“They are all free citizens,” Hu quoted the police officers as saying. “For them to come to Beijing and so on, there is nothing illegal about it. They are free to do so. They did not do anything wrong, they have no legal trouble. We just want to understand the situation and verify it ….”

The police acknowledgment is an indication that Chen’s troubles with the authorities have primarily been about revenge by local leaders, who had seemed especially bitter and personal in their mistreatment of Chen ….

But the central government has never shown much inclination to stop the authorities in Shandong province’s Linyi city, which oversees Chen’s village of Dongshigu. The Chinese government has a long history of ignoring its own laws.

Guo Yushan, another activist involved in Chen’s escape, told The Wall Street Journal that “they asked every question they could about Chen Guangcheng and wanted every detail about his escape” during the 50 hours he was detained in Beijing, and that his interrogation was “civilised”. (Guo has since been ordered not to talk to foreign media.) Of those detained outside Linyi, He Peirong—profiled by Oiwan Lam at Global Voices—remains missing after being taken from her home in Nanjing on Friday.

In Linyi’s Dongshigu village, meanwhile, the substantial security machinery assembled to guard Chen has been at work rounding up members of his family instead. From Tania Branigan at The Guardian:

On Monday, the European Union urged China to avoid harassing the activist’s family and associates. But many are already in the hands of furious officials; Chen Kegui fled after lashing out with a knife at men who had broken into his home and detained his father. Shortly afterwards, two police officers marched his mother away from the hospital where she was caring for his sick child. Chen Kegui’s wife is now too frightened to reveal her location.

“She’s afraid she will be next and the whole family will be taken away. She’s terrified,” said lawyer Liu Weiguo, whom she hired before she left.

Liu, possibly under pressure from the authorities, recruited a band of other lawyers who have volunteered to aid Chen Kegui. From David Pierson at The Los Angeles Times:

“Shandong policemen are famous for violating the law,” said Liang Xiaojun, one of the volunteers and a regular defender of activists. “I don’t know if Keguis rights will be protected, which is why we’re getting together. We are concerned about the case and we want to help. We’re hoping we can create enough publicity to pressure the relevant parties.”

Another volunteer lawyer, Teng Biao, said Chen Kegui’s whereabouts are still unknown. It is also unclear whether he was in the hands of police or local thugs (human rights activists argue that there’s often not much difference).

Despite his own reported wishes and the alleged acknowledgement of his innocence, it may be impossible for Chen to remain in China. From Josh Chin at The Wall Street Journal:

In fleeing and seeking U.S. protection, analysts say, Mr. Chen has elevated his case, taking what had been home confinement of Mr. Chen under local authorities and turning it into a national issue, which makes it more difficult to find a resolution that lets him remain in China—something activists say he prefers to safe passage out of the country.

“What he’s done almost ensures that he has to leave,” said Joshua Rosenzweig, a human-rights researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, noting that Beijing is unlikely to want to keep around such a high-profile critic of the country’s legal system. “It would be very difficult to imagine any other end game to this ….”

U.S.-based activist Bob Fu on Monday raised the possibility that the U.S. and China would come to a “face-saving” arrangement that would allow Mr. Chen and his family to travel to the U.S., not as asylum seekers, but under the pretext of seeking medical attention. Mr. Fu is the founder of Christian human rights group China Aid, which he says facilitated Mr. Chen’s escape.

(Fu, who says he learned of Chen’s escape three days before the guards themselves and has been a major conduit of information since the news went public, is also the subject of an article at MSNBC, which calls him “God’s double agent“.)

Kellie Currie, a fellow at the Project 2049 Institute, suggested a possible compromise to The Diplomat’s Jason Miks:

“One possible face-saving solution for everyone would be for Beijing to allow him and his family to lawfully immigrate to Hong Kong. He would arguably be much safer there, away from the reach of the horrible Linyi officials who have been tormenting his family, and would be able to attend law school, have access to international media, diplomats, etc., while technically remaining on Chinese soil and able to continue his work in support of the rule of law in China.

