Beijing 2008: January 2008 Archives
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
30 January 2008
When state security agents burst into his apartment last month, Hu Jia was chatting on Skype, the Internet-based telephone system. Mr. Hu's computer was his most potent tool. He disseminated information about human rights cases, peasant protests and other politically touchy topics even though he often lived under de facto house arrest.
Mr. Hu, 34, and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, are human rights advocates who spent much of 2006 restricted to their apartment in a complex with the unlikely name of Bo Bo Freedom City. She blogged about life under detention, while he videotaped a documentary titled "Prisoner in Freedom City." Their surreal existence seemed to reflect an official uncertainty about how, and whether, to shut them up.
That ended on Dec. 27. Mr. Hu was dragged away on charges of subverting state power while Ms. Zeng was bathing their newborn daughter, Qianci. Telephone and Internet connections to the apartment were severed. Mother and daughter are now under house arrest. Qianci, barely 2 months old, is probably the youngest political prisoner in China.
For human rights advocates and Chinese dissidents, Mr. Hu's detention is the most telling example of what they describe as a broadening crackdown on dissent as Beijing prepares to play host to the Olympic Games in August. In recent months, several dissidents have been jailed, including a former factory worker in northeastern China who collected 10,000 signatures after posting an online petition titled "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics."
"This is a coordinated cleansing campaign," said Teng Biao, a legal expert who has known Mr. Hu since 2006. "All the troublemakers -- including potential troublemakers -- are being silenced before the Olympic Games."
With fewer than 200 days before the Aug. 8 opening ceremonies, Beijing is in the full throes of preparations. Roads and subway lines are being completed, and the city's new stadiums are nearly finished. But with more than 20,000 journalists expected for the Games, Beijing is also tightening controls over information.
Early this month, the authorities announced that only state-sanctioned companies would be allowed to broadcast video and audio files on the Internet, although the practical effect of that edict remains unclear. China has also extended a crackdown on Internet pornography and "unhealthy" content, a move some rights groups consider a tool for arresting online dissidents.
China has jailed 51 online dissidents -- more than in any other country -- and last year blocked more than 2,500 Web sites, according to Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom advocacy group.
Mr. Hu used his own Web site to post updates about other dissidents or peasant protests. He also did not hesitate to describe his semi-regular encounters with the police and state security officers assigned to monitor him.
"The police force mobilized is much, much larger than before," Mr. Hu told Agence France-Presse in October as the Communist Party clamped down on dissidents during an important political meeting. "Now, they just arrest people very publicly and arbitrarily, without the necessary legal procedures."
Last year, Mr. Hu became involved in the case of Yang Chunlin, the former factory worker who organized the "We Want Human Rights, Not the Olympics" petition drive, part of an effort to help local farmers seek legal redress over confiscated land. Mr. Yang was arrested last summer and charged with subverting state power, according to human rights groups.
Mr. Hu told Agence France-Presse that Mr. Yang's arrest was part of a government effort to "clean up" politically touchy cases before the Games.
"I'm helping Yang Chunlin to hire a lawyer," Mr. Hu said. "The authorities have threatened Yang's family and relatives. Yang's wife dares not speak to anyone because of the threats."
By Richard Spencer | The Daily Telegraph, United Kingdom
January 28, 2008
The Prince of Wales has snubbed the Chinese government by refusing to attend the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.
The Prince made his decision known to campaigners for a free Tibet, who had been calling on him to show solidarity with those who believe the Games risk obscuring China's human rights record.
He gave no reason for his decision, and neither did he say whether he had received a formal invitation.
But recently he has been wooed by the Chinese, and particularly their new ambassador in London, who had made it her personal mission to encourage him to go.
"As you know, His Royal Highness has long taken a close interest in Tibet and indeed has been pleased to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama on several occasions," a letter, written to the Free Tibet Campaign by Clive Alderton, the Prince's deputy private secretary, said.
"You asked if the Prince of Wales would be attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008. His Royal Highness will not be attending the ceremony."
Separately, the Prince's staff have made clear he will not be attending the Games at any stage during the summer.
