Previously on March 19, 2020 in the Kobo Hall
This article is very long and is divided into the following parts: the process of arrest; experiences in detention; the story of a property manager and an electric car; reflections on the school’s struggle strategy; and other miscellaneous topics.
Arrests.
(The following conversations are recorded on police tape. My cell phone was taken away, the following was organized according to recollection, the questions and answers may have sequential differences with the real situation, but the content should correspond with the facts recorded by the police. (Black font is the content of the conversation, blue font is the commentary at the Time of writing the tweet)
At 6:20 a.m. on March 21, 2021, a group of civilian police officers knocked on Rita’s door.
After the action on the 19th, I had thought that your school would not be so unashamed that it would not report the crime because it knew it was wrong. As it turned out, I thought too much of your school. On the other hand, I also thought about what your school would charge Rita with if she reported the crime, but it turned out that the charges your school had placed on Rita when she reported the crime were so far beyond what Rita or anyone else could think of that it was only confusing. The answer to exactly what the charges were can be found in the middle of the article.
Police: Do you know why you were approached?
Me: Go ahead.
Police: What were you doing at 3:00 yesterday?
Me: Sleeping.
Police: Think again. Just use this bag, 3:00 am.
I: If you mean carrying this bag to post flyers at Tsinghua University, it was on March 19, the day before.
Police: (look at the time) Oh mistake. Tsinghua University came to us on the 20th to report a crime. Now you are summoned on suspicion of disturbing public order.
(Organize the departure, get in the car)
Police: Student rights volunteers, is there such an organization?
Me: If we’re talking about officially registered organizations, they shouldn’t exist. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t unregistered people who think they are student rights volunteers. Whether such people exist I’m not sure, you can go to the campus to investigate.
Police: Where did you post it at the time?
Me: It’s the location I wrote in my public post.
Police: Are you a student of Tsinghua University?
I: Was once. 2015-2019. withdrew from school.
Police: How did you drop out? You have a problem with Tsinghua?
Me: Yes. But it’s not relevant to this case, and I think it can be left unexplored. I’m going to do this whether there’s a beef or not.
Police: Your hair is real?
Me: Yes.
POLICE: (whispering) Alien. Can’t understand it.
Me: (car gets on the highway) Is driving this far going straight to the detention center?
Police: Take you to get nucleic acid. Don’t ask so many questions, just think about how to explain yourself clearly. I can not detain you, do not have the power.
Me: I know you don’t have that authority. (Counter-attack to discriminatory police statement √)
(Do the nucleic acid, go to the police station, wait for a while and then take your first statement, at this point it’s about 8:00 am)
Police: As you are suspected of disturbing public order, you are now being questioned.
(Record the details of the incident, including whether anyone assisted, how to enter the campus (the answer is over the wall), where it was posted, how it left, etc.)
Police: Did the school tell you to post it?
Me: No.
Police: Did the school send this notice?
Me: No.
Police: Where did the content in the notice come from?
Me: I made the text content. (The police statement was very concise: -Is the content of the posting real? -It was fictitious. I was puzzled by these questions, and I didn’t understand why the police were obsessing about whether the content of the posting was a school notice, etc. I only understood later when I saw the case reported by the school. (On the other hand, making is not the same as fiction; I am a student rights volunteer, and I made this text with this as a drop, which is certainly not fiction.)
Police: Does the organization Student Advocacy Volunteers exist?
Me: (Repeating my answer from the car) (Continuing to be baffled as to why I am obsessing over whether or not the Student Advocacy Volunteers is an organization. At the time, I thought it was to find collaborators, but again, it was only later that I understood. (The police transcript is again very concise: -doesn’t exist.)
Police: Why are you doing this?
Me: To help students defend their rights.
Police: To defend what rights?
Me: The school locked up a large number of students’ electric bikes on campus on the 17th by unfa…unreasonable means (I don’t get to say whether it’s legal or not).
Police: How do you post this to help defend your rights?
Me: By this means, I hope to make the school leadership realize that its order to lock up electric vehicles is wrong.
Police: The school is locking up electric cars. The notice you posted says motor vehicles, what does that have to do with electric cars?
Me: The school locked up the student’s electric car, so in this text it is oriented toward the school leader to offer to lock up the school leader’s car as a way to put the school leader in his or her place. The motor vehicle in this passage basically refers to a car.
Police: Did you communicate with the school in advance?
Me: I have not communicated with the school directly, but many students are actively speaking to the school.
Police: Don’t bite off more than you can chew, just ask if you have told the school that you are going to post the slip?
