23 May 14 | China, News and features
(Photo: Yo Hibino/Wikimedia Commons)
“Keep quiet and carry on” is the slogan that can best describe China’s take on the approaching 25th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
This is the yearly Tiananmen anniversary crackdown, and people within China know what to expect; slower internet, blocked search terms, more military personnel in public and the arrest of high profile individuals. But this year’s crackdown appears particularly thorough, either a reaction to dissent being higher than usual or a perception that it is in light of the milestone anniversary.
The Chinese government has already jailed scores of lawyers, activists and intellectuals, sending a chilling message to any other would-be agitators. Of the most widely reported was the arrest of Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent human rights lawyer who helped organise the 1989 protests. His detention came three days after he joined a private panel discussion on the massacre. Around 15 people were at the event, five of whom have since been detained. Then there was the airing of confessions on state media by journalist Gao Yu and citizen journalist Xiang Nanfu this May, which echoes Maoist propaganda tactics.
As we get closer to 4 June actions against freedom of expression will grow. Yvonne Shen, who is Asia News Digest Editor at Freedom House, an NGO committed to tracking violations to free expression, says the Chinese government “step up their censorship efforts in the days surrounding that date”. Within a week the organisation anticipate spikes in suspicious activity online. They are keeping a close eye on social platform WeChat in particular, given its current popularity.
“There was a leaked document dated 31 May, 2011, from the Beijing Municipal Government, that suggested the authorities had launched a ‘wartime coordination mechanism’ that required all units to report suspicious information during the “sensitive period,” Shen tells Index of the government’s usual tactic.
China forbids open discussion of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, in which soldiers fired on crowds of unarmed pro-democracy protesters, killing hundreds if not thousands (no official death toll has ever been released). On top of arrests, an army of censors work overtime to ensure mentions of the event are quickly removed. Sites are blocked and words that allude to or directly reference it vanish.
The private realms of emails and direct messages are also monitored, as Louisa Lim, author of upcoming book The People’s Republic of Amnesia, Tiananmen Revisited, describes: “I wrote my book on a brand-new laptop that had never been online. Every night I locked it in a safe in my apartment. I never mentioned the book on the phone or in e-mail, at home or in the office — both located in the same Beijing diplomatic compound, which I assumed was bugged.”
Chinese journalists are trained “not to ever touch Tiananmen with a 10 foot pole,” Beijing-based journalist Eric Fish tells Index. He too perceives a recent shift: “The atmosphere for Chinese journalists has tightened quite a bit in general since Xi Jinping came to power. It feels like they’ve clamped down a lot more than normal in the lead-up to this anniversary.”
As Fish says, the detentions form part of a broader crackdown on free speech. When Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, there were hopes he would relax censorship. These hopes were quickly dashed. Index recently reported on a ban of seemingly innocent US TV shows, which shows just how pervasive the attack has been.
Even foreign journalists, who are usually granted more leeway, have experienced “a big uptick in pressure over the past two years,” says Fish, a reference to several prominent cases of journalist visas being revoked.
This is a fact Steven Levine has had to accept. “I anticipate being refused a Chinese visa the next time I apply to visit China as this is one way in which the Chinese authorities punish foreigners who criticise their human rights practices,” explains the retired professor of Chinese history and politics, who coordinates the Tiananmen Initiative Project — an individual effort aimed at focussing attention on the Tiananmen Movement and government crackdown.
Levine’s project has already been banned from the Chinese online world; within days of launching last November, the site had been blocked. Levine will not be deterred and continues to correspond with Chinese individuals inside the country, as well as with exiled Chinese who were either leaders or active in the 1989 movement. For him, being refused a visa is a price worth paying. It’s a different story for those inside of China, who take a much bigger gamble.
That said many have come up with creative ways to circumvent censorship. For example, prominent writer Murong Xuecun avoided the censors by using the politically neutral word “tractors” instead of the highly provocative “tanks”. And while “4th June” is blocked, the new code of “May 35th” has filled its place — a count of that month’s 31 days plus four in June.
