Not long ago, Wang Yu, the first person arrested in the 709 lawyer arrest case, received the International Women’s Courage Award from the U.S. government. Wang Yu was imprisoned for her duties as a lawyer, and her son has been subjected to surveillance and violence since he was a teenager.
Bao Zhuoxuan is the only son of Wang Yu and rights activist Bao Longjun. When he was 16 years old in 2015, he tried to flee China with the help of friends after his passport was confiscated and he lost his freedom, but the attempt failed; his parents later compromised with the government and won him permission to leave the country. He first went to Australia to study and then came to the United States from Australia when he was under 21 years old, looking to embrace his physical and mental freedom. He is currently based in California, where he is attending a community college and awaiting political asylum in the United States. He was recently interviewed by Voice of America, and the following is the content of the interview.
Reporter: You said you were under 24-hour shifts of surveillance by the national security for two years.
Bao Zhuoxuan: It started when I was 16 years old after my parents were both imprisoned for a period of time, a few months after the 709 incident in 2015. At that time, the government sent me to Ulanhot, Inner Mongolia, where my grandmother and sister-in-law live, and they both live close to each other. At first the government did not keep me under close supervision, but after I tried to escape from the country, they took me back and began to monitor me non-stop.
From then on, I was still allowed to attend Ulaanbaatar No. 1 High School. To keep an eye on me, they installed cameras in all places other than the school toilets, including classrooms, corridors, playgrounds, and dining halls, with three cameras in the classrooms and more than I can count outside. The surveillance people were watching me in one room in shifts. I went in that room, and it had all the cameras in it. They told me that no matter what I did, they could see every move I made. A pencil fell on the floor, I bent down to pick it up, and they knew everything. This treatment at first attracted blank stares from my classmates, who all knew that the sudden installation of so many cameras was aimed at me. Moreover, my situation was reported in the news, of course by the Chinese Communist Party’s rhetoric. During those two years, it was impossible for me to study at ease. The good thing is that the school teachers were relatively simple and took care of me relatively well, and did not make any unreasonable demands on me.
When I went to and from school, and when I went out and entered the house, there were always two national guards “escorting” me. They started out in police uniforms, but only changed to civilian clothes at my request. This is not all. Since I was living in my grandmother’s and sister-in-law’s house, the normal neighbors across the street from them were moved out and replaced by the national security guards to facilitate 24-hour surveillance of the two houses. Although I didn’t see any cameras installed inside the house, every time I called one of my parents’ friends, they knew immediately and would immediately come to me for questioning.
I never understood, even if I escaped once, if I escaped a second time, they would just catch me again the second time. Why spend so much money, manpower and material resources to hire a shift of police to watch a teenage boy like me every day?
Reporter: How did your escape go? What kind of psychological activities did you have at that time?
Bao Zhuoxuan: After the 709 arrest, I was finally sent to my grandmother in Ulanhot, Inner Mongolia by the government. They probably thought that it would be easy to manage me in that small, remote place and that I would not be easily accessible to the outside world, so they didn’t keep too close an eye on me. Moreover, my passport was confiscated during 709, and there was no theoretical possibility of my leaving the country.
One day, friends of my parents, whom I knew well, told me in a social media “cable” that they might meet in a few days. Later, two of their friends showed up in front of me in Ulaanbaatar. They took me out of the house, in a deserted area, and asked me a few questions about whether I would like to study in the U.S., and I said yes. Then, they agreed with me a time for me to take a cab to the airport one day during the November holiday and they would meet me; I didn’t need to bring anything except a little cash, including my school bag, ID, etc.; I could tell my grandmother about it, but don’t tell anyone else. Before I left that day, I told my grandmother that my parents’ friends might want to take me away to study elsewhere. She seemed to understand the meaning immediately.
I arrived at the airport without incident and was met by these two friends, who gave me a fake ID. They were so sure of themselves that they flew with me to Yunnan and drove south. We drove all the way across the China-Myanmar border line and saw that there wasn’t much at the border either. That’s when I learned that we were smuggled into Burma and then would be smuggled overland to Thailand with the help of human snakes. Someone in Thailand would fly me to the United States. However, they didn’t tell me more details.
(Reporter’s note: The New York Times reported that Zhou Fenglock, one of the founders of the human rights organization Humane China, was waiting in Thailand to take Bao Zhuoxuan to the U.S.)
I was really scared when I found out it was a stowaway, but I couldn’t back out of it, and it was too late to back out. We stopped in the Burmese border town of Mangla, where we stayed in a hotel, and later changed hotels for a few days for safety. The plan was to stay in Burma for only one day and then leave, but things didn’t go as we hoped and the snakeheads delayed. Later, three of our family members were arrested by some people who spoke Mandarin.
