When calls began circulating online in February for people in China to go to designated locations in major cities to hold protests, no one knew who was behind the messages. Now AP has tracked down the loose-knit group that is responsible:
The Associated Press tracked down the student and some of his colleagues, giving an inside look at one group of campaigners behind the online petitions, and how they use technology to operate behind the anonymity of the Internet.
The group is a network of 20 mostly highly educated, young Chinese with eight members inside China and 12 in more than half a dozen other countries.
Calling itself “The Initiators and Organizers of the Chinese Jasmine Revolution” after a phrase used in the Tunisian uprising, the group is not the sole source of the protest calls; at least four others have sprung up.
Interviews with four members of the Initiators show similar evolutions: All are young people who grew to resent the government’s autocratic rule and China’s widespread inequality and injustice. The uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt made change look possible.
“People born in the late ’80s and the ’90s have basically decided that in their generation one-party rule cannot possibly outlive them, cannot possibly even continue in their lifetimes. This is for certain,” the lean, soft-spoken 22-year-old who goes by the Internet alias “Forest Intelligence” said in an interview at a cafe in Seoul’s trendy Samcheong-dong district.
