2. Large wave of resignation from the Chinese Communist Party is happening
More than 35 million Chinese have quit the CCP till Apr. 2008, people are continue quitting at a rate of 44,000 to 56,000 per day in April 2008.
- China: 35 Million Chinese Quit the Communist Party
10.Videos: Tiananmen Square Massacre - June. 4, 1989
Thousands of students shot to death by tanks and soldiers on Tiananmen square in capital city Beijing in 1989
Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
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HONG KONG—The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) has issued a press release criticizing South China Media for firing a reporter who had worked on a feature story about the 1989 June 4th Tiananmen Square Massacre.
According to Mak Yin-ting, chair of HKJA, the incident represented a step backward for Hong Kong media, who she believes to have stepped up “self-censorship” in order to avoid displeasing the regime in China.
HKJA called on South China Media to apologize for the firing.
Esquire magazine, published by South China Media, withdrew a feature story by the journalist, Daisy Chu. According to the press release by HKJA, they told her the articles were “seditious.” Ms. Chu disagreed with this and publicized her views on the Internet. She was fired shortly afterward, on June 29.
Mak said that this was the first time a reporter had been fired over disputes about June 4th coverage. “I saw some reporters resign because they disagreed with how the management dealt with June 4th news. However, those are the cases where reporters resigned from their positions themselves.” She also said that the managing editor was fired because of the incident as well.
In their press release, HKJA stated they were worried that the incident could set a dangerous precedent for Hong Kong journalists by discouraging them from working on “topics which are incompatible with the business interests of the owners of media companies.”
According to a July 6 report in the New Zealand Herald, Mak has said earlier this month that Hong Kong media scaled back their reporting of the Tiananmen Massacre during the 10-year anniversary this year. She also said some programs aired on TV appeared to follow the Chinese regime’s line.
Ten years after the Tiananmen Square massacre,10,000 Falun gong practitioners gathered outside China’s central leadership compound in Beijing. They had come to appeal at China’s central appeals office — to appeal for practitioners who had been abused in the city of Tianjin, for thei books, which ahd been banned, and for practitioners all over the country who were being harassed and investigated by the police.
They were met by the Chinese premier, and the arrested practitioners were released. It seemed like the appeal had been successful. But in reality, time was running out, and the brutal crackdown was getting closer and closer.
By Paul Lin 林保華, The Taipei Times, Taiwan, Saturday, Jun 06, 2009-
Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. For 20 years, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has created a mass of lies about what happened and has used China’s economic development to cover up its murderous acts.
Self-styled anti-communist President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has said he has been deeply moved by the CCP’s progress. In stark contrast, the people of Hong Kong have been staging a protest on the Sunday before June 4 each year; this year they also held a candlelight vigil on June 4, which was attended by tens of thousands of people in Victoria Park.
Sunday’s demonstration saw the biggest turnout since 1992, which means that it was the largest since handover. But there was more to the protest than the 20th anniversary of the massacre: Recent actions of the CCP and the Hong Kong government also set off anti-CCP feelings among Hong Kong residents.
First, the CCP has been trying to establish a second power base in Hong Kong to intervene directly in government affairs because it is unsatisfied with the administration’s insistence that “Hong Kong people rule Hong Kong.”
Second, on the eve of Tiananmen Square Massacre memorial services, Chief Executive Donald Tsang (曾蔭權) — under pressure from Beijing — tried to use China’s economic development to gloss over the murderous acts of the CCP, claiming that this represented the opinion of the people of Hong Kong. Tsang immediately apologized, but his comments caused an uproar.
Third, early last month, Hong Kong University Students’ Union chairman Ayo Chan (陳一諤) said at a forum on the Tiananmen Square Massacre that China should rehabilitate the June 4 movement. But he added that the suppression could have been avoided if students had dispersed before the crackdown. Chan also described Beijing’s bloody actions as being “slightly problematic” and said Beijing should not be blamed. As a result, students at the university organized a referendum to recall Chan.
Fourth, during the live talk show City Forum on Radio Television Hong Kong late last month, Stanley Lui (呂智偉), the convener of the Hong Kong Youth Development Network, said the early part of the student movement was patriotic. But he said that when Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人), vice chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, brought donations from Hong Kong to Beijing, the movement changed in character. This reference to support for China’s democratic movement in Hong Kong as a “cash transfer” incensed Hong Kong’s democrats.
As many as 61.2 percent of Hong Kongers now think that the Tiananmen student movement should be rehabilitated, an increase of 12 percentage points compared with last year and the highest figure since 1997.
The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China and the pro-democracy camp consist of moderates and radicals, with the moderates being the mainstream. Although the factions quarrel and pro-China media and politicians take the opportunity to discredit them, they unite at crucial times to stop pro-China lawmakers from changing legislative procedures. They also stage joint protests, because they know who the common enemy is.
