杨占青
杨占青

中国资深公益人士,福特汉姆大学访问学者

Silencing the bereaved, attacking the defender

Author: Li Ang , a human rights activist based in Taiwan.

“The Wuhan governments used media to whitewash the outbreak of Covid-19. The government concealed the outbreak, failed to alert the public, and responded incompetently and inadequately, finally allowed Covid-19 to explode out of control. This is the main reason why so many Wuhan citizens neglected to prevent the infection” says Bu Ping Ke (literally Indignance Man, 不平客), a lawyer member from ‘the Legal Advisory Group for COVID-19 Claims’ (新冠病毒肺炎索赔律师顾问团).

“For most of the dead, the outbreak of Covid-19 is a man-made disaster, pure and simple. They are victims of malfeasance and abuse of power” says still Bu Ping Ke. Hubei provincial government and Wuhan municipal government are culpable for spreading fake news and suppressing the whistleblower, Doctor Li Wengliang.

“We might become victims one day if we ignore the misfortune of the Covid-19 victims we saw in the We-media today” Bu Ping Ke tried to raise the awareness of the Chinese people.

Unfortunately, the reality is totally opposite. The Hubei provincial government and the Wuhan municipal government not only do not compensate the families but smear the helpers. What we could clearly see today is that the Chinese government continuously uses media to smear the human rights defenders and legal professionals.

“Zhanqing Yang is totally a big liar! He asked for CNY100,000 before my lawsuit and I paid partially. Now, my lawsuit is over but I couldn’t find him” says the ‘fake’ Zhang Hai, who claim to be the son of a victim of Covid-19 in Wuhan suing the Wuhan provincial government by stirring up by Yang.

We are able to know that these messages are fake because the ‘real’ Zhang Hai wrote a statement to prove Yang innocence. 

“I am very grateful for Mr. Yang and I did not pay any cent to the Legal Advisory Group for COVID-19 Claims” says Zhang Hai. 

“I resolutely sue the Wuhan local government for causing this man-made disaster. We should hold the government accountable. The life of the people is also life” Zhang Hai angrily claims. “The government blocked all of my social accounts” the last sentence of Zhang Hai’s statement. 

“I have worked to defend rights of victims of certain human rights violations in China for more than 12 years. This is the first time I face this situation (being strongly discredited by the Chinese government and their henchman by spreading disinformation against Yang)” says Zhanqing Yang, a veteran Chinese activist who fled to the U.S. and is a visiting scholar based in the U.S. now.

Amid the pandemic, he is working as a legal consultant coordinating an underground group composed of at most 22 lawyers based in China who advice the families of Covid-19 victims secretly. They appeal to the Chinese government and Chinese People's Congress to hold the negligent officials accountable and to set up a compensation fund for the victims of Covid-19.

Recently, his main goal is coordinating at least five groups of kin of Covid-19 victims to sue the local government of Wuhan and Hubei province while we can read on many international medias that the Wuhan Intermediate Court has rejected these suits over curt phone calls rather than official written explanations, as legally required, and without specified procedural ground. “The court did this to 'avoid a paper trail'” says Yang.

“The history has repeated. Rights defence action(weiquan), however, is getting much harder than ever before” says Zhanqing Yang.

“The Chinese-government-recognized shit stirrer”

After starting to coordinate ‘the Legal Advisory Group for COVID-19 Claims’, Yang found that rumors, disinformation and smears are springing up like mushrooms.

Several online media established or partially invested by the local government of China successively published articles to defame him. These medias, at least, include JCZY Net (河南精彩中原网), HKHT News(香港大中华通讯社), pro-Beijing media International Daily News(国际日报网页版) and medias suspected to be pro-Beijing include ED Times India and DW News(多維新聞).

Different humiliating names are used to describe this human rights activist and his efforts on rights advocacy, especially anything related to the U.S. These articles call him ‘a master of asking for compensation’, ‘a professional shit stirrer’, ‘a stray dog’, ‘a jester of Trump’ and ‘Hansan Hu’, a well-known villain role in ‘Sparkling Red Star’ which is a 1974 propaganda film calling for revolution of the Chinese Communist party. 

“I am coming back again” is the famous saying of this villain who is a tyrannical landlord of a village. This line has become an internet buzzword today. Yang is described and shaped as a notorious and high-maintenance nuisance who ‘keeps coming back to make trouble and disturbance to the society and the motherland’. [Picture_3]

“Attacks spring up like mushrooms.”

Three means are often taken. First, these medias tend to shape his collusion with the U.S. in order to arouse anger of Chinese people. These pro-Beijing medias take the narrative of the competition between these two powers to reduce the intention of Yang and his credibility.

