Human Rights: September 2010 Archives

By Radio Free Asia
September 29, 2010

Chinese activist had exposed forced abortions and other abuses by local officials.

Prominent civil rights lawyers and activists in China have vowed to continue a relay hunger strike in support of Shandong-based activist Chen Guangcheng, who has been held under house arrest at his home since his release from prison earlier this month.

"Basically there hasn't been any improvement [in Chen's situation]," said Fan Yafeng, a legal scholar and Protestant social activist, who began the hunger strike protest on Monday.

"The main thing needed is for his communication links to be restored."

Fan said Chen's case is widely seen as an indicator of the state of human rights in China.

"The personal freedom of Chen's family members has been illegally constrained in recent years," he said.

"Their basic rights have been violated to the point where they can't even go shopping, or seek medical attention."

Abuses exposed

Chen, 38, has been confined at home since his release at the end of a jail term of four years and three months for "damaging public property and obstructing traffic" handed down by a Linyi municipal court in August 2006.

Chen, who had exposed abuses like forced abortions and sterilizations by local family planning officials under China's "one-child" population control policy, served the full term in spite of repeated requests for medical parole.

Chen is well-known in China's civil rights community, which is frequently exposed to detention, prison sentences, and official violence and harassment as activists struggle to enforce the rights of the country's most vulnerable people.

>> Complete Original Report

By Radio Free Asia
September 28, 2010

Dissidents had protested an earlier series of decisions by the court.

Authorities in China's southwestern province of Sichuan have convicted 10 rights activists on charges of disturbing public order, handing down jail terms of up to three years in some cases.

The sentences were handed down by the Central District People's Court in Leshan city on Tuesday, after the men staged a 2009 protest at a series of the court's decisions in recent years.

Bao Junsheng was sentenced to three years' imprisonment for "gathering a crowd to disturb social order," while fellow activists Zeng Li and Huang Xiaomin received two-and-a-half-year sentences.

Zeng Rongkang, Xing Qingxian, Yan Wenhan, and Lu Dachun each received two-year jail terms.

Liu Jiwei was released from detention, while Xu Chongli was sentenced to a one-year supervision order.

The men were first tried for "assembling a crowd to disrupt social order" on April 7. However, their case was sent back to the People's Procuratorate, the local state prosecutor, for more evidence.

Their sentencing comes more than 18 months after they were detained for chaining themselves together in a protest outside the court on Feb. 23, 2009.

>> Complete Original Report

By TINI TRAN, Associated Press Writer | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
September 28, 2010

China has warned the Nobel committee against awarding its coveted peace prize to a jailed Chinese dissident, the head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute said Tuesday

A Foreign Ministry spokeswoman denied that China has exerted pressure but said that choosing dissident Liu Xiaobo would go against the prize's aims.

"The person you just mentioned was sentenced to jail by Chinese judicial authorities for violating Chinese law. I think his acts are completely contrary to the aspirations of the Nobel Peace Prize," said spokeswoman Jiang Yu.

Liu, one of the country's most prominent activists, was the main author of a daring political manifesto that called for stronger human rights and an end to Communist party dominance. He was detained in 2008, and then found guilty of inciting to subvert state power. He was sentenced last December to 11 years in jail.

Geir Lundestad, secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, said China's Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying warned that awarding the prize to Liu could harm ties between the two countries when she visited Norway in June.

Fu said that giving the Nobel to Liu would be "an unfriendly action that would have negative consequences for the relationship between Norway and China," Lundestad told The Associated Press.

Lundestad said the Nobel committee is independent and ignores pressure to influence its decisions. The peace prize winner will be announced on Oct. 8.

Liu's wife, Liu Xia, said Tuesday she thinks China will be able to exert enough pressure to stop her husband from getting the award.

"The Chinese government has money and power. There is nothing they cannot buy," she told AP Television News.

In past years, when other Chinese human rights activists have been mentioned as prize contenders, China also tried to quash their nominations.

