Friday, 24 November 2023
“I cannot believe tales of torture have now turned into personal experiences"
The 29 Principles Mental Health Report Launch
On Thursday 23rd November, The 29 Principles hosted a webinar to launch it’s 2023 Mental Health Report: “A framework for understanding political violence and mental health amongst Chinese human rights lawyers”.
The 29 Principles presented the key findings from the recently released report, including three recommendations for NGOs providing mental health support to lawyers, activists and other dissidents in China. Namely, support should be:
- Be trauma informed so as to prevent re-traumatisation from interactions with support services
- Take whole community approach, creating supportive communities and tackling intergenerational trauma
- Battle stigma to promote the acceptability of seeking help
We were then privileged to hear real life stories of suppression and political violence from Li Fangping, Zhang Chunxiao and Yang Bin. All attendees couldn’t help but be impacted by their powerful stories detailing the struggles they have faced in their pursuit of human rights, with Zhang Chunxiao highlighting how lawyers have “paid a heavy price for the progress of society” but “chose to face it bravely”.
In particular, Li Fangping described Li Heping’s arrest and his own subsequent arrest, including being beaten and humiliated by officers. Yang Bin similarly described the pressure she has faced due to her work, and how she still faces surveillance and damage to her property when outside of China. Lawyers and their families take on a huge burden to fight for their ideals, paying “a heavy price for the progress of society” as Zhang Chunxiao said.
This was followed by an insightful panel discussion features Dr Vladimir Jovic, trustee of the UNVFVT; Sophie Cornford, Programme Manager at The Rights Practice; and Robin, a Chinese counsellor. The panel focused on the key principles of mental health provision, the difficulties of providing this support (especially in China), and the importance of psychological support for victims of torture.
Dr Jovic highlighted in particular how the psychological impacts of these experiences can often long outlive the physical impacts, stressing the need for wholistic care for survivors. This was echoed by Sophie and Robin, who highlighted the need for a whole-community approach, including family members and lawyers who are educated in the Convention Against Torture.
Whether we are NGO workers, members of the diaspora or just interested we can all take on this advice, educating ourselves on mental health to create those supportive communities which are so essential to survivor healing.
Full transcripts of the speakers' powerful narratives are available below for further reference.
For media inquiries or additional information, please contact Rosie, Acting Executive Director, on [email protected].
Thank you for your attention.
The 29 Principles
Li Fangping - Chinese human rights lawyers, currently residing in the United States
I’m here to talk about mental health under torture. As I got older, my uncle would often talk about his ups and downs in life as the victim of an “Anti-Rights Campaign”. He said that there was a time when he could not accept the political persecution that followed (because of being a victim under the “Anti-Rights Campaign), he lost hope in life. If it was not for the fact that he couldn’t bear his mother being hurt because of him, he would have said goodbye to this miserable world long ago.
I remember that he also often talked about a story that during the “Anti-Rights Campaign“ that Hu Shi-Du, Hu Shi’s son who stayed in mainland China (named because Hu Shi missed his American mentor John Dewey - just for info here: the name of John Dewey was translated to be having a surname “Du” in Chinese, and Shi can mean “thinking about” in Chinese, and thus Shi-Du means thinking about Du (Dewey)), was being accused as a rightist and was forced to hang himself as a result.
As I vividly recall memories from my youth, I cannot believe tales of torture now really turned into personal experiences that accompanied my career as a rights-defending lawyer.
1) On September 29, 2007, it finally happened that lawyer Li Heping, a close friend and colleague whom I met almost every week, was kidnapped and tortured by the national security personnel. Lawyer Jiang Tianyong and I immediately rushed to Heping’s residence, and found Li Heping in shock. We listened to him telling us what happened and prayed for him. We felt that the situation was very serious, and we also felt feared and threatened by the National Security officials. We finally agreed that we should release information despite our fear, and to issue an appropriate statement about the incident. Without smartphones then back in 2007 I edited a text message and sent it to different groups of people, with the content of the message saying “At 5:30pm on the 29th, Lawyer Li Heping was hooded and kidnapped from his office in the Gaolan Building, and was taken to an unknown premise. He was beaten and electric batons were used, sustaining serious injuries. The attackers demanded Li Heping and his family to leave Beijing, otherwise they would beat Li whenever they saw him. His hard drive, mobile sim card, and lawyer’s card were robbed, his laptop was copied and the data was completely erased). He was beaten until 1am on the 30th, and was released in the country area of Xiaotangshan, where he then returned home by himself with much difficultly.”
