Chang Weiping Completes Sentence, Faces Travel Ban

On 8 July 2024, human rights lawyer Chang Weiping completed a three-and-a-half-year sentence at Weinan Prison in Shaanxi province. Prison officials then escorted him to Haikou city in Hainan province, where his household registration (hukou) is officially located.

The Judicial Bureau of Haikou city informed Chang Weiping that he is now under their supervision and must report regularly to the local police. Additionally, he was notified that he is prohibited from traveling abroad for the next two years.

On 2 December 2022, the Baoji Municipal Intermediate People’s Court informed the family of detained human rights lawyer Chang Weiping that the Supreme People’s Court has again approved the extension of the deadline for announcing a verdict to 7 January 2023. Chang Weiping was tried behind closed-doors on 26 July 2022.

Under China’s Criminal Procedure Law (CPL), a court is supposed to reach a verdict within two months of accepting the case, and may not exceed three months at the latest. However, the CPL grants a higher court the authority to grant an extension of this deadline by three months at a time, in cases “where the death penalty might be issued or where civil litigation is attached, as well as those that have any of the circumstances provided for in article 158 of this law.” The human rights defender was tried for the charge of “subversion of State power” under the Criminal Law, which does not provide for the death penalty as a punishment. The case does not involve civil litigation.

The circumstances stipulated in article 158 of the CPL are: major, complicated cases in remote regions where transportation is extremely inconvenient; major cases of gang crimes; major, complicated cases of crimes being committed in several locations; and major, complicated cases involving a large area making it difficult to gather evidence. It is unclear which of these circumstances the Supreme People’s Court relied on, in approving the extension of the verdict deadline.

On 22 June 2022, Chang Weiping’s defence lawyer talked to the human rights defender via a video link from the Feng County Court in Baoji city, Shaanxi province. Chang Weiping continues to suffer from bloody stool. In December 2021, he received a basic rectal examination. However, his family is very concerned that he has been experiencing bloody stool for an extended period of time during detention. His family would like him to undergo gastroscopy and colonoscopy in order to determine whether there are other conditions, which if not detected and treated early, may lead to serious health consequences. On 1 July 2022, Chen Zijuan, Chang Weiping’s wife, sent an official request to the Feng County Detention Centre demanding that Chang Weiping urgently receive a comprehensive health examination, including painless gastroscopy and colonoscopy.

A day before the video call, the defender’s lawyer went to review the case files at the Baoji Intermediate Court. The judge overseeing the case forced the lawyer to sign a non-disclosure agreement because the case is deemed “special”, without providing further justification or legal basis. The agreement prohibits the lawyer from disclosing the content of the case files to the public or even family members.

In the afternoon of 14 September 2021, Chang Weiping was allowed to meet his lawyer for the first time since his detention in October 2020. The meeting took place at the Feng County Detention Centre located in a remote mountainous area of Baoji city, Shaanxi province. The human rights defender was transferred to the detention centre in April 2021 after spending almost six months under "residential surveillance at a designated location" (RSDL), a form of enforced disappearance provided for under Chinese law.

Earlier on 8 September 2021, a local prosecutor from the Baoji Municipal People's Procuratorate came to question the human rights defender. On 9 September 2021, the human rights defender's lawyer went to the Procuratorate to examine the case files, a right afforded to defense lawyers under Chinese law once a criminal case is under review for prosecution at the procuratorate. However, the lawyer was not allowed to enter the Procuratorate's building because he did not bring a negative COVID test. He telephoned an assistant to the prosecutor who is responsible for the case and was told the prosecutor is on annual leave. The lawyer was also told that the examination of case files requires the prior approval of both the responsible prosecutor and the investigating organ, and that the files can only be viewed electronically on site because they contain "top secret" information.

Chang Weiping said his RSDL detention took place in the same hotel where he had been detained under RSDL in January 2020. During his RSDL from October 2020 to April 2021, he was restrained in an interrogation device known as a "tiger chair" for six consecutive days. The hotel room and his bed were very small, and he shared the room with state security officers. The room was under 24-hour CCTV surveillance. He only showered six times during this period.

The human rights defender said he was subjected to intensive interrogation and was not allowed to sleep unless he provided testimonies according to the interrogators' instructions. Each of his three daily meals consisted of a steamed bun. The officers gave him a small amount of meat in addition to the buns when he complied with the officers' interrogation instructions.

The human rights defender said he is currently suffering from bloody stool, a condition which he did not have prior to his detention.

On 23 July 2021, Dr Chen Zijuan, human rights defender Chang Weiping's wife, and their young son, accompanied by a family-appointed lawyer and several friends, travelled to the Feng County Detention Centre, where the human rights defender is detained, to seek a meeting with him and to deposit money so he could purchase food and other daily items. Feng County is in a remote mountainous area in Baoji city, Shaanxi province, more than 1900km from the southern coastal city of Shenzhen where Dr Chen Zijuan and her son live. When they arrived at the detention centre and requested to deposit money for Chang Weiping, a police officer told them Chang Weiping's account has already exceeded the maximum limit of 1000 Yuan and that a detainee is not allowed to spend more than 150 Yuan per month. When the human rights defender's lawyer contested this and asked the officer to provide the legal basis for these monetary and spending limits, the police officer was not able to answer and walked away. When the lawyer and the family asked the security guards to allow them to wait inside the detention centre's reception area, the guards said their leaders instructed them not to open the doors to visitors.

