Zhang Ronghua and Her Fetus were Killed by the Birth Certificate.

Posted on 2019-04-07 by wrchina

WRIC Report May 16, 2013

(All photos by family of victim and WRIC)

Background : The news about the deaths of a poor pregnant women and her fetus in the Tengzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital just because she had no “birth certificate”, was spreading rapidly, shocking the public. In order to clarify the truth of this incident, volunteers of WRIC were invited by the victim’s families to visit Tengzhou for a full-scale interview and investigation of this human tragedy, and to promote the judicial process. However, a few months later, facing the court hearing, the victim’s families told Zhang Jing, the head of WRIC, who had interviewed by telephone, that the judge personally warned Zhang Ronghua’s husband Cao Yongzhong that he would stop talking to any organization or media overseas. The amount must also be kept confidential, otherwise no compensation will be awarded. Therefore, Cao Yongzhong asked WRIC not to pay attention to the case anymore.

Cao Yongzhong is an ordinary peasant from Wuhu Anhui province, whose home is barely furnished, whose family is very honest and simple; he has a 10-year-old daughter. Cao Yongzhong and his wife Zhang Ronghua had been in Tengzhou, Shandong province for more than a decade, they relied on selling roast duck for living in the market, though the living was very hard. No one could predict that a disaster causing two deaths would put the originally happy family into unsurpassed misery!

On the afternoon of October 2th, 2012, Zhang Ronghua who had been pregnant for ten months felt that the baby would be born. She was accompanied by her husband and came to the Maternal and Child Health Hospital in Tengzhou to prepare for birth at around 13:00. After the registration, the hospital staff asked them the birth certificate. Cao Yongzhong told that they had no one because they were far away from hometown and had always been busy for business. After a negotiation, the hospital agreed to accept them, would provide the birth certificate according to the couple’s certificate of identification and fulfill the undocumented notification, and the deposit must be paid first. After Cao Yongzhong paid a deposit of more than 2,000 Yuan, the doctor checked her and told him that his wife would be normal after the birth.

Illustration of picture: Zhang Ronghua was still alive with her husband and daughter on Jan.2012

However, Zhang Ronghua had been not permitted to enter the delivery room until 2 a.m. the next day. Cao Yongzhong wanted to accompany his wife to give birth in the delivery room, the doctor asked Cao Yongzhong for a red envelope of 200 Yuan, but at that time, Cao Yongzhong did not have any extra money, so the doctor refused Cao. According to the regulations, a husband has right to accompany his wife in the maternity room, which is conducive to the smooth delivery of the baby, and the doctor asked the family for red envelope, which clearly violated the relevant regulations.

In the absence of the birth certificate and the red envelope, the migrant worker from other province was permitted to enter the delivery room after more than ten hours of waiting for the operation of delivery. However, when she went in for an examination, the doctor told her family that her heartbeat was a little slow. He suggested a caesarean section, wanted the family to sign for consent. Then Cao Yongzhong and the nurse pushed the puerperal Zhang Ronghua from the eighth floor to the ninth floor of the operating room. Cao Yongzhong saw his wife was in pain, and further requested to accompany her in the operating room, but was refused by the doctors.

He waited outside, waiting for more than ten minutes but then Cao Yongzhong heard his wife screaming constantly. He was very anxious and worried about his wife’s safety. He knelt down several times and begged the doctors to rescue her, but they were indifferent to his request and ignored it. At this time, Cao Yongzhong heard all kinds of alarms sounding in the operating room. Cao Yongzhong stood in front of the operating room, looking up and watching, dared not leave one step, was so anxious that he kept praying and praying.

Around 5 a.m., the operating room was calm again. When Cao Yongzhong thought of a lively and lovely baby coming to the world and his family, the previous feeling of worry and fear was just swept away, his face was full of a father’s pride and kindness, and his heart was relieved slowly. Then a doctor came up and told him that the situation was a little bad. Cao Yongzhong was shocked by the news, he and his sister knelt down and asked the doctor to rescue her, if not, they should transfer her, but the doctor said they couldn’t. Again and again, the families asked to go into the operating room to see what happened inside. At this time, a large number of security guards came, there was a huge ruckus between the families and security guards, the families were kept a distance from the operating room resolutely. Security guards had been surrounding the operating room for 2-3 hours. During this period, the families were unable to get close to the operating room and did not know whether the mother was alive or dead. Cao Yongzhong suffered in great pain.

A few hours later, Cao Yongzhong finally got into the operating room! But see his wife’s horrible, purple body, belly swelling very big, no cesarean section, thrown on the operating table even without trousers, blood dripping down a drop, drop by drop, the good wife is gone, the baby is also gone! Cao Yongzhong could not control tears flowed down. No any statement, no one explained, Zhang Ronghua had been laid quietly on the operating table for more than 30 hours, and the whole body began to drip!

Zhang Ronghua was a happy woman.

Illustration of pic: A originally happy family destroyed suddenly。 In Tengzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital, Shandong Province, Zhang Ronghua never got up after going to the operating table. (Photos: WRIC)

Many Cao Yongzhong’s relatives came to the hospital in succession, Cao tried hard to control his anger to negotiate it, but the administrator of the hospital shirked his responsibility and assigned more than 100 security guards to push more than 10 Cao’s relatives into automobiles and take them away illegally. The oldest family members were over 70 years old, and they were illegally detained in a manor called Qingshuiwan, for more than ten hours, all their correspondents were confiscated. During the illegal detention of more than ten hours, there was neither water nor food. There was a physical collision, Cao’s father was injured, and they were constantly threatened.

During detention, the hospital held meeting with Cao as well as several families. The content of the meeting was that Cao Yongzhong’s wife’s death had nothing to do with the hospital, the hospital could give Cao Yongzhong 30,000 Yuan as condolence fund according to humanitarianism, if Cao Yongzhong cremated her wife’s body immediately, otherwise the police would enforce the cremation. Cao Yongzhong disagreed at that time. Then a man named Huo who claimed to be the director of the Political and Legal Commission, which Cao did not hear clearly, but saw his work permit as five-star judge, spoke to Cao:”You can accuse me! In Tengzhou, I am not afraid of anything” He also told that even in Cao’s his hometown Wuhu; he had classmates as directors, and had friends in many parts of the country.

What’s more abhorrent was that a few people wearing police uniforms viciously warned Cao Yongzhong that if he made any problems, he would be locked up immediately!

