Amnesty International today designated three prominent human rights defenders from Hong Kong and mainland China as prisoners of conscience.
Human rights lawyers Chow Hang-tung and Ding Jiaxi, along with the free media advocate Jimmy Lai, are all currently imprisoned solely because of their peaceful human rights activism. Amnesty International has called for their immediate release.
“As the Chinese government touts progress on its measures to promote human rights, the stories of these three human rights defenders demonstrate a starkly different reality inside the country,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China Director.
“Meeting with diplomats; discussing politics; complaining about unfair treatment in police custody; talking with friends over dinner: these are all things that can get you jailed in today’s China,” said Brooks. “The ongoing detentions of Chow, Ding and Lai demonstrate the continuing failure of the authorities in China to uphold their international obligations, and their prosecution lays bare the cowardice of state officials who cannot accept criticism, whether from international experts or from their own citizens.”
Jimmy Lai and Chow Hang-tung have both been targeted amidst a broader dismantling of human rights and civic space in Hong Kong since the introduction of a Beijing-imposed National Security Law (NSL) in 2020. Ding Jiaxi, as with many human rights defenders in mainland China, is the direct victim of the authorities’ overly broad and vague ‘national security-related’ laws that justify convictions in secret trials and lengthy jail sentences.
Amnesty International considers a prisoner of conscience to be any person imprisoned solely because of their political, religious or other conscientiously held beliefs, their ethnic origin, sex, colour, language, national or social origin, socio-economic status, birth, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or other status, and who has not used violence or advocated violence or hatred in the circumstances leading to their detention.
Jimmy Lai
Nearly 200 police raided Lai’s Apple Daily newspaper shortly after the NSL was enacted. He was arrested along with several newspaper executives, and eventually charged with “colluding with foreign forces” under the NSL, and with sedition. Apple Daily closed in June 2021 following another police raid and the freezing of its assets, in what Amnesty International called a “flagrant attack on press freedom”.
Lai faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in his ongoing national security trial. Hong Kong courts have already convicted Lai on four separate cases involving “unauthorized assemblies”, for his engagement in peaceful protest – including attending a Tiananmen Square vigil. He has also been prosecuted for alleged “fraud”; as a result, Lai is already serving combined prison sentences which will see him spend nearly seven years unjustly behind bars.
Lai, who will turn 77 in December, has reportedly been held in solitary confinement, and there are serious concerns about his health, especially following the cancellation of his appearance in court in early June 2024. Those concerns are exacerbated by the lengthy delays in his NSL trial; begun in December 2023. After a long adjournment, it is currently expected to continue in November 2024.
Chow Hang-tung
Chow was charged in 2020 for participating a peaceful vigil commemorating protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, and charged again in 2021 after she asked people on social media to light candles in memory of the victims. She was jailed for 22 months for daring to commemorate their lives.
Chow also faces a potential 10-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion” under the NSL over her role as former leader of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organized the city’s annual Tiananmen candlelight vigil for 30 years.
Despite her imprisonment, Chow has continued to use her legal knowledge to defend rights, including in 2022 to secure the lifting of reporting restrictions on bail hearings. Most recently, Chow mounted a legal challenge to rules that require women – but not men – to wear long trousers year-round in Hong Kong prisons, where temperatures regularly exceed 30 degrees Celsius in summer. In the past, Chow has suffered retaliation for such advocacy, including repeated periods of solitary confinement.
“Amnesty International and many others have highlighted the dangerous human rights flaws in the Hong Kong’s National Security Law. But rather than taking steps to repeal the law, the Hong Kong government has instead doubled down by ramming through an equally-repressive local national security legislation (referred to as ‘Article 23’) in March of this year – increasing jail times for peaceful activism, even if it happens outside Hong Kong or mainland China,” Sarah Brooks said.
Ding Jiaxi
Ding was sentenced to 12 years in prison for “subverting state power” in April 2023. He is one of dozens of lawyers and activists targeted after attending an informal gathering held in the city of Xiamen in 2019, at which they discussed current affairs in China. Activist and legal scholar Xu Zhiyong, who had also attended the meeting, was sentenced to 14 years by the same court on the same charges.
Ding was held incommunicado in “residential surveillance at a designated location” for more than a year after being taken away on December 26, 2019. He was subjected to torture and other ill-treatment during detention, including long hours of interrogation and being bound to an iron “tiger-chair” with his limbs contorted for more than 10 hours per day for many days. For nearly four years, from his initial detention until his transfer to prison following his sentencing, Ding was not allowed access to pen and paper.
He reportedly faces serious restrictions in prison, including the withdrawal of “yard time”. His right to communication is strictly limited to letters from direct family members, telephone calls are prohibited and he has limited access to reading materials.
“As part of its strategy to avoid scrutiny, the Chinese government routinely justifies ruthless repression – and rebuts efforts to hold authorities accountable for it – by describing it merely as ‘internal affairs,” said Sarah Brooks. “This is why the stories of Jimmy Lai, Chow Hang-tung and Ding Jiaxi are so important. Theirs are the ‘internal affairs’ the Chinese authorities tell us don’t deserve attention, dignity or justice.”
“By designating Chow, Lai and Ding as prisoners of conscience, we stand with all those unjustly detained for saying out loud what they believe to be true. All three – along with the many others imprisoned in Hong Kong and mainland China solely for their beliefs – must be immediately and unconditionally released.”
NOTE TO EDITOR
Amnesty International’s Prisoner of Conscience determination is based on the information available to Amnesty International regarding the circumstances leading to the person’s detention. In naming a person as a Prisoner of Conscience, Amnesty International is affirming that this person must be immediately and unconditionally released but is not endorsing past or present views or conduct by them.
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