Chinese Peril

China's Media Interference Is Going Global

BY AMY GUNIA / HONG KONG 

China is actively attempting to influence the global media to deter criticism and spread propaganda, according to a new report released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Monday.
The report, China’s Pursuit of a New World Media Order says Beijing is using a variety of strategies including ramping up international broadcasting, undertaking extensive advertising campaigns, and infiltrating foreign media outlets to spread its world view.
“You can see that what is at stake is not only the Chinese authorities trying to spread their own propaganda…what is at stake is journalism as we know it,” Cédric Alviani, East Asia Bureau Director of RSF told TIME.
According to the report, the Chinese government is investing as much as $1.3 billion annually to increase the global presence of Chinese media. 

With this investment, Chinese state-run television and radio shows have been able drastically expanded their international reach in recent years. 

China Global Television Network is televised in 140 countries and China Radio International is broadcast in 65 languages.
The government is also spending significant sums to promote Chinese views by placing paid advertorials in Western media publications. 

Alviani said in an era where news media is struggling with profitability, media outlets have been tempted by advertising dollars. 

China has paid up to $250,000 to place ads in leading international publications.
“If you’re a subscriber to big media you trust the contents they provide to you, you implicitly trust the content they provide, it’s quite dangerous,” Alviani told TIME. 

“In the long run they have to make a decision, do they want to keep their credibility? Or do they want to carry Chinese propaganda?”
The report says China is also attempting to control foreign media outlets by buying stakes in them. 

Chinese ownership leads self-censorship, and journalists have been fired for writing about the country critically.
A columnist for South Africa’s Independent Online, of which Chinese investors held a 20% stake, had his column cancelled in Sept. 2018, hours after a column about China’s persecution of ethnic minorities was published.
In addition to buying stakes in media outlets, Beijing has influenced foreign media by inviting journalists, especially from developing countries, to China for training. 

The report mentions one example where 22 journalists from Zambia were invited to visit China for specially-designed event called the 2018 Zambia Media Think Tank Seminar.
By inviting journalists on lavish, all-expense-paid trips to attend seminars in China, Beijing wins many of them over and secures favourable coverage.
Lack of press freedom in China is well-documented, with the country ranking 176 out of 180 countries in RSF’s 2018 World Press Freedom Index, but the report documents several cases of China is using the same tactics used to silence dissent at home to repress journalists overseas. 

China is “employing blackmail, intimidation and harassment on a massive scale,” says RSF.
“Chinese ambassadors extend their role outside of the regular diplomatic roles, they denigrate journalists anytime they write something that does not meet Chinese propaganda,” Alviani told TIME.
Despite China’s far-reaching influence into global media organizations, RSF hopes that journalists will work to document Chinese interference.
“It’s very likely that what we show in this report is only the tip of the iceberg. The purpose of the report is to stir interest for journalists so they’ll pay attention to the extent of Chinese influence in their regions,” Alviani said.

No longer safe: Researcher harassed by China in her own country

By Peter Hartcher

After a quarter-century of researching China, Anne-Marie Brady is a veteran of Chinese government spying and harassment. 

 "I was prepared for pressure in China," says the 52-year-old New Zealander, a well-regarded professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch. 

"But I always felt safe in New Zealand. So that changed." 

Last week she wrote to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seeking police protection. 

It was her first direct appeal to Ardern, but her third in a series of pleas to escalating levels of officialdom.

China expert Anne-Marie Brady has been subject to ongoing harassment.

First came the pressure on her university. 

Chinese officials demanded that her immediate superior stop her research. 

It might have worked – the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the mayor of Christchurch backed them up in an effort to appease Beijing. 

 They failed when the university vice-chancellor intervened on behalf of academic freedom. 

But it was just the beginning.
Next, her office was broken into in December 2017. 

As far as she could tell, nothing was taken. 

"I think it was meant to scare me, to show me people could come into my office." 

If so, it worked: "I felt this great dread," after the intrusion. 

"I reported it to security and there was no follow-up."
If she had any doubt that she'd been targeted, she got a detailed warning letter from a concerned friend in the Chinese community to let her know that an official campaign of intimidation against her – and others – was under way.
Brady's home was next. 

While she was on the phone to the New Zealand Secret Intelligence Service negotiating to give them the letter, her husband called to say that someone had broken in. 

"Cash, pearls, jewellery, other electronics were ignored," Brady tells me. 

The only things missing were laptops, phones and an encrypted memory stick from her last trip to China. 

Other memory sticks were left behind. 

"It was very telling." 

 She immediately reported the break-in to the intelligence service and the police. 

Brady went to her office the next morning to discover that it had been broken into. 

Again. 

It was February 15 last year. 

Brady was scheduled to give testimony to Australia's Parliament that afternoon.
She gave evidence by video link to two committees keen to know about, among other things, her groundbreaking research into the Chinese Communist Party's activities in Antarctica in the course of producing her book China as a Polar Great Power. 

This is a vital interest for Australia, which has sovereignty over 42 per cent of the continent, as well as a vital area for New Zealand. 

And it turns out to be an area of very lively interest to China's military too, as Brady's research had unearthed. 

Her work uncovered, for instance, that the Chinese People's Liberation Army had built three military facilities on Australian Antarctic territory.

So when Australian Liberal MP Julian Leeser asked Brady whether she'd encountered any personal difficulties from Beijing over her work, she replied "yes", and summarised the various incidents. 

The Chinese government was deeply displeased that Brady had spoken out. 

"Soon after my testimony to the Australian parliamentary committees, some of my colleagues in Chinese universities were visited by the Ministry of State Security.
"They were very angry that I had spoken about the burglaries and break-ins. They were particularly upset that I had spoken it into Hansard," the official record of proceedings of the Parliament. 

Yet the New Zealand police didn't take the matter seriously. 

And the incidents continue. 

In November, Brady's car was tampered with. 

The New Zealand police treated the matter with familiar indifference and told the mechanic not to speak to the media.

When Brady and her family returned home this month after a Christmas holiday, their phone rang at 3am. 

The caller was silent. 

The number is unlisted.
It's not only her Antarctic research that Beijing wants to stop. 

She also unearthed the fact that a member of the New Zealand Parliament spent 15 years working for Chinese military intelligence but never disclosed it. 

 But the harassment in her own country seems to have been in angry response to her 2017 report in New Zealand, titled Magic Weapons: China's Political Influence Activities Under Xi Jinping.
The title is a reference to the fact that Xi named three "magic weapons" of Chinese Communist Party power – the People's Liberation Army, the party's program to strengthen and build itself, and the party's United Front Work Department that covertly spreads party influence through the overseas Chinese diaspora and elements of Chinese culture and business. 

This is the same Chinese Communist Party agenda that the Turnbull government sought to address with its foreign influence laws, which are just now about to take full effect.

The power of Brady's work is that she meticulously reads original Chinese documents in the original Chinese. 

It is her own "secret weapon". 

Australia's John Garnaut, a Mandarin-speaking former Beijing correspondent for this newspaper, says: "Professor Brady is a first-rate scholar who has led the global conversation and almost single-handedly woken up New Zealand." 

The chair of the Australian Parliament's security and intelligence committee, Andrew Hastie, says that after listening to her evidence and other conversations, "it appears that she's a target of interest for the Chinese Communist Party or apparatchiks of the Chinese state as a way of silencing her and intimidating her."

Unfortunately for Brady, her country's government is more interested in appeasing China's rulers than protecting her, or protecting New Zealand's democratic freedoms. 

"It's very clear," says Brady, "that my country's government wants this story to go away. The Chinese Ministry of State Security operates in our societies unhindered and our governments just watch. It's happening in Australia, too."
John Garnaut, who was commissioned by Malcolm Turnbull to write the classified report that informed his government's foreign interference laws, confirms: "It would be naive and also reckless to assume that similar activities are not happening here."
In the meantime Brady and her family are left to defend themselves. 

