David Cowhig’s Translation Site – 2022: Zhou Shifeng on 2015 China’s Rights Lawyers Mass Arrest 

2022: Zhou Shifeng on 2015 China’s Rights Lawyers Mass Arrest 

Below is my translation of Beijing Ruifeng Law Office lawyer Zhou Shifeng’s November 2022 story of his persecution as part of the PRC crackdown on human rights lawyers. Zhou was released in September upon completion of his seven year prison sentence. Zhou’s story appeared on the Civil Rights and Livelihood Minsheng Guancha website on December 7th.

First, some background:

Since July 10, 2015, 233 human rights lawyers and activists have been taken into custody across the country as authorities have accused them of being involved with the activism of the Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, which appears to be at the center of the crackdown. While most of the 200 have been released after being threatened for supporting the firm, 14 remain in custody while 6 others have disappeared, according to the Hong Kong-based NGO Chinese Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. Of the 14, 8 have been criminally detained, 3 have been placed under “designated residential surveillance,” and 3 have been placed under other forms of police custody. Only 1 of these 14 has had access to a lawyer.

“Detaining anyone incommunicado and in secret leaves them at high risk of torture or ill-treatment, especially when they are detained on politicized charges,” said Sophie RichardsonChina director at Human Rights Watch. “Beijing’s blatant failure to guarantee even basic protections for these individuals demonstrates the government’s extraordinary disdain for rule of law.”

Human Rights Watch: July 2015: China: Secretly Detained Lawyers at Risk of Torture. More Than 200 Lawyers Interrogated, 20 Remain in Custody or Missing

2017 New York Times: ‘Flee at Once’: China’s Besieged Human Rights Lawyers
As the global spotlight on the nation’s domestic policies has dimmed, lawyers for dissidents increasingly face a terrible choice: acquiescence or imprisonment.

2022: Frontline Defenders website: ZHOU SHIFENG COMPLETED SENTENCE AND RETURNED TO FAMILY

Fu Zhenghua (Chinese: ???; born 13 March 1955) is a former Chinese politician and public security officer. In March 2013, Fu was appointed as the Deputy Minister of Public Security (minister-level) and Deputy Communist Party Secretary of the Ministry of Public Security. Since 2015, Fu has served concurrently as the head of the 610 Office.[1] He was also appointed as the Minister of Justice in 2018. Fu was known to be a close ally of Sun Lijun, he has come under investigation in October 2021 and was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and removed from public office in March 2022.[2] He was subsequently arrested, tried, and given a suspended death sentence.[3]

Wikipedia article Fu Zhenghua

Sun Lijun (Chinese: ???; born 13 January 1969) is a former Chinese politician and police officer. He was investigated by the Chinese Communist Party‘s anti-graft agency in April 2020.[1] Previously he served as vice-minister of Public Security and vice-president of the China Law Society.[2] Prior to that, he served as director of the First Bureau of Ministry of Public Security, handling domestic political security. And he served as the ministry’s director of the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan Affairs Office and a deputy director of the 610 Office, which was in charge of suppressing Falun Gong practitioners. Sun became the second official at provincial or ministerial level to be investigated by the anti-corruption watchdog in 2020, after Zhang Zhinan, former vice governor of east China’s Fujian province.[3]

Wikipedia article Sun Lijun

 

The arrested lawyers. Their names are listed below.

The Truth about the “Especially Big Incident” of July 9, 2015

 July 9th ??????

by Zhou Shifeng Article Source: Minsheng Guancha Time: 2022-12-07 19:20

 

Zhou Shifeng

I am Zhou Shifeng, a citizen of the People’s Republic of China, ID No. 410522196411180077, former director of the Beijing Ruifeng Law Firm, a doctor of criminal law, and a direct and major victim of persecution in the  July 9th  incident that shocked the world.

Although Fu Sun, who manipulated the case, was sentenced to life imprisonment, the backbone of Fu Sun’s political gang and other active supporters are still in control of judicial power in the political and legal ranks. They continue to trample on the PRC Constitution and human rights, in the July 9, 2015 ‘major incident’ created by Fu Zhenghua and Sun Lijun’s anti-constitution, anti-rule by law and anti-human rights political gang. Without the complete eradication of this political gang, the PRC Constitution and human rights in China cannot be upheld. The shared human rights of freedom, equality, democracy and rule of law will continue to be trampled upon.

Therefore, removing all members of Fu Sun’s political gang and purging their influence is the responsibility of legal practitioners like us to defend the PRC Constitution and uphold shared human rights of freedom, equality, democracy and rule of law. The Chinese people expect that of everyone who defends human rights and justice.

  1. The July 9th Incident

Fu Zhenghua and Sun Lijun of the Ministry of Public Security and their political gang members arranged for public security officers in Beijing, Tianjin, Heilongjiang, Shandong, and Fujian, beginning in the early hours ofJuly 9, 2015 to seize and take to detention one Beijing lawyer after another, including Wang Yu, Zhou Shifeng (director of the Ruifeng Law Firm), Wang Quanzhang, Huang LiqunXie YuandongLi ShuyunLiu SixinXie Yangyi, and Li Heping, as well as  PRC citizens Bao Longjun, Wang Fang, Gao Yue, Zhao Wei, the religious Hu Shigen, as well as Guangzhou lawyer Sui Muqing, Hunan lawyer Xie Yang, and Guangxi lawyer Chen Taihe. Prior to that, twenty other people had been arrested, including Beijing lawyer Liu Jianjun, citizens Wu Gan and Zhai Yanmin. All of them were deprived of the right to hire a lawyer as provided for in PRC law.

In order to prevent lawyers from meeting and obstructing relatives and others from raising questions, within days from July10, 2015, the task force separately forced interviews, illegally summoned and illegally restricted the personal freedom of nearly 1,000 people across China. These people were warned not to intervene in the cases and forbidden to post online, repost or comment online. The detainees were also threatened, “We will arrest whichever lawyer you hire.” This was also the case a lawyer was hired.  The hired lawyer would either threatened, arrested, or had his lawyer’s license revoked.

