Representative Chris Smith, who heads the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on human rights, said that New York University controlled Chen’s movements and tried to monitor the congressman’s conversations with the activist.

“That is not the way you treat a world-class human rights defender who has suffered torture and every other depravation to combat abuse in China. It really is a black mark against NYU,” Smith said.

Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, said that US universities faced a “huge systemic problem”.

“I have no problem with higher education having a constructive engagement with China as long as you don’t gag human rights defenders. Frankly, you should be providing them with space; otherwise, wittingly or unwittingly, you’re enabling a dictatorship,” he said. [Source]

George Washington University’s Donald Clarke, however, thinks “NYU is more sinned against than sinning here.” He quotes Georgetown Law School’s James Feinerman, who doesn’t buy Chen’s allegations:

[...]Finally, Chen mistakes what he knows (and what he knows works) in China for the way things work in the US. He assumes that the PRC government – or government in general – can make academics fall in line. How little he knows us. Nothing rankles the academy more than a heavy governmental hand – especially that of one viewed by most as a vile totalitarian autocracy – trying to wield influence. It’s more likely to cause academics – even academic administrators – to react in opposition. We prize our freedom more than that. It’s a shame he’s failed to learn at least that much about the institution that has sheltered him and his family for the past 16 months or the country of his exile. This latest screed, however, is likely to backfire. Remember Solzhenitsyn? Despite his heroism, his Nobel prize, and his writerly brilliance, he was remembered more as a reactionary scold, ranting about the West while enjoying its perks. From various accounts, Chen also risks becoming a captive and a mouthpiece for the religious right, anti-abortion, and China-threat factions here in the US. His current story will resonate with them, but in the longer run it promises he will receive even less attention from influential mainstream opinion makers in this country. [Source]

Elizabeth Redden of Inside Higher Ed says that whether or not Chen’s departure can be traced to Chinese pressure, his allegations about US academic freedom “being greatly threatened by a totalitarian regime” are worth noting:

“I think that’s basically right,” said Perry Link, a professor at the University of California at Riverside who is among the China scholars who have been blacklisted from obtaining visas to conduct research in China. Link did say, however, that the words “greatly threatened” seemed to him a little over the top. “It is a big problem, and it’s a long-term problem, and it’s a subtle problem. It’s gotten dramatized in the last few days as a university kicking out a blind human rights lawyer at the behest of a totalitarian government.” (Chen is blind.) “This is spectacular, almost Hollywood-ized, but that’s not the way it works. The influence problem is pervasive and serious but it doesn’t happen that way.”

“It happens when scholars are induced, whether for fear of not getting visas or because of the lure of getting money, to censor themselves and not raise questions that they otherwise would raise and to speak using words that they know would be acceptable in Beijing rather than words they would view as being more accurate,” said Link, who noted, for example, that the massacre in Tiananmen Square (a subject of his own research) is frequently described by scholars as an “event” or “incident” or even by a Chinese word meaning “tempest in a teapot.”

“Chen is absolutely right when he says that the Chinese government has influenced intellectual freedom in the West,” said Maochun Yu, a professor of history at the United States Naval Academy. “On the other hand, this is not NYU’s problem. It’s a larger problem.” [Source]

Georgetown University’s James Millward similarly writes that the broader issue of academic freedom will continue to gain traction as U.S. and Chinese academic communities become more intertwined:

As we go forward, should more such incidents arise, here’s what both sides should do: China, please abandon counterproductive efforts to intimidate foreign institutions and scholars. Ham-fisted bullying only undermines the very soft power that was your goal in the first place, and ticks off the teachers who teach foreigners about China.

And deans and provosts at U.S. institutions: Don’t be craven about academic freedom. Join together with other institutions and take a firm, principled stand to support scholars. Don’t be afraid to do what NYU did in hosting a dissident or to take bold steps if China denies a visa to one of your professors. We are the No. 1 global brand in university education, largely because of our principles. Where else is China going to go? [Source]

Meanwhile, Chen weighs his next move – he reportedly has an offer to join Fordham University’s School of Law as a visiting scholar at a human rights program and another offer to join a pro-life think tank. Verna Yu at the South China Morning post writes today that Chen’s connections with pro-life and other right-wing groups has stoked concern that he has become a politicized figure:

Professor Jean-Philippe Beja, a senior researcher at the French Centre on Contemporary China, said exiled activists were political capital for a while after they arrived in the West but siding with one political camp would tend to diminish their credibility. “If you appear to be siding with right extremists, it will hurt your image,” Beja said. “The problem with exile is that you are isolated, and when you’re isolated, it’s easy to be taken advantage of.”

