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By Calum MacLeod - USA TODAY
December 30, 2011
ZHENGZHOU, China - The electric acupuncture needles stung her scalp, and the drugs bloated her weight, gave her heart palpitations and brought on premature menopause.
But Wu Chunxia consented to the treatments at the psychiatric hospital because if she didn't, she knew she would be strapped to her bed and left vulnerable to assaults from violent inmates.
"It was worse than hell in there," says Wu, 37, of the Henan provincial psychiatric hospital in Xinxiang. "I feared I would be strangled at night by other patients."
Wu was not at the hospital for reasons of mental health. She was committed there in 2008 by the Chinese government for 132 days as punishment for protesting about local injustice to higher authorities.
The Communist Party does not acknowledge its mental facilities are used to silence critics, but according to numerous human rights groups and Chinese dissidents, China's Communist-led government has for decades incarcerated healthy people in mental wards to suppress dissent. In the past two years, wrongful confinement cases have sharply increased, says Liu Feiyue of Civil Rights and Livelihood Watch, a human-rights organization based in Suzhou.
The rise in confinements is greatest among petitioners -- the ordinary people who complain about local problems, he says. Committing them to mental hospitals is a "quick, convenient and very effective" method for the government to silence criticism.
Now some Chinese officials are pushing back against the political confinements. Prodded by academics, activists and former patients, China's National People's Congress is discussing what would be the country's first ever mental health law.
Minister of Health Chen Zhu told the standing committee of the Congress in October that the new law will curb the abuse of involuntary hospitalization and better protect the rights of the mentally ill. Chen blamed "procedural failings" for cases of forcible treatment that were challenged by victims and families.
Despite several shortcomings, the draft legislation represents both a legal and social milestone for the world's most populous country, says Wang Yue, a psychiatry professor at Peking University.
"Only once a society develops to a certain level does it pay more attention to mental health and forced hospitalization," says Wang, who alludes to wrongful confinements in mental wards in the U.S. in the early 1900s, though such cases were not attempts by the government to silence political opponents.
"In China, we have long had the principle of big government and small society, and only now are we moving toward judicial supervision and a society ruled by law," he says. "We must solve the problem of treating those mental patients who need treatment and not hospitalizing people who don't."
Complaining to higher authorities
The number of wrongful confinements has risen because the number of Chinese who demand justice for personal matters has grown, Liu Feiyue says. They are reviving an ancient Chinese system of seeking redress by taking a complaint directly to higher authorities. They are determined, often desperate, he says, and thus troublesome to the authorities who are well aware their careers can be ruined by disquiet.
Xu Wu, 43, a former security guard, had grown suicidal after four years of incarceration, including electric shock treatment, for petitioning authorities about a wage dispute with his employer. In April, after watching a film in which kung fu star Jet Li escapes from jail, Xu copied Li's moves by loosening his cell bars over three nights and escaped from the mental hospital in the Yangtze River port Wuhan.
He fled by train to Guangzhou, 600 miles south, where a hospital test concluded he was sane. He was seized eight days later by plainclothes Wuhan police outside the Guangzhou television station where he had just described his plight on-air. Media coverage, including video of his re-capture, helped secure Xu's release on June 10, the same day the initial draft law was released for public comment.
He has read it and is pessimistic about its effectiveness. "I hope the new law will help other patients, but it will be hard to implement, like all laws in China," Xu says.
His lawyer sounds more optimistic.
"The law will reduce the abuse of power and the confinement of healthy people," says Huang Xuetao, director of the Equity & Justice Initiative, a non-profit based in Shenzhen, south China. She welcomes the revisions adopted in the latest October draft, including removal of the catch-all "risk of public disorder" reason for involuntary hospitalization, but urges further revision before the law is finalized sometime in 2012.
Last month, with the help of Equity & Justice, Xu Wu and four fellow victims of forced hospitalization appealed to the National People's Congress for patients to be permitted to enlist outside representatives to help appeal their diagnosis and confinement.
In China, only the person or organization that applied for a patient's forced commitment can apply for his or her release.
"The ideal would be for every involuntary hospitalization case to be examined and verified by judicial authorities, as happens in some U.S. states," Huang says. "But in China at present, that's just not realistic."
Persistence pays off sometimes
Wu Chunxia won her release from the psychiatric hospital in Xinxiang by threatening suicide and persistently demanding her case be investigated, she says. Now she is battling for justice and compensation both through China's courts, despite their lack of independence from the Communist Party, and the more traditional route of petitioning higher authorities, the very act that, while legal, got her detained in the first place.
