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.

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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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I saw a statistic somewhere that apart from Beijing, Sichuan has more political dissidents than any region in China. Sichuan doesn’t have the largest population of a Chinese province and it’s not the poorest; nor is it, like Guangdong, near Hong Kong and the freer media there. So why is there so much going on here?

It’s a lot of things. There is this teahouse culture here—you have these places where you can meet publicly. Not a lot of Chinese cities have these. Everywhere there are tea houses and people meet and talk. There are signs not to talk about national affairs but everyone does.

And then there’s the paoge culture (the mafia-type associations that used to regulate daily life rather than official laws and rules). People are accustomed to thinking independently of the government. Also, we’re just far away from Beijing, separated by rivers and mountains. Even the guobao [State Security police] are different. They sometimes say, “I’m just doing this to have my rice to eat.”

The interview as a whole is very, very highly recommended reading. See also Ran Yunfei’s blog and Twitter and Weibo accounts.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2012. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ai Weiwei, detention, education, Lei Feng, Nanjing Massacre, Ran Yunfei, religion, self-immolation, Sichuan
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Chen, 42, was one of hundreds of dissidents, rights activists and protest organizers swept up in a crackdown on dissent from earlier this year, when the ruling Communist Party sought to stifle potential protests inspired by anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Arab world …. Chen’s defense lawyer, Liang Xiaojun, confirmed that Chen is accused of “inciting subversion of state power” for 26 essays he published online and for an overseas magazine …. Chen, who was detained February, signed the “Charter 08″ manifesto for democratic reform that was co-written by Liu Xiaobo, the jailed dissident who won the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Two other dissidents from Sichuan detained at about the same as Chen — Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao — have been released.

Human Rights in China has more details and background:

The procuratorate charged in its indictment that, between March 2009 and January 2011, Chen published “inciting articles” on overseas websites, including Democratic China (民主中国), Human Rights in China (中国人权), and China E-Weekly (议报), to subvert state power. The articles cited in the indictment include “The Illness of the System and the Antidote of Constitutional Democracy” (制度之疾与宪政民主之药), “The Growth of the Civil Opposition Is the Key to China’s Democratization” (民间反对派的成长是中国民主化的关键要素), “The Traps of Harmony and the Absence of Equality” (和谐的陷阱与公平的缺席), and “Sentiments from a Hunger Striker on International Human Rights Day” (人权日绝食的感悟) …. Chen has not been permitted to see his family since being detained. His wife, Wang Xiaoyan (王晓燕), and other family members have been repeatedly summoned and harassed by the police, who warned their employers to “watch out for these people.” Authorities also attempted to keep Wang from hiring Liang Xiaojun as defense counsel and then set various obstacles to prevent Chen from meeting with his lawyers—to date, Chen has been able to meet with Zheng Jianwei only twice and with Liang Xiaojun once. Chen’s wife, brother, and sister have also not yet received permits to attend Chen’s trial.

See also news of Chen’s formal charging in March, via CDT.

Update: Chen received a sentence of nine years’ imprisonment, according to The Associated Press:

Liang [Xiaojun] said the trial at a court in the city of Suining in southwestern China lasted about two and a half hours and that the sentence was handed down 30 minutes after the trial concluded.

“We pleaded not guilty. He only wrote a few essays. We presented a full defense of the case, but we were interrupted often, and none of what we said was accepted by the court,” Liang said.

Liang said that after the sentence was handed down, Chen said: “I protest, I am innocent. The governance of democracy must win, autocracy must die.”

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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The sergeants were never more than 30 inches from his side, and sometimes just four inches away, and they stayed there as he slept, showered and used the bathroom, Mr. Ai said.

“It is designed as a kind of mental torture, and it works well,” he added ….

Mr. Ai’s associate, who insisted on anonymity because of the risk of official retaliation, said that from the very beginning of Mr. Ai’s detention, the police had made it clear that it would be a difficult experience. “He told me that when he was taken from the airport, the police told him: ‘You always give us trouble, now it’s time for us to give you trouble,’ ” the associate said ….

