Prison
was hard for Liu Yao. The crusading Chinese lawyer spent 16 months
behind bars at a county lock-up in Heyuan, a city in the southern
Guangdong province, surviving mainly on a diet of instant noodles and
preserved bean curd. His days were spent making plastic bags. His pens
and law books were taken away, he says, and he was denied access to
newspapers and his case file. When he was freed in April this year his
dark hair, which had been shaved off, grew back white.
Liu, 47,
was first detained by the authorities on December 19 2007, two days
after he led farmers from Bainitang hamlet to the disputed construction
site of the Lankou hydropower station, which was being built on their
land. In the confrontation, wooden boards and other construction
materials valued at Rmb50,615 (£4,500) were allegedly destroyed or
stolen. The farmers’ lawyer was formally arrested a month later,
accused of inciting unrest. In June 2008 a county court sentenced him
to four years in prison.
Liu’s family and colleagues suspected
that he had been prosecuted simply for doing his job. “In the course of
doing his legal work, he was charged, arrested and convicted,” Liu’s
wife, Lai Wei’e, would later tell me. Liu’s sentence was equivalent to
a year in jail for each Rmb12,650 in alleged damage. “It’s ridiculous.
How can a few boards be worth Rmb50,000?” said Lai’s brother-in-law,
Huang Yuhui. “The important question is, ‘Was anyone hurt?’” To which
the answer was no, he said.
The case sparked action by lawyers’
associations in Shenzhen, the special economic zone bordering Hong
Kong, and in Beijing. “The Shenzhen Lawyers Association is like a
father, and its lawyers are like brothers and sisters,” said Lai. The
lawyers’ campaign also distinguished the controversy surrounding the
Lankou hydropower station from the myriad land disputes that arise
regularly across rural China, since it united assertive legal
professionals and aggrieved farmers under the same banner.
. . .
Liu
personified this unlikely class solidarity. He was born into a humble
family in 1962 and raised in Paitou village – of which Bainitang hamlet
is part – yet rose to become a member of China’s prosperous
professional classes. It is a leap that few rural children make. A
partner in Liu’s firm, Zou Zongcheng, says: “I have known Liu Yao for
six years. He is the son of farmers. He understands the importance of
land and knows how to eat bitterness. He never took any money from
those villagers.”
Liu started out as an artist. He specialised in
reproducing famous oil paintings – a cottage industry in China – but
became interested in the law after his brother was injured in a knife
attack. The culprits were never caught; nor were his brother’s medical
fees compensated. “I filed a lawsuit on my brother’s behalf because
local lawyers wouldn’t accept the case and lawyers in Guangzhou [the
provincial capital] were too expensive,” Liu says. “I bought some law
books and began to teach myself… I began to help other people file
lawsuits.”
In 1989, at the age of 27, Liu started to teach
himself law in earnest. He also had his first brush with the
authorities, who detained him for three months after he urged local
farmers not to pay what he argued were excessive taxes. After his
release, he moved to a nearby town, Huidong, and began a legal
apprenticeship. “I had to get special approval to take the law exam
because I didn’t have the necessary degree – I was just a peasant,” he
says. “I passed the exam in 2003 and became a registered lawyer. I got
into trouble again for helping peasants in Huidong when local
governments seized their lands. That’s how I ended up in Shenzhen.”
When
the villagers of Bainitang approached Liu for help in 2006, their case
was a routine one in the context of China’s rapidly changing
countryside. As costs increased in Shenzhen and other cities across
the Pearl River Delta, where south China’s manufacturing industries
have traditionally been concentrated, export factories migrated to
cheaper sites inland such as Heyuan on the banks of the East River.
Heyuan was happy to receive the factories, setting up development zones
and recruiting migrant labour. To meet the new demand for power the
city turned to its natural resources, placing officials and their
hydropower project on a collision course with the villagers of
Bainitang. The authorities had not counted on an opponent of Liu’s
tenacity.
Liu took the case on the understanding that his firm
would be paid 20 per cent of any settlement. After a collective
agreement to pay Rmb1.8m (£160,000) fell through, and some of those
affected accepted smaller individual offers, Liu led villagers to the
construction site on December 11 2007 and again on December 17, when
the fateful clash occurred.