It’s a game of cat and mouse. Ultimately, the cat is winning, but the mice aren’t going down without a fight.
This article was posted on May 23, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
07 May 14 | Asia and Pacific, China, News and features
(Photo: Hannah Leung)
The world’s first museum dedicated to the 1989 pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square opened in Hong Kong last Saturday to mark the 25 year anniversary. Named the June 4 Memorial Museum, it hopes to educate the millions of mainland tourists who visit Hong Kong each year.
The violent suppression of student protests in Tiananmen Square remains a taboo topic in mainland China, banned from official discourse. Beijing considers the weeks of peaceful protest by students and workers a “counter-revolutionary” revolt and defends its decision to send in the army. To this day no official numbers of the death toll have been released and many young Chinese in particular are unaware of its occurrence.
Index visited the museum a few days after its launch. Located in the busy district of Tsim Sha Tsui, the bustling side streets of Hong Kong’s main Korean centre, the museum sits on the fifth floor of a commercial building. Inconspicuously sandwiched in the throngs of bars and Korean fried chicken joints, discretion is key. It’s easy to walk past the museum if you don’t know what you are looking for and signs of its existence are only given at the floor directory located by the elevator.
A curator at the museum tells Index that since its opening the museum has received around 300 visitors per day, with an even split between mainlanders and Hong Kong residents. At the time of our visit, there were mostly Hong Kong residents in attendance, with a sprinkling of mainland visitors. It’s also packed. Despite being a normal weekday and an hour before closing time, a queue weaves out the door. The sense of eagerness to discover something is palpable amongst the patrons.
The space is modest – 800 square feet in total – with both people and information meticulously squeezed in. School children browse through books and pamphlets found on a bookshelf. Some pose for pictures with a Goddess of Democracy statue located by the entrance. The statue is a replica of one created by the protesters in the days before the crackdown.
Copies of newspaper clippings, photos, videos and an interactive feature on the configuration of the protestors at Tiananmen Square, which went on for a month, are all on display. The centrepiece is a video of the Tiananmen Mothers, a group of activists personally affected by the protests, some of whom lost children or relatives in the crackdown. Testimonies given in the clips go through the agony of losing a university-aged child, and the subsequent upset of being forced to lie about the way their children died. They have been forbidden by the government, then and now, to reveal the truth.
One young woman, a tourist from mainland China, is visibly in tears as she watches the documentary. Others are less moved and some attendees have criticised the museum for not being sombre enough. A couple, also from the mainland, fiddle with the interactive feature found in the centre of the museum before the man, seemingly bored, says he wants to leave.
That visitors are here however, is a feat in and of itself. While free speech is protected in Hong Kong in theory under the One Country Two Systems agreement, closer ties to the Chinese mainland in recent years have led to incursions on free speech, as Index recently reported. In the weeks leading up to the museum’s unveiling many were sceptical about whether it would open at all. Occupants of the same building called for its closure, citing safety concerns. The museum’s backers believe Communist Party officials were behind these efforts. In another incident, Yang Jianli, a US-based activist who participated in the protests in 1989, was refused entry to Hong Kong to attend the opening ceremony. The launch was greeted by more protests from pro-China demonstrators.
Over in a small area by the exit, memorabilia is sold. USB memory drives are also available upon enquiry containing information and images related to the killings. Museum founders hope visitors will smuggle these over the border into mainland China, and in so doing force the Communist government to admit its crimes. They might be an overly optimistic aim, but at least the June 4 museum is confronting China’s recent past in an honest, open way.
