{"id":3519,"date":"2009-06-02T13:58:19","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T12:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2017-01-09T13:56:05","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T13:56:05","slug":"tiananmen-20-liu-hongbin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/?p=3519","title":{"rendered":"Tiananmen 20: Liu Hongbin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tiananmen-square\"<\/a>Poet Liu Hongbin fled China after taking part in the Tiananmen Square protests. Here, he describes his experience of returning to China as a persona non grata in 1997<\/strong>
\n
\nIn the dead of winter 1997, I landed back in Beijing. As I was passing through immigration control, an officer asked: \u201cDo you have a Chinese name?\u201d I wrote down a name with the same pronunciation but using different characters. He waved me through.<\/p>\n

According to police regulations, anyone with a foreign passport has to report his place of abode within 24 hours. As soon as I arrived at my mother\u2019s home, I called to register with the police. Early the next morning, six policemen broke into my mother\u2019s home and greeted me with the words: \u201cYou are not welcome in this country. Your counter-revolutionary words overseas have made you persona non grata. You are forbidden to meet politically sensitive people, to move or speak freely.\u201d Then they took away my passport.<\/p>\n

I was put under house arrest, but I managed to leave the house. I met the sister of a dissident writer in prison, Sun Weibang. He had been adopted by International PEN as an honorary member, at my suggestion. I said I was willing to take any of his writings out of the country.<\/p>\n

One day, the police came banging at the door at my sister\u2019s house. Hearing this, I telephoned the British consul in Beijing and told him what was going on. The consul told me to open the door. The police showed me a warrant and asked me to sign it. I made a fingerprint and put down the same name I used when entering the country, but the police ordered me: \u201cPut down your right name.\u201d The telephone rang: it was the consul again. I told him they were going to take me to police headquarters.<\/p>\n

As I was walking down the staircase of my sister\u2019s home, flanked by police, my sister returned from work. As I was shown into the car, my sister told me: \u201cI will be with you very soon,\u201d and she hailed a taxi. The police car drove away at full speed with its siren on, pushing aside pedestrians and vehicles. The police sitting in front were abusive, shouting at the crowds. I was calm and unafraid. My eyes were moist.<\/p>\n

I wanted to ask one of the police, \u201cDo you believe in God?\u201d The words didn\u2019t come out. I thought it might be too provocative.<\/p>\n

At police headquarters, they interrogated me. They asked me what organisation I belonged to. I said International PEN. They drew up a statement and asked me to sign it. I refused. Then my sister arrived, and the police questioned her separately. Two plain-clothes policemen passed by and I recognised them. I even remembered their names; I said hello, as if speaking to old acquaintances. They were the policemen who had harassed me before I left China in 1989.<\/p>\n

After we were released, I asked my sister: \u201cWere you afraid?\u201d She replied: \u201cNo. I\u2019m proud of having a brother like you.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few days later, my passport was returned to me. I had told them to give it back or I would apply for a new one at the British Embassy in Beijing. I made my way to Jinan and spent a night of freedom there. A friend\u2019s wife had used her name to book a room in a hostel. The next day, I left for Nanjing. As soon as I called my sister to tell her I was safe, they tracked my whereabouts, and the hotel where I was staying was swarming with police.<\/p>\n

From Nanjing, I headed for Shanghai to meet a friend who had helped me out when I was ill. She booked me into a hotel and said she would return the next morning. I took a walk alone in the night rain and tasted the excitement of freedom.<\/p>\n

The next morning when we went out, we were all followed in the subway and to the restaurant. As we came out of a bookstore, I sensed them just a few feet away. I asked the man and woman to show their ID or I would report them to the police. They fobbed me off by saying they had none and the girl said she was waiting for a job. I went into a Baptist church for a while. The people shied away from us. I felt calm but realised we were not welcome there. When I came out, the two police agents continued to follow us, I turned around and started taking photographs of them. Then I caught sight of a dozen police with walkie-talkies. They surrounded me, coming out of taxis and leaping off motorbikes. I dialled the British Embassy number on my cell phone, but I was arrested in broad daylight and taken to a local station.<\/p>\n

After several hours, the head of the police came to me with my Chinese ID card in one hand and my passport in the other. He told me: \u201cYou have to choose between the two.\u201d And I now knew what that meant: the final hour had come. I said, \u201cI want my British passport,\u201d but I felt like saying, \u201cI want freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

The chief declared: \u201cYou have been performing activities incompatible with your tourist status. You must leave the country immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next day, I was taken to the airport and two policemen escorted me onto the plane. Before I boarded, I asked one of them: \u201cCan I give you something?\u201d They exchanged glances and agreed. Presenting him with my collection of poems, I said: \u201cI will return through my poetry.\u201d I was deported to Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

As soon as I got back to London, there was a death threat waiting for me on my answer machine. The perpetrator, of Chinese origin, was arrested. I didn\u2019t press charges.<\/p>\n

A longer version of this article appears in the forthcoming issue of Index on Censorship magazine<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Poet Liu Hongbin fled China after taking part in the Tiananmen Square protests. Here, he describes his experience of returning to China as a persona non grata in 1997<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[4,581],"tags":[7364,866,283,3466],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23345,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/23345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.indexoncensorship.org\/newsite02may\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}