Although the letter avoids backing the group's position on the Games, the Free Tibet Campaign welcomed the decision, with which it intends to launch a campaign to persuade other prominent figures not to attend in protest at Chinese policies.
"We welcome Prince Charles's decision to stay away from the Games, and call on other public figures and politicians to follow suit," said Matt Whitticase, a Free Tibet Campaign spokesman.
"The deterioration of the human rights situation in Tibet and China since the Games were awarded is deplorable and can only mean that these Games rightly are destined to be known as the Games of shame."
January 24, 2008
The Beijing Olympics this summer were supposed to be China's coming-out party, celebrating the end of nearly two centuries of weakness, poverty and humiliation. Instead, China's leaders are tarnishing their own Olympiad by abetting genocide in Darfur and in effect undermining the UN military deployment there. The result is a growing international campaign to brand these "The Genocide Olympics."
This is not a boycott of the Olympics. But expect Darfur-related protests at Chinese embassies, as well as banners and armbands among both athletes and spectators. There's a growing recognition that perhaps the best way of averting hundreds of thousands more deaths in Sudan is to use the leverage of the Olympics to shame China into more responsible behavior.
The central problem is that in exchange for access to Sudanese oil, Beijing is financing, diplomatically protecting and supplying the arms for the first genocide of the 21st century. China is the largest arms supplier to Sudan, officially selling $83 million in weapons, aircraft and spare parts to Sudan in 2005, according to Amnesty International USA. That is the latest year for which figures are available.
China provides Sudan with A-5 Fantan bomber aircraft, helicopter gunships, K-8 military training/attack aircraft and light weapons used in Sudan's proxy invasion of Chad last year. China also uses the threat of its veto on the Security Council to block UN action against Sudan so that there is a growing risk of a catastrophic humiliation for the United Nations itself.
Sudan feels confident enough with Chinese backing that on Jan. 7, the Sudanese military ambushed a clearly marked UN convoy of peacekeepers in Darfur. Sudan claimed the attack was a mistake, but diplomats and UN professionals are confident that this was a deliberate attack ordered by the Sudanese leaders to put the United Nations in its place.
Sudan has already barred units from Sweden, Norway, Nepal, Thailand and other countries from joining the UN force. It has banned night flights, dithered on a status-of-forces agreement, held up communications equipment and refused to allow the United Nations to bring in foreign helicopters. The growing fear is that the UN force will be humiliated in Sudan as it was in Rwanda and Bosnia, causing enormous damage to international peacekeeping.
By The Miami Herald
January 20, 2008
After acrimonious debate, Miami Beach commissioners have decided to end city sponsorship of a cultural and business exchange program with China because of concern over the communist country's dismal human rights record. Instead, commissioners voted unanimously to move the program to the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce.
The China Cultural and Business Exchange Program is the pet project of Commissioner Jerry Libbin, who defended it as a valuable way to boost tourism. Libbin started the program in 2005, led a local delegation to Beijing in 2006 and Shanghai in 2007, and has hosted reciprocal delegations as well.
But Commissioner Jonah Wolfson, who led the anti-China charge at Wednesday's commission meeting, criticized the program ``in light of the nation's blatant and ongoing human rights abuses.''
By RADIO FREE ASIA
January 8, 2008
Ordinary Chinese have left numerous support messages online for detained AIDS activist Hu Jia and his wife and baby, who remain under tight restriction at the couple's Beijing apartment. Authorities are meanwhile clamping down on blog posts and comments about Hu, who some believe was detained for his outspokenness around the Beijing Olympics.
"I am a neighbor," read one comment to Zeng's blog, which has now been blocked. "Please tell me how I can deliver baby formula to you."
"This is to add my comment to the others, and to tell the world that the Chinese people love justice and we love the light," said another. "We are praying for you."
The authorities have cut off Hu's wife Zeng Jinyan from telephone and Internet access, effectively detaining her and her baby daughter under house arrest.
Video taken by the couple in recent months shows a team of national security police camped outside the couple's apartment round the clock; the police are turning away any journalists who try to visit Zeng, but she was briefly captured by a UK television crew peering from the window, her baby in her arms.
