Human Rights: June 2009 Archives
By David Barboza | The New York Times
June 23, 2009
Liu Pan, a 17-year-old factory worker, was crushed to death last April when the machine he was operating malfunctioned.
Somehow Mr. Liu became stuck in the machine, his sister Liu Yan recalled during a tearful interview in a village near the factory.
"When we got his body, his whole head was crushed," Ms. Liu said. "We couldn't even see his eyes."
Investigating the accident, inspectors found a series of labor and safety violations at the factory, Yiuwah Stationery, which supplies cards, gift boxes and other paper goods to Disney, the British supermarket chain Tesco and other companies.
The investigators also discovered that Mr. Liu was hired illegally, at 15, below the legal age limit here. Disney has called the situation at the factory "unacceptable."
In a statement issued Wednesday, Disney said it had instructed its vendors and licensees to "cease new orders of any Disney-branded products in the Yiuwah factory" until conditions were improved.
A spokesman for Tesco said that company was also working to improve conditions at the factory.
While the accident at the Yiuwah factory was particularly tragic, working conditions elsewhere are worsening. A year and a half after a landmark labor law took effect in China, experts say conditions have actually deteriorated in southern China's export-oriented factories, which produce many of America's less expensive retail goods.
With China's exports reeling and unemployment rising because of the global slowdown, there is growing evidence that factories are ignoring or evading the new law, and that the government is reluctant to enforce it.
Government critics say authorities fear that a crackdown on violators could lead to mass layoffs and even social unrest.
"The economic downturn has given regulators the perfect excuse to ignore the law," says Zhang Zhiru, director of the Shenzhen Chunfeng Labor Dispute Service, a nonprofit group that supports workers. "I don't see any fundamental change."
But workers are fighting back. Earlier this month, the government said Chinese courts were trying to cope with a soaring number of labor disputes, apparently from workers emboldened by the promise of the new contract labor law.
The number of labor disputes in China doubled to 693,000 in 2008, the first year the law was in effect, and are rising sharply this year, the government says.
The law requires that all employees have a written contract that complies with minimum wage and safety requirements. It also strengthens the monopoly state-run labor union and makes it more difficult for companies to use temporary workers or to dismiss employees.
Western companies that outsource to China say they have stepped up their monitoring of supplier factories to ensure they comply with the law. But they acknowledge that ensuring compliance is challenging in China.
A spokesman for the local Dongguan government here said that they were strictly enforcing the new law. But in interviews, some factory owners acknowledged that they were seeking ways to get around it, complaining that the law's regulations were too costly and cumbersome.
Lawyers say some local governments have issued their own competing rules or interpretations of the law that weaken it, to aid factory owners.
"Many local governments want to develop their own versions of the law," says Liu Cheng, a professor of law at Shanghai Normal University and one of the law's authors.
China's huge and complicated labor market has long thrived on cheap labor and lax regulation. In recent years, labor rights advocates say they have seen incremental gains for workers. But they say there are growing signs of labor abuse. They point to a string of recent cases, like one several weeks ago in which police in southern China's Anhui province said they had freed 30 mentally handicapped workers from what they called "slave conditions" in a brick kiln.
On the same day, police said a fire in the dormitory of an illegal factory in southern Guangdong province killed 13 female workers and seriously injured four others.
A few weeks earlier, 7,000 workers went on strike at a factory that supplies some of the world's biggest technology companies, saying they were being cheated on overtime wages and fed unsanitary food.
Experts say cheating workers on wages, forcing them to log up to 200 hours of overtime a month and denying them health benefits is commonplace in China.
Many factories are violating not just the new contract labor law, but also a 1994 law, which covered a broader set of labor and wage practices, they said.
"The employment contract in many factories here is a mere scrap of paper," says Liu Kaiming, director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation, a labor rights group in Shenzhen. "Here is a common trick: The factory signs contracts with 1,000 workers but actually they've hired 2,000. The factory reports to the government saying they have 100 percent of their workers registered."
Heather White, a consultant who has inspected factories in China for Tommy Hilfiger, Polo Ralph Lauren and other big companies, says many exporters evade the law by subcontracting to so-called shadow factories, which operate under illegal conditions.
"The market is penalizing anyone who complies with the law," she says, meaning their products are more expensive. "And so many companies are subcontracting" to shadow factories.
By Keith Bradsher | The New York Times
June 25, 2009
The Chinese Health Ministry on Thursday ordered sharp restrictions on Internet access to medical research papers on sexual subjects. It is the latest move in what the ministry calls an antipornography campaign that many China experts see as a harbinger of a broader crackdown on freedom of expression and dissent.
In the past month, central government officials have cited a need to control pornography in ordering that filtering software be preinstalled on all new computers sold in China starting July 1.
They have also forced Google to disable a function that lets the search engine suggest terms and on Wednesday night even briefly blocked access nationwide to Google's main search engine and other services like Gmail. Some users were still having problems accessing Google sites on Thursday night.
In addition, Chinese bloggers say they have detected evidence of a concerted effort to stain Google's image. They say that someone in Beijing manipulated Google's software to make it more likely to suggest a pornographic search term during a state television broadcast.
At the same time, the government seems to have stepped up harassment of human rights advocates.
Liu Xiaobo, one of China's best-known dissidents, was formally arrested Tuesday on suspicion of subversion, six months after he was detained for joining other intellectuals in signing a document calling for democracy. This month, the authorities refused to renew the licenses of more than a dozen lawyers after they agreed to represent clients in human rights cases.
