 Good morning and aloha everybody. Welcome to Law Across the Sea. My name is Mark Shklov. I'm the host of Law Across the Sea. We have a program that we bring every other Monday talking about lawyers and law and lawyers who have crossed the sea for various reasons. Today my guest is Dr. Tang Biao. Dr. Tang is a lawyer from the People's Republic of China. He was an outspoken academic and civil rights activist in China. He was formerly a lecturer with the China University of Political Science and Law and also provided legal representation in death penalty and civil rights cases. Dr. Tang left China as a result of recent persecution of civil rights lawyers in that country. Dr. Tang, since leaving China, has been a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School and at Yale Law School. He is currently a visiting scholar at New York University and the Institute for Advanced Study. He's presently in Hawaii as the inaugural participant in the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Scholars at Risk program. This is a special program that's funded by the University of Hawaii as well as private sources including Hawaii lawyers Rich Turbin, Ray St. Chu, Judy Pavey, and Larry Foster, the former dean of the University of Hawaii Law School. Dr. Foster is here today as my co-host and I'd like to welcome both Dr. Tang and Dr. Foster. Welcome to Hawaii. Aloha. Good to see you. Our pleasure. Dr. Tang, I want to ask you a few questions just to help me understand where you're from and what you've done. According to what I've heard, you are a rights defense lawyer in China. Is that right? Yes. What is that? What is a rights defense lawyer? Just a defense lawyer in China means a lot of Chinese lawyers use the Chinese constitution and laws to defend human rights and tell us the abuse of power. Abuses of power? Yes. By the government? Yes, by the government. In many cases, these lawyers defend not only the human rights and fundamental freedom, but also promote democracy in China. I see. And you hold yourself in that category and that's similar to a civil rights lawyer in Hawaii or in the United States? What we would call a civil rights lawyer or is there a little bit of a difference or how do you see? Yeah, no human rights lawyers in China and the United States defend human rights or civil rights, but there are at least two major differences. One is in the United States and other western countries, there is a rule of law and the lawyers can use the legal system. But in China, the rule of law is our goal. We don't have a rule of law and we don't have judicial independence. And then it's very, very hard for Chinese human rights lawyers to work. And the second one is the safety of the human rights lawyers are not guaranteed in China. Many human rights lawyers encounter all kinds of harassment and persecution and today, many lawyers are in detention and disappearance and a lot of lawyers in China. So we always arrest it or sentence or disappear or even torture. So that's a main difference. Dr. Foster, you've spent some time in China and what questions would you be asking Dr. Tong about his experiences and background? Yeah, a number of questions. Let me begin by saying that I really consider Dr. Tong a real hero, the kind of person that can stand up to power and say the kinds of things and do the kinds of things that he's done takes a great deal of courage to do. So I really appreciate the work that you and your colleagues are doing in China. Maybe if you could give us an example of maybe one or two of the cases that you got involved in these rights defense lawyers. I have a recollection that there's a rights lawyer that is was in the news here in the United States a few years back, the so-called blind lawyer. As I recall, you were on part of his legal team in China and maybe you could talk a little bit about that case. Yeah, you know in 2003 there was a very influential case, a Shenzhen case. Actually that is the very beginning of the rights defense movement in China and in that case a young designer was tortured to death in the custody and repatriation center and me and two other scholars lawyers wrote an open letter to the National People's Congress to tell us the constitutionality of the custody and repatriation system. And then many lawyers and scholars protested against this unconstitutional detention. And then several months later this regulation was abolished. And another case may be Cheng Guangcheng's case. Cheng Guangcheng is a planned activist in Shandong province. He made a lot of effort to challenge the forced abortion and forced sterilization under the one child policy. And then a lot of other human rights lawyers went to that really providing legal assistance to Cheng and other victims. So we human rights lawyers in China have taken a lot of these human rights cases or sensitive cases and then the number of human rights lawyers in China is increasing rapidly. In 2003 there are only 20 or 30 human rights lawyers all over China but now maybe more than a thousand. And you mentioned that you started off with a letter in the newspaper. Is that right? It's an open letter to the National People's Congress. I see. How was that published? I mean was that in a newspaper or like a... It's a newspaper and it's quite subtle. You know the the newspapers, the televisions are totally controlled by the Communist Party. But since 1990, there was a process of marketization of the media. And then some media, you know, report some two news. And some journalists like lawyers, they want also challenge