Cao said that he was going to contact with public media. At this time, a leader knocked the table vigorously, stood up, pointed to Cao and scolded him, called Cao to leave immediately, saying that the medias were also under their control! There were many policemen, security guards and unfriendly people in casual clothes, Cao was afraid that he and his families would be suffer from their poisonous hands, dared not say anything more. Because of fear to the public authority, Cao Yongzhong had to transport his wife’s body to the funeral parlor in tears and froze it.

In opinion of Cao Yongzhong and his families, the tragedy was man-made completely. Zhang Ronghua, as a disregarded migrant labor, did not provide a birth certificate during her pregnancy in Tengzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital, especially in the case of failing to meet the medical staff’s request for an additional 200 Yuan (in fact, this sum is the medical staff’s extra and private claim), which led to her death because of irresponsible behavior of the medical staff. In this regard, representative of the hospital said, the medical staff asked Zhang Ronghua to be hospitalized immediately at the birth registration, but Zhang had not done like that until 16.15 p.m. on October 2th, 2012,so she failed to comply with the doctor’s instructions.

In addition, Zhang Ronghua’s death had nothing to do with the hospital, No rescuing presented by her family was a misunderstanding, reason of no voice was in operating from the anesthesiologist, in and out of various kinds of equipment was evidence of rescuing, and so on…

A normal and official statement reason for Zhang Ronghua and her fetus’s tragic death presented by Tengzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital was: “Academic consensus is that artificial rupture of membranes is one of the high-risk factors for amniotic fluid embolism, there are few such sudden and catastrophic medical situations. Tengzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital is a second-level hospital at the grass-roots level. The deceased suffered from amniotic fluid embolism at 3:45 that day, and all the medical staff had done their best to rescue her every minute, the diagnosis was timely, the treatment was correct, and the maternal and child died of an outbreak of amniotic fluid embolism, which is a difficult problem that cannot be solved in medicine at present, our hospital was unable to dispose it certainly, we want to express deep unfortunate and regret.” A bunch of medical records and data from unknown sources was also listed to prove it.

On May 16, 2013, WRIC volunteer Su Changlan cames to Zhang Ronghua’s home for an interview. (Photo by WRIC)

Illustration of pic: Su Changlan (right lady), a volunteer of WRIC was at Cao’s home. (Photo: WRIC)

Cao Yongzhong and his family thought the medical records were false and forged. There are several main questions raised by them:

1. The deputy of the hospital said that Zhang Ronghua entered the operating room at 4:10 a.m., and died at 4:45 a.m. But when the family members arrived at the hospital at 5:30, they found that at least 100 security guards had been sent to surround the operating room. That’s a large problem! In common sense the security guards were basically not at work at that time, usually there were about a dozen security guards at the hospital during the day. Why were more than 100 security guards mobilized against the families of the deceased? It took at least one or two hours for at four or five o’clock in the morning in such small county. That is to say, when the families arrived at 5:30 and saw so many security guards who actually had been called at 4 o’clock or earlier. The question is, before the families have not yet arrived at the hospital, more than 100 security guards were called to the hospital to do what? What happened inside the operating room during the hours when the security guards surrounding the operating room?

2. Later, a large number of security guards and thugs were mobilized to detain the families whose communicating devices were confiscated, in a suburban area called Qingshuiwan, one day long, they had been threatening and intimidating the families to remove the body before releasing them! Why?

3. Did the failure of the medical staff asking for red envelopes have anything to do with the maternal death? Were pregnant women without birth certificate discriminated?

4. What is the purpose to withdraw the medicines and the medical records, to destroy evidences by using large number of security forces?

For the questions raised by the families, the hospital refuses to respond positively for various reasons. So far, the families have not received any oral or written responses from the hospital!

In this regard, we went to Jinan to interview the family’s attorney, he told us the question straightforwardly. To sum up, there are nine points:

When the pregnant woman was admitted into the hospital, the medical staff asked for birth certificate and red envelope, but the husband did not bring cash not to give them the red envelope, and there was a dispute! Was it related to the negative rescue or even deliberate failure to rescue in the hospital?
The doctor’s provisional order was executed at 16:43 on Oct. 2th to monitor the fetal heart rate, in his reply to the appraisal organization, he said: “There are birth process records and continuous fetal heart rate monitoring after entry to the maternity room, “ The woman was admitted to the maternity room at 2:00 a.m. on October 3th, but strangely, there is not a complete corresponding birth process chart in the medical record, only about 03:35-03:54 am. Where are the other fetal heart monitoring charts?– Obviously, the hospital staff hid the fetal heart rate monitoring charts for other periods. Why did the hospital staff hide other charts? Please provide other charts.
The medical records show that “opened three venous channels” during the period in maternity room, but the woman did not have any fluid treatment when she was transferring out from maternity room. Please provide the video data of that day to verify! Since there is monitor, why dare not to provide the video?
In addition, since three venous channels had been opened, what drugs had been used? Why does the doctor’s advice show that a total of two bottles of medicines were used on the pregnant woman? Where are the three channels?
In the reply to the appraisal organization, the doctor admitted that after the woman was transferred to the operating room, the medical treatment was delayed, the doctor moved equipment of type-B ultrasonic to the operating room, in case if the maternal patient’s life is in danger , what is the purpose of the type-B ultrasonic operating? Now that the type-B ultrasonic operating has been done, where is the report? Please provide it.
Where are the birth process records? Why do you hide them?
The deputy of the hospital said that the emergency doctor was notified to rescue when the pregnant patient was sick in the maternity room, but the fact which can be proved by video was that there were only several young nurses but there were no doctors in the maternity room! This shows that in the maternity room, there was no medical treatment at all. Obviously it was intentional failure to rescue, what is the intention?
After the maternal death, the hospital did not issue a death notice, why? According to the state regulation, a death notice must be issued after a death in hospital. What is about the death notice?
The most importance is that the families urged to seal the medical records and remnants at the first time after the maternal death, Why did the hospital assign a large number of security guards to surround the operating room, beat family members and forcibly withdraw all the remaining medicines? What kinds of medicines were injected to the pregnant woman? Why should drugs be withdrawn at the risk of crime, and why should evidence be destroyed?

All of the above mentioned by the attorney of the families are facts. Tengzhou Maternal and Child Health Hospital promised many medias that there were surveillance videos. Why does the hospital dare not to show the videos? On May 16, 2013, the families accompanied by volunteers of WRIC and enthusiasts came to the hospital, hope to find out the real cause of Zhang Ronghua’s death, because the families have seen and heard too many doubts with the hospital about this tragic tragedy. According to Cao Yongzhong and his families, they came to the hospital several times, but they were all refused and fooled by the hospital in a variety of ways, and even were threatened. Zhang Ronghua could not rest in peace in heaven as the case has not been settled finally.

