China Digital Times

Stories tagged with: dissidents (55)

• Fears for China’s Web Freedom

  

  From RFA:

  Writers in China said they feared a long hard road before real freedom of expression emerges in China, as authorities in the eastern province of Jiangsu formally arrested a prominent blogger who called for democratic change.

  Paris-based media freedom group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) condemned the arrest of blogger Guo Quan at his home in the eastern city of Nanjing.

  Guo, who is currently being held in a Nanjing police station on a charge of “subversion of state power,” also had his home searched and his computer confiscated.

  » Read more
  • November 19, 2008 3:21 AM

• A Life of Purity and Dignity

  

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

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

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

  Hu Jia has chosen to stand with those who suffer, and to lend his voice to those who are voiceless in Chinese society.

  » Read more
  • October 25, 2008 9:10 PM

• China Dissidents Eye Uncertain Post-Olympics Landscape

  

  From AFP:

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

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

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

  “With the Olympics over, it looks like they have even more time to give us trouble,” Wan told AFP.

  » Read more
  • October 21, 2008 5:20 AM

• Bush Meets 5 Dissidents From China Before Games

  

  From New York Times:

  President Bush held private talks with five prominent Chinese dissidents on Tuesday, and urged China’s foreign minister to relax restrictions on human rights, as part of an intensifying White House effort to put pressure on Beijing before Mr. Bush travels there in a little over a week for the summer Olympic Games.

  Mr. Bush received the dissidents — Harry Wu, Wei Jingsheng, Rebiya Kadeer, Sasha Gong and Bob Fu — in the White House residence, where he “assured them that he will carry the message of freedom as he travels to Beijing,” said his press secretary, Dana Perino. Earlier, Mr. Bush dropped in on a meeting between his national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, and China’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi.

  The back-to-back meetings came a week before Mr. Bush leaves for an Asia trip that will include the Olympics. The president has faced criticism from human rights advocates and members of Congress for his decision to attend. But his meetings on Tuesday drew praise from some of those critics.

  » Read more
  • July 30, 2008 10:23 AM

• China Dissidents Hope Olympics Not Like Berlin Games

  

  From Reuters:

  One of China’s leading dissidents, Chen Ziming, hopes the Beijing Olympics will be like the Seoul Games in 1988 and lead to political reform and not like the Nazi propaganda-driven Berlin Olympics of 1936.

  But Chen and fellow dissident Wang Juntao are fearful the Games starting on Aug. 8 may change nothing, despite reform-minded forces inside the Chinese government pushing for a more liberal post-Olympics China.

  “The Chinese government, intellectuals and the general populace, all of us do hope the Olympics is a success,” Chen said on Monday in Sydney during his first overseas trip.

  “We hope to see the result of the Seoul Olympics, which would help push political openness and improvement in human rights and help the progress of the political system’s structural change,” said Chen, branded a mastermind of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and jailed for 13 years in 1991.

  » Read more
  • July 28, 2008 6:35 AM

• Countdown to the Olympics

  

  The BBC World Service program Changing World recently had a special report about human rights and the Beijing Olympics. From the show’s introduction:

  The opening ceremonies for the Games of the 29th Olympiad will be held August 8th. When the Games were awarded to Beijing seven years ago, China vowed to improve its record of human rights. As the Countdown to the Olympics enters its final days, the BBC’s Gerry Northam investigates whether China has kept that promise.

  Podcasts of the two-part series can be heard here.

  » Read more
  • July 26, 2008 11:15 AM

• China’s Silencing Season

  

  The Washington Post tells the story of activist Huang Qi who is currently in detention in Chengdu, possibly for his recent work investigating the collapse of shoddy schools in the Sichuan earthquake:

  Huang, 45, is among dozens of Chinese writers and lawyers who have been convicted, detained, placed under house arrest, tailed or otherwise harassed as part of China’s broad crackdown on dissent in the run-up to the Olympic Games in Beijing next month. At least 44 writers are in Chinese prisons in violation of their rights to free expression, more than at the beginning of the year, according to a report released Tuesday by the PEN American Center, an advocacy group.

  While much has been written about the political stakes involved, less well known is the personal toll that opposing the official Chinese government line these days can take. Huang’s friends are often harassed and sometimes detained; his wife, Zeng Li, has been forced to change apartments frequently after police pressed landlords to evict her; frequent beatings when he was in prison left Huang with brain injuries that now spark bouts of violent anger and other health problems. The stress eventually became too much for Zeng; she separated from Huang in 2006.

