May 28th, 2012
China‘s largest microblogging service has introduced a code of conduct to
restrict the type of messages that can be posted. The new move from Sina Weibo, seen to be the latest attempt to censor social media, comes after local authorities criticised the posting of “unfounded” rumours on the network. Under the
new rules, users start with 80 “points” which can be deducted for breaking the sites code of conduct, and repeat offenders risk having their accounts deleted. The site has also developed a
“community convention” clearly outlining what type of postings are unacceptable on the site.
May 24th, 2012
The brother of blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng has
fled his family’s captors in a second escape from their Shandong village. Chen Guangfu arrived in Beijing on Thursday morning after escaping the home where his relatives have been living under strict control since his brother escaped house arrest and fled to the US embassy in Beijing in April. Chen Guangfu is said to be seeking help for his son, Chen Kegui, who was
arrested on attempted murder charges earlier this month following a clash with intruders who broke into his home to search for his uncle.
May 9th, 2012
Chinese micro-blogging platform Sina Weibo
plan to introduce a “user-contract” in an attempt to control sensitive information on the site. The rules, which are set to be introduced later this month, outline do’s and don’ts for the site, including prohibiting posts which “spread rumors, disrupt social order, and destroy societal stability”. The new rules will also introduce a “community committee”, a group of registered users, who will implement the terms of service. Violation of these regulations could result in deletion, preventing reposting or disabling commenting.
May 4th, 2012
Even before the internet, dissidents in exile were able to create networks that provided a lifeline to those back home, writes Index editor Jo Glanville
This piece originally appeared on Comment is Free
The desperate plight of Chen Guangcheng is a graphic illustration of how China treats its dissidents. Harassed and intimidated, Chen has spent the past seven years between prison and house arrest since he exposed the government’s forced abortion policy in 2005 (he was awarded the Index freedom of expression award for whistleblowing in 2007). House arrest is a common tactic in China for containing and controlling whistleblowers and activists. In Chen’s case, since his release from prison in 2010, it has meant a life of social isolation and fear. Other current well-known victims include Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser and Ai Weiwei, who famously attempted to turn China’s tactics on their head by installing his own in-house surveillance.
The week’s dramatic events echo the story of celebrated dissident Fang Lizhi, who died last month; Fang also took refuge in the US embassy following the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and stayed for more than a year until China allowed him to leave. Fang was one of the most important influences on the Tiananmen generation of young activists and the authorities considered him “the biggest black hand behind the 4 June riots”. In exile in the US for the rest of his life, as well as pursuing his academic career as an astrophysicist, he remained active in speaking out for human rights in China along with other exiles of 1989, including Wang Dan.
The experience of exile for dissidents, despite the continuing possibility for influence, can bring another kind of isolation. “Homelessness, loneliness and despair have almost driven me to self-destruction,” wrote the poet Liu Hongbin on the 20th anniversary of Tiananmen Square. It is only through memory, he has written movingly, that he has made the journey home. Writer Ma Jian, who has written the definitive novel of the Tiananmen generation, Beijing Coma, while in exile, was still able to visit China regularly until last year – a measure of how far the situation has deteriorated. Chen’s desire for “a rest”, as he told Congress, is likely to be more than a short stay.
However, there are networks that can only be built from exile and that have always been a lifeline for dissidents back home, long before Twitter, SMS and Facebook revolutionised the possibilities of making revolution. Under editor George Theiner, a Czech dissident in exile in London, Index on Censorship magazine published the leading lights of Czechoslovakia’s pro-democracy movement in the 80s, most notably Václav Havel, as well as publishing and distributing Polish and Czech samizdat – a vital outlet for opposition activists. When Index’s founding editor Michael Scammell started publishing the most famous dissident of them all, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great man panicked: when he heard that his work was appearing so widely in English, he thought it was the KGB who was circulating his writing as part of a political provocation. But it was the first worldwide publication of much of his work in translation and an immensely important part of circulating the plight of dissidents in the Soviet Union.
Forty years on, Belarusian activists in exile have played a vital role in galvanising opposition to Alexander Lukashenko’s regime. Since the elections in 2010, following the mass arrests and imprisonment of the opposition, some of the leading lights of the pro-democracy movement have settled in London and Warsaw where they have helped to shape a successful European campaign alongside human rights groups. Natalia Kaladia, artistic director of the acclaimed Belarus Free Theatre, had to flee Belarus following her arrest and the intimidation of her family. In a campaign with Index, her new organisation Free Belarus Now, which she runs with Irina Bogdanova, sister of former political prisoner Andrei Sannikov, has helped to persuade Deutsche Bank and BNP Paribas to stop doing business with Lukashenko’s regime.