Thanks to the intervention of WRIC, the deputy of the hospital received us, but said that Yang Bilan who was the president of the hospital then have gone (rumored on the Internet that her brother is a vice mayor and her background is very strong). The new president was just on a business trip, and only a section chief surnamed Yang faced us. As far as we know, the president disappeared already at the time of the incident , while the new leaders was delaying under excuse that he do not know much about the case, and need further verification, attempted to minimize and trivialize this serious medical accident and human rights violation.

So far, this event can be confirmed that the maternal death was caused by amniotic fluid embolism. Excessive use of Oxycontin, unreasonable artificial rupture of membranes and many other behaviors can lead to amniotic fluid embolism. But after the accident, the hospital staff did a large number of efforts to destroy remaining medicines and medical records that ought to be sealed up. The real cause of Zhang Ronghua’s death was not known directly. Now the truth is unknown. According to the relevant laws and regulations, due to the hospital’s own reasons, it is impossible to find out the truth, and the hospital is for all the responsibilities. Seven months have passed since Zhang Ronghua and her fetus’s death occurred. Cao Yongzhong and his family had to ask the medias for help, hoping that the domestic and foreign media would pay close attention to the tragic plight of domestic women and seek justice for their dead family. To this end, the majority of WRIC’S volunteers strongly urge relevant departments of Shandong Province and Tengzhou City to thoroughly investigate this serious violation of women rights, and publish the investigation report to the world, so that Zhang Ronghua can rest in the heaven. Later, the hospital agreed to compensate for 1 million Yuan according to the local court sentence, unless Zhang’s family accept interview from foreign medias.

Illustration of left pic: Zhang Ronghua’s daughter often cries and asks her grandma: Why is it good for someone’s mother to have a baby? Why is my mother not?

Illustration of right pic: The husband is in great pain facing the dress which her wife left. (Photos: WRIC)

Su Changlan, a volunteer of WRIC, was helping the Cao’s family to sort out the investigation documents about Zhang Ronghua’s case. (Photo: WRIC)

Fears Grow For Health of Chinese Women’s Rights Activist Su Changlan

Posted on 2017-06-28 by wrchina

Article: RFA Photo : WRIC 2017-06-28

The health of jailed Chinese rights activist Su Changlan, who once campaigned for the land rights of rural women and supported Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, has deteriorated rapidly in prison, her husband said following his first-ever prison visit.

Su, 45, was jailed for three years after being found guilty of “incitement to subvert state power” by the Foshan Intermediate People’s Court after a more than two years in pretrial detention.

Her husband Chen Dequan told RFA on Tuesday he had finally been allowed to see her on Monday.

“I went to visit her yesterday. Her health is much, much worse than it was before, but there are some details I can’t really talk about here, as long as you understand that,” Chen said.

“Her hyperthyroidism … and heart problems are very serious now … and she speaks haltingly,” he said. “She didn’t seem normal. She also has mood swings that she can’t control.”

In 2013, WRIC volunteer Su, Changlan interviewed Ma Shengfen’s deeds of rights protection. (Photo by WRIC)

Asked if his phone calls are being monitored, Chen said: “Yes, by the state security police. I could lose my job, or something similar.”

Meanwhile, Su’s brother Su Shangwei said his sister is dependent on medication.

“Her health is very poor right now, and she can’t be without medication,” he said. “Her heart isn’t supplying blood [to her extremities] so her hands are numb, and she looks very pale.”

“The medication means that she now has kidney failure … I’d say her life is definitely in danger, and she could much worse at any time now,” he said. “There’s a limit to what can be achieved by putting her on medication. To get better treatment, she really needs to go to the hospital.”

Su’s lawyer Wu Kuiming said Su hasn’t long left to serve of her sentence.

“We could apply for medical parole on the grounds that she isn’t well enough to serve her sentence, but I don’t think it would get approved,” he said.

“She is due to get out pretty soon now,” Wu said. “Her health has been bad right from the start, mainly because of the poor conditions in prison … the government is so brutal.”

Independent health assessment

Amnesty International China researcher Patrick Poon called on the Chinese government to allow an independent medical assessment of Su’s condition.

“The view of Amnesty International is that they must allow a person access to adequate medical care, and they must grant any request by a detainee for an independent medical assessment and treatment,” Poon said.

“Detainees absolutely have the right to request this,” he said.

Su was jailed for three years in March after being found guilty of “incitement to subvert state power” by the Foshan Intermediate People’s Court after spending more than two years in pretrial detention. Time already served is usually counted as part of the sentence in China.

Fellow Foshan rights activist Chen Qitang was jailed for four years and six months on the same charge.

The court judgement found that Su and Chen had “used the internet and social media to spread rumors and defamation, and repeatedly published or forwarded articles and posts containing attacks on the socialist system.”

Activists in Hong Kong staged a protest against the sentences, because some of the posts made by Su and Chen had been in support of the 2014 pro-democracy Occupy Central movement.

The Occupy Central movement saw hundreds of thousands of people pour onto the streets in a campaign for full democracy, using umbrellas to protect themselves from sun, rain, and pepper spray, which gave the demonstration the nickname Umbrella Movement.

But the movement ended with no political victory, and amid accusations from the ruling Chinese Communist Party that the civil disobedience campaign was being orchestrated by “hostile foreign forces” behind the scenes.

In March, Su became the third recipient of the Cao Shunli Memorial Award for Human Rights Defenders, in honor of her work “promoting human rights at the grassroots level in China.”

Su’s detention has been judged “arbitrary” by the United Nations, which has called on Beijing to release and compensate her.

Women’s Rights in China Condemns Su Changlan Sentencing in Fuoshan Court

Posted on 2017-04-01 by wrchina

By WRIC Apr 01, 2017

On March 31, 2017, women’s rights activist Ms. Su Changlan was sentenced by the Guangdong Fuoshan Intermediate Court to three years for “subverting national government” to three years in prison plus three more years without political rights. Ms. Su had already been illegally detained for two and half years through numerous delays of court dates. Her alleged subversions amounted to interviews and reports of civilian petitioner Ma Shenfen and an expose of the abuse and death of Cao Shunli, published on the WRIC website and attributed to her by the Chinese government. The judgment, lacking concrete instances of subversion, instead mentioned Women’s Rights in China nine times and WRIC founder Zhang Jing three times. Ms. Su and Ms. Zhang’s friendly Skype chats were used to pad the otherwise vacuous judgment, signifying the Xi Jinping regime’s renewed suppression of non-governmental organizations and an era of NGO frost in China.

