Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
06BEIJING6612
2006-04-07 07:13:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Beijing
Cable title:  

IS CHINA'S RIGHTS PROTECTION MOVEMENT REACHING THE

Tags:  PHUM PGOV KIRF CH 
pdf how-to read a cable
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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIJING 006612 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/03/2016
TAGS: PHUM PGOV KIRF CH
SUBJECT: IS CHINA'S RIGHTS PROTECTION MOVEMENT REACHING THE
LIMITS OF OFFICIAL TOLERATION?


Classified By: Deputy Political Counselor Robert
Griffiths for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 BEIJING 006612

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/03/2016
TAGS: PHUM PGOV KIRF CH
SUBJECT: IS CHINA'S RIGHTS PROTECTION MOVEMENT REACHING THE
LIMITS OF OFFICIAL TOLERATION?


Classified By: Deputy Political Counselor Robert
Griffiths for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d).


1. (C) Summary: The rights protection movement in
China has created a nationwide network in recent
months, but insists on remaining a "virtual" network
rather than a formal organization for fear of inviting
a crackdown. The network centers on rights lawyers in
Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Sichuan, but
supporters number in the hundreds, including
journalists, intellectuals and activists. The
movement draws support from some house churches and
overseas Christian and non-religious groups, including
those in the United States. Its most prominent public
activities include the recent rotating hunger strike,
along with lawsuits, rights awareness campaigns and
efforts to impeach local officials, most publicly in
Guangdong's Taishi village. Such actions have had
marginal success and have largely been tolerated,
although recent detentions and Party guidance to
strike back at the network suggest that some in the
movement may be pushing that tolerance past its
limits. End Summary.

Weiquan Movement Increasingly Prominent, Networked
-------------- --------------


2. (C) China's rights protection movement ("weiquan
yundong") has reached a new degree of networking
cohesiveness in recent months, according to several of
the network's members. Primarily by using the
Internet, lawyers and legal activists in Beijing,
Guangzhou, Shanghai and Sichuan have formed a mutual
support network. They originally agreed to come to
the defense of any of the network's members who faced
police harassment, providing free legal defense and
encouraging media reaction to protect those who might
be jailed. More recently, at the instigation of
Beijing attorney Gao Zhisheng, many members of the
network participated in a rotating hunger strike that
was organized and publicized on the Internet, China
Academy of Social Sciences scholar Fan Yafeng
(protect) told poloff recently.

Hundreds of Members; No Formal Organization
--------------


3. (C) The network is loosely organized, but includes

private attorneys at several law firms, journalists,
academics and members of China's independent PEN
Center for Freedom to Write, most of whom are males
under the age of 50 and many of whom have served short
jail terms. A handful of low-level central government
officials and provincial People's Congress deputies
have also joined or shown support for the group. This
support offers the movement "a certain level of
influence," according to Hubei activist Yao Lifa
(protect). The group has intentionally not
established a formal organization for fear of bringing
on a negative government response or crackdown, said
the PEN Center's Liu Xiaobo (protect). Most
communications take place over the Internet; when
members meet, they do so in small groups over meals or
for discussion "salons."


4. (C) Most of the 14 attorneys featured as China's
most notable civil rights lawyers of 2005 in Asia
Newsweek (www.yzzk.com 12-25-2005) are members of the
network, some of whom work for large, well-funded
Chinese law firms. Many met as a result of their 2005
legal defense of Beijing house church pastor Cai
Zhuohua, who is serving a three-year sentence for
distributing Bibles without a publishing license. Of
the 14 attorneys featured, Shanghai's Zheng Enchong
and Shandong legal adviser Chen Guangcheng are in
jail. Shanghai's Guo Guoting fled China for Canada in
2005 after his law license was cancelled, while
Beijing's Gao Zhisheng's law license remains under a
one-year suspension.

Why Has The Group Not Yet Faced A Crackdown?
--------------


5. (C) Despite these detentions, many in the group
have been able to operate relatively unhindered.
Some, such as Beijing's Li Heping, believe the
government has determined not to detain such attorneys
for fear of incurring a backlash or making martyrs of
them. Others, including Li Baiguang (protect),told
poloff that Vice Premier Zeng Qinghong has given
instructions not to detain them. According to this

BEIJING 00006612 002 OF 003


line of thinking, Zeng wants to encourage some
expression of social dissatisfaction as a way of
demonstrating that Hu Jintao is governing poorly, they
said. Gao Zhisheng (protect) believes that his
prominence in the international community has allowed
him to continue his public activities, such as open
letters criticizing the government's abuse of
religious activists, petitioners and the Falun Gong.