“If Chen would agree to this, it would probably be the best possible outcome for all the parties involved.”

If not, exile to the US would at least avoid what the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Lieberthal described to NPR as “the worst possible outcome“: for Chen to remain trapped in the US embassy in Beijing for months or years, with his presence there “a long-term major irritant in our bilateral relationship”. This prospect echoes the 13 months that physicist Fang Lizhi—who died last month—spent with his wife Li Shuxian in a windowless embassy basement following the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident. At The New York Review of Books, Perry Link recalled his own part in Fang’s “temporary refuge”:

The eventual solution of the Fang case was to negotiate Fang’s and Li’s exile: As Fang later wrote in The New York Review, Deng Xiaoping’s key demand in the negotiations was that the US lift its economic sanctions on China—a condition the US was unwilling to meet. But in June 1990, the Japanese government promised to resume loan programs to China, and with that Deng agreed to release Fang and Li as part of the package. The Chinese government demanded in addition that Fang agree to “no anti-China activity” after his release. Fang accepted this demand, but repeatedly made it clear that to criticize China’s ruling regime was hardly “anti-China.” He persisted with his criticisms, which he saw as supportive of China.

Today, for Chen Guangcheng, the two governments might agree that exile is the least awkward solution from their points of view, but Chen may not accept it. Chinese dissidents have learned over the past two decades that exile leads to a sharp decline in a person’s ability to make a difference inside China. Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner who is now in his third year of an eleven-year prison sentence for “subversion,” made it clear after his arrest that he would not accept exile as an alternative to prison. From what friends of Chen in Beijing have been saying in recent days, it seems that Chen is taking a similar position.

Link gave further details of Fang and Li’s stay at the embassy to The Guardian’s Tania Branigan:

“It had comfortable furniture and food and so on, but in terms of personal freedom it was no better than a prison.

“Their son Fang Zhe went in with them, but about four days later left because he couldn’t stand it.”

In an essay, Fang, who died last month, wrote: “All the windows were nailed shut by planks and it was isolated from outside. The garbage would be put into the medical briefcase and carried out by the resident doctor for processing. The food was purchased by the nurse.”

Regardless of Chen’s eventual destination, the irritant factor looks set to persist through this week’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue, for which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her Treasury counterpart Timothy Geithner have travelled to Beijing. From NPR:

This time around, human rights issues will certainly “interfere” with Clinton’s agenda. And they should, says Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican of New Jersey.

“My hope is that this week will be a game-changer for the administration, which has been very weak and enabling of the Chinese dictatorship,” Smith says. “You know, hope springs eternal — this is the week to make a difference and be very strong with Chen Guangcheng ….”

The Obama administration has raised concerns about Chen’s harsh treatment under house arrest in the past. Administration officials wouldn’t comment Monday directly on Chen’s case. Clinton would only say she’s working on — as she puts it — a “constructive relationship” with China.

One former senior diplomat defended the lack of specific comment, telling Reuters that “the quieter we are officially, the better the outcome likely will be“. But both Clinton and Obama have stressed that human rights have a central place in their negotiations with China. From Reuters, via The Guardian:

Global Times took a moment to enjoy the Americans’ dilemma, and the fact that Chen is now at least partly someone else’s problem.

In the Western media, Chen is a hot potato for Chinese authorities. Now he is making Washington uncomfortable. Chen, unlike other dissidents who made abstract human rights goals in China, has many detailed complaints about the country’s grass-roots governance. He travelled to the US embassy from Linyi, Shandong, and now these problems have entered the US sphere of import.

All countries are plagued by various public complaints. Chinese petitioners are motivated by various incentives. If petitioners’ requests are not met by domestic authorities and turn to the US embassy, this is not only embarrassing to China but also puts the US in an awkward position.

The US embassy would have no interest in turning itself into a petition office receiving Chinese complaints. It is easier just preaching universal values to the Chinese public, and occasionally, helping a few exemplary cases that best illustrate US intentions. It is never willing to involve itself in too many detailed disputes in Chinese society.

