An unidentified attorney revealed last January 21 that the Chinese Communist Party tortured human rights lawyers Ding Jiaxi and Xu Zhiyong who have been detained for more than a year now.
ChinaAid reported that the Chinese Communist Party officials finally allowed the two human rights lawyers to speak to their unidentified attorney online since they have been caught and detained in an undisclosed location. Jiaxi has been in prison since December 2019 while Zhiyong came two months after being caught from a friend's home in Guangzhou last February 15, 2020.
According to Human Rights Watch, this practice is normally done by the CCP as part of the "residential surveillance at a designated location" measure where authorities hold captive for up to six months in a secret location outside of prison facilities its detainees so that they are denied access to family and legal counsels and are prone to increased risk of ill-treatment and torture.
Jiaxi and Zhiyong, during the online meeting, affirmed this practice since they said they have been tortured by officials of the CCP through sleep deprivation, thirst, and hunger.
"Five people took turns interrogating him for seven days and nights. Officers also deprived him of sleep for prolonged periods of time. For two weeks during his most intensive interrogation period, they gave Lawyer Ding only half a bun for each meal and limited him to only 600ml (approximately 20 ounces) water per day," the unidentified lawyer shared on Jiaxi's experience.
Zhiyong, a 46-year old co-founder of the banned Open Constitution Initiative and the non governmental civil rights group advocating New Citizens' Movement, has actually been in and out of prison, as per Human Rights Watch.
He was first detained in 2009 together with a co-worker from the Open Constitution Initiative for a trumped-up tax evasion case. This was followed by imprisonment in 2014 to 2018 for "gathering a crowd to disrupt public order" led by the New Citizens Movement.
When the CCP started detaining human rights lawyers on Dec. 26, 2019, Zhiyong, as per Human Rights Watch, had been on the move from one city to the next until he moved to his friends' house in Guangzhou where he took to Twitter the government's "authoritarian rule" and mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Jiaxi, on the other hand, was one of the prominent human rights lawyers that were detained with Zhang Zhongshun and activists Dai Zhenya and Li Yingjun on Dec. 26, 2019, which was referred to as the "12.26 crackdown."
The crackdown, HRW added, took place two weeks after the said activists and lawyers attended a Xiamen, Fujian province gathering on China's human rights and political future on Dec. 7-8, 2019. They were accused of "inciting subversion," which is a crime subject to 15 years of imprisonment as per Chinese law.
As per ChinaAid, Jiaxi was deprived of sleep by the Chinese authorities who gave him only 2-4 hours of rest a day as part of his torture. His wife, Luo Shengchun, and child are based in New York. Shengchun's community church has already requested the Chinese authorities to release Jiaxi.
Jiaxi, upon hearing news of peoples support for him, said "for my convictions, I am willing to keep going, and am prepared for anything. I thank all those in the community, church friends, and all friends..., and-I love you all."
Human Rights Watch also reported that Li Qiaochu, Zhiyong's girlfriend, was also under fire by the Chinese authorities since she is a women's and labor rights activist. Qiaochu's Beijing home was searched by the police on January 2020 before she was detained for 24 hours and "denied" medical attention while in detention. She has gone missing since Zhiyong was imprisoned last February.