The same public security agencies charged with fighting pornography are responsible for suppressing illegal political activity, said Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher in Hong Kong for Human Rights Watch. The government's statistics for seizures of illegal publications tend to include both pornographic and political documents, he noted.
"The two are closely associated," Mr. Bequelin said. "These campaigns work hand in hand."
By RADIO FREE ASIA
June 21, 2009
Tibetans cite a new government effort to control what news they hear.
KATHMANDU--Chinese authorities have begun to remove satellite dishes in a Tibetan-populated region of China in an effort to block access to foreign broadcasts, according to Tibetan sources.
Tibetan-language broadcasts by Radio Free Asia and Voice of America appear to be particular targets of the campaign, one source said.
"Beginning in April of this year, the local broadcasting department oin Kanlho [in Chinese, Gannan] prefecture [of Gansu province] dispatched staff to the counties to install cable lines and to pull down the satellite dishes used by local Tibetans to listen to foreign broadcasts like RFA and VOA Tibetan programs," a Tibetan woman in the Labrang area of Kanlho said.
"They also installed cable lines for listening to government-approved programs," the woman added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"Local Tibetans were told by officials that they were carrying out the directives of central and provincial level authorities," she said.
"They distributed copies of the letters issued by the government."
A Gannan prefecture document obtained by RFA, citing State Council document #129, describes what it calls "unprecedented efforts to collect satellite dishes" to restrict access to long-distance broadcasts in Gansu province, a site of repeated Tibetan protests against Chinese rule during the past year.
Anyone failing to comply with government directives to remove the dishes would be "dealt with in accordance with law," the memo said.
Begun in 2000
Tibetan writer Woeser, in the June 15 entry of her blog "Invisible Tibet," noted efforts "as early as 2000" by China's government to block broadcasts by Radio Free Asia and Voice of America.
Hundreds of jamming towers have been built in Tibetan regions for this purpose, she wrote.
"The Chinese government is now forcing Tibetan monks to pull down satellite dishes so that they cannot listen to RFA and VOA broadcasts. In May this year, the Chinese authorities carried out the policy vigorously in Kanlho."
"In their place, the local Tibetans are forced to listen to [state-controlled] local TV programs connected through land lines," she wrote.
Originally reported by Lhumbum Tashi for RFA's Tibetan service. Tibetan service director: Jigme Ngapo. Translations by Karma Dorjee. Written in English by Richard Finney. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.
By Zheng Yuwen | VOICE OF AMERICA NEWS | The Epoch Times
June 16, 2009
A Beijing court recently sentenced a bookstore owner to three years in prison for printing and circulating the Bible. He was officially convicted for conducting "illegal business activities." Observers say that this sentencing shows China only pays lip service to religious freedom. People's right to follow their own faith is heavily restricted or even stripped away.
The bookstore sells Christian books in Beijing. The owner, 38-year-old Mr. Shi Weihan, is also the leader of a house church. On June 10, a court in Beijing sentenced him to three years in prison, and charged him 150,000 Yuan (approximately $20,000) in fines. Six others, including members of the same church and workers at the printing house, were also sentenced to prison or fined.
Shi's wife, Ms. Zhang Jing, told VOA that the family was surprised by the long sentence term. Shi's daughters, who are 8 and 12, are having a hard time accepting the sentence. Ms. Zhang said, "The two kids feel that their father is innocent. They don't know why he was convicted and sentenced."
Shi was arrested on November 28, 2007 by the authorities. He was released on January 4, 2008, but was arrested again on March 19, 2008. He had been detained at the Haidian Detention Center since then.
Ms. Zhang said that Shi has severe diabetes. Since March 2008, family members were prohibited from visiting or giving him medicine. His lawyer requested medical parole but received no response. The family is very concerned about Shi's health.
Shi's youngest daughter was born in the United States and is a US citizen. Since Shi's arrest, the U.S. Embassy in China has called his family several times to inquire about his situation.
A VOA reporter called Haidian Police Bureau for Shi's information. Bureau staff told the reporter to submit a written request before they would grant an interview.
By Austin Ramzy | TIME Magazine in partnership with CNN
June 17, 2009
On May 13, Beijing lawyer Li Chunfu went to the southwestern city of Chongqing with a colleague to meet with the family of a man who died in a labor camp. While meeting with the family, Li and lawyer Zhang Kai were detained by police. Li was chained to a chair and punched, while Zhang, also roughed up during their arrest, was locked in a cage. Their transgression? They were representing the family of Jiang Xiqing, a man who belonged to the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. After a few hours of questioning, the Jiangjin district police released them around midnight. "We were scared, but the people [we represented] were even more scared," says Li. "So we went back the next day."
Violence has not stopped Li and his fellow human rights lawyers from doing their jobs, but bureaucracy might. On June 1, the law licenses for Li and more than a dozen other prominent rights lawyers expired. The annual renewal is generally considered a formality -- a matter of filing out forms and paying a fee. But this year Li and other top rights lawyers were shut out. They say they are being punished for simply doing their jobs. See pictures of the Pakistani lawyers' movement.