"It's an uneven contest," she says. 

"We are just an ordinary family facing down the Chinese Communist Party." 

She is continuing her work regardless: "I haven't changed. China's changed."

China Watchers Demand Action on Harassment of New Zealand Professor

By Charlotte Graham-McLay

Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, had been harassed and intimidated for publishing research critical of the Chinese Communist Party.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — More than 160 China experts from around the world have signed a letter urging New Zealand’s government to protect an academic who was the subject of harassment and intimidation for publishing research critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
The letter, published Thursday on the Czech website Sinopsis and signed by 169 scholars, researchers, journalists, commentators and human rights advocates, is the latest effort by scholars to ramp up pressure on Western governments to confront China’s political interference beyond its borders.
The New Zealand police and the country’s intelligence agency, along with Interpol, are investigating the case of Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in the city of Christchurch. 

She had been subjected to a yearlong harassment campaign in which her home was burglarized, her office broken into twice and her car sabotaged.
The only items stolen from her home were electronic devices linked to her China scholarship, with the thief or thieves ignoring cash and newer electronics used by other family members.
The harassment began after she published a paper in 2017 titled Magic Weapons, which outlined China’s blueprint for spreading its influence in Western countries.
In Thursday’s letter, the signatories said they were “appalled and alarmed” by the “wave of intimidation” against Ms. Brady. 

An introduction written by Miguel Martin, an independent China researcher who writes under the pseudonym Jichang Lulu, said the number of “unprecedented attacks” on foreign scholars of China were escalating.
China’s intimidation of academics included harassment for their views and opinions, denial of visas, threatened or actual libel suits or detentions during research visits in mainland China.
Kevin Carrico, a lecturer in Chinese studies at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and one of several Australian academics to sign the letter, said the harassment of Ms. Brady only confirms her research into Chinese meddling and risked silencing other China watchers.
“We’re facing a completely unacceptable and frankly insane situation in which a scholar focused on P.R.C. interference operations is falling victim to those same interference operations,” Mr. Carrico said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
The letter writers accuse New Zealand’s government of being “slow to take action” and failing “to acknowledge that a problem exists.”
“The harassment campaign against Brady risks having a chilling effect on scholarly inquiry, allowing the C.C.P. to interfere in the politics of our societies unfettered by informed scrutiny,” the writers said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.
Ms. Brady’s requests for additional protection for her and her family had gone unanswered. 

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, told reporters Thursday that she had to allow police officers to work independently of the government, but she would ask one of the lawmakers in her governing Labour Party to look into Ms. Brady’s situation.
“What I will do is have the police minister just seek an assurance that everything that can and should be done is being done, including for Ms. Brady’s own personal security,” Ms. Ardern told Radio New Zealand.

One scholar who signed the letter about Ms. Brady said that among the signatories were people who had previously doubted China’s reach in Australia.

“Whether you agree with Brady’s research is really a secondary issue,” said Adam Ni, a China researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra, the Australian capital, who signed the letter.
“She shouldn’t be intimidated for doing that research and giving her opinion,” he added.
While Australia has made moves to prevent foreign influence in its politics, New Zealand has been criticized by its Western allies in the Five Eyes intelligence sharing partnership for not doing enough.
As the government wrestles with the issue, New Zealand last month joined other nations in blocking Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker, from supplying technology for a next-generation mobile data network because of fears it could prove a security threat.
Last September, one Chinese lawmaker admitted he had taught English to spies in China, and this October, another was accused of trying to hide a campaign contribution from a wealthy Chinese businessman with ties to China’s Communist Party.

Chinese State Terrorism

Academics write in support of Anne-Marie Brady, urge PM to take action on China

By Anusha Bradley 

Canterbury University politics professor Anne-Marie Brady

The prime minister is being told she must make it clear to China that attempts to intimidate and silence academics here will not be tolerated.
Twenty-nine academics, researchers and human rights advocates have written an open letter to Jacinda Ardern in support of China critic and Canterbury University politics professor Anne-Marie Brady.
"We have been shocked and disturbed by the reports of intimidation and harassment suffered by Professor Anne-Marie Brady," the letter said.
"Attempts to intimidate and harass one academic in New Zealand have implications for freedoms of all the others -- and indeed, for the freedoms of all who live here."
The group also urged the prime minister to "make a clear statement in defence of academic freedom" in light of the case and to be "very clear that any intimidation and threats aimed at silencing academic voices in this country will not be tolerated".
It was revealed that Prof Brady had been burgled in February and the police, Interpol and the Security Intelligence Service were investigating the involvement of Chinese spies.
The investigation widened two weeks ago when, in a new twist, Prof Brady's mechanic discovered during a WOF examination, that two of her tyres had also been tampered with.
One of the 29 signatories to the letter, published today, was sociologist and commentator Tze Ming Mok, who said the prime minister was not doing enough to send a clear message to the Chinese government.
"The silence is very conspicuous."
"There is never a bad time to signal really clearly to all our trading partners that we are a particular kind of country, we have particular kinds of standards, and there are some things we will not stand for."
Prof Brady's experiences have already had a chilling effect amongst China-focused experts in this country with many unwilling to comment on the saga publicly, she said.
Margaret Taylor, a spokesperson for Amnesty International, which also signed the letter, said it was not only academics but the Chinese community in New Zealand who feared being targeted by their former government.
"People who have spoken to us, and they are very brave for doing so, are terrified that if they do speak out they will come under the attention of the Chinese authorities.
"Many of them don't speak to their family members, they're too scared to contact anybody at home."
Prof Brady said she felt "humbled" by the support, not only from her peers who signed the letter but from the wider public since the story about the burglaries broke.
But she was just doing her job, she said.
"The Education Act requires all political leaders and government agencies to protect and defend our academic freedom and uphold the critic and conscience role of the academic.
"So I do my job, and I expect the government to do their job."
A spokesperson for the prime minister said she supported and defended the legal right to academic freedom, as set out in law.
"The matters contained in this letter are under investigation by the police and it is not appropriate to comment on them before the investigation is finished."
But Prof Brady said the investigation was over, and the issue was now in the government's hands.
"The police have done a really great job and a thorough investigation has been completed. The next step now is the political will that needs to have the guts to face up to the situation."

Is Interpol becoming China's Gestapo

China: Families of Interpol Targets Harassed
End Collective Punishment in Pursuit of Suspects
Human Rights Watch

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping speaks during the 86th INTERPOL General Assembly at Beijing National Convention Center on September 26, 2017 in Beijing, China. 

 
Chinese authorities should immediately stop harassing and detaining family members of suspects living abroad to compel their return to China, Human Rights Watch said today. 

The global police organization Interpol and foreign governments should reject China’s misuse of Interpol’s “red notice” system, which alerts governments to people sought for arrest.
Human Rights Watch interviews with five “red notice” individuals found that the Chinese authorities subjected their family members in China to forms of collective punishment – unlawfully punishing someone for the actions of another. 

The authorities have also pressured relatives to travel to the countries where red notice individuals live to persuade them to return to China.
“Chinese authorities have put all kinds of unlawful pressure on relatives of corruption suspects to get them to return to China,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. 

“There is no legal basis for these traumatizing guilt-by-association tactics.”

China’s wanton mistreatment of relatives of corruption suspects is bad enough, but Interpol and other governments should not be enabling Chinese abuses abroad.
                                                                          Sophie Richardson

In late 2012, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping launched a purported “war on corruption.” 

As part of that campaign, China asked Interpol to issue red notices against individuals living abroad who have been accused of "corruption".
Interpol red notices are alerts seeking the arrest and extradition of wanted people, issued at the request of the government seeking those individuals. 

