Chinese Human Rights Defenders [2] reported on 31 August that civil rights campaigner Wang Guilan had been sentenced to more than 15 months of Re-education through Labour (RTL) for “disturbing social order.” CHRD reports [3] that, according to the authorities, “Wang is being punished for accepting a phone interview by a foreign journalist during the Olympics.”

CLB condemns the sentencing of Wang Guilan on the spurious and arbitrary charge of “disturbing social order” to RTL, an extrajudicial system that doesn’t give defendants any realistic chance to defend themselves. Please take a few minutes of your time to print this PDF letter [4] and post it to the authorities calling on them to immediately release Wang Guilan.

Wang Guilan, from Enshi City, Hubei, was a former worker at a State Owned Enterprise (SOE), became one of the millions who lost her job in the process of SOE “restructuring” [5] in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. After becoming unemployed, Wang used up her severance pay to set up a medicine stall in her local shopping centre, only to be evicted four years later after the authorities slated the centre for redevelopment. She was awarded 50,000 yuan in compensation by the courts, but the shopping mall violated the order and failed to pay her the full amount. Wang then sent numerous petitions to the local court authorities seeking enforcement of the ruling. They consistently failed to respond. On 22 November 2001, after yet another judicial rejection, Wang poured a can of petrol over her head at the courthouse entrance and threatened to set herself alight if her case was not settled. Court security officials not only failed to dissuade Wang, they deliberately provoked and taunted her, saying she would have to “move fast, otherwise the petrol will evaporate.”

In anger and desperation, Wang then carried out her threat, and in the ensuing blaze suffered third-degree burns all over her face and head. After prolonged emergency medical treatment, followed by several months in which a mainland lawyer who had been assigned to the case on a pro bono basis negotiated intensively with the local authorities on her behalf, the Enshi city government agreed to provide Wang with a disability pension for life and also to cover the full costs of a much-needed series of remedial and cosmetic surgery operations to repair her face. This traumatic experience served to politicize Wang, setting her on an eventual collision course with the authorities.

In July 2005, Wang tried to meet in Beijing with Louise Arbour, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, and briefly staged a demonstration in front of the American embassy, in an attempt to attract international attention and pressure the Chinese government to intervene on her behalf. She was immediately detained by the Beijing police and escorted back to her hometown by six officers of the Enshi Public Security Bureau. On 2 August, she was taken to a police station near her home and ordered to name the instigator of her “attack on the embassy” and to confess to her “crime.” When she refused to do so, she was sentenced without trial to seven days’ administrative detention.

During this period, local officials informed Wang’s family that the agreement she had reached with the Enshi government on payment of her medical treatment costs now constituted a “problem.” Should they agree to hand over the original copy of the compensation and redress agreement, however, “Everything would be negotiable.” The family refused, and the police then spitefully increased Wang’s sentence. On 1 September, midway through a major series of cosmetic surgery operations to reconstruct her face, the Enshi RTL committee sentenced her to one year and three months in an RTL camp. After completing her sentence, however, Wang went on to become a prominent civil rights activist. In spring 2008, for example, she was one of the chief organizers of an internet petition drive calling on the Chinese government to pay greater attention to human rights concerns in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics.

As CHRD reports, “On April 17, 2008, Beijing police picked Wang up off the street. They handed her to interceptors from Enshi City. Wang was escorted back to Enshi, where she was held at an isolated "black jail". On May 6, Wang was told by the Secretary of the Enshi City Political and Legal Affairs Committee that she was to be detained until after the Olympics.”