In retrospect, the two friends did a pretty good job of keeping it a secret, and didn’t even tell me any details on the telegram. I think that even if the government wanted to spy, it would have focused on me, not the two of them, and would not have known who would take me away. And it only took the government a few days to know who took me where, and to this day I can’t figure out how. I don’t know what went wrong, and they don’t know. (Reporter’s note: Rights Defense Network says that Chinese government eyes lurking in Burma discovered Bao Zhuoxuan; local Chinese and folk in Mongla later learned that the director of the local tourism bureau was a mole sent by the Chinese government.)
After we were arrested, I said I didn’t know anything, which was true because the two friends didn’t reveal too many details. After all, I was very young and panicked. At the time, I was already showing signs of PTSD; I would fidget, be terrified, worried, suspicious, plus I was still scared. (Reporter’s note: The Los Angeles Times said the police beat him with a stick and threatened to beat him to death, saying, “Even if they beat you to death and left you out here in the middle of nowhere, no one would care. No one will ever find your body.” The police interrogated him and accused him of being backed by “foreign forces”. (They often woke him up at 1:00 a.m. for questioning and forced him to sign a confession of guilt.
They gave me a statement, but what was written in the statement was completely different from what I said. When I refused to sign, they beat me, so I signed. I was taken back to China and put under house arrest for a few days before being sent back to Inner Mongolia. From then on, 24-hour surveillance began.
Reporter: What did you go through in the 709 incident?
Bao Zhuoxuan: On July 9, 2015, my father took me to the capital international airport, ready to escort me all the way to Australia for my studies. My passport, visa and admission procedures were all in order. At the airport, a group of people suddenly rushed up and held us down, and we were led out with our hands tied behind our backs. Since then, I have been separated from my parents for more than two years.
After I was arrested that day, I was placed under house arrest for a few days. At first they did not rough me up, because the arrest was not directed at me and had nothing to do with me. However, during the house arrest I tried to escape, and after all, I was still young and wanted to do impossible things, so I was beaten by them. I was first sent to my grandparents’ house in Tianjin. Later I learned that my mother was taken away from me at home that day. (Reporter’s note: Rights Defense Network reported that Bao Zhuoxuan was held in solitary confinement for 40 hours and did not eat for more than 20 hours. When his aunt came to pick him up from Tianjin, he was told that his passport was confiscated, that he could not return to his home in Beijing, that he could not see anyone, including journalists and his parents’ friends, and that he could not hire a lawyer for his parents. On that day, Bao Zhuoxuan’s mother, Wang Yu, was home alone, waiting for news that her husband and son had left China for Australia without incident, the Los Angeles Times said. (The house suddenly lost power, and more than 10 men used an electric drill to force open the door to her house, rushed in, pushed her to the ground, handcuffed her and put a sleeve over her head.)
Because I had just regained my freedom from house arrest, I started frantically calling my parents’ friends at my grandparents’ house and got a bunch of their lawyer friends before I realized that maybe things weren’t as simple as I thought, because I found out that many of the lawyers’ phone numbers were not working, and it turned out that they had all been arrested. This is what became known as the 709 incident.
Probably knowing that many people might come to contact me if I called them, they probably thought that a big city like Tianjin was not easy to manage, so they took me out of Tianjin to Inner Mongolia shortly afterwards. Then those things happened.
Reporter: What do you think of your mom and dad and the ideals they dedicated themselves to? Do you ever regret leaving your parents and coming to a foreign country?
Bao Zhuoxuan: My mom and dad never directly instilled in me a definition or judgment of the CCP. They would show me specific cases, such as who’s family was forcibly demolished, petitioners were beaten by the police; those in Xinjiang were sent to concentration camps and how they were persecuted, etc. They never preached. They never preach, they just show me examples and let me use my own observation and understanding to judge.
We also use wall software at home, and I go on the Internet to see what is being said outside. In contrast, I found that the current state of human rights in China is really bad, and some of the CCP’s practices are disgraceful.
Sometimes I think it’s better for me as a parent to instill some political right and wrong in my children directly and clearly, because not all children can understand these rights and wrongs on their own and get out of the CCP’s mindset easily.
I feel so sorry for my parents. They would not compromise no matter what the torture and abuse, but, I was their weakness. 99% of the reason for the CCTV confession was because the CCP took me in exchange. I knew that my parents would not back down because of the torture, or for any other reason. I was later able to leave China for Australia because my parents made major sacrifices and compromised a lot with the CCP. And my parents felt very sorry for me, they always said so. In fact, I think that their cause took precedence over me as a simple individual.
Many times they were able to stay in foreign countries as well, yet they came back to China every time because they wanted to keep the cause of human rights in China alive. Such is their professionalism, their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the realization of human rights. That time my father would return to China even after sending me to Australia, but the Chinese Communist Party probably thought he was going to flee abroad.
However, my parents’ position and approach is actually not understood by many people in China. Ordinary people would think that many things are not directly related to them, so why must they take such a big risk to go against each other?
Now, although I will encounter all kinds of difficulties in the United States, I enjoy an unprecedented spiritual freedom. I will not regret my choice of this path.
Reporter: Thank you for the interview with Voice of America, and I look forward to seeing you achieve what you want in life and in your studies, and realize your ambitions in the land of the free.
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