Fighting for freedom

Student petitions against father’s imprisonment.

Somewhere in Beijing, China nine years ago, in one of the thousands of apartments endlessly stacked in the metropolis, a young ChongYu Xia sat with his father in front of their television.

On the screen was the story of a street vendor who had his sausage cart taken away by the Chinese government — it was the third time this had happened to this particular vendor, but this time, he retaliated.

The vendor, in a flurry of heightened anger, used his knife against a police assistant on the scene, accidentally cutting him and causing the man to bleed to death.

The Chinese government responded with an immediate death sentence — no due process, no fair and speedy trial.

Government prosecutors saw a murderer, but ChongYu, a current Liberty University student, said his father saw something else in the vendor.

“(The vendor) was a really good guy, but we saw the police officers kept harassing him,” ChongYu said.

“My dad was so touched by this guy that he went to him and defended him in court completely free of charge.”

It was the first human rights case that ChongYu’s father, Lin Xia, took up as a human rights lawyer in China.

He ended up winning the case and saving the vendor’s life in court.

He forced the Chinese government to follow their own sets of legal principles, of which ChongYu said are written down but rarely followed.

Several years after winning that case, after becoming an established human rights defender in China, Xia Lin was personally granted none of the rights he so earnestly defended for others.

On Nov. 8 2014, Lin was taken from his house by Chinese government officials in front of his family — no due process, no fair and speedy trial.

“I’ll be back in 24 hours,” he said while the authorities forced him out of his home.

It has been more than 900 days since Nov. 8, 2014 – the last time ChongYu saw his father.

A week after authorities took Lin, they told his family Lin was arrested on charges of gambling.

ChongYu was not convinced, though. He is nearly certain his father never gambled a day in his life, and he believes the government does not have any proof of it either.

“When they first arrested my dad, they were not asking him about any of his fraud or gambling actions he did,” ChongYu said.

“They kept on asking him about the cases he had, so we can tell from there that they arrested him just because he was a human rights lawyer, and they have reason to dislike him.”

Now, nearly two-and-a-half years after his father’s arrest, ChongYu is setting out to fight what he believes is blatant injustice on behalf of the Chinese government.

On Friday, April 21, ChongYu wrote a letter to the Chinese embassy in Washington D.C., pleading with them to reopen his father’s case and give him a fair trial.

The letter comes a day after Lin received a final sentence of 10 years in prison without a second trial.

Following the first trial, which took place June 2016, Lin was originally sentenced to 12 years in prison and was denied a personal statement in court.

“On behalf of my family and friends in and outside of China, I refuse to accept this illegal and unjust verdict,” ChongYu stated in his letter.

“Rejecting all evidence raised by the defendant’s attorneys that my father did not commit fraud, the court still denied him a fair second trial.”

Attached to the letter is an online petition that currently has nearly 400 signatures.

The petition states it has a goal of 1,000 signatures, and although anyone can sign it, ChongYu doubts it will receive that many.

Rather, he said he will send the letter and petition after getting as many people to sign it as possible.

ChongYu also said he doubts the letter will do much to release his father from captivity since the final sentence was recently levied, but he feels as though he has to try something since that is what he said his father would do.

“I will not give up until justice is satisfied,” the letter stated.

He admitted he does not know how the Chinese embassy’s process works, or whether the embassy would be able to broker a deal with the government even if it wanted to.

He believes the letter is the best he can do for his father, though, while he is still in school at Liberty.

It is not just his father ChongYu is worried about, either.

The New York Times reported in the summer of 2015  that more than 200 human rights lawyers and activists were imprisoned by the Chinese government — Lin is only one of the many that were incarcerated by the Chinese judicial system.

ChongYu’s letter, along with pressing for the release of his father, also advocated justice for the other human rights defenders who were arrested.

Chinese law states a case may be overturned if new evidence is released, but ChongYu said in his letter that it is clear the Chinese government ignored this rule to arrest lawyers that objected to its tyrannical actions.

ChongYu said he realizes changing any action of the Chinese government is doubtful.

More than anything, he hopes his letter and petition can get a response from the Chinese embassy and raise awareness in America about the oppressive nature of the Chinese police state.

“I wish the embassy could answer me, because most likely they won’t,” ChongYu said.

“According to the Chinese law, my dad was already sentenced, and they can’t really do anything to it, (but) I am
also trying to bring the American government’s attention to this to see what I can do from there.”

ChongYu’s full letter to the Chinese embassy and the attached petition can be found and signed on thepetitionsite.com.

Young is the editor-in-chief.