Former human rights lawyer Ding Jiaxi and legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, both of whom were severely beaten by authorities over the “Xiamen gathering,” were able to meet with their lawyers by video for the second Time recently, as more shocking details emerged about their severe torture. Xu Zhiyong’s girlfriend, Li Qiaochu, was interviewed again by Haidian police on Saturday, but the latest news is that she was actually detained by police in Linyi, Shandong province, and taken to Linyi.
The interview is false arrest is real
The wife of Ding Jiaxi, who has been appealing for more than a year for the “Xiamen Party” case, said in an urgent tweet Saturday morning, “Li Qiaochu’s interview by Beijing police officer Guo was really just a front, I just learned that she has been taken to Linyi by Shandong Linyi police! The Parents were taken to Tongzhou Yuqiao police station to sign a detention notice, which they only saw as ‘subversion of state power’. The police then took back the detention notice. Jiaochu spoke out for the torture and abuse of Zhiyong and Jiaxi, and was re-arrested. China denies human rights with impunity!”
Earlier, Li Qiaochu tweeted on February 5 that Officer Guo in Haidian asked her to meet at 3 p.m. on Saturday. Li Qiaochu said that two months ago the interview was held in Dazhongsi police station for 10 hours of interrogation. “Hearing about the interview gives me heart palpitations.”
Luo Shengchun told Voice of America Saturday morning that Li Qiaochu’s interview was actually a scam to arrest her directly.
She said, “That Officer Guo said he was going to give her something, and that something was to take her away, hi. After she went there, I heard from her Family that she was actually taken to Linyi immediately. We still don’t know, until 7:00 we have been waiting for her news. Both kept calling with Officer Guo and either didn’t answer or had a busy signal. We have been in contact with her mother and father, but no news. Then her mom and dad came Home and said they were the police station to sign her detention notice.”
Worried about Li Chiaochu’s fate
Luo Shengchun said it was clear that the authorities were trying to silence Li Qiaochu, who has been speaking out about Xu Zhiyong’s persecution, fearing that they would use even more brutal methods to persecute her.
But their more sinister intentions are not known outside, and it’s hard to say whether they will persecute her in a more sinister way,” she said. Now, Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong are in a very bad condition. It is estimated that the follow-up they have to, we feel that it is the Ministry of Public Security side that is operating and directing them here underneath.”
In addition, Ding Jiaxi, who was arrested on Dec. 26, 2019, and Xu Zhiyong, who was arrested on Feb. 15, 2020, while on the run, were able to meet with their defense lawyers for the first time on Jan. 21 of this year, and then recently were able to meet with their lawyers by video, allowing the outside world to get more details about the torture the two suffered.
More shocking details of torture
According to information provided by Luo Shengchun, Ding Jiaxi’s lawyer, Peng Jian, will meet Ding Jiaxi for the second time on Feb. 3 after waiting for nearly 48 hours. This time, the meeting did not have the same network and equipment failure as the first time, and communication was smoother.
Luo Shengchun tweeted that the police played “Xi Jinping‘s Strategy of Governance: China’s Five Years” for 10 days at maximum volume, 24 hours a day and night, starting after the Chinese New Year in 2020, when Ding was under “designated residence surveillance” in Yantai, Shandong Province.
During his six-month stay in Yantai, Ding was deprived of sleep for 73 days and was interrogated by fatigue; he did not see a ray of sunlight for six months, was exposed to fluorescent lights 24 hours a day, and was not allowed to shower or brush his teeth. He was not allowed to take a shower or brush his teeth. He had to sit during his arraignment and wear a black hood when he went to the hallway and bathroom.
During his first meeting with his lawyer, Ding Jiaxi revealed that he was interrogated by five police officers in shifts for seven days and seven nights; that he was given only a quarter of a steamed bun for each meal for half a month, and that he was restricted to drinking water for one week, with only 600 milliliters provided daily.
