Recently in Tiananmen Massacre Category
By Susanne Beyer | SPIEGEL Online International (Germany)
November 17, 2011
Chinese poet Liao Yiwu recently moved to Germany, where his books are best-sellers. His self-imposed exile has allowed him to finally publish his memoir, which reveals the abuses and torture he suffered during his years in prison. The book is a shocking indictment of the Chinese justice system.
The old man seemed unflappable as he spoke. Sitting in a wheelchair, his wooden cane always close at hand and his thick, silvery gray shock of hair as neatly parted as ever, he talked about China, presenting himself as someone who knew the place well, having been there 12 or 15 times. "I admire what China has accomplished since Mao Zedong's death in 1976," he said.
But he didn't stop there. He continued on to say that, while it's true China isn't a democracy, the country has nonetheless managed to create an economic boom for itself, with the result that "hardly anyone living in China today could say they aren't doing better now than at any other point in their lives." This is "an enormous accomplishment," he added, and Chinese communism has been "successful." Then he raised his index finger, and, stabbing it in the air, said, in a reference to a famous quote by the Prussian king Frederick the Great: "They have the right to find their salvation in their own way."
This 92-year-old man wasn't just chatting by a fireplace somewhere, nor was he just anyone. The man in question was former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, celebrated as the grandfather of the nation. And Schmidt said all this as a guest on Germany's most important talk show, sitting across from Günther Jauch, the country's most respected talk-show host. At his side was the man who has set his sights on becoming the next chancellor, Peer Steinbrück. The talk-show host said nothing at all in response to Schmidt's theories, but quickly changed the subject. Steinbrück, for his part, suggested the theories were "in need of some fleshing out," then praised Western-style democratic rule of law in a roundabout way.
Schmidt got away with his statements without criticism, in front of more than 5 million viewers, and with applause from the studio audience.
An Interesting Conversation Partner
The former chancellor certainly appeared sprightly on that talk show three weeks ago, and considering the fact that he seems to be constantly out and about and meeting people, perhaps he could -- though it's just a suggestion -- spare a little time for someone who might make an interesting conversation partner: the friendly 53-year-old Chinese man who has written the year's most brutal and shocking book, and insists every word in it is true.
The man is Liao Yiwu and the book lays out his recollections from nearly four years spent in Chinese prisons, following his arrest and conviction for writing a poem called "Massacre" in response to the bloody suppression of the 1989 demonstrations at Beijing's Tiananmen Square. His latest book, published in German as "Für ein Lied und hundert Lieder" ("For a Song and a Hundred Songs"), is an eyewitness report from the epicenter of human rights abuse, a volume that overflows with blood, urine and excrement.
"Admiration" for China? "The right to find their salvation in their own way?" Liao Yiwu was astonished when told about the former chancellor's statements. He asked whether Schmidt really uttered those precise words, then shook his head.
On Thursday of last week, Liao had just arrived in Munich after a book tour in the United States, in order to accept the Geschwister Scholl literary prize for his prison memoir on Nov. 14. He found his way, exhausted and shivering in the cold, to a restaurant in Munich's English Garden for this interview, but when he heard Schmidt's words quoted, he was suddenly wide awake.
Anyone who talks that way is afraid of jeopardizing trade with China, he said, but such people bring "bad thoughts into the world." If trade is more important than human rights and dignity, "then the end of the world has arrived." And no one should deceive themselves about the Communist Party, he said. "It has a golden body and two faces. It shows the Chinese people its fierce face, and the West its pleasant one."
Multiple Versions
Liao Yiwu described that fierce side in his book. He was forbidden to publish it in China or abroad, but S. Fischer Verlag, a German publishing house, was interested in releasing it this summer. Another of Liao's books, published in English as "The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up," had been well received in Germany two years before. In that book, Liao records his conversations with China's poor and disenfranchised, the toilet cleaners and migrant workers, and those persecuted for their political views.
Liao was forced to write multiple versions of his prison memoir. The first version, hand-written and his only copy of the work, was confiscated by the police. So was the second. For the third version, he was able to write on a computer and save back-up copies. After investing so many years in the work, Liao was determined to see it published in Germany. He fled China for Berlin in early July, and the book was released later the same month.
His escape saved not only the book, but himself as well, Liao said. If he had stayed in China, the book couldn't have been published. And if it had been published, he would have been put on trial. And then it would have started all over again.
