Official Responses Provide Updates on Yahoo! Cases, June Fourth Prisoners

The Dui Hua Foundation has been informed by reliable sources in the Chinese government that three individuals serving sentences for counterrevolution or endangering state security have been released or been granted a sentence reduction. In addition, a June Fourth prisoner serving a sentence for arson has received a sentence reduction.

Li Zhi (李智), a 40-year-old former civil servant from Sichuan, was released from Chuandong Prison on November 11, 2009, following a nine-month reduction granted in June 2009. In December 2003, Li was sentenced by the Dazhou Intermediate People’s Court to eight years’ imprisonment for the crime of subversion and deprived of political rights for four years. He had allegedly communicated with overseas dissidents and posted articles online that criticized government policies. According to the verdict in Li’s case, Yahoo! Hong Kong provided the Chinese police with Li’s user information for his email account. Li had previously received a one-year sentence reduction in January 2007.

Two other prisoners whose email account information was handed over to Chinese police by Yahoo! Hong Kong—Wang Xiaoning (王小宁) and Shi Tao (师涛)—remain in prison. Wang, who allegedly posted critical articles online and tried to set up the “China Third Way Party,” was sentenced in September 2003 by the Beijing Number One Intermediate People’s Court to 10 years in prison with two-year deprivation of political rights for inciting subversion. Wang is serving his sentence in Beijing Number Two Prison and is due for release on August 31, 2012. In April 2005, the Changsha Intermediate Court sentenced journalist Shi Tao to 10 years in prison with two years’ deprivation of political rights for trafficking in state secrets. To facilitate visits by his family, Shi Tao was recently moved from Chishan Prison in Hunan to Yinchuan Prison in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to serve out the remainder of his sentence. He is due for release on November 23, 2014. (Read about Dui Hua’s work in uncovering and releasing information about the Yahoo! cases.)

Dui Hua was also informed that three long-serving prisoners, including two counterrevolutionaries, have been granted clemency for activities related to the spring 1989 disturbances.

Gu Xinghua (顾兴华), a 47-year-old member of the Miao ethnic group, was released from Guiyang Prison on November 27, 2008, after more than 18 years in prison. He was detained in October 1989 for allegedly attempting to organize an armed rebellion by trying to set up the People’s Solidarity Party in Guizhou Province. In September 1990, the Bijie Prefecture Intermediate Court sentenced Gu to life in prison. His sentence was reduced to 20 years in August 1994, and he was subsequently granted four sentence reductions totaling 69 months.

Zhu Gengsheng (朱更生), perhaps the best known of the remaining June Fourth prisoners, was granted a sentence reduction in early 2010 and is now due for release from Beijing Number Two Prison on April 29, 2011. Zhu was shown on Chinese television atop a burning tank, waving a flag and shouting, “We’ve won.” Detained for counterrevolutionary sabotage and counterrevolutionary incitement and propaganda, Zhu was sentenced to death with two-year reprieve for counterrevolutionary sabotage. His appeal was rejected in January 1992. In 1994, the sentence was commuted to life in prison. His sentence was then reduced to 19 years in 1997, and Zhu has subsequently received six more sentence reductions.

Another June Fourth prisoner, Li Yujun (李玉君), was given a one-year sentence reduction in 2009. In January 1991, Li was convicted of arson by the Beijing Higher People’s Court and sentenced to death with two-year reprieve. The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1993 and further reduced to 20 years in November 1996. After six sentence reductions for good behavior, Li’s sentence is set to expire on November 10, 2013.

“Compared to prisoners serving sentences for other crimes, political prisoners are rarely given sentence reductions or parole,” noted John Kamm, Dui Hua’s executive director. “It is welcome news that, in these cases, local courts have decided to exercise clemency. Dui Hua hopes that other courts will take the initiative and order the release of long-serving prisoners convicted of counterrevolution—a crime removed from the Criminal Law in 1997—and endangering state security.”