The latest details of the torture were revealed by Ding Jiaxi, who was put on a “tiger bench” from beginning to end of the 7 days and 7 nights of interrogation. Luo Shengchun’s tweet said Ding was strapped to a tiger bench from April 1 to 8, with a restraint belt around his back and one around his waist stretched to the limit, making it difficult to breathe. He was interrogated from 9 a.m. to 6 a.m. the next day. Between 6:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m., he went to the bathroom, ate and walked around, but was not allowed to sleep for 24 hours. On the morning of April 7, his ankle swelled up like a steamed bun due to the long sitting on the tiger bench, and the pain was unbearable, plus he suddenly missed his wife and son, so he stopped insisting on zero confession, but asked the director to agree to four conditions before he opened his mouth: only talk about Xiamen; admit the matter but not the crime; no official lawyer; and guaranteed sleep.
Luo Shengchun’s tweet said the police agreed at the time, but from April 28 to May 6, the interrogations began again in rotation, allowing only four hours of sleep a day, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m. During this period Ding Jiaxi was so weak that he fainted twice and lost his memory.
Luo Shengchun said: “They strangled him tightly on the tiger stool, which is the kind that can not move at all. (Reporter: The tiger stool is the one where you are not allowed to close your eyes for 7 days and 7 nights, right? Yes, but all their interrogations were conducted on this tiger stool. In addition to the 7 days and 7 nights, there was another week where only 4 hours of sleep were allowed.”
Luo Shengchun: Yantai police are a criminal gang
Luo Shengchun said that Chinese law clearly prohibits the torture of suspects, so the Yantai police are simply a criminal gang that tortured Ding Jiaxi inhumanely to force him to confess to “subverting state power.
She said, “Now that more and more detailed details have come out, I’m more shocked than uncomfortable. It means that the Yantai Public Security Bureau is simply a criminal gang that extorts confessions through torture. It is clearly written in the Chinese law of criminal procedure that it is a crime to extort a confession under torture. They are now recklessly using such illegal methods to force Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong to confess to subversive acts in order to achieve the goal of persecuting them.”
In addition, Xu Zhiyong, one of the founders of the Citizens’ Movement, mentioned in his first video interview with his lawyer that he was subjected to 10 days of sleep deprivation during his “detention” in Beijing, sleeping only four hours a day for the first five days and two hours a day for the last five days. During his anonymous transfer to Linshu County Detention Center, he was given only one steamed bun per meal.
Xu Zhiyong Tortured Similar to Ding Jiaxi
On the afternoon of February 5, Xu Zhiyong’s lawyer Liang Xiaojun met with Xu Zhiyong again via video from Linshu County, Linyi City, Shandong Province. Xu Zhiyong’s girlfriend Li Qiaochu tweeted that Xu Zhiyong was also tortured during his transfer to Yantai “prison” at the end of April last year, where he was tied to an iron chair for more than a week every day, with his limbs fixed and struggling to breathe. When going to and from the prison, they were wearing black headgear and a heavy helmet.
Luo Shengchun said the latest news about Xu Zhiyong’s torture suggests that he, like Ding Jiaxi, was subjected to inhumane torture during his time in Yantai.
She said, “Also Xu Zhiyong was subjected to almost the same interrogation methods as Ding Jiaxi, many days of sleep deprivation, and also the same strapping to a tiger bench. So now it’s more of a shock.”
Speaking to VOA after her first meeting with a lawyer since Ding’s disappearance more than a year ago, Luo Shengchun said the dehumanizing torture of Ding by those police officers confirms the news she received last July that the torture was more severe than she could have imagined, and that it cut her to the core.
The third investigation into Ding and Xu expired on Jan. 19 this year, and the case was then transferred to the Linyi City Prosecutor’s Office. The three defense attorneys for the two men went back to the Linyi Procuratorate on Jan. 20 to learn more about the case, and were told that the Ding-Hsu case had been split into two cases, and that the charge had been changed from “inciting subversion” to the more serious “subversion” and that the case had been classified as “confidential. The case was classified as “confidential” and lawyers were required to sign a confidentiality pledge.
A full-scale censorship campaign
The “12-26 Citizens’ Case” is another major political case after the 709 mass arrests of lawyers and human rights activists in 2015, in which many were severely tortured by Chinese authorities, and the level of torture of those involved has continued unabated.
Luo Shengchun recently tweeted that as 2020 comes to a close, she has begun collecting lists of persecutors from citizens and their families who are being persecuted in China, updating them weekly in a bilingual list that is regularly submitted to the U.S. State Department, the European Union, the United Nations and other agencies with sanctions mechanisms. She said she hopes that these perpetrators will be stapled to the pillars of shame in history and pay the price for their evil deeds.
Li Qiaochu, Xu Zhiyong’s like-minded girlfriend, was also imprisoned for four months last year by the authorities for being a serial offender, and after being released on bail on June 19, she returned from a “small prison” to a “large prison” and has been harassed and summoned to keep quiet.
On January 11 this year, Li Qiaochu posted a long article online, “If I want to shut up, I’ll speak up,” detailing his experiences during six supervisory interviews from July 17 to December 9, 2020, and two summonses lasting more than 10 hours on November 26 and December 8.
Li Qiaochu, who was detained in connection with the December 26 citizenship case, and Chang Weiping, who was detained for the second time last October, both disclosed that they were subjected to inhumane treatment and torture while under residential surveillance.
Xu Zhiyong is an active figure in China’s civil rights movement, having founded the Public League to promote democracy and the rule of law in China, and later launched the New Citizens Movement to pursue true citizenship and a free, just and loving China. He was released from prison after completing his sentence.
Ding Jiaxi, a former aeronautical engineer, worked as a lawyer after 1996 and began to participate in the activities of the Public League. He was one of the main practitioners of the civil movement, and was the main organizer and coordinator of the civil movement with Xu Zhiyong and Zhao Changqing.
On April 17, 2013, Ding Jiaxi was criminally detained on charges of “unlawful assembly,” and on April 18, 2014, Ding Jiaxi and his co-defendants Li Wei, Zhao Changqing, and Zhang Baocheng were charged with “gathering a crowd to disrupt public order,” and Ding Jiaxi was sentenced to three years and six months. He was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months.
In December 2019, Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi participated in a 21-person gathering in Xiamen with lawyers, scholars, and citizens, known as the “Xiamen Gathering. Huang Zhiqiang, a lawyer from Zhejiang Province, and Chang Weiping, a lawyer from Shaanxi Province, were released on bail after 2 and 10 days respectively, and Chang Weiping was placed under residential surveillance again in October last year.
Shandong lawyer Liu Shuqing, Sichuan lawyer Lu Siwei, Hangzhou lawyer Zhuang Daohe and Hebei lawyer Lu Tingge were released after being summoned for 24 to 48 hours. Beijing scholar Wang Jiang Song was asked to make two statements. Since then, several people have continued to be summoned and harassed for long periods of time.
Five people, Hubei lawyer Tang Jingling, Hunan lawyer Wen Donghai, Hubei citizen Liu Jiacai, Hebei citizen Ding Lingjie, and Beijing legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, went into hiding and disappeared, but later returned home and were interviewed or placed under house arrest again, while Xu Zhiyong was arrested. Four people, Guangzhou citizen Liu Siwei, Shanghai lawyer Wu Shaoping, Shenzhen lawyer Pang Kun, and Shenzhen entrepreneur Wang Yingguo, later left for the United States.
Xu Zhiyong’s girlfriend Li Qiaochu and Chen Jiaping, the director of the Xu Zhiyong documentary, did not attend the meeting but were implicated and placed under residential surveillance. The incident is known as the “12-26 Citizens’ Case”.
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