Home > 11- CONTRE L’OPPRESSION DES FEMMES - AGAINST WOMEN’S OPPRESSION > Demand release arrested Chinese women activists !

Demand release arrested Chinese women activists !

Sunday 22 March 2015, by Robert Paris

Five women’s rights activists who were reportedly planning to raise awareness of sexual harassment on public transport are being criminally detained in China.

Li Maizi (also known as Li Tingting), Wu Rongrong, Zheng Churan, Wang Man and Wei Tingting were taken away by police in the lead up to International Women’s Day last weekend.

They live in the eastern Chinese cities of Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou.

Human rights groups said the women had planned to distribute stickers and stage an event to raise awareness about sexual harassment on public transport.

China Human Rights Defenders says the women, who are aged between 26 and 30, are now being held for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" and that the women’s lawyers have not been able to speak with anyone in the group.

Has the commemoration of International Women’s Day also now been outlawed in China?

Sally Tang Mei-Ching, Socialist Action (CWI in Hong Kong)

The Chinese dictatorship celebrated International Women’s Day by arresting women activists, a move that has caused outrage around the world. The arrests highlight the widening repression under Xi Jinping –China’s ‘paramount leader’ – and also how women’s rights are being stifled in China today. On 6 and 7 March, just before International Women’s Day (8 March) and just as the annual ‘red carpet meeting’ of the NPC (National People’s Congress) was getting underway in Beijing, security forces arrested at least ten women activists for preparing protests to highlight gender oppression.

This was a trans-provincial action by the Chinese police. Activists were arrested in different places – in Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou. Some of the activists have been released, but five well-known feminist activists are still being detained. Their names are: Wu Rongrong (武嵘嵘) (age 30) , Zheng Churan (郑楚然)(aka Da Tu) (大兔)(26) , Li Tingting (李婷婷)(aka Li Maizi) (李麦子)(26) , Wang Man (王曼)(32) , Wei Tingting (韦婷婷)(26) . Li Tingting was arrested in Beijing, Zheng Churan was arrested in Guangzhou, and Wu Rongrong in Hangzhou.

The women planned to organise protests in different cities on 8 March, International Women’s Day, to march in a park in Beijing city, and go on public transport with stickers to spread the message against sexual harassment.

In recent years these activists have become well known with their “performance art” to arouse public awareness on women’s rights in China. This includes the ‘Occupy men’s toilets’ campaign to demand increased women’s toilet facilities in public places, and also an action wearing white wedding dresses daubed with red paint as a protest against domestic violence. They are members of the Women’s Rights Action Group, which campaigns against gender discrimination.

“Picking quarrels and provoking troubles”

As Time magazine points out, the five activists “were not advocating for the overthrow of the Communist Party.” Nor did they “organize political rallies, but rather used performance art to challenge societal views.” [Time magazine, 19 March 2015]. Once again, as with crackdowns against anti-corruption whistle-blowers and campaigners for ethnic minority rights, Xi’s ultra-repressive machine has struck even against moderate within-the-system critics.

On 12 March, the five were reportedly officially charged by police with “creating a disturbance, picking quarrels and provoking troubles”. This is a catch-all charge widely used by the dictatorship to silence and incarcerate regime critics – including workers’ representatives and ‘political reform’ activists. A guilty verdict can carry a sentence of up to five years in prison. The five can now be held in detention for 37 days before the authorities decide on formal charges.

Solidarity action stopped in China – International solidarity needed

Since the five women activists were arrested there have been petition activities around China to call for their release, but in many schools and universities these actions have been stopped by the authorities with school officials threatening reprisals against students. Related websites and social media platforms have been blocked in China.

International solidarity action is needed urgently. The CWI (Committee for a Workers’ International) which has an exemplary record of campaigning against sexism and discrimination, as well as against state repression, can play a key role in initiating protests given its extensive global connections and active organisations in more than 40 countries. The Chinese supporters of the CWI, in China and Hong Kong (Socialist Action), are appealing to socialists and women’s activists internationally to organise protests, by writing to the Chinese authorities and staging demonstrations demanding the release of the ‘China 5’.

China: Free jailed labour activists, stop suppressing labour organizations!

Forum posts

  • One month ago Chinese President Xi Jinping launched his most coordinated effort yet to extinguish the human rights movement in China. In July, more than 200 human rights defenders (HRDs) were detained, including more than 100 human rights lawyers. All are key figures in the movement for justice, transparency and accountability in China. They are well-organized, well-educated and well-used to intimidation by the authorities.

