Songshinan (Chat host): You were just named by 《Southern Wind》 magazine as the 2009 Man of Public Interest. You deserve it.

In 2009, you and your team found at least 5000 names of children who died during the Sichaun earthquake. Your action warmed thousands of families, moved inumerous conscientious Chinese and made them feel angry and inspired, and also cornered the stupid Sichuan government.

In your own unique way, you have challenged the authoritarian windmill, used courage to press the cowardice of the authorities, used playfulness to highlight the authorities’ stupidity, used persistence to reveal the authorities’ crudeness, used your action to prove authorities’ falseness.

In my heart, you are more than the man of 2009; you are the largest Grass-Mud Horse in China this year.

Questions from forum members:

fatherofmissingfish: Hi Old Ai. 2009 was a hard year.  There was Huang Qi, then Tan Zuoren [inprisoned]. The government repression of rights defenders has been extremely harsh. What do you think about the future of the human rights movement?

Ai Weiwei: The government is protecting their power; citizens are defending their rights. No matter how hard defending rights is, this is the only way.

ririxishou：Hi teacher Ai. [In Chinese, "teacher" is a term of respect] I want to ask one question.  Which dimension of change do you think is most important for today’s China: Is it immediate demands for freedom? Or raising citizen consciousness first, then talking about freedom?

Ai Weiwei: For the question of freedom, there is no bargain, no strategy. You are either free or not free.

Kaidijianeng: Teacher Ai, please share your thoughts on “freedom” and “citizenship” in today’s society. What are your expectations for government and for citizens?

Ai Weiwei: Today the government’s wisdom is to play dead; citizen’s wisdom is to kick [the government's] ass, regardless if it’s playing dead or really dead.

vahine: Grandpa Ai [In Chinese, "grandpa" is an informal term of high respect], is there any space to compromise between us and authorities? Is there still a possibility of constructive interaction?

Ai Weiwei: I think we have a 100% bastard government, but only less then 5% of citizens demand democracy, equality and justice. So there is a lot of space.

jencoxu: Do you still have any hope for China? Do you think the next round of reforms will be top down or bottom up?

Ai Weiwei: I never had any hope for China. I am only resisting the hopelessness China is imposing on me.

Zhangyang: Dearest Grandpa Ai, my question is: What factors in Chinese culture are preventing the establishment of civil society? How can we address that?

Ai Weiwei: We always talk about Chinese culture this and Chinese culture that.  As a matter of fact, Chinese culture has no damn business here. Forget about Chinese culture; this is the shortcut to civil society.

wtdd: How big is the possibility of organizing an opposition party, for example through Twitter?

Ai Weiwei: The order should be, organizing people on Twitter first, then organizing a party.

zyl1989：Are you ready for prison? Or put it this way, the government has not yet put you into a prison cell. Is it because they do not think you are threatening enough?

Ai Weiwei: I don’t think so. It is because the prison cell is not big enough.

pigselbow: In an intervew about the 1980s generation,  Chen Danqing [an artist] commented that you are a lefty artist. What do you think about his comment?

Ai Weiwei: Left or right, that’s a scholar’s business. As a citizen, there is only one position: Grass-Mud Horse.

louy0427: Master Ai, I salute you and pay my respect here.  I want to ask what kind of strength sustains you on the current road? After all, your fame and influence can open any country’s door for you. Please tell us, when more and more elites emigrate to foreign countries because they are disappointed in the ruling powerful of this land, why have you chosen a road full of danger and unknowns? After all, you are facing a ruthless government which has a powerful propaganda apparatus and violent force! Thank you!

Ai Weiwei: If I give up the country I am in, then I have lost my reason to choose any other country. If I denied my current road, there is no other road in front of me.

li198558: Please Mr. Ai tell us why you investigate the names of students who died in the earthquake? Tell us the truth!

Ai Weiwei: I don’t believe the parents of these kids did not name them.

Ricebowl: Facing such a bastard society, is Teacher Ai ever depressed? How can you keep full of energy?

