Much of the recent news
about Chinese civil society has centered around the trial of China’s rights
defense lawyers such as Pu Zhiqiang, Zhou Shifeng, and most recently Xia Lin who was sentenced
to 12 years in prison. All of them deserve a great deal of attention for the
courageous and important work they do in taking on difficult cases.
In this post, I want to
make sure that Chinese labor activists and workers are not neglected because
they are some of the most active and potentially influential civil society
actors in China. Worker strikes and protests are at historically high levels
and worker self-organizing is taking place among Walmart China workers,
teachers, and taxi drivers, among others. In some cases,
workers are assisted in their organizing efforts by activists working for
independent labor NGOs in provinces like Guangdong. Such is the case of the Guangzhou-based Panyu
Workers Center which helped workers in dozens of factories organize and engage
in collective bargaining with their employers. In doing so, they acted in the role of de facto trade unionists doing the job that China's official union, the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), should do but does not. In their most recent successful
case, the Panyu Center helped workers in the Taiwanese-owned Lide Shoe Factory reach a collective agreement with management for economic compensation and unpaid overtime and social
security totaling nearly 120 million yuan.
A number of the staff of
the Panyu Center are now about to go on trial tomorrow (September 26, 2016) at
the Panyu District Court on criminal charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb
social order” which carries a maximum five-year prison sentence. The staff on
trial are Zeng Feiyang, the director, and Zhu Xiaomei. They will be joined by
another labor activist who is not on staff at the Panyu Center, Tang Huanxing.
A third Panyu Center staff member, Meng Han, had his trial postponed when local
prosecutors sent his case sent back to the police for further investigation.
This is a high-profile
case that began on December 3, 2015 when a number of labor activists in
Guangzhou were rounded up and interrogated. Many were later released, with the exception
of staff from the Panyu Center who were clearly the center of this attack.
Unlike previous cases of repression against labor groups which originated from
local authorities, this one showed clear signs of coming from Beijing. Soon
after the crackdown, China’s main state media organs – the New China News
Agency, CCTV and the People’s Daily – launched a smear campaign against the
Panyu Center, and Zeng Feiyang in particular.
I encourage readers of
this blog to follow this case closely to see how authorities of the Communist
Party of China – the party of workers and farmers – treat some of China’s most
prominent labor activists. The Panyu Center staff have already had their rights
violated by the police and other authorities on a number of occasions. The
state smear campaign, which sought to try them in the media, before they even
had a court trial, was only the most brazen example. We also know that the
police did not allow them to see their lawyers for several weeks. In Feiyang’s
case, it took six months before he was able to finally meet with his lawyers. In addition, their family members weresubjected to physical threats and verbal harassment when they did not cooperate
or, in the case of Feiyang’s mother, after she filed a lawsuit against the state media organs for defaming Feiyang's character.
I will be posting more
on this case once we hear the results of the trial. Hopefully, I will have some
good news to report.
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