Frontline Defenders
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/statement-report/upr-submission-china-2018
‘In 2014, Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti was accused of “separatism” for his written work calling for better integration of Uyghur peoples into China’s economic development. He is now serving a life sentence in prison. Other advocates for Uyghur rights, dignity, and even basic allowance for cultural expression find themselves and their families harassed, threatened, arrested, and sent to “re-education” centers, where they are kept incommunicado for months at a time. In 2014, Tibetan HRD Tashi Wangchuk issued a call for enhanced bilingual education for Chinese Tibetans. Despite guarantees made in China’s third National Human Rights Action Plan4 that the “the right of ethnic minorities to learn, use and develop their spoken and written languages shall be respected and guaranteed,” Tashi Wangchuk was arrested, detained incommunicado, charged with “separatism”, and currently awaits a court verdict.’
‘Human rights defenders such as A-nya Sengdra (阿亚桑扎), Ge Jueping (戈觉平), Ge Zhihui (葛志慧), Lin Lanying (林兰英), Lin Yingqiang (林应强), Liu Jinxing (刘进兴), Tang Zhaoxing (唐兆星), Liu Yanli (刘艳丽), Yu Wensheng (余文生), Zhang Zhan (张展), as well as Agnes Chow (周庭), Ivan Lam (林朗彦), and Joshua Wong (黃之鋒) in Hong Kong, were convicted and sentenced to prison terms in 2020. Most of the defenders convicted in the mainland have been kept under prolonged pre-trial detention, often without access to their family and legal counsel of their choice. The rejection of Ge Jueping’s appeal, the trial of Ge Zhihui and Zhang Zhan, the confirmation of a 20-year sentence handed down in 2019 to Dr Gulshan Abbas, sister of US-based Uyghur woman human rights defender Rushan Abbas, and the sentencing of Liu Jinxing and Zhang Zhan all took place in the second half December 2020. Human rights defenders such as Cai Wei (蔡伟), Chang Weiping (常玮平), Chen Mei(陈玫), Ou Biaofeng (欧彪峰), Wang Zang (王藏), Xie Fengxia (谢丰夏), and Xu Zhiyong (许志永) were all detained in 2020 and are currently in different stages of pre-trial detention. Lawyers Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜), Li Yuhan (李昱函) and Qin Yongpei(覃永沛), as well as health rights defenders Cheng Yuan (程渊), Liu Dazhi (刘大志), and Wu Gejianxiong (吴葛健雄) were arrested prior to 2020, but remain in detention pending trial or a verdict following trial as of today.’
‘UN experts also issued four public statements on China last year, raising concerns about the lack of investigation into the death in 2014 of woman human rights defender Cao Shunli (曹顺利), the on-going harassment of human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) after his release from prison, the treatment of human rights defenders and peaceful protesters in Hong Kong, and the fate and whereabouts of Uyghur scholar Tashpolat Tiyip. The Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders highlighted the disbarment of human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng (余文生) and Sui Muqing (隋牧青) in his latest report on impunity for abuses committed against human rights defenders.’ … The EU named and called for the release of over 30 Chinese, Tibetan, Uyghur and women human rights defenders.’
‘These public attacks by Chinese government officials and state media outlets included explicit references to the women’s personal and private details, including information related to their medical history or conditions. The attacks are ad hominem and often irrelevant to the women’s testimonies, exploiting entrenched gender stereotypes, sexism and misogyny, and playing explicitly and implicitly on gendered tropes.
Family members of the women human rights defenders have also been used in articles, State-organised press conferences, and videos published by State media in which they criticised the women for “spreading rumours” and “lying” about their experience in detention. The broadcast of family members’ testimonies, likely achieved through coercion, to discredit individuals exposing human rights violations is consistent with a broader strategy of using State media to negatively portray human rights defenders and extract forced confessions, which are often then televised.
At a daily press conference on 23 February 2021, a spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Wang Wenbin, attacked Tursunay Ziyawudun, a Uyghur woman human rights defender, for revealing to the BBC and CNN the abuses she suffered and witnessed during nearly ten months of arbitrary detention in Xinjiang in 2018, including rape and forced insertion of an intrauterine device. He held up a photograph of Tursunay Ziyawudun and another Uyghur woman human rights defender, Zumrat Dawut, while he spoke.
During a press conference on 4 February 2021, the same spokesperson attacked Zumrat Dawut, while holding up a photograph of her, for revealing to international media that she was forcibly sterilised, allegedly for having too many children. Earlier in November 2019, the State-owned tabloid The Global Times published an article and a video in which one of Zumrat Dawut’s brothers in Xinjiang called on her to stop “spreading rumours”. Two days later, on 6 February 2021, State media again attacked Zumrat Dawut in an article that was published simultaneously by numerous State media outlets, including Xinhua News and China Global Television Network (CGTN)…
The same 6 February 2021 article also attacked the accounts provided to international media by Uyghur woman human rights defender Mihrigul Tursun concerning the beating and torture she reportedly suffered during several periods of arbitrary detention since 2015. … an interview with a male Han Chinese doctor who discussed personal medical details about one of Mihrigul’s sons. Close-up shots of what appear to be medical and identity documents in which the name, date of birth and other personal information of her son are visible, were also shown in the segment.
At a press conference on 10 February 2021 in Beijing, Xu Guixiang, Deputy Head of the Propaganda Department of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region’s Committee of the Communist Party of China, attacked Gulbahar Haitiwaji, a Uyghur woman human rights defender who was persuaded to return to China from France and then detained for three years between 2016 and 2019. … The Xinjiang official derided her allegation of forced sterilisation and said it was “laughable” that sterilisation should still be necessary for a woman of her age.’’’
