Racing against Terror
By Zhou Qing
Honorable Mr. President,
Honorable Delegates of PEN Centers
Ladies and Gentlemen;
Good Afternoon. I am very much grateful to the Italian PEN for your invitation of me to this conference in such a beautiful city – Milan. It is the first time for me to have attended a conference as a writer after 17 years of being labeled as a dangerous element by the Communist Party in China since I was arrested in the wake of June Fourth Massacre in 1989. The reason that I am here emphasizing my identity as a writer is not only because this opportunity may be considered as a comfort and compensation to my inhuman life in the jail for two years and eight months, where I lost six teeth and got a permanent cripple arm, but also because my personality have been defined as a fearful carrier of viruses in the society of China. As a matter of fact, I started writing in early 1980s and got a prize for my publication even at my teenage. I have never stopped my writing since my release from jail, and ever nominated for some International literature awards for several times.
Since I was released from jail, my name has not been allowed to appear in the media in Mainland China for a considerably long time. When it appeared for the first time, the character of my given name had to be split into two parts as Jing-li. Chinese literati had been known to preserve a tradition that one should not change ones name in whatsoever situation. In todays China, however, the authorities have screened the names of many writers as carefully as to prevent the pestilences from occurring. More dreadfully, a few members of the Independent Chinese PEN have been severely sentenced in prison just for their different opinions from those of the Chinese Communist authority.
On the contrary, if one could behave oneself obediently toward the Chinese communist authority, a writer in such a corrupted state of authoritarianism would get unthinkable material comforts and spiritual debauchery from it. For instance, a woman communist writer is said to have got a authors remuneration 10 times higher than the normal one for a short story of hers despite being a privileged author who has already enjoyed, even if she would do nothing any more, a good salary, a big apartment, a full job insurance and other benefits which the most of Chinese citizens cannot have. What would such a writer say about the situation in China? What would the Chinese Communist regime do for such a kind of hack writers? To the second question, the cultural and propaganda departments of the Chinese Communist regime have done utmost to support and propagandize them both in China and abroad. There are famous writers, such as Yu Hua and Mo Yan, who have being written the complementary works without any troubles in China, and who, at the same time, have also be nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. Their identities as a member of the Chinese Communist Party, or even a member of the Chinese Peoples Political Consultation Committee, have however be completely ignored by the Western society. Therefore, they have chances to eat every thing, enjoying not only the governmental banquets at the Peoples Congress in China but also the great culture meals abroad. An extreme case is Mr. Yu Hua who visited Italy not long ago, as you might have known. He announced to the Italian media that publication in China is now very liberal, and that his publication has never been censored at all, bla, bla. That was of cause a ridiculous announcement. Hence, I would like to express my respect to Italy PEN again for giving this opportunity to a member of Chinese Independent PEN in the present Italian-Chinese Culture Year.
When I am now writing this, as a matter of fact, I am still wondering whether or not I will finally be present at thi conference. It is well known that many Chinese writers, particularly members of our Chinese Independent PEN Center, such as our president Dr. Liu Xiaobo, are not permitted by the Chinese government to be abroad for participation in any activity or even for a private tour. At the end of 1999 when I returned from a visit to Russia, I was detained at the border in Xinjiang Autonomous Region for more than ten days. The reason could be only that I was not supposed to have returned to China.
I believe that terrifying and lying are the two most important tools that all the totalitarian states have employed to maintain their legitimacy and continuity. The dictators can always take their advantages in controlling the resources almost in a whole society to occupy, override and threaten the private spaces of the society and its citizens at any costs. Those in power have just made use of the common fears of publics to protect their interests obtained from corruption and preserve their sources of continual corruption. Meanwhile, they constantly produce lies to distort the history and reality. The terrors and lies are spreading over whole China so as to seriously pollute and drug the people in various social groups and the society as a whole. Hence, I define it as the State Terrorism.