They are not international arrest warrants, however, as Interpol’s member countries can determine what legal action to take in response.
In some countries that do not have extradition treaties with China, Chinese authorities have tried to secure the return of red notice individuals by putting pressure on their family members in China. Official reports often depict the individuals initially refusing to return, but later changing their minds due to “the deterrent effect of the law, policy appeals, and family influence.”
Human Rights Watch research revealed that Chinese authorities, using Interpol red notices as a justification, used various means to systematically harass family members of red notice individuals. 

Police and prosecutors visited or summoned relatives without presenting any legal documents and threatened to detain them if they failed to convince the red notice individual to return to China. 

Human Rights Watch identified at least two cases in which authorities formally arrested relatives.
The police have also barred family members – including spouses, children, parents, and siblings and their families – from traveling outside China. 

Children of red notice individuals have been blocked from attending schools abroad. 

Authorities have also imposed collective punishments on relatives by freezing their assets, firing them from their positions in government-owned companies, or warning their business partners not to work with them.
Human Rights Watch takes no position on the merits of Interpol red notices discussed below. However, even properly issued red notices would not justify collective punishment of family members.
Authorities in countries in which red notice individuals reside should investigate harassment and other abuses by Chinese officials or their agents against these individuals or their family members. 

Authorities in the countries in which they reside should ensure red notice individuals in their countries have adequate protection. 

In cases where red notice individuals may be subject to extradition, those authorities should provide them adequate opportunity to contest the extradition, and not return anyone to China if they are likely to face persecution, torture, or ill-treatment there.
Interpol should conduct careful due diligence before processing information provided by the Chinese government and before facilitating information-sharing between the Chinese police and police forces of other countries, Human Rights Watch said. 

They should also ensure that fundamental rights of red notice individuals and their family members are protected.
“China’s wanton mistreatment of relatives of corruption suspects is bad enough, but Interpol and other governments should not be enabling Chinese abuses abroad,” Richardson said. 

Detention, Threats, and Harassment of Relatives of ‘Red Card’ Individuals
Human Rights Watch interviewed four people based in the United States and one in Canada. 

All interviews were conducted in person or by phone. 

They are from four provinces and one municipality in China, and all said they are currently on Interpol’s “red notice” list. 

Human Rights Watch also spoke to three lawyers who represent clients subjected to red notices. 

Three red notice individuals asked to remain anonymous for fear of government reprisal against their families in China. 

Human Rights Watch also reviewed dozens of government and media reports on returned red notice individuals, which generally corroborated the accounts of these individuals.

Detention, Threats of Detention
Interviewees told Human Rights Watch that their family members in China were very scared of the government officials who visited them. 

They said that police and prosecutors invoked Interpol red notices to justify punishing their family members.

Liang Jianguo (pseudonym), a businessman, said, “Police told my family that the government can take ‘any actions to control’ the relatives of red notice personnel and that they won’t live a normal life [unless I] return to China.”

Zhang Datong (pseudonym) said:
They would call [my wife] first, and say, “We are coming tomorrow morning to your home at 8:30, don’t leave the house.” 

Of course, my wife wouldn’t dare to say no… they repeatedly threaten[ed] my wife that if I don’t go back, she would be detained… my wife told me many times that, “You have no idea the mental distress we’re under.” 

She is very worried that if she does anything wrong to displease or provoke them, they would not allow our children to go to school.
Zhang said that the police had also harassed his septuagenarian parents: “[My parents] are very scared, too. One time after they talked to my mother, she had to be hospitalized for a month for high blood pressure-related health issues.”

Li Gang, a former businessman in Wuhan, Hubei province, said that his mother showed signs of mental illness after sustained harassment:
When the authorities started to harass my mother, she was 79. 

During September and October 2016, it was really intense. 

The authorities came to our home about every other day. 

At the end of last year, my mother had a stroke and was hospitalized… 

My brother told me that [our] mother has been losing her mind. 

She would talk to herself, murmuring things like “Ganggang [Li Gang’s nickname], please come back. You will be fine, as long as you sort out the money issues.”

Wang Lihe (pseduonym), a former businessman, said:
They have summoned my siblings countless times, from both the [the name of the prefecture] and the provincial public security bureaus… 

Today they summon my sister, tomorrow my brother, the next day my niece, like that… 

[The police] would threaten them that if I don’t go back, they would be arrested too.

Liang said:
At the beginning, the police came [to our home] about twice a week; later, two or three times a month. 

Every time for one or two hours. 

This has been going on for over a year. 

They come whenever they want, acting like hooligans. 

They threatened my wife, saying that if she doesn’t do what they ask her to do, she would be jailed, and that once she’s jailed, she won’t be able to get out ever.
Liang said police used similar language with other relatives, including his child, a minor: “They are all scared to death. Every time my wife calls me, she cries and cries, begging me to return to China.”

Xie Weidong, a former Supreme People’s Court judge now residing in Canada, said that to compel him to return to China, authorities detained his sister and his adult son for over a year. 

Xie shared with Human Rights Watch documents detailing his case.
The Hubei procuratorate detained Xie Weidong’s sister, Xie Weifang, in September 2016 and his son, Xie Cangqiong, in December 2016 in Beijing, where they were living, and took them to Hubei province. 

Prosecutors charged Xie Weifang with taking bribes, and accused Xie Cangqiong of being a co-conspirator with Xie Weidong in an embezzlement case. 

Xie Weifang was released in January 2017, after the charges were dropped. 

Xie Cangqiong remains held at a detention center in Hubei.
In her letter to the Chinese Communist Party’s disciplinary body, the Central Commission on Discipline Inspection (CCDI), Xie Cangqiong’s mother, Wang Liwei, who is divorced from Xie Weidong, alleged that officials tortured Xie Cangqiong and threatened her: “My son and his aunt, after being tortured… had written letters pressuring Xie Weidong to return to China. [Prosecutors] threatened me…ordering me to make Xie Weidong return to China, otherwise, I would be detained, too.” 

A 2017 Supreme People’s procuratorate report revealed a case in which a family member of a red notice individual was detained. 

Chu Shilin, a businessman in Shandong province, returned to China from Canada in 2016, two months after authorities detained his ex-wife, Xu Jianhong, on suspicion of “harboring a fugitive,” on the grounds that Xu transferred money from China to Canada to aid Chu’s hiding.

Restrictions on Movement
Another tactic Chinese authorities use to compel red notice individuals to return is blocking China-based relatives from leaving the country. 

Interviewees said that none of their family members were shown any legal document for the travel ban. 

Some relatives discovered they were under a ban only when trying to leave the country, while others were informed by the authorities.

Wang Lihe said:
No one in my family can get out of the country – my mother, siblings, siblings’ spouses and children. Even my company’s employees. 

One of my employees was in the US. After they returned to China, now they can’t leave. 

My brother is also banned from travelling domestically. 

He can’t take the train, and can’t fly.

Zhang Datong said:
My daughter had already got the admission letter to a high school in the US, but she couldn’t leave the country. 

We had to find her another school [in China]. 

My son was only 8-years-old. He was stopped at the border [at the airport]. 

Even the customs officer was perplexed, saying, “Such a small child. What happened?” 

But still, he couldn’t leave, and had to go home.

Li Gang said:
[Authorities] confiscated my younger brother’s passport. 

They threatened my sister-in-law, “We know your son is attending college and it is a joint program with a US university. If you don’t convince [Li Gang] to come back, your son can’t leave the country. He will be ‘exit-banned.’”

Xie Weidong said, “My other sister and her family immigrated to Canada many years ago. Her daughter went back to China about two years ago. Now she can’t leave the country.”

Liang Jianguo said:
My parents, my wife’s parents, my siblings, my wife’s siblings, and all of their children, everyone is being “exit-banned.” 