The editorial is an exceptional break in the blanket of silence thrown over China’s official and, as far as possible, social media. From China Media Project, on Saturday:

CMP was able to find no coverage of Chen Guangcheng whatsoever in traditional media, and so far (as of 6pm today) there has been no official word from official outlets like Xinhua News Agency.

Following a flurry of discussion of Chen Guangcheng on Chinese social media Friday, we see far more robust controls today. Nearly all possible searches have been blocked, and even the Chinese word for “blind person”, or mang’ren (盲人) — Chen Guangcheng lost his sight during his early childhood — turns up the familiar warning that: “According to relevant laws, regulations and policies, these search results cannot be shown ….”

But we did happen across this post by Chinese professor Zhu Dake (朱大可), who wrote cryptically:

[The Story of the Mole] Once upon a time there was a mole who was surrounded by a pack of wolves, but with the help of some mice he managed to escape. The wolves were furious. The mole’s older and younger brothers, his mother and his baby still lived in the burrow. They became the hostages of the wolves. The escaped mole hid in the forest and called out to the lion, but the lion could not hear his fragile voice. The mice in the walls and the mice in the field all passed along the welcome news, but they couldn’t decide whether the [mole's] escape was a victory, or whether it was just the beginning of more hardship.

Moles, wolves and lions are now all on a list of censored terms compiled by the AP: see also two recent instalments of CDT’s own Sensitive Words series. Other entries include “Blind Man”, “A Bing” (a blind musician), “Shawshank Redemption”, and many other code words pressed into service by netizens trying to stay ahead of the censors. Others have joined foreign supporters on Twitter, from where Al Jazeera’s The Stream compiled a roundup of reactions and rumours.

At NPR, Louisa Lim contrasted the attempted blackout with authorities’ approach to the recent Bo Xilai scandal(s), on which speculation was allowed to run relatively wild.

But in the case of Chen, the escaped lawyer, the strategy has been completely different. The censorship machine has tried to deny his existence rather than allow his demonization. That could be because sensitive negotiations with the U.S. about his fate are ongoing.

Charlie Custer of the translation website ChinaGeeks.org says another factor could be that his case is more potent.

“The whole Bo Xilai thing is sort of like watching an opera or watching a movie. It’s very entertaining and very interesting, but it doesn’t cause the average person to think, ‘Wow, that could happen to me,’ ” Custer says. “Chen Guangcheng comes from a rural, poor background, so he strikes a chord with a lot of people. Then seeing his family — these people who are completely innocent of anything — be arrested and held without trial or charges, that does resonate with a lot of people.”

See also ‘Activist’s Escape Tests Chinese & US Governments‘ at CDT, on the political implications of Chen’s escape within China and across the Pacific; Steven Colbert’s account of the episode, in which he comments that “apparently losing your sight doesn’t just make your ears better: it makes your balls bigger”; and an English-subtitled version of Chen’s video message.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: asylum, Barack Obama, Bo Xilai, Chen Guangcheng, Christopher Smith, Deng Xiaoping, EU, exiles, Fang Lizhi, Global Times, Hillary Clinton, Hong Kong, Hu Jia, linyi, Liu Xiaobo, online censorship, perry link, police, refugees, Shandong, sina weibo, social media, Teng Biao, Tiananmen Square, Timothy Geithner, United States
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Related to Chen Guangcheng: Abing (a famous blind musician of the 20th century, hence a reference to Chen), three requests (which Chen makes of Wen Jiabao in his YouTube video), Hu Jia + Zeng Jinyan (questioned by security officials for helping Chen)
陈光诚胜利大逃亡系列更新：阿炳（同“盲人”，指陈光诚），三点要求（陈光诚视频露面对温家宝提出三点要求），胡佳+曾金燕（胡佳、曾金燕因涉及援救陈光诚而被国保传唤）

Other Hot Topics: Wang Zheng (the Beijing professor released an open letter stating she saw Bo Xilai and knows the story behind his case), beauty shocked the Party (second artillerywoman Liu Yuanyuan’s Weibo debut went viral)
其他热点： 王铮（王铮近日发表公开信称见过薄熙来家人并了解内幕），美的惊动了党（昨日爆红网络的二炮女兵刘园园新浪微博自我简介）

Note: All Chinese-language words are tested using simplified characters. The same terms in traditional characters occasionally return different results.

