CHINA

According to the information received, on June 5, 2006, officials at the Shanghai’s Tilanqiao Prison took Mr. Zheng Enchong from his cell at 4:00 a.m. and at around 5:00 a.m. sent him directly home.

Human Rights in China (HRIC) has learned that jailed lawyer Zheng Enchong was allowed to return directly home following his release on completion of his sentence, on June 5 after serving a three-year prison term on charges of illegally providing state secrets overseas. His case has sparked intense overseas and domestic media interest.
However, a number of other Shanghai residents were rounded up for detention and surveillance in the lead up to his release and the anniversary of the June 4th crackdown.
Sources in China told HRIC that on May 30, Zheng’s wife, Jiang Meili, received a letter from Zheng in which he laid out special arrangements for his release. According to the text of the letter, Zheng states that the Party branch secretaries of the North Station and Tianshan districts, along with a social worker and household registration police officer, came to the prison to talk with Zheng and seek his cooperation on the following arrangements: 1) On June 5, a police vehicle would bring him to the North Station District police station for a procedure where his sentence of deprivation of political rights would be executed, along with inspection of his release papers and arrangements “guaranteeing his personal safety.” 2) On the morning of June 6, as arranged by the Tianshan district Party branch secretary, Zheng would be taken to the Ziyunlu Tianshan police station for the processing of his household registration and identification card. Zheng wrote Jiang that she should wait for further notification regarding where she should meet him..

IDHAE welcomes the safe return home of lawyer Mr. Zheng Enchong after three years in prison, and asks for dropping the remaining sentence of deprivation of his political rights for one year.

We want in this moment to thank all the persons, organisations and institutions, which intervened in favour of Mr. Zheng’s release and among them alml IDHAE members who took part in the IDHAE “Free Zheng Enchong Campaign ”

BACKGROUND INFORMATION :

Zheng Enchong, aged 55, a lawyer in Shanghai,  had advised more than 500 families displaced by Shanghai’s urban redevelopment projects on their rights to fair compensation. In particular, Zheng, despite the revocation of his licence as a lawyer in 2001, had been advising families involved in a lawsuit alleging corrupt collusion between officials and a wealthy property developer.

Zheng Enchong had been arrested on June 6, 2003 and taken to the Shanghai Public Security Bureau Detention Centre, on charges of “illegally providing state secrets to entities outside of China” (article 111 of the Criminal Law for  sending two communications to HRIC).

At the court hearing on August 28, 2003, Zheng’s wife, Mrs. Jiang Meili, and other observers had been barred from the courtroom on the grounds that the case involved state secrets. Zheng Enchong was sentenced, on October 28, 2003, to three years in prison and deprivation of his political rights for one year by the Shanghai Second Intermediate People’s Court. The Shanghai appeal court upheld the sentence on December 18, 2003.

Mrs. Jiang Meili, the wife of Zheng Enchong, has been detained for three days illegally until March 1, 2004. On   February 28, 2004 Mrs. Jiang went to Beijing to petition the National People's Congress on behalf of her husband. In the same day, shortly after 1:00 a.m., five women and two men burst into her hotel room,  bound and gagged her. She was forced into a vehicle and taken to another hotel in Hubei's Canzhou City. The next day, five person  took her back to Shanghai, where she was held in the Guangdi Hotel in Hutai Road. During this time, to Mrs. Jiang Meili they haven’t presented any arrest warrant or given any reason for her detention. According to the information received, the persons who have been involved in her detention were officials of the Shanghai Representative Office in Beijing, the Shanghai Letters and Petitions Office and the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau (PSB). Mrs. Jiang Meili was finally released on March 1.

 During Jiang Meili’s next  visit to her husband on November 10, 2004, along with other family members. During the visit, Zheng said he had been visited a number of times by the director of the Shanghai’s Judicial Bureau and Prisons Bureau, Miao Xiaobao, who had told him that if he admitted wrongdoing, his three-year sentence would be reduced by one year. However, Zheng Enchong refused to do so.

According to information from HRIC, since the beginning of his imprisonment, Zheng has not been allowed to see his lawyer, as a result of which he has not been able to file an appeal application against his sentence before the Shanghai Supreme People’s Court. His wife has filed an application on his behalf but the Court has not acknowledged it.

Moreover, Zheng reportedly also told his visitors that in spite of his relatively light sentence, he has been housed in the prison’s high security section, where he is obliged to share his 3.5 square meter cell with two other prisoners. In addition, Zheng said also that he has been denied several times his right to call his family.

According to the information received, during the visit of  Zheng’s wife to the prison he asked her to urge displaced residents to persevere in their legal action against Zhou Zhengyi, a wealthy property developer, and others involved in a redevelopment project. When he began speaking about this subject, prison guards immediately ended the visit, and five or six guards grabbed Zheng and carried him out of the visiting room.

After the visit, Zheng’s wife and other family members have written an open letter to the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, and Prime Minister, Wen Jiabao, calling for their intervention to grant him an appeal through the Supreme People’s Court.

On 9 December 2005 Zheng Enchong was awarded a Human Rights Award by the German Judges' Association in a ceremony attended by the German President Horst Koehler. Zheng Enchong’s wife Jiang Meili, who had planned to represent her husband at the awards ceremony, was refused permission to leave China due to an alleged property dispute that she was suddenly informed about shortly before her planned departure.

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