December 2006 Archives
By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
December 22, 2006
BEIJING, Dec. 22 — A Chinese court convicted a leading human rights lawyer of subversion on Friday but gave him an unusually light sentence under terms that may mean that he will soon be released.
The lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, 42, was sentenced to three years in prison with a five-year reprieve, the official New China News Agency said. That means he does not have to serve his sentence in prison as long as he does not commit another crime in the next five years, legal experts said.
Mr. Gao, who has been outspoken in his defiance of the ruling Communist Party, was expected to receive a harsher penalty for his prolific and uncompromising writings and his efforts to defend followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual sect.
The authorities under President Hu Jintao have been seeking to cripple China’s weiquan, or rights protection, movement, which consists of journalists, grass-roots organizers and lawyers who use legal means to defend people who feel they have been wronged by officials.
Top officials have also sought to send a strong warning about the risks of cooperating with foreign news media and foreign organizations that have ties to China. Earlier this week a Beijing court sentenced Lu Jianhua, a prominent scholar at the government-run Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, to a 20-year prison term on charges of leaking state secrets. He was accused of disclosing unspecified sensitive information in articles he prepared for publication abroad.
Mr. Gao’s relatively light sentence may reflect his status as a leading dissident with relatively wide recognition among human rights groups overseas. His supporters in China have publicized his case and the plight of his family, whose members they say have suffered beatings and harassment by the security police.
But through the official news agency, the authorities presented Mr. Gao as cooperative, saying he had provided evidence that could be used against other opposition figures. “Gao also voluntarily reported others’ offenses and provided important clues for cracking other cases, a contribution to win him a lenient penalty and a reprieval of five years,” the agency said.
Hu Jia, a rights advocate who has maintained close ties to Mr. Gao, said officials mainly intended to reduce his influence.
The sentence deprives him of his “political rights,” which is often interpreted to include the freedom to publish or speak out on sensitive topics, for one year. It also places him under heavy scrutiny for another four years. “He will be a prisoner in his own home,” Mr. Hu said. “The sentence is better than we expected. But it is designed so that he will not be able to express himself in public.”
“This is a clever move by the leadership,” he added. “They can appear as though they are responsive to overseas opinion. But they also see that Gao’s influence will be diminished or eliminated within China.”
By Radio Free Asia
December 18, 2006
Chinese officials are trying to deflect blame for the country’s pollution onto foreign firms, accusing them of “environmental colonialism,” experts say. The move follows government concern over thousands of anti-pollution protests in the past year.
In a December 3 opinion piece in The Washington Post, a leading China analyst called the effort a “blame game.”
Elizabeth Economy, director for Asia studies at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said that Chinese officials, the press, and some activists have charged multinational corporations with “exporting pollution” by sourcing their products in China and ignoring environmental rules.
Economy said the campaign aimed at foreign investors began in October when Pan Yue, deputy director of China’s State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA), accused developed countries of practicing “environmental colonialism” by investing in China’s polluting industries.
Similar accusations followed, including a report by China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, which published a list of over 2,700 “serious polluters,” including 33 joint ventures of multinational corporations.
The group’s list included Chinese affiliates of Panasonic, PepsiCo, and Nestle among other foreign firms, according to a report in the official China Daily.
According to Economy, Chinese press reports “focused exclusively on the 33 multinationals … and ignored the more than 2,600 Chinese companies similarly cited. The reason, she thinks, is that worldwide attention has been drawn to China’s pollution problems with the approach of the 2008 Olympic Games.
Officials have sought to avoid blame after a wave of over 50,000 environmental protests in the country last year, she said.
In an interview with Radio Free Asia, Economy said, “I think blaming foreigners is a very attractive way of deflecting attention, and perhaps even deflecting some of the social unrest away from corrupt local officials and poorly enforced regulations and onto the international community.”
By AFP | Yahoo
19 December 2006
BEIJING (AFP) - Retail giant Wal-Mart, an icon of American capitalism, has said it had authorised the establishment of a Communist Party union branch at its China headquarters.
The branch was set up in the southern city of Shenzhen, where Wal-Mart operates its China business, said a spokeswoman at its headquarters, Huang Yunling.
"We set up the Communist Party (branch) last Friday. It's one of our steps to adapt better to China."
It followed the establishment of similar party organizations in around a third of Wal-Mart's 66 stores in China since August, after two years of intense pressure from the All China Confederation of Trade Unions to allow unions.
By Li Jia | The Epoch Times Toronto / Canada
December 17, 2006
At the 2006 International Human Rights day, Toronto's Amnesty International democratic organizations and individuals who have been persecuted by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) protested in front of the local Chinese consulate. The groups included Canadian Uyghur, the Tibet association, Falun Gong practitioners, Formosan Association for Public Affairs who gathered together to protest against the communist regime's persecution of them. Rebiya Kadeer a former member of the Chinese communist Political Consultative Conference (PCC), once ranked the fifth richest in mainland China, and an Uyghur's human rights leader, came especially to Canada to expose to the world how the CCP deceives the Uyghur people.