But Beja said it was understandable that someone like Chen, who went from being an oppressed activist to enjoying hero status in the US, might not fully understand the situation he was getting into. “From his village in Shandong to a place where he is put in high US politics is definitely a destabilising experience. It’s very hard for him … I’m sure there are people trying to convince him that’s the only way to carry on his advocacy.”

But Beja said he hoped Chen could still change his mind.  “This is a very sad episode but it’s too early to judge.” [Source]

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Post tags: abortion, academic freedom, Chen Guangcheng, higher education, new york university, political dissidents
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The new rules say people wanting to adopt must go through official channels and meet requirements, which under Chinese law include being healthy, over 30 and childless.

People who use abandoned children for illegal and profitable ends will be severely punished, the rules say, without specifying.

The document also sets out measures that should be taken when an abandoned baby is found, requiring that police try to track down the parents or guardians, and transfer children to a government-sanctioned nursing home for temporary care if they fail. These homes should only take the children under official care if no guardian is found within a certain period. [Source]

The new directive treads into the sensitive territory of child abandonment and trafficking in China – recent media claimed that nearly 200,000 children disappear in the country every year, according to the South China Morning Post. An Shanghai Daily investigative report sheds more light on China’s black market for adoption, as undercover reporters find that most would-be parents prefer to pursue illegal avenues:

Only orphans with physical or mental problems were sent to orphanages while healthy unwanted babies would go to families “via other ways,” staff told undercover reporters.

One of these other ways, a middle-aged woman who posted ads on hospital walls in the central Henan Province, told reporters by phone that she was selling babies who were only a month old.

“A boy costs 36,000 yuan and a girl 24,000 yuan,” the woman said. “You arrange a place so we can take the baby to see you. If you want to buy it, we can take it to the hospital to make sure it is healthy.”

She told the reporter that a favorite could be picked from many others. The woman said many of the babies were born to migrant workers. [Source]

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Human, Rights by Crazy Crab of Hexie Farm for CDT:

 

Read more about Hexie Farm’s CDT series, including a Q&A with the anonymous cartoonist, and see all cartoons so far in the series.

[CDT owns the copyright for all cartoons in the Hexie Farm CDT series. Please do not reproduce without receiving prior permission from CDT.]

 

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The following deleted weibo was selected by CDT Chinese editors from FreeWeibo.

V微动力: On the morning of May 18, several individuals gathered on a rooftop near the southern intersection of Beijing’s Qianmen and West streets, opposite the National People’s Congress office. They unfurled banners, tossed leaflets, and apparently shouted slogans until police, firefighters, and ambulances arrived at the scene. Firefighters and SWAT ascended the building and, after an hour or so, escorted the individuals back down. The entire incident took place over less than two hours. by @报晓公鸡

5月18日早晨，有多人登上了北京前门西大街南侧、全国人大办公楼对面的一座楼房的顶层，挂出了多幅条幅，抛洒大量传单，似乎还有人呼喊口号，须臾警车、消防车和救护车到场，经过大约一小时左右消防官兵、特警登楼，将楼上人员接下。事件持续过程大约不到两小时。by@报晓公鸡

May 21, 2013 at 6:39 p.m.

The second banner from the left mentions the chengguan (city management officers) of Jiamusi, Heilongjiang Province. The two banners to the right begin with the word “injustice” (冤). The protesters may be asking that justice be done for a man beaten by chengguan outside Jiamusi on May 8 [zh].

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Wen Xin Liu.

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The following deleted weibo was selected by CDT Chinese editors from FreeWeibo.

Fast-Furious悍匪: 10,000 people gathered in Jinning, Yunnan in a rally to protest against aggressive land seizures.

Click to view slideshow.

May 21, 2013 at 8:40 a.m.

Via CDT Chinese. Translation by Wen Xin Liu.

