits a political asylum request, we're ready to review it," MAC chairwoman Chang Hsiao-yueh told legislators in a parliament session.
"It is too early to say if we will allow it... We're looking for him. He has not contacted any government agencies."
Zhang, 48, is from Shandong province and was jailed for three years for participating in the New Citizens’ Movement in China, the reports said. 

He was released in 2016.
China has jailed several people for involvement in the group, which advocates working within the system to press for change, including urging officials to reveal their assets.
Chang said Taiwan does not offer political asylum to Chinese, but that Taiwan can offer "long term stay", providing a visa to remain in Taiwan without officially calling it "asylum". 

Chang said the government will review any request with the immigration authorities.
Zhang has said that a source of inspiration for his asylum request was the wife of Taiwanese activist Lee Ming-che, local media reported. 

She has been attempting to free her husband currently being detained by China on suspicion of activities harmful to national security.
Lee's detention and Zhang's potential defection could further exacerbate tensions between Taiwan and China. 

Relations have strained since Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen, whose party has advocated independence for Taiwan, took office in 2016.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control, which it deems a wayward province.

Rogue Nation

Wife of Taiwanese Rights Activist Detained in China Speaks Out About His Disappearance
By Nicola Smith / Taipei

In this photo taken March 24, 2017, Lee Ching-yu, third from right, holds up a photo of her missing husband, Taiwanese pro-democracy activist Lee Ming-che.

The wife of a Taiwanese human-rights activist who went missing in China 10 days ago has demanded his release after the Chinese authorities confirmed Wednesday that Lee Ming-che had been detained for allegedly threatening national security.
“My husband is passionate about human rights,” Lee Ching-yu told a packed news conference at Taiwan’s parliament in the capital, Taipei. 

“He is innocent. Free Mr. Lee!” she shouted, flanked by legislators and rights activists.
News of Lee Ming-che's arrest was released by Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office on Wednesday after more than a week of snubbed requests for information from his family and Taiwanese authorities. 

The announcement from Beijing confirms fears that he is the latest victim of an escalation in China’s repression of civil rights and free speech.
Lee Ming-che disappeared while traveling from the semiautonomous Chinese territory of Macau to the southern city of Guangzhou, just days before Chongyi Feng, a China-born Australian academic researching human rights, was barred from leaving the same city.
Human-rights groups believe Lee Ming-che may have been caught up in a campaign of targeted disappearances after a raft of new national security laws gave sweeping powers to emboldened Chinese police forces.
Lee Ching-yu believes her husband, a community-college manager, may have been targeted through new, strict regulations to monitor and control foreign-funded NGOs, which could have put his human-rights activities on the radar of the national security apparatus for the first time.
Although not a high-profile activist, Lee Ming-che encouraged fundraising for families of Chinese human-rights workers, and discussed China-Taiwan relations on popular messaging app WeChat. “This kind of behavior is perfectly normal in a civilized country,” says Lee Ching-yu.
Earlier this week, Lee Ching-yu, who works as a human-rights researcher, told TIME that she was blindsided when her college-sweetheart husband of 20 years vanished. 

As she dropped him off for an early morning flight from Taipei to Macau on March 19, there had been no discussion about possible dangers.
“On the way to the airport we talked about our family. My husband comforted me about my mother, and reassured me that she would recover,” she says, explaining that her mother had breast cancer.
Initially his wife did not worry when she heard nothing after his 8 a.m. flight. 

The gnawing fears only set in that afternoon, when his friends waiting in Guangzhou messaged her to inquire where he was. 

She contacted the airline, his hotel, any authorities she could reach, to track him down. 

For nine anxious days, she waited for news.
It was Lee Ching-yu's dogged determination that likely provoked the Chinese authorities to finally break their silence over her husband's detention. 

On Tuesday, she handed over his hypertension medicine to officials at the Straits Exchange Foundation, a Taiwanese government-backed body that acts as an unofficial intermediary between Taipei and Beijing. 

The foundation’s attempts to locate her husband had been ignored, but Lee Ching-yu's stunt appeared to work.
“Taiwan resident Lee Ming-che allegedly engaged in activities endangering our national security and is under investigation by relevant authorities,” said Ma Xiaoguang, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the Chinese State Council, on Wednesday. 

Ma said that Lee Ming-che's health was "satisfactory," but gave no further details about his current location or the accusations against him.
Lee Ching-yu's decision to publicize her husband’s case was driven by a resolve to put the spotlight on human rights and to stress that he had committed no crime.
“People now care more about human-rights issues because of our problem," she says. 

"People have the right to legally go to China. It’s not only about my husband but about other NGO workers."
At Wenshan Community College, where Lee Ming-che works, director Cheng Shiouw-jiuan says his disappearance had awakened the students’ interest in human rights. 

And Amnesty International has also taken up his case.
“There is absolutely no doubt that the threshold of intolerance towards dissent in China has considerably lowered in recent months and years,” says Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia director at Amnesty International.
“In this general climate of political hardening and an attempt to blacken and demonize human-rights activists and dissidents as traitors ... and with the NGO law in the background, what Mr. Lee was or wasn’t doing before clearly is not seen in the same light, however innocuous it was,” he says.
Lee Ming-che, who volunteers for human-rights group Covenant Watch, is the first Taiwanese NGO worker to disappear on mainland China, sending chills through Taiwan’s civil rights community. “We’re not sure if it’s safe for human-rights staff to go to China," says Chiu E-ling, head of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights.
Lee Ming-che's situation has been complicated by Taiwan’s frosty relations with Beijing, which views the self-governed island democracy as a renegade province that must eventually be reunited with the mainland. 

The Taiwan government’s Mainland Affairs Council, the primary agency for dealing with Beijing, has demanded that Chinese government departments disclose their “handling” of Lee Ming-che and ensure his safety.
“I don’t know if the government is really helping or not, but I would prefer to trust them,” his wife says.
Her biggest priority for now, is to honor her husband’s values.
“For the past 20 years he has been fighting for human rights, even when it hasn’t been successful," Lee Ching-yu says. 

"He believes that if you do nothing, nothing will change."