[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 3 (Wednesday, January 26, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S88-S90]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. SPECTER:
  S. 2006. A bill for the relief of Yongyi Song; read the first time.


                       Private Relief Legislation

  Mr. SPECTER. The thrust of the private relief bill and the concurrent 
resolution is that they seek relief for Mr. Yongyi Song, who is a 
librarian at Dickinson College of Carlisle, PA. Mr. Song was detained 
in Beijing, China, on August 7 of this year and on Christmas Eve was 
charged with ``the purchase and illegal provision of intelligence to 
foreign institutions.''
  Two days ago, the People's Republic of China announced that Yongyi 
Song had confessed, which I believe is a representation having 
absolutely no credibility because Mr. Song has been held in detention 
for months. Any statements made in that context are inherently 
coercive, intimidating, and really of no validity at all.
  The facts are that Yongyi Song is a distinguished and noted scholar 
who has published extensive works about the Cultural Revolution in 
China and that he had made a trip to the People's Republic of China 
earlier this year in order to further his academic research. Then he 
was taken into custody without cause.
  The resolution that has been filed calls for the People's Republic of 
China to release Yongyi Song promptly. It calls for the fair treatment 
of lawyers in the People's Republic of China so they may practice in a 
decent manner within their judicial system, and it calls for the 
People's Republic of China to put into practice the reforms in the 
judicial system which they have, in fact, adopted on paper but are not 
putting into effect as a matter of practice.
  The relationship between the United States Government and the 
People's Republic of China is a complex one. We have seen repeated 
incidents by China of flagrant disregard for human rights, and this is 
another instance. By taking Yongyi Song into custody and holding him in 
detention without charges, and months later--from August 7 until 
Christmas Eve--finally filing charges, and then the representation of a 
confession, which legal experts interpret to mean that they have no 
case and are doing their best to try to fashion some make-way situation 
is perhaps the lowest ebb of disregard for human rights and for 
academic freedom.
  The resolution will be taken up concurrently in the House of 
Representatives as well. The bill for naturalization will enable the 
Government of the United States to take stronger action on behalf of 
Mr. Song. It will enable our State Department officials, for example, 
to visit with Yongyi Song, may be instrumental in obtaining the right 
to counsel, and may be instrumental in obtaining the right to observe 
any trial which is in process.
  There has been a marked and serious determination in the activities 
of the People's Republic of China in their criminal justice system.
  I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of my remarks the full 
text of an article from the New York Times, dated January 6 of this 
year, be printed in the Record.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (See exhibit 1.)
  Mr. SPECTER. It concerns lawyer Liu Jian who represented the 
defendant in a criminal case. He found that none of the 37 witnesses he 
had lined up appeared to testify because of intimidation from the 
Government. He found himself, a lawyer, in police custody charged with 
``illegally obtaining evidence.'' While in custody, he was subjected to 
beatings and day-long interrogations without food or rest, and he later 
found his ability to practice law and his license to practice law in 
jeopardy.
  It is obviously impossible to have a judicial system that functions 
without lawyers. The activities of the People's Republic of China have 
been absolutely reprehensible in this regard. Our resolution calls for 
relief for Yongyi Song and also calls for an improvement in the 
judicial system and the treatment of lawyers by the People's Republic 
of China.
  Mr. President, this vital legislation would grant Mr. Yongyi Song 
U.S. citizenship. Mr. Song has been a resident of the United States for 
the past ten years, has passed his United States citizenship tests, and 
had been scheduled to be sworn in as a United States citizen in 
September 1999. However, Mr. Song, a respected researcher and librarian 
at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA, was detained on August 7, 1999, 
in Beijing, China while collecting historical documents on the Chinese 
cultural revolution of the 1960's. After 5 months of detention, Mr. 
Song was formally ``arrested'' on Christmas Eve in China, on charges of 
``the purchase and illegal provision of intelligence to foreign 
institutions.''
  The People's Republic of China claims Mr. Song violated Chinese 
criminal law by collecting historical documents. However, the documents 
in Mr. Song's possession have reportedly been previously published in 
newspapers, books, and other ``open'' sources. The historical material 
Mr. Song was gathering in no way threatens the security of the Chinese 
Government or people. The case of Yongyi Song is an affront to basic 
human rights, an affront to academic freedom and affront to people 
around the world.
  The bill that I am introducing today would waive the oath of 
allegiance and grant Mr. Song immediate citizenship, as Mr. Song passed 
the INS naturalization test on June 7, 1999. I believe it is vital that 
Congress become involved in this case: if Mr. Song were a U.S. citizen, 
the State Department would be in

