Online Protest Grows as Former Teacher Awaits Verdict on “Inciting Subversion of State Power”
HRIC Bulletin
2012-09-13
On the September 4, Chen Pingfu (陈平福), a former math and science teacher, was tried in a court in Lanzhou, Gansu Province for “inciting subversion of state power.” The court did not issue a verdict.
In 2005, Chen started playing violin on the street in Lanzhou on weekends to repay debts he had incurred for heart surgery. He was repeatedly harassed by local authorities in Lanzhou and began blogging about his ordeals and the cruelty of city officials. In August 2012, the Lanzhou procuratorate charged him with “inciting subversion of state power,” basing its indictment on 34 articles posted on his blogs.
After Chen’s trial, his story spread on the Internet and, on September 9, Sun Yat-sen University professor and documentary filmmaker Ai Xiaoming (艾晓明) initiated a signature campaign to protest his prosecution. As of September 13, 2012, 323 people have signed, including well-known scholars, writers, and rights defenders inside China and abroad.
There is no indication when the court will rule. It was reported that on September 13, the police officers who have been monitoring Chen left. Chen has been under residential surveillance since June 27, 2012.
Below is an English translation of the indictment by Human Rights in China. For additional background information on Chen, we are including an essay below, written by Yaxue Cao, based on Chen’s blog posts listed in the indictment.
A Portrait of a “Subverter”
by Yaxue Cao
On Tuesday, September 4, a 55-year-old man was on trial for “inciting subversion of state power” in Lanzhou, the capital city of northwestern province of Gansu, China, and the evidence cited in the indictment (see below for translation) consists of a long list of blog posts and nothing else. So it is a case of the crime of self-expression. The sentence hasn’t been announced, and at the end of the trial, the court announced that he would continue to be “residing under surveillance” (监视居住) until the sentence comes.
His name is Chen Pingfu (陈平福). He was 20 years old when China, under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership, reinstituted national college examination. He excelled in the exams, and entered Northwest Normal University in Lanzhou majoring in mathematics. Upon graduating he was assigned a teaching job at the vocational school of Victory Machinery Factory of Capital Steel (首钢胜利机械厂) in Gaolan (皋兰) on outskirts of Lanzhou. There he taught math for more than two decades.
In May 2005, he suffered a heart attack and was sent to a hospital. His employer, a Mao-era state-owned enterprise on the brink of bankruptcy, was unable to help him with funds needed for surgery, nor could he afford it himself. He had to leave the hospital. His father gathered his younger siblings, pleading help from them for their older brother. They pulled together more than 50,000 yuan [about $6,000 at the time] and Chen Pingfu underwent a successful heart bypass surgery.
He was anxious to pay the debt, losing sleep sometimes, not because his siblings were pressuring him, but because none of them were well-off. One of his younger sisters, a cleaning woman in a small town making 150 a month yuan [about $20], gave him what was likely her life’s savings: 10,000 yuan[about $1,212].
With few means to make money, Chen Pingfu decided to play violin on the street. On Saturdays and Sundays he traveled 30 miles from Gaolan to downtown Lanzhou to do that. It wasn’t easy for an educated Chinese man with a keen sense of “face.” On his first trip, he chose a site but paced for an hour before taking out his violin and spreading a sheet on the floor that read: “Employee of Victory Machinery Factory, deeply in debt due to heart surgery, have to perform on street for alms.”
He played the famous Butterfly Lovers’ Violin Concerto (the musical retelling of the Chinese classical tale of Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai, the so-called Chinese Romeo and Juliet) and Robert Shumann’s “Träumerei,” among other pieces. To those who thought he was a fraud, he gave his employer’s phone number for verification. But mostly he met with compassion, encouragement, and generosity. Once, a five-year-old girl pulled her mother to a stop, listened, and handed him a 1 yuan [about $0.15] bill with both hands. Another time, a man stopped and listened, then disappeared into a hotel but sent a porter with 50 yuan [about $6]. Other musicians gave him tips on how to play better. Along the way, he improved his playing.
It went well, so well that Sohu.com, a major Internet service provider in China, interviewed him about his “success” and the positive social aspects of his story. It is from this interview, now available on Youtube, and the articles listed in his indictment that I learned his story.