Second, they tend to stigmatize him with a nonexistent sexual harassment case in order to defile his personal character and shape him as a criminal. 

The last one is to highlight his disqualification as a lawyer. However, Yang has never claimed to be a lawyer but has known as a legal NGO worker coordinating human rights lawyers in China and advocating human rights abuse cases to the society and the world.

To frame his collusion with the U.S.

‘Stray Dog Yang Zhanqing, Why Not Look at What's Happening Around You?’ is an online critique published in its opinion column of DW News published in this October. It argues that Yang is a jester of Trump who intentionally ignores the terrible epidemic situation in the US but deliberately targets the failure of the Chinese government.

JCZY Net, which is an online media under the guidance of the United Front Work Department of the Henan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China, co-constructed by the United Front Work Department of the Zhengzhou Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China issued an article, ‘Decrypt the Consulting Group of Zhanqing Yang‘ on 28 August, 2020. This media published a picture of Yang with official of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor which is an affiliation within the United States Department of State, to show how Yang conspires with the U.S. to “encourage his compatriots to sue their own government and incite people to hate their own country” and spreads the criticisms globally against the Chinese government.

This picture, which is used as the key evidence of Yang’s shameful and ugly liaison with the US government, however, was taken in October of 2019 before the outbreak of Covid-19 when Yang lobbied the U.S. Congress for human rights violation cases of an independent journalist who was arbitrarily detained, Sophia Xueqin Huang and another human rights violation case ‘Changsha Funeng Three’, which is a Chinese health rights organization co-founded by Yang. Three staff include Cheng Yuan, Liu Dazhi, and Wuge Gejianxiong were arbitrarily detained and secretly tried in September this year at the Changsha Intermediate People’s Court. ‘Changsha Funeng Three’ is a well-known case supported by more than 200 CSOs internationally including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Chinese Human Rights. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention of UN Human Rights Council also issued an opinion in June concerning three victims of this case.

In addition to deceiving readers by misusing pictures to smear Yang’s intention, a critique published by a pro-Beijing media International Daily News intentionally imply that Yang is alumni of the U.S. president merely because he is now a visiting legal scholar at Fordham University in the U.S.

If you further track the author of some of these articles, you can easily find that the writer only wrote about topics about the criticism against ‘colour revolution’ which is reshaped, defined and labelled by the Chinese government as anti-China. 

To stigmatize him with a nonexistent sexual harassment case and to question his intention

“Yang is not a perfect person but we think that this case is made up by the government or the pro-China media” says a Chinese Metoo movement feminism activist.

A news published by ED Times India based in New Delhi reported that a victim of sexual harassment accused that Yang is the perpetrator of her nightmare. However, in the last paragraph of this news, it suspiciously praised the performance of China on controlling Covid-19 and compare with the situation in the U.S.

To highlight his disqualification as a lawyer 

Yang Zhanqing certainly does not have the Chinese lawyer license. In fact, he never claims to have one. 

His earlier career before fleeing from China due to political reason provides the perfect proofs that he is a well-performance legal worker in rights-oriented NGO.

He joined Beijing Yirenping, which is a non-profit organisation dedicated to promoting social justice and public health and focused on eliminating discrimination against disadvantaged groups such as women, carriers of hepatitis B and HIV, LGBT+ patients of Diabetes and Tuberculosis, and people with disabilities, as a legal worker rather than a lawyer. Beijing Yirenping had successfully participated in law making process of People’s Republic of China including, at least, ‘Mental Health Law’, ‘Labor Contract Law’, ‘Employment Promotion Law’ and ‘Food Safety Law’ before being crackdown.

Yang participated in the group of volunteering lawyers for the families of victims of the Chinese melamine-laced powdered milk scandal in 2008. It was a significant food safety incident in China that caused at least 432 babies diagnosed with kidney stones. “At that time, the domestic media still had room for reporting” he says. 

Yang takes this case and the fake vaccine scandal in 2018 as examples to explain that the Chinese government's control of public opinion and the attacks on dissidents and victims are significantly enhance.

“NetEase (a Chinese internet company providing the mainstream and commonly used portal site, email service and news site in China) invited us to write critiques about this incident. My colleague and I wrote together an article ‘Don’t Let the Parents of Children with Kidney Stones Encounter "Judicial Stones" Again’ to reveal and expose the court’s refusal to open a case for the families of the victims” says Yang to show the no longer exist civic space.

"On the one hand, the court does not file a case. On the other hand, the families of the victims are unwilling to file a complaint because they do not believe that the court will open a fair trial. Therefore, most of them send complaints online or negotiate with the officials in the office. By accepting media interviews, they are able to pressure the government to remedy the violation of their rights partially" explains Yang.