The people of Hong Kong are pragmatic and do nothing that strays too far from their goals. Their support for China’s democracy movement is a sincere contribution; they avoid attacking one another in order to make best use of limited resources. They stand up when the values they believe in are in crisis. They did so six years ago when China forced through its National Security Law, and they are doing so now as the truth of the Tiananmen Square Massacre struggles to be heard.
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist, The Boston Globe, USA, June 3, 2009 -
IT IS 20 YEARS since the Tiananmen Square massacre, and China’s communist regime hasn’t budged an inch.
The government has no reason to regret its murderous crackdown during “the political storm at the end of the 1980s,” a foreign-ministry spokesman in Beijing told reporters last month. “China has scored remarkable success in its social and economic development. Facts have proven that the socialist road with Chinese characteristics that we pursue is in the fundamental interests of our people.”
As a euphemism for dictatorial savagery, “the socialist road with Chinese characteristics” may not rise to the level of, say, “Great Leap Forward” or “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.” And certainly the material riches and capitalist bustle that characterize much of China in the 21st century are a far cry from the mass starvation and unspeakable chaos that devastated the country in the 20th. But make no mistake: The junta in Beijing is no kinder or gentler today than it was at Tiananmen 20 years ago, and no less prepared to crush anyone who resists its grip on power.
Perhaps nothing today so exemplifies the totalitarian implacability of China’s rulers as their ruthless persecution of Falun Gong, a quasi-religious discipline of meditation and breathing exercises, combined with moral teachings about truth, compassion, and forbearance. By civilized standards, it is incomprehensible that anything so innocuous and peaceable could provoke bloody repression. But China’s uncivilized government fears any movement it does not control, and Falun Gong – with its uplifting values so different from the regime’s Stalinist ethic – has attracted tens of millions of adherents, independent of the Communist Party.
There is nothing subtle about Beijing’s decade-long campaign to suppress Falun Gong. At www.faluninfo.net/gallery/12, the Falun Dafa Information Center describes several of the torture techniques the government uses to break Falun Gong practitioners. Burning, for example. In hundreds of reported cases, police or labor camp authorities have used cigarettes, car lighters, or red-hot irons to sear Falun Gong believers on their faces, torsos, and genitals .
Other victims have been forced into water dungeons – locked cages immersed in filthy water. “Some water dungeons . . . have sharp spikes protruding on the inside of cramped cages,” the center reports. “Usually, the water dungeons are well-hidden rooms or cells where practitioners are forced to stay for days and nights on end in total darkness. The water is most often extremely filthy, containing garbage and sewage that leaves the victim with festering skin.” Other torture methods include electric shock, brutal forced “feeding” with concentrated salt water or hot pepper oil, and injection of nerve-damaging psychotropic drugs capable of inducing “horrific states of physical pain and mental anguish.”
Independent and third parties have raised numerous alarms about China’s inhumane war on Falun Gong.
The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions has cited reports of “harrowing scenes” of Falun Gong prisoners dying from their treatment in government custody, and noting that “the cruelty and brutality of these alleged acts of torture defy description.” Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have repeatedly highlighted the agonies inflicted on Falun Gong practitioners. So have a handful of supremely courageous Chinese lawyers, among them Gao Zhisheng and Li Heping. In 2007, Canadian attorney David Kilgour, a former prosecutor and member of Parliament, co-authored a detailed report documenting the systematic harvesting of vital organs from imprisoned Falun Gong believers, in order to supply China’s lucrative transplant industry.
All these atrocities, of course, account for only one narrow lane on that “socialist road with Chinese characteristics” that Beijing so adamantly defends. The government of China is no less vicious in its persecution of devout house Christians, of Tibetan Buddhists, of democratic dissidents who seek greater liberty, of journalists who fail to toe the Communist Party line, of the countless inmates enslaved in “re-education through labor” camps, or of women who wish to decide for themselves how many children to have.
Twenty years after the screams and blood and slaughter at Tiananmen Square, the People’s Republic of China is still a great dungeon. “China is first and foremost a repressive regime,” the noted China scholar Ross Terrill has written. “The unchanging key to all Beijing’s policies is that the nation is ruled by a Leninist dictatorship that intends to remain such.” That was the truth in 1989. It remains the truth today.
The Chinese authorities have stepped up curbs on dissenting voices and escalated censorship of activists throughout the country, said Amnesty International today, a day before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.
Roseann Rife, Asia-Pacific Deputy Director at Amnesty International, said:
‘Cutting off communication and preventing movement will not stop activists from fighting for their rights and will not stop people from marking the twentieth anniversary of the crackdown. The quest for truth will only be fuelled by excessive harassment.’
The reports come as survivors of the crackdown Shao Jiang, Dr. Wang Rongfen and Yenhua Wu assemble at Amnesty’s Human Rights Action centre in London to tell their stories (3 June) and lay flowers of commemoration outside the Chinese embassy (4 June). Amnesty members across the UK will hold candlelit vigils and will re-name local squares ‘Tiananmen Square’ as an act of solidarity.
