Veteran journalist Chen Min, better known by his pen name Xiao Shu, has posted a six point personal statement following his release from detention for vocal support of activist Xu Zhiyong. David Bandurski translated the statement at China Media Project:
2. Beginning August 2 at 12:30 p.m., I lost my freedom for 48 hours. I was first illegally abducted by state security and taken to the airport in Beijing, where state security police from the city of Guangzhou returned me under close guard back to Guangdong. I was then held illegally at the Xiaoyingzhou Hotel in Guangzhou’s Panyu District. At no point were any legal procedures undertaken.
3. This extralegal forced measure owed to my coming to the aid of Xu Zhiyong and 15 other participants in the New Citizen’s Movement [who have recently been detained]. I came to the assistance of Xu Zhiyong and these 15 other participants in the New Citizen’s Movement out of a basic sense of decency, and because of my views on the building of a civil society. The building of a civil society is not about one person or about one group of people but concerns everyone, concerns the welfare of the whole nation, and is in the greatest public interest of the [Chinese] people. It is the greatest consensus that can unite various classes, and in particular those both inside and outside the system . . . The suppression of Xu Zhiyong and the 15 other participants in the New Citizen’s Movement is in fact the suppression of civil society, and it is impossible to tolerate. […] [Source]
See prior CDT coverage of Chen Min (aka Xiao Shu), Xu Zhiyong, the New Citizens’ Movement, and China’s developing civil society.