“He said he was questioned by the police more than 50 times, and none of those was about the tax issue of the company, but mostly about his blog,” the associate said, adding that the police had vehemently criticized Mr. Ai for his postings. “How dare you say those things, you are too defiant, disobedient,” the associate said they would say ….

“He told me that he was made to wash his own cloths by hand, which was his favorite, happiest thing to do, because he felt like that was the only thing he could do with his own hands,” the associate said.

The conditions of Ai’s release have channelled these details along an indirect route, with nameless sources passing them to various media organisations and the artist himself nodding when asked to confirm the accounts. Even these indirect revelations may be risky, but Ai told The Wall Street Journal that he feels he has no choice:

Mr. Ai told The Wall Street Journal by phone on Thursday he still could not directly discuss his incarceration, but confirmed that accounts from people close to him were accurate, saying: “I think it’s genuine. It’s all facts there.”

Details of Mr. Ai’s detention were recounted to The Wall Street Journal by people close to him soon after his release but on condition that they not be published, because of the artist’s concerns that he would be detained again.

Now, however, friends appear to have been given a green light to speak out by the artist, who has also since Monday resumed posting political messages on Twitter, despite saying previously that he had been ordered not to for a year after his release.

Asked why he now appeared to be violating his bail terms, Mr. Ai said: “I did what I think is necessary and I’ll take the consequences. I can’t be alive and not express my feelings.”

From Reuters:

“What you’re doing is illegal,” Ai told police officers at one point, according to the source. “They said: ‘Do you know before [former president] Liu Shaoqi died, he was holding the constitution…. Talk about illegality, there’s no difference between the country that we are in now and the time of the Cultural Revolution.”

Liu, a former president, was purged and died in prison during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution when paramount leader Mao Zedong turned against his comrades in the name of radical upheaval ….

Police officers told Ai “you criticised the government, so we are going to let all society know that you’re an obscene person, you evaded taxes, you have two wives, we want to shame you. We’ll not use politics to deal with you,” the source said.

Evan Osnos cites this reference to Liu Shaoqi as a revealing glimpse of the mentality of Ai’s captors:

What is interesting about that passage is what it suggests about the men in the capillaries of China’s security system, an area so rarely illuminated. One often wonders how agents of force in the name of the state see their roles: Do they, for instance, picture themselves as the defenders of China’s fragile economic rise from the likes of rabble-rousers willing to risk national stability for some fanciful notions of individual rights? Or, rather, do they see their role in a darker light, as nothing but the muscles of an ailing patient, lashing out against the dying of the light?

It’s convenient to imagine one of the two. But from the sound of it, in this case they see themselves as something else and discomfiting: the members of a long national tradition, without beginning or end.

The Economist notes the mystery that still surrounds Ai’s sudden release, and lingering uncertainty about his future:

Four of Mr Ai’s associates who were detained at the same time appear to have suffered worse. Mr Ai only learned about their treatment after his release (he was not allowed to leave his cell except for trips to a lavatory, which he had to request, like everything else, by first saluting his guards). Two of them were kept handcuffed for many days. One suffered a heart attack.

The source says Mr Ai had been fully expecting to spend at least the next five years in prison and was shocked by his release. This has also puzzled many observers. It is possible that China was getting worried about the international outcry over Mr Ai’s case. But foreign criticism of China’s human-rights record, especially in recent months, during which Chinese leaders have been especially anxious to crush dissent in order to prevent an Arab-Spring-style uprising, has rarely proven so rapidly effective. It is also possible that Chinese leaders were divided over how to treat Mr Ai given the party’s reverence of his father. In another unexpected development, the authorities in the south-western province of Sichuan released an activist, Ran Yunfei, who had been detained in February and accused of subversion, a crime that often incurs a lengthy jail term. Mr Ai, in his recent Twitter postings, had been calling for Mr Ran to be set free.

It is unclear how the authorities will respond to Mr Ai’s return to online campaigning. The source said Mr Ai was expecting the police, who frequently visit him at his studio in north-eastern Beijing, to raise objections to his twittering. But he said Mr Ai felt he had no choice given the way colleagues had suffered because of their links with him. It remains unclear whether the authorities will allow him to take up a teaching post in Berlin which he recently accepted. He is followed everywhere, the source says, with agents even hiding behind trees when he takes his son to the park. The police have made it clear, however, that he should focus more on his art.

