(TibetanReview.net, Apr23’24) —The practice of collective punishment dates from the days of Mao Zedong’s dictatorship and it continues to this day in a China which claims to practice what is sought to be called a globally superior “whole process people’s democracy”. Whatever this Communist Party of China’s “theoretical breakthrough” jargon means, there is very little to praise it when it punishes severely even children of those who have dared to be critical of the governing dispensation.
Releasing its annual report on the situation of human rights defenders in China in 2023 on Apr 15, If I Disobey, My Family Will Suffer: Collective punishment of human rights defenders’ families in China, the US-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) has highlighted Chinese authorities’ punitive measures against human rights defenders’ families, including even newborns.
“Chinese authorities are punishing their families, including young children to penalize human rights defenders, rights lawyers, themselves. Even the Chinese law provides no legal basis for this perverse practice, which is forbidden in international law,” CHRD Director Renee Xia has said.
“The most heart-breaking part in really inflicting so much pain is the harm done to children. Children growing up from a young age watching their parents being mistreated and persecuted leaves a long-term psychological trauma.”
The report is based on testimony from a dozen people affected by collective punishment last year, and redacted certain identifying details to protect them from official reprisals.
“While this report focuses on 2023, Chinese authorities have used these tactics for decades, inflicting tremendous harm with impunity,” it said.
“Seeking redress often triggers more police harassment, brutality, and baseless legal prosecutions,” it added.
It said authorities threatened and harmed the children of rights advocates, including by imposing foreign exit bans, forcing them to drop out of school and detaining them in psychiatric wards and orphanages.
“The Chinese Communist Party’s collective punishment of human rights defenders’ families is an informal or hidden policy carried out by government authorities,” the report cited one activist as saying.
In one severe case, He Fangmei – an imprisoned campaigner for vaccine safety and for victims of defective vaccines – had her young children placed in a psychiatric hospital following her and her husband’s detentions.
After He gave birth, her newborn child was also placed in the institution, the report said.
Likewise, the family of human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang was subjected to intense harassment, and his young son denied education through official pressure on schools. The boy’s mother Li Wenzu – also an activist – has said that last month he was once again forced out of a school he had been attending for just 10 days after police showed up there.
The report also shed some light on the fate of Peng Lifa, an activist who disappeared after he placed banners denouncing President Xi Jinping and the country’s Covid policies.
“To prevent his family from speaking out, Chinese police have… put members of his family and relatives under surveillance, and cut off all contact with each other and the outside world,” the report said.
CHRD is a network of Chinese and international activists promoting human rights and empowering rights defenders in China.