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“There are many stories that are still vivid in my mind,” he said. “I slept between two death-row inmates, and they kept telling me stories. I said, ‘I don’t want to hear your stories.’ But they said, ‘You have to listen to our stories because tomorrow or the day after we could be executed.’ So I just listened to their stories.”

Writing the memoir has dominated his time since his release, not least because he had to write the book three times. The first two manuscripts were confiscated by the police, who he says harassed him throughout the process. “Sometimes fear is like a drug,” he said. “The more fearful you are the more compelled you are to do it.”

[…] Mr. Liao doesn’t hold out hope of wider political reform, or freedom of speech, in China. Does he wish he had been born somewhere else? “When I was a little boy my father asked me to read ancient Chinese texts. I always wished I could have been born in ancient China.”

[…] The melancholy tone of his flute Thursday night at the New York Public Library offset the great bursts of fury and fear during his recital of “Massacre”—performed using Chinese ritualistic chanting and howling. After the recital, Mr. Liao looked entirely drained, but he revived during a conversation with the library’s Paul Holdengräber, especially after some shots of Chinese baijiu on the table in front of him. [Source]

Liao claims that the book’s rewriting helped with its literary structure, but that “only the police could say which was best: they are my most loyal readers!” On prospects for reform, he has previously commented that “I have no interest in what China will become. My suggestion would be that China crumbles into dozens of little countries so that it would no longer be the terrible menace it is now.”

See more on Liao and his flight into exile via CDT, and reviews of For a Song … from Nick Holdstock at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Kit Gillet at South China Morning Post, and Jiayang Fan at Slate:

Liao is a born observer. Without pen and paper, he mentally collects stories from convicts who converged like “dregs sinking to the bottom of a sewage pipe,” yet who re-create with uncanny accuracy “an exact replica of the state bureaucracy outside.” Inside prison, “those in power enjoyed unlimited privileges”; Liao describes, as an example, the allocation of a fundamental resource: “The chief could use scented napkins to wipe his butt, but slave thieves had to resort to using wrapping paper or old newspapers.”

Liao’s meticulous portrait of the societal microcosm between cell walls—replete with its cast of foreign ministers, chairmen, scholars, and counter-revolutionaries—reads like a hybrid of Swift and Orwell, the latter of whom Liao reads with surreal astonishment in prison. Corruption, nepotism, and ineptitude run rampant, while in-house political campaigns—titled “Confess Your Own Crimes and Report on Others”—systematically weaken any rebellious momentum the prisoners might build among themselves. [Source]

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“This is a benchmark in the organisation’s ongoing efforts to engage Chinese-speaking human rights activists and supporters around the world,” Amnesty’s East Asia head Roseann Rife said.

“The importance of distributing more human rights information in the Chinese language reflects China’s growing influence throughout the world,” she said.

The new website will feature translations in simplified Chinese of Amnesty’s reports and annual documents, and a Chinese-language blog. [Source]

Read more on human rights in China via CDT, and click through to Amnesty’s new Chinese site and blog.

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1. It is true that New York University has asked us to leave before the end of June.

2. In fact, as early as last August and September, the Chinese Communists had already begun to apply great, unrelenting pressure on New York University, so much so that after we had been in the United States just three to four months, NYU was already starting to discuss our departure with us.

3. The work of the Chinese Communists within academic circles in the United States is far greater than what people imagine, and some scholars have no option but to hold themselves back. Academic independence and academic freedom in the United States are being greatly threatened by a totalitarian regime. [Source]

The New York Post originally reported last Thursday that NYU was booting Chen under pressure from Chinese bureaucrats who had approved its plans to build a campus in Shanghai, though a university spokesman denied that outside influence played a role in the decision. Jerome Cohen, the NYU law professor who helped to orchestrate Chen’s relocation to the United States after he escaped house arrest in China last year, also called the New York Post story “highly distorted.” From The Washington Post:

“My understanding with the Chens was that NYU could guarantee him one year in order to get their feet on the ground and transition to a more permanent position,” Cohen said in an e-mail from China, where he often travels, adding, “I am grateful to the university administration for its extraordinary generosity, which could not reasonably be expected to go on indefinitely.”

