Jiansanjiang

“We demand that the judge’s violations be investigated, as well as the illegal existence of the Qinglongshan brainwashing center.”

Local police chief Sui Tingfu, was sued for illegally detaining adherents of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice persecuted by the Communist Party.

Nine months after four Chinese rights lawyers were detained and brutally beaten by police for attempting to defend Falun Gong practitioners detained in Jiansanjiang of northern China’s Heilongjiang Province, another eight lawyers on Wednesday challenged a police blockade around the courthouse in order to defend Falun Gong practitioners.

Activists hailed the shutting down of an extralegal detention facility in northeast China on April 28, though some still remain locked up.

Three human rights lawyers were released after 15 days of detention by police in northeastern China, exposing the torture they suffered while in custody.

Seeking justice in China requires being willing to pit weak flesh and blood against the steel of oppression. Four human rights lawyers who took that risk at a remote spot in the far north of China have focused the nation’s attention on the secret, extra-legal hellholes used to terrorize the faithful, the dissident, and the unlucky in China.