Manipulated by the Fu-Sun’s group, from July 11 – 18, 2015, many official media in China, under the instruction of the Ministry of Public Security, used materials provided by the police to completely distort and turn upside-down the facts about me,  the Ruifeng Law Office, Liu Sixin and Wang Yu.  They convened a Cultural Revolution-style parade of public trials against me and the Ruifeng Law Office, Liu Sixin and Wang Yu on Chinese Central Television [CCTV] and other media. Lawyers and many citizens across China signed letters of complaint against Fu Zhenghua, Sun Lijun’s gang system and official media reporters. These letters of complaint were all futile.

The July 9th case fabricated by Fu’s and Sun’s groups was a blatant violation of the spirit of the PRC Constitution, in blatant opposition to the Chinese Central Government’s strategic decision to comprehensively follow the rule of law, and an egregious act that damaged China’s judicial reputation and has had an extremely bad impact on the international community. The July 9th case was followed for many years by distinguished persons, mainstream media and self-published online media from many countries around the world until I was released from prison on September 24,2022. That day the Chinese media published a photo of me coming out of prison together with a photo of Fu Zhenghua, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment at the same time, with the headline “Zhou Shifeng, the “main criminal” of the July 9th case had been released from prison and returned home.  The July 9th case was a particularly significant and bad political, legal and human rights event in world history.

Although Fu and Sun were brought to justice, the heirs of these two men still hold judicial power and continue to do evil in the name of the law, trampling on the PRC Constitution and basic human rights.I and other persecuted victims of the  July 9th  incident have repeatedly filed complaints against this anti-constitutional and anti-human rights group with various authorities, but to date there has been no legitimate response. Not only that, but many people who have defended the PRC Constitution and human rights are still being illegally imprisoned in the name of the law. The so-called July 9th  Task Force is in fact a group of Fu Sun who trampled on the Constitution and human rights. The rest of that group still illegally holds onto a large amount of property seized from the victims and illegally obstructs the persecuted from filing complaints. Even during the “education and rectification of the political and legal forces ” launched by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 2021, this huge political group continued to defy the spirit of the Communist Party Central Committee and oppose its campaign to promote the “education and rectification of the political and legal forces”. After the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Fu Zhenghua and Sun Lijun’s anti-constitution, anti-rule of law and anti-human rights group showed no signs of any restraint.

II.  Causes of the  July 9th  Incident

July 9th  was a brutal, tragic and inhumane bloody persecution of me, the Beijing Ruifeng Law Firm and the forces of light and justice represented by other human rights defenders by the dark and evil forces represented by Fu Sun’s political gang, the specific causes of which are outlined below.

(1) I was persecuted by Fu Sun’s group after successfully defending Zhang Miao, a reporter’s assistant for the German Times Weekly.

At nearly 11:00 P.M..on the night of July 9, 2015, Zhang Miao, a reporter’s assistant for the German publication Die Zeit who had been detained for nine months in the Tongzhou Branch Detention Center of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, was acquitted of all charges. As Zhang Miao’s defense lawyer, I pointed out that the public security authorities had kept Zhang Miao in a “black jail” for more than a month, during which he was not allowed to sleep for three days and four nights.  This  is typical of illegal detention and torture, and is prohibited by Chinese law.

So, a few hours after Zhang Miao’s release, on the morning of July10, I was resting with my client and his family and friends at the Seven Days Hotel in Songzhuang when the door to my room was kicked in. Without showing any documents or giving any reason, I was taken to the illegally established black prison with a black hood, handcuffed behind my back, my mouth taped shut, and my head covered with clothing. The illegal abduction and removal of the lawyer even before the lawyer departed from the side of his client and his family and friends is a blatant violation of the PRC Constitution as well of the strategic decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to follow the rule of law comprehensively. This also tramples upon the basic norms of international relations and a blatant insult and provocation to Germany, the European Union and to the Chinese people themselves.

It was my job as a lawyer to successfully defend my client Zhang Miao. But the Fu-Sun Group held a grudge against me because of this and it was one of the main reasons they concocted the  July 9th  Incident. In the single room where I was held in secret, they used torture on me, repeatedly demanding who had entrusted me with the representation of Zhang Miao’s case and how much the representation fee was, and also retrieved all the official letters and power of attorney left by Ruifeng Law Office with the public security authorities, the detention center and the procuratorial authorities. They openly said (with uninterrupted video as proof), “You purposely set yourself on a course for death and still personally represented Zhang Miao’s case,” and “If it weren’t for the Die Zeit  Zhang Miao case we wouldn’t have screwed you and the Ruifeng Law Office, and there wouldn’t have been the July 9th case.”

Public security repeatedly interrogated all the Germans related to the case, such as the First Secretary of the German Embassy in China, An Shuna,  An Kexin of Die Zeit, the journalist Kai of the Süddeutsche Zeitung were all subjected to this. The Fu-Sun group tried to find out the so-called clues of the case from them, but eventually came up with nothing. After some time, the case officer said, “Your case has worked in your favor, the Prime Minister visited Germany, advertised German beer and bought German road repair machines.” Germany is the leader of the European Union and places a high value on human rights. The arrest of Zhang Miao of Die Zeit aroused great concern in Germany, the European Union, and the United States. When Zhang Miao was acquitted, the joy of the people over the Zhang Miao’s case did not last even a night, as Zhang Miao’s lawyer was arrested and the  July 9th Incident  broke out, shocking the entire world.

It was my honor as a lawyer to use the law to defend the rights and dignity of my client without fearing the threats of Fu Sun’s gang, and to defend the seriousness of the law by using a high level of defense to let my client regain his freedom. To the world, the victory of  Zhang Miao of the German publication Die Zeit case was a victory of lawyers using the law to guard their belief in human rights and justice. That case upheld the dignity of China’s constitution and laws and promoted China’s international image of following the rule of law and protecting human rights. However, such a major historical event with wide domestic and international influence was then tarnished by the Fu-Sun gang. The  July 9th case created by the Fu-Sun gang attracted intense worldwide attention that has lasted for years and has had an extremely bad negative impact on China’s reputation.