[...]Cohen said that he had “never heard a word from anyone, including Chinese diplomats” suggesting that the Chinese government was pressuring NYU to end Chen’s tenure there. The New York Post story alleged that NYU was expelling Chen from its campus to satisfy demands from Beijing and to ease the approval process for an NYU campus planned for Shanghai. [Source]

Bob Fu, one of the activists who helped Chen flee to the United States, told Barbara Demick of The Los Angeles Times that “American universities are out chasing the Chinese dollar” and speculated that NYU could have made the decision even in the absence of direct pressure from Beijing. Still, the South China Morning post reported that Chen did not respond to a reporter’s request for evidence backing his claims, and NYU issued its own statement on Sunday denying any involvement by the Chinese government. From Andrew Jacobs of The New York Times:

[...]“We are very discouraged to learn of Mr. Chen’s statement, which contains a number of speculations about the role of the Chinese government in N.Y.U.’s decision-making that are both false and contradicted by the well-established facts,” John Beckman, a university spokesman, said in the statement. He said the university was “puzzled and saddened” by Mr. Chen’s accusations but that it would continue to help him and his family.

The university insists that Mr. Chen’s law school fellowship was always meant to be for one year, and those who have worked closely with him in recent months said he understood the time limitations of a financial arrangement that even Mr. Chen acknowledged was extremely generous. The fellowship’s end, Mr. Beckman said, “had nothing to do with the Chinese government — all fellowships come to an end.”

Mr. Chen said the school had given him until the end of June to vacate the faculty apartment in Greenwich Village where he and his family have lived since arriving in the United States in May 2012. [Source]

Where will Chen head next? The Financial Times reported earlier this month that Chen may join Fordham University’s School of Law as a visiting scholar at a human rights program. Chen has also reportedly received an offer from the Witherspoon Institute, a New Jersey-based pro life think tank, though Bob Fu of ChinaAid told Reuters that Chen has not yet made a decision.

Updated: Jerome Cohen has responded to Chen’s statement in an interview with Foreign Policy:

Foreign Policy: Is there any connection between NYU Shanghai and Chen Guangcheng?

Jerome Cohen: We’ve tried to keep it quite separate. I have not been involved in setting up the Shanghai campus — it was easy for me, therefore, to take on the Chen thing.

The irony of this whole thing is that I share a concern of [the Chinese government interfering in institutions] outside of China, but I always try to do it on the basis of evidence and facts. What concerns me here is that the New York Post, or something that Congressman Christopher Smith says, or NYU faculty opposed to [NYU President John] Sexton who don’t have anything to do with China, or Chen’s statement, no one has given one fact [to show that] Chen has been restricted or not done much at NYU. It’s all nonsense!

You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you. NYU has been extraordinarily generous to the Chens, and I’ve been grateful for the support. [Source]

Updated: Cohen spoke more strongly in an email quoted by Jeremy Page, Josh Chin and Sophia Hollander, who explored the apparent tug-of-war over Chen at The Wall Street Journal.

“Mr. Chen seems to be taking advice from a group that thrives on accusation, rumor, suspicion, gossip and malice,” Mr. Cohen said in an email. “So far not a single fact has been adduced to support their allegations” about New York University, he said. Mr. Cohen didn’t say who was in the group allegedly advising Mr. Chen.

Religious conservatives close to Mr. Chen said that NYU had made it difficult for him to have private meetings without school officials present, discouraged him from accepting awards because it might anger the Chinese, and retaliated after he made public appeals on behalf of his nephew, who he claims is being tortured by Chinese officials.

[…] One person close to Mr. Chen suggested that his statement might compromise offers from other schools and push him toward the Witherspoon Institute.

Some members of the human-rights community have long expressed concern that Mr. Chen could be co-opted by antiabortion Christian groups in the U.S. Such groups, they say, tend to cast Mr. Chen as an antiabortion crusader, emphasizing his fight against China’s one-child system without placing it in the context of his general efforts to promote rule of law in the country. [Source]

On Twitter, Rectified.name‘s Will Moss suggested that recent developments show “an uncomfortable, public transition from idealized symbol to actual person“.

At The New Yorker, meanwhile, Evan Osnos focused on the broader context of the emerging complications faced by educational institutions as they pursue deeper involvement in China.

