Montreal Gazette: Mercy mission

Monday 29 January 2001

The last time JinYu Li saw her husband, ShenLi Lin, was Dec. 26, 1999.

The police let him stop at home for five minutes on his way from the Shanghai police station in China to a detention centre, where he was imprisoned for following the teachings of Falun Gong.

Li, a Canadian citizen, was given 48 hours to leave the country. Police officers escorted her to the airport and forced her onto a plane to Montreal.

Since then, she has not heard of or from her husband. All she knows is that he has been sent to a labour camp where authorities punish adherents of the outlawed Falun Gong.

But after 400 days and 400 letters pleading for help, Li still carries a flicker of hope.

"I would like to ask the Canadian people to help me," the slight, soft-spoken Li said. "I would like to ask the government to talk to the Chinese government and tell them to release my husband.

"My husband has not done anything wrong. He is not a criminal."

Lately, there have been a few reasons for Li's hope to intensify.

Two weeks ago, KunLun Zhang, a dual Chinese-Canadian citizen, was set free from a labour camp after behind-the-scenes diplomacy by Canada's Foreign Affairs Department and a boisterous campaign by a coalition of parliamentarians, human-rights groups and the public.

Li has her fingers crossed that the Canadian government will also press the plight of her husband and the thousands of other Falun Gong practitioners believed to be imprisoned in China when Prime Minister Jean Chretien meets face to face with Chinese President Jiang Zemin on a Team Canada trade mission next month.

The meeting will be the first test of the foreign-policy lessons gleaned from the Zhang case and an important indicator of what might be in store for Canada's official policy on human-rights violations in China when it comes up for review within the next year.

Parliamentarians and China watchers say the Zhang case should shake the government in realizing that its policy on confronting human rights in China is in desperate need of renewal. But the government doesn't appear to be on the verge of deviating from its standard path.

Marie-Christine Lilkoff, a Foreign Affairs spokesman, said human rights will be discussed on the trip in a general sense, but she was not aware whether specific cases or the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners would be covered.

"Human-rights issues continue to be an area of concern and we will continue to address them," she said.

"We continue to be concerned with the repression of freedom of religious expression.

When human-rights issues are raised, it will be official to official.

"We will not make a statement before the press," Lilkoff said. "That is not the way we do it."

Since 1997, Canada's policy toward China has been to bring up human- rights issues in private and through a discussion group of high-level government officials and politicians.

This policy, sometimes called "constructive engagement," accompanied the strengthening of trade ties between Canada and China, as the latter liberalized its markets and threw open its borders to international commerce.

Constructive engagement marked a major shift in Canada's relationship with China, away from the multilateral approach to broaching human rights, which included sponsoring resolutions at the United Nations and publicly denouncing abuses.

Constructive engagement drew the ire of some human-rights advocates for its seeming unwillingness to criticize, its focus on commerce and its lack of mechanisms to monitor progress.

"I don't think it's very effective because I think it's a form of persuasion that has no sanction to it," said Michael Szonyi, a China expert in the University of Toronto's history department.

"The Chinese have proved remarkably adept at manipulating the policy to their advantage. If they release a dissident before a state visit it gives them credibility and they can push human rights off the agenda."

How the government interprets and applies the lessons of the Zhang case will show how forceful Canada is about pushing its trade partner to curb abuses like detaining political dissidents, cracking down on labour unions and persecuting minority groups like Muslims, Christians and Falun Gong practitioners.

Zhang, a 60-year-old sculptor and former McGill University professor, lived in Canada from 1989 to 1996 with his wife and two daughters. In 1996, Zhang and his wife returned to China to care for his ailing, aging mother-in-law.

He ran afoul of Chinese authorities in July after a public demonstration of Falun Gong in a park.

As he tells it, Zhang was targeted by the government for his beliefs.

His home was raided, he was forced to take and pay for "re-education" classes and he was placed under house arrest.

Zhang was in and out of detention three times. He was imprisoned in a tiny cell with 20 others where he slept on the concrete floor, had no privacy to use the toilet and subsisted on a few leaves of boiled cabbage a day.

Zhang said he was tortured with electric shocks on his arms, legs and torso. He was told if he screamed his mouth would be punished with more shocks.

Through all this he refused to denounce his belief in Falun Gong.

In November, Zhang was sentenced to three years in the notoriously inhumane Wangcun labour camp. There he was subjected to mental torture: brainwashing sessions, anti-Falun Gong videos and constant surveillance.

About the same time, his daughter, LingDi, an Ottawa university student, launched a tearful public appeal to the Canadian government for help.

Supported by parliamentarians from across the political spectrum and human-rights groups, public support was drummed up and pressure put on the government to help.