Articles published by Ms. Su on www.wrchina.org included only reporting on the rights and welfare of women and children in China, searches for missing children and renuiting kidnapped child brides in Fujian Province with their parents. Contrary to the court judgment’s allegations of “fraud and libel”, each report and interview was verifiable and factual, with real events and persons, from the charitable and humanitarian perspective. In comparison, the Fuoshan Intermediate Court was the glaring example of obfuscation and slander. Su Changlan was arrested in October, 2014 for “spreading information about Occupy Hong Kong”. She subsequently spent two and half years behind bars, after the Guangdong Superior Court had to unprecedentedly grant the government four delays in the case. Deviating from legal procedure, the police refused to admit any mistake or release her. Ms. Su, in ill health, frequently went on hunger strikes and was determined to resist her unlawful detention.

Women’s Rights in China is a non-profit organization registered in the United States in 2008. WRIC’s projects in China, in charitable cooperation with women’s and children’s human rights organizations, included the search for missing children, assistance for abandoned female infants in nunneries, reuniting child brides in Fujian through investigations and DNA collection, legal aid for victims of governmental population control and milk subsidies for baby girls in the countryside. The Chinese government not only did not assist these activities in any way, but regarded WRIC as an enemy and obstructed and suppressed its activities. The Xi Jingping government has declared that all foreign human rights NGO’s as hostile organizations and actively oppressed and purged domestic civil society organizations in contravention to universal humanitarian principles.

WRIC strongly condemns Ms. Su Changlang’s prison sentence as a blatant assault on the conscience of China. WRIC takes pride in Ms. Su and is proud to count her as one of her volunteers. She stated in her trial, “I love my country deeply. I love even more every citizen who lived on its soil, the people who are suffering from inhumane oppression. The mechanism of the government put me in the chair of the accused. The glare from the emblem of the state in front of me seems to be fading. But the strength of justice has let me see the light of hope. I am innocent.” (http://www.wrchina.org/archives/5120) WRIC will not submit to oppressive power, and will continue to defend the rights and welfare of women and children in China.

Women’s Rights in Chian volunteer Su Changlan (right) intervied Ma Shengfen’s rights deeds in Jan 2014.

Court applies for fourth verdict deferral for Chinese activist who voiced support for Occupy protests

Posted on 2017-02-05 by wrchina

WRIC

A Guangxi court has applied for the verdict for women’s rights activist Su Changlan to be deferred for the fourth time, her lawyer has said. Su was detained in October 2014 after making comments on social media in support of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Occupy movement. She previously worked as a volunteer for the New York-based Women’s Rights in China group, and has been a long time campaigner for women’s and children’s rights.

Lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan posted on his Twitter account on Sunday that he called the Foshan court and was told that it had applied to the Supreme Court before Lunar New Year to defer the verdict by another three months. If approved, it will be the fourth time that it has been deferred, each time for three months.

She pleaded not guilty at a Guangdong court at her trial in April to charges of “incitement to subvert state power.” Liu told US-backed Radio Free Asia at the time that “she had no intention in that direction, and the case basically rested on a few articles she wrote.” Three articles and three WeChat messages were cited in allegations of incitement against her, he said in a tweet.

Su has thus far been detained for 27 months without being sentenced.

Special extensions

According to China’s Criminal Procedures Law, the court must announce a verdict within three months at the latest after accepting the case. Further extensions may be granted in special circumstances with the approval of the Supreme Court.

“This way, the local courts can use special circumstances as a reason to apply to the Supreme Court for approval to extend the verdict numerous times, detaining the defendant long-term,” Liu wrote.

Liu asked the court for an explanation as to why the verdict was deferred but received no answer. He was also unable to obtain an explanation from the court’s supervisory department. He previously made a complaint at the Supreme Court in November, but still has not received a response.

Patrick Poon, a researcher at Amnesty International, told HKFP that deferments for such cases were extremely rare.

“The delayed verdict of Su Changlan’s case once again explain[s] the bizarre practice of the criminal justice system in China. A person can be almost detained indefinitely as the court continues to apply for delaying to deliver its verdict. If the allegations were sound, why would this be the case?”

A ruling for Chen Qitang, another Guangdong activist also charged with inciting subversion, was also delayed three times, and the court looks likely to apply for another extension, Liu said.

The presiding judge for Su’s case has said that he is unable to decide the verdict, according to Liu. “It’s not only the court that can’t decide it, it’s also the Foshan Intermediate Court – otherwise, they wouldn’t drag the verdict out repeatedly. The direction of these two [Su and Chen’s] cases must have met with interference from the powerful organs above.”

A human rights activist, a secret prison and a tale from Xi Jinping’s new China

Posted on 2017-01-06 by wrchina

2 January 2017 by Tom Phillips in Chiang Mai

Peter Dahlin spent 23 days in a ‘black prison’ in Beijing, where he says he was deprived of sleep and questioned with a ‘communication enhancement’ machine. Here he tells the story of his incarceration and expulsion from the People’s Republic.

Some nights Peter Dahlin says he tucks a “big-ass knife” under his bed in case intruders come for him as he dozes; others he cannot sleep at all.

“They’ve kidnapped people several times here before,” says the 36-year-old Swedish human rights activist, chain-smoking Marlboro cigarettes as he remembers the 23 days he spent in secret detention in China.

It has been a year since Dahlin became one of the first foreign victims of President Xi Jinping’s war on dissent.

On 3 January 2016 Chinese security agents encircled the activist’s Beijing home and spirited him and his Chinese girlfriend, Pan Jinling, off to a covert interrogation centre he now calls “The Residence”.

Months have now passed but the memories of that spell in custody have proved hard to shake. “These facilities are built to break you,” the campaigner says during a seven-hour interview at a home in Chiang Mai, a city in northern Thailand where he and Pan have lived since he was deported from China amid one of the most severe crackdowns in decades.

The story of Peter Dahlin, told here in unprecedented detail, offers a rare and troubling snapshot of Xi Jinping’s China, where an unforgiving offensive against civil society is now unfolding.