[[Page S89]]

a stronger position to insist on being able to see him while he is 
being detained, insist on monitoring any trial that may occur, and 
insist on Mr. Song's right to counsel. Further, U.S. citizenship would 
afford Mr. Song a better chance of being expelled by the Chinese 
government after the trial, rather than being forced to serve a prison 
sentence should the Chinese Government convict him in Chinese court.
  Mr. Song was a young man in China during the Cultural Revolution and 
now, at age 50, he is languishing in a Chinese jail as a result of 
trying to study it. Considering the extremely high conviction rate in 
the Chinese judicial system, it is very probable that Mr. Song will be 
convicted despite my commitment to an all-out fight for his freedom and 
innocence.
  This case presents an international challenge to academic freedom and 
the pursuit of truth. While private relief legislation is a last resort 
that should be used sparingly by the Congress, the urgency and the 
compelling nature of this situation is one that demands immediate and 
definitive action. I urge my colleagues to support me in this fight for 
justice.


                       the yongyi song resolution

  Mr. President, I have sought recognition today to introduce 
legislation that will bring attention to a situation which is occurring 
in the People's Republic of China. On August 7, 1999, Mr. Yongyi Song, 
a resident of Carlisle, PA, was detained in Beijing, China while 
collecting historical documents on the Chinese cultural revolution of 
the 1966-76.
  Mr. Song works as a researcher and librarian at Dickinson College in 
Carlisle, PA. He is a noted scholar of Chinese cultural history and has 
authored two books and several articles on the subject. On Christmas 
eve Mr. Song was formally arrested on charges of ``the purchase and 
illegal provision of intelligence to foreign institutions.'' Yet, the 
documents in Mr. Song's possession have reportedly been previously 
published in newspapers, books and other ``open'' sources.
  His case is complicated because although Mr. Song has lived in the 
United States for the past ten years and has passed his citizenship 
tests, he has not been sworn in as a U.S. citizen. He was scheduled to 
take the oath of allegiance on September 23, 1999, but was detained by 
the PRC before he could return home.
  The case of Yongyi Song is an affront to basic human rights, an 
affront to academic freedom and an affront to people around the world. 
The People's Republic of China claims that Mr. Song violated Chinese 
criminal law by collecting historical documents, yet the documents in 
Mr. Song's possession have reportedly been previously published in 
newspapers, books and other ``open'' sources. At a time when the 
Chinese Government is looking for legitimacy, trying to get into the 
World Trade Organization and talking about improving its criminal 
justice system, this is a sharp about face.
  This legislation I am about to introduce, a Concurrent Resolution, 
will express the Sense of the Congress that the Government of the 
People's Republic of China (PRC) should immediately release from prison 
and drop all criminal charges against Yongyi Song. Further, it will 
encourage the PRC to make reforms to their legal system so that 
criminal defense lawyers are guaranteed fair and professional treatment 
and encourage the PRC to conduct fair and open court proceedings.
  In working with Mr. Song's defense team, I have learned about several 
problems within the Chinese legal system. First, the difficulties 
criminal defense lawyers face in representing their clients in the 
People's Republic of China. Over the past several years China has 
attempted to reform its legal system yet it has not been successful. 
Police often refuse to let lawyers meet with their clients and lawyers 
are often not provided with legally guaranteed information they require 
to competently represent clients. Many times trials are not open to the 
public or defendants families so that fair treatment of both lawyer and 
client cannot be accurately ascertained or proven. Additionally, 
defense lawyers are subject to harassment and interference and at times 
even arrest and imprisonment by Chinese authorities while defending 
clients. For example, in July, 1998 Liu Jian, a criminal defense lawyer 
from Nanjing, China was imprisoned, subjected to beatings and 
``marathon'' interrogations after he represented a local official 
accused of taking bribes.
  I urge my colleagues to send a sharp message to the People's Republic 
of China that they immediately release Yongyi Song from prison and drop 
all charges against him. Further, we should encourage the PRC to 
provide fair and professional treatment to criminal defense lawyers and 
work to ensure that more court proceedings are open to the public.