Me: No.
Police: Do you think your behavior is illegal? Did you do the right thing?
Me: There may be situations where the law is broken in the course of action, but there are situations where the risk of breaking the law should give way to the benefit of more people. By taking this risk, I can help defend the legal rights of more people, then my actions are just. On the other hand, when I say illegal here, I am only saying that it is possible, because it is not up to me to say whether it is illegal or not.
Police: That is, you feel that your actions are just?
Me: Yes.
(End of transcript. (Sign and fingerprint the transcript.)
During this period of time, listening to the police chat with each other, I called me “small ads”, feel confused. The police were holding the sheet I had posted in the school, but anyone with basic common sense would not have thought it was an advertisement. The answer came an hour or two later, when the police asked me to sign a stack of papers.
One of them is roughly the school to report the administrative cases generated by the case, which records March 20, Tsinghua University xxx (if Rita is correct about the school personnel should be the security department) to report the case, the reported cause of “entering the school to post false small ads, the circumstances are more serious. I laughed out loud when I saw this sentence, and at the same time I could understand what those puzzling questions were about when I took the statement earlier. If you know the details of the case is this, when checking the transcript will inevitably carefully confirm the questions related to the authenticity of the content of the leaflet, to ensure that their answers are fully and objectively recorded. It was this asymmetry of information that prompted the police to sign the first statement.
(At noon in the marquee, another civilian police officer came over to chat with Rita)
Police: What are you posting this for?
Me: To help students defend their rights. (Repeat the cause and effect)
Police: What’s wrong with the school locking students’ electric bikes? The school has the right to manage the students.
I: The right to manage is measured, not to cross the line to violate some basic rights of citizens, such as property rights.
Police: You are not a student at school, what is it to you?
Me: I think anyone with a conscience would want to do something to help students, right?
Police: Then go through the proper channels.
Me: I do call on people to use many channels for feedback, such as the police, such as through the State Department client. But–
Police: You should go through the school to reflect, not to the State Council client ah, the first level to control the first level of things. How can we find the Prime Minister when things go wrong?
I: The State Council client is open to the public, with a big “I write a letter to the Premier” on top, just to let us reflect the problem.
Police: Then you can use the State Council client, how can you go to the school and post flyers?
I: These channels are certainly legitimate, but in some cases they do not address urgent needs. When a student’s rights are violated by the power of the school, one way is to go within the logic of the power of the school to give feedback on the problem, which is bound to face great resistance; another way is to seek a higher power, such as reporting like a public authority. This is something that students can do within the bounds of legality. But either way, it’s not easy and it takes a long time to respond to the urgent reality of the need.
Police: So let the students defend their rights, what are you doing getting involved in this?
Me: Students are afraid of the power of the school, but I am not, so in this case, I am the most active if I have to go through other means.
Police: Do you think it’s appropriate for you to go over the wall and enter the school?
Me: I admit it may be against school rules.
Police: It’s not just school rules, but also the Public Order Management Punishment Law. The school is an institution, some people can enter some people can not enter. You broke the law, how is it still justice?
Me: To me, this risk of breaking the law is insignificant compared to the rights of the greater number of people it can defend. If I violate the legal rights of the school, but preserve the property rights of countless students, that is at least blameless.
Police: No matter why you did it, you broke the law, then you are not righteous.
Me: Give me an example. If there’s no provision in the criminal code for righteousness, and when someone is seen on the side of the road killing someone, a person–
Police: There is no provision in the criminal law for courage, then you can’t care.
I: (ignore the interruption) a person can have two options, the first is to stand by and call the police, wait for the police to come people dead murderer gone; the second is to go up and fight themselves. Granted the second should be punished under this version of the criminal code, but at least it should not be blamed.
Police: this has to be divided into minor and major, what if they are just fighting? Then of course it can’t be regulated.
Me: So the legal benefits are comparable, and you just made the comparison, which is the heavier legal benefit violated by fighting or killing, and the heavier legal benefit violated by not going to pull the fight. I am doing this for the sake of protecting the legal interests of the students, and I should be punished, but the whole act is just.
(I think I have always respected the law, this respect is reflected in if you violate the law, how to punish how to punish, will not resist arrest, will not attack the police, will not escape from prison; but this does not mean that where there are legal risks will not do things. (The law is not omnipotent, and in some cases, in order to solve real and urgent problems, it is necessary to leave the framework of the law and take the risk of violating some small legal interests in exchange for the preservation of larger legal interests, and if I am asked whether such behavior is right or wrong, the answer is undoubtedly right; next time I encounter a similar situation, I will undoubtedly take the same action.)