'Open Fire'
Liao writes in his book that he was a "romantic" before he went to prison, a successful young poet in China during the 1980s, talented, but naïve and apolitical.
The turning point for him came on June 4, 1989, with the massacre at Tiananmen Square. The words poured out of him, and "Massacre" was the result.
Open fire, open fire, open fire
Shoot women, students and children
Shoot workers, teachers and vendors
Riddle them with bullets
[...]
Wipe out the flowers, forest, school campuses, love, and the pure air
Shoot, shoot and shoot...
I feel good and I feel high
Liao's taped recording of the poem circulated among dissidents. In 1990, he was arrested and taken to an interrogation prison. "They exposed my head, then my body. The (prisoners appointed as guards) examined the clothing they'd torn from my body, centimeter by centimeter, then piled it up nearby. Only then did they examine my mouth, my armpits and the soles of my feet. I clutched both my empty fists at my sides, then moved instinctively to pull up the pants that weren't there, when their leader ordered me to stick out my bottom -- and, with the utmost care, inserted a bamboo stick into my anus."
"I hadn't been exposed to the gaze of others this way, without a stitch of clothing on my body, since I was a baby. The exhibition lasted about seven minutes, but it was longer than an entire lifetime ... God damn it, I hadn't thought the first blow would already bring me to my knees."
Beaten with Batons
He was kept in a cell near the latrines, and from there taken to his interrogations. The guards beat him with electric batons, one time delivering 100 blows in a single interrogation, another time for 20 minutes without pause. They cuffed his hands behind his back, once for 23 days straight. The handcuffs were often too tight, causing his hands to swell and the metal to dig into his skin.
There was a clear hierarchy among the prisoners, about 20 of them were held in "a bit more than 20 square meters" (215 square feet). The higher-ranking prisoners were waited on by the lower-ranking ones. There were the "pleasure servants," feminine young men with pretty faces who sang and danced for the higher-ranking prisoners, slept naked beside them and performed sexual favors. Then there were the torturers, merciless with their defenseless victims.
A so-called "menu" circulated among the prisoners, offering 45 "dishes," each a description of a different method of torture. "Twice-roasted meat, served on a steel plate: First, the victim's naked back is pricked at random with bamboo needles, causing thousands of punctures. These are strewn with salt, then the entire thing taped up in bandages. Once the blood has clotted, the bandages are torn off."
Liao Yiwu left prison a broken man, and China's enemy. In one poem, he describes his "fatherland" as a "country of criminals" and exclaims, "I want to see you in prison. I want you, too, to see how it feels to have your hands bound at your back." He asks whether the country wants "for your people to love you like a prostitute loves her client."
No More Potatoes
Writing gives him dignity. He's no longer afraid. And life is about survival.
He feels lost even during the days in Munich leading up to the acceptance of his award, although he has friends here with him. But how can he feel joyful, given his history? How can he, when a friend he has felt closely connected to for 30 years is in prison? Author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, one of the individuals who signed the Charter 08 human rights manifesto, was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years' imprisonment for "inciting subversion of state power." Liao Yiwu thinks of his friend every day. Is he being tortured with electric batons this very minute?
At the restaurant in Munich, Liao orders a fish stew, but leaves half of it uneaten. "It's the potatoes," says the friend sitting next to him. "There were always potatoes in prison. Now he can't force them down."
Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein
By Sharon LaFraniere, Michael Wines and Edward Wong | The New York Times
October 27, 2011
Political censorship in this authoritarian state has long been heavy-handed. But for years, the Communist Party has tolerated a creeping liberalization in popular culture, tacitly allowing everything from popular knockoffs of "American Idol"-style talent shows to freewheeling microblogs that let media groups prosper and let people blow off steam.
Now, the party appears to be saying "enough."
Whether spooked by popular uprisings worldwide, a coming leadership transition at home or their own citizens' increasingly provocative tastes, Communist leaders are proposing new limits on media and Internet freedoms that include some of the most restrictive measures in years.
The most striking instance occurred Tuesday, when the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ordered 34 major satellite television stations to limit themselves to no more than two 90-minute entertainment shows each per week, and collectively 10 nationwide. They are also being ordered to broadcast two hours of state-approved news every evening and to disregard audience ratings in their programming decisions. The ministry said the measures, to go into effect on Jan. 1, were aimed at rooting out "excessive entertainment and vulgar tendencies."