Fu, speaking at a news conference in Beijing about a trip by Premier Wen Jiabao to Europe next week, said there is false talk about Chinese pressure every year.

"Every year, you report that China will apply pressure. And it's standard practice around this time of year. You often talk about the Chinese pressure issue," she said.

Lundestad said he told Fu that the committee is independent of the Norwegian government. He said giving the peace prize to the Dalai Lama in 1989 shows the Nobel committee doesn't respond to pressure from China. Beijing accuses the Dalai Lama of trying to undermine its control of Tibet and is sharply critical of anyone who supports him.

China has pointedly disavowed his award as well as the Nobel Literature Prize in 2000, won by Gao Xinjian, a dissident emigre writer who lives in France.

"I've had many such meetings, but this is probably at the highest level," Lundestad said. "They consider this an unfriendly action which would have negative consequences for the relationship between Norway and China.

"We, of course, reject any effort to interfere in the deliberations of the Norwegian Nobel Committee," he said.

Before his latest sentence, Liu, a former university professor, also spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, which ended when the government called in the military -- killing hundreds, perhaps thousands of demonstrators.

China routinely uses vaguely worded subversion charges to jail people it considers troublemakers. Liu's 11-year prison sentence is the harshest penalty given for inciting subversion since the crime was introduced in 1997.

In recent weeks, there have been increased public calls in support of Liu's nomination. More than 120 Chinese scholars and intellectuals have signed an open letter supporting his bid.

Last week, Czech democracy leader Vaclav Havel added his voice to the growing support for Liu, writing a public endorsement published in the International Herald Tribune.

Liu modeled the political document he wrote in 2008 after Havel's Charter 77, a political declaration that helped pave the way for the 1989 Velvet Revolution that swept the Communist regime out of the former Czechoslovakia.

>> Original Report

Letter from China
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW | Published in The New York Times

September 16, 2010

Fan Meizhong remembers exactly what inspired him to become a teacher after graduating from Peking University's history department in 1997.

"My own history classes at school were so oppressive," he said. "It wasn't about pursuing the truth, but about controlling our minds. I felt my education was a waste, and it made me really mad."

So Mr. Fan, now 38, decided to tackle the problem head on -- by becoming a teacher who would tell children the truth about their country.

Even as China's economy and society become increasingly diverse and sophisticated, its relationship to its own history remains stubbornly mired in cover-ups and silences. A look at how high school textbooks present the six decades since the establishment of the People's Republic reveals the problem. Glaring omissions include mass famine, violent political campaigns, deadly labor camps and the suppression of a democracy movement that was televised live around the world. Taken together, these events killed dozens of millions of Chinese.

The reason is simple, say critics. The political party that caused the tragedies is still in power, and it fears challenges to its authority. "They didn't begin telling the truth in the Soviet Union until after it collapsed, did they?" said Yuan Tengfei, a teacher in Beijing.

A result is that high school graduates, many headed for university and top jobs in China and, increasingly, abroad, leave school in a miasma of ignorance about their country, Mr. Fan said.

He lists the history hot spots: "The 1957 Anti-Rightist Campaign, the 1958-61 Great Leap Forward famine, the Cultural Revolution, June 4th" -- the army's crushing of democracy protests near Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

"All these things have happened in our history, and we need to talk about them," he said. "What kind of country are we that our history is so tragic?"

His course is a risky one. In 2000, he left his first teaching job, at a state high school in his home province of Sichuan, under duress. He was then fired from two private schools after just a few weeks' teaching.

"The accusation is always that I'm 'reactionary,"' he said.

Today he teaches at the private Guangya School in Chengdu, where most of the students, the offspring of China's new rich, are headed to universities overseas, often in the United States. The school tolerates him, Mr. Fan said, because its principal is a free thinker -- and has the political connections to protect his establishment.

The malaise does not only affect history, said Liang Weixing, who teaches literature at a state high school in Hubei Province. He says the education system is conservative, and bogged down with ideology.