She has had some success. Officials revoked the police decisions to punish her petitioning first by detaining her, then by committing her to a labor camp, a decision later changed to confinement in the mental hospital. The policeman who handled her case, Zhang Xiaodong, told USA TODAY he doesn't know Wu. But earlier this month, in an interview with Southern Metropolitan News, Zhang blamed his treatment of Wu on orders from the local political-legal committee, a Communist Party group that guides judicial work. Committee secretary Li Zongxi declined to comment.
Corruption plays a major role
Rights activist Liu says officials commit troublemakers to mental hospitals because the process is secretive and, unlike the courts, requires no evidence of wrongdoing. He says the full extent of wrongful confinement in recent years far exceeds the 1,000 cases his group has compiled in a database since 2009.
Corruption also plays a major role. Unethical doctors and hospital administrators can benefit financially by allowing police to turn hospitals into "black jails," Liu says.
For these reasons, Liu says the new law will remain "just a piece of paper" until China undertakes "systematic change, to a society that genuinely respects law and human rights."
Even accepting the current draft over nothing may be a devil's bargain, warns Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watchg. "A bad law will entrench bad practices and would extend too much the power of public security officials to detain people on the basis of their political opinion or other irrelevant aspects," he says.
China has failed to adopt the international norms for mental health law set out in the United Nations Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities, despite its ratification by Beijing, Bequelin says. The draft lacks provision for people to be assisted by lawyers and fails to prohibit the "political use of psychiatry," he says.
Wu Chunxia is encouraged by the pending legislation. "It shows more attention paid to human rights in China," she says. "I hope the law stops normal people suffering the persecution I had."
Two years after Wu filed a suit against both the hospital and the neighborhood officials who committed her, a court in nearby Shenqiu County held its first hearing in October. Now she is petitioning the provincial court to speed the process and asking police to investigate the policeman Zhang Xiaodong.
"I have no home or family, I have been detained and tortured by illegal medical treatment," Wu says. "They have destroyed the latter half of my life. Until the people who illegally handled my case are punished, I won't close my eyes, even in death."
Contributing: Sunny Yang
By The Learning Network | The New York Times
October 26, 2011
On Oct. 25, 1971, the United Nations General Assembly voted to admit the People's Republic of China (mainland China) and to expel the Republic of China (Taiwan). The Communist P.R.C. therefore assumed the R.O.C.'s place in the General Assembly as well as its place as one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
The New York Times, in the Oct. 27 edition, described the reaction at the United Nations: "After the tension and drama of last night, today was spent in efforts at reconciliation and in political introspection and analysis." It also noted, "Secretary General Thant appealed to all members to 'endorse the tremendous step forward' represented by Peking's admission and to set aside suspicion and bitterness."
The Republic of China had been a member of the United Nations from the organization's formation in 1945, at which time it still governed all of China. However, in 1949, the R.O.C. government was expelled from the mainland by the Communist Party, the founders of the People's Republic of China.
Though the R.O.C. only continued to control the island of Taiwan after its expulsion from the mainland, it still considered itself the one true government of China. This view was supported by the Western powers in allowing the R.O.C. to remain China's representative in the United Nations. Their main motive? They wanted to prevent another Communist government from gaining a place in the Security Council.
By 1971, however, the People's Republic had gained enough international support for the U.N. General Assembly to pass the resolution declaring that it, and not the R.O.C., was the rightful representative of China. The resolution specified that it was a "restoration of the lawful rights" to the P.R.C., indicating that the country had been denied its rightful seat since 1949.
The United States, the most significant opponent of the resolution, then argued for the P.R.C. to be admitted separately from the R.O.C., which would have allowed the R.O.C. to retain its spot. The proposal was defeated.
Connect to Today:
The Republic of China, which has largely relinquished its claim to mainland China, has continued to fight for a place in the United Nations. Over the years, it has applied to the U.N. under the name "The Republic of China (Taiwan)" and "The Republic of China on Taiwan," but the applications have been denied. The U.S. supports a "one China" policy, which maintains that, though the People's Republic does not hold sovereignty over Taiwan, there is only one China that includes both the mainland and Taiwan. It has not supported Taiwan's applications for membership, objecting to what it perceives as "an effort to change the fragile status quo that has governed relations among the three."
By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
October 06, 2011
In one big respect, life has changed little in the past 12 months for the man who won last year's Noble Peace Prize.
As the Nobel committee prepares to hand out this year's award, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is exactly where he was last October - in jail.
He is serving an 11-year sentence for inciting the subversion of state power.
If anyone hoped this award might bring about a reduction in the activist's sentence or a more open society in China, they were wrong.
The opposite has happened. Liu Xiaobo's wife, Liu Xia, appears to be under house arrest and other Chinese campaigners have been targeted.