Peter Dahlin speaks on camera in a still from video released by China Central Television.( Photograph: AP)

In the four years since Xi became China’s top leader in November 2012, feminist campaigners, journalists, academics, bloggers, publishers, human rights lawyers and even foreign non-governmental organisation workers such as Dahlin have all been targeted in what experts suspect is a coordinated Communist party push to prevent the development of organised opposition to the regime.

The political situation, which some call the most dire since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, has deteriorated so fast under the current leadership that one scholar claims Xi has built “the perfect dictatorship” – an ever-more repressive system that nevertheless avoids major international censure.

During his stint behind bars the Swedish activist says he was given a firsthand taste of the harshness with which that battle for control is being waged.

For the first time I am not optimistic any more. This is how China will operate for the next 20 years.

He claims he was blindfolded and confined to a cell with expressionless guards who refused to engage in conversation but noted down his every move; was for days deprived of access to his embassy, the right to exercise or even to sunlight; was forced to endure exhausting late-night interrogation sessions conducted by hectoring inquisitors determined to paint him as a spy; subjected to a lie-detection machine intended to extract information about his work; and suffered periods of sleep deprivation that he believes were intended to weaken his resolve.

Dahlin, who until his detention had run a Beijing-based rights organisation called the Chinese Urgent Action Working Group or China Action, said during the seven years he lived and worked as an activist in China friends and diplomats had always considered him an optimist about the country’s future.

Those illusions have been shattered by the things he witnessed in the lead-up to his incarceration at The Residence.

“For the first time I am not optimistic any more,” he says. “This is how China will operate for the next 20 years. Now it’s a new hard line.”

The underground activist

Peter Dahlin arrived in China from his native Sweden in the summer of 2004, a 23-year-old political science graduate keen for a taste of the world outside a lecture theatre.

“I was just there to backpack and learn,” recalls Dahlin, whose travels took him through Beijing, Shanghai and Xiamen, the south-eastern port where Xi served as vice-mayor in the 1980s.

Three years later he returned, throwing himself into human rights work alongside Hou Wenzhou, a Chinese activist he had met online.

Dahlin’s first project was a report denouncing the existence of an illegal nationwide network of secret detention facilities called “black jails”. It identified eight such prisons in Beijing.

About the same time Dahlin met Wang Quanzhang, a crusading civil rights lawyer known for his defence of China’s downtrodden and outspoken criticism of the government. Together, in 2009, they founded China Action, a non-profit advocacy group dedicated to supporting human rights defenders in the one-party state.

Increasingly draconian laws make it effectively impossible for such non-governmental rights organisations to operate legally in mainland China. Instead the pair registered their group as a company in Hong Kong and decided they would strive to operate in the shadows so as to avoid attracting attention.

“I decided we had a shot at doing something quite special,” Dahlin says of the group’s creation. The Swedish activist says he was partly driven by “middle-class guilt” but also a conviction that people should be the masters of their own destinies.

Even my close friends didn’t know about my work … I always operated with a cover.

“I’ve never been particularly political,” he says. “I’ve never paid attention to Tibet and these issues very much. “I just believe in the idea of self-determination.

“Whether it is Scottish people, the Catalan people, the Tibetan people or even just a village somewhere in China; that the people there should be the ones that have an influence, whether it is by forming an organisation, a labour union, their own media, whatever.”

Guided by those beliefs, Dahlin set about building China Action into a small but potent force for social change.

With grants from institutions that included the European Union, the National Endowment For Democracy and the Norwegian Human Rights Fund it ran training sessions for human rights lawyers and investigative journalists and offered support to young Chinese campaigners traumatised by run-ins with the security services.

Just as China Action was ramping up its operations, however, the human rights situation in China took a turn for the worse.

The crackdown begins

Many accuse Xi of initiating the current chill but some trace it back to around 2008 when anti-government protests rocked Tibet just as China was preparing to host the Summer Olympics.

Deadly riots the following year in China’s far west left authorities even more convinced that it was time to step up their controls over society.

In Beijing Dahlin sought to fly under the radar, moving into a one-bedroom studio hidden in the alleys around the 13th century Drum Tower and disguising his trueline of work with a series of legends.

He told some he was the son of a wealthy Swedish businessman who was in China researching the electric bicycle industry; to others he introduced himself as a legal researcher or expat English teacher, “just to see the way the conversation dies”.

“Even my close friends didn’t know about my work,” he says. “They knew I did something to do with an NGO and human rights but that is about it. I always operated with a cover.”

A self-professed history geek, Dahlin adopted the surname Beckenridge – an allusion to John C Breckinridge, the vice-president of the Confederate states – but he maintained his first name. “Any effective cover story has to have 90% truth and then 10% misleading … you always keep your first name to avoid mistakes.”

For a while the subterfuge paid off. Dahlin’s visas were renewed by public security authorities, despite the fact that his human rights work was officially illegal, and he sensed that police were happy monitoring the group from afar.

“We’re not a political organisation,” he says by way of explanation for why his group was able to keep operating for so long. “We don’t deal with democracy issues.”

But by 2013, the year Xi became president, the climate had begun to change. First came a sweeping crackdown on China’s already tightly controlled internet; outspoken bloggers were detained and publicly humiliated in an attemp to curb the “wanton defamation” of the Communist party.

Next came the obliteration of the New Citizens’ Movement, a collective of liberal scholars and activists who had been pushing for moderate social and political change. The group’s leader, a respected lawyer called Xu Zhiyong, was jailed for four years. Another prominent member fled into exile in the US.

Most dictatorships are very clumsy, raw, inelegant. But this one isn’t. They have it sussed.

Stein Ringen, political scientist

It was the start of what many describe as a concerted clampdown on civil society designed to extinguish organised opposition to Beijing at a time when China’s fading economic boom threatened to undermine its political legitimacy.

Stein Ringen, a political scientist whose new book, The Perfect Dictatorship, examines the dramatic political tightening, said he believed that after a period of “steely and foresightful analysis”, China’s top leaders had concluded they must tighten their grip over the population now that the era of mega-economic growth was over.

“There is an absolute determination that the regime will persist and continue. That is number one for everything: the perpetuation of the regime.”

Ringen, an emeritus professor at Oxford University, said that in just a few years Xi had turned his country into a “controlocracy” where an ingenious mix of hard and soft measures were used to ensure the party’s rule went unchallenged.

“It is so smooth that in some respects it doesn’t even look dictatorial,” he said. “Most dictatorships are very clumsy, raw, inelegant. But this one isn’t. They have it sussed.”