Amnesty International is calling on the Chinese authorities to hold an open and independent inquiry into the 1989 violent military crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square. The organisation is urging people to sign an international online petition, calling for an inquiry, at www.protectthehuman.com/tiananmen.
Over the past few days, Amnesty International has received reports of serious harassment of human rights activists:
In Beijing, HIV/AIDS activist, Wan Yanhai, was forced to travel to the northern city of Changchun ahead of the anniversary. Police officers knocked at his door and requested he leave to ‘avoid possible conflict’. He refused but was forced to board a train to leave the capital with his family.
On 3 June, Zeng Jinyan, carrying her infant daughter, attempted to leave home to attend her mother’s birthday celebration. Five policemen roughly pushed her back inside and told her she was not allowed to leave the house in the coming days.
On 3 June, in Hangzhou, police officers gathered outside the house of human rights activist Wen Kejian and invited him for a ‘talk’.
On 2 June, two police officers and four ‘Neighbourhood/Residential Committee” members were stationed outside the Shanghai-based reproductive rights activist, Mao Hengfeng’s house. They forced her back inside after she attempted to leave and told her she was forbidden to go out until the 4 June anniversary was over.
On 2 June, in Inner Mongolia, internal security police reportedly took away internet writer Tian Yongde at around 3:30pm, while he was visiting his mother in hospital. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
On 1 June, police took up positions outside the houses of lawyers Jiang Tianyong and Li Xiongbing, and other police drive them wherever they go.
At midnight on 2 June, lawyers Lan Zhixue and Tang Jitian were discussing a case in the offices of an NGO. When they were leaving in the early hours of 3 June, police took the two lawyers in for questioning. They have not yet been released.
In order to limit communication between activists and internet campaigners, Chinese authorities have shut down Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail.
Background
Amnesty International has documented at least one hundred cases of activists who have been detained briefly or faced violence from authorities this year as they defended land rights, housing rights and labour rights. Signatories of the Charter 08, a petition calling for legal and political reforms, continue to face questioning.
Recently, lawyers have been threatened with denial of their licences in retaliation for their work on human rights defence cases. On 31 May, at least 18 lawyers still had not received their license renewals by the 6pm deadline. These lawyers, from 11 different law firms, are involved in defending and providing legal aid to Tibetans who were detained in connection with March 2008 protests, Falun Gong practitioners, human rights defenders detained for exercising freedom of expression, families of victims of the Sichuan earthquake, families of victims of the poisoned milk powder scandal, and other public interest cases. Some of them have called for the democratic election of Beijing lawyers Association executive committee members and are thus being targeted.
REMEMBERING TIANANMEN: A conference in Taipei yesterday heard calls for Taiwan’s government to initiate discussions on human rights issues during cross-strait talks
By Loa Iok-sin， STAFF REPORTER，The Taipei Times，Taiwan, Monday, Jun 01, 2009-
It’s about time for Taiwan to become an “exporter of democracy,” speakers at a conference on the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre said in Taipei yesterday, urging the government to discuss human rights issues during cross-strait negotiations.
“China has become an ‘exporter of authoritarianism — not because of any ideological reasons, but for its own national interests,” said Yiong Cong-ziin (楊長鎮), director of the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) Department of Social Movement.
“China has become strikingly similar to what it once criticized as ‘American imperialists,’” Yiong said.
He said that because of its need for oil and other raw materials, as well as for the access to the Indian Ocean, “China is providing support and weapons to authoritarian rulers in Myanmar, Sudan and Zimbabwe.”
CRACKDOWNS
“As the Chinese government cracks down on Tibetan demonstrators in Lhasa, arrests Chinese human rights activists and even allows live organ harvest of Falun Gong practitioners, we cannot pretend that all these do not happen and we only focus on economic exchanges,” Yiong said.
“If we do, we would become a member of China’s ‘axis of evil,’” he said.
Taiwan should seek to become an “exporter of democracy” and bring up human rights issues — such as urging Beijing to give justice to victims of the Tiananmen Massacre — during cross-strait talks, he told the conference.
“Taiwan received much help from the international community — especially from international human rights groups—during our struggle for democracy,” former DDP legislator Lin Cho-shui (林濁水) said.
Several Chinese democracy activists also attended the conference, which was organized by a Chinese democracy movement support group.
JUSTICE DELAYED
“We’re talking about commemorating the Tiananmen Massacre here, but it’s not just about remembering a historic event, because Tiananmen Square is not yet history,” Chinese democracy activist Xue Wei (薛偉) said.
“Justice is yet to be rendered even judged by the lowest standards, many Tiananmen Square demonstrators are still in jail or in exile,” Xue said.
“Remembering Tiananmen Square itself is a resistance to the Chinese Communist Party regime,” he said.
All the speakers expressed their concerns that less people seem to care about democracy in China today as the country evolves into a strong economic power.
