14 Feb 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
Veteran Chinese dissident Zhu Yufu has been sentenced to seven years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” after he shared his poem “It’s time” over Skype. The court in Hangzhou, eastern China, sentenced Zhu following a trial hearing on 31 January. During the hearing, prosecutors cited the poem and messages the activist had sent online. In the poem, Yufu called on Chinese citizens to defend their freedoms. The court verdict said the crime deserved “severe” punishment.
01 Feb 12 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost
Several Tibetan-language blogs hosted in China are reported to have gone offline today, amid a period of severe unrest. AmdoTibet’s blog section has been temporarily shut down, a message on the site reads, “due to some of the blog users not publishing in accordance with the goal of this site.” Tense events of recent weeks have included a stream of self-immolations in Tibet protesting against Chinese rule, and more recently, deadly clashes between officials and demonstrators.
22 Jan 12 | Asia and Pacific, China
Zhu Yufu, a poet and activist, was last week charged with crimes relating to subversion for writing and publishing a poem online. The poem, It’s Time, has been translated by A.E. Clark:
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
The Square belongs to everyone.
With your own two feet
It’s time to head to the Square and make your choice.
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
A song belongs to everyone.
From your own throat
It’s time to voice the song in your heart.
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
China belongs to everyone.
Of your own will
It’s time to choose what China shall be.
Zhu is not new to activism, he was involved in the Democracy Wall movement in 1979. He was formally arrested last April for publishing the poem online, as China began a fierce clampdown on dissent.
A number of artists and writers have been imprisoned in recent weeks for word crimes. Activists Chen Xi and Chen Wei, and writer Li Tie, now face sentences of between nine to 10 years.
Chen Wei was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for inciting subversion, while Chen Xi and Li Tie face 10 years in jail for subversion, a more serious charge. Joshua Rosenzweig, Research Manager at the Duihua Foundation, an organisation seeking clemency and improved treatment for at-risk detainees, notes that, “as far as the law is concerned, ‘subversion’ and ‘inciting subversion’ are not synonymous or interchangeable. The difference has important ramifications.”
Quoting China’s Criminal Law, Article 105, Rosenzweig writes that subversion refers to the following:
Among those who organize, plot or carry out acts to subvert the state power or overthrow the socialist system, the ringleaders and the others who commit major crimes shall be sentenced to life imprisonment or fixed-term imprisonment of not less than 10 years;
The latter, “inciting subversion” is defined as:
Whoever incites others by spreading rumors or slanders or any other means to subvert state power or overthrow the socialist system shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not more than five years, criminal detention, public surveillance or deprivation of political rights; and the ringleaders and the others who commit major crimes shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years.
There can be no doubt that China is displaying less tolerance for words of dissent. Zhu Yufu’s sentence is likely to be lengthy.
21 Jan 12 | Asia and Pacific, China
The defection of Chinese writer and dissident Yu Jie last week revealed shocking allegations of torture and beatings more usually associated with rogue American troops in Iraq.
Yu, a close friend of imprisoned Chinese writer Liu Xiaobo, is most famous for his mocking attack on the country’s premier, China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao, published in Hong Kong in late 2010.
Yu fled with his family to the US on 11 January. Shortly after, he held a press conference in Washington and released a written statement on why he had chosen to defect. Below we pick out the most shocking of these claims.
Though I was physically in China, I became an ‘exile at heart’ and a ‘non-existent person’ in the public space.
Illegal house arrests, torture, surveillance, tracking, and being taken on ‘trips’ became part of my everyday life.
Several of the plainclothes officials came at me again and began beating me in the head and the face without explanation. They stripped off all my clothes and pushed me, naked, to the ground, and kicked me maniacally. They also had a camera and were taking pictures as I was being beaten, saying with glee that they would post the naked photos online.
They forced me to kneel and slapped me over a hundred times in the face. They even forced me to slap myself. They would be satisfied only when they heard the slapping sound, and laughed madly. They also kicked me in the chest and then stood on me after I had fallen to the ground.
The head state security officer told him:
If the order comes from above, we can dig a pit to bury you alive in half an hour, and no one on earth would know… If the central authorities think that their rule is facing a crisis, they can capture [all China’s dissidents] in one night and bury them alive.
While the post-Tiananmen Square period was a time when Chinese dissidents defected in their droves, there is still a steady trickle of Chinese who seek refugee status overseas. Some of them leave legally, while others, who are denied passports or the right to leave smuggle themselves out, usually via Vietnam. They include fellow writer Liao Yiwu, who has been living in Germany since 2011; Chinese diplomat, Chen Yonglin, who fled to Australia in 2005; and AIDS activist Wan Yanhai, who left for the United States in 2010. The wife of Chinese dissident human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, Geng He, has also been living in the US for the past two years. Her husband is currently serving a three-year prison sentence for violating probation rules, having been missing for more than a year.