“There was some property damage,” Liu
admits. “One witness, a minor, said 50 boards were destroyed and
another said all of them were. But police photos showed many boards
were not destroyed and [the second witness] is an employee of [the
dam’s developer]. I believe the minor’s testimony was coached by the
police ... An appraisal document appeared belatedly during the trial
and was introduced as ‘supplemental evidence’. I call it false evidence
and a violation of legal procedure. The verdict was also incorrect
because it didn’t mention that the land had been appropriated
illegally.”
When the Heyuan Intermediate People’s Court decided
to deal with Liu’s appeal through written submissions rather than in
open session, 36 lawyers from more than 10 provinces and cities signed
a petition on his behalf. Lawyers’ associations in Shenzhen, where Liu
worked for the Guangdong Wisdom & Fortune Law Firm, and Beijing
also sprang into action. On the evening of August 3 2008, two lawyers,
Li Fangping and Xie Yanyi, flew from Beijing to petition the Heyuan
court. A hearing was set for the following month.
. . .
A
day before the appeal, the committee to save Liu Yao assembled outside
the offices of the Shenzhen Lawyers Association, preparing to descend
on a hostile court in a rural backwater. I joined the caravan of
big-city lawyers for the two-hour car journey, alongside Lai, Liu’s
wife, and her brother-in-law – even though Liu’s two defence attorneys,
Meng Xi and Li Fangping, were nervous about my presence.
“The
lawyers wouldn’t come if they didn’t think my husband had a case,” said
Lai as we took the road to Heyuan. “There are problems with the
evidence. The case also has implications for other lawyers, who are
worried about the precedent it has set.”
Her spirits were picking up, even though a local journalist who had promised to come along had cancelled at the last minute.
The
next morning, Liu and two villagers were led into a room at the Heyuan
Intermediate People’s Court. Liu, or Prisoner No 14, had a hint of a
moustache and appeared to be shirtless beneath a bright orange jail
vest. With his shaved head he looked more like a village tough than a
lawyer. Li Fangping complained that his client had been brought to
court in such a state. Liu and villager Li Zhiguang, who wore a black
and blue-striped shirt under his prison garb, were led into the
courtroom in handcuffs. The other villager, Li Dongming, wore civilian
clothes – his nine-month sentence had recently ended.
Three
judges sat opposite Liu. The lead judge looked the part – lidded eyes
and a mouth that set naturally in a frown. Lai sat on her own at the
back of the small courtroom, which was packed with about 25 policemen
and observers. She exchanged only the occasional nod with her husband.
Under Chinese court procedures, families do not receive visitation
rights if a case is still at the appeal stage. Lai had not had a proper
conversation with her husband in months. The situation had been hard on
their eight-year-old daughter, she said. “She knows what has happened
but there is lots I don’t tell her. I encourage her to study.”
Liu
outlined the grounds for his appeal, which centred on evidentiary
procedure. He and his lawyers also contended that the hydropower
station was built without proper land-conversion approvals, which are
necessary before agricultural land can be expropriated for industrial
use. If the dam was an illegal construction, they argued, then Liu and
his farmer clients should not be prosecuted for opposing its
construction.
“My mother and father were peasants. I was a
peasant,” Liu told the court, gesturing with his now uncuffed hands.
“Like the villagers of Bainitang, we relied on our own hard work.
“We
have to protect our land,” he continued, his voice rising. “There is no
other option.” Behind Liu his colleagues leaned forward, listening
intently. “I led them to the construction site to support them, not
destroy things. Are people without money not entitled to a livelihood?
Does the country not have laws?”
After four hours of often heated
exchanges the appeal hearing ended with fireworks. The lead judge
interrupted Liu, telling him to wrap up his final remarks. This
provoked an objection from Meng Xi, who demanded another opportunity to
speak. When this was denied he and the judge, banging his gavel,
started a shouting match. Liu joined in, along with his sympathisers in
the gallery. As police and the defendants’ supporters leapt to their
feet, Liu and Li Zhiguang were handcuffed and taken away. There was no
violence but the courtroom seethed.
. . .
Such
bad-tempered exchanges between prosecution and defence highlight an
important point about crime and punishment in China. Judges are often
poorly trained, and verdicts in politically sensitive cases frequently
preordained. But there is a system and its forms are adhered to. From a
cynical perspective, this facilitates show trials that enable the
government to argue that justice has been done, even when people are
jailed for exercising rights enshrined in the country’s constitution.
