August 3, 2017
Xie Yanyi, one of the lawyers detained in the 709 crackdown.
The Lonely Crusade of China’s Human Rights Lawyers
In mid-November, the Tianjin deputy police chief called Xie’s older brother, Wei, with a proposal. The police had told Xie about his new daughter, but he still did not know about his mother, and the police worried that he would react violently when he learned the news. If Wei would agree to tell Xie about their mother’s death, the police would arrange a meeting between the brothers. Wei agreed. It would be the first time anyone had seen Xie since his capture 16 months earlier.
The meeting lasted more than four hours, with Xie carrying the bulk of the conversation. He spoke about human nature, about philosophy and democracy and about what he had learned in the detention center. His imprisonment was also valuable for the guards and officials, he said. ‘‘It’s an exchange of minds,’’ he told his brother. ‘‘The officials also need to be changed and enlightened by this experience. This is necessary to see the light.’’
Around noon, lunch arrived. During the meal, Xie turned to the deputy police chief, who was sitting off to the side. In his first six months of detention, Xie said, he had been given three steamed buns each day, but he never ate more than half his portion. ‘‘Do you know why I didn’t eat them all?’’ he asked the deputy. ‘‘I was preparing myself to endure hunger. I wanted to be ready for the long term.’’ The deputy laughed uneasily.
Xie did not seem interested in the outside world. He did not ask about the status of his imprisoned friends and colleagues, or about his wife and still-unnamed newborn daughter. He had spoken at great length, but Wei could not recall a single question his brother had asked.
Only the shock of his mother’s death seemed to pull Xie briefly back to Earth. Wei hesitated to broach the subject, and he hoped somehow to avoid it. But the police officers interjected, reminding him of their deal. Wei reluctantly delivered the news. At first, Xie did not believe it. Wei moved to a chair beside his brother and held both his arms. ‘‘I explained it was a heart attack,’’ Wei says. ‘‘He thought it was cruel to tell him about this.’’ Xie began to cry, and no one spoke for several minutes. When Xie regained his composure, he said that the first thing he would do upon his release was visit his mother’s grave.
Once the news had been delivered, the meeting quickly ended. As Xie was taken away, Wei asked the police officers if it would be possible to meet again. Before they could reply, Xie responded that there was no need. ‘‘You have your own work, and it’s very tiring to come to Tianjin,’’ he said. Wei asked again, and the police officers said that they would request approval. ‘‘There’s no need,’’ Xie repeated. ‘‘I can handle this by myself.’’ He was led away by several guards and disappeared behind an iron gate.
Later, when Yuan heard Wei describe the meeting, she remained mostly silent. But at the end, she leaned forward and spoke with pride about her husband’s determination. ‘‘He’s ready to spend his life in prison,’’ she said. ‘‘He will take his case as a sacrifice to democracy and rule of law in China.’’ Before his capture, Yuan said, her husband had wrestled with finding his purpose. ‘‘Now it seems he’s found his way.’’
Liang, too, seemed bolstered by the news. ‘‘I’m very happy after what I just heard,’’ he told Yuan and Wei. ‘‘But it’s not a surprise to me. I know he’s a man with a powerful heart.’’
Privately, though, Liang was more skeptical. ‘‘Xie is talking philosophy; we are dealing with his case,’’ Liang told me after Yuan and Wei had left. The idea that Xie had given up the struggle, even while so many others continued to fight and long for his freedom, was difficult to accept.
Liang needed to get back to work. Yuan had asked him to prepare for the possibility of a trial, and he had begun drafting a statement of defense. But now he was unsure what to say, or how to proceed. It seemed that perhaps his client — his friend — was more lost than Liang had realized.
One afternoon, I found Liang hunched over his office desk, flipping through a yellowed, dog-eared copy of the Chinese criminal-procedure law, hoping to find a new way forward on Xie’s case. As I entered, Liang put down the law book and rubbed his temples. Over the last several months, his spirals of gray hair, once limited to beside his ears, had spread upward toward the crown of his head. ‘‘We know we can’t win,’’ he said, slowly and quietly. ‘‘We can’t do anything to make our clients not guilty. For human rights lawyers, our job is to meet with them, to encourage them, to deliver their message to the outside. Only lawyers can do this. And so I continue to defend them.’’ Liang paused and touched a cup of tea cooling on the desk. ‘‘Maybe in the future, after many years, when we look back at the sacrifice of Xie and other lawyers, we will see it was worth it. That they used their sacrifice to push forward Chinese human rights, to expose the government’s rule of law as fake.’’ He stood up from his desk and turned back toward me. We were the only ones left in the office. ‘‘But who will remember his name?’’
