Stalking, Surveillance, Blocking, Capturing - Experience of Chinese Human Rights Activists (and The New Norm in Hong Kong)

"I haven't had any visitors at my house for years, because they're downstairs, not allowing any diplomat, media worker, journalist, or so-called 'unstable individuals', to come to my house." Hu Jia said in a video interview with Stand Newsfrom her home in Beijing, while wearing a black blouse with the words "I want true universal suffrage".

47-year-old Hu Jia is a well-known human rights activist in Mainland China who has been concerned with issues ofenvironmental protection, AIDS, democracy and human rights for many years. In 2008, he was imprisoned for three and a half years for "subversion of state power", but in fact, since 2004, he has been under house arrest as long as he is at home.

There is a 24-hour police presence guarding his house who work in 12-hour shifts, and the police know well who is living in the neighborhood, so no stranger is allowed to go near his place. Even when Hu Jia visits his parents or goes to the hospital for a follow-up appointment for liver cirrhosis, the police will not leave him alone. Hu Jia went to Shenzhen late last year to see his daughter who now lives in Hong Kong with his ex-wife. The police also came with him, so he could only tell his daughter that they were friends of his.

House arrest and surveillance are the daily life of human rights activists in Mainland China like Hu Jia, which is believed to soon be the new norm for Hong Kong democratic activitists.

The enactment of the National Security Law in Hong Kong has changed Hong Kong society overnight. In recent months, Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Tiffany Yuen Ka-wai, Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit and Lee Cheuk-yan have all said that they have been followed and watched by unknown people for a long time. Some veteran journalists covering news in Mainland China were interviewed by RTHK's programme "Viewpoint 31", saying that the series of stalking incidents were similar to those experienced by dissidents in the mainland. It is foresseeable that in less than a year's time, Mainland China's measures on maintaining social stability and state surveillance will be fully implemented in Hong Kong, and the local populace should be prepared.

The first three articles of this feature explore the histories of the Czech Republic, Korea and Taiwan, tracing their progress from totalitarianism to democracy, in the hope of gaining insights or hope on how to move forward. However, tyrannical rule continues in Mainland China, which is Hong Kong's closest neighbour, and is directly related to the future of Hong Kong. Chow Hang-tung, vice-chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China (HKASPDMC), who has been concerned about the human rights movement in China for many years, said the Hong Kong government's actions in recent years are obviously intended to replicate the model and mindset of the Mainland in suppressing civil society in Hong Kong. "From the point of view of the Communist Party, this is definitely the correct direction, but the question is, how solid can our resistance be?"

"You will soon face the terror, stress and cost that I am facing - It's normal to be scared, but you have to move forward," Wu Jia told Hong Kong people.

The Start of Suppression: The Southern Weekly Incident

Just over a decade ago, civil society in China was not as suppressed as it is today.

In May 2008, the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan caused nearly 70,000 deaths and 370,000 injuries. More than 300 NGOs, large and small, went to the frontlines to support the relief effort, and the hidden power of the people began to enter mainstream society. The year 2008 has been regarded by many as the "First Year of Chinese Civil Society". 

In recent years, the Chinese government has tightened its grip on civil society, even attempting to uproot it. Chow Hang-tung believes that the first sign of the difference is the 2013 "Southern Weekly" incident. The liberal media outlet Southern Weekend was censored after covering President Xi Jinping's New Year's speech, which was themed on the "China Dream" and the "constitutional dream" as soon as he took office. Many journalists and intellectuals were dissatisfied, and a large number of netizens gathered outside the building of the Southern Media Group for several days in support of the editorial and reporting department of Southern Weekly, and took to the streets demanding democracy and freedom of speech.

With Xi Jinping in power, the Chinese regime's non-tolerance of civil society is unparalleled. Zou Xingtong cited the example of the late Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo, who was arrested in 2008 for publishing Charter 08. In retrospect, it can be said that the people made the first move before the regime fought back. However, in 2015, the "709 arrests" [1] and other large-scale arrests involving hundreds of people have developed into a proactive and pre-emptive attack by the regime.

"The intensity of the suppression and the seriousness of the case are no longer the same."

China's crackdown on civil society can be seen in its treatment of NGOs and human rights lawyers.

In fact, in Hu Jia's case, the repression hasn't stopped since 1989, when, at the age of 15 and in the third grade of junior high school, he blocked a military bus on the street heading for Tiananmen Square. That summer, he attends another high school, fortunately avoiding detection by the security department, but as a teenager, Hu has witnessed a reign of terror like that of George Orwell’s dystopic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

After graduating from university in 1996, Hu Jia became an environmentalist. In 2001, he joined the most influential AIDS awareness NGO in China, Aizhixing, which was concerned about the massive outbreak of AIDS in rural areas due to trading of human blood. In 2002, when the government began to target Aizhixing, the Ministry of Propaganda banned media coverage of its work and its founder, Wan Yanhai, was arrested. Hu Jia was prepared for the possibility that one day he would also be arrested. 

