Chinese university students disciplined over rainbow flags file lawsuit against Education Ministry
- For six months, two Tsinghua students have petitioned to have penalty handed down by the university in July overturned
- Advocates commend the pair for persisting in a mainland environment where public discussion of LGBTQ rights is considered sensitive and is censored
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The Tsinghua University students, who would only be identified by their surnames Huang and Li, filed the petition with the Beijing No 1 Intermediate People’s Court on Monday, Huang said.
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They have been seeking to have the decision overturned since then, appealing first within the university and then to the Beijing Municipal Education Commission, to no avail.
The students decided to file the lawsuit after the Ministry of Education dismissed their application for an administrative review early this month. The ministry said their case “does not fall within the scope of administrative reconsideration”.
Huang said they objected to the accusation of “distributing unauthorised promotional material” on campus, a charge that had “negative impacts”.
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Huang said they might consider appealing again if the court did not rule in their favour. “We feel a bit pessimistic about getting a win in the ruling … [but] the lawsuit still has its significance in raising public awareness,” she said.
Yanzi Peng from LGBT Rights Advocacy China said it was impressive that the students were consistently trying to defend their rights through legal means. The university’s penalty reflected a “politicised” misunderstanding and handling, Peng said.
“Gender diversity in education and the right of sexual minority students to a dignified education on campus should be the responsibility of schools and the education system,” he said, noting that strict control over LGBTQ issues would make discrimination on campus worse.
Liang Ge, a researcher in gender, sexuality and popular culture at King’s College London, said an institutional and structural inequality of power between the college administration and the students made them “extremely vulnerable and disadvantaged”.
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“The university’s strict control over the expression of the LGBTQ+ community tries to make the queer invisible, marginalised and dispossessed,” Ge said, adding that homophobia and transphobia could be found in almost all mainland university administrative systems.
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Since 2014, several LGBTQ rights cases have gone to court over a wide range of issues, including conversion therapy and employment discrimination. Cases against private parties have had some success, but no case against a state entity has prevailed, according to Darius Longarino, a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Centre.
“In the past two years or so, space for LGBTQ expression and advocacy have drastically declined. This has also affected court cases, some of which have encountered lengthy unexplained delays,” Longarino said.
“The lengthy and unpredictable delays, the decreasing space for media to report on LGBTQ rights cases and increased pressure from authorities can be very discouraging to would-be plaintiffs. That the Tsinghua students are still bringing their case in this environment is even more laudable and impactful.”