This article was published on May 7, 2014 at indexoncensorship.org
18 Jun 12 | News and features, Volume 41.02 Summer 2012
Despite talk of reform, the Bahrain Grand Prix and the Beijing Olympics proved to be catalysts for rights abuses. Mihir Bose asks whether human rights should be a criterion for hosting coveted international sporting events
On the evening of 13 July 2001, as Beijing held a press conference in Moscow to celebrate securing the 2008 Olympics, they had an unexpected visitor: François Carrard, the Swiss lawyer who was executive director of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Normally on such occasions the IOC keeps its distance and lets the victorious city have its moment in the sun. But Carrard felt he had to address the media on the human rights issue.
In the lead-up to the vote, Beijing’s rivals, in particular Toronto and Paris, had made much of China’s human rights record. As the members gathered, some 50 protesters assembled outside chanting “Free Tibet”. The Russian police, some wearing riot gear, broke up the protest and six people were seen being taken away in a waiting bus after demonstrators tried to unfurl three banners on the Moscow River embankment, opposite the World Trade Centre where the IOC was meeting. There were reports of 12 arrests.
The IOC had so far refused to discuss human rights, arguing that it was only concerned with making a decision about sport. Nor was the issue addressed by the Evaluation Commission that visited the bid cities and whose assessment formed the basis of the IOC members’ decision. The report of the commission was crucial as, following the revelation of the 1998 Salt Lake City corruption scandal in which IOC members were accused of taking bribes, they were subsequently barred from visiting bid cities. Just before the vote for the 2008 Games, Hein Verbruggen, the Dutch chairman of the Evaluation Commission, summarised to his fellow members the various potential risk factors of the bidding cities. But he did not mention human rights.
Beijing did face a question on human rights during its presentation. But this was delivered in such a roundabout way that only seasoned IOC observers could have understood it. Roland Baar, a rower from Germany, raised the ethical issue of playing beach volleyball in Tiananmen Square. Beijing had proposed this idea, but it had been shelved after objections from the Evaluation Commission that it was not a suitable venue. Baar was so circumspect that he did not even utter the words “Tiananmen Square”, lest it offend the Chinese.
But now Carrard felt free to talk about human rights. At the press conference, apologising profusely for intervening at the Chinese party, he revealed, “On human rights we had two choices — a decision we close the door and that is a hugely respectable decision. The other way is to bet on openness. We bet that in seven years’ time the interactions, the progress and the development will be such that human rights can be improved.”
Beijing Olympics: China’s coming-out party
Long before the Beijing Olympics was staged it was clear that this was an impossible bet, and in the end Jacque Rogge, who was elected president of the IOC a few days after the vote in Moscow, made it clear that it was no business of the committee to monitor China’s moral development. Indeed, Rogge confessed that the IOC neither had the power nor the ability to do anything on human rights. The result: China rode out the protests that accompanied the Games, in particular the ones that marked the torch relay. China, as it had always planned, used the Games to show they could take the Olympics, a western invention, and do it better. By the end of it, IOC members were applauding the Games as China’s giant coming-out party and declaring the bar had been raised to such an extent that other countries would struggle to match it. All talk of human rights and opening up the country had vanished.
The fact was that the Games went to Beijing not because the Olympic movement thought it could change China, but because of wider geopolitical considerations. The overwhelming view of IOC members was that the Games had to go to the most populous country in the world. China had been a good Olympic member. Whatever its human rights record, there was no Olympic reason to refuse the bid. There was also a fear that Beijing, having failed in 1993 when it lost to Sydney by two votes, might walk out of the Olympics if China did not succeed this time.
There was a dominant view in the Olympic movement that, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, a strong China was needed to balance the all-powerful Americans. Ivan Slavkov, the IOC member from Bulgaria — later expelled from the movement in 2005 when he was caught by an undercover reporter saying he would take bribes in exchange for votes — said at the time: “We need China to act as a check on the US. The US is the only superpower. It dominates everything, including the Olympics and the medal tables. China is coming up fast and, by giving the Games to them, we can make sure they develop in the right direction.”