the abuse of power by the government. And then the Transgress was reported in the south of the southern metropolitan newspaper and then our open letter was also published. So there is some opportunity to talk about these things in China. There was. Yeah, and another very important element is internet, social media. So even if the official newspaper didn't publicize it, we can also use social media that blog or Twitter or there was no Twitter in 2003. But later on a lot of social media and then it plays a very important role in the rights defense movement. It's very helpful for us to organize, to mobilize people, to disseminate messages, to censor information. And then it promotes the rights defense movement positively and actively. Okay, so there are ways to talk about civil rights, human rights in China and that you say it's growing. But how did you get involved? What was your start in the rights defense or human rights? Yeah, I just mentioned Sun Zhejiang case. That was my first human rights case. But I mean, it would have been much easier not to take that case. What made you want to do that? Yeah, when I was in Peking University preparing my PhD, I had a lot of discussion with Xu Zhiyong and Yu Jiang, two of my classmates. And then we decided to do something to promote rule of law in China. And we paid a lot of attention to these issues like forced abortion, torture, death penalty, and including the custody and repatriation system. So after the report of Sun Zhejiang case, we decided to contribute a little bit. And in that open letter, we demanded not only the abolition of custody and repatriation system, but also to push forward the constitutional review system in China. Because we want the National People's Congress to review regulation issued by the State Council. And that is very important in China to have a basic constitutional review. And that is very risky at that time. But we decided to do so. I see. Well, and we're going to take a little break right now. And at the, when we start again, I'd like you to tell us what happened to you after our break as a result of your actions as a rights defense lawyer. So we'll take a break right now and come back and talk about that. Thank you for watching Think Tech. I'm Grace Chang, the new host for Global Connections. You can find me here live every Thursday at 1 p.m. We'll be talking to people around the islands or visiting the islands who are connected in various aspects of global affairs. So please tune in and Aloha and thanks for watching. Okay, I'm here with Brett Overgaard of the Faculty of the School of Journalism and the Department of Communications at UH Minoa. We've had a number of shows. We have a movable feast going on. And we talk about journalism. We talk about language. We talk about communication in general. We talk about the effect of that on the country and on individual people. Brett, it's so good to be able to discuss this with you in our movable feast. Oh, it's my pleasure. This is a great opportunity. You'll have to come back again and again. Okay, deal? That's the deal. Brett Overgaard. I'm Jay Fidel. We care about everything. Thanks. Well, Dr. Tong, welcome back to Law Across the Sea after our break. And I told you I'd wanted to ask you a little bit about what the results were of your actions. And I understand, I've heard, that some lawyers in China get persecuted because of the rights defense actions that they take. What happened to you? What happened to you? What was the result? Yeah, since 2003, I had taken a lot of sensitive cases and I co-founded a couple of NGOs in China. One is Open Constitution Initiative, Gongmeng. Another is China Against the Death Penalty. And I focus a lot on torture, freedom of expression, religious freedom, and land rights. I defend it for fundamental practitioners, the political dissidents, and the victims of miscarriages of justice. So because of my human rights law, I was banned from teaching. And eventually I was fired by my university. I was disbarred. And so excuse me, but so the cases that you were taking were contrary to what the government wanted. Is that correct? Or contrary to the government position? Yeah, yeah. And the government took this action to bar you from teaching? Yeah. I see. Yeah. And I was disbarred and I was put under house arrest. And I was kidnapped actually three times and detained and tortured. What happened when you were kidnapped and tortured? What was the result of that? In 2008, I tried to represent Hu Jia, another prominent activist. And then I was kidnapped and threatened. Who kidnapped you? The secret police. Guo An, Guo Bao, the secret police. And what did they do? So when I returned home after I parked my car, four people just forced me into their car and put a sack on my head and then detained me. And I didn't know where I was detained. Did you know who they were? Did you have any idea who they were? They are from the secret police. But I don't know their names, their position. And the same thing happened in 2011. I was also kidnapped and then detained for 17 days during the detention. I was put under extreme form of solitary confinement and physically and mentally tortured. And I was forced to wear a handcuff and 24-7. I was forced to sit down on the ground facing the wall from 6 a.m. to midnight 12 o'clock. And so a lot of human rights activists were also kidnapped and detained and tortured at that time. And what were they telling you? Were they telling you anything? Did they say why you were there or give you any basis to make a decision