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Essay: Elder Hu Shigen’s release is welcome, but more importantly it reminds us that we must stand up to the CCP

China Elder Hu Shigen

ELLIS HEASLEY, of UK-based religious freedom advocacy CSW, says celebrations around Elder Hu Shigen’s release are tempered by the knowledge of the CCP’s “continuing injustice and cruelty towards religious leaders”…

London, UK

Elder Hu Shigen was reunited with his family on 26th March after spending more than seven-and-a-half years in prison in Tianjin, China. 

He was sentenced, as many are in China, on charges of ‘subversion’ – essentially spreading ideas that do not conform to the Chinese Communist Party’s projection of supreme and unquestionable authority – after being arrested as part of the government’s infamous 709 crackdown in 2015.

Elder Hu was one of over 300 caught up in the crackdown, which takes its name from the date on which it began in July, 2015, and, like many of those arrested, he was first held in Residential Surveillance in Designated Location (RDSL) – a form of enforced disappearance in which detainees require permission from police to speak to anybody, including lawyers and family members, and therefore essentially means they are unable to have any contact with the outside world.

China Elder Hu Shigen

Elder Hu Shigen. PICTURES: Courtesy of CSW

 

“While it is good news that Elder Hu has finally been released, any celebration is tempered by the knowledge of the CCP’s continuing injustice and cruelty towards religious leaders and indeed anyone who stands up and speaks out for human rights in the country.”

Held under these conditions for approximately five months, Elder Hu was subjected to severe torture whilst in detention, and suffered at least one heart attack due to sleep deprivation. Also, time spent in RSDL is only counted as half the duration of a prison sentence, and as such Elder Hu actually spent more than the seven years and six months to which he was sentenced behind bars on this occasion.

While it is good news that Elder Hu has finally been released, any celebration is tempered by the knowledge of the CCP’s continuing injustice and cruelty towards religious leaders and indeed anyone who stands up and speaks out for human rights in the country.

Consider Gao Zhisheng, for example, a prominent human rights lawyer who disappeared in August, 2017, and whose whereabouts remain unknown today. He is believed to be in some form of detention having previously been subjected to multiple disappearances, arrests, beatings and torture. 

Two years ago, Gao’s wife Geng He called on the Chinese government to return his remains, claiming that she believed he may have been ‘persecuted to death’. She has received no news since.



Notable also is the case of Pastor Wang Yi, the leader of Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, who is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence on charges of “inciting to subvert state power” and “illegal business operations”, ultimately because he openly criticised the government’s policy towards unregistered or independent churches.

Even today members of Wang Yi’s church continue to face severe harassment, with reports emerging last month of the arrest of at least three church members while several others were subjected to forced evictions from their homes after authorities warned landlords against letting to tenants who ‘organise illegal activities in the name of religion’.

China Pastor Wang Yi

Pastor Wang Yi. PICTURE: Facebook/Early Rain Church

One couple, Elder Li Yinqiang and his wife, were forcibly taken from their home in Chengdu to another city in Sichuan province without even being given time to collect their two young children.

Even by the standards of the CCP such developments reveal a shocking new low to the depths to which the authorities are willing to plunge in the name of silencing and stifling any expression of belief that does not acknowledge and afford supreme – some may even say ‘divine’ – power to the regime.


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What is frustrating however is that this has been clear for decades. Elder Hu was first imprisoned in 1994 for “organising and leading a counterrevolutionary group” and “counterrevolutionary propaganda and incitement” for marking the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre in a public event.

He was sentenced to 20 years, and served 16 before being released on account of his poor health; with the addition of his more recent sentence this man has now spent a total of 24 years separated from his family and friends, all because of his peaceful calls for basic human rights.

This is the strategy of the CCP, and it has been for decades. Elder Hu may finally be free but there are many others who are not, and many more whose ‘freedom’ is no freedom at all when they have to live their lives in constant fear of violence, arrest, or even being driven from their homes.

The international community knows this is happening, and yet every day it fails to take sufficient action to put a stop to it. China is, of course, a significant economic and geopolitical power, but the CCP is not invincible, and with co-ordinated action such as sanctions on those clearly responsible for egregious human rights violations and refusing to trade products tainted by forced labour, for example, we can begin to loosen its vice-grip on the lives of people like Elder Hu Shigen, Gao Zhisheng, Pastor Wang Yi and many others.

ellis heasley

Ellis Heasley is public affairs officer at UK-based religious freedom advocacy CSW

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