For media inquiries on this declaration, contact Chen Guangcheng at [email protected].

 

To sign this public letter, contact [email protected].

 

 

 

 

2022
New Year’s Declaration on China’s Human Rights Crisis

January 10, 2022

 

 

 

We, the initiators of this open letter, are
civil society organizations that have long been committed to human rights in
China and strive to push forward China’s progress from a society ruled by law
as a tool of oppression to one that follows the rule of law, as well as guiding
the Chinese people to become citizens of the world who can pursue freedom and
justice.

 

As many are aware, the communist red tide rose
in the 19th century and continued into the 20th century. It brought about a
global-scale disaster for all to witness and caused hundreds of millions of
innocent lives to be lost. Since Xi Jinping became the supreme leader of the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China’s legal system and human rights conditions
have been continuously deteriorating. Even the slight progress that came after
the opening up and reform of the CCP, such as the term limits on the supreme
leader, was removed; this is a clear indication that this setback in the rule
of law and human rights has no sign of being reversed in the foreseeable
future. It is bound to cause greater disasters and endanger the lives of more
innocent people.

 

Since Xi Jinping came into power, the CCP’s
perverse practices at home and abroad in politics, economy, military,
diplomacy, etc. are countless, but we will not discuss them all in this letter.
Let’s first take a look at its domestic policies: from the suppression of human
rights lawyers to the elimination of civil society; from large-scale violations
of human rights in Tibet and Xinjiang to the full-scale crackdown and
persecution of house churches; from the surveillance on all citizens through
big data to the deprivation of citizens’ freedom of speech, assembly,
association and other constitutional rights, even unjustifiably depriving
citizens of their personal freedom and private property. During the Hu-Wen era,
the “black jails” used to arbitrarily detain and torture prisoners of
conscience had spread throughout the regions of China. After the Jasmine
Revolution in the spring of 2011, the CCP set out to “legitimate” it; on March
14, 2012, China’s National People’s Congress passed a law and implemented it on
January 1, 2013; under Article 73 of the Criminal Procedure Law, the black jail
was replaced by “residential surveillance at a designated location,” the arrest
of a person can go on for six months without notifying family members and
lawyers, and the duration can be extended an unlimited number of times for another
six months…. it is darker than the black jail. There are other cases of
dissidents being diagnosed as “mentally ill,” being illegally detained,
teachers who lost their jobs because their students had exposed and reported
them to authorities…… the resurrection of an intensified “Cultural
Revolution” will inevitably bring about economic depression, fear in people’s
hearts and result in anger and resentment. In order to divert internal
conflicts, the Chinese Communist Party, headed by Xi Jinping, abandoned its
promise of “Hong Kong will remain unchanged for 50 years,” threatened Taiwan,
incited xenophobia, and made enemies on all fronts around the world. The fruit
of China’s prior 40 years of reform and opening-up has nearly all been
lost. 

 

In today’s world, when the CCP headed by Xi
Jinping brazenly brags about its “whole-process people’s democracy,” we only
need to cite a few cases where the lives of people are at stake to see how
little the CCP regards life and humanity! From just the humanitarian
perspective, we strongly protest against the CCP’s inhumane violation of civil
rights. 

 

Chinese citizen Yang Maodong (pen name: Guo
Feixiong) and human rights lawyer Tang Jitian have family members overseas
whose time on earth is nearing its end, but they have been barred from leaving
the country to visit and take care of their dear ones. The female journalist
Zhang Zhan’s life is at the edge of death while imprisoned, but she was still
refused medical parole. Prisoner of conscience Huang Qi’s mother wanted to see
her son for one last time before she died and was denied that before she passed
away.

 

Guo Feixiong’s wife
Zhang Qing, who resides in the United States, was found to have end-stage bowel
cancer in January of this year and was in urgent need of Guo Feixiong’s company
and care, but Guo Feixiong’s trip to the United States in January was cited by
China’s Ministry of Public Security as “endangering national security,” and was
stopped by authorities at the airport. For ten months thereafter, Zhang Qing’s
condition deteriorated as each day passed, and in early November, the
intestinal tumor caused the second intestinal obstruction, and her condition
became critical and could turn life-threatening at any time. Guo Feixiong gave
his utmost effort to go to the United States and accompany his sick wife, he
made many sincere appeals to Chinese government departments and relevant
leaders. At the same time, he also kept in communication with China’s public
security departments at various levels. However, the Chinese authorities
repeatedly obstructed Guo Feixiong, until he was arrested on December 5th and
is still held in secret detention.

Lawyer Tang Jitian’s
daughter was studying abroad in Japan when she suffered from tuberculosis in
May of this year, and she was subsequently in the intensive care unit due to
complications, in need of her father’s company. Lawyer Tang Jitian was barred
from leaving China because he would “endanger national security.” Thereafter,
lawyer Tang sought various government departments to make known his
circumstance and even visited the ministry of public security, but his attempts
were in vain. He was forcibly disappeared on December 8th. 