    Xi Jinping’s government has imprisoned leading lawyers, journalists, activists and academics – those with the reach and authority to influence minds – for defending the rights of others and exposing injustice. NGOs have also been targeted, especially those working on LGBT, HIV/AIDs, women’s rights, and labor rights issues, because they link and empower people across provinces and establish relationships with foreign NGOs and funders, who provide funding they cannot get in China.

    In addition to mass detentions, government media outlets have launched a campaign vilifying the lawyers who remain in custody. Lawyer Wang Yu was labeled a “shrew” and a “hypocritical and false lawyer.” On July 9 she was taken from her home after her apartment door was pried open in the early hours of the morning and her electricity and internet connection cut. Her husband was also detained, as was her 16-year-old son, who was stopped at the airport as he was boarding a flight to Australia to continue his schooling. Another lawyer, and director of a law firm at which a number of the detained worked, Zhou Shifeng, was shown on national television confessing to “unlawful activities (which) have an impact on social stability.” Pre-trial televised confessions are a tactic to humiliate the human rights defenders and isolate them from their networks. Journalist Gao Yu was paraded on television before her trial in order to “confess her crimes.” At her trial, she retracted this confession, saying it was forced. She was subsequently sentenced to seven years. Now, police have promised leniency if she re-confesses.

    The Chinese government characterizes the movement as a criminal conspiracy, trying to delegitimize human rights defenders who have gained public support through their work. The authorities cite fear of social instability as justification for their actions. However, this is merely a cover for social control to prevent the public from questioning the autocratic and often corrupt rule of the elite. To ensure “social cohesion,” the state targets HRDs like terrorists, with early morning raids on their homes, disappearances, interrogation of family members, and incommunicado detention. This, of course, is not new, but the coordinated nature of it is. When one considers that there are only a few hundred human rights lawyers in China, the startling scale of this crackdown becomes apparent. Though the majority have subsequently been released, around 25 HRDs, including 12 lawyers, remain in custody. Reportedly only one of the detained lawyers has been permitted to see his own defense lawyers. This is contrary to Chinese law (and there has been no shortage of human rights lawyers willing to represent the detained).

    But intimidation and violence have not worked. Despite the huge personal cost, these lawyers have remained steadfast in their commitment to their human rights activities. As the repression against lawyers has worsened, since 2012 when Xi Jinping assumed power, so the number of human rights lawyers practicing in the country has increased.

    Since 2012, Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized the importance of strengthening the rule of law in the country. In what purports to be a move towards democratic reform, he has instructed officials to swear allegiance to the Constitution (in which freedoms of speech, association, and the press are all guaranteed) and is pressing ahead with judicial reform to put more distance between the courts and the Party. Yet all are not equal under the law in Xi’s China. The treatment of HRDs makes a mockery of claims that China is a country with rule of law.

    This systematic assault on civil society has not done any damage to China’s standing on the world stage. On July 31, Beijing was granted the right to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. In September this year China will co-host, with UN Women, a global summit in New York celebrating women’s rights and gender equality – unbelievably the same China which jailed five women’s right activists in March for protesting against sexual harassment. When the international community continues its “business as usual” approach to China, as its human rights situation markedly deteriorates, it does a huge disservice to those HRDs who suffer appalling abuses on a daily basis as they push forward genuine reform in the country. While the Chinese authorities may succeed in silencing some of their internal critics by jailing them, they should not be rewarded on the international stage. For Chinese HRDs, the lack of international reaction is as dispiriting as the locking of cell doors.

  • After more than a month of imprisonment, the so-called “feminist five” were released from custody by Chinese police yesterday. The five activists had been arrested on March 8, International Women’s Day, over a campaign they attempted to organize online to hand out fliers on buses and subways in several cities calling attention to sexual harassment and groping in China.

    That may not seem like much of a crime, even in China—they were arrested for “picking quarrels and creating a disturbance”—but the planned action took place at the same time as the so-called “two meetings,” the annual high-profile gathering of China’s rubber-stamp legislature, during which authorities are highly sensitive to any provocation. The arrests have also been read as a blunt message from the increasingly autocratic Chinese government to civil society groups.

    The arrest of the activists is less surprising than the fact that they were released. (They’re not out of the woods yet. They’ll be under a form of restricted and monitored release, which was also used on artist Ai Weiwei after his highly publicized arrest and release in 2011.) The case sparked international outrage and drew condemnations from prominent figures including John Kerry and Hillary Clinton. But China has brushed off similar international criticism of its human rights practices in the past. So why did it back down this time?