But the debate about human rights in China has not gone away.
The 55-year-old's award - and later the Arab Spring - seems to have renewed the focus on China's political system, even among its own top leaders.
Long-time activist
Liu Xiaobo was sentenced on Christmas Day 2009 for helping to draft a manifesto - Charter '08 - calling for political change.
At the time he had been speaking out for 20 years, although he was still a relatively unknown figure both inside and outside China.
But his criminal conviction, the manifesto he proposed and the harsh sentence he received suddenly catapulted him onto the international stage.
And it happened just as the Nobel Peace Prize committee was looking to honour someone who had stood up to the Chinese government.
"We knew from experience that the dissident community was divided," Geir Lundestad, the permanent secretary to the Nobel committee, said just a few days ago.
"In one sense the Chinese government made the decision easy. Liu Xiaobo went from one of several candidates to the most prominent symbol of human rights in China."
Immediately after the award was announced, Liu Xia, the dissident's wife, went to see him in jail, in the city of Jinzhou in northeast China.
She told her husband about the award - and passed back news to the Nobel committee that he was happy to have received it.
Up until then Liu Xia had been visiting her husband regularly in prison, where the activist, academic and author spent his time reading, running and writing letters to his wife.
After the award though, things changed.
Liu Xia suddenly disappeared from view, her Beijing home off-limits and guarded by security officers.
Her telephone, internet connection and other contact with the outside world was severed. Little has been heard from her since.
Expected reaction
When the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention asked earlier this year about these restrictions, the Chinese government admitted that "no legal enforcement measure" had been taken against her.
But it continues to detain her anyway - without justification, according to the UN working group.
Hu Jia, another Chinese activist who has spent time in prison, recently tried to visit Liu Xia, but was stopped by a guard before he got to her apartment.
"As a man with long experience of this kind of thing, I believe the security implies that she is at home and under house arrest," said Mr Hu.
The BBC was also turned away when we tried to visit.
Hu Jia also said Liu Xia had been able to visit her husband four times during the past year, although other reports suggest that has not been the case.
He added that Liu Xiaobo was allowed to return home last month - free from handcuffs and leg irons - to mourn the death of his father.
'Very patient'
For other activists, bloggers and lawyers, life has also become more difficult over the last 12 months.
The political upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa appears to have worried China's leaders, who fear these revolutions might lead to calls for change here.
Their reaction has been to crack down on anyone who might agitate for change.
People have been detained, prosecuted and sometimes simply scared, in an apparent attempt to curtail their already limited activities.
"All hopes were dashed if anyone had expected that some positive change in the human rights situation in China would result from awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese citizen for the first time," commented the Chinese Human Rights Defenders.
Mr Lundestad said the Nobel Peace Prize committee had not been surprised by China's reaction and remained "very proud" of its award to Liu Xiaobo.
The committee is now waiting for him to collect his medal, pick up his prize money, worth about $1.5m, and give his Nobel lecture.
The dissident still has eight years of his sentence left to serve so that might not happen for some time - if ever.
But as Mr Lundestad said: "We are very patient."
By Liao Yiwu - Op-Ed Contributor | The New York Times
YUNNAN PROVINCE, in southwestern China, has long been the exit point for Chinese who yearn for a new life outside the country. There, one can sneak out of China by land, passing through pristine forests, or one can go by water, floating all the way down the Lancang River until it becomes the Mekong, which meanders into Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
So each time I set foot there, in a land where red soil gleams in the sun, I turned restless; my imagination ran wild. After all, having been imprisoned for four years after I wrote a poem that condemned the Chinese government's brutal suppression of student protesters in 1989, I had been denied permission to leave China 16 times.
I felt very tempted. It doesn't matter if you have a passport or visa. All that counts is the amount of cash in your pocket. You toss your cellphone, cut off communications with the outside world and sneak into a village, where you can easily locate a peasant or a smuggler willing to help you. After settling on the right price, you are led out of China on a secret path that lies beyond the knowledge of humans and ghosts.
Until earlier this year, I had resisted the urge to escape. Instead, I chose to stay in China, continuing to document the lives of those occupying the bottom rung of society. Then, democratic protests swept across the Arab world, and posts began appearing on the Internet calling for similar street protests in China. In February and March, there were peaceful gatherings at busy commercial and tourist centers in dozens of cities every Sunday afternoon. The government panicked, staging a concerted show of force nationwide. Soldiers changed into civilian clothes and patrolled the streets with guns, arresting anyone they deemed suspicious.