In 2009, as his factory prepared for bankruptcy and he had no job to go to, he played violin on street in the afternoons. For one reason or the other, he didn’t talk about the dark side of his street experience in the interview. On the street he was scolded and threatened by liuguan (流管, migrant population administration) and jiuzhu zhan (救助站, relief station) workers who came not to lend him a hand but to get rid of him. They told him, “The government forbids performing on street for money!” They pressed him onto the ground to subdue him. An officer from the relief station shouted at him, “I’ll send you to your death if you dare be a nuisance! Who do you think you are? Making you die is nothing for us! Go with us if you dare, and see how we will tidy you up!” (Quoted from his blog post “Fight against Brutality and Pursue Civilization.”)
One time, a group of men from the Relief Station seized him and threw him into a truck with metal bars. In the heat of the summer, after struggling with the thugs, his heart beat faster and his chest tightened. He begged his captors to let him out, but they laughed at him, and one of them told him he was out of his mind.
On the street, he also witnessed other cruelties. A woman’s basket of peaches was snatched away from her by a chengguan (城管, urban management) officer; a middle-aged shoeshine man was chased away.
As he played violin on street, he also set up several blogs, pouring out his anger, his frustration, and his thoughts on the ills in Chinese society. Not surprisingly, he was summoned and warned by the authorities.
As 2011 began, Chen Pingfu found a teaching job in the southwestern province of Yunnan. Still in Chinese New Year holiday season, he took a flight, for the first time in his life, to Yunnan, some 1,500 miles away. He had had enough trouble playing violin on the street and writing blogs. His plan was to give up both blogging and playing violin on street to teach children math and science and music. After all, he said, he needed to live first. Three days after he arrived in Yunnan, his former employer called, asking where he was. Soon after, the school’s principal, an old friend of his, received a call from police department in Gansu Province. The local police summoned the principal and interrogated him about Chen’s activities and their relationship. The principal pressed Chen about what he had done, and he didn’t want to be ruined for “hiding away a criminal.” Chen said again and again that he was not a criminal. The Yunnan police asked the principal to fire Chen and send him away within 24 hours.
He was back in Gansu Province in less than a week at his new job. This, despite repeated promises he has made to “relevant organ” that he would not write any more blog posts once he started working. Back in Lanzhou, he called the “relevant organ” to protest, and the person on the other end of the line burst out laughing.
In his blog posts, he told his stories, the humiliation and brutalities he had been subjected to. He reflected on the fundamental ills of the system, the lack of rule of law, and the abuses of power around him. He cheered the democratic revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. He expressed deep gratitude toward the ordinary Chinese who had helped him in one way or the other. He voiced his intense disgust for an education centered on tooling children according to the Party’s design. He hoped China would transition peacefully into a democratic country where traditional Chinese culture can be restored and a constitutional political system established, and where he can make a living and play violin freely without being persecuted by the authorities. Chen was determined to continue to speak out. He said in one of his blog posts: “As long as they don’t have an explanation or justification for me, I will continue to tell my story, expose the inhuman crimes perpetrated by the so-called people’s servants, and condemn this lying system.” (Quote from “I May Be Beaten to Death by Thugs, but I Will Not Be Cowed to Death.”)
On June 27, 2012, he was charged with “inciting subversion of state power” for his blog posts and subjected to residential surveillance. He would have been jailed if not for his coronary heart disease.
“At the hardest time of my life when I had to give up treatment and go home to wait for my death…when I needed relief the most, there was no government to be seen. But when I was deeply in debt, and jobless, and had no choice but to play violin on the street to help myself, the Relief Station of Lanzhou’s municipal government came with a barred jail truck,” Chen Pingfu wrote in one post. (Quoted from “Weasels Serve Chickens.”)
In another, he wrote, “Looking back at my life thus far, I found that I had lived meaninglessly for all these years without doing one worthwhile and meaningful thing. I cannot swallow the humiliation in silence; I have kept thinking and reading to break the cultural dictatorship so that my mind can go to a farther and wider world.” (Quoted from “I Cannot Bear the Humiliation in Silence.”)