“I’ve heard some people attributing China’s economic development to the iron-handed crackdown of demonstrators in Tiananmen Square,” former New Party legislator Yao Li-ming (姚立明) said. “That’s highly inappropriate.”
Yao said he was sorry that President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) seems to have become more ambivalent about the the massacre since he became president.
“I understand that he may have other considerations as a president who represents the entire Republic of China,” Yao said.
“But I do expect him to make a gesture on June 4,” Yao said.
By LESLIE HOOK, The Wall Street Journal, MAY 28, 2009, Beijing -
‘Without this stamp, I can’t practice law,” Jiang Tianyong says as he pulls a leathery booklet out of his shirt pocket. He points to a dog-eared page near the back of the book: A red imprint there grants him permission to practice law in China until May 31. The following page, where his renewal stamp should be, is blank. In a few days he’ll be disbarred.
Mr. Jiang is one of at least a dozen prominent human-rights lawyers across China on the verge of disbarment in what appears to be a clampdown on their practice. Chinese lawyers must renew their credentials every year in May at their local judicial bureau or lawyers association through a perfunctory process known as the “annual exam.” There is no actual test involved — the association or bureau simply summons lawyers to its offices, confirms they have paid their dues and gives them a stamp.
But it doesn’t always work this way. Mr. Jiang’s story is a case in point: A former school teacher from Henan province, last year he led a group of lawyers who volunteered to represent Tibetans after the March 14 riots. That April, the Judicial Bureau sent his firm a warning letter; then the head of his firm asked him to stop taking sensitive cases and giving interviews to foreign media. He acceded to neither request and the Judicial Bureau refused to renew his license until the end of June, leaving him unable to practice for a month. This year he has continued to handle high-profile cases involving Tibetan monks, one of whom was released a few weeks ago as a result of work by Mr. Jiang and his partner. He doesn’t expect his license to be renewed before it expires Sunday.
Last year Mr. Jiang was one of at least three rights lawyers known to have temporarily lost their licenses in this way, but this year there may be many more. I spoke by telephone or in person to 16 human-rights lawyers who have yet to renew their licenses. Some may receive their licenses before the May 31 deadline or shortly afterwards. But none of them will miss the official warning signal.
“Other lawyers and law firms have all been approved,” says lawyer Li Fangping, who recently handled a Tibetan case with Mr. Jiang. “It is only firms and lawyers who take human-rights cases who will have to stop [practicing].”
When asked about this trend, an official at the Beijing Judicial Bureau pointed out that the deadline for license renewal is still some days away. “All lawyers are treated equally,” said Dong Chunjiang, a deputy director at the Judicial Bureau. He disputed the premise that some lawyers were “rights lawyers,” saying: “Our 19,000 lawyers are all protecting people’s rights.”
Some lawyers disagree that the government is treating them equally. They believe the license delay is linked to the sensitivity of the anniversaries of the June 4 Tiananmen crackdown and the founding of the People’s Republic, as well as a general tightening of control. “The Ministry of Justice uses the ‘annual exam’ to limit and restrict lawyers’ professional rights,” says Xie Yanyi, who handles cases for people with AIDS and represents farmers in land-rights cases.
The last few months have also seen an uptick in physical violence and detentions of these lawyers. In April, two were badly beaten by thugs in separate incidents. Earlier this month, lawyers Zhang Kai and Li Chunfu were beaten up and detained while investigating a case in Chongqing.
For lawyers who lose their licenses, there is little recourse. Although technically they are allowed to sue the Ministry of Justice for reinstatement, there have been no successful cases of this nature in the past.
The lawyers who face suspension as of Sunday have handled a variety of cases, from representing parents whose children died in flimsy school buildings during the Sichuan earthquake to helping victims of the toxic milk-powder scandal sue for compensation. What these cases have in common is that they show what a powerful ally the law can be for China’s underdogs.
While those cases may have sealed their fates as far as license renewal is concerned, many human-rights lawyers in China say they are working toward the same goals advocated by their political leaders. “People like us want to use our professional knowledge to help society develop a legally based system,” says Mr. Jiang. “Also, I personally want to live in a society that is ruled by the law.”
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai, Telegraph, UK, 28 May 2009-
Beijing has taken steps to prevent dissent in response to a groundswell of pressure for the authorities to atone for what happened.
Students at Beijing and Dalian Universities have been banned from giving any interviews to the foreign media until after the anniversary.
The Public Security Bureau in Dalian warned: “Any indication of an approach from a foreign journalist must be reported immediately.”
University exams have been scheduled across China on June 4, in what appears to be an attempt to keep students inside their classrooms.
Security officers have also been targeting known dissidents including Bao Tong, 76, an aide to Zhao Zhiyang, the late Chinese leader. He has been taken out of Beijing to the mountain region of Huangshan on Monday.
Bao helped to orchestrate the release of Zhao’s secret memoirs, which revealed clashes at the top of the Communist Party over how to respond to the student protests of 1989.
