Two lawyers have embarked on a Kafkaesque quest to find one of China’s best-known human rights attorneys, missing after a Communist party crackdown

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

It was close to midnight on 16 July when Cai Ying’s Airbus 330 left the runway at Changsha’s Huanghua international airport and set a course for Beijing.



More than 1,500km ahead lay one of the most daunting missions of this 52-year-old attorney’s career: to track down Li Heping, one of China’s best-known human rights lawyers.

Li, 45, had disappeared six days earlier after men believed to be police appeared on his doorstep on day two of a sweeping Communist party crackdown on his trade which has so far seen more than 230 people detained or questioned.



At least six missing after clampdown on human rights lawyers in China Read more

“The authorities have been plotting against rights lawyers for a long time,” complained Cai, a stocky smoker who has also offered counsel to anti-corruption activists and a government official who claimed to have been tortured during secret interrogation. “Whatever they have said to justify the crackdown, it is just an excuse.”



Li Heping is a devout Christian and father of two who was born into rural poverty in the south of Henan province. Today he is one of the most respected members of China’s civil rights community.



He began his professional life as an intellectual property lawyer but soon started taking on civil rights cases. Over the past 15 years he has defended underground Christians, environmental activists, political dissidents, followers of the banned spiritual movement Falun Gong and the blind “barefoot” lawyer Chen Guangcheng.



But on 10 July – as security services launched an unprecedented round-up of outspoken rights lawyers and their associates – Li vanished from his Beijing home.



“Nobody knows where he has disappeared to but obviously he was detained by the government or by the secret police,” said Teng Biao, a fellow rights lawyer and friend who was forced into exile after president Xi Jinping began turning the heat up on party critics in 2013.



In the absence of any official information, two Chinese lawyers have embarked on a Kafkaesque quest to find Li Heping by travelling to police stations and detention centres across northern China.



One is Cai Ying, who touched down in Beijing in the early hours of 17 July on Hainan Airlines flight 7136.



The other is Ma Lianshun, a rotund 58-year-old, who arrived in the Chinese capital later that day on a high-speed train from Zhengzhou, where he lives.



Ma Lianshun (left) and Cai Ying, two Chinese attorneys, have spent weeks searching for Li Heping, a human rights lawyer who disappeared from his home on 10 July. Photograph: Supplied

“By searching for Li Heping we are simultaneously exposing the illegal conduct of the authorities,” said Ma who, like his partner, is known for taking on politically sensitive cases.



Ma’s first act in Beijing was to visit Li Heping’s local police station. It was there that Li’s wife had officially reported her husband missing on 12 July. Five days on and there was still no news.



“The police chief said Li had been taken away by people from the Tianjin police department,” said Ma. “He said he didn’t know exactly which police bureau took him and had no obligation to help us find out Li’s whereabouts.”



Cai followed those leads to Tianjin, a city to the east of Beijing with around 14 million residents.



He visited two police stations and a detention centre, hoping to locate the missing lawyer. But there was no sign of Li Heping. “It is wrong for the police to not tell us his whereabouts,” Cai complained.



One week later and still without news, Ma and Cai returned to Tianjin together to continue their hunt.



On 27 July they visited the city’s Public Security Bureau headquarters and the Hexi Detention Centre but at each turn their inquiries were met with shaking heads and sarcasm.

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“The police who received us in Tianjin joked: ‘You lawyers are really active these days – whether it is online or offline, in jail or out of jail’” recalled Ma. “Nothing surprises us these days. They don’t play by the book.”

As the days passed, the fruitless search began taking its toll. “We are feeling a little bit frustrated and helpless at the moment,” said Cai.

At around 10pm on 1 August, Li Heping’s situation deteriorated further. Police raided the home of his brother, Li Chunfu, who is also a lawyer, seizing documents and a computer.

On 6 August police returned to the missing lawyer’s house and summoned his wife for five hours of questioning. Subsequent attempts to contact her were unsuccessful and activists said she had been warned not to speak out about her husband’s disappearance.

The snatching of Li Heping – described by friends as a quiet, bookish man rarely seen out of his trademark suit and tie – has left those close to him on edge.

Reports in China’s state-run media have accused the lawyers targeted by the recent crackdown of being part of a “suspected major criminal gang”.



“Before, I always used to complain that the days passed by too quickly. But from July 10 onwards, every minute has been a torment,” Li’s wife, Wang Qiaoling, wrote in an online post following his detention.



Eva Pils, a legal scholar at King’s College London, who has known Li for more than a decade, said she feared he would be mistreated and forced to make a televised “confession”.



“We know from experience that if people like him are detained and put in incommunicado detention, what it has got to mean is that they are being subjected to very, very harsh questioning and we fear it may involve torture,” said Pils, the author of a book on China’s human rights lawyers.



“We are looking at a system which uses at times very brutal torture. I don’t want to go there in my mind – but that happens.”

One month after Li Heping vanished from his home, friends and relatives are still waiting for news. Public security officials in Beijing did not respond to a request for information about the lawyer’s whereabouts.

Ma, whose clients include the political activists Yu Shiwen and Jia Lingmin, vowed to continue his quest to find the lawyer. “I will fight the illegal crackdown with all I’ve got. I will fight for the rights of Chinese lawyers until the very end,” he said.

Pils said she believed Li’s disappearance and the continuing crackdown on rights lawyers were an attempt by the Communist party to silence those who dared to question its authority.

Under Xi Jinping, lawyers such as Li were now seen as “internal hostile forces” that needed dealing with, she said. “They represent the enemy.”



Teng Biao, who has known Li since 2004, said he feared his friend was facing a long period behind bars.



“We don’t know where he is or what the next step is but it seems that the government is preparing to charge him with some crimes,” he said.



“I don’t think he will be afraid of being jailed. He is very brave,” added Teng, who is now a visiting scholar at Harvard Law School. “But he must be worried about his family. I would like to tell him, ‘We will take care of your family and your two children’.”



Timeline of a disappearance

Additional reporting by Luna Lin