When Deng Xiaoping led China on the path to reform thirty years ago, one of the key declarations he made was that the country would be ruled by law. Since then China has made dramatic headway in developing a legal system, but the application of the law has been choppy.In recent years a small group of independent lawyers around the nation has been attempting to force the state to uphold human rights. The lawyers have been subject to arrest, violence and even, in the case of one prominent advocate, disappearance. But this month's apparent disbarment of the country's top rights lawyers could permanently damage legal reform efforts. "You can't pretend you care about legal reform and the rule of law if you let the vanguard of legal reform be decapitated overnight," says Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.
The disbarred lawyers believe they are being punished for taking cases seen as contrary to the interests of the Communist Party. "The domestic security police tell the Bureau of Justice, 'These lawyers don't listen, they keep doing these kinds of cases,'" says Jiang Tianyong, a Beijing human rights lawyer. "We say this is what's permitted under the law. But they say we have no right to argue that these defendants aren't guilty. So when it comes time for our annual assessment, our licenses aren't renewed."
The sensitive cases these lawyers have handled include illegal land seizures, representing victims of faulty products, such as in last year's tainted milk scandal, defending Tibetans accused of agitating for independence and, as in Li's case, followers of Falun Gong. "Lawyers no longer serve only as instruments of political control like how they were expected to perform from the 1950s to the 1970s," says Albert Ho, a Hong Kong solicitor and chairman of China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group. "With the opening and liberalization of China, it needs to build a system of law and a sound legal system. The government and the governing party shall abide by the law. But they are very, very concerned that the law may cause an obstacle to the control of the people."
Human rights activists worry that by disbarring these lawyers, the government will turn a group of people working within the system into a group of outsiders. "If they don't have many avenues to protest what has happened to them, then it can easily turn into a situation where they will be seen as dissidents," says Bequelin. And once they fall into that category, the lawyers will lose whatever marginal protections their profession once gave them.
One prominent rights attorney, Gao Zhisheng, disappeared in February, shortly after his family fled to exile in the United States. He is believed to be in police custody. Gao, who had defended underground Christians and Falun Gong members, released an open letter describing extensive and grotesque torture he had been subjected to by state security officers in 2007. He said he was threatened with death if he ever revealed the details of the abuse he suffered. When asked about his case in March, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Gao was not a victim of political persecution and his case was being handled "in strict accordance with the law."
Human rights experts note that Gao, who was once named one of China's top ten lawyers in 2001, also lost his legal license in 2005. They worry that the latest group of lawyers could be similarly ostracized and mistreated upon being disbarred. In that case, the authorities might lose as well. For all their work on cases that the Communist Party would rather have disappear, the lawyers are working within the system, rather than outside it. "These lawyers are not advocating a fundamental change to the political system. They are not asking the Communist Party to step down and introduce a western model of multiparty rule," says Ho. "They are only asking the government to fulfill its promise within the law."
By Dylan Bushell-Embling | BusinessWeek
June 15, 2009
The controversial new software blocks political and religious websites and is "far more intrusive" than other content control software, say OpenNet researchers
China's new Green Dam filtering program blocks far more content than pornography, despite the MIIT's claims, that it is to protect youth from obscene content, the OpenNet initiative said.
Instead the program filters political and religious content, and is "far more intrusive" than any other content control software the initiative has reviewed, OpenNet researchers said.
"[Green Dam is] a substandard software product that interferes with the performance of personal computers in an unpredictable way, killing browsers and applications without warning while opening up users to numerous serious security vulnerabilities," the researchers said.
The program actively monitors computer behavior, terminating a wide range of programs if sensitive keywords are entered, said OpenNet, which is a joint project between Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and other universities to monitor government internet surveillance.
For example, entering falundafa.org into browsers or even word processors such as Notepad results in these programs being closed automatically.
With just a single auto-update implementing a few changes to the code, Green Dam could be used to monitor personal communications and browsing behavior, the researchers said. Green Dam already creates log files, but these are stored locally.
OpenNet also called the plan to mandate the use of a particular software product a "questionable policy decision," despite China's decision to make the installation of the program voluntary.
Meanwhile, US software publisher Solid Oak Software is seeking an injunction preventing US companies from shipping software bundled with Green Dam, alleging part of the program was stolen from its CyberSitter filtering program.
Solid Oak has found pieces of its proprietary code in Green Dam, as well as a copy of instructions for updating the software, the company told Reuters.
The Chinese company behind the filtering software--Jinhui Computer Systems--denied any wrongdoing.
A New York Times Editorial
June 12, 2009
China has accomplished remarkable things in the past 20 years, including building one of the world's largest economies. Computers helped speed that development -- and will be even more important in the future. So Beijing's decision to require that all new personal computers sold in China contain software that bars access to certain Internet content seems particularly self-destructive and foolish.
The new rules say all PCs sold in China after June 30 must include special software -- designed by a company with links to China's military and security agencies -- to filter out pornography and other "vulgar" material. Beijing claims that it is trying to protect children. Don't believe it.
In any country, such vague terms would be a frightening license for government intrusion. China's government, which fears the free flow of ideas, already vigorously restricts Internet content, including blocking access to Web sites on Tibet, human rights and other politically sensitive subjects.
Chinese bloggers, dissidents and even some state news media outlets are right to worry that the new software could be used even more nefariously: to collect personal data and spy on consumer Web habits.
The contract for the software, meanwhile, was awarded without industry input. There are serious questions about whether the product will even work.
The last thing China needs is to force the installation of software that could cause millions of computers to crash. That would feed new resentment against a government already accused of gross incompetence after thousands of children died in the collapse of shoddily constructed schools in the 2008 earthquake.