(In the afternoon, after drinking a bottle of water and eating a loaf of bread in the marquee, by close to five o’clock, another group of police officers brought in to make a second statement.)
Police: (holding up the flyer I made to post) Why did you impersonate the school to issue this notice?
Me: (puzzled) I’m not impersonating the school. Look at my signature, it’s a student rights volunteer.
Police: The organization Student Advocacy Volunteers doesn’t exist either.
I: A volunteer can be an organization or an individual; it can be a registered organization, or it can be a spontaneous organization of people who are interested in helping students defend their rights, or it can be some individuals who want to help students defend their rights, they are student rights volunteers.
Police: Do you know who in the school can issue the notice? You are not a school, how can you impersonate a school to issue a notice slip?
Me: It’s more appropriate to interpret it as a protest letter than a notice slip.
Police: It says notice in the title, how is it a letter of protest? I can only understand it as a notice slip.
Me: If it is to be taken literally as a notice sheet, then it is, a notice sheet that I, as a student rights volunteer, sent to the school leadership.
Police: You are not a student, how did you know about this?
I: On the one hand, I have a lot of connections with Tsinghua University, and on the other hand, this matter has already had a high degree of heat on the Internet.
Police: What is your purpose?
Me: One is to make the school leaders realize what kind of widespread anger their approach has sparked; second, this notice sheet was written following the text in the school’s notice to lock up electric cars, which the school had locked up for students, and the offer to lock up the school leaders’ cars in this text would help the school leaders put themselves in the position of making decisions.
Police: You just want to add fuel to the fire and attract heat. This is already a big deal, so you’re going to do it again?
Me: Yeah.
Police: (loudly) Do you know the consequences of doing this?
I: First, the school leaders will know how much protest their locking of students’ electric bikes has provoked when they see it; second, by galvanizing students’ attention through this incident, they can encourage students to keep expressing their demands and defending their rights through all the legal means they can.
Another police officer: Why do you want to help students do this?
Me: It is very difficult for students to assert their rights. They will face resistance from the school, they will fear disciplinary action from the school, or they themselves will be so busy with their studies that they will forget about it after a while. So they need encouragement, they need someone to lead by example.
Another police officer: Talent.
(End of second transcript, sign and fingerprint.)
(About 7:00, started collecting biometric information, took a very nice mugshot, collected fingerprints, blood, voice print, etc.. About 8:00, told me to go sign the penalty notification letter.)
“Administrative penalty notice (I do not know if it is called this name)
For “unauthorized entry into the campus of Tsinghua University in Haidian District, posting false information, disturbing the order of the unit, the circumstances are more serious”, given administrative detention for 7 days.
(Signed, fingerprinted)
(After a while)
Police: I forgot to ask you to write this sentence just now. Write on it, “I’ve read the above and it matches what I said.”
Me: I don’t think it matches what I said, so I won’t write that.
Police: You signed it all.
Me: I signed it to accept the punishment, but you didn’t tell me it meant that it matched what I said. If I had to write that sentence before I signed it, I wouldn’t have signed it.
(After a while, another police officer comes over)
Police: What do you think is wrong?
Me: I don’t think I posted false information, and I didn’t say anything of the sort during the Q&A.
Police: It’s the same whether you sign it or not.
Me: As long as one sentence does not match the facts, I should not sign it.
Police: (loudly) You can not sign, you can go to administrative proceedings, I tell you it will not change anything. From the moment I came to arrest you, you should have known what the law would do to you. You’re not stupid.
(stares at each other)
Although there was something I wanted to say to this cop, there was no more powerful moment than to meet the angry glare from him. Rita’s light brown pupils were her strength, and she had been told since she was a child that they looked like a shallow stream that could be seen from the bottom. If it remains like that now, this round of stare-down is my victory.
(After a while, the police came with a recording device and recorded my plea, and asked me to write a written plea. I don’t think I posted false information, and it’s debatable whether I disturbed the unit. I was not informed of the details of the case at the first statement, and there were induced questions and selective records.”)
A few moments later, the police officer returned and took a third statement. This time it was very simple: the result of the plea was confirmed.
Police: The plea you made, the Haidian Branch decided not to accept it. Do you understand?
I: Yes.
Police: This decision is made by the Haidian Branch, if you want to sue, don’t sue us, go sue the Haidian Branch.
(End)
(After leaving the monitoring area) Police: Ho, you said that I have induced questions and selective recording, you tell me which sentence I have induced questions?