The  July 9th  case perpetrated by Fu Zhenghua and Sun Lijun ‘s gang has not only caused my personal family to suffer huge moral and financial losses, but has also separated hundreds of lawyers and citizens from their loved ones. These people have been stalked and harassed for years and lost their jobs and normal lives.

(2)    Another reason why Fu Sun’s group created the July 9th  case is that over the years, Ruifeng and I, upholding our humanitarian beliefs of kindness, generosity, compassion and justice, have taken up our social responsibility to help those in need and represented a series of human rights cases.

1. Over the years, on behalf of the Ruifeng Law Office, I have accepted people and lawyers from all walks of life who have suffered from oppression. These people are all promoters of social progress. My actions upset Fu Sun’s group. The Ruifeng Law Firm has opened its doors to PRC citizens like Wu Jian, Du Dao Bin, Zhang Yaojie, lawyers Liu Xiaoyuan, Wang Quanzhang, Cheng Hai, Wang Yu, Li Yuhan, Liu Sixin, a postdoctoral fellow, and many other prominent social figures. This provided these people opportunities to survive and work so that they can continue to realize their ideals of defending human rights and justice. This became one of my crimes of subverting state power.

2. The Ruifeng Law Firm has represented many Chinese petitioners for redress of grievances, cases of Falun Gong and other prominent people, and has been attacked by Fu Sun’s group as a hype of hot events. From its inception to 2007-2015, when the July 9th case broke out, Ruifeng represented almost all major human rights cases in China: the Sanlu tainted milk powder case, the revocation of the illegal training base (also known as the black prison) in Jiansanjiang, Heilongjiang, as well as the Cao Shunli case, the Fan Mugen case, the Ye Hongxia case, the Tianli case, the Zhu Chengzhi case, the Ji Zhongxing case, the Yang Jia case, the Ai Weiwei case, the Ilham Tohti case, the Wu Jolai case, the Xia Yeliang case, the Tieliu case, and so on. Our lawyers represented these clients after they heard of Ruifeng Office’s reputation. This was used by Fu-Sun gang as evidence of subversion of state power by Ruifeng and me.

In the July 9th special case, the task force wantonly distorted the cases I represented and used threats and arrests of my clients in an attempt to get them to frame me. My clients refused to cooperate.

Three days before the 2015 Chinese New Year, while people all over China were rushing home  to celebrate the New Year, I went thousands of kilometers away to meet my client at Putian Detention Center in Fujian. I went to Guanxian County, Shandong Province, on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year holiday, in order to meet my client at the detention center the next day at the first opportunity. This lawyer’s dedication and sense of responsibility was repeatedly investigated by the July 9th task force as a suspicion of subversion of state power.  They made several trips to Putian and Guanxian in an attempt to persuade my client to falsely accuse me. The Putian client said, “Lawyer Zhou is so dedicated and professional in his practice that he can’t be charged with anything.” Guanxian parties said : “Lawyer Zhou without even looking at his notes,  presented half an hour of defense, the audience, despite interference from the bailiff, and spontaneous warm applause twelve times. Also outside the courtroom with three minutes to defuse a conflict between the masses. There was no way the prosecution could make its case..”

When Inner Mongolia’s Ordos police arrested the civilian workers they believed to be counterfeiting  trademarks from Guangzhou to the Ordos Detention Center in 2013, public security officers took the printed interrogation transcripts and forced the so-called suspects to sign them. They threatened, “If you don’t sign this, you will be thrown into the desert and buried alive.” Before the prosecution, the prosecutor went to the detention center and asked them if the police had forced them to confess, and their answer was “yes”. Therefore the prosecutor wrote “no” in the interrogation transcript.

In the course of the court’s arguments, the parties challenged this evidence. The prosecutor listened to his client’s cross-examination and said in anger: “No probation can be imposed.” The parties, all of whom were migrant workers, and one of the women had a few-month-old breast-feeding baby at home, were sentenced to solid prison terms. The court imposed fines equal to the value of the property seized from the parties. The prosecutor illegally blocked the lawyer’s intervention for three months during the prosecution phase at the prosecutor’s office. When I signed the petition after the trial, I said that I wanted to file a complaint against the above illegal actions of the prosecution. After I was arrested CCTV said I was causing a courtroom disturbance. The task force said I had a bad attitude in court and had subverted state power.

In 2014 I spent a few hours recovering 50 million RMB in back wages for a group of migrant workers in Guangdong that I had not been able to recover for years. The task force hurried to Zhongshan in Guangdong and Ordos in Inner Mongolia to investigate whether I had pounded on the table during discussions with the Ordos Group, the party who owed wages. If I had done so, they would have charged me with subverting state power. It turned out that I had not pounded the table. When one plan failed, they concocted another. In order to stop me from collecting my lawyer’s fee, the task force took me from Zhongshan to Ordos Detention Center where I was held for nearly a year.  Then they caused the client, who was originally going to pay my lawyer’s fee, to go into hiding and not answer my phone calls after being released from detention. The Hexi Branch of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau continued to illegally seize my representation contract after my release, preventing me from exercising my right to recover my representation fees.

The task force followed their usual tactic of looking for some women they could force to talk me up, detain me and then get them to testify about having an inappropriate relationship with me. This they all vehemently denied. .Now these women want to hold the task force criminally and civilly liable. In 2015I, as an outstanding lawyer and lawyer’s representative in Beijing, I took part in a lawyers’ congress at the Beijing Military District Guest House, where I had registered for housing. The task force, using their nasty psychology, guessed that I was engaging in improper sexual activities. They had a woman surnamed Sun falsely accuse me of rape.  I immediately wrote a criminal complaint against them for what constituted false accusations and frame-ups and gave it to the task force. The task force, exasperated and downcast, exclaimed, “I have to admit that it’s all false.” But the task force did not hold the false accusers criminally responsible, an act that itself constitutes the crime of favoritism. The task force openly said, “You’re facing [the task force] as hooligans.” A civilian police officer said, “What do you think the task force lacks?” I said, “A lack of humanity.” The civilian police officer replied, “Right!”

