Dui Hua Staff Speak to Mainland Chinese Audiences on US Justice Issues

In mid-November 2007, Dui Hua Executive Director John Kamm and Joshua Rosenzweig, the foundation’s manager of research and programs, made presentations before audiences in China on the topics of citizen oversight of US police forces and the lethal injection debate in the United States. They were hosted by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate (SPP) and local procuratorates in Wuhan and Yichang, Hubei Province. The speaking engagements were arranged by Prof. Dan Wei, a high-ranking official with the SPP who came to the San Francisco Bay Area this past March for a week-long exchange program on criminal justice hosted by Dui Hua.

On November 15, Kamm spoke to an audience of more than 100 police officers, prosecutors, and other officials in Yichang in an address broadcast by TV to other locations in the municipality. His three-hour PowerPoint presentation—with Chinese translation—marked the first time Chinese law enforcement officials had been introduced to the concept of civilian oversight. The audience asked many questions following the presentation, and officials also discussed how citizen complaints are handled in China.

In Wuhan, Kamm later gave a shortened version of the presentation to officials from the local procuratorate and prison administration bureau. Kamm described the US system of access to prisoners and to prisoner information, which is considerably more open than the Chinese system.

On November 14, Rosenzweig addressed the Wuhan University School of Law, and on November 19 he addressed law faculty and students at Renmin University in Beijing. Delivering his lectures in Chinese, Rosenzweig introduced the controversy surrounding lethal injection procedures used in the United States. Because lethal injection is an increasingly common method of capital punishment in China, Chinese legal scholars are carefully watching the outcome of the Supreme Court’s consideration of the constitutionality of lethal injection during the court’s current term.

Several officials who spoke with Kamm and Rosenzweig brought up the sharp drop in executions since the Supreme Court resumed the power of death penalty review on January 1. In these exchanges, the officials mentioned numerous reasons for the decrease, including: more sentencing of the death penalty with two-year reprieve; increased use of compensation to crime victims’ families as a means to avoid imposition of the death penalty; serious debate over instances of wrongful executions; and the prohibition of the transplant of prisoners’ organs to anyone other than close family members.

"The presentations on aspects of the US justice system that Dui Hua gave in China reflect our organization's commitment to a two-way exchange of opinions and experiences between experts in the US and China," said John Kamm. "We hope in the future to visit places of detention and attend trials in China, something we were unable to do on this last visit."

Related links:

• Visit Promotes Dialogue on US-China Criminal Justice (PDF on Prof. Dan Wei's program in the Bay Area, Dialogue, Spring 2007, Issue 27)
  
• US Lethal Injection Procedures Face Supreme Court Scrutiny (DIALOGUE.online, Fall 2007, Issue 29)

Dui Hua Co-sponsors Bay Area Seminar by Swedish Ambassador

Dui Hua co-sponsored a seminar by Ambassador Börje Ljunggren from the Asia Department of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Friday, November 30, at Stanford University. Free and open to the public, the seminar was entitled, “Human Rights and Political Reform in Contemporary China: Views from a Swedish Diplomat and Scholar.” For more information, click here or download a seminar flyer (PDF).

New Statistics Point to Dramatic Increase in Chinese Political Arrests in 2006

Chinese arrests for "endangering state security" (ESS) doubled in 2006 over the previous year, according to official statistics recently released by the Chinese government.

The just-published 2007 China Law Yearbook reveals that in 2006 state prosecutors approved the arrest of 604 individuals detained by public security and state security police in ESS cases, up from 296 in 2005. This marks the highest number of ESS arrests in China since 2002.

The statistics also show the initiation of prosecutions in 258 ESS cases involving 561 individuals in 2006, compared to 185 cases involving 349 people in 2005.

"These are some of the only official numbers that the Chinese government publishes with respect to its handling of political crime," notes John Kamm, executive director of The Dui Hua Foundation. "This dramatic increase in arrests confirms the heightened crackdown on dissent in China that we've been witnessing since at least the middle of 2005."