More
optimistically, a trial – no matter how flawed – is clearly preferable
to the lawless violence of the cultural revolution and also China’s
shadowy laogai, or “reform through labour”, system, which allows police
to banish suspects to work camps without a court appearance. The
country’s extensive courts system also reinforces the public’s
awareness of its legal rights, especially relating to property in
affluent urban areas and land in the countryside. And most importantly,
a growing network of increasingly assertive lawyers such as Meng Xi and
Li Fangping are prepared to use the system, its imperfections
notwithstanding, to hold government officials and departments to
account.
After the appeal, Liu’s lawyers and their colleagues
dissected the morning at a nearby restaurant. “What do we do next? I
want to hear your opinions,” Meng said, before offering a few ideas of
his own, including a proposal that an objective observer who was
present at the appeal should post a summary on the Shenzhen Lawyers
Association website.
“This case won’t be decided in Heyuan,”
added Li. “There are three regions involved now – Heyuan, Shenzhen and
Beijing.” As the lawyers rattled on, Liu’s wife, Lai, sat quietly on
the sidelines. At other times she was a whirlwind of activity –
organising hotel accommodation and ordering food for the legal team –
and remained generally upbeat. But occasionally the emotional strain
showed.
Provoking a row with the judge had struck me as a dubious
tactic. Yet just three days after Liu’s appeal hearing ended in a
shouting match, the Heyuan Intermediate People’s Court ordered the
county court to retry the case. The decision seemed to validate the
defence’s assertion that the evidence was flawed. And with no new
evidence admissible for the retrial, prospects for the lawyer’s release
were looking up.
The retrial took place on October 17 and the
verdict was handed down two months later, on December 22. It appeared a
classic face-saving compromise. The court upheld the earlier guilty
verdict, but reduced Liu’s sentence from four years to two. “We are
very disappointed with this verdict – Liu Yao will appeal,” Lai said
afterwards. “We failed,” added lawyer Meng Xi. “Liu Yao has been given
two years’ prison for the same charge. I cannot comment on the judge’s
decision but I think this is a very strange case.”
. . .
In
March, I visited Bainitang to meet the villager I had last seen in
prison vest and handcuffs at Liu Yao’s appeal hearing; Li Zhiguang’s
10-month sentence was almost up at that point. He had been the head of
the hamlet at the time of the protest that led to his, Liu Yao and Li
Dongming’s imprisonment. It was the second time I had travelled to
Bainitang. On my first visit, the final stretch of road to the hamlet
was a muddy track that my driver from Heyuan struggled to navigate. Six
months later it had become a proper concrete surface. Though no wider
than an average suburban American driveway, it represented a leap
forward for the hamlet.
Bainitang’s homes were grouped together
in a classic defensive cluster. To the west of the village lay fields,
river and a mountain range. But for the controversial hydropower
station and an expressway on the river’s far bank, it would have been a
rural idyll.
Li and I walked to the dam at the centre of the
dispute. “That land is mine,” he said, pointing to what had once been a
wooded hill at the edge of the East River. Much of the hill was still
there. But its riverside slope had been sheared off to make way for the
dam and shotcreted for stability. The exposed orange soil, partially
patched over with concrete, resembled a poorly bandaged wound. Below, a
solitary excavator laboured beside the dam. A small hollow nearby,
where villagers used to farm peanuts, was now a dumping ground for
earth dug up during construction.
This is where Liu Yao and 30
villagers had assembled to demand a halt to the development. “We told
them not to start construction until we had cleared up the matter,” Li
said, looking out over the dam. “They said we were being too impulsive
and told us to protest through legal channels. But what good is that
when the government is the law?”
Having completed his survey of
the alleged crime scene, we returned to Li’s home – a red brick and
concrete shell with four floors, including the flat roof. There was no
toilet, no banister on the stairs and windows were yet to be installed
on the upper floors. Mosquito nets protected the beds of the farmer,
his wife, Li Youfa, and their two children. His daughter Donghua, 13,
and son Dongfei, 12, had chalked some basic maths on an outside wall:
“2 + 2 = 4, 4 + 4 = 8” and then, less predictably, “1 + 1000 = 1001”.
For
all its flaws, the structure was still an improvement on the mud-brick
and tile-roof homes where Li’s father and grandfather lived, and which
are now wood stores. “Our family moved here during the Ming dynasty
[1368-1644],” he said, reeling off his lineage.