It is during the past 17 years since June Forth Massacre in 1989 that this State Terrorism has been getting more and more threatening so as to reach the peak of degenerating Chinese people as a whole. The State Terrorism behaves like a carrier of virus. As it extends and expands without limitation, it will finally devour all the living spaces of the people, freedom of expression, and future as well as spiritual development. Now, I will tell you the story of my life during the past 17 years, both inside and outside jail to explain State Terrorism. I believe that my case should be a vivid example for realizing and understanding the situation in China, particularly for a writer there.
In 1989, I was studying in a class of writers at university before the massacre. When the student petition movement was touched off by the death of the former Party General Secretary Mr. Hu Yaobang, my indifferent and indolent life was turned to become intensive and meaningful accordingly. I wrote and put up a poster to protest the editorial of Peoples Daily published on the 26th of April 1989 that condemned the student petition movement. This poster became therefore the root for later persecution against me. When I was sentenced to jail, the first item of my crime in my court verdict was that I had illegally published a newsletter of Democracy and Freedom, for which I was the chief editor, with a printout of 1000 copies. Moreover, I had drafted several posters for the students, mobilizing the students strike, etc. Obviously, this is a typical case of persecution because of expressing ones opinion.
In the wake of the June Forth Massacre, I fled though completely penniless. A student gave me some money from the earlier donation. An unlettered peasant couple also helped me on my way of fleeing and said: We can see that you must be a student, and so please hide at our home. If the police come, we will let our dogs face them while you will escape from our back door to the mountains. However, I was aimless in my fleeing and also very much worried about my girlfriend at the Xian Jiaotong University. Therefore I decided to return to Xian, just for a look at her.
I was beaten down in front of the gate of the University. What I faced was various types of guns pointing at me. I was immediately punished by handcuffing my thumbs. Seeing the blood full of my face, my girlfriend helplessly screamed for help, A student being arrested! A student being arrested! but none of the students playing football nearby appeared to care of it.
My first place in jail was the detention center at the Fifth Department of Xian Public Security Bureau. That was the most infamous one amongst all the ails in China where most of the prisoners had handcuffs and shackles for they were waiting to be executed. There I accompanied more than 30 of them.
The director of the detention center had a nickname as Tiger Wang. He often broadcasted like this: I will make you a subject for three changes! Your wife will change her husband
, your son will change his surname, and you from dog fucking will change your mind!
As so many were locked up in the same cell, fights, tortures and sexual attacks among the prisoners have frequently been happening. There were many prisoners sentenced to death for different types of crimes who enjoyed overriding, beating and humiliating the others. The student prisoners like me were often the victims of those attacks. We had to fight back to defend ourselves since the detention administration often neglected those attacks intentionally. Once with a wooden piece, I broke the head of a death-sentenced prisoner who had always humiliated the student prisoners. However, the police punished me by handcuffing my hands tightly behind my back. I could neither eat nor sleep. The only way to survive was to be fed up by kind roommates. After six days of such punishment, I could hardly withdraw my hands from my back.
There were many different kinds of tortures amongst the prisoners. It is never possible for anyone in a normal and rational society to imagine how brutal these tortures could be. One of the tortures was called vaccination carried out during the summer time. It was to make a cut on an arm of the victim, and then put many fleas, bugs and cooties into the wound. After several days, the victim became vaccinated with a reluctance swelling on the wound like a tomato. But there were hundreds of visible bugs moving inside. It was really terrible.
Another brutal torture was beating ones buttocks with a plastic hose until they became heavy swelled. I witnessed that a prisoner was tortured in this way to a very severe extent just for his smoking without permission. He died of the infection of his wound but his death was certified as a natural one due to some disease.
On 26th of September, 1990, I was transferred to a Labor Camp for so called Reeducation-through-Labor (Laodong Jiaoyang) in Fengxiang County, Shaanxi Province. There had been more than one hundred prisoners in its June Forth Special Team, prior to my arrival. The prisoners were teachers, engineers, students, workers as well as hoboes and beggars. In November of the same year, I learnt from the only newspaper available in jail that the Communist regime made its most efforts for the prolongation of so-called Most-Favored-Nation statue from USA. They pulished such a statement day by day as to claim that nobody was locked up in jail any more for the June Forth Movement. Due to the lack of information in jail, I thought that the international society must have been cheated by such a lie and that Chinese intellectuals had been too weak and obidient to do anything againt it. Under such a completely closed circumstance, this radical mentality of mine became more emotional. Then I made an extrem decision that I should set a presendent to escape from the Labor Camp and then flee abroad. Then I could tell the world the truth.
