Xinjiang Police Arrest Nanjing Dissident For Exposing Human Rights Violations to Foreign Media

Chinese Activist Shi Tingfu in Taiwan. November 2016. Provided to The Epoch Times.

A Nanjing-based dissident has been arrested and accused of “disclosing state secrets” to international media.

Xinjiang police made an interprovincial arrest of Shi Tingfu on January 14. His son, Shi Jing, was also interrogated for 24 hours, according to an insider, Mr. Xie.

Mr. Xie (pseudonym) informed the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that the police from Altay Prefecture, Xinjiang, removed Mr. Shi Tingfu from Nanjing for the alleged crime of “disclosing state secrets” after Mr. Shi Tingfu provided foreign media with undisclosed information about the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC).

“His son was also summoned because he had WeChat contacts of overseas journalists on his mobile phone,” said Mr. Xie. However, the Nanjing police intervened and stopped him from being transported to Xinjiang after no chat records were found between him and the mentioned journalists on WeChat, Mr. Xie added.

Mr. Shi Jing confirmed the accuracy of the details with The Epoch Times.

The Notorious XPCC

In July 2020, The U.S. enforced financial sanctions against the XPCC.

According to a report by U.S. consultancy and commercial intelligence firm Sayari, the XPCC has stakes in over 862,600 companies and groups in 147 countries,

It is a “paramilitary organization run by Xinjiang’s Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and China’s central government, and it controls swaths of Xinjiang’s economy. It reportedly employs 12 percent of Xinjiang’s population and makes up 17 percent of Xinjiang’s GDP,” read the report.

“The XPCC is essentially a parallel government in Xinjiang and has been directly involved in implementing the surveillance, mass detention, and forced labor of Uyghurs,” said Nury Turkel, Commissioner of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).

Xinjiang governments, aided by the XPCC, are perpetrating a cultural and demographic genocide against ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang. “This genocide is ongoing, and is the systematic attempt to destroy Uyghurs by the Chinese party-state,” said former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

In a 2022 report (pdf) titled “Until Nothing Is Left,” by researchers at Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, Sheffield Hallam University, it stated: “The XPCC functions as a regional government, a paramilitary organization, a bureau of prisons, a media empire, an educational system, and one of the world’s largest state-run corporate enterprises. The central government of the PRC considers the XPCC a ’special system of integration of government, military and enterprise.' As such, the XPCC is a colonial institution, responsible for land expropriation and explicitly dispatched by the top levels of the party-state to act as a military and industrial force to suppress Uyghur dissent.”

According to the Chinese white paper on the XPCC in 2014, the XPCC was tasked with local governance since 1954.

Gathering Evidence

Mr. Shi Tingfu stayed in Xinjiang between October and November last year, collecting evidence relevant to XPCC’s crimes of violating human rights with a local human rights advocate.

On Dec. 11, 2023, he provided several victims’ details to the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times after he returned to Shanghai.

According to Mr. Shi Tingfu, Nanjing police went to Xinjiang and stopped him from going to Urumqi, the capital, in early November. “Urumqi’s officials are worried, fearing that we might sue them,” he said.

He stated that he was cautious during his time in Xinjiang and dared not shoot videos. “These ruffians, they operate with a sort of bandit logic. They don’t need any reason to apprehend you, or they can come up with any excuse at will.”

The purpose of the trip was to “expose the human rights issues in Xinjiang to international human rights organizations,” said Mr. Shi Tingfu.

Brutal Demolition

In a phone interview, Mr. Shi Tingfu revealed the following stories.

Chen Guirong, a former fruit farmer for the XPCC in Alar City, was responsible for wasteland management at the logistics horticultural workstation in 1988. In 2002, her unit allowed her to cultivate her own orchard, and she signed a notarized 30-year contract lease for a 30 mu (4.9 acre) orchard of pear trees.

To develop the orchard, Ms. Chen planted over 1,000 poplar trees as a protective forest and built cellars for fruit and vegetables and pens for cattle, sheep, pigs, and warehouses.

When the orchard was mature and prosperous in 2012, local officials suddenly showed up and forcibly razed her orchard at night. Unknown individuals abducted her and took her to the Gobi Desert and threatened if she filed a lawsuit, it would cost her life.

