Cheng Yuan, Liu Yongze and Wu Ge Jianxiong, three members of the mainland Chinese charity organization Changsha Fu Neng, have been detained by authorities for more than 21 months since July 2019. Cheng Yuan’s wife, Shi Minglei, arrived in the United States with her daughter. Shi Minglei said she will speak out through the international community to bring to light the persecution that her husband, Cheng Yuan, and others have suffered at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party authorities.
It is reported that the verdict of the “Changsha Fu Neng subversion case” may have been delivered in secret, but the verdict is not known to the outside world. On April 7, Shi Minglei, wife of the defendant Cheng Yuan, and her family arrived in the United States with the assistance of the American Christian human rights organization China Aid Association. After landing in the U.S., Shi Minglei tweeted, “One hurdle after another, lonely, fearful and difficult. The moment I left China, I was sad and emotional and cried a lot.”
When asked about the experience of leaving China this time, Shi Minglei said it was a borrowed third country, and other specific details were inconvenient to disclose.
Shi Minglei said in an interview with the station that although there is reliable information that the case has been sentenced, the family has not received any official notification of the verdict. In addition, the family and their lawyers did not receive any official notification of the case during the investigation, and their efforts to rescue Cheng Yuan and others were obstructed by the authorities.
Shi Minglei said, “Every step of the process was illegal, whether it was the persecution of our family members after the arrest of Cheng Yuan, or when the case reached the court stage. The fact that the authorities do not dare to make it public so far only proves that they are persecuting and handling the case in violation of the law. This is also a landmark event in the Chinese Communist authorities’ crackdown against local NGOs in China.”
In March 2016, the charity Changsha Fu Neng was founded by Cheng Yuan and others who have long been concerned about the rights of people with disabilities and have actively monitored government information disclosure. On July 22, 2019, Cheng Yuan, Liu Yongze and Wu Ge Jianxiong were arrested by Changsha’s State Security Bureau on suspicion of subversion of state power, and in September 2020, news broke that the case had been tried in secret.
“Yang Zhanqing, the co-founder of Changsha Founeng and a U.S.-based public interest activist, told us that in the context of China’s severe crackdown on civil society, the Changsha Founeng subversion case was not publicly investigated and the family was not notified of the outcome of the trial, a typical example of the CCP’s secret handling of cases. Example: “The government should publicize cases like this one as a typical case, publicizing how these public-spirited people ‘subverted state power’ and how they were punished. If it is not made public I think the content of this verdict may be too east and west, the authorities themselves can’t get it, there should be little evidence in it, and there is no legal basis, it is totally retaliation.”
Shi Minglei told the station that on the day of Cheng Yuan’s arrest, the police took him away in front of his three-year-old daughter, who was also hooded and handcuffed for more than 20 hours of interrogation, and that the authorities’ brutal law enforcement had cast a serious psychological shadow on her daughter. Shi Minglei said that after her husband’s arrest, the authorities put her and her family under long-term residential surveillance on suspicion of “subversion of state power,” froze their bank accounts and seized their documents. At the same time, her friends and employers were repeatedly harassed and threatened by surveillance agencies and secret police.
“It was not easy for us to come to the United States, and I am very grateful that my daughter is free. We will never again be used as hostages and as a means to blackmail Cheng Yuan.”
In August 2019, as Cheng Yuan, Liu Yongze and Wu Ge Jianxiong were being denied access to lawyers, officials notified the families that they were withdrawing their right to self-representation by lawyers and instead appointed six official lawyers. Subsequently, the families of the three defendants issued a joint statement refusing to accept the assignment of lawyers by the Justice Bureau, but authorities did not respond. Wu Youshui, the father of Wu Ge Jianxiong and a Chinese rights lawyer, was also disqualified from defending his son. As previously reported, on the eve of this year’s Lunar New Year, New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker sent a letter to “sister city” Changsha Mayor Zheng Jianxin, demanding the unconditional release of Cheng Yuan and three other public interest activists. Meanwhile, Gordon Mar, a hospital in San Francisco, California, has also been closely following the case and has suggested that the mayor of San Francisco consider ending the “sister city” relationship with Changsha.
Shi firmly believes that Cheng Yuan’s three people are committed to eliminating discrimination against the most vulnerable groups in Chinese society, and that they are not suspected of subverting state power, and that the Chinese authorities are further suppressing civil voices by forcing their conviction on political charges. Shi Minglei said that he would ask for assistance from the United Nations and other international organizations to speak out for human rights through the international community and to bring to light the persecution suffered by Cheng Yuan.
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