Sources:

Chinese Artist Confirms Details Of Detention – NYTimes.com
Chinese Artist Challenges Beijing Again – WSJ.com
Ai Weiwei endured immense pressure in detention: source – Reuters
Letter from China: Ai Weiwei: “We Want to Shame You” – The New Yorker
Ai Weiwei: In and out of jail – The Economist

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Ran Yunfei was among the first detained amid the government’s recent expansive crackdown on dissent. He returned Tuesday night to his home in Chengdu, the capital of southwestern Sichuan province, said Wang Wei, his wife ….

Ran was an uncompromising voice for free speech before he was taken away in late February as anonymous online calls circulated for Chinese to imitate the uprisings sweeping through North Africa and the Middle East ….

… [A] court in Chengdu charged him in late March with inciting subversion of state power, but prosecutors recently sent the case back to police, said Ran’s friend Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent rights lawyer who spoke briefly to the blogger on Wednesday morning.

Pu said Ran was released into “residential surveillance” for a six-month period, under which he is not allowed to leave home or meet people without permission, and he may not speak publicly. Still, Pu welcomed Ran’s release as a sign the crackdown could be easing.

The New York Times explains Ran Yunfei’s writing and political stance:

Until his detention, in the city of Chengdu, Mr. Ran’s daily blog writings and micro-blog postings provided readers his thoughts on a range of topics, including the value of an uncensored media, the importance of charitable giving and his personal struggle with chronic back pain. Although he wrote about the so-called Arab Spring and his yearnings for a more open political system, he did not call on his followers to take to the streets against the ruling Communist Party.

Mr. Ran was a reluctant critic, saying he would rather be traveling, drinking wine and reading. “In a free country I would happily spend my life in the library doing research,” he said in one post. “But I live in a country where I cannot in good conscience merely live such a life. I feel that I have no alternative. I have to voice my criticisms of our messed up social reality. Otherwise I would be uneasy. I would not be able to sleep well.”

Hours earlier, Ai Weiwei had, apparently coincidentally, tweeted that “If you don’t speak for Wang Lihong, and don’t speak for Ran Yunfei, you are not just a person who will not stand out for fairness and justice; you do not have self-respect.”

Read more by and about Ran Yunfei via CDT.

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1. 我读书、写作、做研究的目的，是为了求真，为了求自由，是为了求得自己体面而有尊严的生活。当然我知道我远远没有得到这一切，因为没有谁会将尊严和体面奉送到我的面前，我得自己来争取。如果每个人都为自己的体面和尊严而斗争，当然这个社会可能就会变得更好一点。
Translation： I write, read and research to pursue truth, freedom, to pursue a life with glory and dignity. Surely I know there is still a long way to go, no one would present these two things in front of me and I must fight for them myself. Of course this society may change for the better if everyone gets to fight for glory and dignity.

2. 批评政府及制度，其目的在于做一个自由的人，为自己的权益起而奋斗。这样说来，每个人都有为自己权益起而批评的义务与动机，都不应该寄望于别人来为自己争取权益。
Translation：The purpose of criticism of the government and the system is to be a free person fighting for one’s rights. From this we can say that all have the obligation and motive to criticize for their own rights. No one should depend on someone else to strive for these rights on their behalves.

Read more by and about Ran Yunfei via CDT.

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A rights activist in Sichuan has been formally arrested and charged with inciting subversion against the state, according to a statement on Wednesday by China Human Rights Defenders, an advocacy group that tracks violations by the Chinese government. The advocate, Chen Wei, was charged on Monday, and his family was notified on Tuesday.

Mr. Chen is the third person in recent days to be charged with inciting subversion in an extraordinarily harsh crackdown on progressives in China that has been unfolding since late February. The other two, Ran Yunfei and Ding Mao, are also from Sichuan and are known, like Mr. Chen, to be promoters of rule of law and democracy-oriented reforms.