The human rights defender's lawyer and wife also went to the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Public Security's Letters and Visits Office to submit complaints against the Baoji Municipal Public Security Bureau's handling of the Chang Weiping's case, including its refusal to facilitate access to legal counsel, as well as to follow-up on Dr Chen Zijuan's previously lodged complaints against the Bureau submitted in April 2021. An official at the Letters and Visits Office told them that their previous complaints were already transferred to the Baoji Public Security Bureau who replied in late April. When Dr Chen Zijuan said she had never received any replies, the official told her to talk directly to the Baoji Public Security Bureau.

The lawyer and family then went to the Shaanxi Provincial Procuratorate to submit complaints against the Baoji police. After making multiple phone calls to superiors, the receptionist told them that Chang Weiping's case is "very special and sensitive" and that her superiors told her that the Procuratorate will not intervene.

On 16 April 2021, detained human rights lawyer Chang Weiping's family received a written notice from the Baoji Municipal Public Security Bureau to say that the human rights defender was formally arrested on 7 April 2021 on the charge of "subversion of State power". Prior to the formal arrest, Chang Weiping was detained under "residential surveillance in a designated location" (RSDL) for the lesser charge of "inciting subversion of State power". Under China's Criminal Law, those convicted of "subverting State power" may face a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Under the Criminal Procedure Law, the Baoji public security authorities must complete their investigation within two months and then make a decision whether to recommend prosecution or drop the case. With the approval of a higher-level procuratorate, this investigative period is extendable by up to five months if certain broadly defined conditions are met, such as if the case is deemed to be "particularly serious and complicated". 

In late February 2021, a lawyer submitted a request to the authorities of Baoji city to meet Chang Weiping in detention. Soon after the lawyer returned to the city where she resides, she was made aware that the Baoji authorities had lodged complaints against her with the Judicial Bureau in her city. As a result of this pressure, the lawyer decided to withdraw from the case.

This is the fourth lawyer who has withdrawn from Chang Weiping's case due to official pressure since the human rights defender was detained in October 2020.

On 25 November 2020, Chang Shuanming was allowed to meet his son Chang Weiping at a police station in the Gaoxin District in Baoji, Shaanxi province. The meeting lasted ten minutes and took place in a room in the presence of several security officers. The father said his son looked thinner and tired, and that his eyes were bloodshot and he spoke much slower than usual.

Since 22 October 2020, human rights lawyer Chang Weiping (常玮平) has been held in an undisclosed location and denied access to lawyers, after police took him into custody in the city of Baoji in the northwestern province of Shaanxi. This comes only six days after he spoke publicly about torture he suffered at the hands of local police.

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Chang Weiping is a human rights lawyer known for his public interest litigation in defence of the rights of people facing discrimination based on their health status, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. He has provided legal counsel to human rights defenders, victims of defective vaccines, as well as women, LGBT persons, and persons living with HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B who face discrimination in the workplace.

On the evening of 22 October 2020, after Chang Weiping was taken into custody, the Baoji police telephoned his wife, who lives in Guangdong province in southern China, and informed her that the defender had been placed under “residential surveillance at a designated location” (RSDL) for unspecified “violations of legal regulations”. The police did not inform her of the exact charges he faces, the location in which he is being held nor did they provide the family with an official RSDL notice.

On 26 October 2020, accompanied by two lawyers, Chang Weiping’s father went to the Gaoxin District Branch of the Baoji Public Security Bureau to seek additional information, request a meeting with Chang Weiping, present paperwork for legal representation, and submit an application for bail. The police did not allow the lawyers to meet Chang Weiping and refused to disclose the identity of the police officers or unit responsible for investigating him, the exact location of his detention, and the basis for placing him under RSDL. They justified these actions on the grounds that the human rights defender is suspected of “inciting subversion of national security” and that his case involves “state secrets”.

Chang Weiping’s detention came six days after he published online a video clip, in which he shared details of his torture during a ten-day RSDL detention in a hotel room in Baoji in January 2020. He was placed under RSDL then in connection with his participation in a private gathering of lawyers, academics and activists in Xiamen city, Fujian province in early December 2019. Police launched a cross-provincial operation to detain, question and harass a number of human rights defenders who attended or were otherwise connected to the meeting. During his January 2020 RSDL, local authorities officially announced the suspension of Chang Weiping’s lawyer’s license.

In the video clip, Chang Weiping said that police interrogators tied him to a restraining device known as a “tiger chair” for “24 hours a day for ten days” and interrogated him 16 times during that period. In the ten months since his provisional release from RSDL, he said the local police kept him under strict surveillance at his family home in Fengxiang county in Baoji, telephoned him daily, and visited him at least once a week. He explained in the video clip that his work as a lawyer and his attendance at the December 2019 meeting in Xiamen were completely lawful examples of his exercise and defence of human rights.

In August 2018, UN human rights experts wrote to the Chinese Government raising concern that the conditions of detention under RSDL “are analogous to incommunicado and secret detention and tantamount to enforced disappearance”, exposing “those subjected to RSDL to the risk of torture and other inhuman and degrading treatment and other human rights violations.” The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has repeatedly warned China that “widespread or systematic imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty in violation of the rules of international law may constitute crimes against humanity.”

Front Line Defenders is deeply concerned about the detention of Chang Weiping in an undisclosed location, without access to legal counsel which significantly raises the risks of torture and ill-treatment in detention. Front Line Defenders believes that his detention is solely motivated by his peaceful and legitimate work in the defence of human rights.