Prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) and his niece, the lawyer Qu Zhenhong (屈振红), have been formally arrested in Beijing. (image: chinese.rfi.fr)

SOURCE: Chinese Human Rights Defenders

CHRD Also Confirms Arrest of Pu’s Niece

(The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders – June 13, 2014) – Prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) has been formally arrested after more than a month in detention, charged on June 13 with “creating a disturbance” and “illegally obtaining personal information.” A notice issued by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said that “police are conducting further investigation of other criminal facts concerning Pu Zhiqiang,” indicating that more charges may be made against him. CHRD urges the Chinese government to release Pu Zhiqiang and others who have been detained for peacefully exercising their rights to free expression and assembly, including dozens in custody due to the crackdown around this year’s June Fourth anniversary.

“The arrest of Pu Zhiqiang shows the escalation of Xi Jinping administration’s assault on dissent, especially against highly influential figures in civil society,” said Renee Xia, CHRD’s international director. “Pu has become a major symbol of the momentum for political and legal reform inside China, making admirable use of his wisdom, passion, and eloquence along with his legal professionalism. Authorities want to alienate him from the population, marginalize his work, and silence his voice—just as they have done to others who challenge the government.”

The formal arrest order for the 49-year-old Pu comes days after authorities rejected an application for him to be released on medical bail, claiming that it would “pose a danger to society,” as reported by Rights Defense Network. When Pu’s arrest was approved, the legal limit for holding him under criminal detention without either arresting or releasing him—37 days—was set to expire. If convicted of “creating a disturbance,” Pu could be sentenced to more than five years or up to 10 years in prison, according to China’s Criminal Law (Article 293). For “illegally obtaining personal information,” he could be sentenced to up to three years (Article 253(1)).

In addition, lawyer Qu Zhenhong (屈振红), Pu’s niece, has been formally arrested, CHRD has learned from sources inside China. Criminally detained in Beijing on May 15, Qu had served on her uncle’s defense team. The reason for Qu’s arrest has not been confirmed, but some activists speculate that she was seized for assisting journalists in “illegally obtaining personal information” about Zhou Bin (周滨), the son of the former national security chief Zhou Yongkang (周永康), who has been the subject of a corruption investigation. Lawyer Pu has also been charged with the same crime, perhaps due to an open letter he sent to authorities in February requesting an investigation of Zhou Yongkang for violations of “rule of law” and the Chinese constitution. Zhou is also a retired member of the powerful Politburo of the CCP Standing Committee.

Prominent human rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang (浦志强) and his niece, the lawyer Qu Zhenhong (屈振红), have been formally arrested in Beijing. (image: chinese.rfi.fr)

With the arrests of Pu and Qu, CHRD has confirmed four arrests from suppression tied to this year’s Tiananmen anniversary. In addition, 51 others are known to have been criminally detained (see CHRD’s ongoing updates).

A prolific writer and an outspoken critic of government policies, Pu Zhiqiang participated in the 1989 student demonstrations and has assisted the group Tiananmen Mothers in seeking accountability for their loved ones killed in the massacre. Due to his activism, he was not assigned a job when he graduated from China University of Politics and Law with a Masters in law in 1991. Having practiced law since 1997, Pu has defended many high-profile human rights cases. Among those he has represented are artist and activist Ai Weiwei (艾未未), activist and environmentalist Tan Zuoren (谭作人), and Tang Hui (唐慧), who was sent to Re-education through Labor after seeking justice for her daughter, who was raped at the age of 11.

Every year around the June Fourth anniversary, Pu would return to Tiananmen Square to pay respects to those who died in the violent crackdown, but police began putting him under house arrest around that time several years ago.

“I have a ‘June Fourth complex’…25 years have passed, and I must pay a price,” said Pu Zhiqiang to his lawyer at the detention center. “It’s an absolute obligation, [I have] no complaint or regret. I will not change my mind just because of this incident…I hold fast that I have the right to express these views, which has nothing to do with ‘creating disturbance.’”