“When the Communist Party thinks it needs to win the praise and trust of the Chinese people, that is when they will apologise,” he said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. “But if they think it is not necessary to win that trust and praise, they will never apologise.”
Qi Zhiyong, who lost a leg after being shot in the suppression of the protests, said he had also been forcibly removed from Beijing but allowed to return in order to have access to medication.
“They are strengthening their surveillance over me and escorting me wherever I go,” he said.
Yu Jie, an outspoken writer, sent an email to his friends on Wednesday saying that four plain clothes policemen had been sent to monitor him. “They said they had received orders and the restraint of my personal freedom would remain after June 4,” he said, referring to the date of the anniversary.
According to Radio Free Asia, Zhang Shijun, a former soldier who took part in the armed response has been under house arrest since he published a critical open letter to Hu Jintao, the Chinese president, in March. His wife and daughter have been separated and are being monitored.
Since the beginning of the month, there have been growing calls for the government to admit a massacre took place. Wang Dun, one of the most-wanted student leaders, suggested that Chinese wore white on June 4 in memory of the dead. On Google China, the phrase “6 + 4, 20″, representing June 4, 20th anniversary, was briefly one of the most searched terms.
Yesterday (Thurs), 128 family members of Tiananmen victims issued a public statement calling for a fair and independent investigation, and the publication of the names and number of those who died. They also called for compensation and for “those responsible” to be prosecuted.
Meanwhile, popular internet forums on Baidu, China’s leading internet portal, have been closed down in Beijing and tightly restricted across the rest of China.
In Guizhou, a seminar planned for June 4 to discuss human rights has been shut down by local police, and the organisers were detained. There are dozens of other reports of house searches, including of Zha Jianguo, a founding member of the China Democratic Party. One retired professor was beaten when he tried to visit Zhao Ziyang’s tomb in Jinan.
In Shanghai, petitioners have been warned by the local police not to visit Beijing in the ten day period over June 4.
Jane Macartney in Beijing , The Times, UK, May 15, 2009-
As Chinese students marched to demand democracy and an end to corruption, party elders were summoned to the home of the country’s paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping.
The wizened veteran listened to moderates, including the general secretary of the Communist Party, Zhao Ziyang, urging dialogue with the students, whose protests were seen as the greatest threat to date for the party.
Then, without even calling a vote of the most powerful body in China, the Politburo Standing Committee gathered there, Deng summarily imposed martial law. The army was called in and the student protests would be brutally crushed by tanks and troops in Tiananmen Square.
Now, on the 20th anniversary of the bloody suppression of the protesters, Zhao’s memoirs — painstakingly reconstructed from hours of tape recordings smuggled out by supporters — provide a unique glimpse of the deep divisions within the Chinese leadership. The first memoirs made public by such a highly placed party official will enrage today’s leaders because of his assertion that Western-style democracy is essential if China is to avoid future bloodbaths.
The record made by Zhao — who resigned, was purged and held under house arrest for almost 16 years — is to be published this month as Prisoner of the State: the Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang. So sensitive is the document that its existence was kept a closely guarded secret until days before publication.
Speculation had been rife during his house arrest and after his death in 2005 as to whether the man with the most intimate knowledge of the behind-the-scenes machinations that led to the Tiananmen Square crackdown on June 3-4, 1989, had provided his own account of the dramatic days.
In the book, Zhao describes the secret meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee. “At that moment I was extremely upset. I told myself that no matter what, I refused to become the General Secretary who mobilised the military to crack down on the students,” he wrote. “On the night of June 3rd I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted.”
Troops backed by tanks entered Beijing to end weeks of student demonstrations. Zhao’s account confirms the bitter power struggle behind the scenes as the students occupied Tiananmen Square, and the deep rivalries between reformists and hardliners, as well as the crucial role played by Deng in the decision to use force.
The memoirs project was so secret that Zhao’s top aide, Bao Tong, who was jailed for seven years after the protests, told The Times that he learnt of their existence only after Zhao’s death. “I knew he wanted to write something. I knew he would want to leave some record of his work but it was extremely difficult because he was under constant surveillance,” he said. Mr Bao said that there was no doubt about the authenticity of the memoirs. “This is an extremely valuable document for China and for the West,” he said. Zhao left the memoirs on 30 one-hour tapes that he recorded in about 2000. Mr Bao said that it had been impossible for the disgraced party chief to make the recordings before 1999, but after that he had found a way to bypass those watching and listening to him.
The recordings include conversations in which he answers questions as well as sections that are apparently dictated from a now-vanished text. The tapes took Zhao about two years to make and he then found a way to pass them clandestinely to trusted friends. The materials were gathered together after his death, but much of the process remains a secret to protect those involved.
Mr Bao said that to protect Zhao’s family, they had been unaware of the memoirs. “If the authorities want to pursue someone for political or legal responsibility for these memoirs then I will bear everything,” he said.