There is much we don’t know about this case, and people racing to blame one side or the other have already found the story to be more complicated, so I’ll stick to what we know, and that’s this: the outcome will be watched very closely not only at N.Y.U.—whose global expansion has polarized its faculty—but at a range of other schools that are developing programs and campuses in China, including Duke, Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford. Going east, to China or elsewhere, has already presented schools with a range of new puzzles. What do you do when student expression that would be protected in the United States breaks local regulations in Abu Dhabi or Shanghai? What do you do when your principles as an institution conflict with the need to keep up a relationship with a foreign country?

One of the few things we can say for sure is that there will be more cases like Chen’s. In China, Chen proved to be one of the country’s most determined voices for human rights and rule of law; in America, he may have now sparked a debate, far larger than his own case, about how American institutions will face new diplomatic challenges as they deepen their ties to China. We can be sure that Chen will be a vocal part of that debate. “Whether it was the dangers I faced in China or the current momentary difficulties we face,” he wrote in his statement, “I will never bow my head to evil or to lies.” [Source]

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Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, Jerome cohen, new york university, political dissidents, Shanghai
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Kevin Egan, a former prosecutor here who has represented people fighting extradition to the United States, said that Mr. Snowden’s latest disclosures would make it harder for him to fight an expected request by the United States for him to be turned over to American law enforcement. “He’s digging his own grave with a very large spade,” he said.

But a person with longstanding ties to mainland Chinese military and intelligence agencies said that Mr. Snowden’s latest disclosures showed that he and his accumulated documents could be valuable to China, particularly if Mr. Snowden chooses to cooperate with mainland authorities.

“The idea is very tempting, but how do you do that, unless he defects,” said the person, who spoke anonymously because of the diplomatic delicacy of the case. “It all depends on his attitude.”

The person declined to comment on whether Chinese intelligence agencies would obtain copies of all of Mr. Snowden’s computer files anyway if he were arrested by the Hong Kong police pursuant to a warrant from the United States, where the Justice Department has already been reviewing possible charges against him.[Source]

Xinhua reporter Xu Peixi welcomes Snowden to China and hails him as a brilliant idealist for shedding light on hypocrisy within the U.S. government:

We can see, therefore, that when American politicians and businessmen make accusatory remarks, their eyes are firmly fixed on foreign countries and they turn a blind eye to their own misdeeds. This clearly calls into question the integrity of these rich, powerful and influential figures and gives the definite impression that the U.S. bases its own legitimacy not on good domestic governance but on stigmatizing foreign practices.[Source]

Despite complications shrouding the Snowden case, SCMP reports that the Chinese government has nothing to lose:

“This is a win-win for China,” said David Zweig, director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “I don’t see them losing at this point, the fact that he’s here, running away from the United States with all this information … whether he goes back or whether he goes free. I don’t see this as bad for China.”

Ideally for officials in Beijing, Zweig said, “if they don’t have to get involved and Hong Kong arrests him, and they get the computer, they win.”

Law Yuk-kai, director of Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor, said the Chinese government would be happy to see the case drag on and embarrass the U.S.

“It is a setback for people who want the U.S. to restrain China in its abuse of Internet freedom,” he said.[Source]

The Chinese government appears to be weighing its various options while deciding how to handle the case, the Los Angeles Times reports:

So far, officials in Beijing look to be playing it cool by doing nothing — and that, several experts said Friday, is perhaps the savviest thing they could do.

With some U.S. lawmakers calling Snowden, 29, a traitor and raising questions about whether he has a relationship with a foreign government, any moves by Beijing to contact Snowden could inflame tension with Washington just days after a summit between President Obama and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Given that it’s unclear whether Snowden has information that would be particularly valuable to the Chinese — and whether he’d be willing to share it if he did — it’s a risk Beijing may not yet be ready to take.

At the same time, any immediate effort by Beijing to grant Snowden permanent haven or urge him to depart for another locale could raise hackles in Hong Kong. [Source]

The New Yorker’s Evan Osnos, however, foresees bleaker prospects for Snowden.

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Liu Xia’s hand-written letter was posted in photos to Twitter by a lawyer for the family on Friday, days after a Chinese court jailed her brother, Liu Hui, for 11 years on fraud charges.