My son had been studying in the UK for over a year, in a middle school. 

He returned to China during the break and wasn’t able to go back to the UK again.

In 2010, Jiang Chunguang, the head of a public hospital in Yunnan province, was arrested for corruption. 

Soon after, authorities issued a red notice against Jiang’s wife, Guo Xin, who at the time was in the US, accusing her of being an accomplice of her husband. 

Guo returned to China in October 2017. 

In a public letter Guo published before her return, she wrote:
The procuratorate… prevents my Canada-based older brother, his wife and daughter from entering China to visit [our] mother.… If [my] brother enters China, he will be detained… The deputy bureau chief of [the anti-corruption bureau]… phoned my sister, informing her… the exit ban…will be extended to the family’s third generation. The generation of my nieces will be banned from leaving the country.

Financial Control
Interviewees said that authorities have frozen all their assets in China, including jointly held bank accounts and real estate properties, but did not present their family members with any legal documents justifying that action. 

The relatives only became aware of the freezes when they tried to withdraw money. 

Authorities sealed off the properties with tape.
One interviewee said that his relatives’ employment was terminated due to him being on the red notice list.

Li Gang said:
My brother worked for a state-owned company. They terminated his employment. They made him go to the office of the procuratorate every day to assist the work of my case, but he hasn’t been paid. He was told that he could only get all his wages back when I return. Every day he just sits in the [procuratorate’s] office. It’s like going to jail.
Li Gang said his ex-wife’s brother also had to go to the procuratorate every day to “assist the investigation” of Li’s case.
Zhang Datong said, “[Authorities] froze all of our accounts, even my daughter’s tuition account. She had put down a deposit for the high school she was admitted into.”

Xie Weidong said that the assets in China of his sister who had immigrated to Canada, “which has nothing to do with my case…were all frozen. She only discovered this when she tried to sell one of the houses she owned.”
Liang Jianguo said that the authorities “confiscated all our properties, even the place my wife and son live. They have no place to live. There is no money for my son’s education. They are on the brink.”

Harassment Abroad
Chinese authorities have sent officials to countries where the red notice individuals reside to press them to return, sometimes wielding threats. 

A 2017 CCDI report says that Chinese police went to France to bring back businessman and red notice individual Zheng Ning. 

In May 2017, officials traveled to the US and secretly met Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire against whom Interpol had issued a red notice, to pressure him to return to China. 

The clandestine operation was discovered by US law enforcement authorities and later revealed by US-based media.
Interviewees said that Chinese authorities sent family members, lawyers, and friends to meet them in countries where they live. 

Lawyers with whom Human Rights Watch spoke said that officials typically accompany relatives on such overseas visits, and, in some cases, are even present at the meetings between the relatives and the red notice individuals.
Xie Weidong told the Globe and Mail that authorities had sent his detained sister’s former lawyer and his wife to Canada to harass him and his other sister. 

In December 2017, the lawyer and his wife appeared at Xie’s home in Toronto at 2 a.m.; they also visited the home of Xie’s sister in Ottawa.

“The police did not take any action against the lawyer, because they didn’t think he violated the law,” Xie told Human Rights Watch. 

“Now we are even more scared.”
Hubei authorities had also asked Xie’s ex-wife, Wang Liwei, in China to accompany them to go to Canada to help bring Xie back. They threatened that if Wang did not comply, they would continue to hold his son indefinitely.
“[Authorities told my ex-wife that] having an intermediary go to Canada would give cover to the officials who would want to directly speak to me [when they are in Canada],” said Xie.

Li Gang said:
Around the Spring Festival this year, officials at the procuratorate clearly told my brother that they were going to the US, in March or April [2017]. Six people. Three from the procuratorate. Two from the local CDI, plus my brother. 

My brother was told the purpose of the trip was to “persuade Li Gang to return to China.” They showed my brother the itinerary.

A CCDI report suggests that authorities sent a relative overseas to meet a red notice individual and was successful in having her return: In 2013, authorities issued a red notice against Chen Yijuan, a former manager at a state-owned energy company in Yunnan province, alleging that she had taken bribes and laundered money. 

The report says Chen’s cousin and the lawyers of Chen’s husband went to the UK, where Chen was living, to persuade her to return to China. Chen returned in 2016.

Liang Jianguo said, “[Authorities] have sent my friends – people the police consider are very close to me – to look for me. I refused to meet them. I wouldn’t tell them where I was.”
Although the practice may be common, Human Rights Watch was aware of one case in which Chinese authorities deployed people from China – who were already in the country – to harass a red notice individual.
A Chinese national in the US, who rented a room in her house to Wang Lihe, said that since Wang moved in, three former acquaintances of hers had repeatedly called, texted, and visited her, urging her to evict Wang: “They keep telling me that [Wang] is wanted by Interpol and is a very bad person. I should not let him live in my house. They had come to my house to harass me and Mr. [Wang].”

The woman said she believed the three men were acting on behalf of the Chinese government:
One time, I inadvertently told the men that Mr. [Wang] went with his daughter to [an event]. Mr. [Wang] later told me that his relatives in China called him, telling him that the day after [that event], [authorities] had told them that Mr. [Wang] had gone to [the event].
The woman also said that the authorities told Wang’s family that because Wang had a very good relationship with his daughter, they would work on bringing the daughter back to China as a way to force Wang to return.

Background on Skynet, Fox Hunt
Since Xi Jinping assumed power in 2013, the Chinese government has carried out a sweeping anti-corruption campaign. 

Domestically, partly through shuanggui – a secretive detention system ridden with abuses that Human Rights Watch has extensively documented – the campaign has netted thousands of party leaders and rank-and-file government officials. 

Internationally, the government has launched operations known as “Fox Hunt” and “Skynet.”
In June 2014, authorities established the International Office of Pursuing Fugitives and Recovering Embezzled Assets 国际追逃追赃工作办公室 – comprised of personnel from eight government agencies including the CCDI, Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – to hunt down suspected corrupt individuals who have fled abroad. 

By October 2017, 3,587 fugitives from over 90 countries had been returned to China, according to the CCDI.
In April 2015, China published a most-wanted list, called “100 red notices” 百名红通, against 100 officials and business executives accused in major corruption cases. 

According to government statistics, by December 2017, 51 out of “100 red notices” had returned to China. 

Among them, 10 were reportedly repatriated by foreign governments, while 35 returned “voluntarily” after being “persuaded.”
The total number of red notices that Interpol has issued at the request of the Chinese government in recent years is unclear, as is the number currently in effect, since many notices are only known to national law enforcement authorities, and many of those subjected to them do not know of their existence. 

At present, 83 Chinese nationals are publicly listed on Interpol’s “red notice” webpage.

China’s Red Notice Abuses; Interpol’s "Neutrality" 
Interpol’s constitution stipulates that international police cooperation should be conducted in the spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a set of human rights standards that all United Nations member countries are expected to uphold. 

Interpol’s Rules on the Processing of Data states that data processing in the Interpol Information System “should respect the basic rights of the persons who are the subject of cooperation.”
According to Interpol, red notices may not violate the organization’s policy of neutrality, found in article 3 of its constitution, which forbids the organization from “undertak[ing] any intervention or activities of a political, military, religious, or racial character.” 

However, China has issued politically motivated red notices against dissidents and others abroad whom China sought to apprehend. 

Dolkun Isa, who campaigns from Germany on behalf of the ethnic Uyghur community in Xinjiang, has been subjected to a red notice for over a decade but has been unable to access or remove it, interfering with his international travel. 

