(In rough translation . . .)
Though the pain in my lower back is unbearable, I haven’t been able to sleep a wink while thinking of my three colleagues still in the detention house. As someone who experienced this first-hand, I feel a deep sense of obligation to recount the full course of events as quickly as possible in order to help those hunger-striking colleagues and citizens on the frigid frontlines understand the situation.
I was on my way to Liaoning to handle a case when I got a message from lawyer Tang Jitian saying that they were in Jiamusi handling a case of citizens who were being detained illegally. He said there were too many detainees and asked whether I could get involved in the case. I immediately replied that it was no problem. As a rights-defense lawyer, I have no choice to hang back when citizens are being illegally detained. So, having temporarily settled the matter in Liaoning, I went and bought a train ticket from Shenyang to Jiamusi. The matter was urgent, but I could only take the 15-hour hard-seat overnight train.
I arrived at about 11 a.m. the next day (20 March), a half-day later than I’d said I would. Tang, Jiang [Tianyong], Wang [Cheng], and the detainees relatives had already made preparations to head out, and they were waiting for me at the train station with hired cars. Once I got in the car, I was told we were going to a place called Jiansanjiang.
We drove for four hours, arriving at Jiansanjiang after 3 p.m. After a quick meal, we prepared to head out again. I met with my client, Ding Zhongye, who signed a standard power-of-attorney form at the restaurant, and as we were walking to the car he briefly told me the details of the case. Since the beginning of last year, his wife, Jiang Xinbo, had twice been illegally locked up without any due legal process at a place called Qinglongshan, where she remained today.
We four lawyers went together in a single vehicle. After passing through many places, we arrived in Qinglongshan State Farm. Jiang Tianyong told me that the courtyard located next to the branch public security bureau — the one with no sign or other indication of its identity — was the illegal place of detention. Later, the Jiansanjiang domestic security police called it the “Qinglongshan Legal Education Base.” I was surprised: in more than 10 years of practice, I’d never seen and could not believe that a place for illegally detaining citizens could exist for such a long time just outside the gate of the public security bureau responsible for keeping the peace without it being shut down. According to Jiang, he, Liang Xiaojun, and Zhao Yonglin had already filed a formal complaint about this place with the Jiansanjiang Procuratorate, but there had never been any result.
As we entered the courtyard gate, Tang Jitian recognized that a middle-aged man making a phone call just inside was the person in charge of the “base.” Later, we learned his name was Fang Yuechun and he also served as a deputy chief of some PSB branch. Fang obviously recognized Tang Jitian as well, because he started yelling at us angrily, paying no attention to our demands that he produce the legal documentation used to detain our clients. Later, around 20 relatives of detainees gathered at the gate, probably having heard of our arrival. Everyone was filled with righteous indignation and kept demanding that Fang stop detaining people illegally and release those inside. We warned Fang that illegal detention was a criminal offense and demanded that he let everyone inside return home.
Since this was my first time here, I was busy on the outside getting more details from the relatives. Then another middle-aged man arrived, whom Jiang Tianyong recognized immediately as someone surnamed Zhou from the procuratorate who had been there when they filed their previous complaint. As a legal practitioner, my first thought was that if someone from the procuratorate had arrived, he was there to resolve the matter. So I told everyone to quiet down and asked him to resolve the issue. I never expected that this guy would respond by saying that he couldn’t get involved because he was only a temporary employee at the procuratorate. Then, he quickly turned and left. By then, detainee relatives had already recognized him and said that he wasn’t from the procuratorate after all and was lying about being a temporary employee. Actually, he was a domestic security police officer — a deputy captain, no less — named Yu Wenbo.
I was again surprised and more than a bit angry. How could a bona fide officer of the people’s police pose as a procurator when a complaint is made with the state monitoring organ and pretend to be a temporary employee when people go to the scene to defend their rights? What was he trying to do?
We had been at the site for almost an hour, and it was already past 6 p.m. The police officers who came and went from the shared parking lot next door acted as if they saw nothing, and no one came over to express a word of concern. So many things were out of the ordinary here that I began to have a sense of unease. After a brief discussion with Tang, Jiang, and Wang, we decided that the facts were basically clear and that we’d go to the procuratorate the next day to press them for a response to the earlier complaint and make a new complaint on behalf of my client. So, we decided to leave.
