February 1, 2016
In a fine recent study of China’s human rights lawyers, Eva Pils, a scholar of Chinese legal issues, points out that once the behemoth of the Chinese state takes interest in you these days, there can be literally no escape. Those who stray over into the vast terrain where they are viewed as “enemies of the state” are not just subject to violence and torture.
Pils gives a long, sobering list of other things that the predatory state can do: get you fired from your job, get a landlord to terminate your lease so you end up homeless, get internet companies to shut down your blog so you have no voice, and block your child from school admission. These are not theoreticals; unfortunately, there are plenty of credibly documented cases where such things have happened.
In view of these almost limitless powers, the puzzle is not so much why the mighty state is running rampage of late on a handful of rights lawyers and civil society actors in China, but that there are still people with the courage and inner resources to carry on with their dissent. Back in the Maoist period, a dissident might suffer the fate of Zhang Zhixin, who had her windpipes physically cut by prison guards so she could make no noise, and then was executed by firing squad. These days, the tactics are less extreme — but the end result is much the same. Smother someone, eradicate any means they might have for social influence, and in effect bury them alive.
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http://thediplomat.com/2016/02/chinas-rights-struggle-is-no-longer-an-internal-affair/
IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers 