【Turning Human Rights Day into a Day for Attacking Human Rights Defenders】(10 December 2020)

Today is 10 December 2020, which also marks the United Nations’ Human Rights Day. Since 1950, the United Nations has designated 10 December every year as "Human Rights Day". There will be different types of activities on that day, such as seminars and lectures, allowing different groups to review the status of the protection of human rights in the past and promote the protection of human rights.

 

However, Human Rights Day in 2020 can be said to be quite "extraordinary" for Chinese human rights lawyers. Reports from Stand News 立場新聞 also stated that from the morning of 9 December, a number of human rights lawyers and their family members uploaded clips and news on social media, including Wang Quanzhang, Li Heping, Xie Yanyi, and Yu Wensheng’s wife Xu Yan, alleging that they were blocked by the national security officers at the door of their residence to prevent them from going out. They also stated that, according to the authority's language, they would not be allowed to go out between December 9 and December 10, and even their children wishing to go to school were blocked. Lawyer Tang Jitian was taken away by public security officers as early as on 8 December, and human rights lawyers couple Bao Longjun and Wang Yu were forcibly brought from Beijing to Tianjin on 9 December as well. They still put updates on social media at different times on December 9, but there has been not much updates from then.

 

China was re-elected as a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council in October 2020. Therefore, the outside world expects that China will work hard to implement human rights protection measures and policies to demonstrate its commitment after joining the world's leading human rights institution. As such, China should allow its people to participate in various discussions and promote human rights development activities on Human Rights Day safely and peacefully. Only after the experience of Chinese human rights lawyers in the past two days, China's actions still lag far behind the world's expectations. People are not only obstructed from participating in human rights activities, but they are also detained arbitrarily (forced to stay at home and not allowed to go out) without legal basis.

 

A fair, open, and just judicial system is particularly important to China's overall development. Chinese human rights lawyers are committed to promoting the development of human rights in China through peaceful means and resorting to the judicial system. Their work should be appreciated, yet recently what we see is that they are vigorously suppressed by the authorities. Many lawyers have been monitored, detained, revoked licenses, and imprisoned by the authorities. The vision of human rights lawyers to protect the human rights of the people through the use of the judicial system seems to be far away...

 

As a signatory to many international human rights treaties, and a member of the Human Rights Council, China shall respect its status and to ensure that the protection of human rights is properly demonstrated.