The following is based on a communication written by the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and other UN experts to the Government of China on 3 January 2025. The communication remained confidential for 60 days before being made public, giving the Government time to reply. The Government replied on 28 February 2025, which was recently translated and made available. Regrettably the Government did not fully address the questions in the communication, most notably regarding Ms. He’s detention condition and the whereabouts of her daughters.
After the communication was sent, on 7 January 2025, the Xinxiang Municipal Intermediate People’s Court in Henan Province rejected He Fangmei’s appeal and upheld her original sentence of five years and six months in prison. Shortly after the appeal trial, a lawyer representing Ms. He attempted to visit her at Xinxiang Detention Center but was denied access on seemingly baseless grounds. At the time of publication, the fate and whereabouts of Ms. He’s daughters are still unknown.
This is a shorter version of the original communication.
BACKGROUND
Topic: the sentencing in October 2024 by the Huixian Municipal Court in Xinxiang, Henan Province, of woman human rights defender He Fangmei to five years and six months in prison and the apparent disappearance of two of her children.
Ms. He Fangmei is a health rights defender, who has been advocating for vaccine safety and access to remedies for victims of defective vaccines. She started seeking accountability and compensation after her daughter, who was born in 2016, was diagnosed with a neurological disease which paralyzed her after receiving defective vaccines in March 2018. Ms. He co-founded the “Home for Vaccine Babies”, an informal network of families whose children developed a serious illness or disability after being injected defective vaccines. The network advocates for accountability, financial compensation, assistance with medical bills, as well as legislative action.
Special Procedures mandate holders have previously raised their concerns with the Chinese Government concerning the alleged enforced disappearance, detention and charges against Ms. He in a communication (AL CHN 10/2022). We thank the Government for the response received to this communication.
An earlier case of detention of Ms. He in 2018-2019 was addressed by the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in its opinion No. 32/2020. The Working Group determined that Ms. He’s detention was arbitrary and fell into categories I, II, III and V. In particular, her secret detention at an extrajudicial location was considered arbitrary per se, given that it involved elements of incommunicado detention and enforced disappearance.
ALLEGATIONS
Previous detention in 2019
On 25 February 2019, Ms. He Fangmei was seized by the police while she was demonstrating in front of the National Health Commission in Beijing with other families of children who had been stricken with illness or disability due to faulty vaccines.
On 4 March 2019, Ms. He was forcibly returned from Beijing to her home Province of Henan by the Henan police and subsequently detained. On 5 March 2019, she was ordered to serve a 15-day administrative detention sentence.
On 20 March 2019, Ms. He’s husband was informed that she had been formally placed in criminal detention by the Huixian county Public Security Bureau in Xinxiang for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and was detained at the Xinxiang detention centre. Ms. He was told that she would be released if she admitted guilt, but she refused to do so.
On 26 April 2019, Ms. He was formally arrested. Her husband was only informed about her arrest two days later, without ever receiving an arrest notice.
Ms. He did not have access to a lawyer for three and a half months after the start of her criminal detention. When a lawyer requested to meet Ms. He in June 2019, they were reportedly told by the authorities that such a visit would “endanger national security”.
On 3 July 2019, a lawyer was finally able to meet with Ms. He.
On 26 July 2019, the Procuratorate indicted Ms. He and assigned the case to the Huixian City People’s Court. According to the indictment, prosecutors accused her of “picking quarrels” for soliciting donations, shouting slogans outside the Beijing offices of two government departments, unfurling a banner with slogans and disseminating an image of the banner online. After that, her lawyer applied twice for her release on “bail pending investigation”, but the Procuratorate rejected the requests.
On 15 November 2019, Ms. He was put on trial at the Huixian County Court. At the hearing, she pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors recommended a one-year prison sentence. The trial ended without a verdict being pronounced.
On 10 January 2020, the Huixian County prosecutors dropped the charges against Ms. He, and she was subsequently released.
Current case against Ms. He Fangmei
On 2 October 2020, Ms. He went to the Huixian Municipal Government Office and splashed black ink at the front entrance, to protest the lack of remedies for her daughter’s illness and failure to provide compensation for her previous detention in 2019. She was also protesting the close police surveillance and the restrictions to freedom of movement she and her family were subjected to, which obstructed their travel to Beijing, where her daughter could have obtained better quality medical care. Ms. He was detained by the local public security office and initially handed down a 10-day administrative detention, but the police released her without enforcing the sentence because she was five months pregnant.
On 9 October 2020, Ms. He returned to the same Government building and once again splashed black paint at the front entrance. She was then taken by the police and became unreachable sometime between 9 and 10 October 2020.
On 14 October 2020, Ms. He’s husband was taken away in Beijing by individuals believed to be Huixian local police and became uncontactable as well.
In the subsequent weeks, acquaintances and families of victims of defective vaccines made multiple phone calls to the local public security office to enquire about Ms. He’s fate and whereabouts, to no avail. Ms. He’s family made several visits to the local police station and the Prosecutor’s Office, among other places, to inquire about her fate and whereabouts, but the authorities consistently refused to provide any information. Her state of health and whether she has had access to healthcare services is also unknown.
