“Anyone could be Deng Yujiao”

Chinese citizens have been expressing their anger with official conduct through online campaigns. Deng Yujiao is a 21-year-old who fatally stabbed a Communist Party official when he tried to rape her. Her arrest on suspicion of voluntary manslaughter created an online furor when it was publicized by a blogger. This week, the court ruled that she had acted in self-defense and released her from criminal liability.

“It’s about raising the public awareness of democratic ideas — accountability, transparency, citizens’ rights to participate, that the government should serve the people,” said Xiao Qiang, a journalism professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who tracks China’s Internet activity. “Netizens who are now sharing those more democratic values are using these cases, each time making inch-by-inch progress.”

China still exerts sweeping and sophisticated control over the Internet, employing thousands of people to monitor Internet traffic for forbidden material and using software to spot key words that hint at subversion. But the system is not infallible, and Internet users frequently find ways to skirt the censors.

The Tank Man

Unfortunately, studying for the bar got in the way of blogging today. I did manage to catch Frontline's program on "The Tank Man." The documentary was first aired a few years ago but they showed it again in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. The Tank Man was an anonymous protester who became internationally known when he was photographed standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square. The version here is from Jeff Widener of AP.

The whole program is available online.

On a related note, check out this post from Matthew Yglesias on China's new requirement that all PCs include internet-censoring software.

This also highlights why political developments in China are so crucial for the entire world. If, say, Iran tried to do this it almost certainly wouldn’t fly. But companies will fall all over each other to cater to the Chinese market. Then, once the technology is in place other autocracies can try to piggyback on work that’s been done in and for China. But absent China, almost all of world output would be happening in democratic nations, and it would be easy to structure the global economy in the kind of way optimists were hoping it would work for China.

June 4th: "Just Another Day"

James Fallows is blogging about the anniversary of Tiananmen Square massacre as it's being experienced in China.

In his first post, he discusses walking by the square on the eve of the anniversary:

There are more representatives in all categories -- soldiers, police, obvious plainclothesmen -- than I recall seeing even during the Tibet violence in early 2008 or through the Olympic games. Also many people whom you would normally classify as fruit vendors, tourists from the Chinese provinces, youngish white collar workers male and female, and skateboarder-looking characters wearing cargo shorts and with fauxhawk haircuts, were last night walking up and down the sidewalks with their eyes constantly on visitors and drifting up next to people who were holding conversations.

The way to avoid their attention is keep moving briskly along the sidewalk rather than stopping as if you think there is something particular to look at in the square today. The way to draw it is to stop and look around, to pay attention to the security forces themselves, or to have a camera in your hand. If the camera comes out, it may be pointed at one of the scenic highlights in the center of the square.

In his second post, he gives updates from various sources, including his wife (below). Fallows also notes that in other parts of Beijing and China, everything was "perfectly normal" and it was "just another day."

Lots of groups were obviously deputized young men who stood around watching, staring, following people like me at least 3 on 1 at any given moment. There were no women in this capacity. There was a clear absence of the usual "oblivious" quality of Chinese crowd movement, where people bump into you, brush against you, or cut in front of you if you happen to be in the path of where they're going. Everyone milling about was acutely aware of everyone else in his space. They seemed to have assigned space. Some deputies also wore group-colored shirts, all wore "badges" with the Chinese flag surrounded in gold, Many looked like the kids who volunteered at the Olympics. Clearly nationalistic. All young. I wondered if they were paid for the day.

I would guess about 85% of people on the square were there officially. You could tell that because the security lines were basically unpopulated, while all the "deputies" just walked around the screeners without being checked. There were very few tourists, foreign or otherwise. There were mostly uniformed and non-uniformed police. Some foreigners were taking pictures, seemingly unmolested. Any footage and photos will be dull-looking; the shots would look "normal". It was just the feeling of intense orchestration and deliberate crowd-building that gave it away. And also a distinct sense of high-tension, which carried around the front of the Forbidden City, but evaporated just around the corners.

I found her comment about the young, nationalistic volunteers pretty interesting in light of some statistics I read in the paper today. In today's Express (the Washington Post's free paper) that because discussion of the 1989 events is "virtually off-limits" in China, the 200 million "post-1980" kids are most apolitical. Apparently 75% of Chinese college students hope to join the Communist Party. Of those, 56% think it would "boost their chances of finding a good job." In any case, it turns out that many young Chinese no idea what happened 20 years ago.

Slate's "Explainer" is about what the official government line is on Tiananmen Square.