But instead of a farther and wider world, he has found himself in jail—in China.
(Yaxue Cao is a writer and translator based in Washington, D.C. She blogs about human rights conditions and the rule of law in China at Seeing Red in China.)
Lanzhou Municipal People’s Procuratorate of Gansu Province
Indictment
[2012] No.120
Defendant Chen Pingfu; male; Han nationality; born March 1, 1957; identification number 622725195703011415; undergraduate education; registration residence: Apt 101, 301 Xinxing Road, Shidong Township, Gaolan County; residing at Apt 3B-202, Building 2, Fengning Deshang Residential Complex, 284 Zhaolin Road, Anning District, Lanzhou. On June 27, 2012, Chen was put under residential surveillance on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power as determined by the Gaolan County Public Security Bureau.
The Gaolan County Public Security Bureau has concluded its investigation of this case. The Gaolan County People’s Procuratorate submitted his case to the Lanzhou Municipal People’s Procuratorate for examination and review for indictment. The examination conducted according to law has found that:
Between July 2007 and March 2012, the defendant Chen Pingfu registered blogs or microblogs under the name “Chen Pingfu” on NetEase, Baidu, Sohu, Mtime.com, Sina, Tianya, and other websites where he published or reposted 34 articles including “This Is a Fight for the Spiritual Destiny between Good and Evil” (这是一场心灵归宿的正邪大战), “Weasels Serve Chickens” (黄鼠狼为鸡服务) “Fight against Brutality, Pursue Civilization” (对抗野蛮,追求文明), “Robbery or Law Enforcement?” (抢劫?执法?) “How the Rule of Law Can Be Used Only to Bind Ordinary People” (依法治国岂能只顾捆绑普通百姓) “An Unyielding Soul Will Never Be Conquered” (不屈的灵魂永远无法被征服!) “Learn from Egyptians—We Will Not be Fooled by Sweet Lies Anymore” (向埃及人民学习,我们不想再忍受花言巧语的愚弄) “I Cannot Bear the Humiliation in Silence” (我无法默默地忍受屈辱), “Prop Up Socialism , Suffer Hard Times, Dance in Shackles” (社会主义挺着,艰难的日子忍着,戴着镣铐的舞跳着), “Do Not Be Accomplices of Education That Enslaves” (不当奴化教育的帮凶), “The Bugle Call to Overturn the Dictators Has Sounded” (推翻独裁者的号角已经吹响), “Withdraw All Political Parties from Schools” (一切党派退出学校), “A Ghost under the Dictator’s Knife: To Wang Lijun” (专制刀下的鬼— 送给王立军) “Don’t Trick Me, the Whole World Knows” (不要忽悠我,地球人都知道), “Wake Up, Living People!” (活着的人,醒来吧!), “Wherever Great Leaders Appear, the People Are Bound to Suffer” (伟大领袖出现在哪里,那里的人民必定遭殃!) “Use Bright Lights to Illuminate Reality, Use Beautiful Violin Music to Move Society” (用明亮的灯光照亮现实,用迷人的琴声感动社会), “Attempting to Stop the Tide of Democracy Is to Resist the Will of God” (企图阻挡民主潮流,就是抗拒上帝的旨意), “At the Heart of an Authoritarian System Is Official Power, at the Heart of a Democratic System Is Civil Rights” (专制制度以官权为中心,民主制度以民权为中心) “Chinese Characteristics: Leaders Create Thinking” (中国特色—领导创造思想), “Government Bans Making a Living Illicitly, Tunisians Overthrew Ali” (政府不许非法谋生,突尼西亚人将阿里赶下台), “Truth Has Power, True Words Have Energy” (真理具有力量,真话具有能量), “The Whole Nation Will Be at a Loss If Democracy and Rule of Law Are Resisted” (抗拒民主和法制,全民族都是输家), “A Nightmare: Traveled from the Northwest to the Southwest over 10 Days to Find Work But Was Forced to Return” (十天内从大西北到大西南打工挣钱,又被迫返回原地,一场噩梦), “Humanity’s Quest for Freedom and Dignity Is Reaching a Consensus” (人类对自由与尊严的追求正在达成共识), “I Protest with Anger the Authorities’ Infringement of My Right to Make a Living” (愤怒抗议有关部门剥夺我打工挣钱谋生的权利!), “I Am Left Helpless, I Can Only Continue to Pursue the Path of No Return to Freedom and Dignity” (我被逼无奈,只好接着走这追求自由和尊严的不归之路), “I Want Freedom, Dignity, and to Live a Normal Life” (要自由、要尊严,我要像正常人一样生活), “This Tiger of Power Is Frightening Indeed” (真的好可怕啊,权力这个老虎), “I Was Bullied by Civil Servants in My Own Homeland” (我在自己的祖国被自己的仆人欺负), “A Nation That Imprisons Thoughts