After several private discussions by Foreign Affairs officials, accompanied by an intensifying international publicity campaign, Zhang was released two weeks ago and sent to Ottawa.

It was Li and Lin's belief in the truth and compassion of Falun Gong that led them to formally appeal to the Chinese government for understanding.

They had been married scarcely eight months and were to soon move to Montreal once Lin got his immigration papers in order.

But on Dec. 22, 1999, the newlyweds traveled from their home in Shanghai to a government office in Beijing. In the lobby of the appeals office, an official body that serves as a mechanism for citizens to communicate with the government, clerks sought out people there to plead the case of Falun Gong.

Li and Lin were sent to a special office, where with dozens of others they filled out a statement about why they thought Falun Gong was good.

They were forced to wait many hours to register their appeal.

Morning stretched into night and more people crowded the office. There were no chairs, so people sat on the floor. No one was allowed to leave, even to use the toilet or to get food.

Finally Lin and Li realized they had walked into a trap.

The couple and many others were sent to a prison where they spent a day and a night. Then, because they were from Shanghai, they were escorted by three police officers back to their city.

At the Shanghai police station, they were detained for another day and night and interrogated.

Finally, about Dec. 26, Li was allowed to go home, but her husband was forced to stay behind.

"At 11 p.m. the police escorted my husband home because he was going to go to jail. They let my husband come in the house and they let him talk to me for five minutes," Li said.

That five minutes was the last time Li and Lin were together before Li was deported back to Montreal.

What made the Zhang case special was the coupling of private diplomacy and public protest.

In the eyes of Liberal MP Irwin Cotler, it was this one-two combination that packed a powerful punch with China.

"What (Foreign Affairs Minister) John Manley and the Department of Foreign Affairs did behind the scenes was an effective use of private diplomacy, but it would not have been as successful without the outpouring of public support," said Cotler, a noted human-rights lawyer who took on Zhang's case in November and put pressure on his own party to act.

A number of circumstances collided to bring about Zhang's release, Cotler said. Zhang's Canadian connection, the far-reaching publicity of the case, the internationalization of the support and the timing of the pressure campaign - on the eve of a trade mission and coinciding with China's bid for the 2008 Olympics - all contributed.

But there are lessons to be learned, Cotler said: the government should not shy away from joining the chorus of citizens' voices speaking out for human rights and being part of multi-party, grass-roots campaigns.

New Democratic Party MP Svend Robinson was among the parliamentarians who worked for Zhang's release.

He said the case fails to demonstrate a deviation from the government's approach to addressing human rights.

"Nothing has changed here. It's business as usual, " Robinson said.

He also said he is skeptical Canada will learn the lessons it ought to from the experience.

"The federal government has to change its policy. There has to be far more outspokenness at the same time as they are working on trade," Robinson said. "When Chretien troops off to China on his trade mission, it can't be business as usual. They have to make it very clear in a private and public way that Canadians are opposed to the repression of fundamental rights."

Carole Channer, the China co-ordinator of Amnesty International's Canadian branch, is also loath to characterize Zhang's release as a significant shift in Canada's approach.

"I can't see that we've made a major step forward, that the Canadian government has made a major shift," she said. "We have not seen any concrete improvement in China's human-rights record.

"In fact, since 1998, the situation has actually been getting much, much worse."

Channer said she would like to see Canada co-sponsor a resolution condemning torture and other rights violations in China - something it has not done since 1997 - at the coming meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva.

Szonyi, of the University of Toronto, said China is not particularly threatened by low-level campaigns of embarrassment and denunciation carried out by the public - which is why it is essential that government lends its voice.

"Really the state should be taking a stand. It's more likely to be taken seriously," he said.

"I think we should be looking long and hard at a return to the multilateral approach."

- - -

Since she returned to Montreal, Li has written 400 letters about her husband's plight to Chretien, to Montreal Mayor Pierre Bourque, to MPs, MNAs, senators, city councillors, Foreign Affairs officials, the Chinese embassy and rights groups.

There's been a landslide of responses but a dearth of real action.

She was denied a visa by the Chinese government to return to China to look for her husband.

A famed painter in China, Li now works as a seamstress to make money to help in her fight to save her husband.

But despite all this, Li speaks about her future with hope.

"I don't think about painting now. I just hope my husband can come to Canada so we can live a peaceful life and then I will think about art again."

Cotler has agreed to take on her husband's case, and Li hopes the momentum of Zhang's release will fuel the fire of public outcry and government action.

Li knows her husband is not a Canadian citizen, which might make his case more difficult to press - but she is. And she wants her government to help.

"I'm a Canadian, and when they are persecuting my husband, they are persecuting me," Li said.

"If the Canadian government is taking care of their citizens, they should help them to have a normal life and have their rights protected."