Ai Weiwei: Mixing bastardness with depression you will for sure be full of energy, this is a secret recipe from our ancestors.

runnakedisanotherkindofbeauty: Teacher Ai, if you had 10,000 soldiers, would you rebel?

Ai Weiwei: I would command all of them to run naked.

Openthemouth: Please let us know your thoughts. In the current situation, the government’s political propaganda and influence has reached every cell of society, and [the government] purposely weakens citizen education. How can we effectively raise the consciousness of citizens? Facing the powerful propaganda machine, how can we maximize the voices of dissent?

Ai Weiwei: In the lengthy life time, you just need to express yourself simultaneously with others one time, and the world will be changed.

maoxihua: For the group who demands democracy, equality and justice but makes up less then 5% of the population, what should these people do?

Ai Weiwei: Reach 6% ASAP.

(...)
Read the rest of Ai Weiwei (艾未未) on Citizenship and Freedom (265 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 1984bbs, Ai Weiwei, grass-mud horse, huang qi, Tan Zuoren
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Chinese dissident Huang Qi was sentenced to three years’ jail on Monday on charges of illegally possessing state secrets, his wife said, decrying the verdict as revenge for his activism after last year’s huge earthquake.

Huang was sentenced in a court in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province where the earthquake on May 12 last year killed at least 80,000 people, including children crushed in schools that collapsed.

The verdict was another sign that China’s ruling Communist Party is in no mood to relax political controls following last week’s visit by U.S. President Barack Obama, who pressed the government on human rights.

Huang, a veteran human rights campaigner, was detained in June last year after offering help to parents protesting that schools felled by the quake were made vulnerable by shoddy and corrupt building practices.

© Paulina Hartono for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, huang qi, tofu dregs construction
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The US House of Representatives on Saturday threw its support behind two Chinese activists put on trial after investigating whether shoddy construction led to children’s deaths in last year’s Sichuan earthquake.

In a nearly unanimous vote, the House approved a resolution saying it “expresses its support” for activists Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren and calling on China to guarantee their rights to free speech and fair trials.

Huang and Tan went on separate trials in August on respective charges of possessing state secrets and subversion, although human rights groups believe they were targeted due to their activism after the Sichuan earthquake.

Huang, the founder of a human rights website, posted parents’ demands for an investigation and spent nearly 14 months in detention before going on trial. Tan, a writer, led calls for an independent probe into school construction.

The resolution H.RES.877 is sponsored by Congressman Wu, David [OR-1] and cosponsored by 176 bipartisan members of Congress, including nine House committee chairmen. Title: Expressing support for Chinese human rights activists Huang Qi and Tan Zuoren for engaging in peaceful expression as they seek answers and justice for the parents whose children were killed in the Sichuan earthquake of May 12, 2008. One can find the full text of the resolution on the Library of Congress’s Thomas website.

Here is the full text of Congressman Wu’s statement on the House floor follows:

“Mr. Speaker, it is a tragedy when any child is killed. It is an abomination when the act of asking questions about one’s child’s death leads to harassment or persecution by one’s own government.

“We all remember when a major earthquake struck Sichuan province, China, on May 12, 2008. It was the most devastating natural disaster to hit China in more than three decades.

“That day, I was the first personally to present condolences to the Chinese people for their loss.

“Particularly heartbreaking were the stories of the children who were killed as their school buildings collapsed around them, and the images of parents overwhelmed with grief. In the aftermath of the earthquake, these parents started questioning why school buildings collapsed at a much higher rate than other types of buildings. They allege that poor construction and corruption among local officials and builders contributed to the school building collapses.

“These allegations have been stonewalled, or worse, resulted in the harassment of the complainants. Chinese courts have refused to hear lawsuits brought by the parents. Local officials have even kept some complaining parents in arbitrary detention.

“As a parent myself, I find it a tragic failure of justice to have these grievances go unaddressed—especially if a society chooses to enforce a one child policy.

“Two human rights activists from Sichuan’s capital city of Chengdu attempted to stand up for these grieving parents and give voice to their concerns.

“Soon after the earthquake struck, Mr. Huang Qi posted articles on his website, the Tianwang Human Rights Center, about the parents’ demands for an investigation into the school building collapses.

