Wuxi human rights defender Shen Aibin’s lawsuit against Liangxi Public Security for unlawful 15-day detention receives an unlawful ruling from Binhu Court

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On June 3, 2026, this outlet learned that Wuxi human rights defender Shen Aibin’s lawsuit against Liangxi Public Security for unlawful 15-day detention received an unlawful ruling from Binhu Court.

At around 8 a.m. on July 3, 2025, Shen Aibin went to the Jiangsu Provincial Government seeking to meet with Governor Xu Kunlin, but was deceived by police guarding the provincial government into going to the Ninghai Road Police Station of the Gulou Public Security Sub-Bureau. He was then deprived of his personal freedom, but no one attended to Shen Aibin or provided him with food or drink. It was not until around 5 p.m. that officers from the Guangyi Police Station of the Liangxi Sub-Bureau of the Wuxi Municipal Public Security Bureau escorted him back to Wuxi and directly detained him at the case-handling center of the Liangxi Public Security Sub-Bureau. On July 4, 2025, the Liangxi Public Security Sub-Bureau imposed a 15-day administrative detention penalty on Shen Aibin on the grounds that he had engaged in picking quarrels and provoking trouble in Nanjing.

Shen Aibin applied to the Liangxi District Government for administrative reconsideration, but his request for reconsideration was rejected, after which he filed an administrative lawsuit.

On April 9, 2026, the Wuxi Binhu District Court held a hearing in the case. That day, Wuxi police carried out “stability maintenance” measures against rights defenders throughout the city, using various despicable and abusive tactics to prevent them from attending the hearing, while the seats for observers were occupied by a group of strangers. On May 25, 2026, the Binhu District Court issued Administrative Judgment No. (2025) Su 0211 Xing Chu 488, ruling to reject plaintiff Shen Aibin’s claims and acting as a protective umbrella for the Liangxi Public Security authorities’ abuse of power and persecution of Shen Aibin.

The Liangxi Public Security penalty decision determined that Shen Aibin had committed two unlawful acts of picking quarrels and provoking trouble in Nanjing: first, at noon on June 30, Shen Aibin held up a piece of paper and took a photograph beside the Jiangsu Provincial Procuratorate, then posted the photograph to a WeChat group. The paper read, “Where are the rule of law and judicial fairness? Seeking public power that acts in accordance with the law”; second, on July 1, Shen Aibin recorded a selfie video after leaving the Provincial Higher People’s Court and posted it to a WeChat group. In the video, Shen Aibin described how he had “been deliberately and unlawfully sentenced three times by judicial scum in Wuxi, been attacked and persecuted by extremely strong electromagnetic radiation and high-frequency sound waves, and had his minor daughter implicated, persecuted, and sentenced,” among other things. Liangxi Public Security determined that this content was false information.

Clearly, the penalty decision issued by Liangxi Public Security was unlawful.

First, the penalty decision contained errors in its findings of fact. Shen Aibin’s act of taking a photograph and posting it to a WeChat group constituted freedom of expression and an aspiration for the rule of law and judicial fairness; the content of Shen Aibin’s video described his own experiences and expressed his subjective assessments of those experiences. It fell both within the scope of freedom of expression and within the scope of appeals and complaints. There could only be a question of whether it was right or wrong; there was no question of falsehood. Moreover, the content described by Shen Aibin was entirely consistent with objective facts.

Nor did the above-mentioned acts by Shen Aibin involve the subjective intent to “create disturbances without cause,” as required for picking quarrels and provoking trouble, and they caused no harmful consequences whatsoever. They plainly did not meet the constituent elements of picking quarrels and provoking trouble.

