To UN Human Rights High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet Jeria
Esteemed Excellency Mrs. Jeria,
I am Shen Youlian, a Chinese citizen in Guizhou province. At beginning, please forgive me for my presumption to write directly to your Excellency, because I, on behalf of human rights activists in Guizhou, China, imperatively need to report human rights disasters occurred in China to OHCHR. I request OHCHR to concern about the fact that Chinese social societies were persecuted by Chinese government for many years, and to urge Chinese government to act in accordance with its promises and to ensure the fundamental human rights of Chinese citizens inviolable.
To commemorate World Human Rights Day, We human rights defenders in Guizhou decided to hold a conference on human rights on this day every year from 2005. However, our action on human rights studying were suppressed and harassed by Chinese authority from the first conference. Members who participated human rights studying in the conference received intimidation and threats from the police, even were detained illegally around the Human Rights Day.
2008 was the 60th anniversary of the publish of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and then UN Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, launched a year-long human rights advocacy campaign in the first day of this year to mark this important milestone. We human rights activists in Guizhou gathered on January 13, 2008, responding the UN campaign. I was selected as the coordinator and contact of the action with relation to this campaign. Together with participants of the campaign, I decided to launch an activity of studying and advocating human rights each week in that year. We printed UN documents with regard to human rights and studied them and distributed them to other people.
On March 15, 2008, we planned an advocating activity on human rights after more than two months’ study. We scheduled speeches on knowledge of human rights by human rights defenders in a square in Guiyang, where the mass always gathered. At the same time, we also planned to distribute the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But this activity was sabotaged by the police——more than 100 documents were confiscated, participants of the activity were insulated from the mass, and some people were arrested and taken away.
Of course, we did not give up. We insisted studying and discussing knowledge of human rights every week. By the eve of the Human Rights Day of 2008, the number of participants of this study had been doubled.
However, the government became more disgruntled and let the police to harass and dismiss us. On December 4,2008, Chen Xi and I were arrested by the police and were detained separately in a small hotel in the suburb of Guiyang. The police were going to stop the commemoration of the Human Rights Day which was scheduled on December 10 at the Hebin Park in Guiyang.
Because the coordinator was detained, and the participants and people who heard this activity were driven away by the police, the advocating activity was finally ceased.
From 2008 to today, human rights activists in Guiyang had been detained every year before the Human Rights Day until that day was over. Nowadays, we must commemorate the Human Rights Day and study knowledge of human rights in a secret way, and the study is also had to put off until we are released from detention.
At the eve of the Human Rights Day in 2011, more than ten human rights defenders in Guizhou were again kidnapped and detained in hotels. One of the initiator of the conference on human rights, Chen Xi, was later sentenced for 10 years of imprisonment and others were released a month’s detention. Our activities on human rights were labeled as illegal activity, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was identified as illegal document. Human rights activists in Guizhou were banned to study and discuss knowledge of human rights under continuous surveillance.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. “This is the most exciting voice of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We do not give up. We insist to commemorate the Human Rights Day although only after we are released from the Human Rights Day detention. However, our commemoration is in a secret way, and the number of participants decreases.
On September 29, 2016, Li Keqiang, the prime minister of the State Council of PRC, signed and promulgated the National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2016-2020), in which it said that the Chinese government will “support and promote private organizations to take part in international exchange and cooperation on human rights, and to promote non-government contributions to the sound development of international human rights enterprise.”
Encouraged by this plan, eleven of human rights defenders in Guizhou stood out bravely calling for all the Chinese people to respond the National Human Rights Action Plan and preparing a public campaign on human rights advocacy on December 10 as the reply to the government’s appealing.
However, I was arrested by the political police of Huaxi District on November 25. The vice caption of the police robbed me of my cell-phone and threatened to beat me. I was detained first in a detoxification center and later in a hotel named “Hongyang Hotel” in Huaxi. I was not released until the Human Rights Day passed. Therefore, this campaign was spoiled again.
Under such persecution, we still insisted on our commemoration activities on Human Rights Days. On the Human Rights Day of 2019, we held the 15th conference of studying human rights after we were released. I recorded speeches of the participants and later published them online on July 29, 2020. About 10:00pm that day, more than 10 police from Huaxi District broke into my home with no warrant. They searched my home illegally and took away my computer and my cell-phone and then brought my wife and I to a police station. They kept torturing me for a full day, not letting me sleep and no food. Then they sent me to a detention center where I stayed for another 10 days. Before my wife was released next morning, she was threatened in the police station that she must not tell others the message that I was arrested.
After I was released, I sued the police to local court for their arresting and detention without warrant and illegally framing me due to my opinions, but the Nanming District Court of Guiyang rejected my motion without a paper.
Chinese government abuses human rights brutally inside China, calling the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights as illegal document, treating civil activities of studying and discussing human rights issues as illegal activities. However, Chinese government disguised itself as a human rights defender in UN and other international occasions. There is a reprimand on such duplicity in the Bible, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.” “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. ” (Book of Mathew, Chapter 25,Section 25&27)
In UN and international societies, the Chinese government performs with hypocrisy, just as a whitewashed tomb. Therefore, on behalf of all human rights activists in Guizhou, China, I request OHCHR to notice the fact that human rights activists in Guizhou were under the persecution by Chinese government due to our human rights advocacy, and to urge Chinese government to perform according to their promises and the UN charter, to stop Chinese government kidnapping, detaining and torturing human rights activists on the World Human Rights Days, so that Chinese people may not be violated by their fundamental human rights and can also share the sunlight of universal human rights.
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