That day, I witnessed hundreds of red spots on Heping’s chest that was caused by the electric shocks, and deeply felt Heping’s concern, worry and fear. In fact, his emotions were my emotions, his experiences would later become my experiences. For a long time, every time when there were strange footsteps nearby, I would feel extremely stressed, worrying that I would be abducted like Heping.
2) After 3 years, the abduction finally happened. On the afternoon of 29 April 2011, as soon as I left the Beijing Yirenping Centre’s office, an anti-discrimination charity, I was kidnapped, put in a black hood and driven to a national security’s premise. After being escorted into a room, a team of national security guards forced me to strip off to my underwear in public. They first scolded me, then beat me viciously. This was followed by several days of sitting or standing in one position for sixteen hours straight. When I did not conform to their so-called standards, I was tortured in various ways. I remember being kicked hard by a young national security guard because I didn’t call out “report officer” when he came in after his shift.
This kind of humiliation and torture caused mental trauma to me. The feelings of fear, helplessness, loss, devaluation of humanity are still always lingering.
3) Four years later, during the “709 Incident” in 2015, I was forcibly taken away by around 10 public security officers who broke into my place in front of my two-year-old son and 80-year-old father. The national security leader threatened me, saying that “You are a marked person on the list of Ministry of Public Security. If you don’t listen to us, we can send you in anytime.” At the request of the public security officer, my parents were forced to be his “personal surety” for my words and deeds. To this day, I still always recall my two-year-old son’s loud cry when he came to the police station to look for me, and the snapshot of my old father’s reminder in his harrowed face,“Don’t talk about national affairs in Beijing, don’t talk about affairs in Hong Kong when you are in Hong Kong.” Whenever I think of these episodes, I would feel extremely guilty. In particular, my child experienced at least twice frightening scenarios relating to public security officers, causing him to feel feared even when he saw police in Hong Kong.
The impact of the “709 Incident” on me and my family further adversely affected my sense of direction in life. For a period of time, I still suffered from insomnia, listlessness, loss of appetite, reluctance to speak and mental trance. It took more than half a year to slowly recover.
Zhang Chunxiao - Wife of Lawyer Lu Siwei, the former editor of a publishing house, now living in Los Angeles with her daughter.
In the three months when Lu Siwei was detained, my deepest feeling was the pain caused by being deprived of the right to know about him. The pain can not be described by words. When any real information related to you has been forcibly and artificially blocked, you feel like you are in a dark house with no exits, not to mention any hope. After experiencing these three months of torment, I finally realised the importance of defending the right to know.
Before this experience, I didn’t have a complete picture of Siwei’s work, and did not have a deep understanding of the experiences of human right lawyers’ families. Although I felt some of the pressure due to Siwei’s job in China, it was far less bitter than today.
The reason why Chinese human rights lawyers have become a sensitive and special group today is because of the particularity of the era. They paid a heavy price for the progress of society. I am very gratified that many of the wives of human rights lawyers I have seen or known have chosen to share wealth and woe with their husbands, sharing their joys and sorrows. No matter what were their characteristics in the past, when they experienced the drastic change of personal, family and social lives, they all chose to face it bravely.
Thank you for the well planned event! I hope that such activities can arouse people’s broader and more focused concern about the living conditions of Chinese human rights lawyers. To this end, I am willing to contribute my humble effort and fight hard with you all for this ideal.
Yang Bin - A Former Chinese Prosecutor, now an acting defence lawyer. She has recently also been a visiting fellow in New York.
1) Regarding the independence of prosecutors and judges.