CDT Chinese runs a project that crowd-sources filtered keywords on Sina Weibo search. CDT independently tests the keywords before posting them, but some searches later become accessible again. We welcome readers to contribute to this project so that we can include the most up-to-date information.

© Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Bo Xilai, Chen Guangcheng, filtered words, Hu Jia, sensitive words, sina weibo, weibo, Wen Jiabao, Zeng Jinyan
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Some initial reactions from Twitter:

CPL reflects balance of power in pol institutions: Security apparatus did not get everything they wanted, but still increase their powers.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) March 14, 2012

(See ‘Legalizing the Tools of Repression‘ for context.)

The threat of up to six months of incommunicado detention in a police ‘guesthouse’ now hangs over the head of every government critic. Grim.

— Nicholas Bequelin 林伟 (@Bequelin) March 14, 2012

当不义写进法律，则反抗就成为义务。

— 北风（温云超） (@wenyunchao) March 14, 2012

Wen Yunchao: “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”

包括秘捕条款在内许多侵犯人权行为的刑诉法，最终以赞成2639 反对160 弃权57获得通过。这些短视的橡皮图章共同构筑的疯狂，会被经济不景气这个即将到来的大浪掀得东倒西歪。再严苛的管控，都无法解决制度不良造成的就业形势艰难、贫富差距加大、通货膨胀攀升等要命大难题

— 冉云飞 (@ranyunfei) March 14, 2012

Ran Yunfei: “The Criminal Procedure Law, whose secret detention provisions contain numerous infringements of human rights, has finally passed with 2,639 votes for, 160 against, and 57 abstentions. The madness that these short sighted rubber-stampers have built together will be wrecked by the coming wave of economic recession. The perilously great problems that have arisen from systemic failures—poor employment prospects, an expanding gap between rich and poor, rising inflation, and so on—cannot be resolved by means of ever-harsher controls.”

历史上最长的年头是1984，苏联在1984徘徊了74个春夏秋冬。我共朝的1984也已持续63个四季。“严冬已经来临，春天还会远吗？”

— Hu Jia 胡佳 (@hu_jia) March 14, 2012

Hu Jia: “The longest year in history is 1984. In the Soviet Union, 1984 dragged on for 74 springs, summers, autumns and winters. Under our current dynasty, it’s already lasted 63 years. ‘If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?’ [the closing line of Percy Bysshe Shelley's 'Ode to the West Wind']“

For more on the amendment, see CDT’s previous coverage: most recently, ‘Does China’s New Detention Law Matter?‘, ‘Al Jazeera: Inside China’s “Black Jails”‘ and ‘Chatting with China’s Security Apparatus‘.

See also some satirical cartoons on the subject: ‘Article 73 in an Iron House‘, ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall…’ by Hexie Farm for CDT, and another at Hexie Farm’s own site.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: corruption, criminal procedure law, criminal rights, Hu Jia, legal reform, national security, NPC, Ran Yunfei, subversion, terrorism, Wen Yunchao
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A campaign to draw attention to the plight of Chen Guangcheng, the rights lawyer who has been forcibly confined to his home in China’s Shandong Province for more than a year, escalated over the weekend, with dozens of people trying to visit him, human rights advocates said Monday.

As in the past, all those who tried to reach Mr. Chen, who is blind, were violently thwarted by guards before they could get near his home, according to several of the participants and the group Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Among those who made the trip to Dongshigu village on Saturday were 30 activists from across China who launched 80 paper lanterns into the night sky in an attempt, they said, to let Mr. Chen know about their efforts. The following day when they approached the entrance to the village, the group said they were attacked by as many as 300 people, robbed of their cellphones and cameras, and chased out of town.