Is Hopeless” (被禁锢思想的国家是没有希望的), “There Is Such a Political System” (有这样的一个政治制度), and “The Greatest Enemy of Our Times” (我们这个年代最大的敌人). In these articles he expressed such inflammatory views as that Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong Thoughts, Deng Xiaoping Theory, Three Represents, and Scientific Development have no benefit for the society and the people; that the Communist Party rule knows only to push ordinary people around and not let them make a living; that the current system is not democratic enough, and that democracy and constitutionalism should be implemented.
The aforementioned facts of crime are proven by documentary evidence, material evidence, and the defendant’s statements.
The procuatorate believes that the defendant Chen Pingfu disregarded state laws and spread speech attacking the Communist Party and the government to unspecified Internet users, defaming and slandering state power and the socialist system. His actions have violated the stipulations of Article 105(2) of the Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China. The facts of the crime are clear, the evidence is reliable and sufficient, and he should be found criminally responsible for the crime of inciting subversion of state power. This procuratorate is initiating prosecution proceedings against the defendant on the basis of the provisions of Article 141 of the Criminal Procedural Law of the People’s Republic of China, and asks for a judgment in accordance with the law.
Addressed to:
Gansu Lanzhou Municipal Intermediate People’s Court
Deputy Prosecutor: Wang Hailong (王海龙)
August 2, 2012
(The original Chinese indictment is available on Citizens’ Square.)
China: Laid-off Teacher Faces Inciting Subversion Charges for Online Posts
With his thin frame, shabby suit and graying hair, Chen Pingfu, who played his violin for handouts on the streets of northwestern Chinese city of Lanzhou, hardly seemed to be a threat to anyone. But after he wrote a series of online essays criticizing the country’s ruling Communist Party, the 55-year-old laid-off teacher was accused of “inciting subversion of state power”—a criminal charge generally reserved for China’s most prominent dissidents.
Such cases are generally handled quietly in China, with little mention in the domestic press and online discussion closely censored, despite whatever attention and criticism they may receive from foreign governments and human rights activists abroad. A prime example is literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced to an 11-year prison term for inciting subversion in 2009. He is little known or discussed at home, but was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. Chen is the complete opposite. Largely unknown outside China, he has gained a surprising level of online support in China since he went on trial Sept. 4.
On Chinese blogs and Twitter-like services such as Sina Weibo, many people describe Chen as an exemplar of free speech who wrote about the injustices he faced in Chinese society. “I think they identify themselves with him because he is an ordinary person,” says Wang Songlian, a Hong Kong-based researcher for the ngo Chinese Human Rights Defenders. “He doesn’t have connections, he’s not rich, he’s not going forward in life. A lot of netizens feel the same.” Some commenters expressed concern over the effect his case might have on online discourse, which despite censorship has seen significant room for discussion of sensitive topics in recent years. “If this is a crime, then how many people who are active on Weibo should be convicted?” wrote Xing Jianmin, a lawyer from Hebei province. “How is it that the jails aren’t exploding?”
(MORE: Gulag Reform: Will China Stop Sending Its Dissidents to Labor Camps?)