Parts of Sichuan Province, a rugged, populous area in western China, are known to be havens for liberal thinkers, and the region has had a long literary and philosophical tradition. The authorities there are now at the forefront of pressing charges against people advocating political reform.

Though formal charges have only just been brought against the three, they have been in custody for over a month, according to Amnesty International (PDF):

On 19 February, the police in Mianyang city, Sichuan province, detained activist Ding Mao on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power”. At midnight on 19 February, Ran Yunfei, an activist, writer and blogger, was detained in Chengdu, the provincial capital. The next evening, the police escorted him home, searched his house, confiscated his computer and returned him to the police station. On 24 February, the police issued Ran Yunfei’s family with a written notice, dated 21 February, stating that Ran Yunfei is held on suspicion of “subversion of state power”.

On the morning of 20 February, the police also searched the home of another Sichuan activist, Chen Wei, in Suining city. They confiscated his computer, external hard drive and mobile phone, and took him away to “have a cup of tea” with them. On 22 February, the police gave his wife a written notice, dated 21 February stating that Chen Wei is held on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.”

While a long list (compiled by ChinaGeeks) of government critics have disappeared, others have faced different reprisals. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports the dismissal of two journalists in Guangzhou:

Time Weekly opinion editor Peng Xiaoyun reported on her Twitter account Monday that she had received an official dismissal notice from the Time Weekly company, which operates under the Guangdong Provincial Publishing Group. International news reports said Peng had taken “involuntary leave” in January after including controversial figures, such as jailed food safety advocate Zhao Lianhai, in a December 2010 retrospective of 100 influential contemporary figures.

In a separate case, outspoken Southern Weekend commentator Chen Ming, who publishes under the name Xiao Shu, also announced Monday via his local Sina microblog that he was taking a two-year sabbatical. The term “sabbatical” was likely a euphemism for permanent notice since journalists have to resign after six months on leave, U.S. government-funded Radio Free Asia reported. The Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post confirmed the news with an unnamed former colleague of Chen’s ….

“In their drive to stifle public discussion, China’s propaganda authorities are depriving the people of some of the country’s most forward-thinking opinions,” said Bob Dietz, CPJ Asia program coordinator. “Not just bloggers and activists who straddle the realms of politics and journalism, but mainstream journalists who have long operated in traditional Chinese media are now being targeted.”

The New Yorker’s Philip Gourevitch reports that another Chengdu resident, writer Liao Yiwu, has had his permission to travel abroad revoked:

Liao has spent much of his life in and out of Chinese police custody, on account of his insistence on describing the world as he sees it, but for years he has hoped to be able to accept an invitation to the PEN World Writers Festival in New York. Last week, the public-security bureau approved his travel. He got a ticket for a flight leaving next Monday. Then, a few days ago, the police showed up, and said that there had been a change of plans. He was grounded.

“From now on, I’ll apply for my travel permit at the public-security bureau every two weeks until they allow me to go,” Liao said to a Chinese friend, now living elsewhere, who passed his words on to me. “I told them repeatedly that what I’m going to participate in is a literary event, not a political one. I told them that I’m an ordinary writer and they can’t deny me my basic rights to travel. They refused to listen. I’m dealing with a scoundrel government. I’m so outraged.”

March 31 Update:

See reports on the ongoing crackdown from The Guardian:

At least 23 people have been detained, mostly in relation to charges of incitement to subversion or creating a disturbance; three more have been formally arrested; and a dozen people are missing, including several prominent human rights lawyers. Rights groups say they are increasingly concerned that those who have vanished may be at physical risk.

The AFP has a similar report with slightly different numbers:

At least 26 activists have been detained in the wake of the political upheaval that has rocked the Arab world and sparked calls for anti-government demonstrations in China, human rights organisations said.

More than 30 others have been “disappeared” by authorities without charge, Hong Kong-based Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) said, with the victims including prominent rights attorneys and bloggers who had otherwise been tolerated for years.