3. The Ruifeng has always been concerned about and participated in and supported the reasonable and lawful resolution of major social events, promoting the coexistence of interests and harmony among all sectors of society. For example, Ruifeng Law Office participated in the appeal of Nie Shubin’s case as an advisory group. Wu Gan exposed the video of Xu Chunhe being shot by the railway police, which discredited CCTV’s lie. In Jiangxi Chunping four people were sentenced to death penalty and were acquitted after serving14 years. This was vilified by Fu Sun’s group as subversion of state power.

4.  After the 2008 Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake, I just set up the Ruifeng Law Office.  Everywhere people needed money, but we donated to the people in the disaster area. We gave the largest amount of donations among lawyers. The Ruifeng Law Office and I have provided long-term legal and financial help to many petitioners and people in financial difficulties for free, and we send money or send money to the persecuted people we don’t know every year in the Spring Festival. I decided in 2014 to personally contribute 8 million RMB to set up a social assistance fund to help persecuted family members minors and the elderly, sick and disabled.

I met a certain lady in a wheelchair in a public place and my strong compassion led me to transfer money to her twice, and the matter was investigated by the task force for a long time. This would be regarded as an act of kindness in any society, but it aroused the cynicism of Fu Sun’s group against me and tried to be used as evidence of my subversion of state power.

(3) The July 9th Incident  was a retaliation by Fu-Sun gang against me and the Ruifeng Law Firm for defending citizens’ rights and constitutional dignity, overturning the unjust case, and reporting the wrongdoing of the Judicial Bureau.

( 1 ) Wu Gan held a sign in front of the Jiangxi Provincial High Court to protest the court’s long-standing refusal to allow lawyers to copy files in accordance with the law.

Back in 2002, a case of intentional murder, robbery, rape, and extortion occurred in Jiangxi. After several trials, citizens Huang Zhiqiang, Fang Chunping, Cheng Fagen and Cheng Lihe were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the provincial high court. The four defendants have been complaining for years. Their lawyers, however, have been prevented by the court from copying the case files as is their right according to the law. In May 2015, the lawyers held signs at the entrance of the Jiangxi Provincial High Court for over ten consecutive days, asking for copies of the files. The lawyers are still not allowed to copy the case file. The East Lake Branch of Nanchang Public Security Bureau considered Wu Gan’s behavior to be in violation of the Public Security Management Punishment Law and imposed a ten-day administrative detention penalty on Wu Gan. Earlier, Wu Gan exposed the truth about Xu Chunhe’s shooting by the railway police in the Qing’an incident in Heilongjiang.  This made the original CCTV broadcast of Xu Chunhe’s shooting case widely condemned by the society.  Administrative detention would have been a very minor matter, but CCTV made a special report on the incident of Wu Gan’s lifting in a primetime special section on the 25th. The report distorted the facts, shifted the blame and smeared and vilified Wu Gan.

As a lawyer with good insight into social issues, I realized that this incident must have an unusual social background and that behind it must lie the political intrigues of certain people. This is because of the case of citizens Huang Zhiqiang, Fang Chunping, Cheng Fagen and Cheng Lihe, who were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the provincial high court mentioned earlier. This was most likely an unjust and false case created by the system of certain groups of leaders of the former central government. The lawyer and Wu Gan wanted to take the opportunity of the Decision of the CPC Central Committee on Several Major Issues in Comprehensively Promoting the Rule of Law, adopted at the Fourth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, to promote the vindication of wrongful convictions. However, the central government’s state media,  manipulated by Fu Sun, distorted the facts about Wu Gan’s exercise of his constitutional civil rights and his defense of justice.  This was Fu Sun’s apparent attempt to kill several birds with one stone: on the one hand, to shield certain leaders of the former Central Committee and gang members who were still in high positions at the time, and on the other hand, to suppress Wu Gan and the Ruifeng Law Office.

On May 26, Xie Yuandong, a lawyer and former CCTV reporter at Ruifeng Institute, wrote a Weibo article “Refutation of CCTV’s Report on the Truth about the Detention of Netizen “Super Vulgar Butcher “ Wu Gan” , attacking the CCTV report and arguing that Wu Gan’s actions were part of the exercise of his constitutional right to protect the rights of state organs and their personnel. The PRC Constitution grants citizens the right to criticize and supervise state organs and their staff. Under Xie Yuandong’s comment, I wrote, “CCTV’s actions have severed the flesh-and-blood ties with the people that President Xi Jinping has worked so hard to establish. CCTV’s report has severed the flesh-and-blood ties with the people established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China”. As the saying goes, “Confucius wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals, and rebellious officials and traitors became afraid. This sentence draws a clear line between the CPC Central Committee after the 18th National Congress and the CCTV reports manipulated by the Fu-Sun gang as well as between the CPC Central Committee and this unjust case. This is another fundamental reason for the  July 9th mega-event. On May 27, the day after the commentary was published, Wu Gan was transferred from administrative detention to criminal detention. Thus the Fu Sun group thus kicked off a mass arrest of me and the Frontier Institute and the lawyers and humanists who had stood in solidarity with us.

The case officers and relevant leaders of Fu Sun gang members in the relevant provinces and cities and public prosecution and law departments know very well that I and Ruifeng Law Firm were persecuted for upholding the spirit of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China after the 18th National Congress of the Constitution and the rule of law.