"At that time I was ready every day, I took a shower before I left home, I changed into clean clothes, ready to be taken into custody at any moment."

Hu Jia's prediction was accurate. On December 25th of that year, he was arrested while on a visit to an AIDS village in Henan province because their announcement of an AIDS epidemic involved state secrets. Hu Jia recalled that when he was detained, the police told him very clearly: "When you boarded the T974 train from Beijing, we were already waiting for you here. "That was the first time I had ever been approached directly by officers, and I was approached on an ad hoc basis."

Obvious tracking "Big Brother is Watching You"

In fact, NGOs in the Mainland have always been exposed to all-round surveillance by the regime. WeChat did not exist in the early 2000s, but all calls, messages and emails were sent over the official Chinese network. In recent years, however, the acts of national security and other departments have become more frequent and high-profile. In the past, appointments for "tea" with members of the human rights community used to be made by plainclothes officers in private and then met in a cafe. Now they will drive a police car - called a "float" - to your door, asking about your organisation's ties to foreign anti-China groups, or asking you to be an informant and provide evidence that the organisation is breaking the law.

"In recent years, they've shown up plainly, even National Security officers, without any disguise. It’s as if there’s no longer a need to keep their identities hiddden." He's just trying to put pressure on you, to get you to report regularly, to tell you the rules - even though the rules may be at odds with the law. 

The purpose of stalking is not only to gather information, but also to exert pressure. One kind of stalking is secret stalking, and another kind of stalking is overt stalking, which tells you that big brother is watching you."

Relatively soft tactics such as drinking tea and stalking do not work, and then in the name of checking water meters and taxes, they may break into your house directly or put pressure on you through your family members. In 2008, Wu Jia was forced to cease operations after being accused of tax evasion at another AIDS awareness organization, Love Source, which he founded before he was imprisoned.

In 2008, Hu Jia was convicted of inciting subversion of state power and sentenced to three and a half years in prison. After his release in 2011, Hu Jia remained under house arrest, with police guarding his house 24 hours a day. He no longer works for any organisation, either because he can no longer found an organisation, or because no existing NGO dares to hire him. 

"As long as you don't agree with the Xinhua News Agency, the Communist Party, the People's Daily or the Global Times, you're a dissident, you are noise, and regardless of whetheryou're a NGO, a religious group, or a labor organisation, you're under close surveillance, without exception."

Human Rights Lawyers: from "Die-Hard" to Being Arrested

Apart from civic organizations, human rights lawyers are also a group that has been suppressed in the Mainland. 

On 9 July 2015, the Chinese authorities mass-arrested, summoned, detained and interviewed over 300 human rights lawyers and pro-democracy activists in as many as 23 provinces. Beijing lawyer Chen Jiangang, who defended one of the arrested lawyers, Xie Yang, and accused the police of torturing Xie, has been repeatedly threatened by the authorities, and his entire family was kidnapped during a trip to Yunnan. His sons, six and two years old, were threatened at gunpoint by the police. The family eventually fled to the United States last year, escaping a direct threat to their lives. But even after they left, his mother who is in China still faces harassment from time to time from the authorities.

"They went to my hometown in Shandong to threaten my mother, but my mother herself actively opposed me and said she was going to sue me for opposing the Communist party, so what is the use of threatening my mother?" In a telephone interview with The Stand News in the United States, Chen spoke of his frustration.

Chen, who began practising as a lawyer in 2008, describes the judicial environment in China in the years leading up to 2015 as "acceptable". Although he also represented some sensitive cases in the eyes of the authorities, the most he would do at that time was to have a dinner with the Judiciary Bureau staff before the trial, telling the lawyers to keep their mouths shut in the courtroom.

We're all like, "Okay, okay, no problem," because our lawyers' licenses have to be audited annually, and we don't want to stand against them directly. But when it comes to the actual trial, I personally have never compromised.

From around 2011 to 2013, the term "die-hard lawyers" was popular in China's human rights circles, describing lawyers who were actively involved in human rights cases to the extent that they protested in court against unfair trial procedures. Although many lawyers were expelled from the court and even detained, Wu Qingbao, the former deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice, wrote an article in the Global Times, praising the "die-hard" lawyers for defending the rights of the underprivileged against the miscarriages of justice and law enforcement, acknowledging their contribution to the society and even suggesting that the government should absorb these lawyers and make them part of the decision-making process.