The thugs attacked her 80-year-old father, who soon passed away from being forbidden to seek medical assistance.

A female neighbor who spoke out against the thugs was violently assaulted and suffered severe injuries.

Li Qiang, the head of the Alar City Demolition Office, under the justification that “the land belongs to the state.” compensated only a few hundred thousand yuan ($140,000) despite the property loss value at ten million yuan ($1.4 million).

Petitioners Lose Their Lives

In 2015, husband and wife Liu Yulian and Chen Yaohua were kidnapped and detained for 32 days without legal procedures or documentation after they filed a lawsuit. The then 48-year-old Mr. Chen died just a few days after being brutally tortured in detention.

Pan Haiyun, a local petitioner, was arrested by Liang Yuying, the former head of the 9th Regiment. In an attempt to rescue Ms. Pan, her husband said to Liang, “If you don’t release her, I'll take the pesticide.” Liang responded, “Go ahead, it’s not my concern.” He consumed the pesticide in front of Liang. Liang left the scene, and Ms. Pan’s husband was left to die at the scene.

Lu Rong was detained in a rehabilitation center and later a detention center for more than seven months over filing a petition. In 2022, she was publicly paraded with handcuffs and ankle restraints.

Previously, local officials excavated several hundred mu (more than 100 acres) of Ms. Lu’s land, uprooting all the fruit trees, including date orchards, during the entire fruiting season.

Wang Aiqin, a local resident from the 5th company of the 9th Regiment, was detained in the psychiatric department of Aksu Hospital for over a year and a half due to her filing a petition.

According to Mr. Shi, the local authorities subject the petitioners to brutal violence. “It’s truly unjust, and terrifying. Nowadays, they dare not go petitioning,” said Mr. Shi Tingfu.

A perimeter fence surrounds a forced reeducation center in Dabancheng, Xinjiang region, China, on Sept. 4, 2018. Thomas Peter/Reuters

Barbaric Forced Evictions in Alar City

Tang Hui (pseudonym), an insider in Alar City, disclosed that in 2002, the authorities promoted a 30-year voluntary reclamation contract to residents. People devoted considerable manpower, resources, and finances to convert barren land into productive fields.

However, in 2019, the local government forcefully repossessed the land without compensation during the contract period, and those who resisted were apprehended.

The uncompensated requisition of land affected thousands of households. According to Ms. Tang, approximately 260,000 acres of land were forcefully taken, accompanied by water and power cutoffs as a coercive measure.

Ms. Tang explained, “In certain areas, no vegetation was present, even after cultivating the land for the initial three years and trees for the subsequent three. In some places, there has been no financial return for over a decade. People used meltwater from the Tianshan Mountains for irrigation, and every year, the water fees increased. Despite being deceived, they endured it all.”

Petition Regulations Instill Fear

The XPCC adopted petition regulations as a form of intimidation. Mr. Shi Tingfu said that local officials label petitioners into categories of “persistent petitioning” or “disruptive petitioning,” which “frightens the local people,” said Mr. Shi.

Mr. Shi Tingfu provided a document issued and stamped by the court, Procuratorate, and Public Security of the XPCC 1st Division in Alar City regarding the petition regulation, which addressed “duplicate” and “cross-level” petitions and the dissemination of grievances on forums, microblogs, and other social media platforms.

“Cross-level” petitions refer to petitions submitted not to the petitioner’s immediate administrative level in their place of residence or the place where the alleged rights infringement occurred, but rather at a higher level.

According to the Chinese Public Security Administration Punishments Law, persistent or disruptive petitioning violates the law. They will be punished, including warning, pecuniary penalty, administrative detention, and revocation of the license issued by the public security organ.

Being aware of the risk of exposing these dark secrets to the outside world, Mr. Shi said, “If I get arrested, it means these materials frighten the corrupt local officials. Please pay closer attention and help to seek support from international human rights organizations.”

Mr. Shi Tingfu, 65, a grassroots activist, was sentenced to one year in prison in 2017 with a charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for revealing the truth about the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. It is known that Mr. Shi Tingfu has been suffering from high blood pressure, pneumonia, and asthma. After being arrested by the Xinjiang police across provinces, his health condition is of grave concern.

Li Xi, Xiong Bin, and Zhong Yuan contributed to this report.