UN Renews Dui Hua Status as Dialogue Newsletter Highlights Foundation's Strong Ties With China

Dui Hua received some good news as the newest issue of Dialogue was in production. The Economic and Social Council of the United Nations renewed our Special Consultative Status for another four years. Dui Hua remains the only international NGO focused exclusively on human rights in China and the United States to have received this much-coveted status. Increasing our engagement in the international human rights arena, Dui Hua has participated in UN forums such as the Universal Periodic Review of China’s human rights record in 2009 and will take part in the upcoming review of the United States in Geneva this November.

Dui Hua maintains this status through respectful, open and frank communication with China, the United States, and those concerned about human rights in the two countries. Dialogue Issue 40 is full of examples of our approach: the lead story recaps the recent US juvenile justice delegation to China, which Dui Hua organized and the Supreme People’s Court hosted. The issue analyzes recent staff visits to two women’s detention facilities in California—the massive Valley State Prison for Women and our local San Francisco County Jail. The research and prisoner section contains information on Uyghur prisoners that we received in the course of our unique, long-running dialogue with the Chinese government, as well as background information about the only two cases known to Dui Hua of Americans currently imprisoned in China for endangering state security.

An additional article Dui Hua is posting concurrently with this issue—and available only on our website—is a guest commentary by Ms. Patricia Lee, a member of the US elegation to China and the managing attorney for the Juvenile Division of the San Francisco Public Defender's Office. In the piece, Ms. Lee shares her observations on mock trial proceedings held in Qingdao, Shandong Province.

Dui Hua relies on support of all kinds to make our work possible. If you believe in the importance of honest conversation with China on human rights, please consider donating to us.

Dialogue can be read on our website as DIALOGUE.online. We welcome you to subscribe to Dialogue as an e-newsletter or print copy, become a Dui Hua fan on Facebook, and follow Dui Hua on Twitter.

Dui Hua Makes Research Products Available to Wider Audience

The Dui Hua Foundation is pleased to announce that it is making the Occasional Publications of the Dui Hua Foundation (OPs), our main limited-distribution research product issued from 1999 to 2008, available to a wider audience as both a print set and a CD-ROM. Before being retired, the OPs were sent to a small number of professionals worldwide who monitor human rights and criminal justice in China. Dui Hua is now offering governments, academic libraries, research institutions, human rights organizations, and interested individuals the chance to add this unique resource to their collections.

With 27 volumes covering nearly 2,000 pages, the OPs represent the fruits of Dui Hua’s pioneering research into open-source documents published or approved of by official government bodies about political and religious crime in China since 1980. The OPs feature an invaluable compilation of data on more than 1,000 detainees—many of whose names were unknown outside of China before their discovery and publication by Dui Hua—as well as groundbreaking research into criminal justice statistics.

Having first distributed the OPs as print copies, Dui Hua has developed a digital version that brings together on one fully searchable CD-ROM all the original Chinese-language documents with Dui Hua’s English translations.

Buyers of the OP package (print copies plus the CD-ROM) will be sent at no additional cost existing volumes of the research product that replaced the OPs in early 2009—Reference Materials on China’s Criminal Justice System (RM)—and will receive future RM volumes free of charge until the end of 2012.

Selected samples from the OP series are available here (PDF).

If you are interested in acquiring a set of the Occasional Publications, please email duihua (at) duihua.org for more information.

Senior Manager Joshua Rosenzweig Testifies Before Congressional-Executive Commission on China

On Tuesday, August 3, Senior Manager for Research and Hong Kong Operations Joshua Rosenzweig gave a testimony before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) at a hearing entitled “Political Prisoners in China: Trends and Implications for U.S. Policy.” Rosenzweig also submitted a written statement for the record. The CECC holds such hearings periodically to gather information for reporting to the US Congress and the President.

In his testimony, Rosenzweig focused on mounting evidence that a crackdown on the exercise of civic and political rights is underway in China, particularly targeting members of ethnic minorities, government critics, and rights defenders. He spoke about the recent increases in criminal proceedings for “endangering state security” offenses, the use of various punishments meant to counter political and social threats, and the conflict between those who support a “stability-above-all-else” stance and those who seek more rule-of-law reforms. He closed with recommendations on how the US government can more effectively engage with the Chinese government and the international community about human rights issues.