Contact is taking a holiday!

• ucanews.com reporters, Beijing

In addition to harsh prison terms, recent cases have seen hefty fines that bankrupt entire families

A composite photo shows Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, at left, and Christian Pastor Zhang Shaojie, at right (Photo credits, from left: AFP Photo/Frederic J. Brown, China Aid)

When Ma Hongbin, president of Nanle court in Henan province, issued an eviction notice to the family of Pastor Zhang Shaojie last month, his 80-year-old father, 78-year-old mother, disabled wife, youngest daughter and son-in-law were given just three days to leave their home.

As part of his conviction for “creating a public disturbance” in July, Pastor Zhang received a 12-year prison term — the harshest against a church leader in China in decades — and a fine of 700,000 yuan (US$114,000).

The court intends to sell the family’s home and car to pay the fine, according to the court order, which officials posted around the village in the latest episode in a year-long campaign of government harassment following a land dispute with Zhang.

Nanle county officials showed up at the house to enforce the eviction order on November 14, but failed when the pastor’s mother, Mei Xian, threatened to self-immolate.

“I held some gasoline in one hand and held a lighter in the other. Then they backed away,” she said.

Cases like Zhang’s are rare but increasingly common in China. In recent years, authorities have paired surprisingly harsh sentences with even more unusual financial penalties that often result in families also facing punishment.

In Nanle County, authorities have urged people to give up Christianity — which is apparently the same motive behind the decision to exert pressure on Pastor Zhang’s influential family, most of whom are Protestants.

In the case of Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, 45, who was sentenced to life in prison on separatism charges in September, the motivation behind the government’s decision to also seize his assets is less clear. After his arrest in January, authorities froze his bank accounts and eventually seized 850,000 yuan before his appeal was rejected last week.

“This money was the savings of me and my husband [from] over 20 years, out of our salaries,” said Tohti’s wife Guzelnur. “The money was saved for the education of our three children, it was not the sponsorship of anybody or from an organization.”

Tohti’s lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan says that Tohti’s case is particularly puzzling because fines are usually only handed down on people convicted of economic crimes in China.

“I do not understand on what legal grounds all his family’s money was confiscated,” he said. “The fines will become the government’s treasure.”

Although authorities have so far not defended the financial penalties against Tohti, officials and state media have justified the conviction, most recently last week when the Xinjiang Daily called it a “typical case” of separatism in an article on new draft laws to combat religious extremism.

In Zhang’s case, although the main guilty charge was for “creating a disturbance”, there was also a lesser charge of fraud.

The court in Nanle convicted Zhang based on the testimony of one witness, Li Cairen, who never appeared in court, according to US-based China Aid, which has closely followed the case.

The judge heard how Zhang helped Li gain compensation after her son died in an industrial accident and then extorted money from her — a charge Zhang, his lawyers and family deny.

China Aid says it remains unlikely the sole witness ever accused the pastor. Li remains locked up in a ‘black jail’, her whereabouts unknown.

Authorities have used trumped-up economic charges to bring down other people deemed a threat to the state, said Maya Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch. But typically prison terms have been less severe than those handed down on Zhang and Tohti, and rarely have fines been so devastating.

“We may have to wait to see if there’s a trend,” she said.

In July, another Uyghur scholar, linguist Abduweli Ayup, was sentenced to 18 months in prison and fined $13,000 for “illegal fundraising” after he reportedly sold honey and t-shirts to raise funds to build a Uyghur-language school in Xinjiang.

In a bid to help him pay the fine, Ayup’s friends set up a campaign on the fundraising site YouCaring.com with the aim of raising $5,000 before the scholar is due to be released in January, after already spending a year in prison before his trial.

Family and friends accuse the government of punishing Ayup in a bid to prevent him and others from trying to preserve the Uyghur language. State policy dictates that all schools in Xinjiang must teach in Mandarin only, one of a number of restrictive policies that Uyghurs say is provoking an increasingly bloody separatist movement in Xinjiang.

In cases where people deemed a threat to the Communist Party are linked to economic activity — whether legal or illegal — authorities have often imposed “a huge fine”, notes Wang. But these have tended to be imposed on organizations with the intention to punish individuals rather than on the individuals themselves.

After a series of run-ins with authorities following strong criticisms of the government, superstar artist Ai Wei Wei was arrested in April of 2011 and charged with tax evasion. The fine — 12 million yuan (US$1.85 million) — did not put global art superstar Ai in financial trouble but it still represented five times the amount his company allegedly evaded in taxes.

Ai has given few interviews in recent years due to government pressure. He declined to comment this week.

Similarly, when social welfare NGO head Xu Zhiyong was arrested for tax evasion in July of 2009, authorities imposed a fine roughly five times the amount of the original violation, 1.46 million yuan, and closed down his organization by declaring it “illegal”.

A campaigner for social and political rights whose organization helped underprivileged people in China, Xu was sentenced to four years in prison in January for “gathering crowds to disturb public order”. His daughter was born in January as he was in detention awaiting trial.

Zhao Guojun of China Lawyer’s Observation, a website that monitors domestic legal cases, noted that according to Chinese law, assets can only be confiscated if family members are still able to financially support themselves: in the recent cases of Tohti and Pastor Zhang they are not.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has made “rule of law” a cornerstone of his rule since taking power in March last year, but the recent cases of Tohti and Pastor Zhang in particular suggest that little is likely to change in China when it comes to dealing with dissidents, said Zhao.

“Obviously, in such politicized cases when people are receiving fines, it is intended to punish them and their families or seek revenge more than they deserve,” he said. “Authorities do say in political cases that there are no rights. It is not reported, but law enforcement officials including policemen do say it privately.”