“Under today’s rule of law, what we should see from state authority is justice and not ruthless suppression based on violence,” Liu wrote to Xi, denouncing the sentence as unjust.

[…] Supporters of Liu Hui say his case was trumped up, aimed at thwarting the increasing attention by the rights community on the plight of Liu Xia, who has been effectively detained in her home since her husband Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Prize in 2010.

“No one has told me the reason for this house arrest … Possibly in this country being the wife of Liu Xiaobo is a crime,” she said. [Source]

Chinese and English versions of the letter have been posted to Google+.

Liu Xia has been mostly isolated since her house arrest began. Haunting footage of her smoking at her window emerged last autumn, and two groups, one of AP journalists and the other of activists including Hu Jia, managed to visit her in her apartment in December. Liu was allowed to attend her brother’s trial in April, shouting as she left the courthouse, “I’m not free – tell everybody I’m not free! I love you – I miss you.”

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The 41-year-old reporter, who had worked as a photographer for the New York Times, has not communicated with his family since the evening of May 31, his younger sister Du Jirong told the South China Morning Post.

“I don’t know where he is,” Du said. “Online, people say that he is in jail in [Beijing's] Fengtai district. He must be miserable, he has never been to jail.”

Relatives found a summons order by the Fengtai Public Security Bureau in his deserted home, Du Jirong said. The bureau has yet to reply to her multiple requests for information on his whereabouts. [Source]

The New York Times has more on the details of his detention:

Two copies of an unsigned police warrant dated June 1 found recently by friends in the apartment of the journalist, Du Bin, said that it had been issued for “disturbing order at a public place.” That falls under an administrative statute the police can use to hold people for up to 15 days for minor offenses, said Jerome A. Cohen, a scholar of Chinese law at New York University.

The police could release the detainee during that period, move that person to China’s “re-education through labor” system, or seek a formal criminal charge, Mr. Cohen said.

One friend of Mr. Du said he had heard that the police were investigating the journalist, who is 41, for illegal business activity related to his books, many of which are on politically delicate subjects. It is a charge that officials have used before against Chinese journalists writing books on such subjects even when, as with Mr. Du, the books have been published outside mainland China. [Source]

Du’s “Tiananmen Massacre” book was published by Mirror Books, based in Hong Kong and New York. China Change quotes a previous interview with Du in which he explains his motivations for producing the book, which includes accounts of the June 4th, 1989 military crackdown on protesters:

In an interview with Deutsche Welle, Du Bin said, “Living in mainland China, you live in insecurity everyday whether you speak the truth or not…One should go ahead, do what one needs to do…With [The Tian’anmen Massacre], I want more people to know that there once were people who embraced death for the sake of democracy and freedom, and we should be proud of them.”

Du’s documentary, The Women of Masanjia Labour Camp, can be seen with English subtitles below. The labor camp came into the public spotlight in April, when Lens Magazine published a report about alleged torture at the camp, which held Falun Gong practitioners and others. Soon after, the Central Propaganda Department issued a directive banning any coverage of or comment on the report.

Masanjia produced toys for export, and first made international news when a woman in Oregon found a letter in a box of Halloween decorations appealing to the “World Human Rights Organization” for help. Recently, a former detainee at the camp claimed to have written the letter. From the New York Times:

[..T]he letter writer remained a mystery, the subject of speculation over whether he or she was a real inmate or a creative activist simply trying to draw attention to the issue.

Last month, though, during an interview to discuss China’s labor camps, a 47-year-old former inmate at the Masanjia camp said he was the letter’s author. The man, a Beijing resident and adherent of Falun Gong, the outlawed spiritual practice, said it was one of 20 such letters he secretly wrote over the course of two years. He then stashed them inside products whose English-language packaging, he said, made it likely they were destined for the West.

“For a long time I would fantasize about some of the letters being discovered overseas, but over time I just gave up hope and forgot about them,” said the man, who asked that only his surname, Zhang, be published for fear of reprisal.

He knew well the practices of the camp in question, which was corroborated by other inmates, and he spoke as other inmates did of their work preparing mock tombstones. His handwriting and modest knowledge of English matched those of the letter, although it was impossible to know for sure whether there were perhaps other letter writers, one of whose messages might have reached Oregon. [Source]

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She was accused of assaulting three women who stormed into her apartment with a handful of people after she returned from a protest in Wanning, Hainan , against a spate of sexual assaults targeting primary school pupils.