“Separately, in February of this year, Mr. Tan Zuoren issued a proposal on the Internet calling for volunteers to travel to Sichuan to compile lists of students killed in the quake, to document the parents’ treatment, and to conduct an investigation of the quality of school building construction. Mr. Tan’s report criticized officials for failing to follow through on commitments to fully investigate the role that inferior construction played in the school building collapses and for failure to deal with the parents’ demands.

“For these actions, the local Chengdu municipal government charged both Mr. Huang and Mr. Tan with endangering national security. Mr. Huang was charged with illegally possessing state secrets and Mr. Tan was charged with inciting subversion of state power.

“After months of being held in prison—Mr. Huang for over a year—both of these men were put on trial in August of this year. There are allegations that both trials were fraught with numerous substantive and procedural violations.

“In the case of Mr. Tan, the parents of the earthquake victims said they were detained to prevent them from attending his trial. The court reportedly rejected requests from Mr. Tan’s lawyers to call three witnesses, including the noted architectural designer Ai Weiwei, who helped design the Beijing Olympics’ Bird’s Nest Stadium and who was also investigating student deaths in the Sichuan earthquake. According to Mr. Ai, police came to his hotel and used force to prevent him and 10 others from leaving the premises until after the trial ended.

“Mr. Huang’s trial was allegedly fraught with similar violations, including the detention of a volunteer from the Tianwang Human Rights Center to prevent him from testifying on Mr. Huang’s behalf.

“To date, judgments have not issued in either Mr. Huang’s or Mr. Tan’s trial. The trials have been suspended or held open. Both men continue to be held in prison.

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge my colleagues to pass House Resolution 877 to express their support for Mr. Huang and Mr. Tan’s peaceful request for answers and justice on behalf of the parents whose children were killed in the Sichuan earthquake.

“This bipartisan resolution, with 176 cosponsors, calls on the Chinese government to adhere to its own constitutional guarantees, its own criminal procedure laws, and its own recently issued National Human Rights Action Plan to ensure that Mr. Huang, Mr. Tan, and all Chinese citizens are accorded the right to free speech and the right to criticize and make suggestions to the government, as guaranteed by their own constitution.

“Mr. Speaker, no one who suffers the loss of a child deserves abandonment by or punishment from his or her own government.

“Let us pass this resolution today for the thousands of parents in Sichuan who remain without answers about the death of their son or daughter, and for the two men who have courageously spoken out on their behalf.”

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: David Wu, huang qi, political prisoners, Tan Zuoren, U.S. Congress
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

The trial of one man, Huang Qi, began Wednesday but adjourned without a verdict. Mr. Huang, a well-known blogger and civil rights campaigner, is accused of possessing state secrets, which carries a sentence of five years to life. The second defendant, Tan Zuoren, a writer and also a prominent rights advocate, faces a potential five-year sentence for subversion and is to go on trial Aug. 12. The charges are broad ones the Chinese government often uses to silence people who publicly challenge the government.

“These trials are not about a reasonable application of the law, but about silencing government critics whose work has considerable public benefit and sympathy,” Sophie Richardson, the Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group based in New York, said in a written statement released Tuesday. “The government is likely seeking to squelch those who cause it embarrassment, but in the process it is undermining domestic and international confidence in its ability to cope in a transparent way with natural disasters.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, huang qi, political prisoners, Tan Zuoren
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A state secrets trial of a Chinese dissident who criticized the government’s response to a massive earthquake last year ended Wednesday after half a day, with no immediate ruling, his wife said.

About 50 supporters and relatives of Huang Qi tried to attend his trial in Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan but were barred from entering the court by police, said Zeng Li, Huang’s wife, in a phone interview. She said her husband’s health has been deteriorating in recent months while in detention.

Huang, 45, long one of China’s most outspoken activists, ran a human rights Web site and wrote about parents who had lost their children when badly built schools collapsed in the May 2008 quake that left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: activists, huang qi, state secrets
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A Chinese dissident who criticized the government’s response to a massive earthquake last year that left almost 90,000 people dead or missing will plead not guilty in a state secrets trial that opens next week, his lawyer said Thursday.