The restrictions arrived as party leaders signaled new curbs on China's short-message, Twitter-like microblogs, an Internet sensation that has mushroomed in less than two years into a major -- and difficult to control -- source of whistle-blowing. Microbloggers, some of whom have attracted millions of followers, have been exposing scandals and official malfeasance, including an attempted cover-up of a recent high-speed rail accident, with astonishing speed and popularity.
On Wednesday, the Communist Party's Central Committee called in a report on its annual meeting for an "Internet management system" that would strictly regulate social network and instant-message systems, and punish those who spread "harmful information." The focus of the meeting, held this month, was on culture and ideology.
Analysts and employees inside the private companies that manage the microblogs say party officials are pressing for increasingly strict and swift censorship of unapproved opinions. Perhaps most telling, the authorities are discussing requiring microbloggers to register accounts with their real names and identification numbers instead of the anonymous handles now in wide use.
Although China's most famous bloggers tend to use their own names, requiring everyone to do so would make online whistle-blowing and criticism of officialdom -- two public services not easily duplicated elsewhere -- considerably riskier.
It would "definitely be harmful to free speech," said one microblog editor who refused to be named for fear of reprisal.
This newly buttoned-down approach coincides with a planned shift in the top leadership of the ruling party and government, an intricate process that will last for the next year. During such a period, tolerance for outspokenness outside official channels tends to shrink, and bureaucrats eager for promotion show their conservative stripes.
The crackdown also follows popular uprisings across the Middle East that appear to have given China's leaders pause regarding their own hold on absolute power. In the view of some, it also tracks the influence in China's ruling hierarchy of hard-liners like Zhou Yongkang, the public security chief who helped preside over the suppression of riots by ethnic Uighurs in western China's Xinjiang region.
On Tuesday, Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that Mr. Zhou was urging authorities "to solve problems regarding social integrity, morality and Internet management" and that he had called for "the early introduction of laws and regulations on the management of the Internet," among other things.
Nobody outside China's closeted leadership knows the true reason for the maneuvers, beyond a general and intangible sense of uneasiness over the degree to which freer speech is taking root here.
The microblogs, or weibos, are perhaps the prime example. In the last year, weibos have become the forum of choice for Chinese to pass on news and gossip about scandals involving government and the elite. The two largest, run by the privately held Sina Corporation and Tencent Holdings, each count more than 200 million registered users.
In the face of official censorship, their weibos are filled with salacious tales of official malfeasance, such as a July frenzy -- photographs included -- over a Yunnan Province city official's sex orgy. Industry insiders say the principal weibo (pronounced way-bwah) regulators, based in Beijing and the Shenzhen Communist Party Internet offices, have been assailed by government leaders elsewhere for allowing the scandals to spread online unchecked.
In fact, the government could easily shut down microblogs. Officials disconnected the entire Internet in Xinjiang for 10 months after the ethnic riots there in 2009. But their growing popularity makes that highly unlikely. The number of users has quadrupled in a single year.
Song Jianwu, dean of the school of journalism and communication at China University of Political Science and Law, said Chinese leaders accepted the need for such outlets for expression. But in the case of weibos, he added, "they are also concerned that this safety valve could turn into an explosive device."
He said the government might gradually require more and more users to register under their real names, while demanding that operators monitor posts more closely. "I think they will do it in a step-by-step fashion," he said. "We hope and we have suggested that they will do it in manner that is not antagonistic."
Some changes are already evident. Besides the in-house monitors who already scan posts for forbidden topics, operators in recent months have bolstered "rumor refutal" departments, staffed by editors, to investigate and knock down information deemed false.
Top officials, including Liu Qi, the party secretary of Beijing, have held publicized visits to microblog companies, sometimes accompanied by popular microbloggers, in which he urged people to uphold social order and the proper ideology -- and implying that their own status in official eyes would depend on their cooperation.
State restrictions on television are murkier. The rules ostensibly apply to CCTV-1, the general programming channel of Central China Television, but not to CCTV-3, which specializes in arts and entertainment, according to a report in the English-language edition of Global Times, an official newspaper.