International manufacturers probably could force the government to reverse the new rules by threatening not to sell their products. But they have no history of standing up to Beijing. We hope they are making a stronger case in private for a rollback than was apparent in the anemic public statement issued by a coalition of American trade associations. They called for "an open and healthy dialogue" with the government but seemed to go along with the farcical claim that its intention really was to improve parental control.
If Beijing does not reconsider its foolhardy decision, the new rules would take effect on July 1. Our advice to Chinese consumers: Buy your PC now.
By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
June 11, 2009
China is facing a storm of protest at home and abroad over new regulations requiring all personal computers sold in the country to include software that can filter out pornography and other "vulgar" content from the Internet.
Industry executives, free-speech advocates and ordinary computer users have reacted angrily to the new mandate, which gives manufacturers until July 1 to preinstall the software on millions of new machines. The government presented the regulations to PC makers on May 19, but they were not released publicly until Monday.
"Mandatory installation of filtering software is simply acting blindly," said an editorial in the Wuhan Evening News.
Computer makers in the United States say it will be impossible to fulfill the requirement by the end of the month and have asked the Chinese government to reconsider the directive. They say it raises thorny questions about censorship and whether manufacturers will be liable if the software -- designed by a company with ties to China's military and public security agencies -- conflicts with operating systems or causes computers to crash.
"To be honest, nobody really knows what this software is capable of," said one executive at an American computer maker.
So far, the government has not shown any signs of backing down. On Tuesday, state-owned media and officials defended the new software, known as "Green Dam," and said suggestions it could be turned into government-operated spyware were exaggerated.
"If you have children or are expecting a child you could understand the concerns of parents over unhealthy online content," Qin Gang, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said at a regular news conference Tuesday.
Bloggers, dissidents and even normally cautious state media outlets have greeted the announcement with skepticism, questioning the software's reliability and wondering whether it could be used to censor nonsexual content. Some criticized the government's decision to spend 41 million yuan, or $6 million, on a program that was not solicited through an open bidding process.
China vigorously restricts Internet content, regularly blocking Web pages devoted to Tibetan independence, human rights issues and other politically sensitive subjects. An anti-vulgarity campaign this year has shut down thousands of pornographic sites.
"How do you prevent this from becoming a backdoor for the misuse of power?" asked an editorial on the Web site of Caijing magazine. "Up until now, officials have not answered these questions. The government can urge parents to take responsibility through a variety of mechanisms, but it can't become an omnipotent Big Parent."
Green Dam's designers say the program, which uses image recognition technology and text filtering to block material, is not capable of acting as spyware. Most important, they say the program can be disabled or erased by computer owners who don't want to use it.
The Beijing News devoted a full page to Green Dam and found its performance less than stellar. For example, an innocent math question that included the word "balls" was filtered out, as were apparently harmless photographs with yellow backgrounds.
Writing on Green Dam's own Web site, one teacher said sexually explicit images slipped through and another complained that it would not let her view pictures of pigs. "Pitiful little pig!" she wrote. "I was curious, so I looked up some photos of naked African women. Oh, they were not censored!"
In an editorial he wrote for the Oriental Morning Post, Wang Lin, an associate professor at Hainan University Law School, said the government should have consulted computer users and allowed other software companies to submit comparable programs. "They've made a decision affecting tens of millions of people without regard to their opinions," he said in an interview. "It's like you buying a car and the government telling you where you can drive."
Executives at computer makers, who last year sold about 40 million PC's in China, would agree with such sentiments, although none were willing to speak on the record for fear of angering a government they hope will change its mind.
Manufacturers and software designers have been working behind the scenes to convince officials to reconsider the directive, which was drawn up without industry input and without advance notice.
On Tuesday, a coalition of U.S. trade associations issued a statement that gently made their case.
"We believe there should be an open and healthy dialogue on how parental control software can be offered in the market in ways that ensure privacy, system reliability, freedom of expression, the free flow of information, security and user choice," read the statement, which was signed by groups including the Software & Information Industry Association and the Information Technology Industry Council, whose members include Lenovo, Dell, Apple and Hewlett-Packard.
By Wednesday, industry officials said a dialogue had begun and the American computer executive, speaking anonymously, said he had hopes that the rules might be eased.
Still, he said one possible compromise -- allowing PC manufacturers to simply drop a Green Dam disc into the box of every new computer -- would not be ideal. Preliminary tests by software technicians at a number of companies, he said, have revealed significant software tics that could affect a computer's operating system or other programs.
Bloggers, many of whom face occasional government censorship, have been especially incensed by the new rules. Wang Xiaofeng, a popular blogger, said a friend who downloaded the software was unable to view his satirical writings. He said he is especially bothered by the way Green Dam has been introduced to, or rather, foisted on, the public.
"It's like a bully forcing people to do what they want," he said in a telephone interview.
Still, he said he wasn't overly concerned the software would have a lasting impact on Internet freedom. The government is continually trying to ramp up Web restrictions, and each time, those restrictions are circumvented by the wily and the persistent. "People will always find a way to break through these firewalls," he said. "It's just a shame the government has to keep spending taxpayer money to build them."
Xiyun Yang contributed research.
BBC News
June 08, 2009
The exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has been made an honorary citizen of the French capital, Paris.
The mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, made the award in what French President Nicolas Sarkozy described as a municipal matter, not an act of state.
France has been trying to repair ties with China, but analysts said this award could further ruffle relations.
Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of wanting to split China, but he says he only wants autonomy for his people.
The Dalai Lama began his latest European tour in Denmark on Friday, and has also visited Iceland and the Netherlands.
'Deliberate staging'
He said on Sunday that the rioting that erupted in Tibet in March last year had been fomented by agents of the Chinese state in order to justify a subsequent crackdown and smear local activists as rioters.
"Despite a heavy security presence throughout Lhasa from March 10 onwards, it remains unclear why the Chinese forces of order remained inactive for so long in the centre of the city," the Dalai Lama said.
"On March 14, Tibetans unknown to anyone in Lhasa started to burn shops and throw stones at the Chinese without police interference, while film crews already in place filmed the scene and broadcast it throughout the world.
"Only then did the security forces crack down on the disturbances. It is hard not to suspect a deliberate staging of riots," he said, speaking in Tibetan through a French translator.
Tibet 'errors'
A strong reaction from China is expected to both the award and to the Dalai Lama's comments.
Tension has been high between France and China, following chaotic scenes during last year's Olympic torch relay through Paris, and a December meeting between Mr Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama.
Last month China warned France not to make more "errors" on Tibet.
The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in Dharamsala in India since 1959 when China took full control of Tibet.
Agence France-Presse | The Washington Post
June 06, 2009
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said yesterday she sees no progress in China on human rights, regretting that neither economic reforms nor U.S. pressure are making Beijing budge.
Pelosi, who visited China last week, said Beijing is still holding prisoners for taking part in the Tiananmen Square democracy protests 20 years ago.
"Just our advocacy didn't accomplish any freedom in China. So somehow or other we have to find a way to do that," Pelosi said at the Brookings Institution.
Pelosi said she praised China's leadership in her meetings for lifting millions out of poverty, calling it a "remarkable" achievement.
"The problem I have is that -- people say, 'Well, look at Taiwan, look at [South] Korea, different places' -- economic reform leads to political reform," she said. "What I see in China is that economic reform is being used to suppress the political reform."
Pelosi rejected perceptions that she had softened her stance on human rights during the recent trip.
She said that her position as speaker allows her to raise human rights concerns at the highest level and that she directly petitioned President Hu Jintao to free jailed rights activists.
Pelosi said she has no regrets about angering Beijing's leaders in 1991 by unfurling a banner in Tiananmen Square in tribute "to those who died for democracy in China."
By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN and JEREMIAH MARQUEZ, Associated Press Writers
via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
04 June 2009
BEIJING - In Tiananmen Square, police were ready to pounce at the first sign of protest. In Hong Kong, a sea of candles flickered in the hands of tens of thousands who vented their grief and anger.
Two starkly contrasting faces of China were on display Thursday, the 20th anniversary of the military's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators -- from Beijing's rigid control in suppressing any dissent, to freewheeling Hong Kong, which enjoys freedoms all but absent on the mainland.
Tiananmen Square was blanketed by uniformed and plainclothes security officers who were ready to silence any potential demonstration, and there were few hints that the vast plaza was the epicenter of a student-led movement that was crushed on June 3-4, 1989, shocking the world.
Police barred foreign journalists from entering the square and threatened them with violence, even barring them from covering the daily raising of China's national flag.
Chinese and foreign tourists were allowed in Tiananmen as usual, although security officials appeared to outnumber visitors.
Dissidents and families of victims were confined to their homes or forced to leave Beijing, part of sweeping government efforts to prevent online debate or organized commemorations of the anniversary.
But in Hong Kong's Victoria Park, a crowd chanted slogans calling for Beijing to own up to the crackdown and release political dissidents. Organizers estimated its size at 150,000, while police put the number at 62,800.
"It is the dream of all Chinese people to have democracy!" the throng sang.
Hong Kong is one of the few places in China where the events of June 1989 are not off-limits, because the territory -- returned by the British 12 years ago -- operates under a separate political system that promises freedom of speech and other Western-style civil liberties.
"Hong Kong is China's conscience," Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker Cheung Man Kwong told the demonstration.
In the candlelight, speakers recalled the terrifying events in Tiananmen, where a military assault killed hundreds who had gathered for weeks in the square to demonstrate for freedom and even erect a makeshift statue of liberty. Those killed were eulogized as heroes in the struggle for a democratic China, their names read aloud before the crowd observed a minute of silence.
"Hong Kong is the only place where we can commemorate, and we have to repeat this every year so our younger generations don't forget," said Annie Chu, 36, a Hong Kong tourism worker who says she has attended every vigil for the last 20 years.
Earlier in the day, the central government ignored calls from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and even Taiwan's China-friendly president for Beijing to face up to the 1989 violence.
The extraordinary security in Beijing came after government censors shut down social networking and image-sharing Web sites such as Twitter and Flickr and blacked out CNN and other foreign news channels each time they showed stories about Tiananmen.
"We've been under 24-hour surveillance for a week and aren't able to leave home to mourn. It's totally inhuman," said Xu Jue, whose son was 22 when he was shot in the chest by soldiers and bled to death on June 4, 1989.
Police were also stationed outside the home of Wang Yannan, the daughter of Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader deposed for sympathizing with the pro-democracy protesters, according to the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy. Wang has never been politically active.