Second, the penalty procedure seriously violated the law. First, Liangxi Public Security had not lawfully obtained jurisdiction and unlawfully penalized conduct by Shen Aibin that had occurred in Nanjing. The hearing fully established that the Liangxi Sub-Bureau had obtained neither case-transfer documentation from Nanjing Public Security nor documentation assigning jurisdiction over the case from higher-level public security authorities; second, Shen Aibin’s rights to make statements and defend himself were deprived. During the hearing, at the stage of examining the evidence, Shen Aibin revealed that the Liangxi Sub-Bureau had fabricated an . At the end of that record, two police officers signed: “The party, Shen Aibin, refused to sign; the police read it aloud to him throughout.” The actual situation was that, when the police informed Shen Aibin of the matter, he explicitly wrote at the end, “Request to make statements and present a defense,” and signed his name. However, after taking it away, the officers did not hear Shen Aibin’s statement or appeal, but instead directly issued the administrative penalty decision. In order to conceal this unlawful fact, the Liangxi Sub-Bureau concealed or destroyed the record signed by Shen Aibin requesting to make statements and present a defense, fabricated this record, and the contradictory nature of the defense materials submitted by the two defendants was fully established during the hearing.

In addition to deliberately bending the law in its findings of fact and shielding the above-mentioned unlawful conduct of the Liangxi Sub-Bureau, the first-instance judgment was even more egregious in seriously violating the provisions of the and the , actually using evidence that had not been examined and cross-examined at the hearing as the basis for deciding the case.

The of the Liangxi Sub-Bureau listed 15 items of evidence, but only provided Shen Aibin with eight evidentiary materials. The remaining seven items were marked in the remarks: “Evidence 4, Evidence 8, Evidence 9, Evidence 12, Evidence 13, Evidence 14, and Evidence 15 are provided only to the court for review.” The Liangxi Sub-Bureau refused to present them to the plaintiff and also refused to present or submit them for examination and cross-examination at the hearing. Yet these items of evidence were key evidence for proving whether the facts, evidence, and procedure underlying the penalty decision were lawful. Without examination and cross-examination of this evidence, it was impossible to prove the legality of the administrative penalty decision.

During the hearing, Shen Aibin read aloud Article 43 of the : “Evidence shall be presented in court and examined and cross-examined by the parties.” He also read aloud Article 35 of the : “Evidence shall be presented in court and examined and cross-examined during the hearing. Evidence that has not been examined and cross-examined during the hearing cannot serve as the basis for deciding a case.” He strongly demanded that the presiding judge perform her duties in accordance with the law, not be subject to interference by public security authorities abusing their power, and organize the examination and cross-examination of all evidence. However, the presiding judge was ultimately still constrained by the police and did not organize the examination and cross-examination. Yet Presiding Judge Wu Qian fully accepted this evidence, which had not been examined and cross-examined, in the judgment, seriously violating the legally prescribed trial procedures.

Shen Aibin stated that he would resolutely appeal and expose the wrongdoing of judicial scum in accordance with the law.

A Wuxi rights defender, Mao [name withheld], said: “Courts were originally places where the law and reason were upheld, sacred halls safeguarding social fairness and justice. Now, however, they have degenerated into accomplices of judicial scum and become a scourge harming society. In a country without a place where reason and law are upheld, public power is the greatest enemy of ordinary people.”

A Wuxi rights defender, Fang [name withheld], said: “Over all these years in Wuxi, very few administrative lawsuits have been won. Either they are not accepted, or the courts issue judgments that bend the law. This is the result of governing the country according to law; this is what is distinctive about China: from top to bottom, one thing is said and another is done. In the end, they are forcing ordinary people to take up knives and kill.”

A Wuxi rights defender, Pu [name withheld], said angrily: “I have filed more than 50 administrative cases in total, and have not won a single one. How corrupt have the government and police become? The courts have already become protective umbrellas for corrupt officials and criminal police who violate the law. Where is there any justice? For so many years, the central authorities have introduced one judicial-system reform after another, but at the grassroots level they are all empty slogans and hollow promises, all a great deception. Grassroots judicial organs remain completely corrupt. The police are the chief evildoers; they are the biggest criminal gang.”