My husband, Chang Wei Ping, is a human rights lawyer in China, representing many faith-based cases, demolition cases, and affirmative action cases (HIV, gender, LGBT). On October 22, 2020, he was again placed under residential surveillance for “suspected subversion of state power”. He has not been heard from since.
The Spring Festival of 2021 is coming up, and it has been 102 days since Chang Wei-ping was assigned to residential surveillance for the second Time, and one year and 20 days since his case was investigated by the Shaanxi police. I feel it is necessary to make a record of what he and his Family have been going through in the past year or so. Although our lives are like molehills, we will never stop exposing the truth.
(A) The trouble started with the party
On or about December 27, 2019, he suddenly called me and said anxiously that because he went to Xiamen to attend a party, some of his friends were arrested and he was going into hiding, telling me to take care of myself. He sent me all his bank cards, told me to take care of my family, and hung up after saying “love you”. About ten days of hiding, he said to me, see everyone seems to be safe, he did not do anything, or stop hiding, come out. I told him, or wait a little longer. Little did I know that two days after saying that (January 12, 2020) he would be arrested. The nightmare began.
On the morning of January 14, 2020, the Baoji High-Tech Branch called me and informed me that Chang Wei Ping was under residential surveillance for the crime of subversion of state power. And asked for my mailing address to send me a notice. But I never received it. I called the Baoji police to ask for a written notice to be sent, and they replied that a verbal notice would be sufficient, and the leader said not to send it. Then later they stopped answering my calls. To date, the family has not received the first notice of designated residence surveillance.
(II) Ten days on the tiger bench
On the night of January 23, 2020, he was suddenly released from bail. But he was severely tortured during this designated residence surveillance. He was locked up in the basement of a hotel, and for 10 consecutive days the police handcuffed him to a tiger stool and sat on it except to go to the toilet, causing his right thumb and index finger to be numb and senseless to this day. His legs swelled up and he cried in pain. He asked for medical attention, but the police told him that they had experience, and in his case, he didn’t need medical attention yet, he couldn’t die, people they had handcuffed for a month didn’t die. Every day, they just gave him a bowl of noodle Soup at noon and a piece of cold steamed bun with chili oil in the evening, and every day he was so hungry that he got dizzy and had a stomachache. The police and the Public Security Bureau hired to guard him from the outside to deliberately sit next to him to eat and drink water and eat snacks, Chang Wei Ping was gluttonous to go crazy.
Every night, those hired to guard him in the guardian of his hotel room to play cards, eating, drinking, smoking, deliberately loud, noisy, so he could not sleep. When he was too sleepy to lie down on the table, he was immediately woken up and sat up. He was constipated and in pain after sitting for a few days. The police interrogated him under fatigue and took 16 statements in 10 days.
When he was released on bail on the night of January 23, 2020, his father said he looked tired, with deep-set cheeks, red bloodshot eyes, and had lost a lot of weight. Later Wei Ping told me that, in fact, the people hired to guard him were some local hoodlums who had no idea what their caretakers had committed. They said they only make about 2,000 yuan a month. The day he was released on bail, those people said to him that they didn’t expect him to get out of that place, and that usually their caretakers were going to jail.
(iii) Bailed out, but the threats and intimidation did not disappear
On the third day after taking bail, Baoji Guobao called him and asked him to answer the phone every day, report his whereabouts, and meet weekly to report on his thoughts. Since then, every morning at nine o’clock the town police station would call him to report on his plans for the day. Baoji Guobao has to come to Fengxiang County every week to meet and talk with him. The Chinese law does not have these provisions for bail takers. Baoji Guobao was trying to create fear in these ways so that he would not dare to speak out about the torture he had been subjected to.