                               Exhibit 1

                [From the New York Times, Jan. 6, 2000]

         In China's Legal Evolution, the Lawyers Are Handcuffed

                        (By Elisabeth Rosenthal)

       Nanjing, China.--Liu Jian was an idealistic new lawyer when 
     his Nanjing firm sent him to a rural town 200 miles away to 
     represent a local official accused of taking bribes.
       Stationed in the town, Binhai, he worked round-the-clock 
     doing what defense lawyers do to prepare for trial: 
     interviewing witnesses, examining documents and--when the 
     police would allow--brainstorming with his client.
       But when the court convened on July 13, 1998, almost none 
     of the 37 witnesses he had lined up appeared to testify. The 
     prosecutor swore and ranted at Mr. Liu, calling him a 
     criminal. And at trial's end, outside Binhai's courthouse, 
     Mr. Liu found himself in police custody, charged with 
     ``illegally obtaining evidence.''
       Although legal experts around the country declared his 
     innocence, Mr. Liu spent a nightmarish five months in 
     detention, subjected at times to beatings and daylong 
     interrogations without food or rest.
       ``I was released on Dec. 11, and I've tried not to have any 
     contact with the criminal law since,'' said Mr. Liu, a thin, 
     serious man with a downtrodden air, whose son was born and 
     whose mother had a heart attack while he was in jail. ``I've 
     really lost confidence in the system.''
       Over the past decade, China has tried to overhaul its legal 
     system, training thousands of new lawyers and passing laws 
     that greatly expand their role in criminal cases--for 
     example, for the first time giving defendants in detention 
     the right to a lawyer and allowing lawyers to conduct 
     pretrial investigations.
       But results have been mixed, especially in the country's 
     vast rural areas, where the police, prosecutors and judges 
     often chafe under the new rules. And China's young lawyers 
     have been at once a tremendous force for change and also 
     frequent victims: byproducts of a new legal system that is 
     far better established on paper than in practice.
       ``The law has made great advances, but sometimes thinking 
     has not,'' said Li Baoyue, a criminal lawyer who also teaches 
     at Beijing's University of Politics and Law. ``It is going to 
     be a very difficult road ahead to get these new regulations 
     implemented.''
       Although it is rare for criminal lawyers to end up in 
     prison, defense lawyers say, it is common for them to suffer 
     a barrage of problems, insults and lesser slights like these:
       The police often refuse to let lawyers meet their clients 
     in private or in a timely manner, despite a law giving them 
     access within 48 hours.
       Lawyers are often not provided with legally guaranteed 
     access to court material, like transcripts of confessions, 
     medical examinations and witness lists.
       Intimidation of witnesses by the local police and 
     prosecutors often leaves lawyers with few people willing to 
     testify.
       ``Because of these problems, it's sometimes hard to find a 
     lawyer for criminal cases,'' Professor Li said, adding that 
     the work can be dangerous. ``Many lawyers are scared they 
     could become implicated in the case and lose their 
     livelihood.'' Business law is much more lucrative, and safer
       Gu Yongzhong, a former criminal law specialist in Beijing 
     who now takes on criminal cases only occasionally said: ``For 
     the amount of time it takes to prepare the case, it doesn't 
     pay. And it's very hard to get a not-guilty verdict.''
       Lawyers agree that the obstacles are far greater in the 
     rural areas, where the legal training of judges and the 
     police is often poorest. But some problems are more wide-
     spread, like the difficulty in meting defendants, lawyers 
     said.
       Defendants in cases that are politically sensitive are 
     rarely granted their legally guaranteed rights.
       One lawyer said that he had recently spent two weeks trying 
     to met a client detained by the Beijing Public Security 
     Bureau, which repeatedly deflected requests and turned him 
     away at the gates of the detention center before finally 
     allowing the meeting.
       ``It usually takes some time to get to see your clients,'' 
     Mr. Gu said. ``The law enforcement agencies are not willing 
     at the start because they are worried it will interfere with 
     their investigation. Although it seems to be getting somewhat 
     better lately.''
       Unfortunately, experts say, those first days of detention 
     are when some of the worst police abuses occur--when 
     defendants are subjected to aggressive and sometimes brutal 
     interrogation to obtain confessions. Although Chinese law 
     forbids torture, and confessions obtained by torture cannot 
     be used