But Zhou was celebrated in Hong Kong. Tape recordings of Zhou recalling Tiananmen, used for his recently released posthumous memoir, were played over loudspeakers next to his portrait. One former student leader, Xiong Yan, stirred the crowd with predictions that "democracy will arrive in China."
Another student leader from 1989, Wu'er Kaixi, was forced to return to Taiwan on Thursday after flying to the Chinese territory of Macau the day before in an attempt to return home.
In Washington, Clinton said Wednesday that China, as an emerging global power, "should examine openly the darker events of its past and provide a public accounting of those killed, detained or missing, both to learn and to heal."
Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou urged China to lift the taboo on discussing the crackdown. "This painful chapter in history must be faced. Pretending it never happened is not an option," Ma said in a statement.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang attacked Clinton's comments as a "gross interference in China's internal affairs."
"We urge the U.S. to put aside its political prejudice and correct its wrongdoing and refrain from disrupting or undermining bilateral relations," Qin said in response to a question at a regularly scheduled news briefing.
Qin refused to comment on the security measures -- or even acknowledge them.
"Today is like any other day, stable," he said.
Beijing has never allowed an independent investigation into the crushing of the protests in 1989, in which possibly thousands of students, activists and ordinary citizens were killed. In one famous moment of resistance, a lone man holding shopping bags defiantly stood in front of a column of tanks on a street near the square.
Young mainland Chinese know little about the events, having grown up in a generation that has largely eschewed politics in favor of raw nationalism, wealth acquisition and individual pursuits.
But the issue still resonates with Hong Kong's younger generations.
"It's time for China to take responsibility for the killings," said Kin Cheung, a 17-year-old Hong Kong student who attended the yearly vigil for the first time Thursday. "They need to tell the truth."
Bodeen reported from Beijing, Marquez from Hong Kong. AP Writers Min Lee and Dikky Sinn in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
By Michael Wines and Andrew Jacobs | THE NEW YORK TIMES
June 3, 2009
China's government censors have begun to block access to the Internet services Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and Micarosoft's live.com, broadening an already extraordinary effort to shield its citizens from any hint of Thursday's 20th anniversary of the military crackdown that ended the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement.
People in China who tried to gain access to the blocked Web sites on Tuesday instead encountered an error message saying the sites' servers had unexpectedly dropped the Internet connection -- a standard indicator that access has been blocked.
Weeks earlier, censors blocked Chinese users from viewing all videos on YouTube, and in recent days some television viewers have reported that BBC World News reports related to the Tiananmen anniversary were being selectively blacked out of broadcast programs.
Government censorship of political material on Internet bulletin boards and Web sites is common in China, but this is the first time Twitter has been blocked. Some well-known political activists, unable to post comments on Chinese blogs or chat sites, had switched to Twitter in recent months as an uncensored outlet for their views.
A number of foreign-based sites that have hosted Chinese bloggers, including blogspot.com and the Chinese-language version of wordpress.com, have also been blocked in recent weeks.
The South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper based in Hong Kong that has frequently featured articles on Tiananmen and other sensitive issues, has also seen its distribution on the Chinese mainland curbed in advance of the anniversary on Thursday. And some Beijing readers of last weekend's edition of The International Herald Tribune discovered that an inside page of the newspaper with an article on the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader, was missing.
The anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown, in which army troops killed hundreds of student demonstrators, workers and ordinary citizens, is one of a series of politically sensitive dates this year that have provoked sweeping security measures by Chinese officials.
In recent days, the government has detained a number of political dissidents seen as threats to public order during the anniversary period, including one who had released an open letter complaining about economic hardship visited on former Tiananmen demonstrators who were jailed after the crackdown.
The dissident, Wu Gaoxing, was seized Saturday at his home in Taizhou, a coastal city south of Shanghai, according to the New York advocacy group Human Rights in China. Mr. Wu was among five men, all once jailed for their roles in the Tiananmen movement, who released a letter last weekend charging that former prisoners have been singled out for economic hardship long after their prison terms ended.
Human Rights in China said Mr. Wu was taken away and his computer confiscated about an hour after the letter, addressed to President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders, became public.
Mr. Wu, a writer and former educator, was taken into custody in 1989 and imprisoned for two years after he joined protests in his home province of Zhejiang against the military crackdown on Tiananmen demonstrators. "In this society that claims to be harmonious, we have become 'citizens of the three have-nots waiting to die': we have no regular jobs, no pensions, and no health insurance; if we get sick, we can only wait to die, and all this just because 20 years ago we were sentenced for political reasons," the letter says.
The men, among them a former Communist Party member and a factory worker, said they had been denied pensions, health care and regular employment since taking part in local rallies that were inspired by the protests in Beijing. One of the signers, Mao Guoliang, said he had been fired from 17 schools since he served a four-year term for "counterrevolutionary activities."
The Epoch Times
June 1, 2009
On April 14, 1989 in Beijing, students began gathering to honor the death of Hu Yaobang, the reform-minded former general secretary of the Communist Party. The students began calling for a number of reforms of the Chinese Communist Party, and received wide support in Beijing and around the country. Similar protests spread to 400 cities throughout China. On June 4, the Chinese regime used the People's Liberation Army to put down the protests. No accurate accounting of the number killed has been possible. Thousands are believed to have died on Tiananmen Square and in surrounding neighborhoods in Beijing.
