From Reuters, via Boston.com:
The Chinese author of a book about long-dead Peking Opera stars has become the latest challenger to the ruling Communist Party‘s censors, daring them on Friday to explain their secretive ways before the law.
Zhang Yihe won fame in China three years ago for a memoir of her father and other intellectuals who embraced Mao Zedong’s revolution only to be purged.
……In a previous statement about the book ban, Zhang said Chinese citizens’ rights remained shackled by political dogma and she was being persecuted for her past.”In contemporary China, can’t a Rightist speak or write?,” she wrote in the statement circulated on the Internet.
“If that’s so, then the Constitution should be immediately amended to clearly state who can write books, who does enjoy basic civic rights.”The ban on Zhang’s book has not been entirely bad for sales, though. Pirated copies can be picked up on many streetside book stalls in Beijing, along with other sensitive and lurid titles. [Full Text]
See also: Zhang’s book is “banned” – but what does “ban” actually mean? from Letters from China blog.