[[Page S90]]

     in court, Chinese officials acknowledge that the practice is 
     still relatively common.
       The use of ``confession by torture remains unchecked,'' 
     said a recent commentary in the official China Youth Daily. 
     ``It is commonplace for citizens to be arbitrarily summoned, 
     forcibly seized, detained and even detained beyond legal 
     time limits, and for citizens whose freedom has been 
     restricted to be treated inhumanely.''
       Transcripts of police interrogations with recalcitrant 
     suspects often show breaks in the questioning marked by the 
     words ``Education takes place,'' defense lawyers say. And 
     when the session resumes--voila!--a confession.
       ``The use of torture to obtain a confession is something 
     defendants often raise, but it puts us in a very delicate 
     situation since we need facts and evidence to back up these 
     claims,'' said Sun Guoxiang, a prominent defense lawyer in 
     Nanjing who helped defend Mr. Liu. ``But it is very hard to 
     gather evidence because it is almost impossible to get access 
     to clients at these times.''
       In Mr. Liu's case, the cultures of law and law enforcement 
     repeatedly clashed, as Mr. Liu reminded his captors of his 
     legal rights.
       Just a high school graduate, Mr. Liu became a lawyer 
     through an arduous self-study law program affiliated with 
     Nanjing University, while working full time designing 
     furniture. The first professional from a poor rural family, 
     Mr. Liu regarded the law with a touch of awe.
       ``I thought it was a career where I could help people, that 
     had meaning,'' he said.
       He was admitted to the bar in 1994, when officials in 
     Beijing were writing the new Criminal Procedure Code, which 
     took effect in October 1997. That code allows lawyers to 
     formulate a defense by conducting independent investigations 
     during what prosecutors call the ``investigative period,'' a 
     stage that can last weeks if not months, when a suspect is in 
     detention but has not yet been formally charged.
       But the police in Binhai had other ideas. On his first trip 
     to Binhai, Mr. Liu said, he and a colleague from his firm 
     were never allowed to see their client, whose wife had 
     retained the firm. When a meeting was finally permitted on a 
     subsequent visit, they were given time only to ``exchange a 
     few words''--and these with the head of the county 
     anticorruption bureau listening.
       But a week before the trial, a longer meeting took place--
     and Mr. Liu discovered huge discrepancies between the bribery 
     charges brought by the prosecutors and the story told by the 
     defendant, who said he had been tortured into confessing.
       For the next week, Mr. Liu frantically--and aggressively--
     sought out witnesses, many of whom contradicted the police 
     and some of whom said they had been threatened by local 
     officials.
       ``Our impression wasn't that our client was totally 
     innocent,'' Mr. Liu said, ``but we felt that the prosecution 
     needed to provide better evidence to make the charges 
     stand.''
                                  ____


