Anti-Mao Voices from the Grassroots in China

The recent wave of Party-song-singing in Chongqing left an impression of a return of Culture Revolution, and it seems to last. Meanwhile, the national critique on Mao Zedong is spreading and becoming sharp.

82-year-old Beijing renowned scholar Mao Yushi published a 5000-word “Return Mao』s True Face” on Apr. 26 on Caing.com, itemizing Mao』s sins such as chasing power and indulging prostitutes. Yushi said Mao would sooner or later face justice.

4th week: China arrests 30 church members

BEIJING (BP)– For the fourth week in a row, a Chinese “illegal” church refused Sunday to follow government orders not to meet, and this time at least 31 of its members were arrested.

Once again, reporters were blocked from the site.

The arrests of the members of Beijing’s Shouwang Church in a public square came after church leaders made clear in the preceding days that they would not buckle to pressure from the Communist Party. More than 160 were arrested the first week they tried to meet outdoors, about 50 were arrested the second week and approximately 40 on the third week, Easter Sunday. The declining number of arrests likely is due to the government placing so many other members under house arrest, which prevents them from even leaving their homes. On Easter Sunday, more than 500 church members — including every church staff member, lay leader and choir member — were under house arrest.

China Has ‘Highly Repressive’ Press, says by Freedom House

The level of press freedom in the Asia-Pacific region has fallen, with conditions in China “highly repressive” and with extensive state and Communist party controls also evident in Laos and Vietnam, U.S. human rights group Freedom House said in an annual survey Monday.

The region is also home to two of the survey’s poorest performers, Burma and North Korea, it said, citing a  modest decline in the average score for the Asia-Pacific in the group’s latest annual media freedom index assessing the degree of print, broadcast, and Internet freedom.

Beijing Rights Lawyer Suffers Memory Loss After Ten-Day Detention

A Beijing human rights attorney who had been missing for ten days, was released by authorities from a mental hospital in an extremely weak physical and mental state. He couldn’t walk, had pain all over, and couldn’t fully remember what had happened to him.

What Jin Guanghong, a Beijing rights lawyer, could recall after his ten-day ordeal, was that on April 8 or 9, while walking on the street, he was abducted and taken to a detention center, and later a mental hospital. He said he was beaten and vaguely remembers being tied to a bed and given injections and medicine. He then held a hunger strike but was fed through a tube in his nose, according to an April 22 report by China Rights Defense Alliance.