Such is the case of Yang, a Chinese national with U.S. permanent residence and PhD’s from Harvard and Berkeley, who had been denied the right to return to his homeland since the 1989 Tiananmen tragedy. After detention he was first investigated for illegally entering China by using a friend’s passport and was held in solitary confinement for almost a year, totally incommunicado, with no notice of his whereabouts given to his family and no access to counsel. As the generous legal time limit for criminal investigation was about to expire and his detention was about to exceed China’s maximum one-year punishment for those convicted of illegal entry, the authorities started the detention clock over again by launching a new investigation, this time for alleged acts of spying for Taiwan, a much more serious charge that could lead to the death penalty. In an effort to extract Yang from the clutches of the security police, his family, members of Congress, the State Department, the UN, human rights organizations, the media and his lawyers subjected the Chinese Government to unremitting pressure. Not only did the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention find Yang’s detention to be in violation of international law, but also both Houses of Congress unanimously adopted resolutions calling for his release. Yang was finally indicted on both the illegal entry and spying charges and tried on August 4, 2003 in Beijing’s No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court, the main arena for political trials. Because “state secrets” were allegedly involved, the hearing was closed to the public, excluding even his family, friends and representatives of the American Embassy. After a half-day hearing, the three-judge panel announced that a decision would be issued in due course, and Yang was returned to his cell. Since China’s Criminal Procedure Code normally requires a trial court to issue its judgment within a month and a half of receiving the indictment, the end of Yang’s long wait for justice seemed in sight. Yet no decision from on high was forthcoming. The court first covered its embarrassment by extending its deadline a month, as allowed by law for difficult cases. When that proved insufficient, last October the court, seeking a continuing fig-leaf for the delay, even asked Yang’s lawyer to apply for another month’s extension on the spurious ground that the defense needed to collect additional evidence. In the repressive Chinese context, where embattled defense counsel appear before this important court regularly, this was an offer that was hard to refuse. Yet Yang’s counsel, the well-known human rights lawyer Mo Shaoping, did refuse to collaborate in his client’s continuing incarceration. Staff at the prosecutor’s office that supervises Yang’s detention center subsequently admitted that on December 1 Yang’s detention had officially expired and that those responsible for holding him illegally should be punished. But they also conceded that this is no ordinary case. The Chinese Government claims that last year its strict new procedures for ending illegally-prolonged detentions corrected over 25,000 violations. Yet lawyer Mo’s petitions to the Supreme People’s Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme People’s Court seeking Yang’s release have thus far gone unanswered, as has his family’s petition to the National People’s Congress. Yang’s two years of punishment without being convicted of anything is obviously a severe deprivation for him and his American wife and children. But it is also a blatant acknowledgement by the Chinese Government that its recent belated campaign to end the scourge of overtime criminal detentions, which the National People’s Congress has characterized as “a chronic disease,” has a long way to go. Unfortunately, despite China’s commendable efforts to create a legal system, politics is still in command. -------------------------- |