"The actual content of the books we must teach is enough to drive you mad," he said, singling out the paucity of post-1949 literature, from either China or overseas. Instead, "more than 70 percent" consists of ancient texts, which students must memorize to pass.

"Judging by the course work, it appears that we are still living under the imperial system," said Mr. Liang.

What is offered as contemporary literature, like "Goodbye, Britannia," a news-style account of Hong Kong's 1997 return to China, or "Journey into Space," about China's astronauts, does not redress the imbalance, he says. "They lack linguistic and literary merit, and are stale," he said.

Perhaps the most famous maverick teacher in China these days is Mr. Yuan, videos of whose history courses at the private Jinghua School in Beijing, where he teaches part time, were posted on the Internet by the school. The school's curriculum director, Liu Juan, said they had drawn nearly 40 million hits.

In class, Mr. Yuan questions with humor official accounts of events like the Great Leap Forward famine, described in texts merely as a time of "severe economic hardship." While estimates of the death toll from the forced collectivization policies vary, Mr. Yuan has taught that 20 million died, a figure he says the government does not dispute. The journalist Yang Jisheng put the number at 36 million in his 2008 book "Tombstone." Frank Dikötter cites 45 million in his recent work "Mao's Great Famine."

In May, the principal and Communist Party secretary of Haidian Teachers Training College, Mr. Yuan's primary workplace, called him into his office for a "chat." In June they ordered him to reapply for permission to teach at the college. Effectively, he was suspended.

He has not yet heard if his application will be approved. Meanwhile, he continues to teach at Jinghua, once a week. His wife, afraid he will be arrested, accompanies him when he goes out.

"It's a tragedy for China that I say one or two true things and get so much attention," said Mr. Yuan.

Mr. Fan believes the omissions in textbooks are actually multiplying. He cites the 1989 democracy protests.

"The textbooks used to mention June 4," he said. "But these days it's completely gone. They're afraid if they mention it, students will know something happened and be curious, and look it up on the Internet. So they think it's better to pretend it never happened."

Indeed, the protests are missing from the Major Events Chronology in the latest edition of Beijing's high school history books, published by the People's Education Press in 2007. In the volume devoted to world political developments, just one Chinese event is mentioned for the 1980s: a 1984 law on ethnic minorities. The next date for China is 1990, for an item on relations with Taiwan.

There is mention of 1989 as a year of "drastic change" -- in Poland.

Mr. Yuan thinks silence is preferable to outright lies. And textbooks are getting better in some aspects, he says.

"I think it's really good that today they do talk about the Enlightenment, or the American political system," he said.

For now, the voices of independently minded teachers remain few. "You can't expect everyone to be brave," said Mr. Fan. "Most people want security, so they teach what they're told."

>> Original Source

By Nicholas Kristof | The New York Times
September 11, 2010

Lodi Gyari, the Dalai Lama's representative in Washington, has a good op-ed in the South China Morning Post (by subscription only). In particular, he makes two points that I think Beijing just doesn't "get." First:

The third mindset is that China should wait until the passing away of the present Dalai Lama, when the Tibetan issue will naturally disappear. This thinking is based on the belief that a leaderless and disoriented movement would fragment into pieces and eventually become irrelevant. This is a misplaced mindset for many reasons, and very counterproductive to China's own future. Those who subscribe to this view do not understand that fragmentation today no longer means irrelevance; it means radical unpredictability and vastly greater risk. Far from fading away, the Tibetan political movement will reinvent itself in the absence of the current, Fourteenth Dalai Lama, and become something far more complex and unmanageable in the process.

That's exactly right. China is waiting for the Dalai Lama to die, so that Tibetans will lose their leader and cohesion. But the result is not that Tibet will be easier to dominate; rather, it is likely to become more violent. There already are many, many young Tibetans who think the Dalai Lama has been too patient, too conciliatory, too pacifist. This is particularly true of the exiles; Tibetans actually in China tend to be more pragmatic and willing to work things out. But overall, my hunch is that we'll see more violent resistance after the Dalai Lama goes.

