Blind Human Rights Lawyer Beaten and Isolated in Chinese Crackdown

By Bill Quigley
Chen Guangcheng, a blind, 39 year old, self-taught, human rights lawyer in China who was recently released after years in prison has been put in home detention, isolated and beaten by authorities. Winner of numerous human rights awards, Mr. Chen was imprisoned for investigating violence and forced abortions against families in China. He is one of many Chinese human rights lawyers and advocates harassed, imprisoned and disappeared recently.

Since being released from prison in September 2010, Mr. Chen, his wife and his young daughter, have been cut off from phone, internet and personal contact. They are confined to their home which is surrounded by guards 24 hours a day.

China Aid posted a video on their website in which Mr. Chen describes being monitored around the clock by three shifts of 22 agents each.

After the video was posted, Mr. Chen and his wife were beaten. Journalists from CNN, Le Monde, and the New York Times who tried to visit him have been threatened and harassed. Two lawyers, Tang Jitian and Jiang Tianyong, were detained by police in Beijing after discussing Mr. Chen’s situation, according to TIME.

Mr. Chen, who has minimal formal legal training, began his legal career by challenging his own taxes. Later he helped an organization of farmers fight to close a paper mill polluting local water.

In 2002, Newsweek recognized Mr. Chen as part of a new generation of “barefoot lawyers” who were helping people assert their legal and human rights. (The idea of “barefoot lawyers” takes its name from the training of local Chinese in basic medical education who were then sent out into their communities as “barefoot doctors.”)

The International Federation for Human Rights reported Mr. Chen was arrested in March 2006 after investigating, putting together briefs, and campaigning against the use of government violence and forced abortions in the enforcement of the national population policies of one child birth quotas in Linyi, China. He spent over four years in prison after a two hour trial where his lawyer was not allowed inside the courtroom.

Now? “I have come out of a small jail and walked into a bigger jail,” said Mr. Chen, according to UPI, which recognized this as the understatement of the week.

Numerous other Chinese human rights advocates and lawyers have been arrested, disbarred or disappeared. Gao Zhisheng, the most prominent human rights lawyer in China who ran the Open Constitution Initiative from his home, once recognized as one of the top 10 lawyers in China, was hooded and dragged from his home by government agents in 2009 and has not been seen since. Guo Feixiong, another human rights lawyer, was imprisoned in 2007 after assisting villagers challenging corruption. Human rights lawyer Liu Shihui, recently denied a license to continue practicing law, was hooded, beaten and had his leg fractured outside his home on his way to a protest is support of the Jasmine Revolution. Nobel Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo is serving an 11 year prison sentence for helping draft Charter 08 calling for democratic freedoms; his family is under house arrest as well.

What can we in the US do to assist human rights defenders in China?

First, we must work to get our own house in order. Unfortunately, the US has given the world many examples of human rights violations, especially in the last 10 years. We must demand transparency and accountability for our own government’s human rights abuses. Without that, it is unlikely other countries will take the US seriously when it asks others to respect human rights.

Second, we can insist that the US government grow a spine and consistently apply international human rights standards when we deal with other countries. Most elected officials are concerned about human rights obligations only in the countries where they think US interests are at stake and then human rights are all too frequently just bargaining chips in the quest for economic and military advantage.

Third, we must take individual actions to strengthen human rights and to protect human rights defenders. The International Federation for Human Rights has a Human Rights Defender program which sends out alerts when human rights advocates are at risk. People can also write the People’s Republic of China, c/o Embassy for the People’s Republic of China, 2300 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington DC 20008.

Courageous people like Chen Guangcheng and others should inspire us all to work more diligently and take more risks for justice and human rights in China, in the US, and in all countries.

Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com.

Swiss Miss Bush – GWB Ducks Geneva Criminal Torture Charges

By Bill Quigley
Justice for George W’s torture violations jumped much closer this weekend. Ex-President George W Bush was supposed to fly to Switzerland to speak in Geneva February 15. But his speech was cancelled over the weekend because of concerns about protests and efforts by human rights organizations asking Swiss prosecutors to charge Bush with torture and serve him with an arrest warrant.

Two things made this possible. Switzerland allows the prosecution of human rights violators from other countries if the violator is on Swiss soil and George W admitted he authorized water boarding detainees in his recent memoir. Torture is internationally banned by the Convention Against Torture.

The European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the International Federation for Human Rights, and the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights prepared criminal complaints with more than 2500 pages of supporting material to submit to the Swiss prosecutor. These criminal complaints were signed by more than 60 human rights organizations world wide and by the former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Independence of Judges and Lawyers, and Nobel Peace Prize recipients Shirin Ebadi and Perez Esquivel.

Amnesty International, which has repeatedly called for criminal investigation of torture by GWB, sent Swiss prosecutors a detailed legal and factual analysis of President Bush’s criminal responsibility for torture.

While some traditionalists in the human rights community scoff at the notion that GWB and others will ever be held accountable for their violations, experts disagree.

"Nobody – from those who administered the practices to those at the top of the chain of command – is under a shield of absolute immunity for the practices of secret detention, extraordinary rendition and torture," Martin Scheinin, UN special rapporteur on human rights and professor of public international law at the European University Institute told The Guardian. "Legally this case is quite clear. Bush does not enjoy immunity as a former head of state, and he has command responsibility for the decisions that were taken."

Similar efforts to prosecute former President Bush, former Bush lawyers Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge Jay Bybee, John Yoo, William J. Haynes II, David Addington, and Douglas J Feith are proceeding in Spain.

