The second trial in the internationally watched “infringement of citizens’ information case” involving the online publication of personal information about Xi Jinping’s daughter and brother-in-law is set for sentencing on Friday (April 23). Xiao Yanrui, the mother of Niu Tengyu, the former maintainer of the “Vulgar Wiki” website and founder of the website, and a member of the defense team of the second trial, gave a telephone interview to Voice of America about the case and pointed out the serious violations of the rule of law and police torture to extract confessions during the case and trial process. .
“I want to continue to defend my son’s rights, he was really wronged. If they ignore the facts, I won’t stop until the case is overturned.” Coco, a single mother living in Jiaozuo City, Henan Province, told Voice of America after learning of the second trial in her son’s case on Friday: “If they uphold the original verdict, it will only do nothing for the country, for society, for what they say is so-called stability maintenance, it will only be a kind of high-class blackness against President Xi, and it will continue to ferment public opinion and do even more damage to the country’s leaders. The case is a kind of damage.”
Case Summary
Niu Tengyu, who was originally working in operations and maintenance for a “vulgar wiki website” and was only 20 years old when he was taken from his home in 2019, was beaten by the Guangdong provincial public security judiciary as the main culprit in a case that has now attracted widespread attention, and was sentenced in the first instance to 14 years in prison and fined 130,000 yuan (RMB) by the Maonan District Court in Maoming City, Guangdong Province.
The highly politicized case, which has attracted attention because it involved the leakage of personal data of China’s first family, was classified as a special case by China’s Ministry of Public Security, known as the “1902136 case of infringement of citizens’ information.
According to sources, the case was sparked by the disclosure of personal information of Xi Jinping’s daughter Xi Mingze and brother-in-law Deng Jiagui on the overseas-based Red Bank Foundation and Chinawiki websites, and the Maoming police investigating the case were said to have been unable to reach the overseas websites and turned to them for help. The Mao Ming police who investigated the case were accused of being overwhelmed by the overseas websites and turned to the mainland website “Vicious Wiki”, which shared the links to those two overseas websites, to take the blame for the crime, prosecuting 24 people, most of whom were teenagers active in the Internet world.
The first trial raises concerns
On December 30, 2020, the Maonan District People’s Court handed down a first instance verdict in the case of the leak of Xi Mingze and Deng Jiagui’s identity information by the Chinawiki and Red Bank Foundation, without the parents of those involved being allowed to sit in on the trial. 24 people associated with the vulgar wiki site were convicted, with the main offender Niu Tengyu sentenced to 14 years in prison and the rest of the defendants The remaining defendants received sentences ranging from one to four years.
The parents of the convicted children cried out injustice, saying that the verdict was “absurd” and that the case officers had been coaxing the parents to keep quiet and not to contact the media, resulting in the children, who did not constitute a crime, being treated as “scapegoats” by the Maoming case department, which wanted to take credit for the crime. The case is a small case into a big case, and was designated by the court as a criminal offender.
After the verdict of the first trial, the case attracted the attention of many Chinese netizens and legal professionals, as well as the international community. Some overseas Chinese media have followed the case. The website of Changing China, hosted by Ms. Cao Yaxue in the Washington, D.C. area, and the official website of the Organization for World Peace (OWP) reported on the case and related reactions in English.
Western diplomats met with the parents of those involved in the case
On March 30, Niu Tengyu’s mother, Coco, met with a group of Western diplomats in charge of human rights affairs. The diplomats, who came from nine Western countries including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the European Union, expressed concern about the case of Niu Tengyu and other young people sentenced by the Maoming court and asked her what she wanted, she told VOA.
“I just want to convey this truth to the first leader of the country, so that he knows that these children were indeed wrongly accused. The party in charge of the case has shown no sign of wanting to correct it so far, but rather suppressing the parents. Several parent groups have been blocked and then each parent is threatened to cooperate with the so-called stability maintenance. They cannot speak to the foreign media or cry out for justice. Then threatened lawyers. Like Niu Teng Yu’s lawyer has been replaced by five. All of them have been threatened and not allowed to plead not guilty. I’ve now switched to a few lawyers, including Bao Longjun, to take the case.” Coco recounts the demands she expressed at the time.
The defense talks about the case
Beijing human rights lawyers Bao Longjun and Wang Yu are both defending the defendants in this case. Bao Longjun took over Niu Tengyu’s appeal and is defending the case along with rights lawyers Ren Quanniu and Qin Chenshou. Wang Yu defended Chen Luo’an, a minor defendant in the case, on appeal. Chen Luo’an was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in the first trial.
