Dui Hua Welcomes Daisy Poon as Development Manager

The Dui Hua Foundation is pleased to welcome Ms. Daisy Poon as our Development Manager, based in the foundation’s San Francisco office.

In late summer 2010, Dui Hua’s Board of Directors held a strategic planning meeting. A decision was reached to create the position of Development Manager to manage Dui Hua’s special programs and all aspects of the foundation’s development planning and implementation.

Ms. Poon, born in Hong Kong and educated in the United States, graduated with honors from Cornell University with a degree in electrical engineering, and in law from UCLA, where she was managing editor of the UCLA Law Review and Asian Pacific American Law Journal. She clerked for Honorable Judge Garland Burrell in Sacramento in 2008. More recently she has practiced intellectual property law at a major law firm in Silicon Valley. She is the first member of Dui Hua’s staff to be a practicing lawyer.

“A special task for Daisy will be helping manage Dui Hua’s growth into new areas of human rights, including such issues as juvenile justice reform and treatment of women in prison,” said John Kamm, Dui Hua’s Executive Director. “We are delighted that someone so committed to what Dui Hua stands for, with such a distinguished background in law and technology, has decided to join us.”

Beijing Court Upholds Verdict Against American Geologist on State Secrets Charge

The Beijing High People's Court today upheld a lower court's verdict against Xue Feng (薛锋), sentencing the American geologist to an eight-year prison term for "gathering intelligence and unlawfully trafficking in state secrets for overseas entities."

The charges stem from events in 2005, when Xue, a 46-year-old naturalized US citizen who earned his Ph.D. in geology from the University of Chicago, was working for the American energy and engineering consulting firm IHS. Xue became aware of and introduced to his employer a database of information about China's oil industry that both Xue and IHS believed was a commercially available product. After IHS purchased the database, the information contained therein was subsequently classified as a state secret. IHS continues to operate in China, and it continues to offer for sale the “state secrets” it purchased.

Xue was detained in Beijing in November 2007 and held for nearly a month before the US embassy was notified and granted access to him, a violation of the consular agreement between the United States and China. Consular officials who visited Xue said that he complained of being physically abused by his interrogators. Xue showed burn marks where he stated that the interrogators stubbed out their cigarettes. The case itself has been marked by repeated delays and due process violations. Xue was held for a year before being granted access to a lawyer. It took another year between his first trial and his sentencing in July last year. Today's decision comes more than two months after the Beijing High Court heard the case on appeal on November 30.

After the case went public in November 2009, US Ambassador Jon Huntsman focused on Xue’s plight and began paying him monthly visits. During his November 2009 state visit to China, President Obama raised the case with President Hu Jintao, and since that time American officials have repeatedly raised the case and pleaded for clemency for Xue, who suffers from a heart condition that has necessitated hospitalization during his long incarceration.

During Hu’s recent state visit to Washington, Xue’s congressman, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the House Trade Subcommittee, questioned Hu about the case, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida), chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, raised Xue in an open letter she delivered to Hu on January 20.

Speaking from San Francisco, John Kamm, executive director of The Dui Hua Foundation, said he was "disappointed, but not surprised" by the high court's decision. "This case has been raised repeatedly by the President of the United States, leading administration officials, and senior members of Congress, but this appears to have counted for nothing. This outcome will be greeted with dismay and concern in Washington and throughout the international business community."

With the court's rejection of Xue's appeal, Dui Hua's efforts will now turn to working actively to secure his earliest possible release by continuing to raise his case in the hope he will be considered for commutation or medical parole.

Dialogue Examines US-China Relations, Wrongful Convictions

The Winter 2011 issue of Dui Hua's Dialogue newsletter has been published. This is our first all-electronic edition of Dialogue, and we expect this new format will allow us to continue offering readers the same high-quality analysis, updates, and news in a more flexible, convenient, and environmentally friendly way.

Besides the regular Dialogue features that have appeared over the past decade—on criminal justice and human rights issues in China and the United States along with information about prisoners and research—in the coming months we shall roll out new features that will enhance the e-newsletter and offer more variety than ever before.

GOP members in the 112th Congress are already taking a tough line on China

This issue leads off with an in-depth look at the impact of the 2010 midterm elections on US-China relations. Hu Jintao's recent state visit helped to relax escalating tensions between the two countries, but a host of serious irritants continues to plague the bilateral relationship. Meanwhile, the 112th Congress has increased the anti-China rhetoric in Washington, which could influence the tone of the upcoming 2012 presidential election.

We also explore the challenges facing prisoners in the United States and China who seek exoneration for wrongful convictions and offer an update on proposals to limit capital punishment in China, examining the controversy over exempting elderly offenders from the death penalty.

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