Chinese blogger Isaac Mao said it had taken some time for the news of Hu's Dec. 27 detention for "subverting state power," to filter through to Chinese netizens, but that now they were reacting.
"They have almost certainly got wind of the news via the overseas media," Mao told RFA's Mandarin service. "Now, a lot of grassroot media in China are reporting Hu Jia's detention."
"Some are even getting together to send Zeng some baby milk powder. There is a lot of concern, because some of the milk powder was not delivered but was intercepted by those guarding the door," Mao said.
"People are not only sending the milk powder but are also making a public record of the fact. People have got used to much more intellectual freedom in the past year or so they are willing to make judgments and even to play a part in spreading the news of events like this," said Mao, a keen proponent of citizen journalism and grassroots Web development.
By David Barboza | The New York Times
January 18, 2008
More than 100 people are under investigation and several government officials have been detained or removed from office in central China after a dispute in early January in which a group of city officials beat a bystander to death.
The government investigation, which was reported by state-run news outlets here, was touched off by bloggers in China who were outraged that a 41-year-old man had been fatally beaten while trying to use his cellphone to photograph a dispute between villagers and city inspectors.
City officials in Tianmen in Hubei Province in central China are being punished and investigated for their role in the killing of the man, Wei Wenhua, the general manager of a construction company, and the beatings of five villagers during a dispute on Jan. 7, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
The episode is the latest in which bloggers and others have used the Internet to force Chinese authorities to investigate beatings and other abuses by government officials.
With China's economy booming and developers transforming big cities and even small villages with huge building projects, clashes between angry residents and public officials have increased, partly because China's legal system is so ineffective and government corruption is perceived to be widespread.
Large public protests are outlawed in China, but when they do occur, local governments and even big cities often call in the police or other security teams to quash them. Occasionally, the battles become deadly.
On Jan. 7, the government says a dispute in a village near Tianmen broke out because villagers were angry over the dumping of heaps of garbage near their homes. Apparently, some villagers had tried to stop a truck from dumping garbage in their neighborhood.
To put down the protest, the government says, local officials called in a large group of parapolice officials, who are often used to quell uprisings or deal with unlicensed business operations in cities.
Mr. Wei apparently drove by in a car and stopped to photograph the skirmish with his cellphone. He was confronted by government inspectors and beaten to death. It is unclear what happened to the images captured on his cellphone.
Soon after, several large protests took place in Tianmen as residents demanded justice.
Once word of the beating spread, bloggers expressed outrage. One posting asked whether the officials had been city inspectors or a mob.
"Where is justice?" one bulletin board posting read. "Where is the law? Aren't there any rules in China?"
Within days, the government detained the leader of the inspection team and removed Qi Zhengjun, director of the Urban Administration Department in Tianmen.
By Howard W. French | The New York Times
January 13, 2008
YANGMIAO, China -- When she gets sick, Li Enlan, 78, picks herbs from the woods that grow nearby instead of buying modern medicines. That is not a result of some philosophical choice, though. She has never seen a doctor and, like many residents of this area, lives in a meager barter economy, seldom coming into contact with cash.
"We eat somehow, but it's never enough," Ms. Li said. "At least we're not starving."
In this region of southern Henan Province, in village after village, people are too poor to heat their homes in the winter and many lack basic comforts like running water. Mobile phones, a near ubiquitous symbol of upward mobility throughout much of this country, are seen as an impossible luxury. People here often begin conversations with a phrase that is still not uncommon in today's China: "We are poor."
China has moved more people out of poverty than any other country in recent decades, but the persistence of destitution in places like southern Henan Province fits with the findings of a recent World Bank study that suggests that there are still 300 million poor in China -- three times as many as the bank previously estimated.
Poverty is most severe in China's geographic and social margins, whether the mountainous areas or deserts that ring the country, or areas dominated by ethnic minorities, who for cultural and historic reasons have benefited far less than others from the country's long economic rise.
But it also persists in places like Henan, where population densities are among the greatest in China, and the new wealth of the booming coast beckons, almost mockingly, a mere province away.
