The
government's concept of how the law operates was evident when it put on trial
the students and intellectuals implicated m the Tiananmen Square movement. They
were detained for many months before being formally arrested, and the so-called
public trials were closed to foreign reporters, friends, and, in some cases, even
family members. Most trials lasted little more than an hour or two, with
virtually no debate, and their outcome had been decided in advance. At times,
China's system reminded me of the Mouse's description of justice at the royal
court in Alice In Wonderland:
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"I'll
be the Judge, I'll be the jury, "
said
cunning old Fury:
"I'll
try the whole cause,
and
condemn you to death."
?
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Chen
Xiaoping, a short, scrappy Hunanese who is one of China's top constitutional
lawyers, is one of our favorite counterrevolutionaries. He gives the
authorities terrible migraines because of his refusal to buckle; he was even
always willing to see us. One day he told me about ills experience as one of
four intellectuals tried for "plotting to overthrow the government"
during the Tiananmen Square protests:
?
"On
December 5, 1990, they woke me up in my jail cell very early," he
recalled. "I knew something was up. They asked me if I wanted to shave.
And they told me to dress up a bit, so I put on a blue cotton jacket they had
given me, very clean, very new. Then they told me I was going to be put on trial
that morning. They didn't give me breakfast, but put me immediately into a car
with two policemen. They handcuffed me. It was the only time during my entire
detention that I was handcuffed. They said they had to do this because every
criminal must walk into the courtroom with handcuffs on, but they put the cuffs
on as loosely as possible.
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"We
drove an hour to the courthouse on Justice Road in Beijing.
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The
security was extremely tight around the courthouse. After I entered, they
opened the handcuffs, gave me breakfast, and they started chatting with me.
Then a man from the Special Cases Team came to say a few words to me. I think
he just wanted to see my attitude toward all this. After he left, one of the
judges came by to see me. He wanted to take another look at my personal
statement. This was a 5,000-word speech that I had written over the past few months.
This was where I had to admit to my mistakes, acknowledge my crimes. They had
read it and edited it, then had me rewrite several sections at least three or
four times. They were picky about every word.
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"My
trial was about to begin, but the courtroom was being renovated, so they held
the trial in a big hallway. There were about 200 to 300 people there, and at a
first glance, I saw my sister, my brother, and one of my professors. There were
three judges. A prosecutor read out the accusations, and then my lawyer spoke
for about ten minutes. I had met my lawyer only two or three times, each
occasion for less than an hour. My lawyer of course couldn't say that I didn't
commit a crime, but he tried to say that I didn't playa big role and that I had
a good attitude. He hoped the court would give me a reduced sentence. Then they
let me talk. At first I didn't want to speak at all, but they said I had to. So
I began refuting each of the accusations before the judge cut me off. He wanted
me to read out my Last Statement, all 5,OOO words, which took about half an
hour. That was it. We all left, and I ate lunch m the courtroom."
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The
judges were very happy with Chen's Last Statement, because in it he admitted to
engaging in certain activities (although he didn't agree they were criminal),
and they released him from jail two months later. They took him under police
escort to the train station, and two university guards accompanied him on the
train all the way back to Hunan, leaving him only after they arrived at the
doorstep of his mother's house. The only problem was that Chen Xiaoping didn't
want to go back to Hunan; he had been living for years in Beijing and wanted to
return to his post at the University of Politics and Law there. The
authorities, on the other hand, wanted him as far away from the capital as
possible.
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The
university had expelled Chen Xiaoping from his post, and his arrest had cost
him his Beijing residence permlt. The authorities refused to give him a new
residence permit or a new ID card, which he had lost. So he was left dangling
in the system: For a couple of years, he had no danwei, no hukou, no ID card,
no job. When he tried to marry a beautiful young woman, no one would approve
it. He needed a permit from his work unit, but there was no place to apply. The
other problem was that the woman's parents were Old Revolutionaries who were
appalled that they had raised their daughter only to marry a
counterrevolutionary. Against her family's wishes,
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Nicholas
Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn "China Wakes" (1994)