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When asked about his detention, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Jiang Yu claimed “I have not heard of that person”. In response, China Media Project offered an introduction:

A former diplomat, [Yang] saw democracy at work in the Western world, and he [eventually] became a lively and acute advocate of universal values. He is also a writer of spy fiction. He use of a vivid and popular style of writing earned him admirers among a wide range of readers, including Party officials and rural workers. A group of migrant workers even established their own Yang Hengjun reading group.

When Yang Hengjun started writing his blog, people felt there was something mysterious about him. A man in his forties, and no one has any idea where he comes from, and here he is writing a blog about military affairs, national security and politics. Moreover, it was said he had written international spy fiction. For a time, opinions were widely divided. Some said that he’s one of our own, after all. Others speculated that he must be a spy.

There’s no question that Yang Hengjun is a strange one. “That’s right, I used to work inside the [Chinese] system. I was in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for twenty years, and I also worked in politics and law and other systems. Professional ethics demand I keep quiet about exactly what I did at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But what does writing a blog have to do with what I did in the past? I have a friends who are policeman, national security guys and foreign ministry people about the ministerial level, and they write blogs too. They too write their suggestions as citizens, and their ideas are much like mine. It’s just that no-one reads them.”

The post at CMP also includes a reading list of ten translations of Yang’s work. ChinaGeeks, meanwhile, has posted a translation of journalist Zhang Wen’s reaction to Yang’s detention:

On March 28, when I saw this news on the net, I was shocked; I truly couldn’t believe my eyes. On the 26th, I had met up with him and had a chat. In the past, I recommended his book “Jiaguo Tianxia”, and he had agreed to give me a signed copy and present it to me when he got to Beijing this trip.

During the meal [on the 26th], Dr. Xu Zhiyong, mentioned lawyer Teng Biao had been taken away [by police], and everyone felt very sad. Only brother [Yang] Hengjun was still smiling and trying to console us. Who could have known that just the next day, it would be his turn to “have an accident.”

Thinking about that now, it’s really hard to focus. After the lunch ended, we all went our separate ways. I went to Houhai to meet up with some family and have a little fun. In the warm afternoon sun and spring breeze, I flipped idly through “Jiaguo Tianxia,” and I was moved again by the warm, loving, sincere, and powerful words.

The site also carries a translation of a recent blog post by Ran Yunfei, entitled “Domestic Microblogs Exist to Die in Battle”. Ran’s wife received notice that he had been formally charged with subversion on Monday.

The internet is a big gift from God to the human race, especially to China, but it’s a shame that when confronted with this rich and multi-faceted gift, many people are at a loss as to what to do. Because Chinese people have never received such a good gift, it has made some people lose all curiosity for digging out the gift, [as well as] all exploratory spirit, and all creativity. That is to say, after being enslaved for a long time, they have even lost all desire, confidence, toughness and strength to cast off their rotten shackles. This is the Chinese people’s grief. When facing the constant progression of the internet, some people’s eyes are seeing just as ignorantly and as powerlessly as before. There’s no harm in cautiously believing that the transformative effect that the internet has brought to Chinese society has only just begun, and the curtain has only just opened on the interaction between Twitter and domestic blogs. The best scene is yet to come.

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Notice on the left hand side of Ran’s Twitter page the photo of the scroll with words and calligraphy of Hu Shi — “Tolerance is Even More Important than Freedom” — for tolerance of the views of other is a precondition for freedom.

CDT thanks the translator who prefers to remain anonymous.

I have the habit of writing a diary and a blog every day. It is how I record everything and practice my writing. What I write on my blog isn’t just for my own benefit. I also hope that it can also help society in some small way. I have no great political ambitions, my attitude towards politics is that of Mr. Hu Shi — “I don’t have any interest in being interested in politics.” I don’t have any moral scruples against getting involved in politics. I am just not interested in it personally. I don’t believe that politics is dirtier than other fields of human endeavor, assuming that the political system is a fairly good one.

In other words, what I like best is to read books, write, travel, drink wine, and enjoying myself — as I said once in an interview with a Danish television station, what I really want to be doing is not criticizing the government. In a free country I would happily spend my life in the library doing research. But I live in a country where I cannot in good conscience merely live such a a life. I feel that I have no alternative. I have to voice my criticisms of our messed up social reality. Otherwise I would be uneasy. I would not be able to sleep well. I would feel that I was not paying my dues.