Meanwhile, any reference to Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution (and even the word jasmine) was censored in text messages and on search engines. The police rounded up human rights lawyers, writers and artists. The democracy activist Liu Xianbin, who had served nine years in prison for helping to form the China Democratic Party, was given a new sentence of 10 years. The artist Ai Weiwei vanished in April and has lived under close government surveillance since his release in mid-June.
An old-fashioned writer, I seldom surf the Web, and the Arab Spring simply passed me by. Staying on the sidelines did not spare me police harassment, though. When public security officers learned that my books would be published in Germany, Taiwan and the United States, they began phoning and visiting me frequently.
In March, my police handlers stationed themselves outside my apartment to monitor my daily activities. "Publishing in the West is a violation of Chinese law," they told me. "The prison memoir tarnishes the reputation of China's prison system and 'God Is Red' distorts the party's policy on religion and promotes underground churches." If I refused to cancel my contract with Western publishers, they said, I'd face legal consequences.
Then an invitation from Salman Rushdie arrived, asking me to attend the PEN World Voices Festival in New York. I immediately contacted the local authorities to apply for permission to leave China, and booked my plane ticket. However, the day before my scheduled departure, a police officer called me to "have tea," informing me that my request had been denied. If I insisted on going to the airport, the officer told me, they would make me disappear, just like Ai Weiwei.
For a writer, especially one who aspires to bear witness to what is happening in China, freedom of speech and publication mean more than life itself. My good friend, the Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, has paid a hefty price for his writings and political activism. I did not want to follow his path. I had no intention of going back to prison. I was also unwilling to be treated as a "symbol of freedom" by people outside the tall prison walls.
Only by escaping this colossal and invisible prison called China could I write and publish freely. I have the responsibility to let the world know about the real China hidden behind the illusion of an economic boom -- a China indifferent to ordinary people's simmering resentment.
I kept my plan to myself. I didn't follow my usual routine of asking my police handlers for permission. Instead, I packed some clothes, my Chinese flute, a Tibetan singing bowl and two of my prized books, "The Records of the Grand Historian" and the "I Ching." Then I left home while the police were not watching, and traveled to Yunnan. Even though it was sweltering there, I felt like a rat in winter, lying still to save my energy. I spent most of my time with street people. I knew that if I dug around, I could eventually find an exit.
WITH my passport and valid visas from Germany, the United States and Vietnam, I began to move. I shut off my cellphone after making brief contacts with my friends in the West, who had collaborated on the plan. Several days later, I reached a small border town, where I could see Vietnam across a fast-flowing river. My local helper said I could pay someone to secretly ferry me across, but I declined. I had a valid passport. I chose to leave through the border checkpoint on the bridge.
Before the escape, my helper had put me up at a hotel near the border. Amid intermittent showers, I floated in and out of dreams and awoke nervously to the sound of a knock on the door, only to see a prostitute shivering in the rain and asking for shelter. Although sympathetic, I was in no position to help.
At 10 a.m. on July 2, I walked 100 yards to the border post, fully prepared for the worst, but a miracle occurred. The officer checked my papers, stared at me momentarily and then stamped my passport. Without stopping, I traveled to Hanoi and boarded a flight to Poland and then to Germany. As I walked out of Tegel airport in Berlin on the morning of July 6, my German editor, Peter Sillem, greeted me. "My God, my God," he exclaimed. He was deeply moved and could not believe that I was actually in Germany. Outside the airport, the air was fresh and I felt free.
After I settled in, I called my family and girlfriend, who were questioned by the authorities. News about my escape spread fast. A painter friend told me that he had gone to visit Ai Weiwei, who is still closely watched. When my friend mentioned that I had mysteriously landed in Germany, Old Ai's eyes widened. He howled with disbelief, "Really? Really? Really?"
Letter to the Editor of The New York Times
August 14, 2011
Re "Officials in China Seized Infants for Black Market, Parents Say" (front page, Aug. 5):
In 2003, on a brutally hot day in rural China, we were handed a strangely stoic baby girl. Our third daughter, she was adopted by us through China's international adoption program with the United States.
Like all families at that time, we believed her to be a legally adoptable child, abandoned by her birth family at the gate of the orphanage because of China's one-child policy and cultural tradition favoring male heirs.
Blissfully happy to be adopting, I must say that the facts behind your article were not even on our radar screen in 2003. But they most certainly are now.
So tell me, President Hu Jintao, how do you tell a child who has already spent years working to let go of grief over her birth family that her past may not be as it was portrayed?
That she was not a child, a person, a creature deserving of a better life, but may merely have been a cog in one of China's many industries, the industry of baby-selling?
Oh, and did you really think that this day would not come to pass? That your own countrymen would not one day rise up and say, "What have you done with our children?"
J. D. SAMUEL
Lexington, Ky., Aug. 7, 2011
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