on what would happen? Yeah, they printed all my articles and interviews and my Twitter posts and then they said they can sentence me. They can touch me with state subversion and sentence me up to 10 years. And they didn't tell me how long they would detain me. Because it's not according to criminal procedure. I was not detained in the detention center. It's an abduction and disappearance. So they tried to stop me from doing human rights work. Did it work? Did they stop you? No. I faced this kind of harassment, persecution every day, every week. But every time I was released, I may feel afraid for a while, but I didn't stop. And every time I even went further. I took more and more sensitive cases and I even organized more protests and participated a lot of political activities. Did they ever put you up to trial or anything like that? No. And at some point you decided to leave China? How did that come about? In late 2013, I was a visiting scholar in Hong Kong and then a lot of my colleagues, human rights lawyers, were arrested. And then all of my friends advised me not to go back because if I went back, I would be arrested definitely. And then I was invited by Harvard Law School, so I decided to come here. Okay. And you have a family in China? Yeah. And when I came to Boston with one of my daughters, my wife and another daughter of mine were blocked from traveling abroad. And of course, it's kind of collective punishment. The government want to use them as hostages to silence me. But I of course don't want to be silent and I continue my human rights work in the States. And then we didn't have any hope. And finally, my wife and daughter decided to smuggle themselves out. And they joined you in Boston? Yeah. Larry, what are your insights in this? What are your thoughts? Yeah, I don't know if I have insights particularly, but there are some interesting verbs that Professor Tung is using in terms of the tactics against lawyers. Arrested, detained, or disappeared. And disappeared is sort of a new word that came into the vocabulary in 2013. People just literally disappeared. Never to be seen? Never to be seen or heard from again. Detained often is illegal detention, even under Chinese law, illegal detention. Nobody knows where you are, nobody can talk to you, you have no right to a lawyer or anything like that. The lucky ones get arrested and there's some sort of a more public process. But it's a very dangerous time for rights lawyers in China. So I was very heartened to learn that the number of rights lawyers is really increasing. And that's just a tremendously hopeful sign for the future. In that respect, what do you see for the future of China? Speaking for myself, I have lots of Chinese friends, lawyers, non-lawyers in China. I do not like to feel for them that their system or their government is oppressive. I was thinking that China was actually progressing, moving very well towards the future. What do you see? What do you see for China for the future? What would you see? What would you like to see? On the one hand, China has no market economy and then the social media, and of course it's censored. And then the legalization, the recovery of legal professions. And then we have seen a rising rights defense movement. On the other hand, the Communist Party actually refuses the idea of rule of law or democracy or constitutionalism. And it never stops to surprise the civil society or the human rights movement, especially after Xi Jinping to his office in late 2012. Actually he started a comprehensive crackdown on human rights lawyers. President Xi. Yeah, yeah. And the NGOs and underground churches and Tibetan and Uyghurs and all these people demanding democracy and rule of law in China. Especially the July 9th crackdown on lawyers. But we can see that this kind of severe crackdown didn't stop the human rights activists in China. And people continue to stand up to fight for their fundamental rights and freedom. So I believe Chinese people will achieve freedom and democracy and there may be a long way to go. But the Communist Party can't prevent Chinese people from fighting for democracy. So that is hopeful for me. And I would like to see that happen. And the idea of democracy, maybe when China started to open up a few years ago, maybe that idea got in. And it seems to, according to what you said, then there's a growing number of younger lawyers, that be right, that are Yeah, yeah. Thinking along those lines that democracy is a good thing and that rule of law is something that we should aspire to. Is that is that a correct assumption on my part? Yeah, no Chinese government tries its best to brainwash Chinese people. But more Chinese people, both young and old, realize the importance of democracy or rule of law. And then this kind of political system and legal system violates people's rights every day. And then people will stand up to fight for their own rights and other rights. So I have seen clearly that more and more people will support democracy and do something for democracy. In China. In China. And do you think they'll be able to see our program in China? Do you think they will be able to see this program? Yeah, yeah. So some Chinese people, especially activists, can use kind of software or VPN to escape the GFW to access to the censored programs and information. And that's the hope. GFW is the great Chinese firewall that blocks everything bad. Yeah. Well, hopefully our program can get in and they can see that you're here with us in Hawaii. And I want to thank you very much for coming today.