As we left, we discovered that the car we’d come in had disappeared. When we made contact with the driver, he told us that the police had chased him out of town and he didn’t dare take us back. After a long back-and-forth, the driver finally agreed to come back to pick us up. But when he returned, he was being closely followed by three vehicles. One of them had plates, which Jiang Tianyong probably already reported. The other two vehicles had clearly covered up their license plates. We returned to Jiansanjiang, ate dinner, and took two rooms at a hotel next door to the procuratorate, where we prepared to file a complaint the next day. Because I’d spent so much time in hard-seat and then ran around all day, I fell asleep before even preparing my complaint documents.
Wang Cheng woke me the next day at 7:37 a.m. and told me to hurry up and prepare my complaint so that we could all go to the procuratorate together. I went groggily into the bathroom to start washing up, when I heard sounds of a tussle outside. Before I could open the bathroom door, it burst open and several men in plain clothes and two men wearing para-police uniforms dragged me out of the bathroom and told me to grab my bag and go with them. As I got my things together, I demanded that they show me their identification and protested their use of force. After they rudely refused, they forced me into an elevator and, grabbing me by the neck, shoved me into a white vehicle with no police markings. Shortly thereafter, Wang Cheng was also brought into the same vehicle as me. He was shouting: “I’m a lawyer! I’m handling a case! You’re kidnapping me!” At the time, there were a number of onlookers.
We were taken to an office block with a sign designating it as Daxing Branch PSB. The whole way, Wang Cheng and I were explaining that we were lawyers engaged in proper professional activities, but we were both ignored. In truth, it was very clear to me that we were faced with para-police officers with no law-enforcement powers, and their lack of legal understanding meant that they were in no position to respond to our questions. About a half-hour later, Tang Jitian and Jiang Tianyong were brought in as well. Past 9 a.m., still no one had shown us any identification or explained why we had been summoned, but we were ordered one-by-one to open up our bags for a search and photograph and video. Our mobile phones had of course already been snatched from us in the car, which meant that we could only protest and had no way to call for help to the outside or call the 110 police hotline.
At about 10 a.m., my questioning commenced and my misfortunes began. As a para-police officer made a big show of giving me fierce looks and berating me, I again demanded that he and the middle-aged man sitting next to him show me their identification. The man said, “You want identification, do you?” I nodded, and he instructed the para-police officer, “Go get Yu Wenbo.” Yu Wenbo came in and asked, “You want identification?” I said, “Yes.” He then said, “Let’s go! I’ll show you identification upstairs.” Then, flanked by the two of them, I was taken from the interrogation room upstairs to a meeting room on the second floor.
As Yu made a show of looking for his identification, the guy behind me (maybe surnamed Li, I’m not sure) closed the door. Before I had a chance to react, Yu smacked me around the head seven or eight times. The next thing I knew, he was hitting me in the head with a big half-full bottle of spring water. Desperate, I shouted: “I’m being beaten by a police! I’m being beaten by a guobao! I’m being beaten by Yu Wenbo!” Then the man behind me got in the action. The two of them knocked me down and kicked and beat me for at least three minutes. Under their blows, I could only protect my head and keep shouting. By the time someone heard and came in, I couldn’t sit up and the slightest movement caused unbearable pain in my lower back.
I knew that my back was injured, and at the time I didn’t even have the strength to lift my head to look at the guy who came in — the guy they said understood the law. I knew that he couldn’t really do the right thing on my behalf, and in this sense he did not disappoint. He merely said a few words and left. Unable to contain my fury, I spoke the most severe words of my life, saying: “Yu Wenbo, you better kill me if you have the balls. Otherwise, I won’t cooperate and you can forget about a statement. Then, if I’m not dead, I’ll press charges against you until my dying day!”
He seemed unperturbed by this threat and said, “Just wait. In a moment, we’ll put you under criminal detention, then you’ll be shot.” Etc., etc. Then, he called in a para-police officer surnamed Ma to watch me and left me there.