It is understood that 9 of the 24 people sentenced are minors, and only Chen Luo’an appealed for the minor defendants. The adult group has 7 people appealing, including Niu Tengyu.
Currently, the defense of Niu Tengyu’s appeal case was notified by the court on Tuesday that the second trial will be sentenced on Friday, although the defense pointed out several violations of the relevant procedures and asked for corrections. In response, Bao Longjun objected. He told the Voice of America that he had reflected the many flaws in the handling and trial of Niu Tengyu’s case to the relevant disciplinary authorities, including the fact that the second trial judge, Zhang Shuming, had participated in the trial committee’s discussions on the case trial in the first trial and should have recused himself voluntarily according to the law.
“He then should not have served as the trial judge of the second trial. This is clearly prohibited by the criminal procedure law. That’s why we asked him to recuse himself. If he does not recuse himself, the trial committee or the president should decide that he should recuse himself. According to the Supreme Law, he should be disciplined in accordance with the regulations on the discipline of court staff. We are now making a report announcement about his such behavior.”
In addition, Bao Longjun pointed out that Niu Tengyu’s defense team had made several applications, such as meeting with Niu Tengyu, reading all the files, and receiving the defense by the trial staff to hear the defense’s opinions, and other multiple applications, which have not received any response so far.
Bao Longjun also pointed out to the authorities that Niu Tengyu’s disclosure of torture by the police should be verified and investigated, and if true, the illegally obtained confessions should be excluded and the crime of torture should be investigated according to the law.
Niu Tengyu’s mother talks about torture
According to a handwritten note circulated on the Internet, Niu Tengyu was tortured by police officers who interrogated him during his detention and residential surveillance. A picture obtained exclusively by VOA shows another handwritten note from Niu Tengyu calling for attention to the case and saying he “looks forward to the court’s acquittal.
Niu Tengyu’s mother, Coco, said that Niu was initially charged with “facilitating criminal activities on the Internet,” but that the case officer added two charges two months before the first trial, namely “provoking and provoking trouble” and “illegal business operation,” in order to make Niu the main culprit. The case officer added two charges two months before the first trial, namely “provoking and provoking trouble” and “illegal business operation”.
Coco pointed out that Niu Tengyu had been denying his guilt and that the case officers had used illegal criminal tactics such as torture to extract a confession and humiliate him.
“In order to create the main culprit, they illegally exhorted him and mentioned him to 103 Zhu’an Park in Nanhai District, Foshan, and locked him up in a small dark room, with handcuffs to hang him up, with his toes touching the ground, and beat him with a whip. Sometimes for an hour or two, he passed out. Then wax was dripped on his body.”
Niu Tengyu’s mother also named a police officer named Chen Quanhui who also subjected Niu Tengyu to nude humiliating abuse.
“He took a lighter and burned Niu Tengyu’s lower body, then molested and said some obscene things. Nine nude photos were taken. Often beaten to the point of hospitalization for resuscitation. “
As one of Niu Tengyu’s defense lawyers, Bao Longjun released some hospital examination reports and hospital records last week and questioned, “Why did the young, fit Niu Tengyu develop sinus tachycardia?” “Why was he hospitalized several times during the fingerprints? Why did he continue to receive treatment after returning to the detention center? This is actually the most direct and real evidence of torture to extract a confession. And these medical records, as can be seen from the trial transcript, were not shown to the defense lawyers at all in the first trial.”
Bao Longjun added: “We found these materials from the trial file, and Qin Chenshou’s lawyer accordingly applied again for the exclusion of illegal evidence and for charging the relevant personnel with the act of extorting confessions under torture.”
Website founder: a case of injustice
Xiao Yanrui, the founder of the vile Wiki site, is currently living in Japan. He told the Voice of America that neither Xi’s daughter nor brother-in-law’s personal information was leaked by Vulgar Wiki. He said that someone within the Public Security Bureau leaked Xi Mingze’s personal information, which was made public by the overseas-based Chinawiki and Red Bank Foundation, and that Vulgar Wiki was only associated with those two sites.
According to the report, this case was supervised and deployed by the Ministry of Public Security and the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department, and was initially characterized as a “special case of anti-China organizations with cyber violence”, but is now considered by law enforcement authorities to be a “major case of an evil group colluding with anti-China forces”. The Ministry of State Security is responsible for investigating the Red Bank Foundation.
