Police have levelled subversion charges against several top activists who urged Middle East-style protests in China, in what appears to be a severe crackdown on dissent, rights groups said on Friday.
Ahead of an appeal for fresh "Jasmine rallies" in 13 Chinese cities on Sunday, skittish authorities in Beijing called the foreign press into line, telephoning journalists and using state media to reiterate the reporting rules.
Ahead of an appeal for fresh "Jasmine rallies" in 13 Chinese cities on Sunday, skittish authorities in Beijing called the foreign press into line, telephoning journalists and using state media to reiterate the reporting rules.
The best part is that knowledge of this incident is being suppressed all over the Chinese internet, EXCEPT extreme nationalis
More than 100 activists have been subjected to interrogation, house arrest and other restrictions or have "disappeared" since the online "Jasmine" campaign first surfaced last week, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders said.
Police are now beginning to file charges against those rounded up, CHRD director Renee Xia said in a statement.
"The numbers point to a bad situation that is only getting worse," Xia said.
More than 100 activists have been subjected to interrogation, house arrest and other restrictions or have "disappeared" since the online "Jasmine" campaign first surfaced last week, the Chinese Human Rights Defenders said.
Police are now beginning to file charges against those rounded up, CHRD director Renee Xia said in a statement.
"The numbers point to a bad situation that is only getting worse," Xia said.
Notice that he is standing ahead of all the others in his entourage.
Notice that the random "netizens" with the cameras happen to recognize him AND happen to know he speaks fluent chinese. They immediatel
It's remotely possible that this guy is just naive and that the chinese officials spotted him and embarrasse
"In the matter of a few days, we have seen more cases of prominent lawyers subjected to prolonged disappearances, more criminal charges that may carry lengthy prison sentences for activists, more home raids, and a heavier reliance on extra-legal measures."
Leading writer Ran Yunfei and Liang Haiyi were among those charged with subversion, while veteran dissidents Ding Mao and Chen Wei -- both imprisoned after the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests -- were charged with inciting subversion, the Hong Kong-based group said.
A fifth activist, Hua Chunhui, was arrested on charges of "leaking state secrets" -- a vague charge often used in China to silent dissent.
"Signs are emerging to indicate that the current crackdown may be one of the most severe actions taken by the government against Chinese activists in recent years," the CHRD said.
In China, charges of subversion, incitement of subversion and leaking state secrets almost always result in conviction, the group said.
The New York-based Human Rights in China described the clampdown as having "a severity rarely seen in the past few years".
Online campaigners this week urged people in 13 Chinese cities to rally every Sunday to press for government transparency and free expression, following last week's calls for protests echoing those sweeping the Arab world.
Calls for protests last Sunday sparked a heavy police turnout at designated protest sites in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. The events appeared lightly attended, however, and free of major incidents.
Notice that the random "netizens" with the cameras happen to recognize him AND happen to know he speaks fluent chinese. They immediatel
It's remotely possible that this guy is just naive and that the chinese officials spotted him and embarrasse
"In the matter of a few days, we have seen more cases of prominent lawyers subjected to prolonged disappearances, more criminal charges that may carry lengthy prison sentences for activists, more home raids, and a heavier reliance on extra-legal measures."
Leading writer Ran Yunfei and Liang Haiyi were among those charged with subversion, while veteran dissidents Ding Mao and Chen Wei -- both imprisoned after the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests -- were charged with inciting subversion, the Hong Kong-based group said.
A fifth activist, Hua Chunhui, was arrested on charges of "leaking state secrets" -- a vague charge often used in China to silent dissent.
"Signs are emerging to indicate that the current crackdown may be one of the most severe actions taken by the government against Chinese activists in recent years," the CHRD said.
In China, charges of subversion, incitement of subversion and leaking state secrets almost always result in conviction, the group said.
The New York-based Human Rights in China described the clampdown as having "a severity rarely seen in the past few years".
Online campaigners this week urged people in 13 Chinese cities to rally every Sunday to press for government transparency and free expression, following last week's calls for protests echoing those sweeping the Arab world.
Calls for protests last Sunday sparked a heavy police turnout at designated protest sites in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities. The events appeared lightly attended, however, and free of major incidents.
Rumored presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman is ruffling more than a few feathers stateside after video of the U.S. Ambassador to Chinaattending a Jasmine Revolution protest in Beijing surfaced.
In the video, the Republican and former governor of Utah -- who is resigning from his post this spring amidst speculation that he is revving up for a 2012 presidential run -- sports sunglasses and a leather jacket with an American flag badge on the shoulder. Huntsman, who is fluent in Mandarin, is seen being approached by one demonstrator outside of a McDonald's restaurant, and according to a translation provided by theShanghaiist, states: "I'm just here to look around."