6. (C) Yet others believe that some of the group's
members, in particular Gao and his aide Guo Feixiong,
are becoming too bold and threaten to precipitate a
crackdown. PEN Center's Yu Jie (protect) told poloff
that he and other members of the Center refused to
take part in the rotating hunger strike because they
felt it was too confrontational and likely to lead to
imprisonment of organizers. Yu said he persuaded
dozens of activists not to join the strike because of
this concern. Multiple sources have separately told
us that Party study sessions now include guidance to
"strike down" the movement, suggesting that official
tolerance for the network and its actions may have
reached its limit.

Successful Actions Include Defense of Rural Rights
-------------- --------------


7. (C) In the past, impeachment efforts in rural
communities have demonstrated the movement's strength,
even if the efforts spearheaded by the group's members
have often failed. Beijing attorney Li Baiguang
(protect) was a key activist supporting efforts to
recall elected officials in Hebei Province's Tangshan
and Qinhuangdao cities after residents were displaced
without compensation by newly built reservoirs. While
these recall efforts themselves failed, villagers saw
that citizens in those areas received compensation,
free education for their children and support to build
new houses. In Fujian Province, recall efforts that
Li Baiguang spearheaded in 2004 along with detained
New York Times employee Zhao Yan also failed. But
again, the party secretaries of Linde nd Fuzhou
cities who were the targets of those campaigns were
transferred to other assignments while a third, former
Fo'an city party secretary, was jailed on charges of
abuse of position, Li said.


8. (C) Recent efforts to recall the elected village
chief of Guangdong's Taishi village have met with less
success. Those efforts, organized by activist Guo
Feixiong (protect),drew attention when local
officials responded by hiring thugs to beat not only
the Chinese organizers but also foreign journalists
who attempted to cover the recall effort. Most
recently, the losing candidate Feng Qiusheng has filed
suit against the election committee. Feng will be
represented by a number of attorneys from the rights
network. The attorneys told poloff that they know
they cannot get a fair court hearing, but plan to use
the Internet as a public platform to write and
criticize the legality of any decision, in what they
are describing as a "virtual" Constitutional Court.

Support from House Churches, Overseas Organizations
-------------- --------------


9. (C) In 2006, many Beijing members of the movement
have begun to gather in churches, most notable among
them Beijing's Ark Covenant House Church. In the wake
of the Cai Zhuohua lawsuit, attorney Gao Zhisheng
became a Christian and decided to join the house
church. Since that time, authorities have increased
scrutiny of the church, most recently detaining
American legal permanent resident filmmaker Wu Hao
after he interviewed Gao as part of a documentary film
about the church. In addition to the Ark Church,
other churches support the network financially, a fact
that may not be broadly known by the church
membership, Hubei activist Yao said.


10. (C) The group has also drawn support from overseas
organizations, including the Midland, Texas-based
China Aid Association (CAA) (protect). At the end of
this month, eightQttorneys who are leaders of the
organization will travel to the United States,
sponsored by CAA, in an effort to raise funds and
increase their networking capability. Other attorney
members will travel separately to a conference on
criminal defense law at New York University.

Comment: Network Reaching Its Limit?

BEIJING 00006612 003 OF 003


--------------


11. (C) Comment: Thanks to the Internet, cellphone
text messaging and increasingly easy internal travel,
the weiquan movement is already far more tightly
networked across different cities than the 1998 China
Democracy Party ever was. CDP co-founders Xu Wenli in
Beijing and Wang Youcai in Hangzhou had never met in
person, while lawyers in the weiquan movement meet
frequently and can be in daily communication. But
given the increasingly high-tech nature of Chinese
police work, we believe these activists over-estimate
the degree of protection they enjoy by keeping their
organization a "virtual" one. Some officials may
retain a degree of sympathy and tolerance for the
movement's aims of helping ordinary citizens enforce
their rights, but they are not likely to tolerate
continued public actions, such as the rotating hunger
strike.
RANDT