Authorities arrested
Citizen journalist Zhang Zhan last year for simply publishing the true living
conditions of the Wuhan people during the coronavirus outbreak, and she was
sentenced to four years in prison on the charge of “picking quarrels and
provoking trouble.” The staunch Zhang Zhan began a hunger strike at the
beginning of her arrest and her life has only been sustained through tube
feeding and injections. But by the end of October this year, Zhang Zhan, who
was nearly 1.8 meters tall, lively and healthy, now weighs less than 40
kilograms and is so weak that she can hardly raise her head. Her brother thinks
it will be difficult for her to survive this winter. Family members and lawyers
repeatedly requested medical parole, but no matter how critical Zhang Zhan’s
conditions are, the Shanghai CCP authorities refused her parole. 

Prisoner of conscience
Huang Qi was arrested in 2016 and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment on the
charges of “intentionally leaking state secrets” and “illegally providing state
secrets to foreign entities.” Huang Qi was targeted because he created the
website “Tian Wang,” which originally covered kidnappings and human
trafficking, and has now expanded to all acts of human rights violations. His
only family is Pu Wenqing, his 87-year-old mother who was suffering from
cancer. The Chongqing authorities not only prohibited the elderly mother from
meeting her son during her final moments before she passed, but also imposed
the “four prohibitions” that deprived Pu Wenqing of her citizenship rights: no
petitioning in Beijing, no media interviews, no contact with petitioners, and
she was not allowed to hire human rights lawyers. 

We believe that the
above-mentioned cases display the CCP authorities’ inhumane actions and abuse
of public powers, and highlight the CCP’s anti-humanism nature. These
deplorable acts of violence have also made the inherently illegitimate nature
of the CCP’s dictatorship even more evident. Those in power are also born as
human beings, but where is their conscience? Their inhumane acts should face
questioning from humankind. The CCP authorities have various excuses and
reasons for their blatant behaviors that not only fail to convince the
freedom-loving world citizens who are passionate about democracy and oppose the
CCP’s one-party dictatorship, but also more and more Chinese people who were
forcibly brainwashed by the CCP are no longer deceived. 

Guo Feixiong and Tang
Jitian, as citizens of the People’s Republic of China, enjoy the rights of free
movement and free travel per the Constitution. They are neither terrorists nor
public officials, how can they “endanger national security” if they leave the
country to look after their dying family members? Zhang Zhan has already
reached the point where she must leave prison for medical care. There are many
precedents of criminal offenders in prison who obtained medical parole, so why
is Zhang Zhan, a dying woman prisoner of conscience, repeatedly rejected? Huang
Qi’s mother is a free citizen, why was she illegally deprived of many civil
rights? Family members of prison inmates have the right to visit, so why
couldn’t Huang Qi’s mother do so?

These four dying women
show clearly the nature of the CCP’s departure from humanity. The tragedies of
them and their families can only be attributed to the fact that they and their
families did not want to be submissive to the one-party dictatorship, and thus
suffered violent retribution from a dictator. This is why we must stand up and
protest against the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government —— for
the sole reason that we are human beings, from a humane standpoint of today’s
human civilization, we cannot accept such man-made human tragedies, we cannot
accept it and cannot ignore it. 

The CCP authorities have
taken their citizens hostage and thoroughly politicized and weaponized
relationships and blood kinships that transcend politics, using them to coerce
dissidents into submission. These dangerous, extreme, destructive crimes and
trampling on human relationships are happening across China; this has become a
critical threat to the basic rights and freedoms of the Chinese people, which
constitutes one-sixth of the human population. 

Since 2005, Chinese
human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng defended the rights of Christians and Falun
Gong practitioners, represented the North Shaanxi Oilfield case, and performed
his duties as a lawyer. The police arrested him in August 2006 and on December
22 of the same year he was sentenced to three years and five-year probation for
“inciting subversion of state power.” Lawyer Gao was kidnapped and tortured
many times during his probation period, he recounted his experiences in “Dark
Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia.” Nearing the end of Gao
Zhisheng’s five-year probation, at that time he had been missing for 21 months,
in 2011 he was sent to Shaya Prison in Xinjiang to serve his three-year
sentence. Gao Zhisheng was subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, various
forms of abuse, and appalling torture. After Gao Zhisheng was released from
prison, he was under house arrest in his older brother’s cave home in a remote
village in northern Shaanxi. Even though a majority of his teeth were destroyed
with only a few of them intact, he was still prohibited from visiting a nearby
county hospital for dental treatment. Under the circumstances of restricted
freedom, Gao still penned many articles for the 709 lawyers whose human rights
had been violated, such as “The Possible Fate of Lawyer Wang Quanzhang” and
“The 2nd Anniversary of the 709 Crackdown.” On August 13, 2017, Gao Zhisheng’s
family discovered that after being under house arrest in the cave-dwelling for
nearly three years, he went missing. Gao Zhisheng, who is a free person under
the law, has been forcibly disappeared for more than four years and four
months. His family members desperately wait for any news of lawyer Gao but have
received no information, his whereabouts and current status are unknown to this
day. 