The legacy of the 1936 Berlin Olympics
The IOC’s dance round the issue of human rights over the decades illustrates a wider problem for all sports organisations faced with such ethical concerns. The classic example of this was the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The award of the Games to Berlin was intended to symbolise the re-admission of a peaceful, democratic Germany to the family of nations after the horrors of the First World War. By a supreme irony, the Games have gone down in history as a triumph of Nazi propaganda. As the official Olympic-Zeitung proudly asked on 19 August 1936: “Do we have to point out that the great victor at the Olympic Games is Adolf Hitler?”
The 1936 Olympics, which left us the legacy of the torch relay, offers a template for the use of sport for ulterior purposes with its extraordinary mixture of opportunism, improvisation and attention to detail in the Nazi preparations for the Games. But Hitler could not have fulfilled his agenda to show how normal his regime was if leaders of international sport had not played into his hands, with their willingness to believe dishonest public assurances and to accept gestures and symbols rather than look at reality.
Since then, sports leaders have often looked the other way when major sporting events are held against a background of state violence, in countries whose repressive regimes seek to present themselves as open societies to the outside world. The list includes rebel South African cricket tours of the apartheid era, financed by tax concessions by the white regime, the 1968 Mexico Olympics, the Ali-Foreman fight in 1974 in a Zaire ruled by the brutal and corrupt despot Mobutu Sese Seko, and the 1978 World Cup in Argentina, organised by a junta which, even then, was embarking on a massive programme of killing people opposed to the regime.
Back in 1851, when Prince Albert wished to advertise the might of Queen Victoria’s realm he held a Great Exhibition — essentially a trade fair displaying the works of industry of all nations. There was culture in the form of Charlotte Bronte, Lewis Carroll and George Eliot, but no sport.
Sport, morality and character
Today, sporting events have come to replace trade expos as a symbol of national success. Nelson Mandela used the power of sport, particularly rugby, to woo the whites, and felt that the rainbow nation had arrived when in 2010 it became the first African country to stage the football World Cup. In Copenhagen in 2009, President Lula of Brazil shed tears after Rio won the right to stage the 2016 Olympics. “Everybody talks of Brazil as the country of tomorrow,” he said. “Here in Copenhagen tomorrow has arrived.” His pleasure was all the greater as Rio had beaten Barack Obama’s Chicago, despite the fact that the most powerful man in the world made a personal plea to the IOC.
But the problem for sport is that, unlike expos, it carries a moral dimension. It is interesting to note that Beijing’s rivals made much of this distinction. Claude Bébéar, president of the Paris bid, made it clear he would have no problems with a Chinese city hosting an expo, but not the Olympics. Giving China the Games, he argued, would indicate moral approval for the regime.
The idea that sport had universal significance emerged only in the 19th century as the rules for modern sports were being formulated. In his fictional novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays, Thomas Hughes presented his headmaster at Rugby, Thomas Arnold, as a sporting guru. His message, said Hughes, was that sport could reach out beyond the playing fields more effectively than any other form of human activity. Indeed, sport could shape society for the greater good.
The headmaster of Hughes’s book was an invention — the real life Arnold had no interest in sport. But the idea proved so powerful that it seduced a French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, who came to Rugby to worship at Arnold’s shrine and used his principles to revive the Olympics, setting it a high political goal. As he put it:
It is clear the telegraph, railways, the telephone, the passionate research in science, congresses and exhibitions have done more for peace than any treaty or diplomatic convention. Well, I hope that athletics will do even more … let us export runners and fencers; there is a freetrade of the future, and on the day when it is introduced within the walls of old Europe the cause of peace would have received a new and mighty stay.
Modern sport is essentially the marriage of Hughes’s big idea in the private realm – that sport develops character — with Coubertin’s big idea in the public realm — that sport can transmit values within and between nations through regular international competition.
Bahrain and Formula One
The problem arises when sport collides with political reality, as it did in the wake of the Arab spring. As millions rose up in the Arab world last year to challenge and even change their despotic rulers, in Bahrain the desire for freedom came into conflict with modern sport. In the picturesque words of the Daily Mail’s Martin Samuel, the result of “little brown people” wanting freedom meant “the next thing you know is there is one less place for rich white guys to race cars”.
