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Visits To Jailed China Activist Curbed After Award

From AP:

Chinese authorities have curbed visits to an imprisoned dissident who was awarded the European Parliament’s top human rights award, his wife said.

Zeng Jinyan said she was told of the restriction during a telephone call Thursday from the Beijing Municipal Prison, where her husband, Hu Jia, is being held on a sedition charge.

“State security police told the prison to cancel my visit that had been scheduled for next Monday,” Zeng said in an online posting. “No one is allowed to see him.”

No reason was given for the change of plans, she said.
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- December 18, 2008 8:42 PM
China Dissident Wins Rights Prize

BBC reports on the awarding of the Sakharov Prize to Hu Jia and a video message from his wife, Zeng Jinyan, to the European Parliament:

Ms Zeng told the parliament Mr Hu had hoped to be China’s last prisoner of conscience but said that more dissidents had been arrested since his detention.

“The situation of freedom of opinion is still absolutely appalling and there is no reason for optimism,” she said.

Ms Zeng said she had been forbidden by prison guards to discuss the prize when she last visited her husband.
» Read more
- December 17, 2008 12:49 PM
China 2008: Human Rights

This next installment in the CDT series on important issues facing China in 2008 concerns the state of human rights in China. See also these previous China 2008 articles: China and the Developing World, Nationalism, Internet Culture, and Identity, Environmental Crisis, and The Global Financial Crisis and the Revaluation of the Yuan.

The issue of human rights may be the oldest sore point between the People’s Republic of China and the developed democracies of the world - particularly the United States - as the former aspires to a place of prestige in the international system. The Chinese government first garnered international outrage for its human rights record with the brutal suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Since then, scrutiny has been focused on, among other issues, China’s treatment of its ethnic and religious minorities. However, human rights as a category casts a broad net which also includes freedom of expression, due process, reproductive freedom, and labor rights.

The hosting of the Olympic Games in Beijing made 2008 a very special year for human rights in China. One of the hottest questions buzzing around the run-up to the Games was whether Chinese leaders would improve human rights, as per their promise when bidding to host the Olympics in 2001. Since the closing ceremony, however, several events have surfaced in the media to indicate that old human rights violations are still plaguing the People’s Republic of China. Below are several cases which have appeared on CDT, from the crackdown in Tibet to lesser-known episodes of religious and political oppression.

Activism

In 2008, the Chinese government set for China ambitious goals of social progress, such as democracy by 2020 and battling discrimination against sufferers of AIDS. Activists continue to be excluded from efforts to meet those goals, as evidenced by the spate of confinements, arrests, and disappearances of democracy, AIDS, and other activists. An activist campaigning for people with HIV and AIDS was detained and sent out of Beijing as the capital observed World AIDS Day. The trial and sentencing of democracy activist Hu Jia and the house arrest of his activist wife Zeng Jinyan were perhaps the biggest stories in this vein in 2008.

The Olympics

To showcase China’s commitment to free speech, the Chinese government created special ‘protest zones‘ in parks around Beijing where people could apply to protest. However, of the 77 protest applications filed - most involving property, health care, and labor disputes 74 were voluntarily withdrawn after being “properly addressed by the relevant authorities”, and none were approved. Petitioners were often followed to Beijing by police from their hometown and forced to go back, or arrested and sentenced to hard labor.

Black Jails

Some Chinese citizens who traveled to Beijing for redress of grievances were not so lucky to be escorted back home. Many petitioners were imprisoned in ‘black jails’ instead, illegal but state-run detention centers for petitioners scattered throughout the capital city. Human rights groups have suspected the existence of these underground prisoners for some time, but hard evidence came to light in September when Beijing activists mounted rescue operations for petitioners being held in a black jail. Charged with no crime and held indefinitely in poor conditions, those held in black jails have also been badly beaten.

Labor

The global credit crisis has exacerbated the plight of China’s laborers. The recent wave of labor unrest stems from the chronic injustices of unpaid wages and unemployment benefits, and stolen pensions. Many Chinese laborers are migrant workers whose legal inability to obtain a hukou, or local registration, consigns them to substandard living conditions and denies them social services such as education for their children.

Legal Rights

The right to sue continues to be denied to parents who lost children to melamine-tainted infant formula and to unsafe schools which collapsed in the Sichuan earthquake. Chinese courts have thus far declined to hear all such cases, lawyers offering legal advice to bereaved families have been intimidated by the state, and parents are both threatened and bribed into silence.