Note, Xinjiang is the autonomous region for minority races including Uyghur
Promise of Autonomy was a Lie
Rebiya Kadeer said, the CCP guaranteed the autonomy of Xinjiang Uyghur in 1955. But now, the CCP transfers Uyghur youths aged 17 to 27 to China's inland schools, to stop them from staying in the local Uyghur regions to be educated. "We have many resources to educate our youth and instead the CCP forces them to other places. Most Uygur college graduates are unable to find a job, but the Han race people from other place have jobs."
By Howard W. French | The New York Times
19 December 2006
SHENZHEN, China — When Zhang Feifei lost her job in this booming Chinese factory town, she was not terribly concerned. Jobs had always been plentiful in Shenzhen’s flourishing economy.
Then Ms. Zhang, a 20-year-old migrant laborer, lost her identity card and was shocked to find that no factory would hire her without a bribe that she could not afford. Desperate for money, she ended up working in a grimy two-room massage parlor in a congested alley here, where she has sex with four or five men each day.
“I was terrified at first, and I was really embarrassed not even knowing how to use a condom,” said the soft-spoken young woman, casting her eyes downward as she spoke. “I didn’t have any choice, though. Little by little, you have to get used to it.”
Few cities anywhere have created wealth faster than Shenzhen, but the costs of its phenomenal success stare out from every corner: environmental destruction, soaring crime rates and the disillusionment and degradation of its vast force of migrant workers, Ms. Zhang among them.
Shenzhen was a sleepy fishing village in the Pearl River delta, next to Hong Kong, when it was decreed a special economic zone in 1980 by the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. Since then, the city has grown at an annual rate of 28 percent, though it slowed to 15 percent in 2005.
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
December 14, 2006
An outspoken Chinese human rights lawyer was put on trial this week, accused of inciting subversion, but authorities kept such tight control over the proceeding that his lawyer and family were prevented from attending, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Gao Zhisheng, the human rights lawyer, was tried Tuesday at Beijing’s No. 1 People’s Intermediate Court. The proceeding lasted less than a day and was conducted in open court, but Mr. Gao’s relatives and their chosen lawyer, Mo Shaoping, were never notified. No verdict has been announced.
“This hearing did not follow the proper legal procedures,” Mr. Mo said. “They didn’t even inform the family.”
Mr. Gao’s trial occurred after rulings in two other controversial cases were announced this month in different Chinese courts. In Shandong Province, in eastern China, a trial court reinstated a guilty verdict against Chen Guangcheng, a blind legal expert who had spoken out against local abuses of population control policies. His lawyers complained that local officials had barred important defense witnesses from the trial.
In Beijing, an appeals court upheld a fraud conviction against Zhao Yan, a Chinese researcher for The New York Times, despite complaints from his defense team of having been prevented from presenting evidence and questioning witnesses. Mr. Zhao is serving a three-year sentence and is scheduled to be released next September.
This year, Chinese lawyers are facing tighter scrutiny under recent regulations that require lawyers to submit to government supervision when they represent clients in politically charged cases like disputes over land seizures, evictions, pollution and other issues. A recent Human Rights Watch report warned that such regulations undermined the fairness of China’s legal system.
Mr. Gao, 42, is one of the most well-known dissidents in China. An outspoken government critic, he has written lacerating essays on the Internet, including predictions that the governing Communist Party will implode because of corruption and abuse of power. He has a flair for confrontation and has taken on cases that many Chinese lawyers would not dare touch, including representing advocates of the banned Falun Gong sect.
He was taken into custody in August and formally arrested on Sept. 21 on charges of inciting subversion. The authorities have not publicly specified the evidence against Mr. Gao or said whether he is being jailed for his writings or his actions as a lawyer.
Mr. Mo, the defense lawyer, has never been allowed to visit Mr. Gao in detention.
Radio Free Asia
12 December 2006
HONG KONG—Chinese authorities in Beijing have secretly tried a top Chinese civil rights lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, on unspecified subversion charges, but his family hasn't been informed of the verdict, his wife has said.
“I just returned home from lawyer Mo Shaoping’s office,” Geng He told a friend who recorded the conversation and gave it to RFA’s Mandarin service.
“They concluded his trial in secret this morning. The family had not been informed. Nor do we know the two court-appointed attorneys. We’ve never met them. We know nothing,” Geng said in the recording, which was made with her knowledge and consent.
Her telephone appeared to be out of order when RFA Mandarin service reporter Ding Xiao subsequently tried to contact her.
Mo, appointed to represent Gao by Gao’s brother Gao Zhiyi, confirmed in an interview that he had not received prior notice of the trial and wasn’t permitted to attend. He declined further comment.