Many Chinese, outraged by the violence against ethnic Han in Lhasa during the last protests, blame the Dalai Lama -- and it's true that he was too slow to condemn the violence. But overall there is no  question about it: His Holiness has been a huge restraining force, working against violence.

So my hunch is that after the Dalai Lama dies, Tibet will come to look more like Xinjiang. Human rights abuses will get less attention, because the Dalai Lama isn't there to call attention to them. But protests will be more violent and more common, and there'll be some genuine terrorists bringing in weapons from abroad.

The other problem with the Dalai Lama dying is that any kind of a solution to the Tibetan issue is going to require painful concessions on both sides. It's not clear that the Dalai Lama is willing to make the kind of concessions necessary, but if he is he could probably carry the Tibetan people behind him. In contrast, after he is gone, there is simply no one who could unite Tibetans and persuade them to accept the necessary concessions. The chance of a peaceful political solution will die with the Dalai Lama.

I outlined what a deal would look like in this 2008 column. Essentially, Tibetans would accept unequivocal Chinese rule in exchange for real autonomy, greater linguistic, cultural and religious freedom, and brakes on Chinese migration into ethnic Tibetan areas.

Lodi Gyari's second important point is this:

It is disheartening to see just how far China's leaders have drifted from the early days of bold reform. The leaders I came to know in the early 1980s shared a conviction about their historic role in bringing about the difficult transition that was needed in post-Mao China. Leaders like Hu Yaobang understood that the greatness of China's future lay in the responsible actions of its leaders to conduct the necessary groundwork for true stability. Hu called for courageous policies relating to Tibet. Because he was open and honest, dared to act, dared to face reality and dared to bear responsibility, he won the hearts of the Tibetan people.

What Lodi Gyari doesn't acknowledge is the mismatch. In the early 1980's, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang were prepared to do a deal with the Dalai Lama -- but it was His Holiness who balked. After the Cultural Revolution, the Tibetans just didn't trust Beijing and thought time was on their side. They made a historic miscalculation in the 1980's, and then the window for negotiation closed with the departure of Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. Maybe it'll reopen with some future leadership team, but today's Politburo is just not prepared to make the concessions necessary. Instead, it operates under the delusion that things will get better after the Dalai Lama dies.

The Dalai Lama has been extraordinarily effective with global public opinion, but he has been spectacularly ineffective with the constituency that matters most -- Chinese officials and the Chinese public. It's not too late for him to devote himself to improving his Mandarin skills, speaking more to Chinese audiences, and seeking to move to China. That request to move to, say, Beijing would put China in a box. I don't think Beijing would accept, but it would at least be a signal of the Dalai Lama's desire to work things out with the Chinese leaders.

And the track we're on is disastrous. More Han Chinese are moving to Tibet, destroying its traditional character so that it will be gone forever. A political deal is the only way to forestall that and avoid violence, but it's hard to see such a deal coming. Your thoughts?

>> Original Source

By Radio Free Asia
September 08, 2010

China holds a labor activist for more than a year without trial.

Shaanxi-based labor activist Zhao Dongmin is still being held without any sign of movement towards a trial, and court officials denied him permission to see his wife before she died of illness, his relatives said.

Zhao was detained more than a year ago on charges of disrupting public order after he applied to set up an independent trade union representing more than 300 workers in more than 20 companies.

His wife Deng Yongxia died of the auto-immune disorder lupus on Aug. 31, never having been allowed to visit Zhao in the detention center.

"When she was very seriously ill, we went to the court to apply for a single visit permit, but the court didn't approve it," Zhao's brother said.

"On the night she died, we went again to ask the court to allow him to see her one last time, and they refused again, saying that no such rules existed."