  • Chinese authorities have formally arrested China’s most prominent woman human rights lawyer, accusing her of subverting the state, her lawyer said on Wednesday, as part of a crackdown on activists who have helped people fight for their legal rights.

    The lawyer, Wang Yu, was taken into custody last July and accused the next month of inciting subversion and "causing a disturbance."

    On Wednesday, Wang’s mother received a notice, dated Monday, from police in the northern city of Tianjin, said Wang’s lawyer, Li Yuhan. Tianjin police declined to comment when reached by telephone.

    Wang is the best-known human rights lawyer targeted in an unprecedented nationwide sweep by Chinese police last July, during which hundreds of lawyers were detained. A formal arrest usually leads to a trial and conviction by China’s party-controlled courts.

  • Twenty prominent lawyers and jurists from Europe, North America, Australia and Pakistan on Monday urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to release a dozen Chinese lawyers and legal assistants held in detention in an open letter published in the British newspaper The Guardian.

    In the letter, the legal professionals, predominantly from Western countries, expressed worries that the Chinese lawyers have been denied legal counsel since their July detention.

    They also said they feared that without legal representation the Chinese lawyers and legal assistants could be "at high risk of torture or other cruel and inhumane treatments."

  • "We’re worried that they’re still detained," Ms Feng told AP news agency. "We don’t understand how this has to do with public safety. And this goes against what the Communist Party and the government says they want to do to build a safer, crime-free society."

    This year’s International Women’s Day coincided with China’s top political meetings and observers say Chinese authorities often detain activists before the start of major political or international meetings.

    Eight women’s rights activists were taken to police stations on Friday and Saturday, and three were released after a few hours.

    One of those released told the BBC that the police told her to warn people not to take part in planned events.

    Among the activities which the activists had planned were a march in a Beijing park where participants would wear stickers advocating safe sex and action against sexual harassment; and gatherings in Beijing and Guangzhou calling for awareness of sexual harassment on buses.

    She added that the five who are still in detention are either members, or founders, of women’s rights and gay rights groups in Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou.

  • About a dozen police barged into Wu Rongpu’s apartment in the early hours and dragged away his labour activist wife, leaving their one-year-old daughter screaming.

    “They came into the room and tore through everything they could” looking for evidence of Zhu Xiaomei’s work for a small Chinese workers’ rights organisation.

    Last week, just over a month after she was detained, authorities formally arrested her on charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb social order”, which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.

    Zhu, 36, came to the Chinese authorities’ attention for her role as a labour activist in Panyu in the southern province of Guangdong.

  • Round a dozen police barged into Wu Rongpu’s apartment in the early hours and dragged away his labor activist wife, leaving their one-year-old daughter screaming.

    "They came into the room and tore through everything they could" looking for evidence of Zhu Xiaomei’s work for a small Chinese workers’ rights organization.

    Last week, just over a month after she was detained, authorities formally arrested her on charges of "gathering a crowd to disturb social order," which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in jail.

    Zhu, 36, came to Chinese authorities’ attention for her role as a labor activist in Panyu, in the southern province of Guangdong.

    The region’s bustling ports and factories have made a huge contribution to China’s transformation into the world’s second-largest economy.

    But as the country’s growth slows and factories shut at an alarming rate, they have become ground zero for an explosion in strikes and worker protests.

    According to data from Hong Kong-based rights group China Labour Bulletin (CLB), there were 2,774 across the country in 2015 — more than the previous four years put together – with unpaid wages the most common grievance.

    As China’s manufacturing hub, Guangdong has been hard-hit by the country’s growth slowdown and had almost twice as many strikes and protests last year as any other province.

    Unions represent one of the government’s greatest fears: that economic dissatisfaction, a widening crack in one of the key pillars of the ruling Communist Party’s claim to legitimacy, might lead to an organized political movement.

    "Labor unrest is one of the things that keeps the Communist Party up at night," said Eli Friedman, an expert on labor relations at Cornell University in the US.

    Beijing, he said, has closely studied how Poland’s Solidarity union movement contributed to the fall of its communist government.

    Authorities have spent hundreds of billions of dollars trying to prevent a similar scenario, by propping up failing companies to avoid mass unemployment.

    They also tightly control tools such as social media to stop people organizing effectively and have cracked down on groups that threaten to gather in large numbers, whether in front of a factory or in Tiananmen Square.

    ’Conflict of interest’

    The accusations against Zhu also come as Beijing wages a widening campaign against civil society, including the mass detentions of human rights lawyers.