Accordingly I started looking for partners of jailbreak. Mr. He was a group leader among the prisoners. He told me that he wanted to escape as well, because he was missing his girlfriend. I thought he maight be a good partner since he was a group leader who had much more convienience to get necessary tools than I had. There was another man who was just arrested from a former jailbreak. So there became a team of three persons for jailbreak.
The plane for jailbreak was carried out as such. The group leader, Mr. He, was able to get a piece of steel-saw hidden in a sausage transported into the jail. My responsibility was to saw off the sticks of the security fence on the window. I had also utilized my bed heet, to make an eight-meters long rope together with my two partners, which would be utilized to get over the high wall of the prison.
All in a sudden, four hours before the planed moment, a group of fierce policemen rushed into our cell. They easily discovered the off-sawed window fence, as well as the eight-meters-long rope. I was immediately put into a isolated cell with heavy guards. The rest of the prisoners held a meeting, and decided to burden me for any charge. I realized later on that the so-called team of three for jailbreak was a trap from the beginning.
The consequence of this attempt of jailbreak was obvious. I was guarded in an isolation cell for a long time, and then punished with a prolongation of my imprisonment for five months. The reasons for prolongation of imprisonment were given as follows:
· Bad and stubborn attitude in the isolation cell;
· Refusing to confess my crime of jailbreak;
· Singing and shouting loudly to disturb the integrations;
· Spreading continuously in the Labor Camp my arguments against the June Forth Massacre in 1989;
· Collecting a name list of imprisoned students and teachers and trying to get it out of the Labor Camp.
Hence, I spent two years and eight months in jail.
As soon as I was released from the jail, I was carefully watched in the society. For instance, I was told that I must stay at home for several days because the President Bill Clinton was visiting China. I became furious and told the police, Bill Clintons visit must not disturb my ordinary life. If you continue to tail me, I will disturb Mr. Clinton as well! Later on, a kind neighbor told me that there had been several new peddlers and strange cars around our house during these days. They were all from the security police.
It has been rather often that I was forced to have a tourist trip escorted by policemen outside Xian during the so-called sensitive periods. They just guarded my door to prevent my disappearance from their sight. I tried once to travel to Zhangjiajie city located in another province, without telling anybody. However, I surprisingly encountered two policemen who were in charge of my case in Xian, on the third days after my arrival. This was not an easy job for them to find me in such a city with a population of three million people. However, they got plenty of policemen to trace me with my photo in hands.
Last year when I tried to help a friend from USA to publish a series of books on Christianity, the police questioned all the related persons, including a car driver.
The policemen watched me as careful as possible. They told me that their attitudes ware never to believe me for any of my publications. At the middle of 1990s, I was in charge of publishing a newspaper entitled Historical Tale. Then they threatened me to shut down the newspaper immediately. Otherwise they would do it themselves, because I was not worth to be trusted, even if there are full pages of a slogan such as Long live the Chinese Communist Party on my newspaper.
In short, I have suffered fears and turbulence day by day in the past 17 years. Yet, all of my family members and friends suffered from inquisition, disturbing and even threats. Naturally, I have to continue to face with the terrors, in the future.
I am telling the stories of my experience just for a surprising and unbelievable truth that I found by chance, that is, all of my sufferings for so many years have been related to the words. I therefore realize that whenever the writers are subjected to terror in a country, the regime must be based on a national terrorism. This has been thoroughly proved in history, from Hitlers Germany to Stalins Soviet Union, from Mao Zedongs China to Saddam Husseins Iraq, as well as todays Cuba, North Korea and my homeland.
My opinion is that it is much more important to recover and repair the humanity which has been distorted by the dictatorship, than to face with the ational terrorism. Please allow me to explain with the example of the Pro-democratic Movement in 1989. During the Movement, there was a very special period from 15th April to the end of May. The people appeared to be extremely self-disciplined though no police carried out their duty by intention. There was not a single case of serious crime happed almost in the whole country during such a long time. Even the thiefs published poster of suspending stealing in order to support the students.