  A New York Times article has more details about Mr. Huang’s work in the earthquake zone:

  Mr. Huang knew the terrain of Sichuan well and did his best to help. He accepted interviews with the foreign press. He and his volunteers rented a truck and handed out bottled water, instant noodles and crackers to refugees. In June, he helped reporters from a British television channel contact parents whose children had been killed in schools destroyed by the earthquake. And he began acting as a clearinghouse of information for reporters.

  Mr. Huang kept in touch with the five fathers whose children had died at Dongqi Middle School. They joined a group of experts to investigate the wreckage for clues as to why the building crumbled. Mr. Huang posted a short article on his Web site saying that, according to the experts, the school was structurally unsafe.

  It was one of his last postings before his detention.

  » Read more
  • July 11, 2008 8:08 PM

• China’s New Freedom Fighters

  

  As part of its Olympic run-up coverage, The Guardian interviews six of China’s most prominent activists and dissidents: novelist Ma Jian, AIDS activist Wan Yanhai, human rights lawyer Li Fangping, environmentalist Dai Qing, economist Dean Peng, and blogger Woeser. From the first of the six, Ma Jian, who’s been on a tear recently promoting his new book “Beijing Coma“:

  I divide my time between London and Beijing. I am trying to persuade my family to spend more time in China. It’s no fun to be in exile. I can’t even figure out the basic 26 letters, let along operate in English. I often feel that although I’ve found the sky of freedom above my head, I’ve lost the soil I stand on. I need to be back in my motherland, where I can find inspirations.

  I am concerned as to whether the government will let me back in after the publication of Beijing Coma in China later this year. But I have to speak the truth. My next book is a novel about the cost of the inhuman family-planning policy. But it is not just books. I openly criticise this dictatorial regime in my articles and interviews or whenever I can. If we don’t, it will never change. And I want to remind people; when a country forgets its past, it will have no future.

  » Read more
  • July 6, 2008 1:53 PM

• As Games Approach, Chinese Renege on Promised Openness

  

  USA Today has published an editorial commenting on various actions by the Chinese government in the run-up to the Olympics, including a recent crackdown on the press and on dissidents:

  This overreaction is unnecessary and counterproductive. Allowing the kind of freedom that can tolerate some dissent and free speech is a sign of a nation’s strength.

  After a devastating earthquake hit Sichuan province in China last month, the relatively open access for reporters boosted China’s image — particularly in sharp contrast to the way Burma blocked reporters and aid officials after its deadly cyclone earlier in May. The Burmese response was similar to the way China used to behave in the face of natural disasters. China’s shift augured well for the Olympics. But foreign and Chinese reporters are now being hampered in attempts to cover the stories of the parents of children who died in schools that collapsed, and who blame local authorities for shoddy construction.

  China has made great strides since the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, when Chairman Mao forced intellectuals to work in the fields. Its economy is booming; free enterprise is now welcomed, not punished. It has legitimate fears about the Olympics being disrupted by terrorist attacks, as they were in 1972. But the country that proudly touts the Games as its coming-out party needs to allow more spontaneity and openness to live up to its official Olympic motto of “One World, One Dream.”

  The paper also published an opposing view of the same topic, from Chinese embassy spokesman Wang Baodong:

  As China expects more than 10,000 athletes and 500,000 foreign visitors coming to Beijing in less than two months, international terrorists and anti-China forces are also calculating their chances. To ensure the safety of the athletes and visitors, China has to take necessary security measures, including making some legitimate and appropriate visa policy arrangements. All these are consistent with practices of previous Olympics and major international sports events.

  Media regulations promulgated early last year by the Chinese government have given foreign journalists full freedom to report from China in the run-up to and during the Beijing Olympics, and more than 25,600 foreign reporters are expected to cover the Games. Of course, they are expected to follow China’s law, and to present to the world a real China with their pens and lenses.

  Read also an op-ed from the Los Angeles Times, “In China, the game has changed.“

  » Read more
  • June 17, 2008 1:59 PM

• Prominent Chinese Internet Dissident Detained For Allegedly Possessing State Secrets

  

  From AP:

  A Chinese dissident who criticized authorities has been detained on charges of allegedly possessing state secrets, his mother and a human rights organization said Tuesday.

  Huang Qi, founder of the human rights Web site 64Tianwang, was detained in the southwestern city of Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, his 74-year-old mother Pu Wenqing said.

  “They didn’t say when he would be freed, first they have to do an investigation,” she said.

  Pu said she is unable to talk to Huang, and was informed by the police of the arrest on Monday. Possession of state secrets is an ill-defined term often used to clamp down on dissent.