All of these international efforts to seek justice for the human rights violations committed by the Bush administration are possible only because the US has refused to prosecute – another disappointment by the Obama administration.

Ironically, February 7 is the ninth anniversary of the date when GWB unilaterally decided that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to enemy combatants. GWB denied, as most facing criminal charges do, that the possibility of prosecution was involved at all in the decision to cancel his trip.

The human rights community promised to pursue Bush and the other human rights violators whenever they leave the US. Katherine Gallagher and Claire Tixiere, the lead lawyers authoring the 2500 page criminal case in Geneva stated: “The reach of the Convention Against Torture is wide – this case is prepared and will be waiting for him wherever he travels next. Torturers – even if they are former presidents of the United States – must be held to account and
prosecuted. Impunity for Bush must end.”

Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. For more on the Bush Torture Indictment see this link. You can reach Bill Quigley at quigley77@gmail.com.

LJI Guest Writers Bill Quigley and Deborah Popowski: When Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib Come Home

The Louisiana Board that licenses psychologists is facing a growing legal fight over torture and medical care at the infamous Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons.

In 2003, Louisiana psychologist and retired colonel Larry James watched behind a one way mirror in a U.S. prison camp while an interrogator and three prison guards wrestled a screaming near-naked man on the floor. The prisoner had been forced into pink women’s panties, lipstick and a wig; the men then pinned the prisoner to the floor in an effort “to outfit him with the matching pink nightgown.” As he recounts in his memoir, Fixing Hell, Dr. James initially chose not to respond. He “opened [his] thermos, poured a cup of coffee, and watched the episode play out, hoping it would take a better turn and not wanting to interfere without good reason…”

Although he claims to eventually find “good reason” to intervene, the Army colonel never reported the incident or even so much as reprimanded men who had engaged in activities that constituted war crimes.

Sadly, the story of Dr. James’ complicity in prisoner abuse does not end there. The New Orleans native and former LSU psychology professor admits to overseeing the detention, interrogation and health care of three boys, aged twelve to fourteen, who were disappeared to Guantanamo and held without charge or access to counsel or their families. In Fixing Hell and elsewhere, Dr. James proudly proclaims that he was in a position of authority at Guantanamo.

Government records indicate that, as the senior psychologist consulting on interrogations, his decisions affected the policy and operations of interrogations and detention on the base. During his time there, reports of beatings, sexual abuse, religious humiliation and sleep deprivation during interrogations were widespread, and draconian isolation was official policy. Prisoners suffered, and some continue to suffer, devastating physical and psychological harm. Dr. Trudy Bond, a psychologist under an ethical obligation to report abuse by other psychologists, filed a complaint against Dr. James before the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists in February 2008.

Dr. Bond’s complaint says that Dr. James’ conduct violated Louisiana laws governing his psychology license. As a psychologist and military colonel, he had a duty to avoid harm, to protect confidential information, and to obtain informed consent, as well as to prevent and punish the misconduct of his subordinates. How did the Louisiana licensing board respond? Rather than investigate, the Board dismissed the complaint, and when asked again, reaffirmed its decision. Dr. Bond has now taken the case to the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal in Baton Rouge.

Dr. James played an influential role in both the policy and day-to-day operations of interrogations and detention in the notorious prison camps built to hold men and boys captured during the U.S. “War on Terror.” According to his own statements, he was a senior member of interrogation consulting teams that, as documented by government records, were central in designing interrogation plans that exploited psychological and physical weaknesses of individual detainees. In one example cited by the New York Times, a military health professional told interrogators that “the detainee’s medical files showed he had a severe phobia of the dark and suggested ways in which that could be manipulated to induce him to cooperate.”

Had Dr. James chosen to cast himself as a brave, but ultimately ineffective voice against torture, he may have fooled some people into believing him. Instead, he’s presented an utterly implausible portrait: one of a man “chosen” by “the nation” to “fix the hell” of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, a feat he claims to have accomplished so successfully that ever since he was first deployed in January 2003, “where ever [sic] we have had psychologists no abuses have been reported.” This is patently untrue. The real “fact of the matter,” as documented by government records, reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross and eyewitness accounts, is that serious abuses were widespread both during Dr. James’ tenure as senior psychologist for the Joint Intelligence Group at Guantánamo, and after he left.

One would imagine that such disregard for a law designed to protect the public welfare would greatly concern the body charged with its enforcement. But the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, which issued James his license, has refused to investigate whether he violated professional misconduct law.

The Board’s conduct should alarm all Louisiana health professionals and their patients. The Board demeans the profession when it fails to seriously address the possibility that a Louisiana licensee was involved in torture. It also strips the Louisiana psychology license of meaning and value. How can patients rely on a license issued and enforced by a body that arbitrarily refuses to look into allegations of grave misconduct?

As the legal battle wears on, the people of Louisiana need to ask the Board’s members what “good reason” they await in order to act. They should demand that the Board of Examiners conduct a thorough investigation of Larry James and, if what he admits is true, revoke his privilege to practice.

Bill Quigley is a Loyola Law professor working at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Deborah Popowski is a Skirball Fellow at the Harvard Law School Human Rights Program. Both authors are involved with the campaign When Healers Harm: Hold Health Professionals Accountable for Torture. Bill can be contacted at quigley77@gmail.com. Deborah can be contacted at dpopowski@law.harvard.edu.