According to the Wall Street Journal, Huntsman's appearance at last Sunday's demonstration is particularly controversial because it is rare for an ambassador to attend an anti-government protest in China. The U.S. Embassy has since moved to extinguish theories that the ambassador's appearance implied that United States is tacitly supporting the Jasmine Revolution movement.
Officials have since claimed Huntsman's appearance was purely coincidental. "The Huntsmans were on a family outing and happened to pass by [popular shopping street] Wangfujing," Richard Buangan, a U.S. embassy spokesman, told the Wall Street Journal,noting the ambassador was on his way to a museum. "They realized what was going on and immediately left."
Since the video appeared, China's Internet censors have reportedly blocked searches for Huntsman's Chinese name.
Watch video of Huntman's appearance at the protest here:
Amid excessive police control and harassment, Pakatan Rakyat leaders managed to lead a protest of about 100 people including Libyan students to the Libyan embassy here, demanding the resignation of despot Muammar Gaddafi.
“We call on the Libyan military to immediately lay down their arms and stop the killing of innocent civilians. We call for respect towards the Libyans and for Gaddafi to step down immediately,” PKR vice-president Nurul Izzah Anwar told a press conference on Friday.
Earlier, the Lembah Pantai MP and her comrades had handed over a memorandum to the Libyan mission, urging an immediate end to the escalating violence taking place in the country.
It can happen here, the corruption is just as bad
Malaysian opposition leaders have been among the first in the world to express solidarity with the people of the Middle East, who appear to have had enough and were revolting against decades of oppression at the hands of cruel regimes.
In the past two months, Tunisia's Ben Ali was the first to fall followed by Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and it looks like there is no escape for Muammar Gadaffi either.
Governments around the world are already calling for the freezing of his assets, in a sharp lesson to corrupt regimes that have stolen for decades or have been accused of cheating their countrymen of their wealth while clinging to power.
In Malaysia, the ruling BN regime arguably extends a greater measure of civil liberties than say, Hosni Mubarak's Egypt, but experts warn the corruption in the Southeast Asian nation was not lesser.
This could trigger the same sort of people's uprising - even if not immediately then in the not too distant future unless reforms were carried out sincerely and immediately.
Meanwhile, Batu MP Tian Chua told Malaysia Chronicle that it was a personal disappointment to him how Gaddafi, a world figure whom he once respected, had allowed absolute power to corrupt himself absolutely.
"He once fought against imperialism and was a breath of fresh air to region. Now he is regarded as a madman dictator. Let his downfall, those of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt be a lesson for Najib and Mahathir in Malaysia and the other despots in Southeast Asia. In the end it is not them or their parties but the people who are paramount," Tian told Malaysia Chronicle.
Also present were at the protest were PSM secretary -general S Arutchelvam, PAS international bureau chief Syed Azman Syed Ahmad and former PAS vice-president Muhamad Sabu.
Paranoia
The protesters had initially planned to make their way from the Tabung Haji mosque along Jalan Tun Razak, where they gathered, to the Libyan embassy, but they were stopped by police a short distance away from the embassy.
The intense police harrassment turned many people away, although they had been eager to take part in the procession.
“We were stopped by the police a few times but we still managed to find our way there. We are shocked at the paranoia displayed by the authorities. It shows they are very worried,” Muhamad Sabu later told Malaysia Chronicle.
When they finally arrived at the embassy, the protesters chanted “Malaysia Boleh, Gaddafi Tak Boleh!” and waved anti-Gaddafi placards. Libyan embassy officials in Kuala Lumpur have themselves condemned Gadaffi for killing innocent citizens and refusing to step down peacefully.
This phenomenon has also taken place at other countries, with Libyans openly welcoming world citizens to support them in urging their leaders to step down.
Last spring, I was waiting for a bus in Cairo. Dawn was just breaking, and Tahrir Square, where the bus station was located, was empty except for the omnipresent face of Hosni Mubarak, on posters that covered giant billboards and buildings all over the city. In the cafes where men sipped tea and smoked hookahs, there was no smell of a revolution brewing. Instead, there was a lingering sense of resignation that the country might be condemned to live under Mubarak forever.
Less than a year later in January, images of the Egyptian revolution flashed across TV screens worldwide, and Tahrir Square had become unrecognizable! As people power explodes across the Arab world -- first in Tunisia, then in Egypt, now in Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere -- one can't help but wonder if we may be witnessing the fourth wave of democratization. If so, can 1.5 billion people living under the Chinese Communist Party ride this wave to democracy and freedom?
Before the dust has settled on the Arab spring, analysts are citing poverty, unemployment and corruption as the three main causes of the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. Arguing that these socioeconomic conditions and statistics are missing in today's China, some are quick to dismiss any possibility of Beijing's rule being shaken by the Tunisia effect. But let us remember an enduring lesson from history. Statistics don't make revolutions; people do.