In March 2022, in what was the first known official statement about her detention since her enforced disappearance in October 2020, Ms. He’s family received an arrest notice issued by the Huixian Public Security Bureau, dated 23 March 2022, stating that she had been arrested on the charges of “bigamy” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. The notice indicated she was detained at the Xinxiang City Detention Centre, in Henan province.
Reports also indicated that Ms. He’s case had already gone to trial at a court of first instance in Huixian, during which the prosecutors recommended a sentence of between five and seven years. No verdict was announced. Her family-appointed lawyers only found out about the trial after it had already been concluded, and they were reportedly denied access to the case files. The authorities did not allow them to meet Ms. He on grounds of “COVID-19 prevention measures”. The court in Huixian also later denied the lawyer’s request to review the case files, on the basis that the trial had already taken place and that the panel of judges had already concluded their deliberations. The court asked the lawyer to submit his opinions in writing.
Ms. He’s family then learned that since October 2020, the human rights defender had been detained along with her then 6-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter with a disability at the Henan Xinxiang Gongji Psychiatric Hospital, where she gave birth to her third child, a girl, in February 2021. At an unknown date between 2020 and 2022, Ms. He’s son was moved into foster care in a rural area, without his parents or any relatives’ consent, while her two daughters remained in the psychiatric hospital despite Ms. He’s family’s pleas to have them released into their care.
At an unknown date around March 2022, Ms. He was transferred to Xinxiang City Detention Centre and forcibly separated from her daughters, who reportedly remained confined in the psychiatric hospital with no access to education nor to specialized care for the elder daughter with a disability. The younger daughter, born in detention in 2021, has reportedly never been officially registered, on the pretext that the birth certificate was not provided to the household registration authority.
In January 2023, a lawyer appointed by Ms. He’s family was finally able to meet the human rights defender at the Xinxiang City Detention Centre for the first time since her enforced disappearance in October 2020. He learned that Ms. He had no legal representation during her trial in March 2022. Ms. He also informed her lawyer that during her trial hearing, she was told that her husband had been convicted on the same charges as the ones she was facing and had been sentenced to five years in jail. However, the court did not give her a copy of the verdict and only “flipped through it” in front of her briefly during the trial.
On 19 May 2023, Ms. He wrote to her older sister to entrust her three children to her care. However, neither the Henan Xinxiang Gongji Psychiatric Hospital nor the Huixian Public Security Bureau allowed the children’s relatives to visit them. Ms. He’s family members were not allowed to visit the human rights defender’s son in his foster family either.
On an unknown date in April 2024, Ms. He’s two daughters, who were then approximately seven-and-a-half and three years old, were reportedly taken from the psychiatric hospital to an unknown location. Their family has not been able to locate them nor obtain information about their well-being, despite multiple attempts to contact local authorities.
On 23 October 2024, more than 30 months after her trial in first instance, the Huixian Municipal Court in Xinxiang, Henan Province pronounced a verdict in Ms. He Fangmei’s case and sentenced her to one year and nine months in prison for “bigamy” and four years for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, amounting to a total term of five years and six months in prison. Her sentence is scheduled to end on 1 January 2027.
As of the time of writing, the fate and whereabouts of Ms. He’s daughters are still unknown.
CONCERNS
In the communication, we express our serious concern regarding the conviction and sentencing of Ms. He Fangmei on charges of “bigamy” and “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”, in apparent retaliation to exercising her right to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly as part of her legitimate human rights work, in particular her advocacy for vaccine safety and remedy for victims of defective vaccines. The use of vaguely worded provisions such as “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and their persistent use against human rights defenders to unduly criminalize their legitimate activities and the exercising of their freedom of expression is cause for serious concern, as has been communicated by Special Procedures mandate holders to the Chinese Government on a number of occasions in recent years (AL CHN 12/2024, UA CHN 12/2021, AL CHN 4/2021, UA CHN 11/2020, AL CHN 22/2019, AL CHN 15/2019, UA CHN 14/2019).
We also wish to express concern for the alleged lack of adherence to due process guarantees in the trial of Ms. He Fangmei and the reported obstacles preventing Ms. He from meeting with her legal representative in order to prepare her legal defense prior to the trial. We call on the Chinese Government to ensure that lawyers are able to perform all their professional functions without improper interference and that all persons are entitled to access a lawyer of their choice to defend them in all stages of criminal proceedings.
Furthermore, we wish to express our utmost concern about the apparent disappearance of Ms. He Fangmei’s two youngest daughters, one of whom has a disability, and the placement in foster care of her eldest son, reportedly with no access to Ms. He’s family, despite clearly expressed wishes by Ms. He to have her children placed in the care of her sister.
We are reiterating our long-standing concern about the continuing practice in China of enforced disappearance and prolonged incommunicado detention, often in solitary confinement, of individuals who have been exercising their right to freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly by peacefully expressing their concerns regarding matters affecting their lives, drawing local and other authorities’ attention to their situation, and protesting against their lack of response. The widespread denial by the authorities of due process rights and judicial safeguards, the withholding of information about human rights defenders’ detention, health and well-being to their families, legal representatives or persons with a legitimate interest constitute serious violations under international human rights law.