The memoirs were translated and edited by Mr Bao’s son and daughter-in-law, Bao Pu and Renee Chiang, and the US journalist Adi Ignatius. He told The Times: “Zhao did this all secretly but he knew what he was doing: getting the final word on what really happened 20 years ago.”
Ten years after the Tiananmen Square massacre,10,000 Falun gong practitioners gathered outside China’s central leadership compound in Beijing. They had come to appeal at China’s central appeals office — to appeal for practitioners who had been abused in the city of Tianjin, for thei books, which ahd been banned, and for practitioners all over the country who were being harassed and investigated by the police.
They were met by the Chinese premier, and the arrested practitioners were released. It seemed like the appeal had been successful. But in reality, time was running out, and the brutal crackdown was getting closer and closer…….
Chinese authorities have intensified the crackdown on human rights activists across the country in the lead-up to the 20th anniversary in June of the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.
Amnesty International has documented at least a hundred cases of activists who have been detained or faced violence from authorities. Several of these cases are related to the surveillance of activists ahead of the anniversary.
In the first four months of 2009, Amnesty International has documented at least four cases of lawyers who were threatened with violence by the authorities as they defended their clients, at least 10 cases where lawyers were hindered from meeting or representing clients and at least one case in which a lawyer has been detained for doing his work.
“If anything, the crackdown on human rights activists is escalating as we approach the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Beijing pro-democracy protests,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Deputy Director. “Most worrying is the complete disregard for national laws and the obstructions thrown in front of lawyers trying to do their jobs.”
Activists across the country have been arbitrarily detained and have faced violence when defending land rights, housing rights and labour rights. Signatories to Charter 08, a petition calling for legal and political reform, continue to face questioning across the country. Liu Shasha, a young woman signatory and an oil plant worker in Henan, was detained for four days for printing and disseminating the charter on the street.
Qi Zhiyong, who was left disabled by a gunshot injury during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, told reporters in a recent text message that he had been detained by the police. He had previously been threatened with arrest if he did not leave Beijing prior to the start of the Olympic Games.
It is believed Qi’s treatment and detention were associated with the 20th anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang, a reformist leader. Hu’s death marked the beginning of the pro-democracy protests twenty years ago.
Beijing lawyers Cheng Hai and Zhou Peng were recently attacked by at least four individuals who claimed to be from a government agency charged with coordinating the offices of the police and courts. The lawyers were on the way to meet their client’s family when they were attacked.
On the same day, another two lawyers, Wu Jiangtao and Li Renbin, were also blocked from meeting the family of their client, Falun Gong detainee Wei Cheng, when they arrived at northern Changchun city in Jilin province. Police put Wei Cheng’s family and relatives under surveillance and threatened them with imprisonment if they hired a lawyer.
Activist Chen Yunfei, based in Chengdu city, Sichuan province was questioned for six hours and warned not to try to organize activists during the 4 June anniversary. Police have had his living compound under surveillance since 20 April 2009.
“Authorities must stop this harassment of people trying to address legitimate human rights issues in China,” said Roseann Rife. “Issues like environmental rights, the right to participate, the right to a fair trial and rights of the person, which were all reaffirmed in the recently released National Human Rights Action Plan.”
HONG KONG, April 17 (Reuters) – A poll of Hong Kong students has found China should be held accountable for its military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in and around Beijing’s Tiananamen Square in 1989 in which hundreds were killed.
Ahead of the key 20th anniversary of the crackdown on June 4th, the University of Hong Kong held a three-day campus-wide referendum on whether China should “rectify” its verdict that the June 4 protests were counter-revolutionary and be held accountable for the event it described as a “massacre”.
Only 19 percent of the roughly 10,000 undergraduate student body cast votes in the poll that ended on Thursday, but 93 percent of them supported the move, the university’s student union said.
The student union called the result a “momentous landmark” after recent signs of indifference and on-campus tensions in Hong Kong between democratic-minded students and conservative elements wanting to tone down the criticism of Beijing, particularly among students from mainland China.
“Twenty years on from Tiananmen, the students of the University of Hong Kong have not forgotten,” it said in a statement.
The demonstrations that drew more than a million people on to Beijing’s streets are now a fading memory, and the killings are still taboo in mainland Chinese media.
The formerly British-ruled Hong Kong has remained the only city on Chinese soil where annual June 4 vigils, remembrances and protests are tolerated.
Jenny Ngai, the union’s acting external affairs secretary, said that while the turnout rate was “not great”, the vote sent a strong signal to society that Hong Kong’s students, unlike those silenced by authorities on the mainland, would continue to speak out.
(Reuters) – Protests could surround the following politically sensitive anniversaries in China this year, adding to government worries about unrest as unemployment rises:
TIBET – The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, fled into exile 50 years ago in March after an abortive Tibetan uprising. Monks’ protests that broke out across the Tibetan region and escalated into deadly riots last year could occur again around March 10, the start of the 1959 uprising.