  Read also Rights Activist Huang Qi Detained on Suspicion of Holding State Secrets from Human
  Rights in China.

  » Read more
  • June 17, 2008 6:56 AM

• Chinese Dissident Huang Qi Said Missing

  

  From AP:

  A Chinese dissident who posted essays on the Internet that criticized communist authorities has disappeared and may have been abducted by the security services, an advocacy group said Friday.

  Huang Qi, founder of the human rights Web site 64Tianwang, was forced to get into a car by three unknown men on Tuesday evening in the southwestern city of Chengdu, Reporters Without Borders said Friday.

  The Paris-based group said two other activists, whom it didn’t further identify, were abducted with Huang.

  The group, known by its French initials, RSF, said it believed Huang may have been taken away by police or agents of the State Security Ministry because of articles he has posted criticizing the government’s response to the May 12 earthquake that devastated a wide swathe of Sichuan province, of which Chengdu is the capital.

  Read also Human Rights in China Condemns the Detention of Huang Qi by Police in Chengdu by Human Rights in China.

  » Read more
  • June 14, 2008 8:11 PM

• How China Is Read

  

  In Democracy Journal, exiled dissident Hu Ping reviews Mark Leonard’s book What Does China Think?:

  Like others, Leonard posits that China’s rise “is the big story of our age and its after-effects could echo down generations to come.” The task he assigns himself is daunting. One should look skeptically at any book that promises to explain how a country as large as China thinks, particularly when it only has 224 pages.

  Leonard’s approach is to economize. He doesn’t tell the reader what China as a whole thinks; rather, he acquaints the reader with the ideas of a small group of individuals he describes as the “intellectuals” who are shaping their country’s future. But the dozens of figures discussed at length in the book are all “insiders,” friends, if not members, of the political establishment–figures like economist Zhang Weiying, the first associate dean of the Guanghua School of Management at Beijing University; Wang Hui, a research professor at Tsinghua University; and Yan Xuetong, the director of the Institute of International Studies at Tsinghua University. The author interviewed none of the many influential dissident Chinese intellectuals based in China and overseas.

  » Read more
  • June 11, 2008 1:51 PM

• China Dissident Held ‘For Criticising Quake response’

  

  From Guardian:

  Chinese police have detained a political dissident because of remarks he made about the government’s handling of the Sichuan earthquake, according to his family and supporters.

  Guo Quan, the founder of the China Democracy party, was seized outside his home by seven or eight police officers four days ago. They searched his house and confiscated his computer.

  “They waited outside and caught him as he was taking our child to school,” said his wife Li Jing.

  Read also Chinese Writer and Professor Guo Quan Detained from PEN American Center, and China: Political blogger arrested, computer confiscated by John Kennedy.

  » Read more
  • May 23, 2008 11:37 PM

• China Dissident Writer Faces Subversion Charge

  

  From Reuters:

  A dissident Chinese writer in police custody faces trial for inciting subversion as part of an apparent government crackdown on dissent ahead of the Beijing Olympics, three writers’ associations said.

  Zhou Yuanzhi, 47, a former tax official, and his wife were taken away by the National Security Bureau of Zhongxiang city in the central province of Hubei on Saturday, PEN centres of the United States, Canada and China which champion writers’ freedom of expression said in a joint statement on Tuesday.

  The statement, received via e-mail, called Zhou’s detention “another troublesome indication that a crackdown on freedom of expression is under way in China ahead of the Beijing Olympic Games”.

  Read also IFJ Deplores Another Arrest of a Writer in China by International Federation of Journalists, and Repression of journalists continues with two more arrests by Reporters Without Borders.

  » Read more
  • May 8, 2008 4:02 AM

• I Was Tortured in a Chinese Prison. Now I’m Marching for Freedom.

  

  Written by Chinese pro-democracy activist Yang Jianli, from the Christian Science Monitor:

  Silence is golden, goes the aphorism. But consider the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. Instead of walking away from the Olympics, which would have removed any tacit approval of Hitler, leaving him less emboldened – possibly even changing the course of history – the world was silent.

  We stir up trouble by speaking out.

  But I am speaking out. Because the people inside China cannot speak out, and because thousands of brothers and sisters in prison need a voice.

  I served five years as a political prisoner in China, from which I was released only last year. I was tortured, both physically and psychologically, and put in solitary confinement for the first 14 months. I was charged with “espionage,” a crime of which I was innocent, and one that can mean jail for life or result in the death sentence.

  » Read more
  • May 7, 2008 4:51 AM