Since its founding in 1999, The Dui Hua Foundation has been engaged in a global search for information about Chinese political detainees and maintains a comprehensive database of information about Chinese political prisoners. Yet despite their intensive research efforts, foundation researchers were surprised to see how few of the individuals arrested for ESS in 2006 were in that database.

"Given the lack of transparency in the Chinese criminal justice system, we've estimated in the past that we know about roughly 10 percent of all Chinese political cases," explains Joshua Rosenzweig, Dui Hua's research manager. "But these latest figures suggest that arrests have been taking place on a larger scale and under even greater secrecy than before."

Among the roughly two dozen cases in Dui Hua's database that can be correlated to the 2006 statistics are the arrests of veteran political activists such as Yang Tongyan, Chen Shuqing, Yan Zhengxue, and Zhang Jianhong; the crusading defense lawyer Gao Zhisheng; and brothers Alim and Ablikim Abduriyim, who were implicated in the activities of their Uyghur-rights activist mother, Rebiya Kadeer. Also presumably included in the arrest figures for 2006 are more than 10 unconfirmed arrests of Tibetan activists in the eastern Tibetan regions traditionally known as Amdo and Kham.

Under Chinese law, the "endangering state security" category comprises such crimes as subversion and "splittism" (including the incitement thereof), as well as espionage and "illegally providing state secrets to overseas entities." Basically replacing the category of "counterrevolution" following legal reforms ten years ago, the ESS provisions are primarily aimed at suppressing political dissent in the name of protecting the "security and interests of the [Chinese] state."

In addition to those charged with ESS crimes, the Chinese criminal justice system punishes a much larger number of individuals for participation in banned organizations such as Falun Gong, membership in unauthorized religious groups, and taking part in "mass incident" protests against corruption, land seizures, environmental damage, and other injustices. These individuals are typically charged with crimes under the category of "disturbing the social order," a category too broad to draw any meaningful conclusions about total numbers from the annual statistical information revealed in the China Law Yearbook.

Fall 2007 Issue of Dialogue Newsletter Published

The Fall 2007 issue of Dui Hua's newsletter, Dialogue, is now available. The cover article considers the impact of China's global prominence and overseas activities on its human rights record and the human rights dialogue itself. Two articles on lethal injection—one each focusing on the United States and China—describe the direction this form of capital punishment is taking in the two countries.

This issue of Dialogue shares updates on three protesters imprisoned for crimes linked to the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations. Newsletter readers will also learn about the Bay Area visit by a Hong Kong legislative councilor and the foundation's most recent activities: the opening of a Dui Hua office in Hong Kong and the new web site launch.

You can now read the entire content of the Dialogue newsletter as DIALOGUE.online, an online resource only available via www.duihua.org. Please subscribe if you wish to receive a free copy of the printed Dialogue newsletter.

Police Document Evidence, Dui Hua Testimony on Yahoo!'s Role in Chinese Internet Cases

In July 2007, Dui Hua research uncovered Chinese police documents related to the role of Yahoo! in the Internet subversion cases of dissidents Shi Tao and Wang Xiaoning. Dui Hua translated the documents and posted them with summary and commentary on the foundation's web site in two separate postings. For the convenience of site visitors, the information released by Dui Hua in late July appears below in one combined posting.

On November 7, 2007, Dui Hua’s Manager of Research and Programs Joshua Rosenzweig gave remarks related to the Yahoo! cases at a briefing entitled “China and the Internet: A Virtual Road to Prison” before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) in Washington, DC. The full text of his remarks can be viewed here.

In addition, selected news articles cover how Dui Hua's work contributed to public awareness of the role of Yahoo! in these cases.

Police Document Sheds Additional Light on Shi Tao Case (7/25/07)

New documentation of the Beijing State Security Bureau’s request for user account information from Internet company Yahoo! in the case of Chinese journalist Shi Tao raises new questions about how much the company knew at the time of the request about the nature of the police investigation.

