Ten years ago today, Cao Shunli died in a military hospital in Beijing.
A prominent human rights activist, Ms Cao fought injustice in China for over a decade prior to her passing at the age of 53. In 2002, she was fired from a government job after she raised concerns about corruption in her department. Over the next 12 years she became a vocal advocate for human rights and anti-corruption, her work often specifically focused on the mistreatment of human rights defenders and petitioners (citizens who petition authorities for the redress of their grievances) by the Chinese authorities.
As is the case for so many others like her in China, Ms Cao’s work frequently put her at odd with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). She was regularly subjected to arbitrary detention, house arrest and enforced disappearance, and served two stints in the country’s notorious labour camps for a total of 27 months.
In 2013, she organized a 90-day protest outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, calling on the CCP to allow Chinese citizens to contribute to a human rights report that the government was required to submit to the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) ahead of its Universal Periodic Review (UPR).
Ms Cao herself had also submitted information to the HRC as part of this process, namely on torture and extralegal detention in China. She had arranged to travel to Geneva to participate in the review in September 2013, but she never made her flight.
On 14 September 2013, Ms Cao disappeared from Beijing Capital International Airport after being questioned by police. The following month it emerged that she had been detained on suspicion of ‘illegal assembly’ and then formally arrested for ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’, and that she was being held in Beijing Chaoyang Detention Centre.
Ms Cao’s health deteriorated swiftly whilst in detention; not only was she consistently denied medical treatment, but it is widely believed that she was subjected to torture, as has been the experience of many other human rights defenders in China.
In November 2013 Ms Cao was diagnosed with tuberculosis in both lungs after her lawyer demanded that she received a check-up, but the authorities continued to deny her medical parole and she was not admitted to hospital until she fell into a coma the following February.
According to the news and commentary website known as China Change, another prominent activist Hu Jia learned that Ms Cao had suffered dramatic weight loss and muscle atrophy by the time of her death in March 2014, and that her body was covered in black patches and scale-like cracks in her skin.
Predictably, the CCP moved quickly to ban all mention of Ms Cao online in the aftermath of her passing, and ten years later there has still been no official investigation into the circumstances of her death. Meanwhile, the situation for those who continue the brave work of standing up for justice and human rights in China has only grown worse over the past decade.
Human rights defenders in the country today can be arrested and jailed for actions that would have been considered ‘safe’ when Ms Cao was alive, such as supporting the families of prisoners, or even the simple act of travelling abroad. In some cases there is no reason given as to why a human rights defender has been arrested, if indeed the CCP will even confirm that they have been detained or sentenced at all.
This has been the situation of the human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who has been disappeared since August 2017. Mr Gao was notable for frequently defending religious minorities, and was detained and imprisoned on multiple occasions prior to his disappearance almost seven years ago.
His family have no idea of his whereabouts or wellbeing, but he is believed to be in some form of detention. In February 2024, Mr Gao’s wife Geng He published a Valentine’s Day letter to her husband in which she wrote: ‘The bitterness of our separation for 16 years makes each day a struggle, and every piece of news about you feels precious, especially considering our last communication was seven years ago… despite the hardships, our family has become the strongest in the world. The children and I will bravely endure until the day you return. Please stay strong as well, no matter the challenges you face, please come back to us. We will always wait for you and love you forever.’
Torture and mistreatment remain common in detention centres and prisons, and the CCP’s wider use of ‘residential surveillance at a designated location’ (RSDL) since 2015 means that such violations are less likely to be investigated and more likely to occur in the first place.
In addition, those released from prison are subjected to continued harassment, surveillance and the deprivation of livelihoods. Many essentially become ‘targets for life’ in the eyes of the CCP and are subjected to further house arrests and reprisals against their family members even after they have finished serving their sentences.
This may be what awaits Christian lawyer and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan, who was imprisoned in May 2020 for her reporting on the COVID-19 pandemic from its epicentre in Wuhan. Ms Zhang is due to be released on 13 May 2024 after serving a four-year sentence on the same charges of ‘picking quarrels and provoking trouble’ that were once brought against Cao Shunli.
There are ongoing concerns for Ms Zhang’s health following a prolonged hunger strike, and questions remain over whether she will regain her freedom and be granted access to the medical care she needs upon the completion of this unjust sentence in two months’ time.
Lately the CCP has also increased its efforts to isolate Chinese human rights defenders from the international community, just as it did when it prevented Ms Shunli from travelling to Geneva over a decade ago.
This cannot continue. On the tenth anniversary of the death of Cao Shunli, the international community must honour her memory by standing up for all human rights defenders in China who have followed in her footsteps and incurred the wrath of the CCP as a result.
The Chinese government must be held to account for the manner in which it has imprisoned, disappeared and in some cases even claimed the lives of those who have called for justice, democracy and human rights in the country, and states must put pressure on the CCP to release Gao Zhisheng, Zhang Zhan and all others held in any form of detention or imprisonment on account of their vital human rights advocacy.
By CSW’s Press & Public Affairs Officer Ellis Heasley
FoRB in Full 