In March 2020, when elementary school started in Shenzhen, the day before Wei Ping’s Parents were to bring their children to school in Shenzhen, Baoji State Security came to the house to question him about why his parents had not reported to them for going to Shenzhen and that his parents were not allowed to leave Baoji without their permission. Later he had a fight with the state security, saying, “I’m out on bail, are my parents, my children also out on bail?” Eventually his parents and children were able to leave Baoji, but he couldn’t send them to the airport, so he had to ask someone else to do it. This incident gave me a big fear, Baoji State Security not only restrict the freedom of the person concerned, they will also illegally restrict the freedom of family members, I am afraid that I will not be allowed to leave Baoji even if I return to Baoji, and my job is in Shenzhen. So, during the ten months Wei Ping was on bail, I didn’t dare to go back to Shaanxi.
During the bail period, the Baoji State Security was constantly creating pressure on Chang Wei-ping in this way. And this pressure became stronger in May 2020 when the deputy director of the High-tech Branch, Xiang Xianhong, took over, and Xiang had visited Fengxiang several times to talk to him, and during this time Wei Ping began to become pessimistic. on October 16, 2020, due to extreme psychological pressure, Chang Wei Ping recorded a video about his experience of being tortured by the High-tech Branch during his fingerprints in January 2020, and sent the video to the website Six days later, he was arrested for the second time by the Gaoxin Branch.
After this arrest, the Gaoxin Branch still did not want to give a written notice. After the arrest on October 22, the lawyer went to negotiate for three days on October 26, and then at 18:00 on October 28, the Gaoxin Branch called me and said they were going to send me a notice because they did not know my address before. This is a very bullshit reason. On October 22nd, someone from the High-tech Branch already came to my Home in Shenzhen. Finally on November 1 I received the notice of Chang Wei Ping’s second fingerprison, the only legal document I have received so far.
(iv) Restricting the family into an island and making Chang Wei Ping’s case secret
- House arrest of parents, relatives and friends
On October 22, at 6:00 p.m., I received a call from Chang Wei Ping’s father, saying that Baoji State Security had come to my home in Shenzhen and wanted to see me. At 8 p.m., I returned home and three Baoji state guards were sitting at my door, accompanied by two local Shenzhen police officers. Their conversation with me was mainly about whether Chang Wei Ping had any lawyer friends who came to my home in Shenzhen during his bail. They also asked me to agree not to give interviews to the foreign media.
On December 14, after his parents went to the Public Security Bureau, they were placed under house arrest, and their cell phones were taken away and they were not allowed to contact the outside world. There were police officers following them everywhere they went. I have not been able to get in touch with his parents for over a month. Four cameras were installed around his parents’ house, two on his house and two on the intersection. The village committee has a monitoring room where the police check the monitoring situation in real time throughout the day, and as soon as someone appears in front of Chang Wei Ping’s house, the police will immediately dash to appear. Interrogation of visitors, bad attitude, requiring registration of ID numbers, work units. All relatives were asked not to go to Chang Wei Ping’s house, including the same surname clan, as long as they have been there, will be looked for by the police. At present no one dares to go to Chang Wei Ping’s house. A few villages away, his eldest sister’s house has also been installed with cameras. His second brother-in-law, who was an elementary school principal, was put on 24-hour duty at his parents’ house by the county school board to report his parents’ every move. Cameras were also installed in front of my parents’ and sister’s homes, and my father was followed by the police when he left the house. My sister needed to report to the village leaders when she left the house for more than two hours. Wei Ping’s sister and brother-in-law were threatened not to speak up for Wei Ping or else it would affect their jobs and their children’s college entrance exams for civil service. All family and friends were swept through.
On January 16, 2021, Xie Yang and Chen Keyun wanted to go to Baoji to visit Chang Wei Ping’s parents, who were under house arrest. Upon arrival in Xi’an, they were taken off the train from Xi’an to Baoji by Shaanxi State Security on the grounds of Epidemic prevention and control, and were taken to a hotel and forced to travel in Xi’an. They were not allowed to see Chang’s parents. A number of Wei Ping’s friends in Baoji have also been repeatedly banned from speaking, illegally detained at the High-Tech Branch, illegally searched for cell phones, and even forced to leave Baoji, where they have lived for years. The Baoji State Security also cracked down nationwide, and any lawyer who had a voice for Chang Weiping was approached by them, and even asked the law firm to terminate the lawyer’s contract. I can’t help but feel that the Baoji State Security illegal case, persecution of family lawyers of the unscrupulous!