“Like how the Wuhan court treats the kin of Covid-19 victims, the court also refused to open the case in the past. Most of the lawyers were forced to withdraw from the assistance. Only Peng Jian, Zhang Kai, Teng Biao, Xu Zhiyong and other public interest lawyers were still involved. There were around hundreds of victims at that time. After the lawyers continuing prosecuted and negotiated with the court, the court reluctantly opened a few cases six months later, which should have effectively promoted the establishment of the subsequent compensation fund” explains Yang in the interview with Deutsche Welle.

“Intention of the big brother”

The human rights defenders strength up so do the totalitarian regime.

The Chinese government picks the materials with political wills to compose and create stories and fake news about these ‘traitors’ and ‘national sinners’ in order to defame their image inside China’s public opinion and further stigmatize and marginalize them. 

They shape the image that campaigners like Yang are accomplices conspiring with the US government to smear the Chinese government but turn the blind eye to the curent situation in the U.S. Chinese netizens question that Yang’s move was to cooperate with the U.S. government’s attack on China to obtain a U.S. green card.

In the critique ‘Anti-China lawyer Yang Zhanqing's rights defend business. Lawyers group? No! A brainless tentacle’ published in International Daily News which is a pro-Beijing media group, the pro-Beijing medias even questions Yang about why there is no case accepted by the court while this result is the key evidence of Chinese’s government’s violation of the rule of law. These medias accuse him with using these victims to benefit himself.

This fake news portrays Yang as a hypocrite who supports progressive values but acts in the opposite direction.

One of the most harmful impact of these slanderous critiques might be the result of confusing the international media. Owing to the politicization and stigmatization, the legitimacy of the actions of these legal remedies are harmed by the government-made fake news. It might let Yang's rights defend initiative be casted aside by human rights activists who are anti-Trump, especially during the period and within the atmosphere of the US election. 

In Yang’s case, it is even more complicated and targeted. China's responsibility for Covid-19 and the campaign asking to take the Chinese government accountable is deem very political in the eyes of the Chinese government. Yang, undoubtedly, is the thorn in the Chinese government’s flesh. The smears and rumors emerge overwhelmingly.

This is very harmful for these campaigners because social credit is significantly important for them. Under the current state and quality of China’s rule ‘by’ law, prosecutions often rely on the scale and degree of out-of-court protests and online media. The effects of public opinion will play a key role. The Chinese government and these pro-Beijing media stigmatize organizers of these human rights defend will also stigmatize family members of the victim and the neutral compensation campaigns.

What makes him incurring substantial smears?

Commentators paying attention to China and activists within the field of civil society of China would easily feel pessimistic at what is happening and what might be going to happen in China after witnessing the U-turn of China’s development of civil society. In their eyes, what happened after the China Sichuan Quake on 12 May of 2008 is not going to happen in 2020. In 2008, the Chinese government established many public welfare organizations in order to appease the families of a large number of victims. 

“The Xi government will definitely employ measures to maintain the stability and take the means of surveillance instead of satisfying the appeals of the families of the victims of Covid-19. This is the key difference from the past” says Yang. He explains that all kinds of self-help and actions of rights protection that are not authorised by the government are seen illegal and would encounter suppression by different levels of Chinese governments. 

At present, there are at least six suitcases against the Wuhan or Hubei government in progress including approximately 11 kins of the victims following the instructions of the Legal Advisory Group for COVID-19 Claims to accumulate evidence. 

“Please continue to pay attention to my safety” Tan Jun said in an interview.

Tan Jun is the first person in China who initiated suitcase about Covid-19. He is a civil servant. He was interviewed by the Commission for Discipline Inspection of Yichang City, Hubei Province after he filed a complaint with the Supreme People's Court. Although facing this political pressure, he believes that he has the legitimacy and rights to exercise as a Chinese citizen.

“Some kin of the victims based in Wuhan have been visited by public security after filing law suit against the local government only because they got interviewed by media” said Zhang Hai. “These public security staff threats them that all of the foreign media are anti-China force. Interviewing by them is anti-the Chinese Communist Party which is very serious and would be arrested” he described.

"All our communication devices is monitored and under surveillance. Phones are monitored. Because, in China, we have very few platforms and channel where we can speak out for ourselves. We used to have a Weibo account with nearly 20,000 fans, but it was blocked by them. Do you know? I personally have five accounts been blocked. If we (the victims and the families) tell the truth, they will deprive you of all your rights."

“The history has repeated. Rights defence action(weiquan), however, is getting much harder than ever before” says Zhanqing Yang.

Today, no media in China dare to report the voices of these family members of Covid-19 victims. 

The fake news about Yang Zhanqing and other human rights defenders, however, is like snowflakes falling endlessly.

CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 版权声明

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