"Their eldest child has just got into senior high school, and the second is only three years old, and lives with my parents [who are] in their eighties now," Zhao's brother said.

He called on Shaanxi authorities to release Zhao as soon as possible. "He has been detained for more than a year now," he said.

Belief in innocence

Deng was admitted to the hospital twice this year after a period of deep depression and insomnia. She died of kidney failure and internal bleeding triggered by systemic lupus erythematosus, doctors said.

Deng maintained a staunch view of her husband's innocence during an interview in June, when she was admitted to the hospital a second time.

"There are elderly and very young people in our family. I can't get out much. There was a time when I went regularly to the detention center to ask to see [Zhao]. I went maybe seven or eight times. It didn't matter what I said; they still wouldn't let me see him," Deng said at the time.

"They wouldn't let me give him money, or take his laundry or bring a change of clothes."

"I couldn't sleep after he went there. I didn't sleep for seven or eight months. The kids are exhausted too. His mother's health is poor as well, so in the middle of that, my body just gave out," she said.

Case stalled?

According to Zhao's lawyer, identified by his surname Chen, Zhao's case had been bounced back and forth between the police, the state prosecutor's office, and the court for months, with the prosecutor calling on the police to present more evidence.

"I haven't been allowed to read the evidence or to visit my client," Chen said. "The procuratorate [prosecutor] says the paperwork isn't ready and that it's not 'convenient' for me to read it."

"If I go to the court, they tell me that the case is still under investigation," he said. "They also said there was some kind of a meeting higher up to discuss the case."

"To this day, they haven't brought a case [against Zhao]. Investigations are supposed to take seven days."

An official who answered the direct line number given to Chen for Zhao's case at the Xincheng district court in Shaanxi's provincial capital, Xian, said the number had been changed.

"There's a new phone number now," he said. "The new directory hasn't been printed yet."

Chen said no one had answered repeated calls he made to the court last week.

"I have been thinking that perhaps the court has been sitting on the case because they don't think it will stand up," Chen added.

Pushing labor reform

Zhao Dongmin was arrested in August 2009 for "gathering a crowd to disrupt social order."

A former left-wing organizer of labor rights group Gongweihui, Zhao applied on behalf of the group to the Shaanxi provincial trade union and the Shaanxi provincial party for registration as a study group.

Receiving no reply, they applied again to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) in the same month Zhao was arrested. The Shaanxi provincial civil affairs bureau then stepped in and issued an order banning the study group.

"The 'Application to Establish a Shaanxi Union Rights Defense Representative Congress' is a strongly worded demand by the working class to the Party to strengthen its leadership over the working class," Zhao wrote in his application letter to the ACFTU.

In it, he argued that the study group was necessary to prevent exploitation of the workers by factory management.

The Hong Kong-based rights group China Labor Bulletin (CLB), which has long criticized the ACFTU as being mired in bureaucracy and unable to function as a body that represents China's workforce, said that, in response, "union officials obfuscated and claimed there was a limit to what they could do."

But behind closed doors, they were moving quickly to make sure that Zhao's influence was quashed as soon as possible.

"They were far more concerned with trying to neutralize the organizing ability of the lawyer-turned-labor rights advocate, Zhao Dongmin," CLB said in a news item on its website.

"The union officials at the meeting all stressed that Zhao Dongmin should not be allowed to represent the workers or get directly involved in their struggles," it said.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Ding Xiao. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

>> Original Source

By Radio Free Asia
September 07, 2010

Police assist authorities in a forcible land grab in southern China.

Several hundred policemen stormed farmland in a southern Chinese village on Tuesday, bulldozing crops and beating and detaining villagers, according to witnesses.

The police officers, who donned riot gear during the raid, were dispatched by authorities to appropriate land in Shuangren village, outside of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region's Liuzhou city.

Villager Chen Qinglong said his mother Qin Shuiying was taken away by police in the clash.

"The [Liuzhou] city authorities ordered the forced land seizure today, sending an army of 500 security personnel, police officers, fire fighters, and armed police, along with 50 bulldozers," Chen said.

