Protecting Human Rights Defenders in China: A Social Network Approach

Research Questions:

1)    What characteristics of human rights defender networks in China contribute the most to mitigating state persecution?

a.     Of particular interest is the nature of network flows. Are rights defender networks based on recruitment for issue specific campaigns, rapid response capabilities, or training and mutual skill sharing? Based on these network types, how do they assist or hinder communication, advocacy, or responses and what changes in the context of  multiple mode networks where one individual is networked to multiple specific networks based on various network flows?

b.     How frequently do individual human rights defenders interact and is there a correlation between the frequency of interaction and trust?

c.     How does trust impact the formation and flow of rights defender networks in an authoritarian regime like China?

Explanation:

There are many organizations and governments involved in civil society capacity development and the promotion and protection of human rights in China. However, although the concept of organizing without organizations has taken root there is still arguably progress to be made in how rights development programs are designed, where emphasis is placed, and how funders can support the development of more robust networks of rights defenders, and the development of civil society more broadly.

What does the data support? Is it better to focus on building a rights defense network based on creating higher betweeness scores for diverse rights defenders around the country or would it make more sense to have a less dense but larger network? Here questions of trust might factor into the network design. In the face of an authoritarian state would it be beneficial to build more fragmented networks that are capable of sustainability even if nodes with high centrality measures are taken out by government targeting? More specifically, is there a typology of centrality measures that have a direct impact on the speed and type of response to acts of state persecution? For example, what does it look like for a human rights defender to have a high betweenness and eigenvector score in terms of being either targeted by the state or being able to respond quickly to state targeting of fellow rights defenders in their network? What does the network analysis tell us about the type of rights defender best positioned to conduct advocacy and withstand state targeting?

A point for future research would be to examine what impact out of country networks have on rights defenders operating in China. Does network connectivity with rights defenders in Cambodia, Thailand, Burma, Australia, and the US, and/or high connectivity with NGOs or foreign governments present a benefit or threat for networked rights defenders in China? Does public participation in foreign conferences, and the corresponding globalization of networks have a positive or negative impact on rights defenders?

Background:

In 2009 a Chinese human rights defender, Liu Ping was fired from her job at a steel plant without proper remuneration. The violation of her labor rights launched her onto the long path of human rights defense. She turned to traditional protest and petitioning at first, moving between varying administrative levels of government bureaucracy and connecting with other human rights defenders. In 2011, Liu Ping decided to run for a position on her city’s People’s Congress, believing that membership in the legislative body would offer her the greatest chance to affect change for herself and countless like her suffering from unfair labor rights, whose pleas and demands were routinely ignored by corrupt officials.

She campaigned through traditional and new media platforms, including Weibo, China’s equivalent to Twitter, quickly attracting around 30,000 followers. A few days before the local elections on 12 May, the police took Liu Ping into custody and charged her with arbitrary violations of China’s Election Law. Almost instantaneously, her supporters launched an online campaign against the police to end her arbitrary detention. Yu Jianrong, another human rights defender, posted information about Liu Ping’s incommunicado detention online, which was quickly shared between multiple online networks nearly 70,000 times. Following this immediate online response to her abduction, the police were forced to release her. She was still barred from participating in the election. She continued her rights defense activities nonetheless.

In April 2013, soon after China’s President Xi Jinping came to power a group of rights defenders gathered in Beijing to echo the President’s calls for anti-corruption. They were arrested. A few days later, Liu Ping and several other human rights defenders in her immediate network in Jiangxi Province, more than 800 miles away from the original action, staged a demonstration in solidarity with those arrested in Beijing. They uploaded photos of themselves to their respective social media networks and communicated with fellow activists face to face and through cell communication. They were detained by the police the next day. Sadly, this time no amount of rapid social media advocacy would free Liu Ping. In June 2014 she was sentenced to six years in prison on spurious charges of “provoking quarrels and stirring up trouble.”

This is one emblematic case of the role of network connectivity among Chinese human rights defenders in terms of advocacy and solidary campaigning but it also points to how many experienced rights defenders spread and share information and skills. The question is what types of networks are most robust and capable of mitigating the threat of persecution from the state.

Data:

The data can come from numerous sources. Select organizations currently engaged in training programs for grassroots rights defenders such as Amnesty International or Frontline Defenders collect data on their participants. The US Embassy small programs grant scheme, CanadaFund, and other embassy grants collect information on their recipients. High profile or well networked rights defenders, such as Liu Ping above, already have massive networks online. In addition to collecting information from the existing funders, survey data can be collected on the ground through chain-sampling within trusted rights defender networks. These can be reached through more grassroots organizations and individual rights defenders. Finally, some data can be generated from interviewing former prisoners of conscious and rights defenders who have been detained by the state. In many cases, large networks of rights defenders might be detained and interrogated about a select group of rights defenders, the authorities attempting to pinpoint network connections and centrality for specific targets. In interviewing former detainees about whether the state specifically interrogated them about their connections with certain individuals, correlated with others who had been detained and similarly questioned, we might not only be able to add to our network map but also build a picture of how the state visualizes the network of (enemy) human rights defenders.