This English version may have been machine-generated from the Chinese original and may not convey the original meaning accurately.
August 19, 2016, is a historical memory that should not be forgotten.
On the eve of the Hangzhou G20 Summit, China entered a period of heightened “stability maintenance” across the country. From August 19 through early September, police in multiple cities subjected rights defenders, petitioners, and civic activists to detention, house arrest, surveillance, and forced removal.
The China Human Rights Defenders organization later recorded this period—from August 19 to September 2, 2016—as a concentrated stability-maintenance campaign, documenting numerous cases of detention, enforced disappearance, forced repatriation, and house arrest.
This was not an isolated August 19, but a stability-maintenance operation that continued for weeks and affected multiple cities.
The mass arrests in Fuzhou were one of the more consequential incidents.
Beginning on August 30, 2016, Fuzhou rights defender Lin Bingxing was first criminally detained, followed by the arrests of Shi Liqin, Liao Jun, Jiang Zhi'an, Lin Yimei, Jiang Bixiu, Xiong Fenglian, Yan Xingsheng, Zhang Xiuping, and many others. Publicly available records indicate that more than a dozen people in total were subjected to criminal detention and other measures.
The mass arrests in Suzhou began on September 8.
Several rights defenders, including Wang Wanping, Zhu Xueying, Wu Qihe, Xu Chunling, Wang Mingxian, and Gu Yimin, were taken away by police one after another. Many rights defenders later viewed this operation as a continuation of the 2015 “709 crackdown”—“709” had never truly ended, but was continuing in another form.
Meanwhile, rights defenders and petitioners in Wuxi, Shanghai, Beijing, Sichuan, and elsewhere were also subjected to detention, house arrest, and surveillance.
In August 2016 alone, the Minsheng Observer recorded 151 cases of stability maintenance, with at least 395 people subjected to varying degrees of repression and intimidation.
These are not cold, impersonal numbers.
Behind every number is a real person: citizens deprived of their freedom, rights defenders taken away, ordinary people placed under house arrest, and families paying a price for pursuing fairness, justice, democracy, and the rule of law.
Today, we commemorate “819” not to foster hatred, but to refuse to forget.
We remember those who were taken away;
We remember those who were forced into silence;
We remember those who continued to speak the truth even in the darkness;
Above all, we remember everyone who has endured suffering in pursuit of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.
History will not disappear because posts are deleted,
and the truth will not die because of censorship.
The “819” crackdown of 2016 was merely a microcosm of China's long history of stability maintenance.
What we can do today is remember.
Remember the mass arrests carried out around August 19 and the G20 Summit;
Remember the persecution that continued after 709;
Remember every person who has lost their freedom;
Remember history, and refuse to forget.
May the day come when China no longer needs stability maintenance to suppress its people,
when no one loses their freedom for speaking the truth,
and when no one is persecuted for pursuing democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.
Remember history, pursue freedom.
Refuse to forget, safeguard the truth.
I strongly recommend retaining this sentence: “This was not an isolated August 19, but a stability-maintenance operation that continued for weeks and affected multiple cities.”