- Threats to the wife
On the one hand, strict control over Wei Ping’s parents in Baoji, while the threat to me in Shenzhen has not stopped for a moment: from October 22 to December 25, 2020, two months, Shaanxi police to Xianhong and others have come to Shenzhen nine times to threaten me not to speak out for Chang Wei Ping, or I will lose my job. The details are as follows.
(1) On October 22, 2020, at around 6:00 p.m., I received a phone call from Chang Wei Ping’s father, saying that the Baoji police had come to my home in Shenzhen and wanted to see me, so I could go home. When I went home at 8:00 p.m., I saw Pang Dingming of the Baoji Public Security Bureau, Song Zixin of the High-Tech Branch and middle-aged men who did not want to show their work permits sitting at the door of my house. After they videotaped me, took a statement and made me promise not to speak out or give interviews to the foreign media. Otherwise, there is no benefit to Chang Wei Ping.
(2) On October 24, 2020, around 11:00 a.m., Song Zixin and middle-aged men who did not want to show their work permits, came to my home in Shenzhen, took a statement from me, and continued to make me promise not to speak out and not to give interviews to the foreign media. During this conversation, the middle-aged man police officer asked me whether I hired a lawyer and the name of the lawyer to facilitate the lawyer went to their reception, and after I informed them, in the afternoon, Zhang Tingyuan lawyer immediately received an interview call from the Chongqing Municipal Bureau of Justice.
(3) On November 11, 2020, at around 10:00 a.m., Xiang Xianhong of the Baoji High-Tech Branch and Yang Yongke of the Baoji Public Security Bureau suddenly appeared at my office door and, after telling me to get out of my office, threatened me in the corridor of my office not to speak out for Chang Wei Ping. Xiang said Chang Wei Ping was an ideological crime. Yang said he would inform my work unit and use unit disciplinary action to make me lose my job.
(4) On November 12, 2020, around 10:00 a.m., Xiang Xianhong and Yang Yongke came to my office door and continued to threaten me not to speak up for Chang Wei Ping.
(5) On November 23, 2020, around 1:00 pm, I suddenly received a phone call from my unit’s police office saying that the Shaanxi police were looking for me. When I went there, it was Xiang Xianhong and Fu Yongqiang who approached me and asked me to delete my tweets. It was later confirmed that they also approached the leader of my work unit before they approached me that day.
(6) On November 24, 2020, at around 1:00 p.m., I received a call from the secretary of my section, saying that the Shaanxi police were looking for me and asked me to go to the police office. Xiang Xianhong and Fu Yongqiang continued to ask me to delete the microblog.
(7) On the morning of December 15, 2020, Baoji City High-tech Branch called the leaders of my work unit, saying that I was going to Beijing to petition and asked the leaders of my unit to talk to me.
(8) On December 23, 2020, at around 16:30, I received a phone call from the security section of my work unit, saying that the Shaanxi police were looking for me, and after I went there, I met four Shaanxi “police officers”: one who claimed to be a staff member of the Shaanxi Provincial Public Security Department, one who did not want to show me his full work permit, and one who only revealed the words “Public Security Department”. “An elderly man who claimed to be a staff member of the Public Security Bureau of Shaanxi Province, an elderly man who did not want to show me his work card, Xiang Xianhong, Fu Yongqiang, and two Shenzhen police officers who did not show me their work cards. The Shaanxi police mainly said three things: first, that I had a good job that ordinary people could not find and hoped I would cherish it; second, that I did not know Chang Wei Ping and said that he often lived in other people’s homes and provoked our relationship as a couple in an attempt to keep me from speaking out for Chang Wei Ping; third claimed that Chang Wei Ping had joined an anti-Chinese organization and that if the seizure of power was successful, Chang Wei Ping would become some Chinese minister or the secretary of the Shaanxi provincial party committee and I I will become the wife of the minister or the provincial party secretary. And at the same time, he claimed that Chang Wei Ping was not deeply involved.
(9) On December 25, 2020, Shaanxi police came to my workplace and illegally copied my work computer’s hard drive without my presence.