US-based activist Wang Zaigang believed the red notice against him was in retaliation for his pro-democracy activism outside of China.
Given China’s record of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and unlawful forced repatriation, Human Rights Watch in a September 2017 letter to Interpol raised concerns that those subject to Interpol red notices from China could be at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
Human Rights Watch also raised concerns about the ability of Meng Hongwei, who assumed Interpol’s presidency in November 2016, to maintain Interpol’s policy of neutrality, and to respect and protect human rights as set out in its constitution. 

Meng is a vice minister in China’s Ministry of Public Security, the police force that has harassed, arbitrarily detained, and tortured countless people for exercising their fundamental rights. 

Human Rights Watch has not received a reply from Interpol.

Harassment and house arrest in China as Trump has 'beyond terrific' time

Human rights defenders and their families placed under heavy surveillance by Xi Jinping’s agents as US president is feted
By Tom Phillips in Beijing

Li Wenzu, wife of lawyer Wang Quanzhang, during a protest in Beijing against the detention of human rights defenders. 

On day one of Donald Trump’s “state visit-plus” to China he was treated to a tour of the Forbidden City, a night at the opera and an intimate dinner with Xi Jinping. 

“Beyond terrific,” he boasted.

Trump's freak show

Li Wenzu got a loud knock at the door from a man claiming to represent the domestic security agency tasked with suppressing political dissent. 

“The US president is in town,” the 32-year-old mother-of-one says she was informed by the agent. “Do not go anywhere … you must cooperate with our work.”
Li is the wife of Wang Quanzhang, a crusading human rights lawyer whom she has not seen since the summer of 2015 when he was spirited into secret detention during a roundup of attorneys and activists known as Xi’s “war on law”.
With China’s leader out to impress his American guest, Li and dissidents like her say they have been placed under house arrest or heavy surveillance in a bid to stop them spoiling the show.
“[The authorities] are afraid of us meeting with foreign leaders, of our stories being heard by people all over the world, and of the truth being uncovered,” she said by phone on Thursday morning as Xi rolled out the red carpet for Trump in Tiananmen Square.
After the knock on her door at about 7am on Wednesday, Li said about a dozen plainclothes agents had camped outside her flat in west Beijing.

A photograph taken by Li Wenzu after plainclothes Chinese security agents were posted outside her flat.

When she tried to go out with her young son, she claimed one of the group “pushed me with his body and prevented us from going”.
“Shame on him!” Li said. 

“Just think about it, I don’t have the right to go anywhere in the country. It is ridiculous. I felt so powerless.”
Beijing-based activist He Depu told Radio Free Asia, a US-backed news website, other activists were also feeling the pinch because of Trump’s arrival: “All political dissidents are under surveillance right now.”

Peter Dahlin, a Swedish human rights activist who was expelled from China last year after 23 days in secret detention, said authorities saw Li – who has campaigned relentlessly on behalf of her imprisoned husband -- as a “constant thorn in their side”. 

He called her treatment “unusual even for China” and symptomatic of a wider breakdown in the rule of law under Xi.
Dahlin, a friend of Li’s husband, said Wang had spent so long in secret detention that “at one point people were seriously wondering if he was even alive any more”. 

He is now thought to be behind bars in the northern city of Tianjin.
Trump has enraged human rights activists by courting China’s authoritarian leader despite what they call the government’s worst crackdown in decades. 

Trump has called Xi a friend and recently praised his “extraordinary elevation” and “great political victory” after he was anointed China’s most powerful leader since Mao.
On Wednesday, Republican senator Marco Rubio rejected that description: “Xi’s further consolidation of power, in a one-party communist state, was not a political victory. It was a tragedy for human rights advocates, reformers and thousands of political prisoners,” he tweeted.
Li Wenzu, who has not seen her husband since he was seized, said: “I hope [Trump] can show concern for human rights issues in China … He should think carefully about dealing with a country that does not care about human rights, and violates the law.
“It’s just like when we are making friends, we must first look at character of the person [we are befriending].” 

Rogue Nation

Energy firms operating in the South China Sea face two options: Bow to Beijing or suffer

• Beijing's willingness to use military threats in the South China is a worrying development for energy players
• Firms that ignore Chinese demands could face on-site harassment, exclusion from the Chinese market and threats to company staff

By Nyshka Chandran 

As the world's second-largest economy threatens military action in the South China Sea, oil and gas players with interests in the disputed zone are put in a bad place.
That was the case for Spanish energy firm Repsol. 

In July, its subsidiary Talisman-Vietnam was ordered by Hanoi to stop gas drilling in a China-claimed area after Beijing warned the Southeast Asian country that it would attack bases if operations continued.

Xi Jinping's administration's use of military retaliation is "a worrying escalation" and could result in further pressure on future business dealings, said Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, in a Wednesday note.

Companies that have interests or operations in blocks licensed by Southeast Asian governments but located within China-claimed waters are likely to face pressure from Beijing, according to Brennan.
There are many overlapping claims in the region. 

China relies on a concept known as the nine-dash line to mark its territorial claims — a massive area that extends roughly 1,000 miles from its southern shores — in the South China Sea. 

But Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei also assert sovereign rights over parts of the international waterway, which is rich in resources and boasts key maritime routes.
Against that backdrop, firms licensed by other countries to operate in disputed ares will face Chinese protestations. 

Any company ignoring those would likely face consequences such as on-site harassment, de facto exclusion from the Chinese market and even threats to company staff and assets, Brennan said. 

BP experienced the latter option in 2007, he added.
"Operators also have to analyse the resolve of Southeast Asian governments to stand up to China. Otherwise, companies with rights to develop blocks or fields in contested waters may find that they are prevented from exercising them as host government become wary of rocking the boat."
The next potential flash-point could be Vietnam's Red Emperor oil and gas field, also called Ca Rong Do. 

Repsol is active in the project, which is located within China's nine-dash line, and drilling is slated for 2019. 

But in light of Chinese threats, it remains to be seen how much progress the Madrid-based firm will make, Brennan said.
Regional players are already taking defensive action in response to China's aggressive behavior.
Indonesia, which isn't a claimant in the South China Sea drama but maintains an exclusive economic zone there, recently announced intentions to use its military to provide security for resource exploration activities.
However, "blurring the lines between commercial and naval activities in this way raises the potential for oil and gas assets to become targets in any militarized confrontation," Brennan said.
Even as China prevents others from tapping hydrocarbon deposits located within its nine-dash line, it's in no rush to develop those assets. 

That's likely because 71.2 percent of total discovered reserves within the nine-dash line are "not currently considered commercially viable," according to Brennan.

Rogue Nation

China’s Rights Crackdown Is Called ‘Most Severe’ Since Tiananmen Square
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCE

Pro-democracy activists held portraits of the detained Chinese human rights lawyers Jiang Tianyong, background left, and Wang Quanzhang at a protest in Hong Kong this summer.

GENEVA — China is systematically undermining international human rights groups in a bid to silence critics of its crackdown on such rights at home, a watchdog organization said on Tuesday. 

The group also faulted the United Nations for failing to prevent the effort, and being complicit in it.
“China’s crackdown on human rights activists is the most severe since the Tiananmen Square democracy movement 25 years ago,” Kenneth Roth, the director of the agency, Human Rights Watch, said in Geneva on Tuesday at the introduction of a report that he described as an international “wake-up call.” 

“What’s less appreciated is the lengths to which China goes to prevent criticism of that record of oppression by people outside China, particularly those at the United Nations.”
“The stakes are not simply human rights for the one-sixth of the world’s population who live in China,” Mr. Roth added, “but also the survival and effectiveness of the U.N. human rights system for everyone around the globe.”
The report highlights China’s measures to prevent activists from leaving the country to attend meetings at the United Nations, its harassment of those who do manage to attend and the risk of reprisals when they return or if they interact with United Nations investigators inside or outside China.
The report also noted barriers placed by Chinese officials to visits by United Nations human rights officials. 
Beijing has not allowed a visit by the agency’s High Commissioner for human rights since 2005, and continues to delay 15 requests for visits by special rapporteurs working on political and civil rights issues.