This week marks the 20^th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Western media characterize the incident as a brutal government crackdown on peaceful protesters. What does the Chinese government say about it?

Very little. Neither the 1989 protests nor the ensuing massacre is included in Chinese textbooks, and many students today have never heard of these events. For the most part, the government avoids discussing the issue at all. The government does acknowledge that the People's Liberation Army intervened after seven weeks of demonstrations and that people were killed. But the official line is that, rather than crushing a peaceful protest, the military simply defended itself—and the country—against violent counterrevolutionary elements. ("Counterrevolutionary" is used in China in much the same way as "anti-American" in the United States.)

China Censors Tiananmen Information

On the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square revolt, China is censoring information about the event.

Reporters Without Borders said this week that Chinese media cannot refer to the incident, which took place June 4, 1989, and information has been suppressed so effectively that most young Chinese are unaware of the event, which led to the deaths of hundreds of demonstrators.

When Internet users look for information on "4 June," Baidu, China's most popular search engine, displays a message saying: "The search does not comply with laws, regulations, and policies," Reporters Without Borders found in recent tests. Video search for the date leads to a message that says, "Sorry, no video corresponds to your search."

An earlier post about Human Rights Watch's video, "The Tiananmen Legacy," is here. Another post, on the memoirs of a Chinese official who was involved in discussions about the crackdown on demonstrators, is here.

Licenses of Beijing Human Rights Lawyers Threatened

According to Human Rights Watch and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, Beijing legal authorities are threatening to deny renewal of the legal licenses of some of the city’s high profile civil-rights lawyers.

“It is unprecedented to have so many prominent lawyers facing difficulties with their license renewal,” Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher with Human Rights Watch, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. “This is a sort of backhand retaliation by judicial authorities in Beijing to warn the firms that employ these lawyers that there might be consequences to their business if they don’t keep their distance.”

The authorities in rural China have frequently sought to silence or intimidate activist lawyers by holding up the annual renewal of their licenses to practice law. But in Beijing, the renewal process, which involves filling out a form and paying a fee, has generally been trouble-free until now.

Releasing the Detained Uighurs into the US

Blogger Hilzoy has completed a multi-part series on the Uighur detainees from Guantanamo Bay into the US. (Links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Compilation, Coda)

The Uighurs are a moderate-Muslim ethnic group from Central Asia and western China. They call their homeland East Turkestan but it was renamed Xinjiang by the Chinese when they took over. The US military conducted Combatant Status Review Tribunals and determined that 15 of the 18 detained Uighurs were not enemy combatants. Currently, 17 of them remain incarcerated, despite the fact that all but one have been approved for release. They have now been detained for over 7 years.

Hilzoy is responding to Newt Gingrich's May 15th column, which claims

Seventeen of the 241 terrorist detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay are Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs. These Uighurs have been allied with and trained by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups. The goal of the Uighurs is to establish a separate sharia state.

As part of their ongoing effort to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration has had to figure out what to do with the Uighurs. Officials believe that if they’re sent back to China they will be persecuted, and no third country will take them.

So the Obama administration has decided to set the Uighurs loose in America. Most likely, the lucky community that will soon be hosting the Uighurs is a neighborhood near you: Fairfax Country Virginia, where there is already a sizable (non-terrorist) Uighur community.

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By their own admission, Uighurs being held at Guantanamo Bay are members of or associated with the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an al Qaeda-affiliated group designated as a terrorist organization under U.S law.

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Even if you accept the argument made by their defenders that the Uighurs’ true targets are Chinese, not Americans, it does nothing to change the fact that they are trained mass killers instructed by the same terrorists responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001.

In the series of posts, Hilzoy debunks these and other myths about the Uighurs. She quotes an FBI agent who interviewed the Uighurs early during their incarceration and concluded that:

The Uighurs considered themselves to be fighting for democracy, and they idolized the United States. Although the Uighurs are Muslim their agenda did not appear to include Islamic radicalism. They claimed to have no political connection to Islamic terrorists or the Taliban. However, their camp in Afghanistan was bombed, and they fled to Pakistan. The Uighurs were captured by the Pakistanis, with half being transferred to US custody, and half being remanded directly to Chinese officials. It was alleged that the Uighurs who were transferred directly to the Chinese were immediately executed. At the time of my TDY, US officials were considering whether to return the Uighurs to the Chinese, possibly to gain support for anticipated US action in the Middle East. The Uighur detainees at GTMO were convinced that they would be immediately executed if they were returned to China.

The Uighurs themselves are pushing back against Gingrich.

