The role of women dissidents is often underestimated because of the low profile many of them keep or because their work is overshadowed by their better-known husbands. Yet, they proudly struggle for human rights and democracy and pay the same price as men.

Beijing (AsiaNews/CHRD) – On International Women’s Day, “we should honour the increasing number of women at the forefront of the Chinese rights-defence movement, who often have to overcome tremendous obstacles in their quest to seek justice and defend human rights,” said Renee Xia, international coordinator for Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a NGO defending human rights in China.

There are many women involved in human rights in mainland China, but their efforts tend to be overlooked. Not only do they often take a low profile to avoid media attention, but they are also overshadowed by their more prominent dissident husbands.

Yet, Chinese women are in the forefront in every aspect of the fight for human rights. Many have played a critical role in some of the most important episodes in recent memory, women like Liu Jie who has worked with petitioners, helping them organise against police harassment in order to protect their rights and more effectively present their grievances. In 2007, Liu released a public letter signed by 12,150 petitioners calling on leaders at the 17th Chinese Communist Party Congress to implement political and legal reforms.

Other women use their work to speak out against human rights abuses. For instance, Ai Xiaoming, a filmmaker and teaches at Yat-sen University, who released ‘Our Children’, a documentary about the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. The movie, which is available online, tells the story of parents who lost their children, crushed when schools collapse on top of them.

Finally, there are the women who, like their husbands, fight for democracy through political reforms. Many women were among the first to sign ‘Charter 08’, including Woeser, a Tibetan author and advocate for freedom of expression, Liu Di, a Beijing blogger and activist, and Shen Peilan, a land rights activist from Shanghai.

Of course, China’s central government is not enthralled by women’s activism. Indeed, it has not hesitated from imposing the same penalties on them as it does on men.

The CHRD has released a list of women dissidents who are currently in prison on trumped up charges or held without due process; among them, Duan Chunfang, a Shanghai activist who was seized by police on 3 July 2009, and Fan Yanqiong, a blogger in Nanping County who was arrested on 26 June 2009 for posting online articles on local corruption.

Like men, women dissidents have to endure to all sorts of mistreatment by police. One of those who stand out is Ding Zilin (pictured), leader of the Mothers of Tiananmen. Because of her systematic and meticulous work in collecting evidence about the victims of the events of 1989, she is the target of constant police harassment.

• china
• women
• dissidents
• police
• harassment
• violence
• tiananmen
• 1989
• prison
• arrests