China allowed visits by four rapporteurs since 2005 on issues like poverty, debt and the status of women. 

But it carefully choreographed those visits, and contacts not sanctioned by the state posed risks to those involved. 

The United Nations has expressed concern that the detention of Jiang Tianyong, a prominent human rights lawyer, resulted from a 2016 meeting in Beijing with the United Nations special rapporteur on poverty, Philip Alston.
Mr. Jiang disappeared for several months and was later charged with subversion.
The report also documents China’s diplomacy in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where China aligns with an informal collection of states, including Algeria, Cuba, Egypt and Venezuela, that discretely coordinate their positions to deflect scrutiny of their records and consistently challenge the council’s ability to look into accusations of abuse in other states without their consent.
“It’s becoming a mutual defense society among odious dictators in which everybody understands the need to deflect criticism of you today because they may criticize us tomorrow,” Mr. Roth said.
“And China is an active, willing partner in that effort.”
Moreover, China has withheld information requested by United Nations bodies that monitor issues like torture, treatment of the disabled and children’s rights, and has tried to stop the filming and online posting of their proceedings, Human Rights Watch said.
The report also accused China of using its position on a United Nations committee that accredits nongovernment organizations to obstruct applications by civil society groups.
Individual measures by China could be passed over as unremarkable, Mr. Roth said, “but when you put it all together, what it represents is a frontal assault on the U.N. human rights system.”
Human Rights Watch delivered a copy of its report to China but received no substantive response, he said.
The effect of China’s behavior on human rights is like “death by a thousand cuts,” Mr. Roth said, but he also pointed to the dangers of “a thousand acts of acquiescence” by the United Nations and states that support human rights.
Human Rights Watch presented a copy of its report to the United Nations secretary general, Antonio Guterres, Mr. Roth said, but Mr. Guterres’s response did not mention China by name.
“That illustrates what needs to change,” Mr. Roth said.
A request for comment from Mr. Guterres’s office was not immediately returned.
The report cited the United Nations’ treatment of the Uighur rights activist Dolkun Isa, who had received United Nations accreditation to attend meetings in its New York headquarters but was escorted off the premises by security officers without explanation.
It also cited the exceptional treatment that the United Nations accorded Chinese dictator Xi Jinping when he visited its Geneva headquarters in January: It sent home many staff members early, refused access to nongovernment organizations and granted access to only a handful of journalists.
Its handling of the occasion “was an utter embarrassment for the U.N.,” Mr. Roth said.
“It became actively complicit in Xi Jinping’s terror of any criticism. It was an utter abandonment of the principles the U.N. should abide by. It was a shameful moment.”

Widow of Nobel Laureate Feared ‘Disappeared’

Beijing Should Cease Harassment and Detention of Liu Xiaobo’s Supporters
HRW

Liu Xia is shown holding photos of her deceased husband, Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. 

The Chinese authorities should immediately and unconditionally release Liu Xia, the wife of deceased Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo, Human Rights Watch said today. 

The government should also stop harassing and detaining Liu’s supporters for commemorating his death.
Since Liu Xiaobo’s funeral on July 15, 2017, following his death from complications of liver cancer on July 13, the authorities have refused to provide information on Liu Xia’s whereabouts, raising concerns that she has been forcibly disappeared.
“Liu Xia has been a prisoner of the state for years simply because of her association with a man whose beliefs the Chinese government cannot tolerate,” said Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch. 

“Her forced disappearance since Liu Xiaobo’s funeral heightens concerns about her well-being and safety.”
Liu Xia was last seen in an official photo taken on July 15, in which she and a few relatives are lowering an urn containing Liu Xiaobo’s ashes into the Pacific Ocean at a beach near Dalian, a city in northeast China. 

Since then, her friends and relatives in Beijing have not been able to reach her directly. 

According to international and Hong Kong media reports, on July 19, authorities have forcibly taken Liu Xia for a “vacation” in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
Liu Xia, 61, is a Beijing-based poet, artist, and photographer. 

She has published collections of poems and her photographic works have been exhibited in France, Italy, the United States, and other countries. 

Liu Xia met Liu Xiaobo through Beijing literary circles and married him when he was imprisoned in a re-education through labor camp in 1996.
Since December 2008, when Liu Xiaobo began serving his most recent sentence for allegedly inciting subversion, Liu Xia has been held arbitrarily under house arrest and deprived of almost all human contact except with close family and a few friends. 

Throughout Liu Xiaobo’s hospitalization, which began in June 2017, Liu Xia was prevented from speaking freely to family, friends, or the media. 

She is known to suffer from severe depression and a heart condition.
An enforced disappearance is defined under international law as the arrest or detention of a person by state officials or their agents followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty, or to reveal the person’s fate or whereabouts. 

Enforced disappearances place the victim at greater risk of abuse and inflict unbearable cruelty on family members and friends waiting to learn of their fate.
Since Liu Xiaobo’s death, Chinese authorities have also systematically prevented his supporters from holding commemorative activities. 

On July 18, police detained Dalian-based activists Jiang Jianjun and Wang Chenggang for throwing a bottle with a message to Liu at the beach near where Liu’s ashes were scattered. 

Jiang was later given 10 days’ administrative detention. 

It is unclear whether Wang has been released. 

Ding Jiaxi, a Beijing-based human rights lawyer, was detained at a Shenyang police station from July 13 to 15 after he protested in front of the hospital where Liu received treatment. 

Beijing police have held activist Hu Jia under house arrest since June 27 to prevent him from going to the Shenyang hospital or participating in memorial activities.
On July 19, as Liu Xiaobo’s supporters in Hong Kong, Melbourne, London, San Francisco, and elsewhere gathered to mark the seventh day of his death, a traditional Chinese memorial rite, police across China called, summoned, or visited activists at their homes, warning them not to join the commemoration. 

Those who have been harassed include Guangzhou-based activist Wu Yangwei (also known as Ye Du), writer Li Xuewen and rights lawyer Huang Simin, Hangzhou-based writers Wang Yongzhi (also known as Wang Wusi) and Wen Kejian, Shanghai-based activist Jiang Danwen, and activist Hua Chunhui, based in Wuxi, a city near Shanghai.
Liu Xiaobo’s death has also prompted new action by China’s internet censors, Human Rights Watch said. 

On the Twitter-like Chinese microblogging platform Weibo, “RIP,” and the candle emoji were censored. 

On WeChat, a social media platform with more than 700 million daily active users, the number of blocked word combinations have significantly increased, and images related to Liu were filtered even in private one-on-one chats, according to a study by the Canada-based organization Citizens Lab.
After announcing Liu Xiaobo’s death on July 13, Shenyang authorities arranged a private funeral that only Liu Xia, a few of Liu Xiaobo’s relatives, and some state security officials were allowed to attend. 

The funeral was followed by a sea burial.

Authoritie imposed these on the family to prevent having a gravesite that could become a place of pilgrimage for Liu’s supporters. 

Liu’s long-estranged brother, Liu Xiaoguang, later appeared at a government news conference thanking the Communist Party for its handling of Liu’s treatment and funeral.

“Chinese authorities may think they will succeed in expunging all memories of Liu Xiaobo and all he stood for,” Richardson said. 

“But in their torment of Liu Xia, their harassment of his friends, and their efforts to silence his supporters, all they do is inspire greater adherence to those ideas.”