Nonetheless, The extreme high sel
f-discipline society turned immediately into a prosecution movement, as soon as the gun fire broke out against the students. In the prosecutions, people disclosed and betraied each other, so that it became a new kind of terrors among the people. Homo lupus homini One is a wolf to other. This has been the strategy of the Chinese nation. This is also the great success of the long-term rule over China by the Communist Party. All the people became slaves of the dictatorship system. I therefore believe that the dictatorship is the natural enemy of the civilized society. It is also the most terrible threats against democracy, freedom and global orders.
To live in China at the moment means that one must race with terror, particularly for a writer. We utilize our ration to face and struggle against the terrors, so as to achieve the slight improvement. Chinese Independent PEN Center and its Writers in Prison Committee have just been organized for such a racing with terror. It makes its best effort to care and rescue the writers from the terrors.
Finally, I believe that there must be a public space in human society which is shared by everybody. In this space, the strengths of goodness and evil are always competing. As a writer, I believe that any kind of freedom is first and foremost derived from the expression of freedom. To write in freedom is also a challenge against the living status under the dictatorship. Though we fail often, we will continue to fight for the freedom of writing and expression!
Thank you!
(Translated by Dr. Minhai Gui)
已经没了“消息”的郭起真
綦彦臣
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【2006年8月10日狱委讯】沧公国诉字〔2006〕01号起诉意见书一经公开,就说明郭起真案重判意向初定。原来,据我掌握的一些信息看,郭起真仅为网络文章之事应无大碍。因为,中共高层已经表达出对网络言论的一定程度上的容忍(并且还有以技术性应对如写作班子在反动“电子刊物”发表文章为辅助手段)。但是,从刘路先生公开沧公国诉字〔2006〕01号起诉意见书,时至今日,郭起真似乎从这个世界上消失了。
一、再遭禁见,已见“凶兆”
我于6月30日去沧州市第二看守所会见过郭起真,并且郭太太于翌日 接见日亦得准许。6月30日会见时,没要任何手续,但是,在我提出 会见要求后,看守所的人也商量了一番,请示市局办案部门当是情理 之中的事情。此前,我给起真写过一封挂号信,要求起真停止绝食, 以利于我能从“人际关系”方面为此“活动”,并且在没了解到独立 笔会帮助的情况下我也准备以“委托代理人”的身分介入此案并暂时 停止了护照办理。
