Ng Han Guan/AP – Chen Guang, a former People’s Liberation Army soldier turned Beijing-based artist, has been in police detention since May 7.
By Louisa Lim, Published: May 16
Louisa Lim is an NPR correspondent and the author of “The People’s Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited,” which will be published June 4.
Dangerous memories of Tiananmen Square已关闭评论
Posted in Headlines, June 4th Commemoration
Tagged Chen Guang, June 4th, Tiananmen
Ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre, a Hong Kong triad speaks fully for the first time about how he smuggled 133 students and intellectuals out of the clutches of the Communist party
By Malcolm Moore, Hong Kong5:00AM BST 18 May 2014
Brother Six had the fastest speedboats in Hong Kong, rigged with four outboard engines to outrun the police on both sides of the border.
Tiananmen Massacre 25th anniversary: how Chinese triads enabled the Great Escape已关闭评论
Posted in Headlines, June 4th Commemoration
Tagged Chen Dazheng, Hong Kong, June 4th, Tiananmen
The events in Tiananmen square remain a taboo in Chinese society
The world’s first museum dedicated to the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square has opened in Hong Kong.
BY HELEN GAO MAY 13, 2014
BEIJING — For those Chinese who have carried their tales of woe for hundreds of miles and suffered numerous bureaucratic setbacks, this seems like mockery. On April 23, China passed a new law banning petitioners from taking grievances to the central government without first trying to resolve them with local officials, even though the petitioning system, which dates back to imperial times, is supposed to allow individuals to appeal directly to higher authorities when they bump up against local bureaucracy. This latest restriction, with the ostensible goal of “streamlining the petitioning system,” all but extinguishes the last hope for many desperate for a sympathetic ear from above. In fact, the petitioning system is blinkered enough that Wang Lin, a law professor at Hainan University, called it a judicial “Catch-22” in a September 2011 essay published in popular newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily.
“Brother Six” tells how he smuggled more than 100 protesters to safety after the Chinese government’s brutal crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989
5:30AM BST 18 May 2014
It is almost 25 years since the crackdown on a pro-democracy movement around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989 led to a bloody massacre.
How a Triad gangster saved Tiananmen Square demonstrators已关闭评论
Posted in Headlines, June 4th Commemoration
They don’t scare easily, and they will take any client — not just dissidents. The Communist Party has noticed.
BY ALEXA OLESEN MAY 16, 2014
If there were a checklist for China’s “diehard lawyers faction” it would probably read something like this: Must be combative, dramatic, and have a flair for social media; must not be intimidated by authority; and must be willing to spend time under house arrest or in jail.
While there is no official group by this name, the term has evolved over the last few years to describe a particular type of criminal defense lawyer: brash, and determined to take on defendants whose rights, the attorneys believe, have been violated. The phenomenon came into sharp relief after the arrest of prominent Beijing lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (pictured above) on May 6 for allegedly “picking quarrels” by commemorating the victims of the June 4, 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen square in central Beijing. Pu remains in detention in Beijing, awaiting a hearing.
It all started with a case gone awry.
It all started with a case gone awry. Beijing lawyer Yang Xuelin, who identifies himself on social media website Weibo as a “diehard,” told Communist Party mouthpiece newspaper People’s Daily that the term originated from a discussion with another attorney in Guiyang, the capital of Southern China’s Guizhou province, in July 2012. Yang and a colleague named Chi Susheng were part of a team of lawyers from around China who had come to the city to defend a former property tycoon accused of gang-related crimes. Over lunch on the first day of the trial, the paper explained, Chi complained the trial was already not going well. It was riddled with procedural problems, she said, and the team was going to have to “firmly fight to the bitter end,” using the northern slang term sike — which roughly means to fight to the bitter end, or to die hard. (The tycoon was sentenced to 15 years in prison.)
PU ZHIQIANG08.10.06
The weekend of June 3, 2006, was the seventeenth anniversary of the Beijing massacre and also the first time I ever received a summons. It happened, as the police put it, “according to law.” Twice within twenty-four hours Deputy Chief Sun Di of Department 1 of the Beijing Public Security Bureau ordered me—“controlled” me, in police lingo—to go to the Fanjiacun police station in the Fengtai District of Beijing. This “practical action” of the Chinese government, although it violated basic human rights, was taken in support of the “stability” that the violent suppression at Tiananmen had brought about.
I recall the early hours of June 4, 1989. The few thousand students and other citizens who refused to disperse remained huddled at the north face of the Martyrs’ Monument in Tiananmen Square. The glare of fires leaped skyward and gunfire crackled. The pine hedges that lined the square had been set ablaze while loudspeakers screeched their mordant warnings. The bloodbath on outlying roads had already exceeded anyone’s counting. Martial law troops had taken up their staging positions around the square, awaiting final orders, largely invisible except for the steely green glint that their helmets reflected from the light of the fires. It was then that I turned to a friend and commented that the Martyrs’ Monument might soon be witness to our deaths, but that if not, I would come back to this place every year on this date to remember the victims.
Descendants of China’s Communist founding fathers have been pushing for the early release of imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, two unnamed sources tell Reuters. Liu was sentenced to 11 years in prison in 2009 for inciting subversion, and received the Nobel Peace Prize the following year. Internal discussion reportedly revolves around international criticism on human rights, with hopes for an improved image abroad weighed against fears that Liu’s freedom would give critics a potent new weapon. From Benjamin Kang Lim and Michael Martina:
[… T]he back channel push for Liu’s parole shows that a debate is taking place among leaders about damage to China’s reputation caused by his jailing. It also suggests the ruling elite are not monolithic when it comes to views on dissent.
[…] “For many princelings, the pros of freeing Liu Xiaobo outweigh the cons,” one of the sources said. “Liu Xiaobo will definitely be freed early. The question is when.”