Me: This is not a questioning session, I have the right to refuse to answer.
Police: You have the right to refuse to answer, not to chat?
Me: I don’t like small talk.
(Handcuffed, got in the car, and headed to the detention center.
Experience in the detention center
The detention center is a large yard with 20-30 people sleeping in bunks in each room, with different people often coming in and rotating. The atmosphere proved to be significantly better than expected; before entering, I was concerned about whether the people here were violent or difficult to communicate with, but after actual contact, I found that this was not the case (one of the reasons was that I did not go to the felony area; some people who had been there said that the people in the felony area generally fit the above stereotype better). People here have mostly junior high school or junior college Education, up to a master’s degree, come in for a variety of reasons, there are many classic illegal behavior (such as prostitution, drunken cursing, drunken fighting, drug use, etc.), there are also many for the inadvertent (such as a lot of retired elderly people in their sixties playing mahjong, gambling from 10 yuan to 100 yuan, there is no specific gambling money and the use of chips; some people panic in case of emergency and There are also two or three people who are victims of police inaction and were arrested for speaking out against the police), and others who are purely unjust cases. They were in different professions, from jobless people, front-line manual laborers, institutional workers and ex-police officers, to university professors and defense industry workers. They were curious about me, and each of them asked me all kinds of questions; I explained to them what CD is and what MTF is, what Life is like inside Tsinghua and what kind of school Tsinghua is, and explained to them why they had refused a degree from Tsinghua. Some of them understood, some didn’t, but in general there was mutual respect. I even discussed my research to some of them, explaining to them what computational chemistry does and how it advances chemistry and biology. A lot of stereotypes are broken here; people who use drugs can be humble and polite, and people who steal and cheat can be very caring. They share their arrests with each other as a laughing matter, and then plot what business (of the legal kind) to start when they get out. There are people who are very annoying and people who are very comfortable to be around. They are ordinary people.
They are the side of society that we are not familiar with, the real, broader group of people in society than we are. People who think they are not standing on the judgment seat and feel superior and treat people with stereotypes are the ones who are more insidious and profoundly evil than they are.
The story of a property manager and an electric car
This is a property manager. He saw an old, unclaimed electric car in the neighborhood, and no lock or battery, rusty and full of sores, so he decided to take it for repair for his own use. He was then sentenced to 10 days detention for theft.
The property manager of the district will be sentenced to 10 days detention for taking away an electric car in disrepair, Tsinghua University ordered to lock the school electric car and no one claimed within 15 days, according to the owner of the vehicle is not subject to punishment, this is the wonderful use of “management rights” strike.
Reflections on the school’s struggle strategy
In the case of the electric car, many students complained through 12345. In the detention center, a prisoner with experience in the system told Rita about the details of 12345’s internal work, and realized that many of our complaints were actually invalid. These administrative organs have intricate processing processes and detailed explanations, and there are many unexpected considerations (for example, the simplest, the existence of threatening complaints are invalid; how many times a day each person can complain, the same problem is reported by more than one person, how the situation will be taken seriously, how the situation will become invalid complaints instead, all have rules); even if the problem is conclusive, the use of different words can have a big impact. The use of different words will also produce a very different degree of importance. In these struggles, people know what departments they can talk to, but they don’t know how to do it most effectively. This is inevitable; few in the student body have experience working within the system and know little about the structure and workings of public power, while schools have long been navigating these networks of public power. By taking advantage of this information gap, schools are able to stand up to complaints and reports. So what students lack is not the determination to defend their rights, but the skill to turn that determination into a sharp enough arrow. To fundamentally change this problem, it is necessary to have the support of people who are familiar with public power, and this is difficult to achieve in the short term.
That is why students choose Zhihu and resort to public opinion; not only because it is the least expensive way, but also, I am afraid, the most effective way that students can achieve. It also makes it more important to fight in a way that is outside the framework of public power. In the case that all public opinion attacks do not work, it makes sense to undertake this kind of struggle while avoiding legal risks as much as possible.
Other Miscellaneous Discussions
While in detention, I thought about whether to file an administrative review or a lawsuit. The final answer is that it is not necessary. On the one hand, the 7-day administrative detention would not affect me in any way; on the other hand, I was not the one being judged in this case, but the credibility of the school; it was not the police or the judge who made the decision, but the millions of eyes in the school. So I don’t have to pursue any further initiatives; the moment your school reports the case, the dust has settled. Whether I was right or wrong, each person will have his own judgment, and what face the school has will produce a unique answer in each person’s mind.
Your school can’t break me; the only thing your school can break is itself.
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