Monthly Archives: 5 月 2014

China detains two rights lawyers in widening crackdown on activists

BEIJING Sat May 17, 2014 2:42am EDT
(Reuters) – Chinese police detained two prominent human rights lawyers this week, the latest arrests in a growing crackdown on dissent that has targeted rights activists and journalists.

Tang Jingling, a prominent Guangzhou-based lawyer known for his work in cases involving land grabs, counterfeit vaccinations and petitioners protesting corruption, was arrested on Friday afternoon, his lawyer Liu Zhengqing said.

Tang was accused of “starting quarrels and provoking disputes,” Liu said on Friday evening. Police had searched Tang’s home and taken away computers, cell phones and other electronics, according to a police document Liu showed Reuters.

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PEN International:China:Renewed crackdown on writers and journalists ahead of 25th anniversary of Tiananmen protests

25th anniversary commemorate

London, 7 May 2014 – Five prominent dissident writers arrested for taking part in events to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy protests should be released immediately and unconditionally, PEN International said today.

Two of those detained are members of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC), an affliate centre of the global organisation of writers. A third member of ICPC is also feared detained separately.

On 3 May 2014 at least 15 people – writers, scholars, activists – gathered at a private residence in Beijing to commemorate the upcoming 25th anniversary of the brutal crackdown on 4th June 1989 pro-democracy protests. An estimated 2,000 unarmed individuals were killed by Chinese troops in Tiananmen Square, Beijing and other Chinese cities.

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PEN International:Take Action for Uyghur writer and PEN member Ilham Tohti

PEN International is seriously concerned for the well-being of Uyghur writer, academic and Uyghur PEN member, Ilham Tohti, who was formally charged with “splittism” on 20 February 2014, amid a crackdown on Chinese Uyghurs critical of the government. His wife received formal notification of the charges on 25 February. Dozens of writers have joined American PEN in calling for his release.

Ilham Tohti
Ilham Tohti has been a target of frequent harassment by Chinese authorities for his outspoken views on Uyghur rights since he established Uyghur Online in 2006

Writer, economist, and Uyghur PEN Member Ilham Tohti was arrested on January 15, 2014 for his peaceful expression in defense of human rights of the Uyghur people. If convicted, he could face life in prison, or even the death penalty. Tohti’s arrest came shortly after the Chinese government’s pledge to make “maintaining social stability” the primary strategic goal within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which PEN believes is part of a crackdown on dissent and criticism of Chinese government policies by the Uyghur people. Join PEN and writers including Teju Cole, Salman Rushdie, Francine Prose, Nicole Krauss, and more than 50 others by taking action to tell Chinese authorities to release Ilham Tohti now. To sign PEN’s letter click here.

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Letter to German Foreign Minister (in Germany)

An
Bundesaußenminister Herr Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier
Auswärtiges Amt
11013 Berlin
Köln, 13.05.2014
Sehr geehrter Herr Außenminister Steinmeier,

bitte erlauben Sie mir, Ihnen den Fall der Beijinger Journalistin Gao Yu zu schildern, der vor allem in den letzten Tagen in den internationalen Medien Aufsehen erregt hat. Die mehrfach durch internationale Journalistenpreise ausgezeichnete Frau Gao Yu wurde am 24. April 2014 von Mitarbeitern des Büros für Öffentliche Sicherheit abgeführt. Zwei Wochen später wurde sie unter dem Verdacht der “illegalen Weitergabe von Staatsgeheimnissen an das Ausland” strafrechtlich in Gewahrsam genommen.
Frau Gao ist unter anderem auch Redakteurin der chinesischen Redaktion der Deutschen Welle und Mitglied des Unabhängigen Chinesischen PEN Zentrums. Der Intendant der Deutschen Welle, Herr Peter Limbourg, hat in einer Pressemitteilung die chinesischen Behörden wegen der Verhaftung Frau Gao Yus kritisiert. Es sei “menschenunwürdig, sie im chinesischen Fernsehen einem Millionenpublikum als geständige Kriminelle vorzuführen”, sagte Herr Limbourg. Er forderte „ein faires und rechtsstaatliches Verfahren“ für Frau Gao, und äußerte seine große Sorge um das Schicksal der 70-Jährigen.

(http://www.pressebox.de/pressemitteilung/deutsche-welle/DW-Intendant-fordert-faires-und-rechtsstaatliches-Verfahren-fuer-chinesische-Journalistin-Gao-Yu/boxid/677028)
Zum ersten Mal kam Frau Gao Yu bereits 1989 nach der Niederschlagung der Demokratiebewegung ins Gefängnis, weil sie in ihren Publikationen Sympathie für die Studenten der Demokratiebewegung geäußert hatte. Sie verlor ihre Position als Journalistin von “Economy Weekly” und war danach gezwungen, ausschließlich für Hongkonger Medien zu arbeiten. 1993 wurde Frau Gao deshalb wegen “Verrats von Staatsgeheimnissen” zu sechs Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt. Sie verbüßte die volle Haftzeit, und wurde erst 1999 entlassen. Da ihre Artikel in China nicht veröffentlicht werden können, schrieb Frau Gao seither, und vor allem im letzten Jahrzehnt, für ausländische Medien; sie nahm auch Einladungen ins Ausland an, um an wissenschaftlichen oder kulturellen Tagungen teilzunehmen.