"Henan has the largest population of any province, approaching 100 million people, and the land there just cannot support those kinds of numbers," said Albert Keidel, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an expert on Chinese poverty. "It is supposed to be a breadbasket, but there has always been major discrimination against grain-based areas in China. The profit you can get from a hectare of land from vegetables, or a fish farm or oils, is so much more."
Other experts say Henan and other heavily populated parts of the Chinese heartland are often excluded from the financial support that goes to the coastal areas, and what antipoverty measures there are have little effect. Typically, residents of those areas say, money intended for them is appropriated by corrupt local officials, who pocket it or divert it to business investments.
By Radio Free Asia
04 January 2008
China's government has issued a stringent new set of rules which will ban all but state-owned corporations from making and uploading video to the Internet.
The new regulations were issued jointly Dec. 31 by the Ministry of Information Industry and the Bureau of Film and Television under China's cabinet, the State Council.
"Companies or individuals who do not have an operating license issued by the relevant department, or who have not submitted an application for such a license, must cease to offer online video services," said the regulations, which come into effect Jan. 31.
The move will make it difficult for Chinese netizens to post video to their blogs or to Web sites, or to Chinese video-sharing sites similar to YouTube, including citizen journalism of the kind which has proliferated amid growing civil unrest across the country.
Fears of unrestIndustry experts estimate that there are currently around 160 sites offering such services in China, and that the majority of them are private enterprises financed by venture capital. Quite a few of them operate without any kind of license from the government.
"There is only one point to these rules, and that is to step up controls over any possible political dissent that might emerge in China," Shaanxi-based cyberdissident Deng Yongliang told RFA's Mandarin service.
"Now that the standard of living is rising for many people, they are beginning to demand more intellectually as well as materially, and such ideological freedom would be a challenge to the current political system," Deng said.
"We are also about to hold the Olympic Games, and so the authorities will continue to step up controls on freedom of expression."
It is currently possible to see video of incidents of social unrest in China, circulating alongside hard and soft porn, and home movies people make to amuse each other.
In one video uploaded to the popular sharing site 56.com, an ordinary citizen visited Beijing's "Petitioner Village", a now-demolished shantytown once housing hundreds of destitute people who lost everything, and who now spend their lives trying to win redress for grievances against the government.
By AFP | via Yahoo!News Canada
January 08, 2008
Canada's Trade Minister David Emerson said Tuesday he is ready to go to the World Trade Organization to try to force China to allow its citizens to visit his country, if the issue is not resolved soon.
In a teleconference from Beijing, he accused Chinese officials of unfair discrimination in refusing to designate Canada an approved tourism destination, while granting more than 130 other countries the special status.
After three years of fruitless negotiations, he said, "we really have got to the point where we have to move it along in a meaningful way in a relatively short time frame or we will have no choice but to explore the WTO option."
The status quo "could do economic damage to Canada," he added, explaining that most foreign trips to the United States, which has been christened a favorable vacation spot by Beijing, include a stopover in Canada.
By REUTERS | The New York Times
07 January 2008
A group of Chinese dissidents has signed an open letter condemning the arrest of an AIDS and environmental activist on subversion charges and urged the government to improve human rights ahead of this year's Olympics.
The letter, signed by 57 lawyers, academics, editors, writers and civil rights campaigners, said Hu Jia's arrest last month on charges of inciting to subvert the government was "unacceptable" as his words and deeds were protected under the constitution.
Hu's activism has set him on a collision course with the Communist Party, which has stepped up curbs on non-governmental organizations, the media, the Internet, lawyers, academics and civil rights campaigners to maintain its grip on power.
The signatories urged the government "to make good use of the opportunity to make the Olympics a truly grand event for the Chinese nation by opening the door of social reconciliation" and proving that it has made efforts to improve human rights.
The letter, e-mailed to reporters by the rights watchdog Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said Hu, 34, was suffering from liver problems and should be released at once.
At the very least, he should receive medical attention and be allowed to meet his relatives and lawyer.
Last week, European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pottering called on Beijing to free Hu, saying he hoped the Olympics would be a chance for China to show it is committed to internationally recognized human rights standards, including freedom of expression.