    Zhu, her husband said, only wanted to help employees protect their rights. But in early December, authorities detained her and two other members of the Panyu Workers Service Centre, along with at least four other activists.

    Chinese state media vilified them, with the official Communist Party mouthpiece the People’s Daily saying they had "plotted behind the scenes to organize and control labor strikes" that "seriously disturbed social order" and "trampled on workers’ rights and interests".

    Their work, it said, targeted the government, using funds provided by foreign organizations, including CLB.

    But a factory employee who worked with Zhu and requested anonymity said that she "taught us how to not break the law, taught us legal knowledge".

    "She gave so much, but society has repaid her with this kind of slander," the worker added.

    The tactics have not stopped demonstrations: more than 60 strikes were reported nationwide in the first week of January alone.

    Independent groups such as Zhu’s actually help to resolve strike actions, according to CLB campaigner Geoffrey Crothall, by negotiating with angry workers and encouraging them to focus on "reasonable" demands.

    "It’s completely the opposite from what the government is pretending is happening," he said.

    The state-run All-China Federation of Trade Unions is the country’s only approved union and the only group legally allowed to collectively bargain on workers’ behalf.

    But many employees feel that it has not "adequately represented" them, Friedman told AFP.

    "It’s a typical practice to have the HR manager also serve as the union chair, which creates an obvious sort of conflict of interest," he said.

    Sobbing child

    Clothes and toys lie scattered around Wu’s apartment. For over a month, he has balanced being the single parent of two children with fighting for his wife’s freedom.

    They met at Hitachi Metals, where she was his supervisor. She fought the company for workers’ right to establish a union, a decision that cost her her job and started her on the path to activism.

    Since her detention, Wu has seen her only a few times, and when he brought their daughter to the detention center to nurse, he said, she barely recognized her own mother.

    On one visit, a government official handed him a letter in her handwriting.

    "Don’t worry," it said. "You don’t need to request a lawyer. Once I clearly explain the situation, they can’t make difficulties for us."

    Wu disbelieves its content "200 percent," he said, adding that police have also pressured him to not seek legal aid.

    Police in Panyu declined to comment when asked by AFP.

    Wu has hired a lawyer, but police have denied him access, he said. Now, he is left waiting.

    "My wife helped a lot of people," Wu said, rocking his sobbing infant to sleep. "Including me."

  • Chinese police have arrested four worker activists based in the country’s Guangdong manufacturing hub, according to lawyers, in what has been described as the harshest crackdown against organised labour by the Chinese authorities in two decades.

    High quality global journalism requires investment. Please share this article with others using the link below, do not cut & paste the article. See our Ts&Cs and Copyright Policy for more detail. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights.

    The level of the clampdown in the country’s southern industrial powerhouse, amid official jitters over a slowing economy and growing labour unrest, was “unprecedented”, a labour rights activist in Guangdong, said. “In the past, they would give us verbal warnings or put pressure on our landlords. But they had not used legal charges in their intimidations.”

    Cheng Zhenqiang, the lawyer representing Zeng Feiyang, one of the activists arrested on Friday, told the FT by telephone that it was clear China’s slowing economy was playing a role.

    “Of course [the crackdown] is related to the economic downturn — but we should not neglect the fact the authorities have never really felt easy about non-governmental organisations … they are always wary of NGOs, especially labour rights NGOs.”

  • Authorities in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong have released a local labor activist "on bail," ahead of Chinese New Year festivities this weekend, although three of her colleagues remain behind bars.

    Zhu Xiaomei of the Panyu Workers’ Center was detained two months ago when a group of police officers broke into her apartment and dragged her away from her baby daughter and teenage son.

    She returned home on Feb. 1, her husband Wu Rongpu told RFA.

    "She’s doing OK," Wu said by phone as the family arrived to spend Lunar New Year at his parental home.

    "I didn’t ask her about [her time in detention] yet because we only just got home, and we are very happy," he said. "Her health seems to be OK, and I am very happy."

    Zhu was held on suspicion of "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order," along with her colleagues from the Panyu Workers Center, Zeng Feiyang and Meng Han.

    Zeng and Meng remain in the Guangzhou No.1 Detention Center, where they have been since Dec. 3.

    And Nanfeiyan Social Work Service Center activist He Xiaobo is also being held in Guangdong’s Foshan, on suspicion of "misappropriation of funds."

    Zhu, a former worker at Hitachi Metals in Guangzhou, lost her job after she organized workers and lobbied for the establishment of a trade union at the factory.