The CCP’s kidnappings
and threats have long gone beyond its borders. The kidnapping of Swedish
citizens abroad and the holding of Canadian citizens as hostages have posed a
threat to the safety of citizens of the free world and created the kind of
threat only posed by terrorist organizations.

We have long called upon
the corrupted powers, the Chinese Communist Party, to respect the law and basic
humanity, but to no avail. We are now calling upon all the righteous people who
stand for basic humanity, and all media, governments, and international
organizations around the globe to oppose on China from all fronts and to fully
unveil the antihumanism of the Chinese Communist regime so that the world can
recognize its evil nature. This includes a boycott of the Beijing Winter
Olympics, and speaking up for the victims on different occasions to stop all
the CCP’s ongoing human rights abuses, especially to prevent the upcoming
humanitarian tragedy from unfolding before the eyes of the
world.     

Therefore, we want to
alert all of mankind: these humanitarian tragedies that are happening inside of
China are an extremely serious indicator; please pay serious attention to this.
China already possesses tremendous power to influence the world, and the
totalitarian system has the ability to do evil to all mankind, and has exposed
its desire and ambition to expand its power and do evil in multiple
spheres. 

The various vile acts
that are taking place in China severely trample on human rights and human
relations, and violate the basic freedoms of citizens, they will not only
endanger the Chinese people, but the repercussions are destined to overflow and
will undermine human freedom and peace, and cause harm to all mankind. The grim
“today” of the Chinese people is likely to be the “tomorrow” for the rest of
the world. There can be no illusions or flukes about this. This generation of
human beings should not repeat the appeasement policies of the world towards
the Nazis in the 1930s with their disastrous consequences. 

We are now urgently
speaking up to protest and appeal, not only for the universal freedom and
dignity of the Chinese people, including Zhang Qing, Tang Zhengqi, Zhang Zhan,
Pu Wenqing, and Gao Zhisheng who was forcibly disappeared, but also to fight
and prevent the dangers that have already appeared in China to endanger the
freedom and peace of all mankind. We hope that through their cases and other
similar humanitarian and human rights cases our fellow human beings will push
forward quickly with their cooperation; not only to say “no” to the
totalitarian communist dictatorship but to also seriously consider how to
fundamentally eradicate the malignant tumor of communist tyranny!

We eagerly hope that our
fellow human beings with noble aspirations will stand with us in protest and
appeal through various forms, and use pragmatic actions to refuse any
association with evil! 

 

Signed,

 

Mr.
Chen Guangcheng, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Center for Human Rights, Catholic
University of America 

 

Dr.
Bob Fu, Ph.D., Founder and President, ChinaAid

 

Reggie
Littlejohn, Founder and President, Women’s Rights Without Frontiers, Co-Founder
and Co-Chair, Stop the Genocide Games

 

Deana
Brown, Founder and CEO, Freedom Seekers International

 

Charlie
Butts, Reporter, American Family News

 

Jenny
Noyes, Executive Director, New Wineskins Missionary Network

 

Chen
Weiming

 

Martha
Racketa

 

Bill
Schertz

 

Melissa
Rasmussen

 

Karen
Heath

 

Art
Leach

 

Yvette
Isom

 

Marnie
Bogdanovich

 

Linda
Rindenour

 

Angie
Chamaschuk

 

Reinhard
R. Weth

 

Tom Dickard

 

Kay Baskerville

 

Brian Kapp

 

Charles Templeton

 

Robert
Hierholzer, M.D.

 

Zhan
Peng

 

David
Scott

 

Emily
Scott

 

Sarita
Robinson

 

Joel
Fetzer

 

June
Hartloff

 

Pat
Roberts

 

Mr.
and Mrs. Earl Joy Studer

 

Shelley
Chapman

 

Linda
Storm

 

Elena
Twohig

 

Doug
O’Mara

 

Sherry
Haines

 

Chuck
Altig

 

Peggy
Altig

 

James
Vennetti

 

Etienne
d’Ansembourg

 

Russ
Larkin

 

Vicki
Mullis

 

Pauline
Bell

 

Christopher
Bealand

China Aid exposes abuses to stand in solidarity with the persecuted and promote religious freedom, human rights, and rule of law. If you wish to partner with us in helping those persecuted by the Chinese government, please click the button below to make a charitable donation.