Police Brutality

In November, police suppressed a violent riot in the city of Longnan, Gansu province over plans to demolish and move the city center. Soon after, Chinese netizens reported that the violence had been triggered when police began to beat protesters. They estimated that over a hundred had been arrested in connection with the riots, many injured and some fatally so. One netizen also claimed that tens of protesters had been beaten to death. These posts were soon censored.

Tibet

Thousands in Tibet were arrested in a security crackdown after violent riots against government policies broke out in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa on March 14. Among them was Jigme, a Tibetan monk who while in hiding spoke to foreign media about his two months of abuse in government custody. Jigme was re-arrested in November at his monastery in Labrang, where he had returned after police assured his family that he would be safe.

Torture

Accusations of torture in Chinese prisons have been leveled for years against the PRC. In early November, Chinese officials appeared before U.N. Committee Against Torture to answer questions about the country’s alleged record of prisoner abuse. However, while flatly denying allegations of torture, members of the China delegation side-stepped the Committee’s questions about whether or not the government disappeared and abused political dissidents. After the review, the U.N. Torture Committee released a report which recommended that China “take immediate steps to prevent acts of torture”. The Chinese government called the committee’s findings ’slanderous’ and ‘prejudiced’.

Xinjiang

Religious oppression continues against the largely Muslim Uighur ethnic minority in China’s far northwest province of Xinjiang. After attackers killed over 20 police officers and security guards in Xinjiang during the Olympic Games, Chinese authorities implemented a security crackdown which included religious restrictions on the region’s Muslims, such as preventing mass prayers and the ciriculation of religious material. During the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in September, women were forced to unveil their faces in public, Uighur restaurants were forced to stay open during the day, and Muslims were discouraged from fasting. Ethnic Uighur government officials were tested with offers of free lunches at work.

Later in November, in a more draconian instance of China’s population control policy (also known as the one-child policy), a Uighur woman was held at a hospital in Xinjiang to undergo an abortion against her will, six months into her third pregnancy. After an unsuccessful escape attempt, she was later released without the abortion due to international pressure on Chinese authorities.

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- December 10, 2008 12:42 AM
Deutsche Welle Announces International Weblog Awards

Deutsche Welle’s International Weblog Awards (The BOBs) have been announced. Generación Y, a Cuban blog written by Yoani Sanchez won the Jury Prize for Best Blog. Among many nominated Chinese blogs, Liu Xiaoyuan’s (刘晓原) blog won Best Blog Chinese, and zengjinyan.spaces.live.com, written by Zeng Jinyan, the wife of the jailed human rights activitist Hu Jia, claimed the Reporters Without Borders Award. The BOBs were also open to public online voting. Science Guru, a science blog written collaboratively by a group of Chinese authors, was the People’s Choice Winner of both Best Blog and Best Blog Chinese awards.

Liu Xiaoyuan's blog

Liu Xiaoyuan is a famous Beijing Lawyer who fights against injustice in the Chinese legal system. According to Rebbeca MacKinnon, Liu Xiaoyuan’s sohu blog got taken down soon after the award was announced. MacKinnon’s past conversation with Liu also inspired her to conduct a study on Chinese blog censorship.

Censorship by Chinese Blog-hosting Companies

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: blogs chineseinternetresearch)

EastSouthWestNorth translated Zeng Jinyan’s latest post, “Thanksgiving.”

Please see the CDT tags, “Hu Jia” and “LIu Xiaoyuan”, for more relevant information.
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- December 1, 2008 6:41 AM
A Life of Purity and Dignity

In The Guardian, CDT’s own Xiao Qiang comments on the recent awarding of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought to activist Hu Jia:

True, Hu Jia does not have the power of a state or a political party behind him. He walked anonymously around the streets of Beijing, without crowds following him, except a group of plain clothes police. He does not even enjoy good health, and now can only walk in his prison cell. But Hu Jia has lived a life of purity and dignity. And the measure of the moral power of such a life is best seen in contrast to the gargantuan state that imprisoned him.

This kind of dignity is not evident in the spectacular Olympics opening ceremony, nor in the Chinese astronauts who recently completed a space walk. In those productions, we see only the power and glory of the state. Most recently and tragically, we have seen thousands of Chinese babies hospitalised for drinking tainted milk powder following a state media cover-up of the contamination in the run-up to the Olympics – one example of many illustrating the human price Chinese people have paid for the powerful and glorious image of the state.