TIANANMEN PROTESTS – Hundreds were killed when Beijing sent the military to crush student-led pro-democracy protests in and around Tiananmen Square 20 years ago this June 4. Demonstrations could be led by families of victims or intellectuals who signed “Charter 08,” a document calling for democratic reforms issued in December.
FALUN GONG – July marks 10 years since Beijing banned the Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that draws on Buddhism, Taoism and traditional Chinese breathing exercises. Falun Gong has since accused Beijing of detaining and torturing tens of thousands of adherents, which China denies. Falun Gong supporters who have staged protests in China and abroad could plan demonstrations in Beijing.
NATIONAL DAY - Beijing will hold a major military parade to mark the 60th anniversary of Communist China’s founding on Oct 1. Dissidents could use the day to demonstrate for political reforms.
LONDON (AFP) — Thousands of people joined protests around the globe Friday accusing China of relentless human rights abuses as the Beijing Olympics kicked off with a dazzling, three-hour opening ceremony.
Demonstrators took to the streets of London, Brussels, Berlin, Amsterdam, Kathmandu, Bangkok, Hong Kong, New Delhi and Washington among others to voice concerns ranging from China’s rule of Tibet to its support for Myanmar’s junta.
China has painted the Games as a celebration of three decades of economic reforms and hopes it will showcase a rapidly modernising country.
But activists across the world are using them to pressure Beijing over its rule of Tibet and the heavily Muslim Xinjiang province, the arrests of dissidents, censorship and concerns about Chinese foreign policy.
Three foreign protestors managed to breach tight security near the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing to stage a brief, 40-second protest and pull out Tibetan flags an hour before the opening ceremony burst into life.
Americans Jonathan Stribling-Uss, 27, and Kalaya’an Mendoza, 29, as well as Cesar Pablo Maxit, 32, an Argentine-American, were immediately and forcibly detained by Chinese security, Students For A Free Tibet said in a statement.
Police did not immediately comment.
Earlier in the day, Reporters Without Borders hacked into Chinese airwaves to broadcast a 20-minute programme in Chinese, English and French at 8:08 am (0008 GMT) — exactly 12 hours before the opening ceremony in Beijing.
The French-based media rights group said it was the first of its kind in China since the communists seized power in 1949.
BEIJING (Reuters) – Chinese plainclothes security officials dragged away three American Christian activists on Thursday after they attempted to protest for religious freedom for a second day in Beijing’s main Tiananmen Square.
The three were swooped on as they started a news conference and brief prayer vigil outside the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall, just a day before the Olympics open.
“We have come here today to speak out against the human rights abuses of the Chinese government,” Patrick Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition, told a small group of foreign reporters.
“We have come here today to be a voice to those who are in prison because of their religious beliefs,” he added, as security officials held up umbrellas and their hands to prevent the incident being filmed.
As the three knelt to pray, burly officials dragged them away, trying to block reporters from seeing what was happening and grabbing at microphones.
“We are here to peacefully pray,” said Swindell, national director of Generation Life, while being taken off the square, centre of pro-democracy demonstrations which were crushed by the military in 1989.
The small group had briefly protested against China’s population control policies and forced abortions on the square on Wednesday until stopped by police. They were then, unusually for security-wary China, allowed to leave……. (more details from Reuters)
Beijing (dpa) – China has imposed restrictions on the access of Chinese and foreign media to Beijing’s sensitive Tiananmen Square, requiring them to apply in advance to film or conduct interviews there, the city government said on Tuesday.
“To maintain a good order of reporting activities at the square, Chinese and foreign journalists are advised to make telephone appointments with the Administration Committee of Tiananmen Area,” said a notice posted on the official website of the Beijing government.
The notice suggested that the new requirement was introduced because of the use of the square for Olympic-related events expected to draw large crowds.
“During the Beijing Olympic Games, one large-scale cultural event would be held each day at Tiananmen Square,” it said.
“A large number of people would come to the square and enjoy the events,” it said.
China has introduced temporary rules allowing foreign journalists to interview any Chinese citizen who accepts a request before and during the games.
But officials have also warned many Beijing residents to avoid discussing sensitive subjects with foreign media.
Tiananmen Square was the prime site of the 1989 pro-democracy protests, which ended after the ruling Communist Party ordered tanks and troops into the square, in a crackdown that is believed to have cost several hundred lives.
Rights groups and families of victims continue to urge the government to investigate and make a full report of the Tiananmen crackdown.
In recent years, many petitioners from outside Beijing have tried to stage protests in the square.
The government has tightened security and introduced regulations sepcifically for the square in the run-up to the Olympics.
Security guards and paramilitary police check the identities and seach the bags of everyone entering the square.
Members of three to five families staged a small protest near Tiananmen Square on Monday to voice dissatisfaction over housing compensation, state media said.