But a Dec. 12 letter — co-signed with lawyer Ding Xikui, addressed to Gao’s brother and wife, and obtained by RFA — states the family-appointed lawyers learned Monday that Gao had been tried that morning in an “open” hearing by the Beijing Municipal First Intermediate People’s Court.
By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
December 11, 2006
Rules requiring Chinese lawyers to submit to government supervision when representing clients in politically delicate cases have dealt a serious blow to the country’s legal system and should be rescinded, Human Rights Watch said in a report to be issued Monday.
The rights group said the rules, known as “guiding opinions,” effectively shut down the legal system to people fighting official land confiscations, forced relocation, corruption, pollution and other politically delicate matters in China’s one-party system.
“These restrictions effectively deprive people with lawful collective complaints of meaningful legal representations and risk instilling a sense of futility about legal avenues of redress,” the report said. “That may exacerbate social unrest in the future.”
The Chinese police have reported a surge in “mass incidents,” including large demonstrations, in the past several years, with 87,000 such events in 2005.
Statistics for the first nine months of 2006 showed a decline in the number of protests from the year before, but Human Rights Watch said that the numbers were subject to political manipulation and that anecdotal evidence suggested rising discontent.
The “guiding opinions,” which were put into effect in the spring, require lawyers who accept cases that involve 10 or more plaintiffs suing organs of the government or the ruling party to submit to “guidance and supervision” by their local judicial bureau and the All-China Lawyers Association, which are under government control.
They also must obtain consent from at least three partners in their law firm before accepting such cases, and they must refrain from “stirring up” news media coverage.
By Alexa Olesen, Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press via Yahoo!news (uncensored world edition)
December 08, 2006
China, which jails more journalists than any other nation, is challenging the view that information on the Internet is impossible to control, and the implications for press freedom could be far-reaching, a New York-based rights group said.
At least 31 journalists are behind bars in China, making it the world's leading jailer of reporters for the eighth year in a row, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in its annual survey released Thursday.
Three out of four of the journalists were convicted under vague charges of subversion or revealing state secrets, and more than half were Internet journalists.
China encourages Internet use for business and education but tightly controls Web content, censoring anything it considers critical of — or a threat to — the Communist Party.
Blogs are often shut down, and those who post articles promoting Western-style democracy and freedom are routinely detained and jailed under subversion charges.
"China is challenging the notion that the Internet is impossible to control or censor, and if it succeeds there will be far-ranging implications, not only for the medium but for press freedom all over the world," CPJ Executive Director Joel Simon said in a statement Thursday.
By AsiaNews.It | Asia News Italy
December 07, 2006
Chen Tao had protested against a government project that would have resulted in the forced eviction of 100,000 people. Another three protesters were condemned, one to life imprisonment. Their lawyers said the trial was conducted behind closed doors and they were unable to defend their clients.
A court in the central Sichuan province secretly executed a man who took part in an anti-pollution protest in 2004 which degenerated into a clash with police, according to a local lawyer. He said: “Three other protesters arrested with him were jailed, one of them for life.”
The executed man, Chen Tao, and the other three defendants had been among thousands of people who protested in 2004 against a hydropower project that would uproot 100,000 people from their homes.
Cai Dengming, whose son was Chen's co-defendant, said Chen was accused of "deliberately killing" a riot policeman during the protest.
Cai said he went to visit his son at Ya’an prison where he was imprisoned, and “the officers there told me that Chen Tao had been executed”.
Ran Tong, the defence lawyer of Cai’s son, said he had only found out about the verdict “on 4 December, when I received the sentence sheet containing the defendants’ names and sentences, already carried out.”
Ran continued: "The court had sentenced them in June, but behind closed doors, and we only got the information almost half a year later. We were not able to defend our clients, and I strongly oppose the court not respecting the spirit of law." The other two protesters were condemned to 12 and 15 years in prison.
Beijing is failing to prevent anti-government rallies that often degenerate into clashes with police. Public Security Minister Zhou Yongkang has said they are on the rise: in 1994, there were 10,000 and in 2004, there were more than 74,000. In 2005, more than 87,000 public protests took place in China.
Everyday, Beijing records between 120 and 230 protests, mostly in rural areas. Local administrators seize land and sell them to companies and industries eager to expand production or to implement ostentatious projects. Residents stripped of their land and badly compensated have no other way but to protest, often violently.
The government fears this trend and is continually organizing anti-corruption campaigns: the latest, launched on 13 November, demands that local officials manage the relocation of evicted people fairly.
By BBC WORLD NEWS
November 30, 2006
China is considering forcing internet users to provide their real names and ID card numbers when opening a blog
Advocates of the idea argue that blog anonymity has encouraged widespread libel and slander.
Opponents say blogging is flourishing for the very reason that people are free to express themselves.