After I was illegally grabbed and detained on July 10, 2015, I said to the Beijing public security officers who interrogated me, “Wu Gan protested against not allowing lawyers to read the files. This is the case of the four people killed and raped in Jiangxi Province. Those files were made by the gang system of certain former central leaders.  This is probably an erroneous death sentence. You can’t let the current leaders take the blame for this and let them fall into a thousand years of disrepute. The original leader has already been arrested, so why are you guys getting into this mess?” They said, “It is impossible for this leader to be arrested.” I said, “You guys will find out about it.” After a few days, the two public security officers told me, “Our leader said he was grateful to Zhou Shifeng for giving us a heads-up. We won’t get into this mess, and if that side (referring to the Tianjin Public Security Bureau) has to convict Zhou Shifeng of something, we’ll go over there (to negotiate).”So later in the distorted reports of the July 9th case in the central media, there was no mention of the matter of Wu Gan holding up a sign at the Jiangxi Provincial High Court. The content of this interrogation can be proven not only by the two Beijing public security case officers, but also by their direct leaders who met and discussed it. There is also uninterrupted video surveillance to prove it.

A few months later, the Tianjin public security authorities actually used my views on “building a Chinese national family and building a rich, strong, democratic and civilized China” as evidence of my subversion of state power when I was interviewed by the media in May 2015 in connection with Wu Gan’s criminal detention. The Tianjin procuratorial authorities and the trial authorities completely adopted this evidence of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau. This completely turned the facts upside-down and confused right and wrong. It proves the stupidity and barbarism of the Tianjin public prosecution and law enforcement, and their blatant trampling on human rights, as well as their being the backbone of Fu Sun’s group, and their blatant opposition to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China after the 18th National Congress.

On December 21,2016, the Jiangxi Provincial High People’s Court issued criminal verdict No.(2016) Gan Jinyuan Zai1, which found Jiangxi Xi Chunping, the four defendants, not guilty. If Wu Gan had not raised a protest, and if I had not exposed the political attempts of Fu Sun’s group, the case, even if vindicated, would have been delayed until several years later, which would have left the leadership collective after the 18th National Congress to carry this historical charge together with the original leadership.

2. The Ruifeng Law Office and I signed a report on the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice’s confrontation with the national line after the 18th National Congress, its continued implementation of the illegal policies formulated to please Bo Xilai. Its public linr was “The Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice openly confronts the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China”, and the criminal fact that the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice demanded a bribe of 10 million yuan from the Bar Association. In 2014, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice illegally obstructed Ruifeng Law Office from passing its annual inspection, and only after Ruifeng sued did it stop. The  July 9th  Task Force investigated and verified these facts, but not only did it not hold the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice criminally responsible for abusing its power and retaliating against it, and politically disloyal to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China after the 18th National Congress. Not only that, but it also colluded with them to frame me and Ruifeng.

III. The  July 9th Task Force’s persecution methods against me and Ruifeng Law Office and other defenders of the rule of law who oppose them

(i) During the public security investigation stage

  1. Without any legal formalities, they illegally arrested Chinese citizens

On July 10, 2015, I was still sleeping when the door of my room was kicked open by a kick, and in came several plainclothesmen. Without showing any documents or legal papers, one of whom claimed to be from the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, and without being told to put handcuffs and a black headgear on me, glued my mouth with a tape. They kidnapped me and took me to their car. They took me to the entrance of the Beijing Detention Centre and shouted several times, “Where are you sending them?” No one paid any attention. I was later taken to a room on the third floor of what was probably a hotel. Soon two men came without uniforms, without showing any papers, claiming to be Beijing Public Security Bureau police, and one of them, an older man, was in charge of interrogating me for almost two months afterwards. Three days later, the man who identified himself as a civilian police officer from the Tianjin Public Security Bureau (more than six months later, when he answered the phone, I learned that he was Liu Xiaoyu, a civilian police officer from the Hexi District of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau).  He had brought several large stacks of blank legal documents used by public security at various stages.  The task force did not even have blank legal procedures when they arrested me.

The two civilian police officers in Beijing and Liu Xiaoyu of the Tianjin Hexi District Public Security Bureau, as well as the other civilian police officers who participated in my arrest together, and the people who provided these blank legal documents, were obliged to give an account of this major crime. The handwriting identification, the difference in time between the official seal on the instruments and what was written on them, can be identified. The others were detained, detained, placed under residential surveillance, searched, investigated, arrested on execution, etc., all with blank legal instruments.

This is absolutely unacceptable in any country, whether for law enforcement or the general public. The Constitution of the People’s Republic of China and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights both emphasize the guarantee of basic human rights. Respect for and protection of human rights is a common value of mankind. Such blatant trampling on the PRC Constitution and laws, confronting the Party’s strategic decision to comprehensively follow the rule of law, and the criminal act of violating human rights with solid evidence, must be seriously investigated and punished by the relevant authorities.

2. The threat of violence plus corporal punishment is the essence of torture. The case officers repeatedly verbally abused and threatened me: “Zhou Shifeng, I’ll skin you alive!” They also delineated a small square on the floor of less than half a square meter and forced me to sit in this small square for nine and a half hours every day, often coming late at night to interrogate me. I don’t know if I slept or how long I slept each day, but I had no strength and I had to lower my voice to the lowest level to save my energy.

3. I was kept in a “black jail”. Not only did my family and the community not know where I was being held, but I myself did not know.  Even the person in charge of the Hexi Branch of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau, which issued the illegal blank documents, did not know. Nor did the government, the National People’s Congress, the discipline inspection and supervision, and the procuratorial organs, which were responsible for supervising the public security know because this was not a legal place of detention. It was a “black jail”. “I was transferred to this unknown place in Tianjin. After I was transferred to this unknown “black jail” in Tianjin, the public security officer in charge of the case, surnamed Shi, complained, “Find a black room, puta black hood on them, and arrest whoever you want, that’s what a black prison means.” There was another case officer, Liu Xiaoyu, present and a 24-hour HD camera available as evidence.

4.  They illegally deprive us of our right to a lawyer and the lawyer’s right to meet with his client in accordance with the law. Lawyers who have been acting in solidarity and defending us in accordance with the law have been systematically persecuted by Fu Sun’s group. In the “black jail”, I was first threatened to make up “struggle to have a good attitude and not to hire a lawyer”. At the same time, the lawyers hired by the family were also threatened and not allowed to represent the July 9th case. During her detention, Li Shuyun offered to hire our lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan as her advocate. The case officer said, “We will arrest whoever you hire to represent you.” They also refused to serve the relatives with a notice of coercive measures. This is a violation of the relatives’ right to know and deprives the detainees of their right to a timely defense in accordance with the law.