"We knew they would come and waited for them on our land from 4 a.m.," he added.

"A villager got beaten up. My mother was detained. All the arrested were taken to Liuzhou city."

Another villager named Qin Shujin provided more details of the attack.

"Police took two dozen people into custody in Liuzhou. They were carrying a large banner on the way to the township government office when they were stopped by police. The two banner carriers were beaten up and injured," he said.

Villagers outnumbered

Qin said that police targeted all villagers, regardless of whether or not they had signed an earlier compensation agreement.

"The bulldozers leveled everything in their way, no matter whether you signed or not, or took the compensation money or not," Qin said.

"When they came, we tried to argue with their bosses, asking 'Why are you destroying our crops?' But the land was surrounded by police and we had no way to deal with them," he said.

A third villager, named Liao Binfeng, from nearby Luorong township said villagers were completely outnumbered by authorities during the confrontation.

"There were about 400 to 500 people, including police, there. They had dogs to guard at the entrance of the road," Liao said.

"A villager was beaten up. I don't know his condition. About 30 people have been arrested. They arrested them this morning and have not released them yet," he said.

One employee who answered the telephone at the Luorong township office said he knew nothing about the incident before hanging up.

But another staffer at the same office initially denied force had been used to occupy the farmers' land and said no one had been arrested in the incident.

"We didn't grab the land. We did no such thing," she said.

When told that photos showing the clash had been obtained, the woman said she was unaware of the events.

"I don't know about this. I did not personally see this incident."

Land sale unapproved

Villagers say the Liuzhou city government made a secret arrangement in September last year with Shuangren village chief Qin Jianlin to secretly sell nearly 10,000 mu (1,650 acres) of their land to a company for commercial development as an automobile factory.

Villager Chen Xinlong said the Luorong township government claimed at the time that it had received provincial permission to obtain the land for sale.

The Guangxi Provincial Bureau of Land Management later told village representatives that the land trade was not approved and was thus illegal.

Chen said that after reports about the sale surfaced, the township government initially promised the 300 residents of Shuangren village 500,000 yuan (U.S. $73,000) each in compensation, but eventually forced the villagers to sign an agreement for a reduced amount.

"According to the state law, the money for land compensation has to go directly to the farmers' accounts. But this did not happen," Chen said.

"[The township government] used an official's name to open a new account. All the compensation went to that account and then was distributed from that account to the farmers. They made the decisions about who they wanted to give money to and how much they wanted to give," he said.

Chen said the villagers are all dependent on farming the land, but will be unable to make ends meet now that the government has damaged their crops.

Another villager who asked to remain anonymous said the deal was kept secret to prevent disclosure of the amount of money involved.

"They didn't publicize the deal. The developers paid 310,000,000 yuan (U.S. $45.6 million) for the tract of land. But we didn't get the money--that went to the village chief. The chief gave us money according to his own will."

A third villager said Qin's cousin, who is not a resident of the village, also received money because he is the deputy director of the township land expropriation office.

"The village chief and his two cousins amassed 1,500,000 yuan (U.S. $221,000) in total in the deal," the villager said.

Qin Jianlin hung up when telephoned for comment on the clash and his involvement in the land deal.

Land disputes common

Profits from new property developments in China can swell local coffers and boost tax revenues to the central government in Beijing.

China's "Regulation on Petitions," issued by the State Council, states that petitioners may voice their grievances to higher-level government offices.

But those trying to do so are frequently held in unofficial detention centers, or "black jails," before being taken back to their hometowns.

Many petitioners have spent years pursuing complaints against local officials over disputes including the loss of homes and farmland, unpaid wages and pensions, and alleged mistreatment by the authorities.

Few report getting a satisfactory result, and most say they have become a target of further harassment by the authorities.

Land disputes have spread across China in recent years, with local people often complaining that they receive only minimal compensation when the government sells tracts to developers in lucrative property deals or evicts them from their homes in downtown areas.

