Categories | Lawsuits & Litigation Article

Human Rights Activist and Attorney Stripped of his Rights

January 25th, 2017 • Lawsuits & Litigation • 2 minute read
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Author Sara E. Teller

Human Rights Activist and Attorney Stripped of his Rights

Basic human rights.  The very basic civil, political, economic, social and cultural freedoms human beings have come to expect.  We’re all entitled to them.  An individual can be called an activist who lobbies for them.  And yet time and again we hear stories of individuals being stripped of these basics.  We hear of others being discriminated against based on age, gender, race or sexual orientation, what have you, or even horrifying accounts of abuse based solely on these differences.  And then there are the countless stories of those who have been forced into submitting false confessions to crimes they simply did not commit after enduring hours, days, even weeks of painful interrogations ortorturous conditions by members of law enforcement without their attorneys present.  Innocent individuals are sent to prison for signing documents after a total, utter mental, emotional, or physical breakdown while those truly guilty are left roaming the streets.

Image Courtesy of China ChangeImage Courtesy of China Change

Xie Yang was among more than 300 attorneys and human rights activists detained in July 2015.  He was questioned about joining an illegal anti-Community party network, imprisoned and pretty quickly moved to a secret location.  The events that occurred in the prison are just as confidential and Xie Yang’s statements, unfortunately, are impossible to verify.  However, he has also stated that it was the goal of his captors to drive him mentally insane, and some of the individuals who were detained with him have indeed been diagnosed with serious Post Traumatic Stress related ailments and other mental orders.  Xie Yang’s legal team made the decision to release the transcripts despite the inevitable backlash to make others aware of the ill treatment and to help protest against such abuse.  After all, whether a person has committed a crime or not, everyone is entitled to their basic rights.  Law enforcement should advocate and be “a collective activist” against this behavior, not actively participate in it.

Sources:

Chinese human rights lawyer has been tortured in prison, his legal team says'Your only right is to obey': lawyer describes torture in China's secret jails
Sara E. Teller

About Sara E. Teller

Sara is a credited freelance writer, editor, contributor, and essayist, as well as a novelist and poet with nearly twenty years of experience. A seasoned publishing professional, she's worked for newspapers, magazines and book publishers in content digitization, editorial, acquisitions and intellectual property. Sara has been an invited speaker at a Careers in Publishing & Authorship event at Michigan State University and a Reading and Writing Instructor at Sylvan Learning Center. She has an MBA degree with a concentration in Marketing and an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, graduating with a 4.2/4.0 GPA. She is also a member of Chi Sigma Iota and a 2020 recipient of the Donald D. Davis scholarship recognizing social responsibility. Sara is certified in children's book writing, HTML coding and social media marketing. Her fifth book, PTSD: Healing from the Inside Out, was released in September 2019 and is available on Amazon. You can find her others books there, too, including Narcissistic Abuse: A Survival Guide, released in December 2017.

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