Chinese Fifth Column: Bought By China (BBC)

BBC correspondent 'called a dog and a c**p journalist during two-year bullying campaign after raising concerns about boss' conflict of interest with Chinese-backed charity
By Patrick Sawer

BBC journalist Sally Chidzoy, who accuses the corporation of bullying her, arrives at her employment tribunal in Cambridge

A BBC reporter was subjected to a campaign of harassment and abuse after exposing links between her BBC boss and a charity funded by the Chinese government.
Sally Chidzoy, a journalist on the BBC’s Look East programme, says she was called a 'shih tzu' and a 'dangerous dog' during her two year ordeal.
She also alleges that she was falsely imprisoned during the same period.
Miss Chidzoy has now taken the broadcaster to an employment tribunal, which opened in Cambridge on Tuesday.
In a 55-page witness statement, Miss Chidzoy, who is still working for the BBC as home affairs correspondent for the East of England, makes a series of damaging allegations.
These include the claim that her manager was the press spokesperson for a Cambridge charity funded by the Chinese government, which she was investigating.
She also claims that the North Norfolk MP, Norman Lamb, attempted to interfere with a story she was pursuing about the then boss of the East of England Ambulance Trust.
Miss Chidzoy alleges that she was told by BBC bosses to hand over her phone after they suspected her of leaking an email Mr Lamb had sent and that they subjected her to “false imprisonment” when she refused to do so.

Sally Chidzoy claims her BBC manager Nikki O’Donnell orchestrated a campaign of bullying after she discovered Ms O'Donnell also worked for a Chinese backed "charity".

The award-winning journalist was subsequently cleared of leaking Mr Lamb’s email to the press, but was disciplined for forwarding his email on to other BBC colleagues.
Miss Chidzoy also accuses the BBC of dismissing her concerns about her manager’s links with the Chinese government.
She claims that in August 2013 she was investigating a charity called the Centre for Business and Public Sector Ethics, which was receiving funding from the Chinese Government.
The "charity" was arranging a visit to Cambridge by members of the Chinese secret police.
But Miss Chidzoy says that when she phoned the charity’s director Rosamund Thomas for comment, she was told their press spokesperson was a woman called Nikki O’Donnell.
The revelation stunned Miss Chidzoy, as Ms O’Donnell was a news editor at Look East and her line manager in the corporation.
As a result Miss Chidzoy spiked the story because she said she could not seek comment from her own manager.
She said in her statement to the tribunal: “I was very concerned about potential legal issues including conflict of interest, the BBC’s reputation and for the BBC’s legal obligation to remain politically independent.”

Miss Chidzoy says she spoke about this to O’Donnell, who told her she had declared her role at the charity to the BBC.
The BBC initially said they could not find the declaration, but later said she did not need to declare one.
Miss Chidzoy also claims that the BBC paid the same charity to facilitate a programme which BBC Look East transmitted from Shanghai. 

That payment was approved by Mick Rawsthorne, head of regional and local programming.
After Miss Chidzoy raised her concerns O’Donnell orchestrated a ‘campaign’ to undermine her.
This led to two years of bullying and isolation, in which her stories were frequently suppressed for reasons she was concerned by.
During this time, she was described as a 'crap journalist' in an email sent by O'Donnell to Mick Rawsthorne, head of region at BBC News, and seen by 16 other colleagues.

The tribunal is being heard at Cambridge Magistrates Court.

She also claims messages were sent calling her a 'shih tzu' and a 'dangerous dog' before being falsely imprisoned and ordered to hand over her phone on September 29, 2014. 

She refused to do so as she felt it went against her ethics, the tribunal heard.
Miss Chidzoy's witness statement also referred to a BBC email leaked to the Mail on Sunday which she claimed was an attempt to politically influence stories she was working on.
She discovered correspondence sent from then health minister Norman Lamb to a member of her management using a personal email address.
She claims that ex-Met police populate the BBC Investigations Unit and she was made to feel like a criminal because of the 'intrusive forms' used to file information on her.
Disciplinary procedures against Miss Chidzoy ended in August 2015, when she was issued with a written warning that would be held against her for two years.
She is expected to provide evidence from five witnesses during the three-week tribunal, which began today, and in which numerous members of senior BBC management are expected to be called.
Miss Chidzoy joined the BBC in 1986 and was appointed home affairs correspondent in 1997.
She has won multiple awards for her investigative journalism and has spoken on modern day slavery at the United Nations in Geneva.

Whistle-Blowing AIDS Doctor Reflects on Roots of Epidemic in China

By LUO SILING

Dr. Gao Yaojie, who helped expose H.I.V.-tainted blood sales in Henan Province, in her apartment in New York last month.

In October, the pioneering Chinese AIDS fighter Gao Yaojie disclosed her wish to be cremated after death: “Please scatter my ashes in the Yellow River.”
But Dr. Gao, 88, a retired gynecologist who uncovered a major H.I.V. outbreak in central China in the late 1990s, also had a more pointed message: “I do not want what I have achieved in this life to become a tool for others to gain fame and profit.”
What she has achieved is considerable.
In 1996, she was called in to examine a female patient with mysterious symptoms at a hospital in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.
The woman had become infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, through a blood transfusion obtained from a blood bank.
Dr. Gao started her investigations and discovered an unsanitary blood collection and sales network, abetted by local officials, that had spread tainted blood throughout the region.
Many residents were selling their blood, which was pooled with blood from other donors.
After plasma was extracted, the rest of the pooled blood, now often carrying H.I.V. or other infections, was reinjected into donors, so they could give more frequently.
Dr. Gao’s work to expose the epidemic and help its victims won her international acclaim but harassment at home.
Her movements were increasingly restricted, her phone was tapped, and she was stalked when she ventured outdoors.
In 2009, she decided to leave China.
“It was because I want to tell the truth to the world,” she wrote in her memoir.
In 2010, she was appointed a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York, and she continues to live nearby. (Her husband, also a physician, died in 2006.)
She has written several books on AIDS as well as a collection of poetry.
In an interview before World AIDS Day on Thursday, Dr. Gao talked about her life in the United States and what she considers the still-untold truth about the AIDS epidemic in China.

Why did you release the statement about your wishes after death?
In 2005, as my husband was struggling with throat cancer, we thought about water burial.
Being buried in the ground was out of the question, because in Henan, the lease on a grave is only good for 20 years.
Afterward, you have to pay more to keep it.
I would like my son to carry out the water burial for me.
When he was 11, he was jailed for three years for being connected to me. [During the Cultural Revolution, Dr. Gao was denounced as being from a “landlord” family.]
After he was rehabilitated, he went on to university and became a professor.
Now that I’ve gone abroad, he’s become worried that the Gao clan might charge him with filial impiety if he “threw his mother into the water.”
So I wrote this statement.
After I die, my son will take my ashes and scatter them in the Yellow River.
Actually, that isn’t the chief problem.
It’s the fact that some people have used my name for their own advantage.
Some have used my name to raise money without my knowledge.

In 2009, you came to the United States and said you would tell the world the truth behind the AIDS epidemic in China. What is that truth?

People campaigning for AIDS awareness at a section of the Great Wall, in Tianjin, in September.