At noon, I asked to eat lunch and was told: “None of us have eaten and you expect to eat?” In the evening, I asked to eat dinner and was told: “We haven’t prepared anything for you.” Up until nearly 1 a.m. the next day (22 March), someone surnamed Yao came to say I could have a bowl of instant noodles, but in severe pain and having not had anything to eat or drink all day, I had no appetite.
Faced with hard and soft pressure, plus the fact that I was in unbearable pain, I reluctantly agreed to go submit to questioning. But I clearly told them that I would not sign any statement that violated my conscience or ran contrary to the facts, and I would not cater to their needs.
As I went downstairs to the first-floor interrogation room, it was nearly 2:30 a.m. I saw documents on the table with the names Jiang Tianyong and Tang Jitian on them and inferred that the three other lawyers had already signed statements. After making several changes to the statement that they had prepared — and enduring threats and recrimination — I finally signed my name. It was 5 a.m. exactly.
At around 9 a.m., we were hooded and each taken into a vehicle. After a bumpy ride, when I realized our destination was a hospital it was clear to me that we were going to be detained. After receiving medical checks — hooded — at two hospitals, we were separated and placed in different vehicles. In my vehicle, besides the driver, there were the two men who had beaten me. On the way, they received a telephone call. The other party asked how long each of us were detained for. They said since I had documentation and this was my first time, I’d be detained for five days, which led me to conclude that the other three would be in for longer. But the first real proof that Tang and Jiang had been detained for 15 days came only after we saw the detention documentation.
Since the paperwork was not yet finished when we arrived at the detention center just before 10:30, we were forced to sit there until 2 p.m. before we could be taken into the cell. In the meantime, I demanded my lawyer license several times (my bag and ID card had already been returned to me), to no avail.
It’s worth noting that, on the detention notice they had me sign, they had written “gambling” in the space for the illegal activity and the document number read “Shanghai PSB No. **” (Later, they had me sign another.) You can see what a rush they’d been in. I don’t know whether the other lawyers noticed this.
Speaking objectively, I at least was not beaten after entering the detention center. But I was taken for questioning nearly every day, and they kept asking questions about things that were already in the statement. Maybe it was because I kept asking for my lawyer license, but, one after another, people kept threatening me with suspension of my license and criminal detention. Because they kept asking me who the plotters and organizers were, I had a strong sense of foreboding. I insisted that I had been asked whether I would take on a case of illegal detention and that I came voluntarily. I’m an adult and a lawyer. Those are the facts!!
On the evening of the 26th, Jiansanjiang Domestic Security Police Unit Captain Liu Changhe came with Yu Wenbo to the detention center. They asked me: “How do you plan to go from here? Do you need a police escort?” I told them clearly that I didn’t. Later, I learned that my assistant had been requested to submit an application asking for police escort. Since I’d always been stern and he was wise to them, he politely refused saying that he did not dare make such a request without my approval.
But at 3:50 a.m., I was awoken and, after completing the release formalities and itemizing my possessions (at this moment, my lawyer license miraculously reappeared inside my locked suitcase), I was told to get in a waiting SUV with civilian license plates. The idea was that we’d pick up my assistant along the way and go directly to Jiamusi. But I insisted on first going to the hotel to shower and change my clothes.
After showering, we changed vehicles and were met by a local lawyer surnamed Wang who it was said had volunteered to escort me. Altogether, the six of us proceeded to Jiamusi airport. At the airport, I requested a souvenir photo with Captain Liu Changhe and ate a meal with the special-unit police officers there to take care of me. Then, they escorted me through the security check and onto the plane.
On the way, I had a stern discussion with Yu Wenbo about the violent beating. He perfunctorily expressed regret (but did not apologize) and left. Captain Liu gave a more positive response and made an apology.
Finally, thanks to colleagues and citizen friends for their support and for watching over us. The weibo from Zhang Lei, one of the hunger-striking lawyers on the front lines, can serve as a fitting conclusion to what I want to say. That is the post entitled “The Importance of Lawyers Rescuing Each Other.” For the actual details, please follow @青石律师 on Weibo, he’ll tell you all: You are not alone!! (tears)(tears)
Because of my physical injuries and the fact that I’ve been furious for the past few days, there might be some lapses in my memory. Please allow me to fill in the details later.