[...] Local authorities issued a detention order on May 31, ordering Ye to be put under 13 days of administrative detention. The women who stormed into her flat were set free. “I think the whole attack and detention was a plot to intimidate me for my activism against sexual abuse targeting young girls,” Ye said.

[...] Ye’s relatives also made multiple calls warning her to leave Bobai county before sunset to avoid trouble. Her landlord also told her to leave the two-bedroom apartment she has been renting for 350 yuan (HK$440) a month for the past two years. “The Bobai authorities couldn’t stand up to the pressure so they tried to get rid of me,” she said. “The police here want to turn this into a conflict between me and the local people. They are totally oblivious to what’s going on out there in the public arena. [Source]

Before her detention, Ye had participated in a protest at a school in Hainan where the headmaster was accused of raping girl students. From the Guardian:

Ye, a well known campaigner, was one of several people who protested outside government offices in Wanning, Hainan province, over the case of a headmaster and official accused of raping schoolgirls.

A photograph showing her holding up a sign reading: “Principal, call me if you want to get a room. Leave the pupils alone,” inspired hundreds of others, who posted images of themselves with the same message online.

But on Thursday, shortly after she returned home to Bobai county, Guangxi, she posted an online plea for help, saying people had stormed into her home and attacked her and were still waiting outside her home. She then lost contact with friends. [Source]

In the New York Times, Didi Kirsten Tatlow reports on the Weibo messages Ye sent out as she was beaten and then detained on May 30:

“Now there are four or five women in my home, beating me,” wrote 37-year-old Ms. Ye on Sina Weibo, the discussion platform that is often likened to China’s “town square.” She had just returned from nearby Hainan Island where she had taken part in a mocking protest outside a school whose principal had allegedly raped several girls, one of many cases of child sex abuse that have come to light in China recently, attracting widespread attention and disgust.

A minute later, at 11:42, Ms. Ye pleaded: “Please everyone call the police, there’s only me and my daughter at home.”

At 11:58: “11 people in total. One is a man. About 10 women.”

And the last message at 11:59, before she disappeared into 13-day-long police detention: “They’re still blocking the stairs at my building. Please everyone report it to the police. Though it’s no use. But I still want a record, to solve it through legal means.” [Source]

During Ye’s detention, her case generated support among activists and netizens in China. Documentary filmmaker Ai Xiaoming posted a photo of herself topless with “Check into a hotel with me and let Ye Haiyan go” written across her chest, as did many others.

Read more about Ye Haiyan’s previous activism for sex workers, via CDT.

© Mengyu Dong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, child abuse, child safety, detention, gender equality, rape, sexual scandals, sexual violence, teacher student abuse, women's rights, Ye Haiyan
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“It’s a sad thing that happens. Of course it’s very very sad. In the meantime, I express I doubt how much effect (there is) from such drastic actions,” the Dalai Lama told reporters during a visit to Australia.

[...] The Dalai Lama said the immolations were a sensitive political issue, but said Tibetans were not sacrificing their lives because of simple social or family grievances.

“I express this as a symptom of some causes of Chinese officials. They must investigate what is the cause of this symptom, of these events. It’s not the solution just to blame someone, including the Dalai Lama,” he said. [Source]

The Dalai Lama called the self-immolations “understandable” but denied recent claims by Chinese state media that he encourages the protests. His comments come in the wake of yet another incident, the 119th to take place in the Tibetan region since 2009, as Voice of America reports that a Tibetan nun set herself on fire near a monastery in Sichuan Province on Tuesday afternoon. The woman remained alive and in a hospital on Wednesday, according to Edward Wong of The New York Times.

Meanwhile, Radio Free Asia reports that a court in Qinghai province has jailed a Tibetan student leader for allegedly organizing a demonstration late last year:

Wangchuk Dorje, a student at the Middle School of Nationalities in Malho (in Chinese, Huangnan) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, was handed a four-year term for being one of the “main organizers” of the student protest, a local source told RFA’s Tibetan Service on Wednesday.

“He was detained after several thousand students launched a peaceful rally,” RFA’s source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Details concerning Dorje’s age, the identity of the sentencing court, and the date of his sentencing were not immediately available.