A few days afterJuly10, 2015, defense lawyers for detainees such as Wang Yu, Li Heping, Liu Sixin, and Gao Yue rushed to Beijing and Tianjin to find the specific July 9th case authorities and demand to meet with the detainees in accordance with the law. The public security officials all said they did not know. Liu Shuqing and other defense lawyers tried to meet with Li Heping, but were stopped by the police. Yang Jinzhu was entrusted to defend me, but he was surrounded by public security officers at home, and Yang fought to the death before he could travel to Tianjin. When I arrived in Tianjin, the case officers blocked Yang Jinzhu’s lawyer from meeting me, and Yang protested by turning somersaults and dropping his lawyer’s card in front of the Tianjin Municipal Procuratorate. Wang Shaoguang, another lawyer hired by my family, was also illegally prevented from meeting with me. I myself repeatedly asked for a lawyer, and after several months I was allowed to write a written power of attorney, but was told a month later that I was not allowed to hire a lawyer.

After I was arrested, I was overwhelmed with anger when the case officer said that lawyers had been assigned to each of you. However, in order to give feedback about my situation to the Ruifeng Law Office and to my family and community who did not know anything about me, I had to sign a power of attorney agreement for the investigation stage with the lawyer they assigned when I could not hire a lawyer. In April 2016, I strongly demanded to change their assigned lawyer. On May 1, the case officer Liu Xiaoyu and a person who appeared to be the leader came to the detention center and said that they could not change the lawyer. I still fought strongly to do so. By June 4 those two people came to the detention center again for this matter and refused my request. Three days before the trial, the case officer Liu Xiaoyu and police officer Shi illegally entered the detention center under the leadership of the detention center’s director Huang, slipped me their printed lawyer’s commission instructions and insisted that I sign them. Even when I arrived at the prison, Ren Yi, the former deputy director of the tenth ward who was in charge of supervising me, said that he would not send me a letter as long as I raised the matter of appointing a lawyer to file a complaint on my behalf in a letter to my family. And so he did.

Many lawyers have had their lawyer’s licenses revoked or even been arrested and sentenced for representing and showing solidarity with the lawyers and human rights defenders arrested in the July 9th Incident . Lawyers apply for reconsideration, and the Ministry of Justice does not accept them. Lawsuits to the courts were not accepted by the courts. Many lawyers were also illegally imprisoned. Fu Sun’s group is still rampant, still trampling on constitutional law under the guise of law, and openly confronting the strategic decision proposed by the State to comprehensively follow the rule of law.

5. The Tianjin Public Security Bureau manufactured false evidence. During the interrogation process, the Tianjin Public Security Bureau made up its own transcript of my interrogation without my saying a word. They also said that I had made the Weibo comments posted by other people. Not only did they know that I didn’t say it, they also knew that I hadn’t read it.

6.  In 2015, I responded to the central government’s decision not to intervene in individual cases by criticizing the leader of a political and legal committee in Baoding for illegally interfering in individual cases. This act was vilified by the task force as discrediting the socialist justice system with Chinese characteristics. My criticism of the Mancheng County Court judges for illegally overrunning their cases was attacked as smearing the image of judges. My reasonable views on the jurisdictional system of court cases at that time were vilified as dissatisfaction with the socialist system.

7. The  July 9th task force tampered with one sentence of the original recording as the core evidence against me. This is the only core evidence that convicted everyone in the entire July 9th mega-case. This evidence is also the basis for the brutal persecution of people from all walks of life in solidarity with the  July 9th community by Fu Sun’s group after July 9th . Although they tampered with the core textual evidence, they could not change the original recording. What is this phrase? And how did they tamper with this important piece of evidence?

After I was illegally arrested, the case officer asked me several times what each person had said at the gathering at the Tujia Restaurant in February 2015. I said it had been a long time and I really couldn’t remember. They then took out the written words and showed them to me. I read it and did not endorse it. Liu Xiaoyu then forged the only important evidence to convict me. The interrogation transcripts , which were made up out of thin air without me saying a word, and then read them to me, and I could only write “my understanding” according to the interrogation transcripts they made up which were completely opposite to the facts “. In this way, a complete chain of false evidence was formed. But they couldn’t change the original recording. The original recording of our meeting was the complete opposite of the transcript.

I had just previously written an article on “That the KMT being beaten and forced to retreat to Taiwan was the choice of history and the choice of the people”, and I mentioned this article at the gathering. What I said then was, “The Kuomintang was then divided.” In the original recording, the phrase “the Kuomintang was divided” was changed by Liu Xiaoyu and others in the interrogation transcript to “the Chinese Communist Party was divided.” This altered phrase became the only evidence they had to convict me and the others in the July 9th  case.

This was the only “core evidence” for the conviction of me and Ruifeng and other human rights defenders for subversion of state power in the July 9th  case, and this core evidence was forged!

8. Making an ordinary dinner conversation into a “meeting to subvert state power”. In the dinner, a few ordinary friends and colleagues chatted with each other, and there was no contact afterwards. It was Fu Sun’s group that opposed the PRC constitution, opposed rule by law, and opposed humaneness that had fabricated this ordinary dinner at the Tujia restaurant transforming it into a meeting to subvert state power. During the gathering, I mainly talked about two things: first, the one-child family planning policy, which the state should adjust, otherwise it will bring many problems to individuals, families and the country; second, the state allocates so much legal aid money every year to help people in financial difficulties to file lawsuits. But these funds have become donkey meat when they reach the grassroots. What is needed is to apply for this information to be disclosed in order to monitor the destination of these funds.