The arrest

As Xi’s crackdown unfolded up and down the country, agents from China’s ministry of state security, a mysterious spy agency tasked with snuffing out political threats to the party, began to move against Dahlin’s group, trying to recruit his assistant as a mole.

“We were well aware that from at least 2013 state security and not just police were actively monitoring us,” he says.

Dahlin began taking extra precautions, memorising the night flights out of Beijing and filling a brown leather satchel with bundles of cash, hard drives, documents, a change of clothes and his passport.

In the summer of 2015 the situation deteriorated further still. A sweeping police offensive against Chinese human rights lawyers – the so-called 709 crackdown – began, sucking in “a very large number” of people directly linked to China Action, including Dahlin’s friend and partner Wang, who was seized near the eastern city of Jinan on 3 August.

At 9.45pm – just hours before he had planned to set off for the airport – there was a loud bang on the door.

With those detentions Dahlin sensed the noose was tightening. “Maybe there will be no more China,” he remembers thinking.

Then on 3 January 2016 the end came. At about 2pm Dahlin realised China Action was under intense scrutiny when a Chinese associate reported being summoned to meet security officials who had grilled him about a Swedish man named Peter.

Shortly before 4pm the Swede sat down at his computer and began to type an email to a group of close colleagues with the subject line: “Situation”.

“There now seems to be an active investigation,” he wrote, adding that he planned to flee the country and might not return to China “if things get bad”.

“Clear all papers, USBs, computers, phones, pads etc,” Dahlin instructed his workmates. “These things need to be done ASAP.”

Dahlin spent the afternoon tying up loose ends: shredding documents, saying goodbye to his girlfriend Pan, and taking care of the couple’s cats, Poopi and Dou Gonggong.

He booked a seat on a 3am Cathay Pacific Flight to Hong Kong and from there planned to take another flight to Thailand.

The arrest of Peter Dahlin, as described to the Chiang Mai-based Mexican-American artist Nicolas Luna Fleck

But at 9.45pm – just hours before he had planned to set off for the airport – there was a loud bang on the door.

“Are you Peter Dahlin?” said one of the uniformed agents packing the alleyway outside. “Well, yeah,” the activist replied.

‘The Residence’

About 15 miles south of Dahlin’s hutong home, not far from Beijing’s Nanyuan military airbase, is a drab, four-storey office block used for the interrogation of those deemed enemies of the Chinese state. “Basically, it is a secret prison,” says Dahlin.

In the early hours of Monday 4 January a convoy of police vehicles pulled up in the ground-floor garage of the U-shaped installation. Blindfolded, the activist was led out of one of the cars, into a lift and then along a corridor into a second-floor interrogation room.

“You sort of just freeze … It was sort of expected but still you realise that this could end badly – or this could end very badly.”

Dahlin’s first interrogation began about 2am that winter morning, as temperatures outside The Residence plunged to six degrees below zero.

Two male inquisitors sat opposite the prisoner, who says he was seated in a hard wooden “tiger chair” with leg shackles that were left splayed out on the floor. Metals bars crisscrossed the room’s only window.

The initial questioning was less intimidating than the surroundings might have suggested. “It started fairly innocuously. They were just trying to get a sense of me. Who am I? What am I doing in China? Very basic questioning.”

Dahlin’s ties to three persons of interest seemed of particular concern: the human rights lawyer Wang; Xing Qingxian, an activist from south-west China; and Su Changlan, a women’s rights campaigner who had been detained months earlier for offering online support to Hong Kong’s 2014 pro-democracy protests. (Su Changlan is a member of Women’s Rights in China and an important human rights activist. She has been held in the jail since October 2014. Su Changlan: Introduction and Thanks )

Two guards watched over Dahlin 24 hours a day, recording every move or sound he made, but never uttered a word.

But it was a gentle introduction to life in The Residence for the sleep-deprived activist: three hours later, about 5am, the session was terminated and he was led into a rectangular cell across the corridor with beige padded walls and two small windows that were also covered by metal bars. Thick blackout curtains made it impossible to tell the time of day; three fluorescent lamps hung from the ceiling, including one directly above the bed. “Even the toilet seat was suicide-padded,” Dahlin recalls.

Also inside were two guards, part of a team that remained there and watched over Dahlin 24 hours a day and recorded every move or sound he made in a notebook but never uttered a word.

“They would often stand up and go and stand and look when you take a piss, you take a shit, you take a shower. It’s a bit odd,” Dahlin says, adding with a laugh: “Luckily I’m Swedish and Sweden has a rather relaxed idea of nudity.”

The following days were a blur of interrogations. “They made it clear … that they had followed me, surveilled me intently for a while and were well aware, they said, of what I had been doing.”

Dahlin claims his captors demanded a “map” of who his group had been working with and became “very, very angry” after he refused to talk unless he was allowed to see officials from the Swedish embassy.

The activist says his interrogators then refused to let him sleep until he offered them detailed information and only relented after he protested to the centre’s boss – a woman who gave her name as Mrs Zhang – that his treatment violated the UN convention against torture, which China ratified in 1988.

“She was very upset,” Dahlin says of her reaction. “And went on about how nicely I’m being treated.”

Eventually he was allowed to sleep.

As the questioning sessions continued, often lasting up to six hours at a time, Dahlin, who correctly suspected that Pan and several colleagues were also being detained in the facility, decided his best option was to avoid incriminating others by painting the officers “a big picture … with nothing in it”.

But the interrogators hit back, telling the activist his friends and colleagues were turning against him. “This is your only chance,” they said. “They are blaming everything on you. If you don’t strike back it is over for you.”

I was quite prepared that there was going to be six months of this. That was my timeframe

Dahlin says he held firm, telling his captors China should be proud of its human rights lawyers and flatly rejecting repeated demands for him to surrender information about them or passwords for email accounts and encrypted hard drives that had been seized from his home.

As night fell on the covert prison, unnerving sounds found their way into the activist’s cell from other parts of The Residence, which Dahlin estimated had been built to house about eight prisoners. “I could hear raised voices. I could hear muffled sounds of what I assumed would be someone slammed against the wall and floor.

“I was quite prepared that there was going to be six months of this. That was my timeframe. I was counting the days in my head.”

As Dahlin floundered in the secret jail the world outside went on. Exactly one week after he was seized, on 10 January, David Bowie died in his New York flat, news the Swedish activist only received after his release.

Two days later, on 12 January, the first reports of Dahlin’s detention began to emerge in the international media. Having initially denied knowledge of the activist’s disappearance, the Chinese government now admitted “coercive measures” had been taken against him.

