A year ago, Peng Lifa draped protest banners from Beijing's Sitong Bridge. They unfurled to reveal exhortations against China's zero-COVID policy, calling it a violation of freedom of expression and demanding real elections and political reform.
One banner criticized Xi Jinping as a "national traitor" and another said "We want food, not PCR tests. We want freedom, not lockdowns. We want respect, not lies. We want reform, not a Cultural Revolution. We want a vote, not a leader. We want to be citizens, not slaves."
Peng Lifa further challenged Xi on Oct. 13, 2022, by shouting through a loudspeaker, "We want to eat. We want freedom. We want votes!"
Quickly arrested that day, Peng Lifa, whose online name is Peng Zaizhou, remains in detention at an unknown location, and his close family members remain under government watch, according to sources familiar with the case who did not want to be named for fear of attracting official attention.
Authorities have yet to deliver to his family any legal documents related to his case, the sources told VOA Mandarin, and his relatives and friends haven't been able to hire a lawyer to provide him with legal assistance.
VOA Mandarin contacted the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comments on Peng Lifa's case and the allegations made by VOA Mandarin's sources but didn't receive any response by the time of publication.
Peng Lifa's wife, Han Yang, and their two underage daughters remain in Beijing. Authorities have arranged transportation for their daily commutes to work and school. They are accompanied by government personnel wherever they go, the sources told VOA Mandarin, describing an upended family.
Because the government confiscated the mobile phones belonging to Peng Lifa's wife and daughters to "protect" them, they must use ones issued by the authorities.
Peng Lifa's father-in-law, Han Yueci, who used to run a small business, has been assigned by the Public Security Bureau to work and live at a small factory and is under surveillance. Peng Lifa's mother-in-law, who used to live in Beijing, now lives with her eldest daughter in Jilin Province in northeastern China, bordering North Korea and Russia. She is likely under surveillance.
Peng Lifa's brothers and sisters are farmers in their hometown of Tailai in Heilongjiang Province near the border with Inner Mongolia. They were all summoned to the local police station for questioning after the banner incident. His parents have passed away due to illness.
Han Yang has two sisters. One sister and her husband work in public schools, and the other sister works in a state-owned power plant. After the Sitong Bridge incident, investigators questioned all three at their workplaces.
Liang Shaohua, formerly a human rights lawyer in China, now lives in Los Angeles, where he volunteers as a rights advocate. He told VOA Mandarin there is no basis under Chinese law for restricting Peng Lifa's family.
"Peng Lifa's family members, including his wife, Han Yang, and daughters, are illegally under house arrest. It is illegal collective punishment," said Liang. "It has absolutely no legal basis and is what gangsters would do."
Chinese dissident Lin Shengliang, who lives in the Netherlands and leads efforts to help and rescue political prisoners in China, said volunteers in China have taken risky trips to find Peng Lifa.
He said Peng Yiping, a retired Chinese military officer, attempted to visit Peng Lifa's family in Tailai on Sept. 27 only to be arrested when he asked directions of a person who turned out to be an undercover officer who confiscated the military man's mobile phone and arrested him.
Zhou Fengsuo, who was a student leader in the Tiananmen Square protests and is now executive director of Human Rights in China in New York City, said he believes Peng Lifa's protest triggered the Blank Paper Movement nationwide, which eventually led to the end of the zero-COVID policy.
Zhou said, "It was because his voice spread overseas and domestically that it eventually led to the nationwide Blank Paper Movement, which, for the first time, used public opinion to force the Chinese Communist Party to change its absurd and cruel zero-COVID policy."
In the Legal Opinion of the Citizens' Court Lawyers Group on the Peng Lifa case published in September in China Spring, an online magazine, Liang said, "If Xi believes that Peng Lifa has violated his reputation rights, he can file a lawsuit for reputation infringement according to Chinese civil law. Advocating ending the zero-COVID policy and removing Xi Jinping and calling Xi Jinping a 'national traitor' are not crimes. And the Chinese police had no legal basis for his arrest."
Liang believes that the authorities' detention of Peng Lifa violates the provisions of the Chinese Criminal Procedure Law and the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.
"Peng Lifa has experienced enforced disappearance for more than a year. In China's Criminal Procedure Law, there are regulations on the length of detention and arrest and when family members should be notified," he said. "He doesn't have a lawyer. Everything is unknown. It actually violates China's own criminal prosecution laws, as well as the (United Nations') International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance. It is totally illegal."