On this, the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, The Epoch Times has asked three participants in the events to tell their stories: Nian Hu was a journalist who was there when the soldiers attacked; Yuan Tien was a University lecturer in Xi'an; and Chen Yonglin, who would go on to a career in China's diplomatic corps before defecting, was a student doing an internship in Beijing with NBC. All three are now living in Sydney, Australia, where they met with Epoch Times reporters.
Nian Hu: Witness to Slaughter
Former Chinese journalist
By Don Robertson/Epoch Times Staff
Before June 4, I was a magazine journalist. In the early months of 1989 I took part in a lot of political forums. There were so many things going on that the government had no hope of controlling it all. There were big parades attended by all kinds of influential people, from celebrities to journalists from China Central Television (CCTV).
As the Tiananmen Square movement developed, the students formed picket lines with their bodies and huge banners, and you had to pass through checkpoints. They were hunger striking, this was their stronghold, and they were concerned government agents would infiltrate into the square. I had a media pass so I could go right into the middle of Tiananmen Square to the Hero's Memorial Hall, where the student leaders were.
People from all over Beijing were supporting the movement by bringing food and water. So the people on the outer security layers ate very well, and food was also delivered to the middle for the leaders, but people in between went pretty hungry. They were so young, it was impossible for them to get everything right!
The government soon hardened its stance. There were announcements that the movement was irrational, controlled by foreign powers, against the government. They demanded everyone return to school and stop participating, and gave a time limit of one month to comply. Martial law was enacted, but they had no way to enforce it.
Students from far and wide were flooding into Beijing and a lot of people didn't know what to do once they got there. The system of security lines fell apart and things were soon beyond the control of the student leaders.
The student leaders also didn't know where to take it, what they should be aiming for.
Soldiers and army vehicles were also arriving into the capital, but the city residents blocked off the surrounding streets and wouldn't let them through. So they started coming in casual dress with loose orders to find their own way to Tiananmen. The city residents could tell at a glance who they were and continued to stop them. We didn't have mobile phones back then, but information was passed back to the student leaders and orders were given, such as "there are lots of soldiers arriving from this direction" so they would send extra people over there.
In the first days of June I learned from well-connected friends that something big was going to happen. I told the student leaders that the CCP was planning something big and blood would be spilled.
By now the square was almost empty during the day, as most of the students were going to the roadblocks and came back to the square to eat and sleep. Camping tents had been brought in from Hong Kong, and there were portable toilets.
On the evening of June 3, waves of students returned to the square for dinner and a rest. The army had surrounded the square, and soldiers were carrying machine guns. The student leaders passed on the message to stay in the square and not return to the roadblocks, so there would be strength of unity. But a lot of the students didn't believe that something big was coming. Some had colleagues waiting for them back at the roadblocks and didn't want to be seen as backing out. It was also hard to pass the message onto everybody.
The student leaders themselves were having heated arguments about what to do. Some thought they should be willing to shed blood, and not be afraid of death. Others wanted to meet with the government and hold discussions. A lot of people thought the army would move in, but few believed the government would shoot to kill.
But I never doubted it. I was a little older than they and I knew the CCP was capable of horrible things.
Around 10:30pm on the evening of June 3, I went to Muxudi, a place near Tiananmen Square within the student barricade. Because of its tactical position, there was talk that it was the first place where guns would be fired. It is at the mouth of Chang'an Road, a wide street that leads straight to Tiananmen Square.
A man about two meters from me was standing on a bike and looking out over a barricade of bicycles, across the thousands and thousands of troops that had gathered. A gunshot sounded out, and he fell to the ground.
"Whoah, a gun just fired!" I heard someone say. "No way, he's just fallen" said another. "No, he's bleeding, he's hurt!"
More gunshots started sounding out. They must be rubber bullets, people speculated. "Don't stand so tall, you might get hit", someone said. Somebody played it down, "it's just his arm, he's ok, don't worry!" Nobody really believed what was happening.
The gunshots continued, but it was hard to know what was happening up front. We were all standing at the same height and it was dark. But soon body after body was being carried past, others were limping or being helped along.
I clutched my camera and was about to start snapping when a man grabbed me and looked me in the eye. "Miss, do you want to die?" I told him: "I want to take photos!" "No, it's too dangerous!" he said.
He beckoned over to a patch of old trees with thick trunks by a nearby canal. Behind each tree was a line of people shielding themselves from the flying bullets. One would fall, and be carried away. Then another. Then another. Non-stop. Wherever someone yelled "fascists!" or "destroy the CCP!" or wherever there was a camera flash, that's where the bullets would fly. "See that?" said the man. "If you take a photo, aren't you harming everybody?"
We heard the sound of crunching bicycles as tanks rolled over the barricade. The soldiers picked up the bikes and cast them into the river. Bullets were ricocheting off the concrete walls of the canal, and they weren't made of rubber. A spark lit up as a bullet struck a meter from my foot.
At about 2.30am I left Muxudi. I took some photos of the injured and the dead. The cursing had stopped, and there were no camera flashes, there was only the sound of gunfire and muffled sobs. Everywhere people were silently watching. The canal was full of smashed bicycles, some army vehicles had been attacked and set alight, and the air was filled with the smell of burning rubber.
I couldn't bear to watch. What happened to my friends? What was happening over in Tiananmen Square?
When daylight came, planes flew over the area with loudspeakers hailing government announcements: "Martial Law has been enacted. Don't be duped by the Baotu (a reference to the protesters, literally: "followers of violence").