Caixin, an aggressive Beijing-based business magazine, ran a story on its website that was later removed. When Hong Kong-based Phoenix Media re-posted the Caixin story on its website, it quickly gathered more than 120,000 comments, largely from mainlanders in support of Chen. “For a lot of people this case involves different layers of injustice that generate considerable empathy and make people angry,” says Joshua Rosenzweig, an independent human rights researcher based in Hong Kong. “This is not somebody who is a veteran political dissident. Those sort of people may not generate that kind of empathy. People feel they should know better, that they are just causing trouble. This guy, he’s got a grievance with the system and there seems to be a good reason. People see why he might question whether the one-party system has been good for China.”
Amid China’s boom, Chen serves as a stark reminder that for all the fortunes made and hundreds of millions lifted out of poverty, others have been left behind. Born in 1957, Chen was one of the first generation of students to take the national college entrance examination after it was reintroduced following the chaos of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, when universities were largely shuttered. He attended the Northwest Normal University from 1978-82, and took a job at the Shengli Machinery Factory in 1984. The factory originally made armaments as part of Mao Zedong’s “Third Front,” when industrial production was developed in the Chinese interior, far from the threat of potential foreign invasion. During the Cold War demand was strong, and despite its remote location business was good for the factory. Chen, who taught various subjects for workers’ evening classes, married and had a son. In the 1990s China began to streamline its military, and the factory struggled to transition to useful commercial products, like farm equipment.
Chen had his own struggles, too. He underwent heart surgery in 2005, and had to pay the $6,000 expense out of pocket. At the same time his son was planning to attend college, adding to his debt woes. So Chen began playing his violin on the streets of Lanzhou to earn extra money in his spare time. Three years later, the factory went bankrupt, forcing him to busk full-time. The ill treatment he received from local police, employees of a local rescue shelter, and urban management officers known as chengguan drove him to start writing online in 2007. “During my days of playing violin on the street, I was constantly insulted and abused by people from the government. They didn’t help me at all,” he told TIME in a phone interview from Lanzhou, where he remains under house arrest pending the outcome of his trial. “It was only the general public that gave me the help. That made me decide to write articles online.”
(MORE: Chinese Dissidents’ Stories of Abuse in Detention Emerge)
Chen says he wrote 300 to 400 articles over the next five years. Prosecutors in Lanzhou identified 34 in particular as evidence of the charge of inciting subversion. The titles include “I Can’t Bear Humiliation in Silence,” “The Call to Overthrow the Dictators Has Sounded” and “I Want Freedom, Respect and to Live Like a Normal Person.” They all bear the distinct voice of an educated man who once held a respected position in society enraged by the abuse he endures as an outcast hustling for a living on the streets. “Yesterday I saw a gang of fierce, imposing chengguan who drove away a middle-aged shoeshine man,” he wrote in a 2010 essay called “A Weasel Serves the Chickens. “That shoeshine man wasn’t doing anything to inconvenience pedestrians, so why did they drive him off? If it weren’t for family difficulties or a lack of money, who would subserviently shine shoes like that?”
Chen places much of the blame for the injustices he faced on authoritarian system, and by endorsing the Arab Spring last year he made himself a target for the crackdown that followed in China. In an essay from February 2011 titled “Study the Egyptians, We Don’t Want to Be Fooled Again,” he wrote, “I’m convinced that if we didn’t have the (Communist) Party’s leadership, this society would finally be harmonious and peaceful.” At that time Chen says he found a new job teaching in southern Yunnan province, but police blocked him from taking it due to his writing, which only increased his desperation. “They accuse me of attacking the social system,” he told TIME. “Indeed, I am attacking the system. It’s too brutal. The general public is very kind, but the government is inhumane. I’m not insulted by their accusations because I’m innocent. I only spoke the truth.”
His defense attorney, Lanzhou-based He Huixin, argued that Chen’s criticism of the government and the Communist Party don’t equal an attack on the state. He noted the same reasoning was put forward in 1933 on behalf of Chen Duxiu, a co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party, who was accused of threatening the state by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government. The argument didn’t work, and Chen Duxiu was convicted, but a public outcry spared him a harsh sentence. Nearly a century later, it’s unlikely the argument will work for Chen Pingfu, either, but he too can hope the concerns of China’s online masses will save him a long prison term.
—with reporting by Chengcheng Jiang / Beijing
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