Hu Jia has chosen to stand with those who suffer, and to lend his voice to those who are voiceless in Chinese society.
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- October 25, 2008 9:10 PM
“Who Is Hu Jia?”

Xujun Eberlein writes in her blog about the recent European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought award to Hu Jia. However, given the reaction on Chinese cyberspace, it seems that many people do not know who Hu Jia is:

A website for Chinese bloggers that I regularly visit is www.bullog.cn. Yesterday a post there titled “Congratulating Hu Jia, Congratulating Zeng Yan” led me to the Sina.com page that reports Chinese government’s protest to the European Parliament, which awarded activist Hu Jia of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. That is not the interesting part, because we have already read about the news from CNN and alike. The interesting part is, as I saw yesterday, there were over 4000 comments on that Chinese report, while only about 200 were visible. When I looked again this morning, it’s “5311 commented, 357 displayed.”

BBC has hailed Hu Jia as “the best-known of China’s imprisoned dissidents.” However, if you take a closer look at the displayed comments on Sina.com, lots of Chinese are asking “Who is Hu Jia?” “What did he do?” Apparently, my relatives (who I talked to) in China had not heard the name either.

Hu Jia (胡佳) wearing a t-shirt of another activist, Chen Guangcheng(陈光诚)/Getty Images

The author points out the irony of the Chinese government protesting the award that creates attention to a topic that they didn’t want people to know about in the first place. The blog continues with this contradiction:

A Chinese blogger put it more incisively in a post titled “Our criminal, world’s hero”: “Sometimes I feel sad for [the government]. On one hand they continuously produce candidates [for international prizes], on the other they are scared into a cold sweats by their own production of such candidates.”

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- October 24, 2008 3:24 PM
Hu Jia Wins European Rights Prize

From BBC News:

One of China’s most prominent human rights activists, Hu Jia, has won the European Parliament’s prestigious Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

Mr Hu, a democracy, environment and Aids activist, is serving a jail term for inciting subversion of state power.

The parliament’s president said Mr Hu was “one of the real defenders of human rights” in China, and that the award would support Chinese activists.

An angry Beijing had put pressure on the parliament not to honour Mr Hu.

Read also Sakharov Prize 2008 awarded to Hu Jia from European Parliament, and the Chinese government’s reaction to the announcement, via AFP.

Update: Amnesty International has called on the Chinese government to release Hu Jia. See this Bloomberg report.
» Read more
- October 23, 2008 5:45 AM
China Warns EU Over Nominee For Rights Prize

From AP:

China has warned the European Union that its relations with the 27-nation bloc will be seriously damaged if jailed Chinese dissident Hu Jia wins the EU’s top human rights prize on Thursday.

Hu is one of three nominees for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize. The winner will be chosen by EU lawmakers.

In a letter to the president of EU assembly, China’s ambassador to the EU, Song Zhe, expressed “much regret” that Hu had made the shortlist.

“If the European Parliament should award this prize to Hu Jia, that would inevitably hurt the Chinese people once again and bring serious damage to China-EU relations,” Song wrote.
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- October 22, 2008 6:01 PM
China Dissidents Eye Uncertain Post-Olympics Landscape

From AFP:

Despite hopes the Olympics would improve human rights, China’s crackdown on dissidents before and during the Games has likely set the stage for a lasting period of even tighter controls, government critics say.

Beijing-based AIDS campaigner Wan Yanhai is back at work following a government-imposed shutdown of his activities during the recent Summer Olympics, but he’s treading carefully.

He said police have tailed him recently and the government last month applied new pressure with a surprise tax probe of his Aizhixing Institute, which advocates for the rights of AIDS victims, a touchy subject in China.

“With the Olympics over, it looks like they have even more time to give us trouble,” Wan told AFP.
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- October 21, 2008 5:20 AM
Chinese React to Nobel Award

From RFA:

Chinese civil rights activists organized an online campaign to support the nomination of jailed AIDS activist Hu Jia to receive this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, while others supported the official line warning the Oslo-based committee not to “hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.”

While Beijing’s leaders will probably heave a sigh of relief following the announcement Friday that the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former Finnish president and peace mediator Martti Ahtisaari, reaction online was more mixed.

“Very disappointed,” one prominent blogger commented on the live update service Twitter.

Another said, “I guess Hu Jia just wasn’t international enough.”