Currently held at Beijing No. 1 Detention Center, Pu was taken from his home on May 5 and criminally detained the next day on a charge of “creating a disturbance.” Soon after being detained, Pu told his attorneys that he was not receiving proper treatment for illnesses, particularly diabetes, for which he needs daily medication. Due to his physical condition, Pu’s lawyer, Zhang Sizhi (张思之), twice sought his release on medical grounds, with the second application denied on June 9 on the grounds that Pu would “pose a danger to society” if released. When Zhang recently visited his client, Pu said he has now been given some treatment for diabetes, including insulin, but that his legs are swollen, a typical sign that a diabetic patient is not being properly treated. He also told Zhang that he has been subjected to interrogation for 10 hours a day, an exhausting situation that is likely only to worsen his health.

“Pu’s health condition greatly concerns us,” says Renee Xia. “He has serious diabetic conditions which require close monitoring and regular medication, and for which he was hospitalized a few years ago. China’s detention facilities are notorious for providing no or minimal, low-quality care, and persecution of detained activists by depriving medical care is a well-documented problem. We have seen this end tragically, like with Cao Shunli, who died in March after not getting necessary medical care. Authorities will seemingly stop at nothing to try and break down political detainees.”

Pu is the only individual still in custody among those seized after taking part in a private event on May 3 commemorating June Fourth. Four others in attendance were released on June 5. In addition, two journalists detained with ties to Pu have also been let go on bail. Though no longer detained, all of these individuals still face restrictions, such as not being allowed to leave Beijing, write articles, or conduct other activities for up to a year without police permission (see report).

SOURCE: PEN America

Yesterday, the BBC News Service's Twitter feed provided first-hand accounts from those who were on Tiananmen Square the night of June 3 to June 4—when the People's Liberation Army gave the order to take back the Square "at all costs," despite intellectuals like Liu Xiaobo mediating with the troops for the protesters' safe withdrawl. The audio clips are haunting.

Twenty-five years later, a collective amnesia has set in as living standards have skyrocketed, educational opportunities seem more plentiful, and the enforced silence by the Chinese govenrment has compelled people to forget. And it seems to have worked, mostly. 

Except for the 15 writers, scholars, lawyers, and activists who had gathered at the home of film professor Hao Jian to remember, all of whom were arrested and five remain detained. 

Except for Hu Jia, who, at 15, took part in the protests at Tiananmen and is commemorating June 4 while under house arrest. 

Except for Liao Yiwu, who spent years in prison after the crackdown for reciting his epic poem "Massacre" in a small town in Sichuan Province and is now in exile.

SOURCE: PEN America

Twenty-five years ago, before the Tiananmen massacre, my father told me, “Son, be good and stay at home. Don’t provoke the Communist Party.”

My father knew what he was talking about. His courage had been broken by countless political campaigns. Right after “liberation,” in his hometown Yanting, they executed dozens of “despotic landowners.” But that wasn’t enough fun for some people. They came back with swords, severed those broken skulls, and kicked them down the riverbank, to float away.

My father never said a bad word about the Communist Party. Even as we suffered through the famine of the Great Leap Forward, when almost 40 million people starved to death, even when I, his little son, almost died, he said nothing. People ate grass and bark; they ate Guanyin Soil, a foul-smelling clay. And if they were lucky, they caught an earthworm—that was a rare delicacy. Many people died from Guanyin Soil, their stomachs bloated. It was hell on earth. My grandmother also died; she was just skin and bones

- See more at: http://www.pen.org/nonfiction/commemorating-massacre-tanks-and-people#sthash.qSAqqwg8.dpuf

SOURCE: The New Yorker

The “History of the Chinese Communist Party, Volume 1,” the first entry in the Party’s official autobiography, appeared in 2002. Its authors had the luxury of hewing to a narrative of birth, growth, and triumph, covering the years between 1921 and the revolution, in 1949. After that, history gets dicier.