State media said police ended the protest about 30 minutes after the families began talking to foreign reporters at the redeveloped Qianmen commercial area to the south of the square.
The Beijing Olympic organizing committee, BOCOG, arranged a group tour of the square on Tuesday afternoon for foreign Olympic reporters.
Security on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square has rarely been as strict as it was for the arrival of the Olympic flame on Monday. For fear of disturbances, even the route the torch was to take to the square was kept secret.
Nothing is to be allowed to spoil the Olympic party. As a precaution before the ceremony, police arrested dissidents, angry farmers, members of Falun Gong and people belonging to ethnic minorities who might be expected to cause trouble. Over the past few days, foreign journalists calling to interview critical intellectuals have heard they were no longer able to talk because they were being kept under surveillance.
No room
Correspondents who initially received an invitation to the torch ceremony were then told there would actually be no room for them in the press stand. No clear explanation was given, but according to a BBC report the Olympic organising committee removed the media from the list of invitees due to security considerations.
Since rioting broke out in Tibet and neighbouring Chinese provinces, the Beijing 2008 organisation has been under growing pressure. Tensions were increased by the protest that disrupted the ceremony to light the Olympic flame in Athens.
The tense atmosphere surrounding the games has resulted in tightened censorship and fiercely nationalistic debate on the internet. Foreign television broadcasters are regularly blacked out and politically sensitive articles in international newspapers and magazines are censored.
That’s Beijing, one of the English language cultural magazines in the Chinese capital, has been ordered to change numerous articles which it could have printed without trouble a month ago.
Discussion forums
Chinese language media are even more seriously affected by the censorship. Two Beijing universities temporarily closed down their internal discussion forums, because students were too critical of government action in Tibet. An article on Tibet on Radio Netherlands’ Chinese language website was blocked immediately after it was published. Websites critical of the West and Western media remain unaffected.
One attempt to limit the damage to China’s image caused by events in Tibet turned out to be a major embarrassment. China invited twelve foreign correspondents to pay a closely stage-managed visit to Tibet. However, they still managed to contact critical monks. Images of an emotional monk telling his story to camera went round the world – except to China.
Evil genius
Ordinary Chinese people therefore get to hear little about all the unrest. The reports they do hear about the Tibetan protests focus on the way Tibetan rioters attacked ethnic Han Chinese and set fire to their houses and shops. The media in Chinese has to stick to the Communist Party propaganda department’s strict guidelines, which cite the Dalai Lama as the evil genius behind the continuing unrest.
During the weekend prior to the arrival of the Olympic flame in Beijing, the state news agency Xinhua reported that an anonymous Tibetan monk had admitted receiving instructions for the riots. There was no word of the decision by a number of foreign leaders – including German Chancellor Angela Merkel – not to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in August.
Chinese nationalists are furious about Western reporting on Tibet. They claim Tibet has been Chinese for over a thousand years and foreign countries are interfering in Chinese internal affairs. Mistakes some media have made in their reporting – such as printing a photo of a soldier in Nepal with a caption stating it was a Chinese soldier in Tibet – have played into the hands of the nationalists. The Chinese journalists’ union has warned foreign journalists that their reporting could affect their media’s credibility.
Keep tabs
Now the Olympic flame has arrived in Beijing, the countdown has really begun. Time is running out, not just for the organisation but also for activists who want to get their cases into the spotlight – reason enough for the Chinese authorities to keep as close tabs as possible on national and international media. This contrasts sharply with the promises of greater press freedom China made when it was awarded the games.
Recently, Sun Wenguang, a retired professor from Shandong University, published an open letter to the representatives of the People’s Representatives’ Conference and Political Consultative Conference, urging them to discuss the issue of two severe human rights abuses in China: the Tiananmen Square Massacre and the persecution of Falun Gong.
On this issue, reporters from Sound of Hope interviewed Bao Tong, secretary of Zhao Ziyang, the former Communist Party’s General Secretary. Mr. Bao said he was very supportive of Prof. Sun’s suggestion and he believed that the People’s Representatives’ Conference should discuss the issues ordinary people otherwise it was not representative of the people.
In his open letter, Prof. Sun said that as the Beijing Olympics were approaching, people throughout China were calling for the redressing of the Tiananmen Square Student Pro-democracy movement and restoring the reputation of Zhao Ziyang who supported the students. Sun also stated in the letter that, since the start of the crackdown on Falun Gong in 1999, practitioners who were against the persecution and telling the truth about the situation to the world, had been arrested and detained, and this situation was still happening at the opening of the two conferences and to this day.
Bao was the Policy Secretary of Zhao Ziyang, the former General Secretary of the Communist Party. After the Tiananmen Square Massacre, he was sentenced to seven-years imprisonment. He was the highest government official to be charged in relation to the 1989 movement.
The above news is brought to you by Lin Nan, Fang Liang, and hosted by Daniel Teng for Breaking News on SOH Radio Network.
