One of China’s best-known dissidents writes about life as a prisoner of conscience in Beijing.
BY HU JIA AUGUST 19, 2014
For the last decade, when I have not been in prison, I have lived in BOBO Freedom City, a housing complex in the eastern suburbs of Beijing. It’s quite nice. Situated near an ancient canal, it is surrounded by bridges and ecological gardens. My experience is a bit different from those of the other residents who live in the compound, however. I am under constant surveillance from the Defenders of Domestic Security, better known as Country Defenders, or Guobao. Guobao prevent my friends, foreign diplomats, journalists from international media outlets, and other dissidents or human rights supporters from visiting me.
Just over three years ago, I was released from prison, where I had spent 1,277 days for “inciting subversion of state power.” Now, I mostly live under a form of house arrest known as “soft detention.” Why am I in soft detention? Guobao once told my neighbors that they were cutting off my normal social networks so that I wouldn’t be able to lead any “organized activities of citizens in the streets.”
I’m not alone. All Chinese dissidents are in prison. Some are in official prisons, guarded by police who stand behind high walls and electric wires. Others are in societal prisons, buttressed by “stability maintenance,” the name of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) system of controlling what it sees as unstable elements. And some, like me, move back and forth between the two.
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