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Ian Johnson:The Ghosts of Tiananmen Square

Ian Johnson JUNE 5, 2014 ISSUE

The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited
by Louisa Lim
Oxford University Press, 248 pp., $24.95
Tiananmen Exiles: Voices of the Struggle for Democracy in China
by Rowena Xiaoqing He
Palgrave Macmillan, 212 pp., $95.00; $29.00 (paper)

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Ken Jarecke/Contact Press Images
Chinese troops observing the Tiananmen Square demonstration in May 1989 before the army was ordered to attack
Every spring, an old friend of mine named Xu Jue makes a trip to the Babaoshan cemetery in the western suburbs of Beijing to lay flowers on the tombs of her dead son and husband. She always plans her visit for April 5, which is the holiday of Pure Brightness, or Qingming. The traditional Chinese calendar has three festivals to honor the dead and Qingming is the most important—so important that in 2008 the government, which for decades had tried to suppress traditional religious practices, declared it a national holiday and gave people a day off to fulfill their obligations. Nowadays, Communist Party officials participate too; almost every year, they are shown on national television visiting the shrines of Communist martyrs or worshiping the mythic founder of the Chinese people, the Yellow Emperor, at a grandiose monument on the Yellow River.

But remembering can raise unpleasant questions. A few days before Xu Jue’s planned visit, two police officers come by her house to tell her that they will do her a special favor. They will escort her personally to the cemetery and help her sweep the tombs and lay the flowers. Their condition is that they won’t go on the emotive day of April 5. Instead, they’ll go a few days earlier. She knows she has no choice and accepts. Each year they cut a strange sight: an old lady arriving in a black sedan with four plainclothes police officers, who follow her to the tombstones of the dead men in her life.

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Party Chief’s Downfall a Central Act in Tiananmen Drama

By CHRIS BUCKLEY MAY 11, 2014, 7:00 PM 

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“We came too late,” Zhao Ziyang told students at Tiananmen Square on the morning of May 19, 1989.

In mid-May 1989, Zhang Gang was among a group of Chinese officials and scholars seeking to defuse the student protests that had filled Tiananmen Square for a month. They had been trying to coax concessions from the government and the demonstrators to end the volatile confrontation and protect the embattled Communist Party general secretary, Zhao Ziyang, who was increasingly at odds with the party patriarch, Deng Xiaoping.

Late at night, Mr. Zhang recalled in an interview, another official stepped aside to take a phone call and turned ashen-faced. The rifts in the party leadership over the Tiananmen protests, the official said, had reached a perilous turning point.

“He had a very grim look, and he turned to me and told me, ‘There was a meeting in Xiaoping’s home, and Ziyang has been sidelined.’”

“The political balance at the time was very brittle – very, very brittle – and as soon as the student movement erupted, this brittle balance was certainly going to be broken,” said Mr. Zhang, who in 1989 worked in a policy research office under Mr. Zhao and fled abroad that year, ending up in the United States. “On one side, we couldn’t rein in the old men, and on the other side, we couldn’t satisfy the students’ demands.”

Some two days later, Mr. Zhao made his famous ghostly appearance on Tiananmen Square. By then he knew that his political demise was sealed and that Mr. Deng had ordered martial law in urban Beijing, which would pit tens of thousands of soldiers against students and residents. Mr. Zhao went to the square at about 4 a.m. on May 19, and, surrounded by cameras and dumbfounded students, pleaded with the protesters to end their hunger strike and return to campus.

“We came too late,” he told them in the heavy accent of his birthplace, Henan Province in central China. After he spoke, students surrounded him for autographs.

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Game of Pawns: China’s version

Alia | May 8th, 2014 – 5:05 am

Apparently, college students are hot on the spy market right now, in both China and the US.

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A month after the FBI rolled out a cheesy microfilm “Game of Pawns: The Glenn Duffie Shriver Story” about an American college student who was recruited to spy for China, Beijing releases its own Shriver stories of Chinese college students being recruited by foreign intelligence agencies for espionage activities.

In the FBI story, Shriver, a Michigan native who studied in Shanghai, was approached by a Chinese woman who later turned out to work for the Chinese government. Shriver was encouraged to seek US government jobs, more specifically, at the CIA, with the aim of accessing classified information. He pleaded guilty to espionage charges in 2012 and was sentenced to 4 years.

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Wall Street Journal: Tiananmen Amnesia and Tiananmen Exiles

Posted on May 15, 2014 by Maura Cunningham

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He coverNow up at the Wall Street Journal’s China Real Time Report blog, my new column on Rowena Xiaoqing He’s recent book, Tiananmen Exiles:

In “Tiananmen Exiles,” Ms. He interviews Shen Tong and Wang Dan, both important figures in the Beijing protest movement, as well as Yi Danxuan, who was a student leader in Guangzhou. All three live overseas (only Mr. Shen has been able to visit China for business, on the condition that he refrain from political activity), and all have been prominent members of the Tiananmen exile community. Wang Dan obtained a Ph.D. in Chinese history from Harvard and now teaches in Taiwan, while Shen Tong founded a software company and Yi Danxuan has worked in journalism and business. Both Mr. Shen and Mr. Yi live in the United States.

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