Attempts to occupy disputed property frequently result in violent clashes, as police and armed gangs are brought in to enforce the will of local officials.

Original reporting by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service and RFA's Cantonese service. Translated by Ping Chen and Shiny Li. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

>> Original Report

By Frank Ching | The Japan Times
September 3, 2010

The only lady vice minister in China's Foreign Ministry is Fu Ying, a well-coiffed, mild-mannered 57-year-old, an ethnic Mongol who speaks flawless English, who has served as ambassador to the Philippines, Australia and Britain, and who is known for her media skills.

A few weeks ago, those skills were fully on display when she gave an interview to Die Zeit, a highly respected German weekly newspaper. Not surprisingly, the subject of human rights in China was discussed. Interestingly, the subject of human rights was introduced not by the interviewer but by Fu.

Asked to compare Europe and Asia today, the veteran diplomat recalled that three decades ago when she was an interpreter "human rights was always on the menu in our dialogues." Now, she said, "China has moved on, and the world has moved on. So much has changed."

"In 2004," she said, "protection of human rights was incorporated into China's constitution." Yet, "European delegations still come to China with the same old attitude. They accuse and interrogate China in a condescending way. I really don't hear much mentioning of China's human rights progress."

It isn't clear if she is genuinely puzzled. Of course, putting protection of human rights into the constitution was a positive gesture -- one that was reported by the international media. But the question is the extent to which this has made a difference on the ground.

The Chinese Constitution is full of high-sounding principles and declares unambiguously that China is a country governed by law. But the promise in the constitution has yet to be realized.

For example, after the Lhasa riots in 2008, defendants were unable to be represented by lawyers of their choice. Lawyers who volunteered their services were warned to stay away.

The current Chinese Constitution, promulgated in 1982, guarantees the Chinese people a host of rights, which include "freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration."

Indeed, similar rights were proclaimed even before the formal establishment of the People's Republic of China on Oct. 1, 1949. On Sept. 29, 1949, two days before the PRC came into existence, a Common Program was published that became the temporary constitution. Article 5 of that document declared that the people "shall have freedom of thought, speech, publication, assembly, association, correspondence, person, domicile, change of domicile, religious belief and the freedom of holding processions and demonstrations."

But where are these rights today? Surely, Fu cannot say such words were forced on China by the West. These were China's own words.

Indeed, as the foreword to Charter 08 -- a dissident manifesto issued two years ago and whose main author, Liu Xiaobo, is serving an 11-year prison term -- put it, China "has a constitution but no constitutional government."

Fu was careful not to name any names in the interview, but she characterized people like Liu Xiaobo as "political extremists" who "put forward demands impossible to meet." Liu and other signatories were simply exercising the freedom of speech guaranteed by the constitution. How can that be construed as making demands impossible to meet and deserving of imprisonment?

However, the lady diplomat was not totally negative. She divided China's attitude toward human rights into three chronological stages, beginning with the end of the Qing dynasty, when prominent scholars tried to reform the Chinese feudal system. At the time, she said, "Westerners were unwilling to make Chinese their equals in human rights. The first wave of China's human rights movement went nowhere."

The second wave, she said, was actually embraced by the Communist Party, but because of the blockade against China instituted in 1950, "many Western concepts including human rights were rejected."

Now, she said, China is in the third -- and most successful -- wave. Many laws have been introduced such as the Labor Law and the Property Law, and while they may not be perfect, they "still represent a big step forward in the development of China's legal system."

China, she said, is not rejecting the idea of human rights but is "learning gradually and absorbing ideas that can be planted and grown on Chinese soil."

So, while human rights are still regarded as an alien concept that should not be imposed on China, there are aspects that can be transplanted that may flower on Chinese soil. Such a theory does not explain why rights promised to the Chinese people more than 60 years ago remain nothing but promises.

