Yan Lianke appeals to Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao over Beijing evictions

06 Dec 11 | China

An urgent appeal from Chinese writer Yan Lianke to the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese Prime Minister

Esteemed General Secretary and Prime Minister:

I am a writer and a university professor. Before deciding to write this letter to you, my conscience was buffeted by a storm of hesitation. It was your encouraging and heartfelt speech, General Secretary, delivered a week ago at the opening ceremony of the Eighth National Congress of the Chinese Writers’ Association that has emboldened me to report to you about the forced eviction and demolition of homes that I have witnessed.

Three years ago, I bought a property in Flower City World Garden using royalties from my books and borrowed money. In July this year, 39 families in the compound, including mine, were formally given eviction notices because of the road-widening project on Wanshou Road in Beijing. A few days after receiving the eviction notices, the wall of our compound was demolished at dawn.

Having been told the eviction was for the development of Beijing, the residents initially were cooperative. However, the Demolition and Relocation Office told the residents that regardless of the size or value of their properties, the compensation per household was set at 500,000 yuan, approximately US$ 78,000, and that whoever cooperated would be further awarded 700,000 yuan. Since then, there has been growing discontent among the residents with the local government and the demolition crew. You can imagine how the conflict and confusion surrounding the forced eviction was intensified by quarrels, fighting, theft and bloodshed.

In August this year, the Demolition and Relocation Office stopped mentioning the 700,000 yuan incentive and instead offered each household a one-off compensation package of 1.6 million yuan, or approximately US$250,000. At the same time, the office initiated a countdown to the demolition.

I visited the Demolition and Relocation Office three times and spoke to the person in charge. During each visit, I made it clear that as a citizen, a writer and a university lecturer, I would take the lead and vacate my property to support the development of Beijing. However, as a citizen whose property is about to be demolished, I requested to view the official documents relating to the road-widening project. I simply wanted to know a few things: how much of the residential zone would be required for the road-widening and how many properties would really need to be demolished. I wanted to know how the compensation was calculated and why the compensation was set at a flat 1.6 million yuan rather than based the area of the properties. In short, all I wanted to see was that the demolition process would more or less follow government regulations and legal procedures and that property owners would be provided with some information. The response I received was along the lines of “everything has already been decided by higher authorities” and “it’s confidential”.

Other residents also made numerous trips to city and district governments to appeal and seek resolution through legal channels but for various reasons the local courts declined to hear the case.

On 24 November, things took an even more bizarre turn. The government of Huaxiang in Fengtai District issued a document to all owners who had received eviction notices. The document stated that on 23 September, law enforcement officials discovered houses with no registered occupants as well as houses without their addresses registered with local authorities. Therefore, these houses were deemed illegal structures and would be forcibly demolished at 8 am on the 30th of November. (In fact, Flower City World Garden has existed for six years.)

I went to the compound this morning where I saw crowds of people and groups of uniformed men and many vehicles blocking access. I saw banners hanging in front of all the houses facing demolition proclaiming, “We pledge to sacrifice our blood and lives to defend our homes!” I saw emotional residents who were indeed ready to sacrifice their lives.

No one knew what would happen during a forced demolition. No local government official was there to mediate with the residents. It appeared that blood could be shed at any moment in this game of cat-and-mouse—if not today, then surely tomorrow. Many residents are determined to live and die with their homes.

Esteemed General Secretary and Prime Minister, as a citizen who is about to lose his home, as a university lecturer and a well-known writer, I have to say this was a shocking scene to witness and experience for myself. The administrators of the People’s University of China where I am employed also attempted to communicate on my behalf with the local government. They were told that the demolition must proceed. You can imagine the distress felt by residents who have nowhere else to go.

As a Chinese citizen, I love my country dearly. As a writer, I am willing to give all I have to promote Chinese culture. As a university professor, I hope to see my students able to study and grow up in a loving and harmonious environment. It is because of my foolish dream of bearing the weight of our nation on my shoulders that I am writing this urgent appeal to you.

I hope the local government will stop playing this game of cat-and-mouse with people whose houses they want to demolish.

I hope this matter can be resolved in a timely manner, in a more rational and a humane way.

I hope all parties will learn from this incident, so that in future there will be fewer farcical forced demolition cases like this, and the Chinese people will live a more dignified life, as Premier Wen frequently stresses.

I hope Chinese people—citizens of China—are given more access to information and can enjoy a greater sense of security and happiness.

My apologies for taking up your time.

Sincerely yours,
Yan Lianke
30 November, 2011

Murong Xuecun: China’s most outspoken novelist on being a “word criminal”

10 Nov 11 | Asia and Pacific, China, Uncategorized

This has been cross-posted from the New York Times with permission.

Word Crimes from Jonah Kessel on Vimeo.

“The worst effect of the censorship is the psychological impact on writers,” Murong said. “When I was working on my first book, I didn’t care whether it would be published, so I wrote whatever I wanted. Now, after I have published a few books, I can clearly feel the impact of censorship when I write. For example, I’ll think of a sentence, and then realize that it will for sure get deleted. Then I won’t even write it down. This self-censoring is the worst.”

China: Petitioners beaten when visiting Chen Guangcheng

07 Nov 11 | Asia and Pacific, Index Index, minipost

A group of petitioners attempting to visit blind Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng were beaten on 30 October. According to petitioner Zhu Jindi, as the group of 37 supporters made their way to Dongshigu in Shandong province, where Chen remains under illegal house arrest, 100 people appeared and beat the group, confiscating their mobile phones and cameras. Li Yu, a democracy activist from Sichuan, was severely beaten and thrown into a police car with two other petitioners. Li is still missing, though the other two individuals were released on 2 November. Other activists have reported similar incidents when attempting to visit Chen, who fell foul of authorities in 2005 for his work in exposing forced abortions in Shandong province.

O-pen Magazine forced to shut by the Chinese goverment

04 Nov 11 | Asia and Pacific, China

O-pen Magazine was set up in March 2011 by Annie Baby, a popular novelist who got her start on the internet. On 1 November she announced on her Sina microblog that O-pen had been forced to stop publishing. In China, magazines need a national periodical registration number, which enables the government to control magazine output. Like other magazines without a registration number, Annie Baby opted to use ISBN from a publishing house.

Local  speculation suggests that shutting down O-pen because it had the wrong registration code was just a pretext. The state has begun a cultural campaign to ‘rectify and purify content’ on TV and other forms of cultural expression is taking place.

Magazine censorship is nothing new — China’s No. 1 blogger Han Han, also a novelist, launched Party in June 2010, it was shut down after just one issue. On November 2, Han Han wrote a blog post that was later taken down by the authorities. However, University of Hong Kong brilliant China Media Project had already posted a translation:

I’ve been involved in this work [of writing] for around 13 years now, and I now understand just how powerless and of no account cultural workers (文化工作者) really are. Owing to a richness of restrictions, people in this line of work are unable to produce anything truly special.

Even though Han Han does not explicitly state it, he is referring to Annie Baby. Han Han compares censorship to castration.

As for myself, while every single essay I write goes through a process of self-censorship and castration, sometimes unavoidably the fashion of my castration is still insufficient to pass muster. This has to do with the level of sensitivity at various publishing houses. For example, my most recent novel has been killed outright, because the protagonist in the novel is surnamed Hu [like China’s president]. So even though I have only written 5,000 characters so far, the publisher assumes there must be political allegory somewhere. By the time I realized I had to avoid this name and changed the character’s surname it was too late.