In addition to this, at the request of the Shaanxi police, the Shenzhen police knocked on my door at 00:20 a.m. on January 14, 2021 to show their concern for my husband and me, and at 21:00 p.m. on January 14, the Shenzhen police came to educate me about the law and to teach me to tweet appropriately. These two incidents had a serious impact on my family: my mother, who lives with me, was scared and shaking, and got nervous when she heard the knock on the door. My 7-year-old child was scared to the point of insomnia, constantly tossing and turning at night, unable to sleep, falling asleep and waking up several times a night, even asking me what he would do if the police held a gun to his head.
In summary, the Shaanxi police practice has only one purpose, by stigmatizing Chang Wei Ping and by constantly threatening the family to shut them up.
- Illegal deprivation of lawyers’ right to defense
In addition to the strangulation of voices from the family, lawyers were also strictly prohibited from participating in the Chang Wei Ping case. Whenever a lawyer goes to the high-tech branch, Shaanxi will definitely inform the judicial bureau to which the lawyer belongs, and even distort the facts by saying that the lawyer made a fuss about the high-tech branch. Lawyer Zhang Tianyuan was repeatedly talked to by the Chongqing judicial bureau and threatened to withdraw from representing this case. When he went to Baoji for the second time to handle Chang Wei Ping’s case, the staff of Chongqing judicial bureau arrived in Baoji overnight and forcibly brought him back to Chongqing from Baoji under the threat of revoking his lawyer’s license. Lawyer Zhang Keke was also repeatedly talked to by the judicial bureaus at all levels in Hubei, saying that he should not be involved in the case. As soon as they arrived in Shaanxi, lawyers Fu Ailing and Chen Jinxue were asked by multiple phone calls from the Guangzhou Judicial Bureau to return to Guangzhou immediately, causing them to return to Guangzhou after only one day in Baoji.
On October 26, 2020, November 23, 2020, and January 28, 2021, the lawyers requested to meet Chang Wei Ping three times, all of which were refused by the Gaoxin Branch, and when asked about the case that had been identified, they refused on the grounds of secrecy. I can’t help but feel that as long as the charge of inciting subversion of state power is attached, there are secrets all over the body. The word “secret” covers up all the truth.
The lawyer’s request for a meeting was denied, but on November 25, 2020, the High-Tech Branch arranged for Wei Ping’s father to meet with him for ten minutes. This ten minutes Wei Ping dare not speak much, slow as recitation, the whole only expressed a meaning, that is, let his parents, let me not give him voice outside, as if he still have access to the network when in custody, to the outside of the sound as if. Only at the end of the meeting, he miserably exclaimed to let his parents live well, as if to explain the aftermath, may be the only sentence of his true meaning of expression. In order to get the family to stop speaking out, the Baoji State Security can use any means at its disposal. We reasonably suspect that Wei Ping may have been tortured again.
- Threatening friends who have worked with Chang Weiping with illegal means to testify against him
While maintaining the stability of the family, the Baoji State Security illegally interviewed friends who had worked with Chang Wei-ping across the province and threatened them with verbal intimidation to testify against Chang Wei-ping as witnesses in the case. Some of these friends, who had only met Chang Wei-Ping once, were illegally robbed of their cell phones to take pictures of their cell phone contacts in order to create a sense of fear. Some friends were coerced into reading out the accusations written in advance by the state security, while others were taken to the local police station for a long period of time to restrict their personal freedom for refusing the accusations. Their attempts to impose incriminating evidence on Chang Weiping are not hidden and are outrageous!
The people’s Procuratorate of Baoji City only replied to me by text message on January 22: After examination, the public security organs are in the process of handling the case according to the law. There is no answer to my request for access to the video recordings of the period of detention. There is no law in China that allows torture, I wonder which country’s law the Baoji People’s Procuratorate is following? And I wonder where the law they follow allows the public security authorities to threaten the families of criminal suspects many times and not to speak out?
As the new year approaches, I would like to thank you all for your attention and support to the Chang Wei Ping case this year. I hope you will keep your attention as always!
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