                  It's the Lawyers Who Are Handcuffed

       Although the realist in him ``kind of expected'' a guilty 
     verdict because ``the prosecutor had a lot riding on the 
     corruption case,'' his lawyer side thought he might have a 
     chance.
       That hope quickly dissipated once his witnesses failed to 
     appear--except the defendant's wife and one nervous man who 
     repeatedly contradicted himself--and the court struck down 
     each point he raised.
       Still, during closing arguments, Mr. Liu was ``shocked'' to 
     hear the prosecutor attacking not the defendant, but the 
     defense team. The prosecutor charged that Mr. Liu had broken 
     the law: that he had ``deliberately induced witnesses to give 
     false evidence'' and then ``presented testimony that he knew 
     to be false to the court''--charges that Chinese legal 
     experts have loudly protested.
       Professor Li of the University of Politics and Law said, 
     ``In certain cases, when law enforcement bodies don't have a 
     highly developed legal mentality, they assume lawyers doing 
     their professional work are doing the bidding of villains.''
       He added that there was often tension between the rural 
     police, few of whom have gone beyond high school, and the 
     better-educated, relatively high-earning lawyers who enter 
     their turf.
       After Mr. Liu was detained, he refused to eat for a day, to 
     protest a jailing he regarded as illegal. He repeatedly 
     reminded the police about the legal time limit on detention 
     and his right to see a lawyer, with little effect.
       For the first 10 days he was not even allowed to contact 
     his own law firm, he said. For the entire five months in 
     custody he was not permitted to speak to his wife. He learned 
     about the birth of his son from a prosecutor.
       In marathon interrogations, the police first urged him to 
     confess, then, when he demurred, ``reminded'' him that he had 
     ``forced witnesses'' to change their testimony. Mr. Liu said 
     they made him stand for hours or beat him until his mouth 
     filled with blood when he refused to confirm their version of 
     events. He said they wrote out a confession for him, which he 
     eventually read to a camera.
       Legal experts from Nanjing and Beijing rallied to his 
     defense, sending lawyers to defend him at his trial, set for 
     October 1998, and preparing statements declaring his 
     innocence.
       He was grateful for their support, but ultimately dared not 
     test the system, deciding to plead guilty in exchange for a 
     light sentence, consisting of time served.
       ``Because of the mental pressure I was under, I was forced 
     to admit to their charges,'' he said. ``I thought, `I'm not 
     going to receive justice here.' I wanted to get out a soon as 
     possible and thought then I could set about clearing my 
     name.''
       Mr. Liu is now appealing the judgment, although lawyers say 
     that with a videotaped confession he will have a hard time 
     officially clearing his name. Meantime, his criminal record 
     bars him from working as a lawyer.
       It is a frustrating limbo for a man, now only 28, whom the 
     country's top defense lawyers have declared innocent. Late 
     last year, a panel of 12 legal experts concluded that while 
     Mr. Liu's actions were ``somewhat irregular'' they ``did not 
     possess the conditions for a crime.''
       Among Mr. Liu's ``minor breaches'' were posing questions in 
     a leading manner and interviewing witnesses alone, said Sun 
     Guoxiang, his principal defense lawyer, noting that these 
     were mostly a result of his inexperience. It is standard 
     practice in China for two lawyers to be present at 
     questioning, although Mr. Liu often worked solo because his 
     firm did not want to station two lawyers in such a remote 
     area.
       And though the case has been devastating for Liu Jian, Mr. 
     Sun says it demonstrates both the incipient power of the 
     legal profession and how far it has to go.
       ``On the one hand I think he was freed as early as he was 
     because lawyers are gaining more respect and playing a bigger 
     role,'' he said. ``On the other, lawyers continue to face 
     difficulties, which are closely related to the quality of the 
     law enforcement and judicial services.''
                                 ______