Article: Pushing Back Against the Authorities in China ‘According to the Law’

From the NY Times blog………

http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/15/pushing-back-against-the-authorities-in-china-according-to-the-law/?_r=0

After the Chinese government on Monday released on bail five feminists whose 37-day detention in Beijing had become an international cause célèbre, their supporters in China posted a petition online welcoming their release — and making demands:

The authorities must halt criminal investigations into the women, drop charges and stop treating them as “criminally suspicious persons.”

Financially compensate them for wrongful detention, publicly apologize for their treatment and discipline the police officers involved in the case.

Return to two civil society organizations with which three of the women were affiliated [Beijing Yirenping, which defends the rights of women and of people with disabilities, hepatitis B and H.I.V., and Hangzhou Weizhiming, which advocates women’s rights] any property seized by the police during raids on the organizations’ premises.

Return to the women their property, stop harassing feminist activists, protect women’s rights on issues such as domestic violence and sexual harassment. [The women were detained for planning to distribute stickers and leaflets before International Women’s Day highlighting the problem of sexual harassment in public transport.]

So far, said one petition organizer, who requested anonymity for fear of political retribution, nearly 150 people have signed the document. Organizers plan to mail it to the Beijing Public Security Bureau and the Beijing Procuratorate, or state prosecutor’s office.

But the petition is not the only response by supporters of the women, whose plight drew much traffic on social media under the hashtag #FreeTheFive.

This week, a co-founder of Beijing Yirenping, Lu Jun, who had campaigned for the five women’s release, said he was planning to take legal action in response to a police raid on the organization’s offices on March 24.

One of the detained women, Li Tingting, worked at Beijing Yirenping. Two others — Wu Rongrong, now with Weizhiming, and Zheng Churan — had previously worked at Yirenping. The remaining two, Wang Man and Wei Tingting, had worked for groups campaigning for the alleviation of poverty and for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights.

The women are “all peers and good friends of Y.R.P.,” Yirenping said, using shorthand for the name of its organization. Mr. Lu, however, told the news media that “we do not flatter ourselves that Y.R.P. made any out-of-the-ordinary contribution to the anti-sexual harassment advocacy campaign” the women had been  working on.

Mr. Lu’s threat of legal action followed a Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement on Tuesday that said Yirenping could expect unspecified “punishment.”

At a regular news briefing, a ministry spokesman, Hong Lei, said: “As regards the organization they [the five women] are affiliated with, Beijing Yirenping Center, because this organization is suspected of violating the law, it will face punishment.”

The ministry did not provide further details about the law that was violated or about the punishment.

Mr. Lu, who is now based in the United States, responded almost immediately, and his comments included the following:

We welcome the Foreign Ministry to openly discuss Beijing Yirenping Center, as it is an improvement on the March 24 nighttime forced entry and search of our premises.

Yirenping takes the Foreign Ministry accusations seriously and will hire a lawyer to respond in accordance with China’s laws, as well as pursue the March 24 office raid.

Mr. Lu also cited the government’s own resolutions, pointing out that a November 2013 meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee called for everyone to work to reject discrimination, including forms linked to place of residence or gender.

The Chinese government has put in place major legal overhauls aimed at improving justice in the country, under the rubric “rule according to the law” (“????”), which has emboldened people to demand their rights “according to the law.” The phrase is on almost everyone’s lips.

The robust defense of the rights of the five women, and of Weizhiming and Yirenping, is part of a broader trend toward asserting rights through the legal system, which is reflected in a soaring number of court cases.

On her Supreme People’s Court Monitor blog, the legal analyst Susan Finder has explored the Chinese government’s push for “rule according to the law” and its associated overhauls. Judicial changes intended to help people file petitions, often against government officials, “will channel more disputes into the court system,” she wrote.

Ms. Finder noted a sharp rise last year in the number of cases being adjudicated by courts. The number of cases accepted by the courts in 2014, more than 15.6 million, was up about 10 percent from 2013, she wrote, and the numbers are expected to continue their climb.

Follow Didi Kirsten Tatlow on Twitter at @dktatlow.