Three days later, on 15 January, a state-run newspaper published an editorialaccusing the activist of funding “radical political activists” who were seeking confrontation with the Communist party.

Friends and relatives called for his release, warning that without access to his medicine, Dahlin, who has Addison’s disease – a rare hormonal disorder also suffered by John F Kennedy – could die.

Cut off from the world in this hidden jail, Dahlin knew nothing of what was going on outside. He used music to help him cope with the boredom and stress, attempting to alleviate the tedium by remembering the lyrics of songs by REM, Bob Dylan and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

“You think through everything. Not once or twice but 100 times for each thing. Every friend you had. Every relationship you had. Every date you had … If you sit there for weeks on end with nothing to do you start having weird thoughts because there is nothing left to think about.”

About 10 days into his captivity Dahlin’s ordeal took an Orwellian turn when interrogators told the activist they wanted to use a “communication enhancement” machine – a species of lie detector – to assist with their inquiries.

Peter Dahlin faces his interrogators. Illustration: Nicolas Luna Fleck.

Electrodes were attached to the activist’s fingertips and small cameras trained on his pupils while he was asked questions. Dahlin suspects it was “a clever psychological play” to make him reveal details of his group’s work and sponsors – but the device appeared to fail.

“They seemed to have some problem with the fact that my fingertips would sweat so they couldn’t get good readings,” he says. “I don’t think they got much from it.”

On about day 13 of Dahlin’s stay at The Residence the omens improved. He was granted a visit from two Swedish consular officials who inquired if he had been given any fruit – “Only one small bite of an apple,” the prisoner replied – then left.

Two nights later came a second positive signal. At about 3am a group of officers came into his cell and one, whom he knew as Mr Zhang, perched on the edge of his rock-hard mattress. “I realised something was happening,” Dahlin says.

The confession

Zhang told the activist he would need to pen “a self-criticism” in which he confessed to a series of crimes.

Crucially, Dahlin should admit that the human rights lawyers with whom he had worked were “criminals” and taking money from the National Endowment for Democracy, a US-funded non-profit which has been demonised in countries such as China and Russia as an instigator of colour revolutions.

“Even though they were not among our biggest funders, that was a very core point,” says Dahlin, who believes the attempt to link China Action to the endowment group was intended to help paint his group as a “hostile foreign force” that had been plotting to undermine the Communist party.

I would go from a sense of serene contentment to being exhilarated to being incredibly despondent.

The following night Dahlin received a second visit. “We need one more thing,” the officer told him. “Let’s make a video.”

Dahlin knew immediately what was being suggested.

Since Xi had taken office apparently forced televised confessions had come back into vogue, used to humiliate a range of government foes including Gao Yu, a veteran journalist who was jailed for leaking a politically sensitive document, and Charles Xue, an internet celebrity known for his online outspokenness on social and political issues.

Within hours Dahlin had been ordered to remove his prison uniform, don his normal clothes and was seated in a room opposite a glamorous female correspondent from the China Central Television, the state broadcaster. He was handed a set of seven or eight pre-written answers that had been typed on to a sheet of A4 paper.

“Prime time!” the activist says he thought as the camera began to roll. “Great!”

Dahlin, who had lost nearly 6kg since his detention began, says he immediately agreed to the recording, knowing it would accelerate his release and, more importantly, that of his girlfriend.

“I have been given good food, plenty of sleep and I have suffered no mistreatments of any kind,” he told his interviewer. “I have no complaints to make. I think my treatment has been fair.”

The ‘confession’ of Peter Dahlin

Dahlin says he tried to deflect blame from his Chinese associates by shouldering responsibility for his group’s activities.

He refused to label the Chinese lawyers he had worked with as “criminals” but admitted: “I have violated Chinese law through my activities here. I have caused harm to the Chinese government. I have hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.

“I apologise sincerely for this and I am very sorry that this ever happened,” he concluded before the camera was turned off.

The next day those comments were splashed across China’s party-controlled media with Xinhua, the country’s official news agency, using the “interview” to prove police had “smashed an illegal organisation that sponsored activities jeopardising China’s national security”.

Dahlin, Xinhua claimed, had been planted in the country by “western anti-China forces” bent on stirring opposition to the regime.

As a reward for his video confession Dahlin says he was given a cup of Nescafé instant coffee and a couple of cigarettes. Less than a week later he and Pan would be free.

Dahlin says the final stages of his three-week stint in a secret jail were among the hardest, even though he sensed his release was imminent. “I would go from a sense of serene contentment to being exhilarated to being incredibly despondent and thinking, ‘Fuck, this is it. I’m dead.’”

Goodbye to China

On the morning of 21 January he was told he had been granted medical parole and would soon be deported. Four days later, after being allowed a fleeting meeting with Pan, he was blindfolded and escorted back downstairs into The Residence’s garage.

Flanked by four burly guards in martial arts clothing, Dahlin was driven north towards Beijing’s international airport where he was told he was being expelled under the espionage act.

“Stay out of trouble now,” he recalls being told by one of the security agents, who escorted him on to Scandinavian Airlines Flight 996 to Copenhagen.

Peter Dahlin’s last view of China and his security minders.

Onboard the passenger jet Dahlin turned on his phone and snapped one final photograph of China: a surreptitious shot of the security officers who had placed him on his last flight out of the country.

The flight attendant in first class – police officials had used cash confiscated from Dahlin’s home to buy his ticket – handed him a glass of champagne.

“I killed it,” Dahlin says. “And then I had another glass. I had wine. I had a whisky. I had a beer and I had a coffee. All of the things I hadn’t had.”

I get weird-ass dreams that I never had before; anxiety; never being able to relax properly.

Since touching down in Thailand in May, Dahlin says he has been gradually trying to rebuild his life.

After the trauma of 23 days in secret custody and seven years living with the daily stress of concealing his work, he says he is struggling to adapt to a more mundane routine and fears he may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

“I’ve gotten so used … to living a lie. It takes time to break that habit down.

“I get weird-ass dreams that I never had before; anxiety; never being able to relax properly. I can deal with it – but it takes time,” he says. “Your mind plays tricks on you. You hear things by the gate at night.”

One afternoon Dahlin remembers suffering a panic attack when he lost sight of Pan, who moved with him to Chiang Mai, in a supermarket and concluded she had been snatched by Chinese agents – as appears to have happened to a wave of Thailand-based dissidents and Communist party foes.

