The Chinese government has been keeping Jiang Tianyong under house arrest in his hometown in Henan province since he was released from prison in 2019, and he has been unable to work or reunite with his wife and daughter. Many lawyers, journalists and pro-democracy activists offered their best wishes to Jiang Tianyong, hoping that he would be freed soon and reunited with his family.
Jiang Tianyong’s wife, Jin Changling, who is currently in the United States, tweeted her thoughts about her husband: “I haven’t spent my birthday with Jiang Tianyong in eight years. I hope Jiang Tianyong will be free soon and I can cut a piece of birthday cake for him personally. Jiang Tianyong has been under house arrest at his parents’ home since his release from prison on February 28, 2019, without any freedom.” For the Jiang Tianyong incident, Chinese rights lawyer Ren Quanniu, on the other hand, said, “blatantly in broad daylight, the practice of imprisoning legally free citizens is not only the nature of the problem of criminal behavior anymore, but also a humiliation of more than a billion national people, which is a fundamental contempt for the nation, the trampling and obscenity of the Constitution established by their mandate!”
Kim Chang-ling also retweeted multiple well-wishes from lawyers, journalists and pro-democracy activists. These included: Chen Guangcheng, a blind lawyer; Su Yutong, a former Deutsche Welle reporter; Lu Tingge, Lin Qilei, and Chen Jiangang, human rights lawyers; Shi Minglei, the wife of Changsha public interest trio Cheng Yuan; Wang Cragging, the wife of lawyer Li Heping; Li Wenzu, the wife of lawyer Wang Quanzhang; Zhou Youfang, the wife of lawyer Wen Donghai; Wang Yanfang, the wife of lawyer Tang Jingling; Li Huanjun, a human rights activist now in the United States; Cao Yaxue, editor-in-chief of ChangeChina.org; and Amnesty International Patrick Poon, a researcher with Amnesty International, and others.
In April 2014, Jiang Tianyong and four other lawyers were illegally arrested by the Heilongjiang authorities when they came to visit Falun Gong practitioners illegally detained in Jiansanjiang Black Prison. According to the examination results of Tianjin Hospital, eight of his ribs were broken. Lawyer Tang Jitian, who was arrested with Jiang Tianyong, had 10 broken ribs, lawyer Wang Cheng had three, and lawyer Zhang Junjie had three.
On November 21, 2016, Jiang Tianyong went to Changsha, Hunan Province to visit Xie Yang, a lawyer arrested in the “709 arrest” case, and his family, and was secretly arrested by Changsha police on his way back to Beijing that night. Three weeks later, the official media confirmed that Jiang Tianyong had been assigned to residential surveillance. On November 21, 2017, he was sentenced by the Changsha City Intermediate Court to two years’ imprisonment and deprivation of political rights for “inciting subversion of state power. “He was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and three years of deprivation of political rights.
Jiang Tianyong was released from prison in late February 2019. He was taken away by police for several days at one point and returned home again, but was placed under 24-hour supervision and his movements have been restricted so far, in a manner similar to house arrest.
Jiang Tianyong has requested medical parole and travel to the United States, but the authorities have refused. When he attended the 3rd China Human Rights Lawyers Festival and the 2nd China Human Rights Lawyers Award Ceremony in Taipei via video in July 2019, he revealed that officials even told him that he would not be able to reunite with his wife and daughter in the United States until after 2022.
On September 24, 2019, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights issued a press release calling on Chinese Communist Party officials to immediately stop the surveillance and harassment of Jiang Tianyong. UN experts say Beijing’s punishment of Jiang Tianyong is not only too extreme, but also illegal.
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