Xiao Yanrui said: “The members of Chinawiki and Red Bank Foundation are all abroad. So, it (Maoming Public Security) identified the gang of vicious wikis as the people who sent Xi Mingze’s photos and disposed of them in order to take credit. It was completely scapegoated.”
Xiao Yanrui believes that Niu Tengyu, a website maintainer, is a kind-hearted young man, and that the Maoming police arrested the wrong person, framed him in order to account to the top, and qualified the case as black and evil.
Xiao Yanrui said: “Black and evil forces? How does this constitute black and evil forces? It’s a bunch of minors. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. The first is not guns, the second is not drugs, there is no such violent things. How does this constitute a black evil force? It is completely unreasonable, a kind of political revenge.”
According to Wikipedia, EsuWiki is an information database website founded by Xiao Yanrui and others on Jan. 8, 2014, which is a human search site that claims to “aim to expose and record the facts” and hopes that readers will “view this site with a correct attitude and take those who are The site was launched on January 8, 2014. The users of Vulgar Wiki are dissatisfied with the current Chinese Internet environment, and mainly use insults and spoofs to record people and events on the Chinese Internet that they consider unethical, with anti-authority and anti-pandering characteristics.
Xiao Yanrui, the founder of the website, pointed out that spoofing is common on the Internet, especially in Western societies, where political figures and people and events considered immoral can be spoofed by netizens, but it is not considered a crime. He said that in order to convict Niu Tengyu and others, the Maoming police found some “witnesses” who provided testimonies such as physical and mental health damage caused by spoofing and ridiculing or human flesh search content on vulgar wiki sites, and turned a small case into a big one.
The “first offender” turned “witness” was questioned
It is understood that the actual controller of the vulgar wiki, Gu Yang Yang, a native of Shanghai, was born in 2002 and was a minor at the time of the crime.
Sources say that Gu Yang Yang, who was considered by police to be “a major suspect” in the case, was arrested for a time after the establishment of the task force, but was soon released and sent abroad by his family.
Parents of children convicted in the case questioned Yang Guangyao, the chief of cyber security of the Maoming Public Security Bureau’s Maonan Branch, saying that the actual controller of the vile Wiki site, Gu Yang Yang, could be released, so why can’t our children be spared? It is reported that this Yang captain, who is in charge of the case, replied that Gu Yang Yang reported other members of the website involved in the case as witnesses.
Niu Tengyu’s mother and the parents of the other children questioned whether Gu Yang Yang’s parents had used their connections to get the case officer to pay them.
Xiao Yanrui, the founder of Vicious Wiki in Japan, told the media that the Maoming police changed the name of the main culprit, Gu Yang Yang, to Niu Teng Yu in the case report they submitted to their superiors in Beijing.
The Voice of America recently called the cell phone of Captain Yang Guangyao, who is in charge of the case, and also tried to contact the judge of the second trial of the case, Zhang Shuming, deputy director of the first court of the Maoming Intermediate Court, and his clerk Chen Ye, but no one answered the phone.
A Call for Fairness and Justice
As early as January 7, 2013, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, in a talk guiding law enforcement at the beginning of his tenure, proposed, “Strive to make the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial case.”
Xi Jinping said, “The national political and legal organs should respond to the new expectations of the people for public safety, judicial justice and protection of rights and interests, and make every effort to promote the construction of a safe China, a rule of law China and a tough team, deepen the reform of the judicial system and mechanism, adhere to strict governance of the police, resolutely oppose unfair law enforcement and judicial corruption, further improve law enforcement capabilities, further enhance the people’s sense of security and satisfaction , further improve the affinity and credibility of political and legal work, and strive to make the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial case, and ensure that the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics advances smoothly in a harmonious and stable social environment.”
Zhou Qiang, president of China’s Supreme People’s Court, has also repeatedly said, “Strive to make the people feel fairness and justice in every judicial case.”
Wen Jiabao, a former Chinese premier who has been retired for years, said earlier this month in an article published in Macau media remembering his late mother that the China I have in mind should be a country full of fairness and justice.
Niu Tengyu’s mother, Coco, said she is now in tears daily, but still believes that President Xi would not be deceived by local case officers and dreams of truly feeling justice in the case her son was wronged in because, as Premier Wen wrote, China should be a country full of fairness and justice.
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