URGENT ACTION

RESTRICTIONS ON RELEASED HUMAN RIGHTS LAWYER 
Immediately after being released from prison on 28 February 2019, human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong was taken away along with his father and his sister. While they have now been returned to their family home, Jiang Tianyong remains under tight surveillance and is being constantly followed, with no freedom to choose his employment. Having completed his two-year sentence for ‘inciting subversion’, Jiang Tianyong was a prisoner of conscience and should never have been detained for practicing his right to freedom of expression.

TAKE ACTION: WRITE AN APPEAL IN YOUR OWN WORDS OR USE THIS MODEL LETTER

Director Zhou Conggui
Luoshan County Public Security Bureau
Xingzheng Dadao 16
Luoshan Xuan, Xinyang Shi
Henan Sheng, China 
Email: luoshangov@163.com
Dear Director,

Human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, along with his sister and father, were immediately taken away after his release from prison on 28th February 2019. According to Jiang Tianyong, he was sent to a resort in Zhengzhou City and only sent back to his parents’ house after going on a hunger strike in protest of the authorities’ restriction of his freedom. 

While Jiang Tianyong was sent back to his parents’ home in Xinyang City, Hunan Province on 2 March, his entire family remains under surveillance and their freedoms restricted. According to his wife, Jiang Tianyong is constantly followed by a group of people in black clothes and that the authorities have told the family that they would decide where he works and lives after his ‘release’.

When Wang Qiaoling, the wife of fellow human rights lawyer Li Heping, attempted to visit Jiang Tianyong on 2 March 2019 she was taken to the police station, where she was detained for six hours. During that time, Jiang Tianyong was brought to the house. That same night, once Wang had been returned and they had all finally sat down for dinner, a group of police barged into his house with video cameras. The leader of the police team then sat down to listen to their conversations, going as far as to interrupt them and instruct that they not talk about cases of human rights defenders. 

Jiang Tianyong has finished serving his sentence. I urge you to stop the surveillance and restrictions of freedom of movement on Jiang Tianyong and his family. 

Yours sincerely,

Additional information

According to Jiang Tianyong’s wife Jin Bianling, Jiang’s health is in poor condition after he left prison. His eyes teared up very often when they chat on video. He said the sun was too bright now as he could not see sunlight in the prison. According to Wang Qiaoling, a friend of Jiang Tianyong, Jiang said he could not sit up straight because his spine was ‘ruined’ by prison officials, but he could not recall the equipment he was forced to sit on in prison as he suffered from severe memory loss. 
Jiang Tianyong was found guilty of “inciting subversion of state power” by the Changsha City Intermediate People’s Court on 21 November 2017. He was sentenced to two years of imprisonment and deprivation of political rights for three years. When in prison, Jiang’s health deteriorated rapidly. Jiang Tianyong has said he is force-fed unknown medication twice a day, and his father has seen his hands and feet cuffed to an iron chair.  
Jiang Tianyong went missing on 21 November 2016 on the way back to Beijing. His first trial was held in the Changsha City Intermediate Court on 22 August 2017, during which he admitted to the charges of “inciting subversion of state power”. At the trial, he also “apologized” for fabricating rumours of torture by Chinese police and for attending overseas workshops to discuss changing China’s political system. According to Jiang Tianyong, he pleaded guilty in his trial on 21 November 2017 and decided not to appeal based on authorities’ promise that he would be released in August 2018 if he did so. 
Jiang Tianyong has been involved in several high-profile legal cases and has supported other human rights defenders, including human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, who was imprisoned and consistently harassed due to his human rights work, and blind legal activist Chen Guangcheng, who exposed forced abortion practices on villagers by local officials in Dongshigu Village in Linyi, Shandong. Prior to his current imprisonment, Jiang Tianyong was most recently detained in March 2014, after he and three other lawyers went to investigate a “black jail”, or unofficial detention facility, in Jiansanjiang, Heilongjiang, where Falun Gong practitioners were allegedly detained. 
Following an unprecedented government crackdown on human rights lawyers and other activists, almost 250 lawyers and activists have been questioned or detained by state security agents since 9 July 2015. In addition to the raiding of many offices and homes, family members of those detained were also subjected to police surveillance, harassment and restriction of their freedom of movement.
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PLEASE TAKE ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNTIL: 25 April 2019
Please check with the Amnesty office in your country if you wish to send appeals after the deadline.

NAME AND PREFFERED PRONOUN: Jiang Tianyong (he/his)

LINK TO PREVIOUS UA: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa17/8818/2018/en/  

Additional TARGETS

Also send copies to diplomatic representatives accredited to your country. HIS EXCELLENCY MR LIU XIAOMING, Embassy of the People's Republic of China, 49-51 Portland Place W1B 1JL, 020 7299 4049, www.chinese-embassy.org.uk Please check with your section before sending appeals after the above date.