No, they have never admitted that [they are associated with ETIM], says [their translator Rushan] Abbas, adding that the Uighurs call the claim "baseless, factless slander against them." Abbas returned from Guantanamo Monday. She now works with the Uighurs' defense attorneys, but said that her comments to the Huffington Post were not intended as advocacy on their behalf.

The Uighurs call relatives in the United States and Europe often, she says, so stay up on the news. They were surprised to hear the accusation from the former Speaker of the House.

"Why does he hate us so much and say those kinds of things? He doesn't know us. He should talk to our attorneys if he's curious about our background," Abbas relates. "How could he speak in such major media with nothing based in fact? They were very disappointed how Newt Gingrich was linking them to ETIM which they never even heard of the name ETIM until they came to Guantanamo Bay."

"The Tiananmen Legacy"

In anticipation of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, Human Rights Watch has released "The Tiananmen Legacy" on ongoing persecution and censorship in China. The related video is below.

The government's ongoing efforts to censor history, crush dissent, and harass survivors stands in stark contrast to the impressive economic and social developments in China in recent decades. The Chinese government should recognize that 20 years of denial and repression have only caused the wounds of Tiananmen to fester, not heal.

Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.

(An earlier post, on the memoirs of a Chinese official who was involved in discussions about the crackdown on demonstrators, is here.)

Tiananmen Memoirs Published

Just before the 20th anniversary of the massacre at Tiananmen Square, the memoirs of General Secretary Zhao Ziyang have been published in English in Hong Kong. Zhao was opposed to the brutal crackdown on demonstrators and after the massacre, he was fired and placed under house arrest until his death in 2005. The memoirs detail the discussions that took place within the party before the massacre.

Those that have seen the book said Mr Zhao denounced the killing of protesters on 3-4 June 1989 as a "tragedy".

"On the night of 3 June, while sitting in the courtyard with my family, I heard intense gunfire. A tragedy to shock the world had not been averted," he said, according to Reuters news agency.

In the book Mr Zhao, who wanted China to embark on far-reaching political reforms, praised Western-style democracy.

"If we don't move toward this goal, it will be impossible to resolve the abnormal conditions in China's market economy," he wrote.

Mr Zhao's former secretary, Bao Tong, said he was behind the scheme to publish his former boss's memoirs.

Mr Bao spent seven years in prison because of his involvement in the Tiananmen incident and is still under house arrest in Beijing.

"I planned both the Chinese and English versions of the book," he told the BBC.

"If China's legal bodies want to find someone responsible, they ought to come after me."

Mexican Nationals Detained in China

James Fallows has a first-hand account.

You can understand why China is nervous, given its dense urban populations and its experience with SARS. You can understand quarantines based on recent presence in a diseased area or possible exposure to diseased people. You can comprehend why direct flights between Mexico and China have for now been called off.

But there is no decent reason for quarantine and detention based solely on nationality. To the best of my information, this blanket quarantine of Mexican citizens is not being applied anyplace else on earth. Let's hope this is a panicky mistake by Chinese and Beijing-area officials and will soon be reversed. It is also worth recognizing the overall aplomb and openness that the Mexican government has been showing in handling the flu outbreak.

Mexico has responded:

Mexico says its citizens in different parts of China have faced discrimination after being suspected of carrying the flu.

"These are discriminatory measures, without foundation ... The Foreign Ministry recommends avoiding traveling to China until these measures are corrected," [Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia] Espinosa said.

She also condemned China as well as Argentina, Peru, Ecuador and Cuba for suspending flights from Mexico due to the flu outbreak. Mexico traditionally has had good ties with all of those nations.

China Releases “The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010)”

China's New UN Plan Won't Delude Its Human Rights Lawyers:

On the same day that Mr. Cheng [an attorney who defended a Falun Gong adherent] was beaten by public officials, China released “The National Human Rights Action Plan of China (2009-2010).” The document is an attempt to respond to criticism by the world human rights community and to show that China's communist leaders are now serious about taking action to improve human and civil rights.

Beating up attorneys and jailing them is not unusual police conduct in China. The AsianNews report notes that there has been an increase in intimidation and violence against the brave lawyers who defend human rights.

The plan says nothing about ending the monopoly of one-party rule in China. Instead, it muddles the concept of human and civil rights by speaking of subsistence rights and economic rights in a socialist state run by the Chinese Communist Party. It doesn’t discuss the fundamental freedoms that the civilized world cherishes—freedom of speech, freedom to practice one’s religion, freedom from arbitrary arrest, independent courts, equal justice under the law, and so on.