Formula One’s first Grand Prix of the season was due to take place in Bahrain in March, just weeks after the kingdom had been engulfed by protesters demanding more freedom. There had been highly publicised protests at the main Pearl Roundabout in the financial district of Manama with some 31 protesters killed. Armoured cars, including Saudi troops and forces from Qatar and UAE, had rolled into the kingdom to restore order. How could a sports event take place in such a climate? And where was the moral compass of sport in even thinking it could?
The race was the dream of Crown Prince Sheikh Salman bin Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa, who had made it clear that money was no object in bringing one of the most high profile world events to his desert kingdom. The Bahrain government funded the race. The Sakhir circuit, where the Grand Prix had been run since 2004, had cost some £92m. The F1 organisers had been paid £24.6m to allow Bahrain to organise the opening race of the 2010 season, and this had risen by 60 per cent for the 2011 race. The protesters knew how dear the race was to the Crown Prince and that if they wanted to wring political concessions from him, they had to hit at his beloved sport.
However, the F1 organisers of the race did not seem to understand the moral questions involved. Neither FIA, the governing body, nor Bernie Ecclestone — the F1 rights holder — wanted to put their heads above the parapet. Their reluctance, it was assumed, was due to the fear that if they cancelled the race they would stand to lose £37m in rights fees.
In the end, the Crown Prince himself decided the race had to be put back, hoping it could be held later in the year. His wish appeared to have been granted when, following an FIA inspection team visit, FIA’s World Council unanimously agreed that the Bahrain Grand Prix would now be held on 30 October. The decision provoked outrage from human rights activists and race fans. Many argued that for all the talk of high values, sport was more bothered about Mammon and ended up conspiring with despots.
The FIA’s judgement was further called into question when details of the inspection report emerged. Over a two-day trip, the FIA had met the minister of culture and tourism, the minister of the interior, had had lunch with the board that runs the Grand Prix, met circuit personnel and visited a shopping centre. But they had not met any of the dissidents. It was clear that the race could now not go ahead at the rescheduled date either. However, it was logistics not morality that was given as the reason for the cancellation. The new date for the race in October meant Bahrain would get India’s Grand Prix schedule – the new Formula One commercial centre – and extend the calendar into December. The teams just could not cope with the pressures this would create.
The whole affair brought little credit to Formula One, least of all the highly paid drivers. Apart from Red Bull’s Mark Webber, who acknowledged the moral question of sport taking place in the wake of a bloodbath, nearly all the other drivers avoided the moral issue. I could not even coax Britain’s most successful F1 driver, Nigel Mansell — who has chalked up 31 race wins and the 1992 world title — to take a stand on this issue. When I asked in the middle of the crisis whether it would be morally justified to stage the Bahrain Grand Prix, Mansell replied: “There are great people involved in Formula One who are in charge and it is up to them to speak to the power brokers of the country.”
The problem here, as Max Mosley, the former head of FIA, astutely put it was:
The Formula One world did not seem to appreciate that the government in Bahrain was about to use the Grand Prix in support of suppressing human rights.
For all the moral high ground Formula One may like to claim, when faced with a stark ethical issue it is powerless and has to duck and dive. The same drama has played itself out again this year, with F1 facing international condemnation for holding the race in Bahrain.
Sports administrators may present themselves as the Vatican of sport, beyond the control of any authority but their own. Yet the money needed to run modern sport means they have to compromise with dubious governments and regimes. The result is that the high moral purpose of sport is sacrificed if not totally ignored. And until sport can deal with this basic contradiction, problems such as Bahrain will continue to appear. The worrying thing is that few in sport seem willing or able to deal with it.
Mihir Bose is the author of The Spirit of the Game: How Sport Made the Modern World (Constable)
This article appears in the summer 2012 edition of Index on Censorship magazine. Click on
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