While none would choose exile, Chen is reported as telling the US ambassador that “he wanted to be part of the struggle to improve human rights within China”, thanks to the internet it is now perhaps more possible than it ever was in the days of the carbon copies of samizdat to continue to exert an influence back home.
Jo Glanville is editor of Index on Censorship magazine
April 27th, 2012
On 24 April,
Chinese petitioner Hu Lianyou was sentenced to two years in prison for defamation after comments made about a local police chief online, according to Chinese state media. Hu allegedly wrote posts on popular websites accusing two officers, including police chief Zheng Hang, of corruption and beating him during an interrogation. The petitioner requested that the trial take place in a more neutral court, rather than in his native Dong’an county, where he has a history of criticising authorities. His request was denied, according to the
Chinese Media Project.
April 26th, 2012
The artist Ai Weiwei’s outspoken views are gaining currency. Simon Kirby reflects on a change of mood in China as people lose faith in the Party
In June 2011, Ai Weiwei was released from detention to a form of home surveillance. He is confined to the city of Beijing and must inform the authorities of his movements. He may not make public statements nor comment on his detention and the terms of his release (a condition he has already breached); further investigations are pending and a prosecution may be pursued within a year. It is still far from clear what the implications are for Ai as a private individual, let alone for his capacity to continue to work as an artist. Just as he was never formally arrested neither has he been fully freed.
This shabby story takes place against a backdrop of heightened political sensitivity in China as the country braces itself for transition to a new, as yet unannounced, group of top leaders. This is scheduled to take place next year in the Great Hall of the People during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party. The Congress will certainly be a rigid spectacle of national purpose and will make numbing television viewing. Not least because it will be impossible not to speculate on the nature of the Byzantine succession struggle which is currently taking place behind firmly locked doors.
The detention of Ai Weiwei was based on intimidation rather than legal process — a pattern that is well established in China. In effect, he was kidnapped by the state and never informed which organ of the machinery was holding him, nor was he charged with a specific crime. Rather, his indictment was based on “confessions”. Even his release was justified on the spurious grounds of cooperative behaviour, willingness to make amends and poor physical health. As the threat of re-opening the case against him still looms, he is now being blackmailed into falling into line.
A few weeks after Ai Weiwei was released I had lunch with him. He talked frankly about the contradictions of his detention and the absurdity of his current position. He clearly intends to continue working and his remarkable personal charisma is undimmed. Yet he is, in my view, a person who is also deeply disturbed by what is happening to him.
Artists and the “Tiananmen contract”
Throughout the 90s, Chinese state-controlled capitalism ushered in a remarkable economic boom from which the fledgling contemporary art scene benefited. Artists, as potentially problematic figures, were heavily co-opted with a variety of sticks and carrots — there were rich rewards to be had and the freedom to continue making, exhibiting and travelling was granted to artists in exchange for creating non-critical work. In many cases, artists were understandably tempted to comply. Ever since the fearful events of the Tiananmen massacre on 4 June 1989, there has been an enforced accommodation between the government and society. I dubbed this the “Tiananmen contract” in an article for Index on Censorship that was published in 2008, ahead of the Chinese Olympics. The deal is that the Communist Party would steer the people towards individual prosperity and the country to greatness, through ensuring stability. In return, the primacy of the Party could never be questioned. Three years ago, the contract was widely supported — the level of basic freedom was greater than it had been in 20 years and living standards were rising. There was also pride at China’s leading role on the world stage. Today, I believe this consensus is much more fragile.
The daily reality for Chinese citizens is that living costs are rising fast and incomes are not keeping up. Working conditions for white collar workers can be demoralising, while those for migrant manual workers, who continue to have even basic rights denied them, are often shockingly exploitative. Commuting in the new, high-rise cities can be exhausting and alienating. People are deeply sceptical about the capacity of the state to protect them from (often deliberately) contaminated food and a toxic living environment, criminal scams, corruption in the medical profession and corporate exploitation of consumers. The Party is widely understood to be at the centre of many of these scandals and is often seen to be protecting wrongdoers. Most flagrantly, the new super-rich live effectively beyond the reach of the law, while ordinary people can in no way count on basic social justice for themselves and their families.