Mo Shaoping, who will represent the activist Huang Qi, said the trial, starting next Wednesday at a court in Chengdu in southwestern Sichuan, will be closed to the public.

Huang is charged with illegally possessing state secrets, an ill-defined charge often used by Communist leaders to clamp down on dissent and imprison activists.

“Huang Qi has denied the accusations to me,” Mo said in a phone interview. “We intend to plead not guilty, firstly because we don’t believe this is a case of state secrets and secondly because we don’t think he obtained any information illegally.”

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: dissidents, huang qi, state secrets
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Tan’s crime? The following is from a Reuters report:

In town after town in Sichuan province, schools collapsed during the May 12, 2008 earthquake, in some cases as residential buildings around them stayed standing. Over 80,000 people were killed in the earthquake, but the government has never released the number of children who died.

Tan Zuoren wrote a proposal this year, called “5.12 Student Archive”, to ask web users and people who lost their children in the quake to help set up a detailed database of the victims.

He asked volunteers in the project to also compile any evidence of shoddy construction at the schools.

On April 11, Cui Weiping (崔卫平), professor at the Beijing Film Academy, published a post on her Sina blog, entitled “Self-initiated and Idealistic Thinking and Action – dedicated to Mr. Tan Zuoren,” excerpts translated by CDT (thanks to Dimon Liu for the title translation) :(...)
Read the rest of Cui Weiping (崔卫平)： Self-initiated and Idealistic Thinking and Action (636 words)

© Xiao Qiang for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Xiaoming, Cui Weiping, huang qi, Liu Shaokun, School Collapse, Tan Zuoren, xiao xuehui
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A human rights advocate who tried to help grieving parents push for an official investigation into a school that collapsed during last May’s earthquake was scheduled to be charged on Tuesday for “illegal possession of state secrets,” according to the man’s wife.

The advocate, Huang Qi, runs an informal advocacy organization called the Tianwang Human Rights Center in the city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan Province, in southwest China. Mr. Huang was detained on June 10 after posting an article on his center’s Web site, 64tianwang.com, relating the demands of five parents whose children had died in the collapse of Dongqi Middle School in the town of Hanwang. The parents wanted compensation, an investigation into the school’s construction, and the responsible parties to be held accountable if fault was found.

Thousands of rooms in school buildings and dormitories collapsed across Sichuan and surrounding provinces during the May 12 earthquake. The government estimated shortly after the quake that as many as 10,000 children might have been killed in the school collapses. In many cases, school buildings collapsed while other buildings around them remained standing, raising questions about the possibility of shoddy construction.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: 2008 Sichuan earthquake, activists, huang qi, School Collapse, state secrets
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

Following his apprehension last month as he was pitching in with the earthquake relief in his native Sichuan province, web activist Huang Qi was this weekend formally arrested for “illegal possession of state secrets”.

Volunteers at his well-known website 64Tianwang.com (English) have been actively posting all news coverage and details surrounding Huang’s case, but the campaign to have his charges dropped gained a lot more momentum when, following his formal arrest on Friday afternoon, three of China’s better-known social issue bloggers, all from Sichuan, Wang Yi, Ran Yunfei and Linghu Buchong*, joined up with two other intellectual-writers, Liao Yiwu and Li Yadong, to take the brave step of issuing a letter of protest. The letter has been posted not just on their ownblogs, but also on the more mainstream My1510, IndyMediaCN, among many others.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: bloggers, huang qi, Internet dissent
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall

A Chinese dissident who wrote politically sensitive articles including some criticizing the government’s handling of a devastating earthquake was formally arrested Friday on charges of allegedly possessing state secrets, a human rights group said.

Prosecutors in the southwestern city of Chengdu approved the arrest and charges against Huang Qi, founder of the human rights Web site 64Tianwang, said Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch.

The move comes as the government is tightening a clampdown on potentially embarrassing protests or complaints before the Beijing Olympics, which begin in less than a month.

© Liu Yong for China Digital Times (CDT), 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: huang qi, Internet dissent, state secrets
Download Tools to Circumvent the Great Firewall