The police document, a copy of which recently surfaced on the web site of the US-based Chinese-language web site Boxun.com, is essentially a standardized search warrant making clear that Chinese law enforcement agencies have the legal authority to collect evidence in criminal cases. (The Dui Hua Foundation has produced a full English translation of the document, which it has examined and believes to be authentic.)

Addressed to the Beijing representative office of Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) Ltd., the April 2004 notice specifies that evidence is being sought in a case of suspected “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities” (a state security crime under China’s criminal code) and requests the account registration, login times and corresponding IP addresses, and email content over a two-month period in early 2004 for a specific Yahoo! email account, huoyan1989@yahoo.com.cn. Court documents have already revealed that this account information was used as evidence in the trial against Shi.

In February 2006 testimony before two congressional subcommittees investigating the practices of American Internet companies in China, Yahoo! senior vice president and general counsel Michael Callahan stated: “When Yahoo! China in Beijing was required to provide information about the user, who we later learned was Shi Tao, we had no information about the nature of the investigation.” While condemning China’s punishment of free expression, Callahan noted that Yahoo! was authorized to comply with legally authorized law enforcement requests in the countries in which it operates.

“This new documentation suggests that Yahoo!’s Beijing office was at least aware of the general nature of the crime being investigated in the Shi Tao case,” says Joshua Rosenzweig, manager of research and publications for The Dui Hua Foundation, “even if it was unaware of the specific circumstances or the name of the individual involved. One does not have to be an expert in Chinese law to know that ‘state secrets’ charges have often been used to punish political dissent in China.”

“We must remember,” Rosenzweig adds, “that before Shi Tao there were three other Chinese dissidents about whom Chinese police obtained user information from Yahoo! in Beijing. If we assume that law enforcement agencies investigating these cases followed the same procedures to obtain that information, three other notices would have been provided specifying investigations into subversion or incitement—crimes of a more unambiguous political nature.”

Shi Tao, sentenced in 2005 by a court in Hunan Province to 10 years’ imprisonment for “illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities,” was jailed for sending an overseas web site details of a secret government memorandum warning Chinese media outlets against voicing opinions contrary to official policies during the months prior to the sensitive 15th anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations. Shi recently joined another jailed Chinese dissident, Wang Xiaoning, in seeking damages in US federal court against Yahoo! and its Hong Kong subsidiary.

More Evidence Emerges on Yahoo!’s Role in Chinese Internet Cases (7/30/07)

Documents in another of four known cases involving Yahoo! and the imprisonment of Chinese dissidents show conclusively that information provided by the company’s Beijing office was being used as part of Chinese police investigations into political crimes.

In this case, emails from Wang Xiaoning supplied to police by Yahoo! were used as evidence that he disseminated writings opposed to the Chinese government and its policies. A Beijing court subsequently found Wang guilty of “inciting subversion” and sentenced him to 10 years’ imprisonment. (The documents, which The Dui Hua Foundation has examined and believes to be authentic, are appended along with English translations.)

On April 23, 2002, agents of the Beijing State Security Bureau approached Yahoo!’s Beijing office with a notice requesting information about a Yahoo! Groups account as well as registration and login information for two Yahoo! email addresses. In a subsequent request for information on August 14, 2002, police sought registration information, login information, and email messages for another Yahoo! email account, all of which appear to have been provided on that same day by Yahoo!’s Beijing office. Both of the police notices clearly state “suspected inciting subversion” as the cause of the investigation.

On September 1, 2002, Wang Xiaoning was taken into custody by police in Beijing on suspicion of “inciting subversion.” He was charged with using an online newsletter to attack the government and advocate multi-party elections, and he was alleged to have used his Yahoo! accounts to disseminate the political writings of his “Chinese Third Way Party” to hundreds of recipients. Sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment by the Beijing Number One Intermediate People’s Court on September 12, 2003, Wang is due for release from Beijing Number Two Prison on August 31, 2012.