Many people in the industry have interpreted the decree and earlier measures by central officials as attempts to bolster the ratings of CCTV against the onslaught of entertainment shows produced by satellite stations, which have been wildly successful. Last year, officials told producers of "If You Are the One," a popular dating show on Jiangsu Satellite Television, to tone down the program. Last month, the authorities suspended a talent show on Hunan Satellite Television, "Super Girl," for exceeding a broadcast time limit.
Many industry observers said the show may have been offensive for other reasons, including prompting home viewers to show support for their favorite contestants through cellphone texting, an action akin to voting. The shutdown of "Super Girl" was taken as a warning throughout the television industry and presaged the new rules.
Bill Bishop, a business consultant and media industry analyst in Beijing, wrote on his blog, DigiCha, that the new limits could drive television viewers to look for entertainment on the Internet. On the other hand, he added, officials might be preparing restrictions for online video content. "The trend in China appears to be towards more, not less, regulation," he wrote. "Investors may want to consider factoring in greater regulatory risk."
By Radio Free Asia
July 01, 2011
China holds lavish celebrations to mark the anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party.
China's ruling Communist Party celebrated its 90th anniversary on Friday amid mass revolutionary song contests, live television galas, and huge expenditure on flower beds, sculptures, and fountains.
But netizens and political activists said the Party continued to suppress calls for political reform and greater accountability, jailing anyone who tried to oppose its rule and silencing public dissent in the name of "public harmony."
As more than 100,000 contestants took part in competitions to render the revolutionary songs of the Mao era, cinemas got ready to screen a revolutionary blockbuster propaganda movie which is expected to generate 800 million yuan (U.S. $123.8 million) at the box office this summer.
But Beijing-based opposition activist He Depu said he, together with all the fellow activists he knows, were under tight surveillance for the duration of the anniversary celebrations.
"We are all under guard here," He said. "Two national security police began watching me [on Wednesday], sitting downstairs."
"If I have to go and do something they come with me ... I have to go in their car. I'm not allowed to go out by myself," he said.
He said the restrictions were directly linked to the Party's 90th anniversary.
"It's the Party's 90th birthday, and they're afraid I'll get in their way," He said, adding that his residential neighborhood had held a cultural and arts performance on Wednesday in honor of the anniversary.
"They were all singing revolutionary songs," he said.
Propaganda slammed
Many Chinese netizens have slammed the amount of official propaganda surrounding the celebrations, with some penning an open letter to the Chinese Communist Party asking it to stop sending out the same old message, because it was harming the government's image.
Letter author Zhao Shilin, a professor at the China Minorities University in Beijing, called on the Party to remember that its power as a political party had been given to it by the people.
But online satire of the anniversary was rife, including a spoof video hitting out at the order to cinemas to screen propaganda history movie "Beginning of the Great Revival" to coincide with the anniversary.
The welter of criticism earned China's netizens a public slap on the wrist in one official newspaper.
"The bitterness and anger currently spreading online has drawn concern from many people," wrote two Party-backed academics in an editorial in the Global Times.
"People are still more willing to slam the government for, mostly, no reason," it said.
"When such attitudes perfectly matched the morbid psychology of the society, those irritable 'opinion leaders' were hailed as 'heroes' by the public," said the article, signed by "a professor and a PhD candidate at the Party School of the Central Committee of CPC."
"No government on the planet would give a green light to this," the article said.
'A monopoly on resources'
Retired Shandong University professor Sun Wenguang said the Party seemed to have spent lavishly on celebrations up and down the country.
"As the ruling Party, they have a monopoly on all resources," Sun said. "They also control the media, the arts, and cultural industries, as well as the right of leadership."
"They are celebrating the birthday of their own monopoly on power and the plunder of the country's resources," Sun said.
China still bans any meaningful political opposition, handing lengthy jail terms to anyone setting up a political party and striking non-Party candidates from local election lists.
The wife of Xie Fulin, an activist sentenced last year to six years' imprisonment for his involvement in the China Pan-blue Alliance party, said she recently visited him in jail.
"They have even stepped up surveillance over him in there," Jin Yan said on Thursday. "They will only let one person visit him and it has to be a family member. They won't let a second person in."
"It was only this visit that they started doing this."
A turbulent history
The Chinese Communist Party emerged in the 1920s out of a small group of intellectuals, going on to fight against the Japanese, and forcing out the Nationalist KMT government of Chiang Kai-shek to found the People's Republic in 1949.