>> Original Source

By Radio Free Asia
August 31, 2010

The beating of an exposer of fraud highlights recent attacks against members of the Chinese media.

A leading Chinese campaigner against academic fraud and fake remedies is recovering as police investigate a brutal attack against him in a Beijing alleyway, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Peng Jian, the legal representative of "science cop" Fang Zhouzi, said his client was recovering well after he was attacked over the weekend by two men, one of whom sprayed anesthetic in his face, and the other of whom tried to beat him with a hammer.

"The thugs planned to have one of them knock me unconscious with the anesthetic and the other one beat me to death with the iron hammer," Fang said in a dramatic account of the attack carried on his personal blog and translated by Hong Kong-based blogger Roland Soong.

The attack took place near Fang Zhouzi's home at around 5 p.m. Aug. 29 after he had finished an interview with Liaoning TV about Taoist master Li Yi, whose claims of superhuman feats of endurance he had investigated.

"Learning from the attack on Fang Xuanchang, I reacted quickly, ran fast, and escaped," Fang Zhouzi wrote, referring to a similar attack on June 24 that left science journalist Fang Xuanchang hospitalized.

The Beijing municipal public security bureau posted on its sina.com microblog: "The police are investigating the attack on Fang and will reveal the investigation results to the public."

Journalists targeted

Chinese journalists and media are increasingly finding themselves the targets of threats and attempts at censorship by private-sector companies as well as government officials if their reporting damages vested interests, overseas rights groups say.

Paris-based press freedom group Reporter Without Borders (RSF) slammed the Beijing police investigation into the attack on Fang Xuanchang as "desultory."

Both Fang Zhouzi and Fang Xuanchang said they are convinced the attacks were acts of revenge by persons they had discredited during the course of their professional lives.

"This was obviously retaliation by someone whom I had once exposed," Fang Zhouzi wrote of his attackers. "They waited near near my residence for a long time until they seized this moment."

"I hope that the case will be solved quickly, along with the case of Fang Xuanchang."

Peng said Fang Zhouzi had also received threatening texts and phone calls about a month before the attack, which resembled in its methods the earlier attack on Fang Xuanchang.

"Fang Xuanchang was attacked by two thugs who hit him on the head with a hammer," Peng said. "Fang Zhouzi was also attacked by two thugs who tried to hit him on the head with a hammer."

"[Like the previous attack], they also used anesthetic, and used extreme force, and didn't say a word. Both attacks appeared calculated to kill their target."

Peng said he believed the attack might be linked to Fang Zhouzi's campaigning against a controversial surgical operation known as "Xiao's procedure," which claims to restore bladder control to people with spina bifida or spinal cord injury.

Fang Zhouzi had recently published an article in the U.S.-based Journal of Urology, which concluded that Xiao's procedure was ineffective, and highlighted the cases of patients who had complained about it on his campaign website.

Xiao's procedure is designed to treat neurogenic bladder due to spina bifida, or spinal cord injury, and has been undergoing clinical trials in China, the United States, and a few other countries.

Response to articles

Xu Youyu, a former professor at the China Academy of Social Sciences, called the attack on Fang Zhouzi a serious incident, but not an uncommon phenomenon in today's China.

"Firstly, he is a courageous and genuine person who works to overturn fraud, fakery, and corruption in academic circles," Xu said.

"I don't think he will be put off by these threats. I am confident that he will continue his work."

Fang Xuanchang also said he believes that the attacks on himself and Fang Zhouzi were the direct result of articles they had written.

"Right now, it doesn't look as if there could be any other reason," Fang Xuanchang said. "This is revenge because we have angered someone with the articles we have written."

"At a personal level, [we] haven't made any enemies, so it's purely the articles. I think we can rule out other possibilities."

Some Chinese media carried front-page coverage of the attack on Fang, with netizens responding in shock and outrage and calling on police to find the attackers.

Original reporting in Cantonese by Hai Nan and in Mandarin by Xin Yu. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.

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