Jacobs described the background of the campaign in another New York Times report last week:

They have been pummeled with sticks or chased by rock-throwing security agents. Some have been beaten, robbed and dumped in remote farm fields without cellphones or money.

In the year since the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng was released from jail and promptly imprisoned at home, a trickle of foolhardy souls has been thus rebuffed after attempting to penetrate the cordon of paid thugs who repel visitors from his village in eastern Shandong Province. Foreign journalists and European diplomats who have tried to see him have fared little better ….

However, [the activists'] campaign — Operation Free Chen Guangcheng — is drawing increased attention to a figure that Shandong party officials have for years struggled to silence and is spotlighting the kind of extralegal punishment that Beijing prefers to keep under wraps.

“I couldn’t believe something so dark and evil could happen in my country, so I had to see for myself,” said Hu Xuming, 38, a computer salesman, explaining why he joined a group of five strangers, all of whom were attacked the moment their vehicle pulled up the road leading to the village, Dongshigu.

McClatchy’s Tom Lasseter tried to visit Dongshigu last week, and recounted his own and others’ experiences, also tweeting photos of his brush with the village’s guardians. From The Miami Herald:

Wang Xuezhen, a 30-year-old purchasing agent for a furniture business and online activist, recounted her own recent try to enter Dongshigu.

“A bag was put on my head, I was down on the ground and those people kicked me over and over,” she said ….

As Wang spoke during an interview at a Kentucky Fried Chicken, a man with a thick build and a closely cropped haircut sat at the next table and listened intently. Wang, a small woman who keeps her long black hair tucked behind the ears, gestured at the man and said he probably was following her ….

When she asked why she’d been beaten and then detained, Wang recounted with exasperation in her voice, police said that “the villagers had accused me of trying to steal a cow.”

A recent briefing from Chinese Human Rights Defenders described the fortifications in place in and around Dongshigu:

In sum, there are two surveillance points in front and behind Chen’s home, and six other points set up at various locations on the four narrow roads that enter Dongshigu Village. There are a total of six surveillance cameras in the village. Two mobile phone jammers are set up at the homes of Chen’s neighbors to the west and east.

Reportedly, almost 100 hired thugs keep Chen under surveillance, and all are recruited from outside the village. They are divided into two large squads and 12 smaller groups, and maintain radio communication with each other while working around the clock. And like many extensive operations, monitoring Chen and the entire village is also wealth-generating. Given two daily meals, each person pockets 100 RMB a day—far more lucrative pay than the average villager (even the village party secretary earns just 3,000 RMB in salary per year). The guards are led by Gao Xingjian (高兴见), who comes from a nearby village . Gao was appointed as head of the guards after fighting off past visitors on many occasions, and has supposedly amassed a good deal of wealth from filling that role.

While these defenses have yet to be breached, Chen’s supporters appear to have won a return to school for his six-year-old daughter, who had previously been confined to the family home with no toys, books or other educational materials. The apparent victory may further fuel the campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal:

“To obtain this type of progress, Chinese web users and Guangcheng’s supporters have paid a huge price,” said Zeng Jinyan, a human-rights activist.

She says she received confirmation this week that Mr. Chen’s daughter, Chen Kesi, has been allowed to begin attending school, but has been escorted by security guards to and from the family’s home in the village of Dongshigu, near the city of Linyi, about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai on China’s east coast. While the family was under informal house arrest last year, authorities had previously prevented the girl from attending school, Ms. Zeng said. it wasn’t clear when exactly the girl started attending school ….

Unlike in many cases involving imprisoned or detained rights activists in China, it appears domestic outrage is prompting the government to act rather than international pressure.

The huge price Zeng refers to includes the threat of further detention for her husband Hu Jia, whose three and a half year prison term for inciting subversion ended in June. Hu’s recent weibo posting in support of Chen, translated by Siweiluozi, was recently featured on CDT. From AFP:

Police told Hu on Friday that he would be placed under “administrative detention” if he violated “any of the terms of his deprivation of political rights”, Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders said in a statement ….

“I told the police clearly — I won’t be restricted on issues concerning citizens’ rights and benefits as well as freedom,” Hu said.

