Persecution of human rights defenders and lawyers has escalated since Xi Jinping came to power in China, a senior China researcher for Human Rights Watch told State Newswire.
Maya Wang of Human Rights Watch (HRW) said before Xi, the Chinese government touted its rule of law reforms. Many Chinese people became lawyers and rights defenders to use the law to make their country a better place, she said in her statement to State Newswire.
“I think it’s fair to say that the Chinese government, since Xi, has gone backward, and the law has once again become a weapon of the state, rather than a tool for people to wield to protect themselves against arbitrary state power,” Wang told State Newswire.
Guangxi human rights lawyer Qin Yongpei has been detained without a court hearing or bail for more than three years, ChinaAid recently reported. Qin was arrested in 2019 after reporting two police officers who mishandled a domestic violence case and posted materials related to the case online. He was charged with inciting subversion of state power. His indictment claimed that he had slandered national leaders, attacked the state’s power and slandered the judicial system by posting on social media and conducting interviews with foreign media starting in 2014, according to the ChinaAid report.
Qin applied for release on bail in 2019 but never received a response from the judiciary department, despite the fact that the law states “a written response shall be given within three days," according to ChinaAid. The date of Qin's trial has been repeatedly delayed by periods of several months since the time of his arrest.
“It’s been three whole years! This case is still repeatedly postponed in the name of the country, in the name of the regime, in the name of politics, but in reality, it is a case for the officials’ self-serving ends and a form of retaliation and framing,” Qin Yongpei’s wife, Deng Xiaoyun, said, according to the ChinaAid article.
“HRW does not provide individual assistance, though we often work to highlight the cases of human rights defenders and lawyers, calling for the authorities to release them, and for other governments to raise their cases,” Wang told State Newswire. “We also work with other groups—such as the Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) or Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group—to amplify these defenders’ voices.”
ChinaAid and Humanitarian China jointly honored Qin, as well as Hunan lawyer Xie Yang, with the “China Human Rights Lawyers Award” earlier this year, ChinaAid reported.
In December 2020, the UN sent a letter to the Chinese government regarding “the detention, arrest and charging of human rights defender and lawyer Qin Yongpei and the alleged arbitrary detention and enforced disappearance of human rights defender and lawyer Chang Weiping.” The letter described Qin as “a human rights defender and lawyer.”
The letter noted that the UN had contacted the Chinese government at least nine times since 2014 expressing concerns over “alleged violations of the rights of Chinese human rights lawyers by state authorities.”