If we could say that 20 years ago, judicial independence was at least a topic that could be discussed academically, then in the past decade or so, it has become a completely taboo topic. No matter in the judicial practice or in the field of legal education, emphasising the “socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics” is a conclusive proposition that cannot be discussed. All discussions and activities in the judicial field are only the thesis composition based on this conclusion. In fact, it has actually led China’s judiciary to a dead end - in the political environment where “the party leads everything”, what space is left to accommodate a little bit of freedom or independence?
In my career as a prosecutor, the non-independence of prosecutors mainly manifests itself in the following aspects:
- The procuratorial organs are very administrative and politicised, that every prosecutor must be subject to the so-called “superior” or “superior agencies”;
- In specific cases, the prosecutor as the person handling the case does not have the final decision-making power on the case and must go through the administrative review and approval process;
- Judicial activities are being intervened with by non-legal factors, especially power. This is particularly obvious in so-called political cases or sensitive cases. In such cases, judicial organs, prosecutors and judges handling the cases are just the tools for political manipulation, or a typical “handle of a knife”.
2) About the difficulties and risks of practicing law in China.
In China, whether you are a lawyer, an official, or a businessman, if you want to succeed, you must follow the same rule, “make a fortune quietly and become a high-ranking official”. This sentence means that if you don’t care about the public affairs and trending social focus, never speak out publicly for fairness and justice, then you will not only be safe, but you can also achieve “success” in the worldly sense.
China’s judicial environment also determines that a large number of cases cannot be treated fairly due to the intervention of political or other human factors. If the lawyers handling such cases dare not to speak out publicly for their cases and fight for their clients, that means that the cases operated in secret cannot enter into the public view.
Such unspoken rules have created a large number of “ostrich” Chinese, sticking their head in the sand, and those who dare to speak out have to bear huge political risks.
To put it simply, the Chinese government mainly controls lawyers or so-called “sensitive” cases through the following methods:
Pressure is exerted through the Lawyers Association and the lawyer’s law firm to require the lawyer to remain silent, delete posts or not represent certain types of cases. Those who disobey are likely to face serious consequences such as having their licenses revoked;
Putting a large number of stability maintenance forces around the place where the case occurred or at the trial site to create an atmosphere of terror with heavy troops suppressing the situation. The purpose is nothing more than to create fear in people’s hearts. When I handled the Sun Dawu case in Hebei, the land expropriation case in Jinning in Kunming, Yunnan, and Chuxiong in Yunnan, I saw almost the same scene;
The lawyers are required to sign a so-called commitment letter that they are not allowed to disclose or publicised any information about the case or even the progress of the case, which artificially politicises and sensitises the case.
Put pressure on the family members of the case or other persons involved in the case, such as talking and pressuring through local governments or grassroots organisations, installing surveillance cameras at residences, etc., to undermine their aspirations and confidence.
Under this high-pressure method of maintaining stability, lawyers have less and less space to handle cases. In many cases, it is almost impossible to take any measures, and it is difficult to have a substantial impact on the outcome of the case. There is no transparency around the process, which makes it difficult for the public to know the process of handling a case.
At the same time, the huge risks faced by human rights lawyers make young lawyers afraid of taking on such cases. The shortage of human rights lawyers is very serious. The solutions to solve this problem has not yet been found.
3) Experience in Germany.
In April 2023, I arrived Berlin, Germany, for a six-month study tour.
On August 6, 2023, it was Sunday. At about 3:30pm, I left the rented apartment and went out to meet a friend. When I cam back at about 6 o’clock, I opened the door and found that the house was in a mess. There was a break-in and theft. The police who arrived at the scene to investigate found that the thief climbed into the room through the bathroom window (I lived on the first floor and usually don’t have the habit of closing the window because the bathroom window is very narrow). After inventory, my Chinese Huawei mobile phone (with two China Telecom phone cards inside), China ID card, and a Chinese bank card were stolen. Although the property damage was not big, it caused serious trouble in my life. Huawei mobile phone is my main tool to communicate with my family and friends in China. Because my ID card was stolen at the same time, neither the bank card nor the phone card could be replaced. The case has not yet been solved, and it has caused a shadow on my heart.