“In this country the government is the one that violates human rights, police officers are performing tasks that violate human rights… so I must express my resistance in public, express my condemnation.”

On Google+, Beijing-based lawyer William Farris noted the Oriental Morning Post’s quickly censored response to an editorial in the Chinese-language Global Times (which, Farris notes, differed somewhat from the English version featured on CDT). The Post argued that the Times, having urged Linyi authorities to exercise greater transparency, ought to publish a fuller account of the situation themselves. From Farris’ translation:

Take for example Chen’s so-called “life complications” mentioned in the article – is this to say that he has been sanctioned in accordance with the law, or a public security “extra-legal punishment,” having his rights trampled? If there really is so-called “soft detention,” and where is the legal basis for it? Article 37 of the “Criminal Law of the People’s Republic of China says that the personal liberty of citizens of the People’s Republic of China may not be subject to infringement, and prohibits illegal detention and other forms of denying or restricting the personal liberty of citizens. The two words “soft detention” have never existed in China’s law, and “residential surveillance” must be done by the police, and is not something that other civil servants can strictly implement under the Criminal Procedure Law.

Furthermore, on the one hand the Global Times report indirectly admits, the local government’s handling of Chen Guangcheng does not meet “strict law and human rights standards.” On the other hand, it also states that Chen Guangcheng caused “interference that laws and regulations could not accept.” Is it possible for a legal system to have two kinds of standards? That article repeatedly emphasized the so-called “small environment” of the locality, is it possible that they did not know that the nation’s laws should not be twisted for the “small environment” of a locality?

Comrade Mao Zedong says: without investigating, there is no right to opine. The media needs to just objectively and comprehensively tell the public “who is Chen Guangcheng,” and the public will see things clearly.

Farris also reports that Chinese search engines have joined Sina Weibo in suppressing search requests for “Free Guangcheng”. Also on Google+, Catherine Yeung has translated messages of support from a number of scholars and other figures including Wu Jiaxiang:

It’s difficult to image how a regime can be so intimated by a disabled person. Could it be the case that this regime is suffering from even more severe disability? My hope is that even if the rights of normal people cannot be fully respected, at the very least a disabled person will be granted permission to see a doctor when he is ill. Otherwise, history is going to judge you harshly.

… and media commentator Xiao Shu:

What strikes me is that he comes from a genuine grass-root background. And yet his inner strength is far stronger than most fighters and elites that I know. He personifies the infinite latent power of China’s grass-root communities. Not only is he from the grass-roots; what is more, he is blind. He cannot see with his eyes. To him, therefore, the physical world is completely dark. He cannot see anything. However, the power of his conscience, the power of his inner conscience, allows him to gain a better understanding than most people with normal vision of this world, and of the road on which our nation should embark. In this sense, he is the leader of those of us who are embarking on this road. He is walking way ahead of us, way ahead of many people with normal vision. This is why I admire him.

See also Yeung’s translation of Zeng Jinyan’s thoughts on Chen Guangcheng from her blog, Under the Jacaranda Tree, past coverage of Chen and his family’s situation on CDT, and a Change.org petition for their release.

Sources:

Attempted Visits to Chinese Dissident Surge – NYTimes.com
Taking Big Risks to See a Chinese Dissident Under House Arrest – NYTimes.com
China cuts access to lawyer who fought one-child policy – MiamiHerald.com
China Human Rights Briefing October 13-20, 2011 – Chinese Human Rights Defenders
China Loosens Grip on Activist’s Family – WSJ.com
Police warn China activist against speaking out – AFP
Shanghai Newspaper Slams Global Times’ Chen Guangcheng Op-ed, Gets Censored – William Farris – Google+
Prominent scholar Wu Jiaxiang makes a public appeal for Chen Guangcheng – Catherine Yeung – Google+
Xiao Shu, Veteran Media Commentator, makes a public appeal for Chen Guangcheng – Catherine Yeung – Google+
He Warms Our Hearts with “Light” (Guang) and “Sincerity” (Cheng) – Zeng Jinyan – Under the Jacaranda Tree

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, family planning, forced abortion, house arrest, Hu Jia, illegal detentions, security guards, Shandong, Xiao Shu, Yuan Weijing, Zeng Jinyan
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Hu was convicted in 2008 for “inciting subversion of state power” for criticizing human rights restrictions in China, and was seen by some supporters as a potential recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize before it went to another jailed Chinese dissident, Liu Xiaobo, last year.

