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The first time Rei Xia was detained, she experienced firsthand what it means to defy the Chinese regime. She spent 37 days in solitary confinement. Incommunicado, unable to shower, with nothing to read, watched by cameras. She spent her days sitting cross-legged on a wooden board. The sleepless nights were endless under the exposure of a spotlight during 24 hours a day. The minutes seemed like days. Until she lost track of time.
When she was released, she discovered that the regime does not forgive and that there is no future for dissenting voices. She explains that she suffered constant police harassment and was evicted from her flat. She could not even share her treatment behind bars with those close to her, knowing that they would suffer reprisals. Such a punishment against dissidents carries a clear message. Their public space is reduced to a minimum. And they are marked forever.
Accused of "picking quarrels and provoking troubles", the Chinese Communist Party’s code to incriminate dissidents, Rei Xia was locked up –for the second time– for a further 28 days in solitary confinement, without access to a lawyer. She claims she was beaten and abused, threatened with rape, tied to a sleeping board for three days. Given this fear, and aware that she was doomed to social and employment exclusion, she fled into exile earlier this year.
Being forced to leave behind –at the age of 27, perhaps forever– her country, family and dreams seems a heavy price to pay. What sparked the authorities’ fury against Rei was her participation, in late 2022, in a silent protest in Shanghai against the Covid restrictions, in which attendees displayed blank sheets of paper. Such conduct is not a criminal offence in the free world, but it can change the course of a life in China. Talking is forbidden. So is silence.
The strength of a blank sheet of paper is that "the accusations are in the heart," Rei reflected at the recent Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy conference, which is held annually in the Swiss city and gives voice to dissidents from around the world. Other attendees included Uighur exile Abduweli Ayup, Tibetan activist Chemi Lhamo, and other dissidents –including some from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba– who devote their lives to the struggle for freedom and the defence of values – at enormous personal cost.
It is crucial that these Chinese voices are not forgotten and are heard. Not only as a matter of principle, but because behind the abuse of power and the injustices are real personal and family tragedies. To put it differently, China’s human rights record is not something abstract or a cold and uncomfortable statistic, as is often perceived in diplomatic and governmental circles, as well as in certain areas of public opinion that –with different incentives– relativises violations or considers them as acceptable collateral damage.
No, behind these violations there are human faces and broken lives. The intellectual Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2010 who died in prison for calling for political reforms, is the most illustrious example. But the list is endless. In my time as a correspondent in China, heartbreaking stories abounded. The mothers of Tiananmen; the plight of the Tibetans; the religious persecution including Falun Gong’s; the tragedy of peasants –called petitioners– who had been run over by the local authorities. And so many others.
I remember the look in their eyes; a look of suffering, but one that poignantly captured their determination to defend their cause no matter what the consequences would be. In those years, several dozen lawyers advised, almost always free of charge and within the limits of the Chinese legal system, the humble petitioners seeking justice. A decision they took in good conscience, without expecting anything in return, with the sole purpose of helping this crowd of underprivileged people. Up until, after growing important in the media, they became enemies of the state.
When, during that harassment, I asked one of them why he was still engaged in a battle that he knew he could not win, and that –moreover– could land him in jail, he said: "because when you make the decision to do the right thing, there is no such thing as looking back". Today, these people are joined by others: Uighurs, Hong Kongers, blank-sheet protesters and anyone else seen as a threat by those in power. We therefore have a moral obligation to expand the voices of these courageous people. The voice for the preservation of freedom.