China has one of the most repressive internet regimes in the world, censoring content and imprisoning some people for what they put on the web.
Under the proposed scheme, bloggers will still be free to write under pseudonyms. Their identity would remain protected as long as they did "nothing illegal or harmful to the public", officials said.
The debate over whether a real name system should be adopted was ignited by a recent report by the Internet Society of China, which regulates online activities.
For many of China's 120 million internet user, the internet is the only venue where they can express themselves freely.
There are worries that the proposed real name online system would limit freedom of expression.
By Associated Press | The Boston Herald
December 02, 2006
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI felt “great sorrow” that China had ordained another bishop without papal approval, the Vatican said Saturday.
The ordination on Thursday was the third known case this year, aggravating tensions between China and the Holy See. “The Holy Father learned the news with great sorrow, because the episcopal ordination was conferred without the pontifical mandate” and thus violated Catholic Church law, the Vatican press office said in a statement.
It was the first reaction from the Holy See since the ordination, which occurred when the pope and some of his top aides were in Turkey during a papal pilgrimage.
On Friday, Hong Kong Cardinal Joseph Zen accused Beijing of reneging on a promise to the Holy See to stop the practice.
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
December 01, 2006
A blind Chinese legal expert who exposed forced abortions in eastern China was convicted on Friday morning for the second time on charges that he destroyed property and disrupted traffic.
The case of Chen Guangcheng, the legal expert, has provoked international concern, as his defense lawyers have argued that officials in Shandong Province arrested him on baseless charges as punishment for his activism against abuses of population control policies.
Mr. Chen was convicted in August but won a rare retrial after an appeals court overturned the conviction. The retrial was held this week in Shandong, and a local judge announced the verdict on Friday morning, lawyers said. Mr. Chen was again found guilty and given the same sentence, of four years and three months.
The retrial has been marred by apparent official efforts at intimidation. Mr. Chen’s wife was kept under close police supervision during the trial.
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
December 01, 2006
A Beijing appeals court on Friday upheld a fraud conviction against a Chinese researcher for The New York Times in a ruling that means he will probably remain in prison until his three-year sentence ends next September.
The researcher, Zhao Yan, sought to overturn an August fraud conviction that stemmed from a period in 2001 when he worked as a reporter for a Chinese magazine. He has maintained his innocence, and his legal team has complained that the appeals court prohibited them from mounting a vigorous case.
Witnesses inside the High Court of Beijing said the judge called the case shortly after 9 a.m. on Friday.
“Do you have anything to say?” the judge asked Mr. Zhao.
“What kind of judge are you?” Mr. Zhao answered, according to the witnesses. “Is this how you use the power the country gave you?”
Outside the courtroom, Guan Anping, a lawyer for Mr. Zhao, criticized the court. “Zhao Yan wasn’t given the opportunity to testify in court,” Mr. Guan said. “He was not allowed to call witnesses or present certain evidence. They sustained the verdict without having another trial. The verdict was based only on the written materials.”
The case of Mr. Zhao, 44, has attracted international attention while raising questions about the rule of law and press freedom in China. Mr. Zhao was initially charged with leaking state secrets to The Times, which could have meant a prison sentence of more than 10 years.
The charge was linked to a September 2004 article in The Times, which reported that former President Jiang Zemin had unexpectedly offered to step down as chief of the military, his last leadership post. The Communist Party bars Chinese news organizations from reporting on high-level politics, and the Times article, based on anonymous sources, quickly prompted a high-level government investigation to determine the source of the leak.
Mr. Zhao joined the Beijing bureau of The Times in April 2004, after working as an investigative journalist for different publications. He was arrested less than two weeks after the publication of the Times article in September and accused of being a source for the article, which both the newspaper and Mr. Zhao have denied.
His trial was held last June, but a verdict was delayed until August, when, in a surprise, the lower court dismissed the state secrets charge. But Mr. Zhao was sentenced to three years on a lesser fraud charge that investigators added a few months after his initial arrest in the state secrets case. The two charges are unrelated, and some legal analysts have questioned whether investigators added the charge as a move to save face.
The fraud charge involves an accusation against Mr. Zhao by a minor official in Jilin Province. The official claimed that Mr. Zhao had taken a cash payment in exchange for promising to use his position as a journalist and his political influence to help the official avoid serving in a forced labor camp. Mr. Zhao has denied the accusation and has said that all of the witnesses against him are friends or relatives of his accuser. Mr. Zhao has already spent more than two years in prison and is scheduled for release next September. His lawyers say that his health has worsened.
On Thursday, Jiang Yu, a spokeswoman for China’s Foreign Ministry, was asked during a regular news briefing about Mr. Zhao’s case and the larger question of press freedom in China. “China is a country of rule of law,” Ms. Jiang said. “This case has always been dealt with according to Chinese laws and legal procedures.”
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