On another occasion Dahlin’s heart leapt when a group of Chinese men surrounded the couple at a local hotel. “I thought, ‘Fuck, is this it? Are they here to do something?’”

The here and now

Back in China, the situation is even gloomier. Recent weeks have seen a fresh round of detentions that suggest the crackdown on human rights lawyers has yet to run its course.

Dahlin’s former partner Wang remains in police custody awaiting trial. “It is not a happy story,” Dahlin says of his friend. “I think he would rather die than admit defeat in this case [by confessing to crimes he didn’t commit]. He is ready to be a martyr.”

Stein Ringen said he believed the world had failed to grasp the scale of the repression now playing out in China, still viewing the country as a “benevolent autocracy” when in fact it had mutated into “a very, very hard dictatorship which manages to look better than it is”.

Peter Dahlin near his home in Thailand. Photograph: Tom Phillips for the Guardian.

The academic said he envisioned no change of direction while Xi, who will reach the halfway point of his anticipated decade-long term in late 2017, was in power.

“Regrettably, I think the best we can hope for is that it doesn’t get worse … My money during Xi Jinping’s tenure would be that what we have now is pretty much what we are going to get – that is a hard dictatorship that is nevertheless tempered by some pragmatism … I’m completely bleak.”

“The alternatives I think are chaos – that the control breaks and that China falls again back into chaos which it has done again and again over the last couple of centuries – or that Xi Jinping’s tightening of controls continues and pulls the system into one of fully fledged totalitarianism.”

I see no reason why they would ever give me a visa to go back. Why would they?

On the veranda of his new home, surrounded by wind chimes, hanging planters, and the soothing sound of bird song, Dahlin reminisces about happier times.

He speaks of his admiration for the Chinese campaigners still willing to sacrifice their freedom to promote change and fondly recalls nights spent at his favourite Mongolian whisky bar in Beijing.

“You miss a few things because my exit consisted of going from solitary confinement into an airplane,” he says. “I left Beijing with a small bag, three books, two changes of clothes, some hard drives and a laptop.

“You do seven years of something … and now it is all gone: your work, whatever you have accomplished, your clothing, your furniture, my cats, my friends.”

But with no political thaw in sight the activist said he doubted he would ever be able to return to the country he once dreamed of transforming.

“I see no reason why they would ever give me a visa to go back. Why would they?”

“I think the only reason I go back is after the government falls. And I’m not sure that is going to happen in my lifetime.”

The Kidnapped Girls

Posted on 2016-04-23 by wrchina

Interview video by Germany’s ARD

Women’s Rights in China(WRIC) volunteer Su, Changlan is showing a German reporter WRIC’s two programs that address the issues of child brides and missing / kidnapped children. In the video interviews with actually victims of these atrocities are shown. Later that year – 2014- Changlan was put in jail for ” Subversion of State of Sower” and is still in jail at the present time.

http://www.daserste.de/information/politik-weltgeschehen/weltspiegel/videos/china-die-gestohlenen-maedchen-100.html

Before Valentine’s Day, Su Changlan’s Husband Detained for Wanting to See Wife

Posted on 2015-02-27 by wrchina

Source: WRIC Translated by Tony Chong Flannery 02-16-2015

Liu Xiaoyuan, the lawyer of WRIC volunteer Su Changlan(left picture), stated yesterday that on the afternoon of February 15 he contacted the older brother of Su Changlan’s husband Chen Dequan, as well as the wife of Su Changlan’s older brother Su Shangwei. Both people told Mr. Liu that it was not until they found a local Chancheng national security brigade in the morning that they received a detention notice. The notice said that Chen Dequan and Su Shangwei were suspected of criminal provocation, and on February 14, 2015 they were detained. They are currently in custody at a detention center in the Chancheng

Su Changlan and her husband are both behind bars, leaving a high school-age son alone and uncared for. After Su Changlan was detained, the family lost its primary economic support. When Su’s husband went out without his wife to search for missing children and to defend the rights of child brides in Fujian, he was in two car accidents that left him nearly paralyzed. His accidents happened one after the other, and he spent several months hospitalized with his injuries. As a result, he has been at home trying to recover his health for the last few years.

To let Su Changlan’s son continue his studies at boarding school and pay his living costs, volunteers at WRIC headquarters in New York worked together to donate money for his studies. But the money sent to China via Western Union was frozen by the government and the police in Foshan, Guangdong would not allow Chen Dequan to collect it. Up to now the boy still has not been able to receive any of the donations for his education, and after losing his father’s care, what a blow the youth’s spirit and life have suffered! However, he knows his mother is an upstanding and decent mother who stepped forward bravely for a disadvantaged group and shouted that they had done no wrong. His father only wanted to know the mother’s situation and see her—what’s wrong with that? As so many families celebrate this New Year, this child is out in the bitter cold on his own.

Image designed by WRIC’s Zhang Jing.

Su Changlan was accused of incitement to subvert state power and arrested three months and 18 days ago. Then on February 14, 2015, Valentine’s Day, her husband Chen Dequan and her older brother were detained on the same day by the police in Foshan City’s Chancheng District on charges of criminal provocation. According to Mr. Liu’s understanding of the situation, on February 12, because the Foshan Public Security Bureau’s national security detachment refused to see him and would not respond to petitions, Su Changlan’s older brother Su Shangwei stood beside the Foshan Public Security Bureau’s sign holding a piece of paper with “Su Changlan is innocent! Expressing my hope” and “Send Su Changlan home! Conscience is nonviolent!” and took two photographs.

After returning home, he might have posted the photos online. The next day, the night of the 13th, Su Shangwei was subpoenaed and taken away. On the 14th, a little after 3 AM, Chen Dequan was also taken from his home. Up to the present, three people have been detained for trying to rescue Su Changlan. Besides Chen Dequan and Su Shangwei, there is also Chen Qitang (Tianli). After Su Changlan was arrested, Tianli always accompanied her family members as they sought negotiations with the police, and also wrote an essay appealing the detention. On November 24 of last year, a woman who claimed to have been imprisoned with Su Changlan called Chen Dequan to arrange a meeting. She also especially wanted Tianli to come along and meet her. The next day, the three had just sat down at a hotel in Dali, Nanhai District when the police seemed to appear out of nowhere to arrest them. After this, Tianli never returned home, having been detained by the Nanhai police on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power. Tianli’s circumstance is the same as Su Changlan’s, and even now Tianli is not allowed to meet with a lawyer.