The root of AIDS in China was the plasma market, which was introduced not only in Henan but in other provinces as well.
Henan was severely affected, however.
From the late 1980s to early 1990s, the plasma market took off in several parts of Henan.
Then Liu Quanxi became director of the Henan Health Department and strongly pushed the policy, which encouraged farmers to sell their blood.
From 1992 to 1998, as a result of the administration of [the provincial party secretary] Li Changchun, blood-selling became an established “industry.”
In a few years, blood stations had spread everywhere in Henan.
Only about 230 of them were licensed.
There were countless illegal ones.
The places with the most blood stations then are the places with the most severe AIDS problem now. From 1998 to 2004, under [now Premier] Li Keqiang, who succeeded Li Changchun in Henan, the AIDS incubation period, which is five to eight years, passed, and a great number of people infected with H.I.V. began showing AIDS symptoms and died.
AIDS not only killed individuals but destroyed countless families.
This was a man-made catastrophe. 
Yet the people responsible for it have never been brought to account, nor have they uttered a single word of apology.
I am very angry now.
Why?
In 2004, the government, which had begun to acknowledge the existence of the AIDS epidemic, sent medical teams to 38 “AIDS villages” in Henan.
Yet there were so many other people in Henan who did not get the needed treatment, not to mention those in other provinces.
In 2004, the Chinese government began to register AIDS patients and put out this policy: Those with symptoms would get 200 renminbi each month.
Those who didn’t yet show symptoms would get 150 renminbi.
This came with a condition, however, which was that one must write “sexual transmission” under “cause of infection,” because the authorities had ordered that “blood transmission” not appear in the questionnaire.
They hid the truth from the public. 
They wouldn’t let the victims say it was blood transmission, only homosexual activity or drug use or prostitution.
Since the officials suppressed information about the epidemic while cracking down on anyone who tried to report the facts or go to Beijing to file petitions, the epidemic wasn’t contained in time but kept getting worse.
On Dec. 18, 2003, Vice Premier Wu Yi met with me and we spent three hours discussing the problem.
She said, “Someone told me that the main routes of AIDS infection in China are drug use and sex.”
I said, “That’s a lie. If you don’t believe me I can call a rickshaw and pull you there myself so you can see what’s happening.”
She finally believed me, but soon the toadies were around her again and telling her homosexuality and sex were the main causes.

Have official attitudes changed under Xi Jinping?
It must be said that the government indirectly admits the existence of the plasma disaster.
I have two pieces of evidence: One is Xi Jinping’s wife, Peng Liyuan.
In September 2015, in her speech at the United Nations, Peng mentioned a 5-year-old orphan named Gao Jun.
He is now 15 and is from Anhui Province.
His parents were infected with H.I.V. from selling blood.
He was the first person affected by the epidemic Peng had come into contact with after she became the [Health Ministry’s] ambassador for H.I.V./AIDS prevention [in 2006].
The other evidence is from December 2015, when the AIDS orphans project of Du Cong’s Chi Heng Foundation was awarded the China Charity Award by the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Du Cong, who had came to China’s rural areas in 2002 for a work project, started to help orphans after seeing the situation in the AIDS villages.
So far, the foundation has raised about 200 million renminbi [$29 million] and helped more than 20,000 people, including more than 600 orphans.
On the other hand, the Central Committee’s Leading Group for Inspection Work sent a team to Henan in 2014 for a two-month investigation.
The first day that they stayed at the Yellow River Hotel in Zhengzhou, more than 300 plasma market victims gathered in front of the hotel to submit their complaints.
But they were warded off by officials and the police.

Is the blood disaster under control now?
In 1995, Henan Province began closing some blood-collecting stations.
However, illegal blood stations are still active.
Last year, I read four news reports about illegal blood stations, three in Beijing, one in Nanjing.
Of course, there must be some illegal blood stations that have not been detected.
And I think the spread of H.I.V. is not totally under control.
Last year, I read a report about a woman who was infected with H.I.V. through a blood transfusion during surgery in Tongxu County, in Henan, which indicates there are still problems with blood donors.
Unfortunately, the victims are farmers, and most of them are illiterate.
They don’t know what happened to them.
They don’t know how to speak up for themselves.
They think this happened because of an unavoidable fate.
In recent years, they have begun petitioning for their rights, but their situation is still very bad.

How is your life in America?
Because I can’t speak English, I don’t go out that often.
Every month I pay $2,000 for my apartment.
The money comes from funds Professor Andrew Nathan [of Columbia University] raised for me.
Since I didn’t work in the United States in my younger days or pay taxes, I feel rather uncomfortable asking the government for assistance.
But in fact I am being taken care of by the United States.
Every month I get $87 worth of food stamps.
All my renumerations and award money goes to buying copies of my books and donating them.
For some time, I’ve had high blood pressure and blood clots in my left leg.
In the past three years, I’ve hardly been able to walk.
A caretaker is with me 24 hours a day.
My life in the United States is busy.
I receive at least six letters a day.
And I have many visitors.

China's Rape Culture

Documentary “Hooligan Sparrow” shows how dangerous it is to protest against rape in China

By Joanna Chiu
"Hooligan Sparrow" holds up a sign that says "China’s women’s rights are dead."

The documentary film Hooligan Sparrow begins with Wang Nanfu, a fresh journalism school graduate, introducing herself while standing on a busy street. 

Seconds later, she is surrounded by a group of men. 

They egg each other on, threatening to smash her camera and daring her to continue filming. 

“This is the story I captured before they took the camera from me,” Wang says in a voice over.
The rest of the documentary is even more violent, but Wang’s subjects appear better prepared. 

When eleven people storm into the home of a Chinese women’s rights activist named Ye Haiyan, who also goes by the name “Hooligan Sparrow” (link in Chinese), Ye deftly fights off their attacks with a meat cleaver.
Hooligan Sparrow, Wang’s first film, was an official selection of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival and debuts this month on the POV series on PBS and on Netflix. 

The severe harassment it documents of women’s rights activists is part of a broader clampdown on civil society in China. 

Last summer, police questioned or detained over 300 human rights lawyers and activists. 

At least a dozen are yet to stand trial.
Days before the attack on Ye’s home, during the summer of 2013 covered in the documentary, Ye had organized a small protest in the southern island province of Hainan, where she held up a poster saying, “Principal, get a room with me—leave the school kids alone.” 

A photo of Ye with her sign went viral, raising awareness of a spate of sexual assaults in China against schoolchildren. 

At the time, Ye was already widely known for volunteering to work for free in a brothel in order to draw attention to sex workers’ rights.
Like Ye, Wang is from a poor village in China. 

Wang taught herself English and won scholarships that allowed her to study journalism in Ohio and New York. 

She was planning on making a documentary about Chinese sex workers when Ye invited her to film their protest.
Their Hainan protest was aimed at a school principal and a local government official, who had taken six female students aged 11 to 14 to a hotel and raped them over a 24-hour period. 

The men claimed they thought the girls were sex workers. 

They were each sentenced to less than 14 years in jail, reflecting the fact that the punishment for “engaging in sex with underage prostitutes” in China used to be only five to 15 years in prison. 

The “prostitute” label was a criminal classification that legal experts said shamed child victims into silence and let rapists off the hook.
In the film, Wang follows Ye and her fellow activists as police and hired thugs chase them from town to town. 

In one chilling scene, only the sounds of Ye getting beaten can be heard. 

Wang is also followed and interrogated, with her camera jerking wildly as she tries to run away. 

All of this happened because a small group of women were successfully raising awareness, mostly through social media, about sexual assault cases.
Anti-rape activism wasn’t always so controversial in China. 

Before Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, authorities seemed relatively tolerant of advocacy around women’s issues, compared to causes such as religious freedom and land rights.
Female activists who are currently in jail include former primary school teacher Su Changlan, who faces up to 15 years in prison on the charge of “inciting subversion of state power.” 

Su is a former volunteer for the New York-based Women’s Rights in China group, and has campaigned for an end to violence against women, and assisted women who were forced to abort children to comply with China’s family planning system.
After shutting down Ye’s activism and driving Wang out of the country, authorities made an even stronger statement last year by arresting five young feminist activists, shortly before International Women’s Day on March 8. 

The five were planning to distribute stickers with slogans, including a call for police to arrest sexual harassment suspects, when they were detained.
“Ye can’t hold street protests anymore. She has trouble traveling because she is under constant surveillance, and her passport has been taken away,” said Wang, who is married to an American and lives in New York. 

“Police threatened my family and urged them to stop me from making my documentary. I haven’t tried to go back to China yet. I don’t know if it’ll be safe to go.”