“He is back home with his parents and me,” his wife, Zeng Jingyan, told Reuters in a brief telephone interview.

“I don’t know if he can speak later. At the moment, I want everything to be peaceful. I’m worried that doing interviews at this stage might cause problems. Please understand.”

She and other rights activists have voiced concern in the past that Chinese authorities might impose restrictions on him amounting to a form of house arrest after his formal release.

His wife, Zeng Jinyan, announced his release on Twitter.

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Post tags: dissidents, Hu Jia, political prisoners, Zeng Jinyan
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Ms. Zeng, 27, previously lived in Beijing but had moved with her 3 ½-year-old daughter to Shenzhen, an industrial city opposite Hong Kong, in April. “The Beijing police drove me out,” she said in a written exchange over the Internet on Wednesday. “Now Shenzhen authorities are driving me out, too.”

Although Ms. Zeng and her husband were frequently harassed in the past, she said, the reason behind the latest pressure was unclear. “Maybe once again there are some officials who don’t want me under their jurisdiction, or maybe there are bigger political reasons,” she wrote, adding: “If I try to find a job, they threaten my boss. If I try to cooperate with someone, they threaten my partner. If I try to find some part-time work, they tell the human resources of the company to censor me.”

Mr. Hu, 37, was perhaps China’s best-known proponent of civil rights when security officers detained him in December 2007 during a roundup of activists in the months before Beijing’s 2008 Olympics. In tandem with Ms. Zeng, he campaigned in the past decade on a wide range of issues that the government deems sensitive, from human rights to medical care to the environment. The couple were early users of e-mail and the Internet to publicize their causes.

Mr. Hu spent much of the past five and a half years either in prison or under house arrest, but managed until his imprisonment to continue speaking on civil-liberties issues through the Internet. His December 2007 detention came one month after he testified on China’s human rights problems via a video link before a European Parliament committee. He was formally convicted of subversion in April 2008 after a trial in which prosecutors cited his Internet statements, articles and interviews with foreign journalists as proof of wrongdoing.

Follow Zeng Jinyan on Twitter.

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Post tags: dissidents, Hu Jia, political prisoners, Zeng Jinyan
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Around 5 pm local time on April 29, Beijing-based human rights lawyer Li Fangping (李方平) was kidnapped by unidentified individuals outside the offices of the health rights NGO Beijing Yirenping Center, of which he is a legal advisor. Li was able to speak briefly with his wife, telling her, “I may be gone for a period of time… can’t talk more.” Further efforts to contact him have been unsuccessful, and his whereabouts are unknown.

The news of Li Fangping’s abduction comes on the heels of reports that prominent human rights lawyer Teng Biao (滕彪) was released earlier that afternoon after 70 days of enforced disappearance . Teng Biao’s wife, who confirmed his return, said she could not comment on his health or any other details of his disappearance. While the timing of Teng’s release initially seemed to signal a positive response by the Chinese government to this week’s U.S.-China human rights dialogue, the disappearance of Li shortly thereafter quickly dampened any hope that pressure on human rights activists in China might be easing. These actions raise renewed questions about the limits of international pressure on the Chinese government, as well as the effectiveness of human rights dialogues.

“In recent months, and especially during this crackdown, we have seen that torture to enforce silence is becoming a frighteningly common experience for those disappeared or detained,” said Renee Xia, CHRD’s International Director. “The Chinese authorities, in the meantime, are resorting to an old trick, the revolving-door approach—one in, one out—to create the impression that things are improving.”