会见郭时,问及此信,郭称没收到。但对绝食问题的解释则全然不是 北京一些分析人士所说的“与高有关即等于与法轮功有关”的判断, 郭说是为自己蒙屈12年不得昭雪而为之。在沧州当局以各种理由不为 郭的辩护律师李建强提供会见郭的机会之后,郭太太赵长芹女士7月 8号中午打给我太太米洪武的电话,告知:郭又遭禁见,不但不能见 律师,而且连家属也无法见了。
此种信息让我立感惊愕,也使我的某些“活动计划”受挫。“活动计 划”中至少有与案件本身关系不大的羁押待遇问题,如使腿伤未好的 郭得以合理用药、吃得好一点、尽可能减低劳动量,等等。
二、“破例”引用法条的含义
从起诉意见书上看,有两点证明了重判的倾向:其一,证据获得时间 如此之短,从5月25日至6月16日不到一个月,说明当局早有准备;事 实上也如此,双方经历了多次博弈,从补给两万块钱药费到有人捎 “再闹就判”的话,不一而足。其二,意见书上引用刑法1066条即在 1055条(第二款)的基础上规定“与境外机构、组织、个人相勾结, 实施本章1033条、1044条、105条规定之罪行的,依照各该条的规定 从重处罚。”
在已往的“煽动颠覆”案例中当局几乎很少援引106条,因为可以百 分之百地肯定,那些被指控为“煽动颠覆”的言论都是海外媒体发表 的,也就是说,作为挣取稿费及保持与有关媒体联系的写稿行为,本 质上都是按商业行为对待,而不存在“发了文章或拿了稿费,就是相 互勾结”之定性。
由这个重判倾向又有“破例”的当局行为来看,原来的一个“悬念” 也得以证实:有关部门一直试图将郭起真“办成法轮功”的打算也得 以实现。虽然起诉意见书未直接说是因为郭参加绝食接力而要处刑法 106条的强化处罚,但隐约间已经涉及当下最为敏感的政治问题,如 该意见书中有两处提到《绝食日记》系列文章。其一曰:“自2002年 10月以来在美国《民主论坛》等境外网站发表的《绝食日记》、《赖 斯和林昭》等文章34篇,被《大纪元》等境外网站转载……在国际上 造成了恶劣的影响。”;其二曰:“2006年3月6日在《民主论坛》发 表的《三月六日绝食日记》一文……煽动推翻现政权。”
当局已经设想或者说有自己的情治手段证实郭起真绝食的行为有一个 “境外支持”背景。
三、屡给地方出“难题”也是诱因之一
郭起真坚持12年的上访,并每逢重要节日或重大公共活动之际散发大 量的鸣冤材料,已成了沧州地方上的一大“难题”。仅就笔者与郭起 真的接触中就能了解到:(1)曾有权力部门人士警谏郭不要继续 “闹事儿”,余下的恢复工作等事就好说了;(2)在坠塔事件发生 后,跟踪郭的党系部门拿出两万元当作郭的治疗费用。但郭态度坚决 地拒绝了警谏,并继续拖着伤腿鸣冤,使沧州当局十分尴尬。
关于郭在上访材料中所涉及的与原单位负责人马某的关系,我曾在私 下劝郭“冤仇宜解不宜结”,应当给对方个下台阶,因为既便所反应 的问题完全得以落实,也不过是个毛毛雨般的小案子。郭对此表示不 能理解。我还逗趣地给他讲了当年我被抓后对看守人员说的一句预 言:“你们的书记也快了。”──大家都以为我说气话,果不久沧州 头号权力人物薄某就进入了中纪委的视野,再后来重刑在身,险些丢 命。其实,郭案的“地方因素”在一定程度上仍是“薄氏政治”的一 些余波,因为在薄氏当政之时沧州官风鱼烂,其不作为直接导致了郭 起真由一个正直公民走向上访专业户进而所谓煽动颠覆政权的结果。
一个上访了多年,本身反映的材料充分但又不是重大事件的基本问题 即与原单位马某的纠纷,真地就没法解决吗?不可能!
至于说到郭起真全力以赴为之鸣冤的王某“杀人嫌疑”案,其当事人 王某的反应则更令人惊诧。据郭太太说:王某曾专到郭宅,要求郭不 必主动替他维权,声称“自己想过平静的日子”并希望郭将所有涉及 他的上访材料都拿出来,所开支的印刷费用全部奉上。
王某“杀人嫌疑”一案终因证据不足而使当事人获无罪开释,但至今 “真凶”一直没有找到。郭起真一直坚持追究“错办”王案的警方有 关人员的责任,无疑大大地牵涉了沧州地方盘根错节的诸种利益关 系。
结束语:前景未定
郭起真案的重判倾向无疑为中央党校政改提纲的第一条“一党执政下 的国家法律至上”理想设计,泼了一瓢冷水。当然,郭起真是否被重 判的条件还取决于以下三个条件:
1、是否在“党管法律”即政法委模式下,事先定出一个“一定将此 案办成铁案”的调子,公检法一体化作业。 2、起诉意见书所意欲采用的刑法106条的主张──指控他与《民主 论坛》的供稿关系为“接受海外敌对势力资助”──是无法成立 的;是否有其他核心证据支持──哪怕当庭出示涉及国家秘密的 证据而不是让大众知晓──才得以技术性确认。 3、郭起真本人当庭对绝食最终目的陈述,能否将自己绝食行为与当 局的“背景确认”完全分开。
(2006年8月6日于绵逸书房)
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曾 鹏
浙江工商大学公共管理学院讲师,社会工作博士生
戴利朝
江西师范大学助理研究员,社会学博士
罗观翠
中