Naturally, as I just said, my reason for criticizing the government and the system is to be a free person to fight for my own rights. That is, every individual has for the sake of their own rights both the duty and the motivation to criticize. We should not expect other to stand up and fight for our own rights. If you do not fight for your own rights, you have failed not only in your responsibility to take care of yourself, but have created serious problems for society for you have, as a human being, failed to fulfill your own responsibilities. The problem is that some people lack the ability to criticize the government and to protect their own rights. The root of the problem is the government’s practice of oppressing and deceiving the people. Therefore people who have been able to see this clearly and people who have a better than average education have out their own good conscience and feelings of obligation, to keep working towards the goal that every will awaken to the need of defending their rights and have the ability to do so.
(...)
Read the rest of Ran Yunfei (冉云飞): How I Lived My Life in the Year 2010 (1,448 words)

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]]> http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/02/ran-yunfei-%e5%86%89%e4%ba%91%e9%a3%9e-how-i-lived-my-life-in-the-year-2010/feed/ 0 http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/10/ran-yunfei-congratulations-to-the-freedom-fighter-liu-xiaobo/ http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2010/10/ran-yunfei-congratulations-to-the-freedom-fighter-liu-xiaobo/#comments Sat, 09 Oct 2010 06:19:36 +0000 Sophie Beach http://chinadigitaltimes.net/?p=98942 Read more]]> Blogger Ran Yunfei posted the following today on his blog:

Congratulations to the Freedom Fighter Liu Xiaobo

Today, I am still excited. I can’t calm myself down so I can write something that is profound or provides a full analysis. I’ll only be able to do that after a few days have gone by. Now I’ll just make a few points to express my congratulations on Liu Xiaobo getting the prize.

1. Liu Xiaobo winning the prize is praise from the freedom-loving countries and people of the world for the Chinese who are fighting for freedom and a blessing for the Chinese people who have not yet won their freedom. I would be happy for any Chinese who promoted
democratic progress who won the Nobel Peace Prize. While I congratulate Liu Xiaobo, I also want to remember China’s prisoners of conscience who have made great sacrifices yet have won this special honor. Everyone, no matter where they live, or whether they are young
or old, should fight for human dignity and for human freedom. This is what the award of the prize to Liu Xiaobo says to us.

2. In the history of the Nobel Peace Prize, only two people have won the prize while in jail. They were the German anti-war activist Carl von Ossietzky imprisoned by Nazi Germany and China’s Liu Xiaobo. We call for the unconditional release of Liu Xiaobo. If he is not released
immediately, the Nobel Prize Committee should be allowed to go to his jail to present him the prize. This is because Nazi Germany and
Hitler in their confusion allowed a prize committee members to go to Carl von Ossietzky in jail to present him the prize. The Chinese government cannot permit itself to be even worse than the Nazis!

3. The PRC Foreign Ministry said that the award of the prize to a criminal like Liu Xiaobo is a blasphemy against the Nobel Peace Prize. The U.S. Congressman Smith, a long-time observer of China, said that this is complete nonsense. In an era in which the Internet is gradually making information available to everyone, trying to hide from any Chinese the news that Liu Xiaobo has won the Nobel Peace Prize is hopelessly stupid behavior — the more one tries to hide it, the more obvious it becomes.

4. Just as Wen Jiabao said, democracy and freedom are irresistable. I sincerely hope that the government will go with the flow, turn away from oppression, and become a force for progress and effectively promote democratic reforms and social progress. Only freedom can bring peace and blessings to all men. If not, under the current messed up system everyone with no exceptions is under all sorts of constraints. If the message of Liu Xiaobo, an advocate of non-violence, is missed, it can only lead to more violent opposition and disasters and more lost opportunities. This is the lesson of the fall of the Manchu Qing government and of the fall of the Republic of China government.

October 9, 2010 at 9:53 PM in Chengdu

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© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Liu Xiaobo, Nobel Peace Prize, Ran Yunfei
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