“My grandfather
was Kuomintang dynasty,” he added, referring to the Nationalist party
that ruled most of mainland China from 1928 to its defeat by the
communists in 1949. “My father and I are Chinese Communist party
dynasty. Life was the same for all of us. We all tilled the land.” In
the main ground floor living area, with only two small bulbs for
illumination, was a television and a small dining table. This was also
where Li parked his motorcycle. On the wall were clashing symbols: a
Christian cross – “My wife believes,” Li said – and a poster of Mao
Zedong and his marshals. “Of course Mao was good,” he added when asked
about the poster. “Without him we never would have had land. Land is
money.”
He disappeared into his bedroom and returned with two
precious plastic bags of documents. One contained his land title,
valid from 1999 to 2029. From another he produced documents relating to
his trial. These included a letter, dated December 1, 2006, confirming
his appointment as head of the hamlet; another, dated September 5,
2007, confirming Liu’s appointment as the villagers’ lawyer; and a
handwritten copy of an appeal written by Liu on December 25, 2008. “It
was no use for me to appeal,” Li said. “I don’t understand the law.
There was nothing I could do but depend on the lawyers. I have no money
or power. None of my relatives are government officials.” He also
produced a letter of his own, written in court, and muttered an
apology – “I write badly” – before reading it aloud:
“I am Li
Zhiguang, a peasant and native of Dongyuan county, with a primary
school education … In May 2006 I took some compensation for my land. My
government said that as leader of the hamlet, I should be a good model
and give up my land first. A villager named Li Jianxin asked why I
agreed to let my land be requisitioned. He and the other villagers
didn’t go along with the requisition plan, blocked the roads and said I
should step down from my position as village leader.
“I agreed to
resign. However, later they hired a lawyer and asked me to stay on. A
village must have a leader and it was too late to elect another. So I
helped organise the lawsuit, the petitions and other things.”
As
Li spoke, Donghua and Dongfei squabbled good-humouredly over the seat
in front of the television. They were also excited about having their
pictures taken. It was a much happier home than the first time I
visited, when their father was in prison. The fact that Li accepted
Rmb20,000 (£1,800) for some, but not all, of his expropriated land does
not exonerate the local government, especially if it was not properly
reclassified. Nor does it have any bearing on the concerns about Liu’s
conviction. It does highlight, however, how difficult it can be for
villagers – in China and elsewhere – to maintain a united front in the
face of concerted government pressure.
. . .
A
week after talking to Li, I caught up with Liu’s wife. She was
distressed. “They are monitoring my home and phone – I don’t feel
free,” Lai Wei’e said when we met in a hotel lobby in downtown
Shenzhen. I hadn’t recognised her at first – her hair was not pulled
back, as before, and seemed almost to hide her face. She also wore
large pink-framed glasses, even though it was cloudy. We went to a
nearby park to talk.
It was then a year and three months since
her husband had been swallowed up by China’s penal system. Lai also
gave me a bitter statement written by her husband. “County prosecutors
betrayed the truth and the law … In order to prove that the hydropower
station was a legal construction, they provided totally unrelated and
laughable evidence. Only a stupid judge could accept it.” The county
and township officials involved declined my repeated requests to
discuss the case.
Liu was similarly scathing about the official
valuations of the construction materials allegedly destroyed: “Only an
idiot could believe them.”
“As a lawyer appointed by the
villagers, I led them to the construction site to stop an illegal
construction,” Mr Liu’s statement concluded. “There was some damage but
it didn’t exceed the boundaries of legitimate self-defence. In helping
the villagers defend their land, I did not endanger society. I am not a
criminal and the judge shouldn’t find me guilty on the basis of false
and illegal valuation documents. To do so would be an injustice and
profane the law.”
Lai’s wish came true. Her husband was granted
his second appeal hearing on April 10. Six days later, Heyuan
Intermediate People’s Court announced its decision to shorten the
lawyer’s sentence to 18 months and suspend the two months he
technically still had to serve. It was not the complete exoneration Liu
and his wife had hoped for – the conviction still stands and he was
given two years’ probation. But after 16 months behind bars he was free
and could see his family again – and visit a hairdresser to have his
now white hair dyed black.
Liu says he will continue to appeal
against the verdict. He complains that, as a convicted felon, he can no
longer practise as a lawyer. “I’m unemployed now and can’t take cases,”
he says. “It’s ridiculous. In trying to stop a crime I was branded a
criminal. Sometimes the law is very malleable.”
Tom Mitchell is the FT’s south China correspondent
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