The Center for Human Rights at the Catholic University of America has recently published an op-ed by Chen Guangcheng commemorating the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. To view this article, check the link in the description or go to humanrights.catholic.edu.
Will Deatherage: Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of The Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China. My name is Will Deatherage, the producer. Joining me, as always, is Chen Guangcheng.
Chen Guangcheng: Hi. Thank you, Will. Thank you everyone. I’m glad to see you here again.
W: And we have a fairly sad but remarkable story coming out of Communist China right now, involving a case of bullying, both of an individual and the people by the police state that, you know, governs China. Guangcheng, can you tell us how this all started, this story for this week?
G: Okay, yeah. This has become the hot news online. This involves a case of bullying.
W: Yeah. Bullying a student, right, Guangcheng?
G: Bullying a student, yeah. That happened July 22nd in Jiangyou City of Sichuan Province.
W: Yeah. So who did this case of bullying involve, Guangcheng?
G: In the video, we can see several young women brought a girl somewhere. The girl was just 14 years old. In the video, we can see the girls bullying her.
W: What exactly were they doing, uh, to her, Guangcheng?
G: Yeah, yeah. They beat her and kicked her and grabbed her clothes, and we can see, you know, she is so scared and she said, “My father will call, like, 911.” In mainland China, of course, we call it 110, right? The bullies said, “If you call 911, that is not useful.”
When the girl’s father found out about this, and went to the police station to ask them to check what’s happening and to punish the bullies, the police stalled, and her father keep going to the police station to ask them to do something.
W: Yes, but they just wouldn’t do anything, Guangcheng?
G: Yeah, they didn’t want [to] do something, you know. Some even said, “Oh, the bullies are so young, we cannot use the law to punish them.”
W: Okay.
G: But of course, I know the law. That is not true, right? Her father know about this, too, but the police wanted to protect the bullies. So then, the girl disappeared from school.
W: Okay.
G: The, girl’s father went to school to ask them, “Where is my daughter?” And the school said, “Oh, after school she came back.” But in fact, she did not come back. And her classmates told him before the school day ended, she disappeared.
W: Okay.
G: So yeah, August 2nd, the video of the girls bullying was uploaded online. So, more and more people watched the video and were angry and stood up to support the girl [being bullied]. So, more and more people asked the CCP to check what happened about this, to punish the bullies.
But the CCP still ignored that. And then, more and more came from different areas to go to the Jiangyou City’s government building to ask them to punish the bullies and find the girl, but the government ignored that. [They] just threatened the protesters there. But more and more people went to the square to protest, even in the night. More than 10,000 people [were] there.
The CCP’s officials ordered the police and special police to go to Jiangyou and to block all the streets to prevent the people coming from other cities to go there to protest. And the police and the special police went to the square and beat the protesters there. And some protesters’ bodies were bloody. And the police arrested the protesters and threw them in a truck to drive them away.
Of course, the CCP, they brought a cellphone jammer truck to prevent the protesters from uploading the videos. So, that became big news online now. Even some people online researched who the bullies are, and some people say some of them are members of the police leader’s family, and some come from the family of [the] CCP’s secretary.
But no one knows the details. But, of course, if they weren’t members of the police’s family, it would be strange for them to think it is useless to call the police.
W: Right.
G: Yeah. The girl was bullied by her classmates, and then the CCP bullied the people.
W: Yeah, yeah. You know, Guangcheng shared with me the videos of this. We’ll include them in this podcast for those watching the video version, and it’s quite remarkable how all these protests and the backlash by the CCP, you know, all over one 14-year-old getting bullied and a refusal to look into it.
I mean, it’s incredible, right, Guangcheng?
Yes, yes. You know, you can see in Mainland China now, there is no justice. Not just for a 14-year-old girl, but for the entire people. Yeah, this is Mainland China today.
W: So the girl is still missing, right?
G: Yeah, until now, no one knows where she is. A lot of people online are trying to find her information, but no news. But they found the bullies’ information and shared their pictures online.
W: Right, right. And like you’re saying, the claim is that some of them might belong to the police’s family, right?
G: Yeah.
W: So Guangcheng, is this… does this happen a lot, where, you know, the Communist Party doesn’t really seem to care about students? I think we… I feel like we have a lot of podcasts about disappearing students, or disappearing kids or teenagers. It seems like the Communist Party just doesn’t care about them.
G: Yeah, no one knows the details. I think this girl, maybe the CCP put her in some hotel.
W: So they’re, like, hiding her?
G: Yeah, yeah. Hiding her, I think. On August 5th, the CCP pretended her family wrote something online [that] said, “Oh, the CCP said ‘sorry’ to us. Please stop sharing the video.” The statement says it came [from] the girl’s father, but people online don’t believe it’s him. So, I think they are hiding her family until this story dies down.
W: Yeah, so they’re just kind of waiting for it to get less attention, right, Guangcheng?
G: Yes, yes.
W: It’s pretty terrible that that injustice can happen. Hopefully people won’t let the story die, right, Guangcheng?
G: Yes, yes. We should try to use different ways to give the CCP big pressure to tell us the truth.
W: And are there still protests going on?
G: No, no. On August 5th, after 3:00 AM, all the protestors were beaten by the police. So now, the square is empty. But online, the story is still very popular.
W: Well, if there’s any other developments that come from this, we’ll be sure to share it, and you can always count on The Barefoot Lawyer Reports on China to highlight all sorts of atrocities the Communist Party is committing, largely thanks to Guangcheng’s connections, you know, to what’s going on in China. Right, Guangcheng?
G: Yes, yes. Remember a few weeks ago, we made the podcast about how the CCP is using fake accounts online to give us trouble. Those same accounts had refused to support this girl, which shows they belong to the CCP.
W: Gotcha. Yeah, no, that’s really good to note. We encourage you to follow our work at humanrights.catholic.edu. Please make sure to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, and our other platforms. Guangcheng, thank you so much.
G: Thank you, Will. Thank you, everyone.
The Catholic University of America’s Center for Human Rights has published a documentary on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The documentary features world-class human rights experts from former state department officials to ambassadors and human rights activists. It can be found on our website at humanrights.catholic.edu.