On the ground, the soldiers were charging into Tiananmen Square. "Strive forward with courage!" boomed loudspeakers to the troops. "Don't be afraid! Complete your orders! The government is proud of all of you!"
Nian Hu was arrested, questioned and held for 20 days. There is a lot more to tell of her story, such as how she managed to evade a prison sentence. In June 1990 she fled China and came to Australia, where she has lived ever since. Her pen name means "Remembering Hu", in reference to a deceased friend who helped her during her arrest.
Yuan Tieming: Rejecting the CCP
Former Senior Lecturer, North West University of Political Science and Law in Xi'an, China
By Don Robertson/Epoch Times Staff
I used to be critical of the CCP but I still believed it could change for the better. I thought if they had a good leader, like Hu Yaobang or Zhao Ziyang, they could reform and follow a democratic path.
I was devastated when Hu Yaobang died: I thought that China's greatest hope was gone. When students remembered him with big posters, poems, and flowers at the local government offices, I was very supportive of what they were doing. That was April 1989.
At first they were just remembering Hu Yaobang, but soon the Beijing students were holding marches criticizing the CCP for its corruption and demanding change. Students in Xi'an held similar marches. The university leaders were very supportive and I'd say about 70 percent of the teachers took part. The TV stations all reported it.
Our banners were all supportive of the CCP. We called for change, improvement, stamping out corruption. But our attitudes changed when they enacted martial law on April 25. We started losing hope in the government. Our slogans started to attack Deng Xiaoping. He was the leader; he was the dictator; it was his fault.
A lot of card-carrying CCP members, myself included, started protesting openly as CCP members. We thought it would put more pressure on the government. We sent telegrams to Beijing and signed with our membership identities.
The university's Communist Party Commission began efforts to stop students and teachers from participating in the marches. They even locked the university doors and wouldn't let people out, but the students broke through and took part anyway. I continued to take part.
When the massacre happened in Beijing on June 4, we all completely lost hope in the CCP. For the next eight days we held daily rallies. Each day we went out we were prepared to die; we knew we might not come back.
But no guns were fired in Xi'an. The government sent out a notice that if anybody participated again, they would be arrested. The students all fled to their hometowns. I also fled to my relative's house.
A team of 11 police was stationed permanently at NW University, and several people were sentenced to jail or labor camp terms. Every student and teacher had to write a report about what they did during the months prior. For two weeks the police came to my house every day and threatened me. They told me that if I didn't give them names I would go to jail. But I only told them what happened out in public, not what happened behind the scenes.
I wrote three reports, each about 7000 words. I said I was deceived by Zhao Ziyang and tricked by the newspapers. I criticized market liberalization and criticized myself. I heaped praise on the CCP. It was all lies. It was very hard for me to write. I had to show that I had changed my thinking.
In the end the party commission stopped bothering me. The school leaders also did their best to protect us.
There is potential for it to happen again today. There is a much greater democratic awareness among people in China now, and there are a lot more protest movements. But the CCP also controls everything much more closely.
Now I really understand that if China wants to change it must totally reject the CCP. Whenever I call people in China I always tell them not to hold any hope in the CCP, and to quit the CCP.
For the many people in Western countries who sympathized with us at that time, I thank you deeply. June 4 didn't affect you, but you still cared about it. Thank you.
Chen Yonglin: To Tiananmen Square and Back
Former first secretary of the Sydney Chinese Consulate-General
By James Burke
For the month leading up the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4 1989, Chen Yonglin was a college student doing an internship as a translator with the American television broadcaster NBC.
The NBC news crew he assisted was initially covering the visit of the then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. However Mr. Chen and the news crew became immersed in the bigger story about the massive student led pro-democracy movement at Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
In the lead up to the massacre Mr. Chen said he witnessed many things such as the student hunger strike and evidence of early attempts by Chinese authorities to clear the square of democracy activists.
On the night of June 3 he went to the square to show his support for the activists and listened to a democracy lecture at the first and last session of the "Tiananmen democracy university."
"While we listened to his speech the guns had started firing in the suburbs," Mr. Chen told The Epoch Times. At 11pm Mr. Chen said a group of 20-30 soldiers emerged from a nearby railway station and he joined students, civilians, and demonstrators by holding hands in an effort to block them going any further. The soldiers stopped, but he said it was obvious they were awaiting further orders.
Before returning to the Palace Hotel where he was staying with NBC, he said he saw large numbers of military and anti-riot police had been deployed and were ready for action.
Not long after, troops and tanks of the People's Liberation Army violently crushed the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen.
Mr. Chen's first sight of the square on June 4 was early in the morning from the roof of the Palace Hotel.
"Smoke was everywhere and in Tiananmen Square it was cleared, there were only tanks," he said.
The Chinese authorities cancelled his internship on June 5 and sent him back to his college.
"After June 4 ... when I was back at college campus, I could still hear more shooting," he said.
Following "re-education" Mr. Chen joined the Chinese diplomatic corps and was eventually assigned as Chinese consul for political affairs to the PRC consulate in Sydney.
Disillusioned by consulate activities against peaceful groups, such as Falun Gong, he sought political asylum in May 2005. On June 4 of that year he came out of hiding to attend a Sydney rally commemorating the 16th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings and made media headlines with a public speech describing espionage activities by Communist China inside Australia.
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