Chan said the notion of many human rights lawyers is to reveal problems such as abuse of power and unfair policies by departments through public disclosure of cases and trials. At that time, lawyers from different provinces would even form legal teams to handle large cases, and they would also have meals together and discuss national issues in their spare time.

"Before 2015, lawyers were still relatively righteous because we all abided by the law. But the Communist Party felt that if they allowed such a section of lawyers to continue to develop, the public security, prosecutor's office and courts would continue to be beaten by us and they will become more and more embarrassed"

The situation faced by human rights lawyers has obviously changed in 2015. "When it comes to "709 arrests", they used political cases directly instead of law, which lawyers called inciting subversion of state power, to arrest people directly, to arrest and extract confessions through torture, and then to put them in jail for a crime," he said.

In the past, when an individual lawyer was arrested, human rights lawyers from all over the country could show their support, but 709 arrests obviously aimed at catching them all, leaving them isolated and helpless, Chen said. According to Chen, in the last five years since 709, not only has the Communist Party's grip on lawyers not been relaxed in the slightest, but it has been continually tightened, with lawyers consistently threatened during meetings and denied permission to practice law after passing judicial examinations. Many 709 lawyers, including Wang Yu, who had set up a "China Lawyers After Club" legal services organization after their registration was revoked, were also banned by the authorities.

Apart from exerting pressure on lawyers, the authorities have also tightened control over case procedures. For example, the families of 12 Hong Kong people detained in Shenzhen's Yantian Detention Centre have been denied access to their clients because they are believed to have been assigned lawyers by the government. 

"China's Communist Party came prepared. One direction is to kill and discipline some of the lawyers, if the rest of them still dare to come out to work on cases, you can just take over the defense seats themselves without the ability to defend others."

Chen recalls the first few years of his practice, when lawyers were full of hope, hoping to spread the concepts of democracy, freedom and the rule of law through human rights cases, hoping that the community in China would become more open and fair; He thinks of his comrades in arms, some of whom are now scattered abroad, some of whom are still in trouble...

"At the time, we still had the illusion that the judicial situation was developing."

Four Ways of China's Communist Party to Crack Down on Human Rights Defense Circles

According to Chow Hang-tung's observations, the Chinese Communist Party's crackdown on human rights circles in recent years can be roughly divided into four directions.

First, the most direct means is to punish the troublemakers in their eyes through legal weapons, supplemented by digital surveillance methods such as message interception and face recognition, so that the net of arrests spares nobody.

Secondly, the introduction of legislation to restrict the sources of funding for organizations, including the implementation of the Law on the Management of the Contents of Overseas Non-Governmental Organizations (Overseas NGO Law) in 2017, which imposes stringent restrictions on the acceptance of funds and fundraising from outside the country by organizations, and increases the chances of NGOs being subject to government regulatory intervention.

Thirdly, suppress the liberal media and step up Internet censorship so that the news of the civil society cannot spread.

"In the past, all kinds of organizations, relied on the media to make a big issue, so it was important to have a small amount of relatively free media at that time, if you didn't have nothing to do. But after the 'Southern Weekend', the Mainland media has cracked down so much."

Hong Kong is obviously in a much better position than the mainland to garner international attention," she says. "Hong Kong is a former British colony and an international financial centre, so if anything happens to you, the whole world will be watching. But it's not the same in the Mainland. When you go underground, it's hard for the media to catch up with you," she said.

Fourthly, due to the lack of communication channels such as the media and the Internet, it is already extremely difficult for Mainland citizen groups to recruit new members. Even when newcomers join, they are often quickly met by the National Security and National Security Bureau to discourage them before they become too firm, in an attempt to let dissident voices fade away as the generations change.

Chow Hang-tung said that even ordinary local community groups, are being watched closely. 

"The national security detects very fast, as soon as they know there is a new recruit, they will put all kinds of pressure on you. They are always looking for your family to threaten that they will be affected if you continue. In many cases, you don't have time to train or convince a new person to stay in the sport, he/she has already been dissuaded."

Chow said that The Chinese Communist Party has undoubtedly achieved some success in its all-round suppression, which has resulted in the narrowing and fragmentation of the human rights protection circle in China. "The most staunch activists and lawyers are basically people who were involved in the movement in the last decade or so," she said.

[1] On 9 July 2015, the Chinese authorities mass arrested, summoned, criminally detained and interviewed over 300 human rights lawyers and pro-democracy activists in as many as 23 provinces; some of the human rights lawyers, including Wang Quanzhang, who had been out of contact for over three years, were charged with inciting subversion of state power and sentenced to prison, with some revealing that they had been tortured in custody after their release.

Source：Standnews #Oct21

#Stalking #Surveillance #Blocking #Capturing #ChineseHumanRights 

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