There are attempts to address these problems through draconian anticorruption campaigns which make examples of officials accused of vice and graft. There are also strenuous efforts to reform social and fiscal legislation and to professionalise the legal system. This year’s 90th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party saw an outpouring of congratulatory media stories featuring joyful ethnic minorities, good comrades and citizens and glorious historical deeds. Meanwhile Tiananmen Square, which is the heart of the great people’s revolution, was firmly sealed and off limits.
In March, I had dinner in a noisy Korean barbecue restaurant in Beijing with a favourite Chinese artist. Only 32 years old, he already enjoys a successful international career, is profoundly patriotic and the holder of an important teaching post. During the evening, my friend passionately expounded an opinion in full earshot of fellow diners and waiting staff that would have made me extremely uncomfortable even five years ago. Namely, that the Chinese Communist Party in 2011 is more fundamentally corrupt than even Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) of the 40s. The official history, tirelessly propagated in films and TV dramas, is that that the nationalist administration had degenerated into a kind of murderous gangsterism before the 1949 revolution. Yet my artist friend argued that pre-revolutionary society in many ways remained, for all its faults, a pluralistic one: an imperfect democracy. There was at least formal acknowledgment of the independence of the judiciary and channels to seek redress from injustice. The Communist Party of the 21st century, on the other hand, retains its monopoly on power through intimidation and force. It is deeply complicit in land grabs, forced evictions, endemic bribery and corruption. It even facilitates the enrichment of favoured businesses through official contracts and privileged access to resources and markets.
A new trend for speaking out
The legal system today, my friend told me, is explicitly in place in order to serve the interests of the Party above anything else. Citizens who attempt to petition the government to redress flagrant social wrongs can expect to be met at best with official obstruction. In many documented cases they will encounter thuggish intimidation and violence. This viewpoint is not unusual. In a way that is entirely characteristic of China, I then went on to hear the same, previously unimaginable, opinion expressed by three other, unrelated people within the course of as many weeks. If during the course of conversation with people in China, one digs just a little, it’s possible to encounter a profound and worrying cynicism in the integrity of the Chinese state.
It seems that suddenly these views are being expressed loudly and in public. Ai Weiwei, on the other hand, has been consistently and persistently making his views known. His father, Ai Qing, was one of China’s most eminent poets, but was a political prisoner for 16 years in the western desert region of Xinjiang. This is where Ai Weiwei spent his entire childhood and early adolescence. When Ai Weiwei returned to China in 1993 after ten years in the United States, his rehabilitated father advised him on his responsibility as a Chinese citizen to speak out, reportedly saying, “You are at home here, there’s no need to be polite.”
An intriguingly enigmatic artist, Ai Weiwei’s public personality is also complex and elusive. The true Ai Weiwei may well be a nuanced combination of the many faults of which his detractors accuse him. However, it has also now become clear, even to his harshest critics, that this artist has courageously maintained a highly principled position for which he is now paying a heavy price. It is my observation that many others are beginning to come round to his point of view.
This article appears in the “Art Issue” of Index on Censorship. Click on here for subscription options and more.
Simon Kirby is the director of Chambers Fine Art in Beijing
This issue is nominated for an Amnesty Award
April 5th, 2012
Authorities have objected to surveillance cameras
Chinese artitst Ai Wei Wei installed into his home to provide a live feed online. The artist created a website with four cameras showing his studio, over his bed, his desk and in the courtyard of his house as a “gift” to the authorities who have been watching him for years.
Wei Wei set up the site
weiweicam.com on 3 April the first anniversary of his 2011 disappearance, but was forced to terminate the feed today. He said the livefeed enabled him to reassure police who were worried what he might do.
March 29th, 2012
A
Chinese human rights lawyer has been visited in prison by his family
for the first time since he disappeared over two years ago.
Gao Zhisheng, China’s best known human rights lawyer, was sentenced to three years in jail in 2006 for “inciting subversion of state power.” He was put on probation for five years, which meant he did not have to serve the sentence, but he was taken into custody throughout that period. Gao was taken from a relative’s home in northern China in February 2009. Last December, in the first official account of his whereabouts, state media reported that Gao was back in jail.