As well as lavish parties, flower displays, and revolutionary song concerts up and down the country, local news reports suggested China's first aircraft carrier was scheduled to begin sea trials on Friday.
However, the millions of deaths in the famine of the Great Leap Forward (1959-1960) and the widespread political turmoil, deaths, and persecution of the Anti-Rightist Campaigns of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) receive scant mention in official accounts of the Party's history in print or on-screen this year.
Deng Xiaoping's economic reform launched an economic boom following the death of supreme leader Mao Zedong in 1976, but repeated calls for political reform and democratization have been violently suppressed or ignored.
China now sees thousands of mass protests and riots around the country every year, sparked by complaints of official corruption, and abuse of power, manifesting in forced evictions and land grabs, illegal detention and harassment, and a growing gap between rich and poor.
Reported by Qiao Long for RFA's Mandarin service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie.
>> Original Source
By Ben Blanchard - REUTERS | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
Jun 04, 2011
The United States and Taiwan pressed China to release dissidents and fully address the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations around Tiananmen Square 22 years ago, as China tightens the noose on rights activists.
The 1989 protests that clogged Beijing's Tiananmen Square and spread to other cities remain a taboo topic for the ruling Communist Party, all the more so this year following online calls for an Arab-style "jasmine revolution" in China.
The events of more than two decades ago continue to affect international perceptions of China, now the world's number two economy and increasingly active on the international stage.
The State Department said China must release all those still jailed for their participation in the 1989 protests.
"We ask the Chinese government to provide the fullest possible public accounting of those killed, detained or missing," deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.
At least five people remain in jail for joining the protests.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei, in a statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency, said the U.S. comments "ignored facts and groundlessly accused the Chinese government, (which) is a rude interference in China's internal affairs and its judicial sovereignty."
"We urge the U.S. side to abandon its political bias and rectify wrong practices to avoid disturbing China-U.S. relations."
The president of democratic Taiwan, the island China claims as its own and has never renounced the use of force to recover, said Beijing should follow Taipei's example and reform politically.
"As we look back upon the June 4th incident, we urgently hope the mainland Chinese authorities will have the courage to undertake political reforms and promote the development of freedom, democracy, human rights, and rule of law," President Ma Ying-jeou said in a statement.
On Saturday, Tiananmen Square was packed with tourists as normal, with no obvious signs that already tight security had been stepped up significantly.
Some roads in central Beijing did have greater numbers of police on them. Police checked some cars on at least one section of the city's main interior ring road.
"I didn't agree with the method of the protest, making a disturbance on the square," said a 60-year-old Beijing resident who gave her family name as Chen. "But I think there should be a way for people to express what's on their mind."
FASTING FOR THE DAY
Dissidents said controls over them had been strengthened.
"I can't come out today. I've been kept at home. But I'll be fasting for the day, like I do every June 4 anniversary," said Zhou Duo.
Zhou was one of the four activists in 1989 who negotiated with troops to evacuate Tiananmen Square of student-protesters, avoiding bloodshed on the square itself on June 4. He was later jailed for his role in the protests.
"Of course, sooner or late June 4 will be reassessed and rehabilitated. That's inevitable. History can never be completely erased."
Zhang Xianling, who lost her son in the Tiananmen protests, said she had been allowed out to visit her son's grave, but was being followed and was not allowed to go as a group with other bereaved parents, as she has done in the past.
"It shows that even after all these years, China is still limiting human rights," Zhang said.
Later in the day, tens of thousands are expected to flock to a downtown park in Hong Kong to hold a candlelight vigil that drew about 150 thousand people last year.
Hong Kong, a former British colony that reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 with a promise of a high degree of autonomy, has remained a beacon for the overseas Chinese pro-democracy movement.
After the crackdown, the government called the movement a "counter revolutionary" plot, but has more recently referred to it as a "political disturbance."
Recent unrest in Inner Mongolia and explosions in two provinces sparked by social grievances have also ruffled authorities as the leadership prepares to hand over power to a new generation at a Party Congress next year.
"Traditionally in the one to two years before any Party congress, the leadership is very stubborn about maintaining law and order," said Willy Lam, a Hong Kong-based China watcher.
(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley, Ken Wills and K.J. Kwon in Beijing, Paul Eckert in Washington, James Pomfret and Xavier Ng in Hong Kong, and Jonathan Standing in Taipei; Editing by Robert Birsel)
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