A few years ago, I traveled to Palestine to attend a conference on nonviolence with a friend of mine. One evening, after the panels and workshops were over, we found ourselves sitting with the pioneering theorist of nonviolent conflict, Dr. Gene Sharp. Discussing the likelihood of mass protests in Tibet and China, we asked him what he thought was the single most important ingredient to make a revolution.
"Hope," he answered, without a moment's hesitation, in a tone that indicated mild surprise at how we could not know such a basic fact of life.
People rise up not just because they are poor or unemployed; people rise up when they believe change is possible. After the success of the Tunisian revolution, millions of Egyptians suddenly found new hope and poured into the streets to demand change. In fact, in both Tunisia and Egypt, the revolution was not led by the poor and unemployed; it was organized and largely executed by the educated, online, middle class youth who wanted a say in the way their country was run. If revolutions are created by poverty and unemployment, why are we seeing an uprising in Bahrain, an international banking center with an educated, middle class majority? If Chinese youth are financially better off today than a decade ago, it makes them more -- not less -- likely to demand freedom and democracy.
However, while hope can mobilize people, it cannot guarantee success, which depends on strategy and tools. The mass convergences in Tunis and Cairo that filled our TV screens for weeks were preceded by months and years of behind-the-scenes strategic planning, training and organizing by groups of activists and youth leaders, who wielded the power of the internet in their nonviolent struggle.
The internet has decentralized power and exponentially strengthened the grassroots. Wael Ghonim, one of the heroes of the Egyptian uprising, said it best, "If you want to liberate a society, just give them the internet." According to Mr. Ghonim, who aptly called their uprising "Revolution 2.0," the Egyptian revolution began online.
Is China ready for a revolution 2.0? There are nearly half a billion internet users in China today. China's social media networks are expanding rapidly -- Chinese Facebook look-alike Renren has 170 million users and microblogging site Sina has 75 million users. In spite of China's great firewall, Chinese netizens have learned to circumvent the censors and read between the lines. When "Egypt" disappears from the internet, they can surmise that Cairo is in tumult. In the age of the internet, any battle against information is futile.
Nevertheless, the ultimate success of a revolution in China will depend on the effective use of strategy. In Egypt and Tunisia, activists and organizers connected with other pro-democracy forces including the Serbian youth movement that helped topple Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. They gathered in living rooms and watched films such as "Bringing Down a Dictator" about the Serbian uprising, and read books like From Dictatorship to Democracy by Gene Sharp, internalizing the lesson that nonviolent movements are more powerful when they are planned strategically than when they happen spontaneously. If Chinese activists can analyze the strategic decisions within the 1989 Tiananmen movement and draw lessons from its failure, they will have a much higher chance of succeeding the next time.
Some believe the Chinese state is too ruthless to allow a nonviolent revolution, arguing that protesters will be arrested long before they reach a critical mass. But mass protest, although the most visible, is hardly the most effective form of nonviolent resistance. In places where the crackdown on street protests is swift and brutal, noncooperation and civil disobedience tactics are often more advisable. These tactics of denying obedience to the rulers, while reducing the risk of arrest and increasing the sustainability of the movement, have crippled ruthless regimes.
Largely unknown to the world, Tibetans today are engaging in a growing noncooperation movement. Since a 2008 uprising erupted across Tibet, China's militarization of the Tibetan plateau has snuffed out all signs of dissent in the streets. But the revolution did not disappear; it simply moved indoors. Tibetans are now making a conscious effort to speak only in Tibetan, to eat only in Tibetan restaurants, or to buy only from Tibetan shops. Tibetans are channeling their spirit of resistance into social, cultural and economic activities that are self-constructive (promoting Tibetan language and culture) and non-cooperative (refusing to support Chinese institutions and businesses). The fact that Tibetans are able to wage a quiet, slow-building nonviolent movement in the most repressive political climate shows that there is a way to mobilize people power against the Chinese regime.
In spite of China's image as a high-functioning economy, many of the social causes of mass discontent that exploded in the Arab world -- endemic corruption, income inequality, labor unrest, inflation, pollution -- continue to plague the nation. Since 2008, China has witnessed the Tibetan uprising, the Uyghur uprising in East Turkestan, and 90,000 mass incidents of public unrest each year. The Chinese government spends almost as much money on maintaining internal security as on its national defense. This underlines the overwhelming danger the regime faces from within its own empire.
2011 marks exactly a century since a previous generation of Chinese overthrew the Manchu dynasty and established a republic that lasted till 1949. This week, as organizers of a "Jasmine Revolution" issued calls for protest rallies every Sunday in thirteen cities in China, I started to feel that the stars are aligned against dictatorships everywhere. If the Chinese people seize this opportunity by combining nonviolent tools with strategic planning, they stand to liberate a quarter of the world's population. It is about time.
Tenzin Dorjee is a writer, musician and activist. He is the executive director ofStudents for a Free Tibet.mment