    Since joining the Panyu Center last year, Zhu has been involved in several collective bargaining cases such as the Guangzhou University Town sanitation workers dispute and Lide shoe factory dispute, the Hong Kong-based rights group China Labour Bulletin (CLB) said in an article on its website.

    According to rights lawyer Wu Kuiming, Zhu’s release is likely because she has a very young child at home in need of care.

    "Zhu Xiaomei has an infant child who needs breast-feeding, which is a reason in Chinese law to be granted bail," Wu Kuiming said. "The authorities would have come under a lot of pressure if they didn’t release her."

    Unofficial groups targeted

    He said Zhu was detained in a coordinated operation targeting unofficial labor groups.

    "They detained them because they don’t want people taking part in activism of this kind," Wu Kuiming said.

    Zhu’s main advice to low-paid workers in a dispute with management was "don’t be afraid," the CLB article said.

    "As workers, we were too isolated before, it was difficult to access information and our thinking ossified as a result," it quoted Zhu as saying in an interview before her detention.

    "Somehow we’d end up believing that we were supposed to be oppressed in this way. I don’t think things should be like this," Zhu said. "If you ask me what I think, I’d say we as workers should have dignity and be respected just like anyone else."

    Zhu said she had come to understand through her labor activism that workers can only get the dignity and respect they deserve if they are organized.

    "Collective bargaining has always been the most useful tool," CLB quoted her as saying.

    The ruling Chinese Communist Party is in the middle of a widening crackdown on non-government groups, especially those involved in the country’s nascent but unofficial labor movement.

    According to the New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), Chinese NGOs work on issues that affect millions of ordinary people daily, including domestic violence and discrimination, child welfare, labor disputes and environmental pollution.

    But now, NGOs that work on human rights or civil liberties issues and rely on foreign funding are being targeted for police supervision under a draft Foreign NGOs Administration Law currently in the pipeline, HRW said in recent report.

  • Rights groups called on Tuesday for the release of key women activists on International Women’s Day, as five feminists detained for planning a campaign event this time last year came under renewed pressure from police.

    The overseas-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network called in a statement for the immediate release from house arrest of artist and rights activist Liu Xia, under illegal house arrest since October 2010 after her husband Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

    Also listed in the appeal were top lawyer Wang Yu, who faces subversion charges for her human rights advocacy work, and pro-democracy and women’s rights activist Su Changlan, detained for her support of the 2014 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

    The group also called for the release of Liu Ping, currently serving a six-and-a-half year jail term for sentenced to 6.5 years for exercising her rights to free assembly, expression, and religion, housing activist Jia Lingmin, serving a four-year sentence, and NGO worker Bian Xiaohui, jailed after she campaigned on behalf of her imprisoned father.

    It said four other women, trainee lawyer Li Shuyun, paralegals Zhao Wei, also known as Kaola, and Gao Yue and activist Wang Fang were all detained in a nationwide police operation targeting more than 300 lawyers, law firm staff and legal activists since Wang Yu’s detention on the night of July 9.

    "[They have been] subjected to government retaliation for their defense of women’s rights, housing and land rights, rule of law, and the exercise of their rights to free assembly, association, and expression," CHRD said in a statement launching the campaign to free the women.

    It said an ongoing crackdown by the administration of President Xi Jinping on all forms of social activism had hit women hard.

    A lawyer for Beijing women’s rights activist Ge Zhihui said she had been tortured while in a police-run detention center in the southern district of Fengtai.

    "Staff at the detention center have been torturing Ge Zhihui, who is being held at the detention center as a criminal suspect," her lawyer Huang Han told RFA on Tuesday.

    Ge Zhihui has further injuries to both her legs on top of the ones that were there before and can’t walk normally, Huang said, adding that staff at the detention center won’t allow her to seek medical attention.

    He said Ge had also been subjected to degrading treatment.

    "They gave her a bucket to urinate in but then when she defecated in it, they made her wash her face in that same bucket," Huang said.

  • A Chinese human rights activist says she has been barred from leaving the country just as she was planning to travel to the US to accept an award.

    Ni Yulan had hoped to travel this week to accept the state department’s International Women of Courage Award.

    But she says she was refused a passport. She also alleges she and her husband were forcibly evicted from their home and he was beaten up.

    Ms Ni, a lawyer, is known for defending property rights of citizens.

    She had been due to attend the US award ceremony in Washington on Tuesday, and had applied for a new passport last month.

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