Since the trials of the 709 detainees began last summer, the news for Liang and his fellow rights defense lawyers has largely been bleak. At trial, lawyers were forced to recant in humiliating ways. ‘‘I want to remind everybody to wipe their eyes and clearly see the ugly faces of hostile forces overseas,’’ one said, according to Xinhua, the state-run news agency. ‘‘Never be fooled by their ideas of ‘democracy,’ ‘human rights’ and ‘benefiting the public.’ ’’ When Wang Yu, the first lawyer detained, was freed on bail, her release was accompanied by a video in which Wang conspicuously refused several prizes she was awarded while in prison, including one from the American Bar Association. ‘‘I am Chinese,’’ she said, ‘‘and I only accept the Chinese government’s leadership.’’
In September, the Ministry of Justice announced new measures expressly targeting the types of extrajudicial activism that had made the rights defense movement so potent and powerful. Under the revised regulations, activities like ‘‘conducting sit-ins, holding banners or placards, shouting slogans’’ and ‘‘expressing solidarity’’ were all forbidden. So, too, was ‘‘generating pressure through public opinion’’ by ‘‘forming groups, organizing joint signature campaigns, issuing open letters’’ or ‘‘gathering online in chat groups.’’ Firms were expected to dismiss lawyers who disobeyed or risk having their licenses revoked. Later that fall, three more rights activists disappeared into state custody.
Then, in January, the first detailed account of a 709 lawyer’s arrest and detention became public. In transcripts released by his lawyers, Xie Yang — a human rights lawyer unrelated to Xie Yanyi with a history of working politically sensitive cases — described months of torture and mental abuse at the hands of a rotating cast of police officers, prosecutors and detention-center officials. During marathon interrogation sessions, Xie Yang said, his captors threatened his family — ‘‘Your wife and children need to pay attention to traffic safety when they’re out in the car; there are a lot of traffic accidents these days’’ — and told him that his detention had been authorized at the highest levels of the central government. If he wanted the interrogations to end, there was only one answer: ‘‘Let me tell you, filing a complaint will do you no good,’’ he was told. ‘‘This case comes from Beijing. We’re handling your case on behalf of Party Central.’’ When he refused, the torture began. ‘‘I’m going to torture you until you go insane,’’ one interrogator said. ‘‘You’re going to be a cripple.’’
Amid the tide of dark news, there was one bit of hope for Liang. In early January, almost a year after Yuan first reached out to him to ask for his help, he received another surprising message from her. Xie Yanyi had been released on bail and moved from the detention center to a nearby hotel under house arrest. The Tianjin prosecutor had declined to pursue the case.
Two weeks later, Xie returned home. The family released a statement, thanking their supporters and stating that ‘‘due to his health and current situation,’’ Xie would not be accepting visitors or interviews or participating in any public affairs. Instead he would focus on spending time with his family; his first priority was picking a name for his 11-month-old daughter.
It was not until early May that Xie began to emerge from his home and Liang finally had a chance to see him. The pair met at a KFC near a busy subway station in downtown Beijing. They chatted about their families and about Xie’s gradual readjustment to life outside the detention center. His freedom was imperfect and tightly controlled — a government minder, unobtrusive but obvious, trailed Xie wherever he went. But Liang noticed subtler changes in his friend, signs that his time in custody had chipped away at his spirit. Xie remained optimistic and pugnacious, but he was also calmer, more aloof. Still, Xie pressed on. He and his wife had finally chosen a name for his daughter: Xie Xin’ai, ‘‘thanks to love.’’ He had also taken his first case, representing members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Despite his wife’s protestations and the dire state of human rights law, Xie was eager to get back to work. ‘‘He has no fear,’’ Liang says.
Yet Xie’s hard-won freedom belied a wider retreat of human rights. In July, when Liu Xiaobo died in government custody, foreign governments and heads of state issued perfunctory messages praising and mourning him, but the global reaction was muted. The world had turned its attention elsewhere — to economic growth, terrorism, North Korea and other issues on which China’s cooperation was essential. Human rights was an unwelcome intrusion. The United States would no longer ‘‘tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be or how to worship,’’ President Trump said, in a speech in Saudi Arabia. Liu died isolated and imprisoned ‘‘while the whole world watched,’’ says Berit Reiss-Andersen, the chairwoman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.
In the days just before and after Liu Xiaobo’s death, Liang retweeted a string of messages from friends and colleagues, eulogizing Liu and grieving his loss. But Liang was circumspect about the potential for Liu’s death to spark change inside China. ‘‘I think there will be a big reaction in the democracy movement,’’ he said. ‘‘But the government will probably shut down news about this, or dilute it, so it won’t have too much impact domestically.’’ Nine years as a Chinese human rights lawyer had taught Liang that losses like Liu’s death were the norm. They could not be prevented, only endured.
