U.S. media recently summarized information from several human rights organizations that the Chinese Communist Party authorities are increasingly persecuting the families of human rights defenders as part of their ongoing crackdown on the group.
In a report yesterday, Voice of America cited the latest news from Minsheng Watch that Hunan dissident Ou Biaofeng has been detained for more than 40 days for helping Dong Yaoqiong, a Hunan woman who “splashed ink on the girl,” and that his wife, Wei Huanhuan, was recently fired from her job, apparently due to official pressure.
Dong Yaoqiong posted a short video on social media last December, denouncing the authorities’ close surveillance. Then Ou Biaofeng, with whom she has close ties, was taken from his apartment in Ningxiang by public security officers, and after 24 hours in custody, he was placed under administrative detention for 15 days for provoking trouble. “On January 12, the day before Ou Biao’s administrative detention expired, a dozen public security officers raided his home and verbally informed Wei that he had been upgraded to “designated residence for residential surveillance.
On January 12, as Ou Biao Feng was being held under residential surveillance for more than 40 days, Wei Huanhuan tweeted that she was suddenly fired by the director of the kindergarten where she worked when she was off work, saying that the Education Bureau had asked all educational units to take an early holiday due to epidemic control, and that she was the only one in the kindergarten who had been treated this way, except for the fact that she had no warning. When pressed, the director had no reasonable explanation. Wei Huanhuan called a lawyer on the spot and was told that the dismissal was illegal. The other party then spoke out against her and implied that the decision was made under pressure from the authorities, hoping not to “make a big deal out of a small matter.
In addition, Chen Zijuan, the wife of Shaanxi human rights lawyer Chang Weiping, has also been frequently harassed and threatened by the Baoji police in Shenzhen.
On January 12, Chen said she had sent a second letter of complaint to the Baoji City Procuratorate, hoping that the authorities would investigate and deal with the illegal behavior of the Baoji police in threatening innocent family members, according to Rights Defense Network.
Chen said that Yang Yongke, deputy head of the Baoji Public Security Bureau’s National Security Brigade, Xiang Xianhong, deputy director of the High-Tech Branch, and others came to Shenzhen eight times between Oct. 22 and Dec. 23 of last year to threaten her.
The Voice of America followed up by reporting that after the release of the above news, Chen was about to go to bed at nearly 12:30 midnight on January 13 when two men in police uniforms suddenly knocked on her door, saying they were Shenzhen public security officers who had come to take an interest in her, and asking if she had posted a microblog that day.
Xu Yan, the wife of another human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng, was the only human rights lawyer’s wife to be summoned on suspicion of inciting subversion, and was held for 19 hours without food or water, asked to strip naked for inspection, and put in a tiger chair. Xu Yan has been restricted from leaving his home by police during sensitive periods, and there are countless others.
On February 15, 2020, Xu Zhiyong, the founder of the Citizens’ Movement, was arrested for participating in a gathering in Xiamen, and his girlfriend Li Qiaochu was taken away from her home in Beijing the next day. On January 11 of this year, Li Qiaochu posted a lengthy article online, “I’ve been told to keep my voice down, but I’m speaking louder,” detailing her experiences since being released on bail, six supervisory interviews from July 17 to December 9, 2020, and two summonses lasting more than 10 hours on November 26 and December 8.
For more than a decade, the Voice of America concluded, human rights defenders and dissidents have been purged by the Chinese Communist Party, while their families have not been spared from being “implicated” and subjected to various levels and forms of harassment and repression. In its 2021 World Human Rights Report released on January 13, the international human rights organization Human Rights Watch also criticized the CCP’s continued crackdown on human rights defenders, while increasingly targeting the families of human rights defenders.
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