These documents follow Dui Hua’s July 25 report on a police document in the case of Shi Tao revealing that Yahoo!’s representative office in Beijing had information that investigators were pursuing a case involving a leak of state secrets. User account information provided to police in response to that document was later used to convict Shi on state secrets charges and sentence him to ten years’ imprisonment. Previously released court documents have also shown that Yahoo! user account information was provided by the company in the course of police investigations into the subversion cases of Jiang Lijun (sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in November 2003) and Li Zhi (sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment in December 2003).

Related links:

• Wang Xiaoning emails provided to Beijing police by Yahoo!
• Police notice to Yahoo! Beijing on Wang Xiaoning case
• Jiang Lijun and Li Zhi subversion cases

Joshua Rosenzweig Gives Remarks on China and the Internet before Congressional Caucus

Dui Hua’s Manager of Research and Programs Joshua Rosenzweig gave remarks at a briefing entitled “China and the Internet: A Virtual Road to Prison” before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) in Washington, DC on Wednesday, November 7. The full text of his remarks can be viewed here.

Dui Hua to Give Remarks on China and the Internet before Congressional Human Rights Caucus on November 7

Dui Hua’s Manager of Research and Programs Joshua Rosenzweig will be among the invited speakers to give remarks at a briefing entitled “China and the Internet: A Virtual Road to Prison” before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) in Washington, DC on Wednesday, November 7.

The below information is from a notice released by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus:

Please join the Congressional Human Rights Caucus for a briefing on the subject of human rights and the Internet in China. The briefing is open to the public and media, and will be held on Wednesday, November 7th, 2007, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 2255 of The Rayburn House Office Building.

China has long developed one of the most sophisticated content-filtering Internet regimes in the world. The Chinese government employs sophisticated methods to limit content online, including a combination of legal regulation, "voluntary codes of conduct," internet surveillance, and criminal sentencing to brutally suppress the free flow of information and to promote self-censorship.

Informational websites, including that of the BBC, Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and the public encyclopedia, Wikipedia, have been partially or completely blocked in China. Particularly in light of the upcoming 2008 Olympics, the Chinese government has made it very clear that it intends to crack down on any information critical of the Chinese regime and its actions. For this purpose, President Hu Jintao announced earlier in April of this year a campaign to rid the country's sprawling Internet of "unhealthy content" and to "purify" it.

For some time human rights organizations have raised their concerns about freedom of expression and Internet censorship in China. In 2004, Yahoo came under fire for giving the personal email address of a Chinese journalist, Shi Tao, to the PRC government, which resulted in his conviction and sentence to 10 years in prison. Other Internet companies have closed down journalists' blogs under pressure from the Chinese authorities and have self-censored their search engines and blog tools.

Dui Hua Opens New Office in Hong Kong

Dui Hua is pleased to announce the recent opening of a branch office in Hong Kong, which will complement and expand on work done from the foundation’s office in San Francisco. The main goal of establishing the Hong Kong office is to increase our capacity to conduct research, programs, and development activities connected with China and Asia as a whole. The office is funded by Dui Hua’s Special Program/Development Fund (SPDF), established in 2005 to support new directions for human rights exchanges and organizational development.

With its location, the Hong Kong office has potential to help strengthen ties between Dui Hua and Chinese criminal justice officials, who increasingly visit the Special Administrative Region, and allows the foundation to build links with NGOs, journalists, and foreign diplomats in Hong Kong. The office is already proving its value in the area of research, since Dui Hua staff is able to make frequent use of Hong Kong’s libraries—still the best repository of materials of interest to the foundation—while researching other collections related to China’s criminal law on a regular basis.

Program and Research Officer Scott Berkland is based in the Hong Kong office, where he works with Dui Hua’s newest staff member, Flora Lee, who joined the foundation in July 2007 as a research and administrative assistant. Before coming to Dui Hua, Flora earned a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in Environmental Science and Policy from Columbia University. She completed her undergraduate studies at Oberlin College, where she studied for a B.A. in Environmental Studies. In Hong Kong, Flora assists with a range of administrative tasks and conducts research, especially for the foundation’s “mass incident” database.