Asked to comment on Pottering's remarks, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said: "China is a country ruled by law. Everyone is equal before the law. No one is above the law. Relevant agencies acted in accordance with the law."
CUT OFF
Police have prevented Hu's wife, blogger and fellow AIDS activist Zeng Jinyan, her newborn baby and elderly mother from leaving the couple's Beijing home. Authorities have cut off her communications with the outside world.
"They broke into our home and took away Hu Jia ... Then they searched our home for about five hours and took away our cell phones, laptops, fax machine, business cards, bank pass books, notebooks and video tapes," Zeng told Reuters last week.
"Six men refused to leave and occupied our living room for two days and one night. I protested angrily but they ignored me and called me a traitor," she said, using a friend's cell phone which was smuggled in but has since been confiscated.
The New York Times
January 05, 2008
China has pulled Li Yu's "Lost in Beijing," a movie whose sexually explicit scenes were already censored, from theaters and banned its producer from the film business for two years, The Associated Press reported. The ruling against "Lost in Beijing" accused the filmmakers of publishing unapproved pornographic scenes from the movie on the Internet and on DVDs, the official China News Service Web site reported. The film's producer, Fang Li, said he believed that Chinese officials faced political pressure to act amid the rapid spread of uncensored versions of "Lost in Beijing" and another sexually explicit film, Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution," on the Internet and in pirated DVDs.
By Associated Press | The Straits Times (Singapore)
January 03, 2008
China has decided to restrict the broadcasting of Internet videos - including those posted on video-sharing websites - to sites run by state-controlled companies and require providers to report questionable content to the government.
It wasn't immediately clear how the new rules would affect YouTube and other providers of Internet video that host websites available in China but are based in other countries.
The new regulations, which take effect Jan 31, were approved by both the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the Ministry of Information Industry and were described on their websites Tuesday.
Under the new policy, websites that provide video programming or allow users to upload video must obtain government permits and applicants must be either state-owned or state-controlled companies.
The majority of Internet video providers in China are private, according to an explanation of the regulations posted on Chinafilm.com, which is run by the state-run China Film Group.
The policy will ban providers from broadcasting video that involves national secrets, hurts the reputation of China, disrupts social stability or promotes pornography.
Providers will be required to delete and report such content.
'Those who provide Internet video services should insist on serving the people, serve socialism ... and abide by the moral code of socialism,' the rules say.
By Michael Bristow | BBC News
January 02, 2008
A few days ago, about 30 police officers broke into the home of Chinese activist Hu Jia and took him away.
His wife, fellow activist Zeng Jinyan, is now under house arrest. At least 10 security personnel guard her home.
Mr Hu's arrest comes as China celebrates the start of one of its most important years in recent history.
This summer, all eyes will be on it as it plays host to the Olympic Games.
Foreign campaigners say Beijing has not fulfilled its promise to improve human rights ahead of the Olympics - a charge the Chinese government flatly denies.
But the country's human rights record - including Mr Hu's case - will be under scrutiny as much as its sporting endeavours.
'Inciting subversion'
Mr Hu was arrested two days after Christmas, during the afternoon, as he sat at his computer in the dining room of his home.
When officers barged into his flat, his wife was in the bedroom, feeding their two-and-a-half-month-old baby.
According to his arrest warrant, issued by the Beijing Public Security Bureau, the 34-year-old is accused of inciting subversion.
His wife has not been told where he is being held.
Mr Hu is a well-known HIV/Aids activist who also helps publicise other human rights cases in China.
He has been arrested several times before.
On the night he was taken away, six police officers stayed at Mr Hu's home to guard his wife, her mother and their child.
Telephone lines and internet access to the home, in an eastern Beijing suburb, have been cut off.
When the BBC visited the couple's flat, we found Ms Zeng was being closely guarded by at least 10 public security officers.
We arrived as three of them were escorting her as she walked her baby in a shared garden next to her apartment.
After a lengthy check of our identification papers, officers finally refused to allow us to interview Ms Zeng, who also publicises Chinese human rights abuses.
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