9. The Tianjin public security officers handling the case faked the names and work units of other police officers. From the very beginning, I suspected that the two case officers of the Hexi Branch of the Tianjin Public Security Bureau were fake. This was because each time they asked me to sign the interrogation transcript and then took it back for them to sign again. In order to calm them down, I did not say anything. Ten months after I was arrested, there were already hundreds of interrogation transcripts, and they could no longer change this evidence. Once they asked me to sign and retract them as usual, and when they did, I deliberately said that the date was wrongly written, and they were so alarmed but helpless that they had to bring the interrogation transcript to me and ask me to amend it. At this point my suspicions were definitely confirmed. The names of the police officers and work units signed on top of the interrogation transcript were all fake. The reason for impersonating the names of other police officers and units is that they know that the various investigative powers such as July 9th arrests, searches and interrogations had no legal justification. They did this for fear that they would be held legally responsible for violating human rights and bending the law at home and abroad in the future. Such a serious criminal act by the police is absolutely not allowed in any country, be it China, the United States or North Korea.

10. The jurisdiction of the Tianjin July 9th Task Force over this case is itself illegal, and is the result of direct manipulation by Fu Sun in the exercise of his special rights. The Tianjin Public Prosecutor’s Office has no jurisdiction over this case at all. After the illegal arrest of us, the top management of Fu Sun’s group issued an additional “Note of the Ministry of Public Security on the Designation of Jurisdiction over Cases of Suspected Crimes of Some Staff of Beijing Ruifeng Law Office” for this task force, blatantly endorsing the illegal actions of the Tianjin task force. This is evidence of collusion between the Fu-Sun gang’s senior management and the Tianjin task force. At the same time, the Tianjin Procuratorate and the Tianjin High Court also used the same means to obtain illegal jurisdiction over the case.

(ii) At the stage of public prosecution; the public prosecutor blatantly violated the Constitution and the law and openly confronted the strategic decision of the Central Government to comprehensively follow the rule of law.

( 11 ) Fabrication of interrogation transcripts. The public prosecutor went so far as to fabricate the interrogation transcript without my saying a word.  When I was just about to amend a few words, they forcibly took it away and did not allow amendments.

12. Denying me the right to file a complaint. When I accused the public security organs of violating the Constitution and human rights, they put me in heavy torture devices. When I asked the public prosecutors to record my complaint or to allow me to write it, I was refused.

13. Before the trial, I was forced to speak in court as they had requested. Two nights before the trial, public prosecutors Gong Ning and Sheng Guowen illegally entered the detention center and forced me to describe an ordinary dinner at a Tujia restaurant as an “anti-establishment meeting”. During the trial, the trial judge asked me if I knew what kind of gathering it was, and I said that I did not know before, but now I knew that it was an “anti-establishment gathering”. The court’s verdict was again written as a “meeting to subvert state power”.

14. Deliberately distorting the facts, the court slandered the fact that a representative of the workers at the gathering wanted to ask me to send a lawyer to help the laid-off workers defend their rights as planning a labor movement.

(c) At the trial stage; not only the trial officials but also public security officers and prosecutors seriously trampled on the Constitution and the law.Law enforcement officers disregarded the dignity of the law, created the  July 9th shocking case, confronted President Xi Jinping for the benefit of political gangs, and discredited China’s constitutional law and international image.

15. Everyone thought that we had committed no crime, but for the benefit of the political gangs, the task force blatantly defied the constitutional law and President Xi Jinping’s instructions. Public security officers Shi and Liu Xiaoyu both said to me, “All the people who have studied the dossier materials in this case say that you do not constitute any crime. President Xi Jinping Xi has twice given instructions: as long as no serious harm is caused, all are treated leniently. The meaning is clear and demands that people be released. But we feel that our leaders are just going against President Xi Jinping.” The evidence proves that the “our leaders” they refer to are Sun Lijun and Fu Zhenghua and their associates in leadership positions on the political and legal fronts.

16. The trial judge forced me to confess guilt before the trial even began. Before the trial, the judge threatened me: “Give up your illusions and confess. I’ve already read it on Guangming Ribao online website, it says right there,  officially, that you committed a crime.”

17.  The core evidence was deliberately left out of the defendant’ s cross-examination. During the court’s cross-examination, I said in my cross-examination of the tampered audio evidence, “Everything is subject to the original recording.” The court judges were greatly alarmed, and they knew that if the trial went according to the original recording, no one involved in the  July 9th  incident would be guilty of a crime. So my cross-examination of that core evidence was deliberately left out of the verdict. There is a public video of the court hearing, which they could not change, where you can see my cross-examination.

18. They deprived me of my right to make a final statement in court. Before the trial, public security officers Liu Xiaoyu and Shi, led by the director Huang, illegally entered the detention center and forced me to sign the final statement they had written for the court. The public security officers gave the court the final statement they had written themselves. Seeing that I would not speak in accordance with this forged final statement, the trial judge became furious and simply deprived me of my right to make a final statement.

19.  They deprived me of my right to appeal. In order to deprive me of my right to appeal, which is a legal right of the defendant, the court produced a pseudo “service of judgment” and “return receipt for service of judgment” for me. The official service of the document included a section asking the defendant “whether to appeal”, and a transcript of the service had to be made. However, the Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate Court, in order to illegally deprive me of my right to appeal, specially produced a pseudo “service document” without the column of “whether to appeal” and without a “service transcript”. The “service of process” was not made. After I was released from prison, I learned that after my trial, CCTV had reported that “Zhou Shifeng confessed to the crime and gave up his appeal”, which was completely inconsistent with the facts.

20. The public security and procuratorial authorities have stigmatized lawyers’ normal representation of cases, performing their duties as lawyers, defending the legitimate rights and interests of their clients, and fighting against unlawful acts such as confrontation with state organs and discrediting the judicial system with Chinese characteristics. The court’s verdict cited several instances of public security and procuratorial organs turning the facts upside-down and smearing the legitimate and lawful acts of lawyers in representing their clients in cases as evidence that they were guilty of a crime. And this only shows that they were criminal gangs that trampled on the constitution and the law.