Li Fangping is a prominent Beijing-based human rights lawyer who in recent years has represented a number of high-profile victims of political and religious persecution, including, among others, Chen Guangcheng, Yang Chunlin (杨春林), Hu Jia (胡佳), and Zhao Lianhai (赵连海). He has faced frequent harassment from officials, and, on December 27, 2006, was severely beaten and suffered head injuries after he and another lawyer were assaulted en route to visit Chen Guangcheng in a Shandong Prison.

See also CDT posts on Li’s involvement in issues such as Green Dam Internet filtering and tainted milk.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chen Guangcheng, crackdown, detention, Hu Jia, lawyers, Li Fangping, Teng Biao, Yang Chunlin, yirenping, Zhao Lianhai
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Baobao’s questions about her father’s incarceration are becoming too difficult to handle, says Ms. Zeng, 28.

“She’s asking, ‘Why do those men have guns? Who are they going to shoot? Why is daddy in a uniform with an identity card on his shirt? Is my daddy a policeman?”’ Ms. Zeng said in a recent telephone interview. “I find it really hard to answer to answer these questions, so I think I won’t bring her along anymore. Hu Jia is coming out soon, anyway.”

Jailed for nearly all Baobao’s life, Mr. Hu has not gotten to know his daughter well. That may change after he’s released — perhaps more than the family bargained for. Expectations are growing among human rights advocates that Mr. Hu will be subjected to house arrest, or “soft detention,” a form of extrajudicial punishment increasingly used by the authorities to control well-known dissidents.

[...] The parallels with the past are eerie, and instructive.

During the Song dynasty, house arrest was legal, but its legality was blurred by the practice of detaining victims indefinitely after they had served their — usually two — years. Much as Mr. Hu could find himself under extrajudicial house arrest after serving his court-ordered time in June, a person convicted of criticizing the emperor or court during the Song was often kept under surveillance long after his sentence had expired.

As was the case 1,000 years ago, “soft detention” centers on the home, but the physical radius can vary, said Ms. Wang. Targets might be allowed to go to work under police scrutiny, or to travel within a fixed perimeter.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: history, house arrest, Hu Jia, political prisoners, Zeng Jinyan
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This tension was highlighted in report released by UNAIDS last year that found that two-thirds of HIV-infected people in China have not sought treatment because of fear, ignorance and discrimination. UNAIDS’ director, Michel Sidibe, said then that China needed to “break the conspiracy of silence” surrounding HIV/AIDS.

But clearly, it is not just the Chinese government that needs to break the conspiracy of silence; it is also the international donor community. It would be wise to listen to what inmates at any of the approximately 700 compulsory drug detention centers in China have to say.

Human Rights Watch’s research has found that the roughly 500,000 people at these centers are routinely beaten, forced to work for up to 18 hours a day without pay, have no access to drug dependency treatment and are denied even basic medical care. Under China’s 2008 anti-drug law, drug users, even first-time users, are locked up for three to six years, without trial, in “treatment” centers that have a relapse rate of as high as 90%. Our research found that some detention center guards provided drugs to “patients”; and one guard admitted using the mandatory HIV test results to determine which female drug users to have sex with.

The Global Fund, as part of its more than $1 billion in HIV funding to the Chinese government, supports a variety of programs in these centers, including “provider-initiated” HIV testing and training of detention center staff members. The United States supports similar programs in China and Vietnam, without any, as one senior U.S. official admitted, “rules of engagement.” United Nations agencies, such as UNICEF and UNODC, have also funded programs in detention centers in the region.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Gao Yaojie, HIV/AIDS, Hu Jia, Wan Yanhai
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Zeng Jinyan told AFP that her application for the early release of her husband on medical grounds had been turned down and that her husband had been taken back to prison after a stint in hospital.

“The head of the medical institute of the Beijing prison told Hu Jia’s mother by phone that Hu Jia’s… cirrhosis does not conform to regulations on medical parole,” Zeng explained on her blog.

Hu was taken to hospital on March 30 because of suspected liver cancer, she said.

Prison officials have refused to give the family Hu’s written medical report despite her request, Zeng said.

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Hu Jia, political prisoners
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