Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Five Chinese labor activists released but not free

May 13, 2020

On May 9, China Labour Bulletin announced that five Chinese labor activists had been released after spending 15 months in detention and another 14 days in quarantine because of the pandemic. The five are Zhang Zhiru, Wu Guijun, Jian Hui, Song Jiahua and He Yuancheng. Guijun, Jian Hui and Yuancheng were well-known in the labor rights community having founded or worked for prominent labor organizations in the south of China. Jiahua, the only female in this group, was a former worker-turned-activist after her experience in 2015 representing workers at the Lide Shoe Factory in one of China's best-known collective bargaining cases.

Since their arrest back in January 2019, we have had little information about their whereabouts or circumstances. It now turns out that they were pressured to dismiss the lawyers of their choosing and accept state-appointed lawyers. Unbeknownst to their families, they were also tried behind closed doors on criminal charges of "gathering a crowd to disturb public order" (聚众扰乱社会秩序罪). Zhiru and Guijun were sentenced to three years imprisonment, suspended for four years, while the others were sentenced to 18 months, suspended for two years. The suspended sentences mean that they will be closely monitored, and their movements restricted, during the period of their suspension and unable to continue their previous work.

Unlike the arrests of five prominent labor activists from Guangdong in December 2015, the arrests of these five activists garnered less international attention, coming in the midst of a string of other arrests of workers and activists, many connected to the high-profile Jasic Technology case in Shenzhen. Together, the harassment, detentions and arrests of workers and activists from 2015 to the present, all stemming from Xi Jinping's broad-ranging assault on civil society, represents the most severe crackdown on labor in China in recent memory. As I wrote in my last post on the power of labor during the pandemic, the crippling of worker centers and labor activists has made it much more difficult for civil society to monitor labor violations and assist workers and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic and the opening-up phase.

On a personal note, I know four of these activists well, having worked with Zhiru, Jian Hui and Jiahua during my time at China Labour Bulletin. In 2016, we had plans to bring Jiahua and several other female worker activists to Bangalore, India to discuss their collective bargaining experience with Indian female garment workers. It would have been a meeting of labor activists from the world's two most populous countries. Unfortunately, Jiahua and the others were stopped at the border on their way to meet us in Hong Kong to board the flight to Bangalore. So in a quick act of improvisation, they put together a video message and we carried it to Bangalore where we shared it with the Indian garment workers. More recently, I was in touch with Jian Hui who had moved from Shenzhen to Changsha, in the neighboring province of Hunan, where he was excited about starting up his own worker center. The last message I received from him was on December 19, 2018, a month before he disappeared.

I've thought and worried about him and the others often since then, so news of their release is sweet indeed but comes with a bitter aftertaste knowing they will not be free to do what they love.








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