Several thousand students took to the streets in Malho’s restive Rebgong (Tongren) county on Nov. 9, 2012, to demand greater rights, including the right to use Tibetan as their language of instruction in the schools. [Source]

See also CDT’s coverage of the Voice of America documentary titled Fire in the Land of Snow, which explores the causes of Tibetan self-immolations.

© Scott Greene for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Dalai Lama, qinghai, self-immolations, Sichuan, state media, Tibet, tibet politics, Tibet protests
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Beijing has been widely criticized for limiting families to only one child, but India has adopted many aspects of its policy. With 1.2 billion people and on course to overtake China as the planet’s most populous country in about a decade, India is taking steps many consider nearly as harsh – but cloaking them in the far more benign-sounding “two-child norm.”

[…] “We’re on the track to be just like China,” says Leena Uppal, an earnest activist who co-ordinates the National Coalition Against Two-Child Norm and Coercive Population Policies. “It’s entirely coercive – for the women, for the health worker, who will lose her job if she doesn’t bring in enough people. The whole focus is on closing off wombs, of making sure these women don’t have any more babies.”

[…] A.R. Nanda, who was once in charge of population policy for India and established its family planning department, says that not only is there a two-child policy, it was explicitly borrowed from China: “The idea of withholding benefits comes from China … ‘If China can do it.’” [Source]

Quartz’s Gwynn Guilford notes that 37% of all the world’s female sterilization procedures take place in India, where it is by far the most common method of contraception. See more on India’s family planning policies at Human Rights Watch and Bloomberg, and on China’s, including prospects for their reform, via CDT.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: demographics, family planning, India, one-child policy, population control
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The best way to advance human rights in the U.S.-China relationship is first and foremost to recognize that the engine of human rights progress in China today is the Chinese citizenry itself. Such progress is neither the product of a gradual enlightenment of the one-party state nor the result of high-minded foreign pressure—although both can play a role, too. But the reality is that day-in-day-out, Chinese citizens are fighting for their rights, and that issues such as the rule of law, government transparency and accountability and exposure of official malfeasance are very much at the forefront of people’s preoccupation—as even the most casual survey of Chinese newspapers and magazines, not to mention microblogging, would reveal.

But such progress comes at a high price, especially for activists, and the question that U.S. policy makers face is whether the U.S. should stand by Chinese people who are pushing their government to pay more respect to fundamental rights and freedoms, or whether it should ignore them. It seems to me, irrespective of the issue of moral imperatives, that it is clearly in the U.S. national interest that China inches towards a more open and less repressive system of government than it has at present. The other approach, a form of engagement that mutes human rights, clearly has failed to yield any results in the past two and a half decades. While this approach styled itself as being “realist” (as opposed to the supposed “idealism” of human rights proponents) it is fairly clear today that the actual realists were those who predicted that such a low level of human rights engagement would yield nothing and even encourage the Chinese government in its repressive ways. [Source]

Amid heated discussion of the NSA’s domestic surveillance activities, Bequelin suggests that America’s most valuable contribution would be “to set the best possible example,” a goal compromised in recent years by “issues ranging from the legality of the Iraq war to Abu Ghraib to the C.I.A. renditions.” But Rosenzweig counters that “it is counterproductive for any particular nation to take responsibility for being a model of moral behavior and rectitude in the area of human rights.”

Aryeh Neier notes a critical change in the historical background for human rights promotion, whose implications extend well beyond bilateral Sino-U.S. relations:

One of the reasons that the United States and some of its Western allies succeeded a quarter of a century ago in promoting human rights in Soviet bloc countries is that they persuaded many in those countries that human rights and economic success went hand in hand. In recent years, however, China’s economic success during a period of economic trouble in the West has conveyed an opposite message. The difficulty of promoting human rights globally in these circumstances is exacerbated by the way that China uses its economic clout in its relations with other countries. Western pressures to promote rights often are defeated by China’s assertiveness in making clear that its trade and aid are not subject to human rights conditions. This has become an important factor in countering pressures for human rights in Africa, in Central Asia and in other parts of the world. [Source]

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: diplomacy, Eastern Europe, hric, human rights watch, U.S. relations, United States
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