Volume 2, on the period from 1949 to 1978, had to tiptoe through a chronological minefield of purges, famine, policy disasters, and other awkward artifacts of history that many living officials would prefer to leave unexamined. The volume, a thousand and seventy-four pages long, was edited for sixteen years. It needed four major rewrites. It was vetted and scrubbed by sixty-four different government and Party agencies, and then received line edits from the most powerful families mentioned in its pages. 

By the time it was released, in 2011, only one of the original three editors, Shi Zhongquan, had lived long enough to see it in print. “Writing history is not easy,” he saidto the journalist Andrew Higgins. For all of the editors’ labors, the reception from independent scholars was not flattering; the official history explained that, once Chairman Mao’s Great Leap Forward drove the nation into famine, he “worked hard to correct” the mistakes, a judgment that a Dutch scholar called a “barefaced lie.”

A group of journalists at the pro-democracy protest in Tiananmen Square, May 17, 1989. (Carl Ho / Courtesy Reuters)

SOURCE: Foreign Affairs

On May 3, 2014, about a dozen rights activists met in a private apartment in Beijing, where they held a seminar marking the 25th anniversary of the protests and crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Since that night, most of the activists have disappeared. At least one of them, Pu Zhiqiang, a human rights lawyer, has been formally detained (the prelude to a criminal charge) for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”

In a way, none of this is surprising. China is an authoritarian regime. Whoever challenges it takes a risk. But what is surprising is that this small group of activists had held the same kind of meeting for several years without getting into trouble. The fact that they weren’t as lucky this year is one sign among many that repression in China has not only not eased in recent years but is getting worse.

But why? As the rights activists argued, it all goes back to June 4, 1989. The regime’s attack on the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square was an inflection point, one at which it could have chosen liberalization or repression. Zhao Ziyang, who was the leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), favored dialogue with the students. He argued that they were patriotic, that they shared the regime’s goal of opposing corruption, and that if the leadership told the students that it accepted their demands the students would peacefully leave the square. Li Peng, the prime minister, countered that if the CCP legitimized opposition voices by negotiating with them, the party’s political rule, based on a monopoly of power, would crumble. In the end, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping sided with Li.

Soldiers face to face with student demonstrators during 1989's Tiananmen Square protests. Photograph: Peter Turnley/CORBIS

SOURCE: The Guardian

Twenty-five years after the bloody military crackdown on the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, China is seeking to quell all discussion of the massacre by locking up, charging or harassing artists, scholars, lawyers, bloggers and relatives of victims.

The anniversary has been preceded by scores of detentions, with others placed under house arrest. Some detainees have been charged with offences carrying prison terms of several years for holding a private memorial gathering. Google services have been disrupted and police have warned some foreign journalists they face unspecified consequences for covering sensitive issues.

"We are seeing much harsher measures taken against a far broader swath of people this year. One question is whether, come Thursday morning, a lot of those people are let go," said Sophie Richardson, Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

Source: Washington Post


By Dan Southerland, Published: May 30

Twenty-five years after the Chinese army fired on unarmed citizens defending pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square, China’s Communist Party seems more determined than ever to silence critics who dare to speak out about the massacre.

This year, the government began striking earlier and harder than before at those attempting to mark the highly sensitive anniversary dates of June 3 and 4 .

One would expect more confidence — and the courage to face up to history — from a leadership that has overseen such rapid economic growth since 1989. Analysts say that the party is nervous about social unrest resulting from the abuse of power by authorities, land and labor disputes and a sense that endemic corruption has benefited high-ranking officials and their children.

But when it comes to Tiananmen, the party may also fear something else: the courage of those who refuse to forget the massacre.

If anything, that courage — displayed not only by dissidents, lawyers, artists, and writers but also by ordinary people who lost sons and daughters in the massacre — has grown even stronger over the past few years.

And the party may fear that its legitimacy will be questioned when it becomes clear it had to rule by armed force in 1989, not only in Beijing but in dozens of other cities throughout China.

Thanks to those who persist in researching these issues, we now know more about how this force was used to crush popular protests in cities far from Beijing.