“Jinyan,” commented a third. “We should still congratulate you. Not even [Chinese President] Hu, the leader of the biggest mafia gang in the world, has had the honor of a nomination bestowed upon him.”
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- October 11, 2008 10:37 PM
China Makes Nobel Prize Warning

From BBC News:

China has said it hopes the Nobel Peace Prize will reward what it called “the right person”, amid reports that jailed dissidents top the list of favourites.

The Prize is to be awarded on Friday in the Norwegian capital, Oslo.

The Chinese foreign ministry said some past choices had gone against the prize’s original purpose of promoting world peace and human progress.

The award went to the Dalai Lama 19 years ago, and dissidents Hu Jia and Gao Zhisheng are on this year’s list.
» Read more
- October 7, 2008 5:57 PM
Nobel Peace Prize May Go to Chinese Activist, Angering Beijing

Along with activist Hu Jia, rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng is also among the Nobel Peace Prize contenders. From Bloomberg.com:

Gao Zhisheng and Hu Jia are deemed top candidates by Oslo’s International Peace Research Institute, which handicaps competition for the award that will be announced Oct. 10. It’s preceded by Nobel prizes for medicine today, physics tomorrow, chemistry on Oct. 8 and literature on Oct. 9.

A decision by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo to honor Hu or Gao may increase tensions between the West and the government of the world’s most populous nation.

“I hope the committee will make the right decision and not challenge the original purpose of the Nobel Peace Prize or hurt Chinese people’s feelings,” said Liu Jianchao, spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, on Sept. 25. The prize should go to those who “truly contributed” to world peace, he said.

See another story on Reuters
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- October 6, 2008 10:51 AM
Zeng Jinyan: I Visited Hu Jia Today

Zeng Jinyan writes her account of a recent visit with her husband, political prisoner Hu Jia, translated by the China Freedom Press blog:

Yesterday morning I received a telephone call from the prison, notifying me that on Wednesday September 24 I could go to Tianjin City’s Chaobai Prison Hangu Qinghe Work Farm to visit my husband Hu Jia. Because the prison is so far away, and I have my baby and parents to take care of, and it was raining, and it would be dark when I returned and I feared it would be unsafe, I requested to switch the date to Thursday September 25. They agreed.

The police had informed me that from now on my visits to see Hu Jia would be coordinated between me and the prison officials directly. As long as I informed the police, they would no longer play go-between or require accompanying me to the prison. Yesterday evening I picked up Hu Jia’s mother. This morning at 8:20 we left home, and arrived at the prison at 10:40. Then we waited there for the visit to be arranged. We heard the prison officials talking about Hu Jia and them making their arrangements. At 2:20 p.m. we left the prison and arrived back home at 5 p.m. Altogether we traveled 338 kilometers, and spent 160 yuan on highway tolls. The new highway makes the trip faster, but it is still very tiring for one person to drive the whole way.
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- September 26, 2008 8:49 PM
Chinese Dissident Tipped To Win Nobel Peace Prize

From Guardian:

This year’s Nobel peace prize will most likely be awarded to a Chinese dissident to highlight China’s human rights record in the wake of the Olympic Games, according to experts who closely follow the workings of the award.

A likely candidate to receive the prize, the winner of which will be announced on October 10 in Oslo, is Hu Jia, a Chinese activist who has campaigned on democracy, the environment and the rights of HIV/Aids patients. Hu is serving three-and-a-half years in jail for “inciting to subvert state power”.

“The prize will go this year to a Chinese dissident and I believe the most likely [recipient] will be Hu Jia, perhaps together with his wife [Zeng Jinyan],” said Stein Toennesson, director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, and a close observer of the peace prize. “He has become the most well known Chinese dissident now and it has been a very long time since anyone [related to China] has won the prize.” The last occasion was the Dalai Lama in 1989.
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- September 24, 2008 6:12 AM
Chinese Dissident Hu Chooses Not to Appeal

From AFP:

Leading Chinese dissident Hu Jia will not appeal a guilty verdict meted out to him for attempting to overthrow the Chinese government, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Li Jinsong said a Beijing intermediate court told him on Monday that Hu, who on Monday was made an honorary citizen of Paris, had decided not to appeal his April 3 conviction of inciting subversion of the state.

His three year and six month sentence will stand, Li said, adding: “I support Hu’s decision.”

Li last talked to Hu on April 4, when the activist indicated it would be futile to appeal.
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- April 22, 2008 4:13 PM