IV.  The Deputy secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Political and Legal Committee, the Deputy President of the Municipal High Court and the Deputy Procurator of the Municipal Procuratorate together trampled on the PRC Constitution and laws, rushed to the front line to create unjust and false cases, and opposed the strategic decision of the Central Government to comprehensively follow the rule of law, and opposed the important instructions of President Xi Jinping.

21. The PRC Constitution clearly stipulates that the people’s courts are the judicial organs of the PRC state. However, the verdicts of Zhou Shifeng and those involved in the July 9th case were illegally handed down in the lounge by Zhang Liang, Deputy Secretary of the Tianjin Political and Legal Committee, Li Ying, Deputy President of the Tianjin High Court, and Bian Xuewen, Deputy Procurator-General of the Tianjin Procuratorate. This was an egregious act that seriously tramples on the PRC Constitution.

22. Sentencing before Trial, A Fake Trial and A Fake Court.

On August 4, 2016, the court was briefly adjourned in the middle of the session. In the temporary lounge, Zhang Liang, Li Ying, and Bian Xuewen discussed with me whether it was okay to sentence me to seven years, saying that the sentence of a few years had nothing to do with me, but was just a number, and that after the sentence, they would go through the motions in prison and then get out on special parole. In the end the three of them agreed to sentence me to seven years in prison. Thus, I was convicted of “subversion of State power” and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment by these three people in the lounge rather than in the courtroom, rather than by the court judge.

Just before that, on July 24th, before the exchange of evidence at the court’s pre-trial meeting (the pre-trial evidence exchange took place on July 27th), Zhang Liang and Bian Xuewen threatened me and prevented me from speaking. I did not know who they were at the time, so I asked them their surnames. They said, “If you knew my name, you’d be out of here.” He said that in the exact same tone of that a gangster uses. Even the emperors of old didn’t dare pronounce such overbearing words. Yet that came from the mouth of the Secretary-General of the Tianjin Political and Legal Committee.

By the five minutes before the exchange of evidence on the 27th, Li Ying and Bian Xuewen deceived me once again saying, “You and your family have not seen each other for a long time, you can go out and reunite with your family if you confess.” After the evidence exchange the bailiff said to me on the way to take me to the detention center, “How come you are such a bid deal?! The central leaders are here.” At this time Fu Zhenghua or Sun Lijun should have been there watching via video. I confirmed this through Li Heping’s lawyer after he was released from prison.

Li Heping’s case went to trial on April 25, 2017. The verdict was handed down on the 28th. Four days before the trial, on April 21, leaders of the Tianjin Political and Legal Committee, judges, prosecutors, public security and other leaders negotiated and rehearsed with him several times. Presiding judge Lin Kun repeatedly and Li Heping said, “You have to give in. You need to give up. We have no choice. This decision is being pressed on us from above. During the day, Li Ying, the Vice President of the Court, and other leaders of the July 9th task force repeatedly asked the people in the inner room for instructions.  The people inside disagreed the first few times and negotiated again to reach an agreement on the roles that they would perform during the court hearing. Li Ying took the final printout and asked for instructions from the people inside. When the person inside poked his head out, Li Heping was also looking in, and Li Heping said that the person he saw was Sun Lijun, who had appeared on TV many times.

This is ironclad evidence that the Tianjin July 9th Task Force and Sun Lijun and Fu Zhenghua colluded with each other and worked together to persecute me and the Ruifeng Law Office, as well as other human rights defenders, and that they worked together to trample on the PRC Constitution and human rights.

IV. The Tianjin Municipality Tenth Prison District also openly sided with the opponents rule by law.  They actively joined the Tianjin crime syndicate that opposed the PRC Constitution and rule by law and opposed the education and rectification of the central political and legal forces

23.  Provide a Copy of the Materials Related to the Accusation to the Accused Person.

I wrote papers accusing public security case officer Liu Xiaoyu of multiple serious crimes in 2018.  Prison guards refused to hand over the materials to the relevant departments in accordance  as required by law. In 2019, I wrote papers accusing the July 9th task force of blatantly trampling on the constitutional law.  They were forced to report the materials to their superiors. However, their superiors refused to hand over the material to the relevant authorities. After returning the materials to me, Deputy Superintendent Ren Yi did not even allow me to send the materials myself, and even in 2021, during the education and rectification of the political and legal forces led by the central government, they did not allow me to submit the letters of accusation that I had prepared. When I gave them the materials, they illegally withheld them. I asked another prisoner, Liu Song, to help me drop it off at the disciplinary mailbox, and when Xin Cheng and Sun Lei found out, Xin and Sun made up reasons to physically punish Liu Song for half a month. At the end of 2021, when the national prison rotation tour was underway, the other two sub-districts of the tenth prison district in my Tianjin prison posted a notice encouraging complaints. Not only did they not post this notice in the high-security sub-district where I was, but they also told other prisoners. “Absolutely no one must let Zhou Shifeng or Liu Song know.”

In fact, from the moment I began to press charges, Tianjin Prison began to retaliate against me by illegally withholding my correspondence. Originally, prison guard Ren Yi said he would give me all the letters, but when they saw that I was suing, they withheld most of the letters until I finished my sentence, and even the remittances from my family to me were repeatedly refused.

25. I was not allowed to make phone calls to my family. Normally, prisoners make family calls once a month, and twice a month during the epidemic.  Since I was a political prisoner and had been accused by the July 9th Task Force, Ren Yi did not allow me to make a single call during my six years in prison.  Xin Cheng only allowed me to make two calls.

26.  They  refused to commute my sentence according to the law. I got eleven administrative tickets.  According to the regulations, each ticket reduces a sentence by three months. Taking into account that there is an interval between each reduction, I should be given at least two and a half years of early release.  However, not a day was taken off my sentence. .

27.  The prison arranged for me to be surrounded by murderers and people guilty of telecom fraud, drug manufacturing and other crimes 24 hours a day. Ren Yi and Xin Cheng used all kinds of illegal means to abuse me since there was no pretext to carry out disciplinary actions against me because of illegal activities on my part. They did this  in a vain attempt to physically and mentally torture me. Their methods and their inhumanity go beyond the limits of human decency.