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<\/a>Emily Rauhala \/ Beijing @emilyrauhala March 19, 2015<\/p>\nAltaf Qadri\u2014AP
\nIndian women’s rights activists wearing masks of five women’s rights activists formally detained in China after Women’s Day crackdown, hold placards with their names, to express their solidarity and demand their immediate release, in New Delhi, India, Wednesday, March 18, 2015<\/p>\n
The line between dissidence and social activism grows ever murkier
\nIt was supposed to be a celebration. This year marks two decades since the world came together in Beijing for the Fourth World Conference on Women. Participants in that event \u2014 including keynote speaker Hillary Clinton \u2014 set an ambitious global blueprint for gender equality and women\u2019s rights. It was a landmark moment for the women\u2019s movement, and a point of pride for China as it stepped, gingerly, toward post-Mao reforms.<\/p>\n
But as meetings to mark the \u201cBeijing+20\u201d anniversary close Friday in New York, things are looking bleak. In the run up to International Women\u2019s Day and the Beijing+20-themed conclave, China detained 10 women for planning activities to celebrate the occasion. Five of those women \u2014 Wu Rongrong, Wei Tingting, Wang Man, Zheng Churan and Li Tingting \u2014 are still in detention. Their lawyers worry they will be charged with \u201cpicking quarrels and creating a disturbance,\u201d an Orwellian turn of phrase used to jail government critics.<\/p>\n
The ruling Communist Party has long taken aggressive measures to silence opposition voices, censoring the Internet, banning books, and jailing dissidents. For much of the past decade, though, the line between \u201cdissident\u201d and \u201ccritical voice\u201d \u2014 that is between prison and the freedom to live your life \u2014 was, with exceptions, relatively clear: Do not openly oppose one-party rule. Avoid the \u201cthree T\u2019s\u201d (Tibet, Taiwan and Tiananmen). Don\u2019t take to the street.<\/p>\n
However, since coming to power in 2012, Xi Jinping\u2019s regime has taken an even harder line, jailing those who speak out on matters not related to party control or the three T\u2019s. (See, for example, the case of Professor Ilham Tohti, or jailed lawyer Xu Zhiyong.) There are new no-go areas, including the politics of Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, and calls for government transparency that do not originate from the government itself. Until this month, if you kept a low profile and did not plan protests, you could speak publicly on issues like gender equality and LGBT rights.<\/p>\n
Now, advocates fear that too has changed. The women arrested in Beijing this month were not advocating for the overthrow of the Communist Party. In fact, they were, separately, and in their respective cities, simply planning to distribute pamphlets and raise awareness about issues the Chinese government supports: gender equality and combatting sexual harassment. These activists did not organize political rallies, but rather used performance art to challenge societal views. Emily Rauhala \/ Beijing @emilyrau … Continue reading
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