Chinese Prime Minister, the Utmost Honorable and Enlightened Dear One,
Wen Jiabao, told a group of visiting Taiwanese journalists Apr. 5 that
he has no sympathy for jailed human rights activist Hu Jia.
"This miserable cockroach and son of snot has slandered the mother-
and fatherland with his untruths and false statements about China's
upcoming Olympics in our wondrous Sepia City, plus the unfactual death
rates for groups like miserable news re****ters and unwanted infant
girls.
"We absolutely do not kill without good reason, and then only after
lengthy trials and appeals, each of which is done with utmost honesty
and fairness. We do not anticipate at this time murdering very many
visitors to our very secure Olympic Village.
"To cite a recent example of our beneficence, an undesired infant girl
in Schwingtyme Province was prepared for death by drowning, which is
the custom in that area. But a young unmarried woman came forward and
begged to adopt this healthy 2-week-old baby.
"Quickly, with cooperation and coordination by our provincial
authorites from Beijing, a hearing was conducted in which an impartial
judge and very fair prosecutor cross-examined the prospective adoptive
mother, and a verdict was rendered on the spot: The woman was
convicted of interferring with a provincial ordinance and sentenced to
death by barbecue, and the infant was ordered drowned so she would not
suffer the difficult life of an orphan.
"So you see, there is great compassion and legal probity in our fair
and lovely nation.
"Now, let the oxygen reservoirs be brought to our City of Brown in
preparation for the August Olympics!"
"Huzzah!"
------------------------------
"The Real China and the Olympics"
By Hu Jia and Teng Biao
Saturday, April 5, 2008; A15
***
This week, a Beijing court sentenced human rights activist Hu Jia to 3
1/2 years in prison for subverting state authority and to one
additional year's loss of his "political rights." He was arrested in
part for co-authoring, with Teng Biao, an open letter on human rights.
Below, The Post printsHuman Rights Watch's translation of the Sept.
10, 2007, letter.
***
On July 13th 2001, when Beijing won the right to host the 2008 Olympic
Games, the Chinese government promised the world it would improve
China's human rights record. In June 2004, Beijing announced its
Olympic Games slogan, "One World, One Dream." From their inception in
1896, the modern Olympic Games have always had as their mission the
promotion of human dignity and world peace. China and the world
expected to see the Olympic Games bring political progress to the
country. Is Beijing keeping its promises? Is China improving its human
rights record?
When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see
skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic
people. You will see the truth, but not the whole truth, just as you
see only the tip of an iceberg. You may not know that the flowers,
smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances,
tears, imprisonment, torture and blood.
We are going to tell you the truth about China. We believe that for
anyone who wishes to avoid a disgraceful Olympics, knowing the truth
is the first step. Fang Zheng, an excellent athlete who holds two
national records for the discus throw at China's Special S****t Games,
has been deprived of the op****tunity to participate in the 2008
Paralympics because he has become a living testimony to the June 4,
1989[,] massacre. That morning, in Tiananmen Square, his legs were
crushed by a tank while he was rescuing a fellow student. In April
2007, the Ministry of Public Security issued an internal do***ent
secretly strengthening a political investigation which resulted in
forbidding Olympics participation by 43 types of people from 11
different categories, including dissidents, human rights defenders,
media workers, and religious participants. The Chinese police never
made the do***ent known to either the Chinese public or the
international community.
Huge investment in Olympic projects and a total lack of transparency
have facilitated serious corruption and widespread bribery. Taxpayers
are not allowed to supervise the use of investment amounting to more
than $40 billion. Liu Zhihua, formerly in charge of Olympic
construction and former deputy mayor of Beijing, was arrested for
massive embezzlement.
To clear space for Olympic-related construction, thousands of civilian
houses have been destroyed without their former owners being properly
compensated. Brothers Ye Guozhu and Ye Guoqiang were imprisoned for a
legal appeal after their house was forcibly demolished. Ye Guozhu has
been repeatedly handcuffed and shackled, tied to a bed and beaten with
electric batons. During the countdown to the Olympic Games he will
continue to suffer from torture in Chaobei Prison in Tianjin.
It has been re****ted that over 1.25 million people have been forced to
move because of Olympic construction; it was estimated that the figure
would reach 1.5 million by the end of 2007. No formal resettlement
scheme is in place for the over 400,000 migrants who have had their
dwelling places demolished. Twenty percent of the demolished
households are expected to experience poverty or extreme poverty. In
Qingdao, the Olympic sailing city, hundreds of households have been
demolished and many human rights activists as well as "civilians" have
been imprisoned. Similar stories come from other Olympic cities such
as Shenyang, Shanghai and Qinhuangdao.
In order to establish the image of civilized cities, the government
has intensified the ban against -- and detention and forced
repatriation of -- petitioners, beggars and the homeless. Some of them
have been kept in extended detention in so-called shelters or have
even been sent directly to labor camps. Street vendors have suffered
brutal confiscation of their goods by municipal agents. On July 20,
2005, Lin Hongying, a 56-year-old woman farmer and vegetable dealer,
was beaten to death by city patrols in Jiangsu. On November 19, 2005,
city patrols in Wuxi beat 54-year-old bicycle repairman Wu Shouqing to
death. In January 2007, petitioner Duan Huimin was killed by Shanghai
police. On July 1, 2007, Chen Xiaoming, a Shanghai petitioner and
human rights activist, died of an untreated illness during a lengthy
detention period. On August 5, 2007, right before the one-year
Olympics countdown, 200 petitioners were arrested in Beijing.
China has consistently persecuted human rights activists, political
dissidents and freelance writers and journalists. The blind activist
Chen Guangcheng, recipient of the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award and named
in 2006 by Time Magazine as one of the most influential 100 people
shaping our world, is still serving his sentence of four years and
three months for exposing the truth of forced abortion and
sterilization. The government refused to give him the Braille books
and the radio that his relatives and friends brought to Linyi prison
in Shandong. Chen has been beaten while serving his sentence. On
August 24, 2007, Chen's wife, Yuan Weijing, was kidnapped by police at
the Beijing air****t while waiting to fly to the Philippines to receive
the Ramon Magsaysay Award on behalf of her husband. On August 13,
2007, activist Yang Chunlin was arrested in Heilongjiang and charged
with subversion of state power "for initiating the petition 'Human
Rights before Olympics.' "
China still practices literary inquisition and holds the world record
for detaining journalists and writers, as many as several hundred
since 1989, according to incomplete statistics. As of this writing, 35
Chinese journalists and 51 writers are still in prison. Over 90
percent were arrested or tried after Beijing's successful bid for the
Olympics in July 2001. For example, **** Tao, a journalist and a poet,
was sentenced to ten years in prison because of an e-mail sent to an
overseas website. Dr. Xu Zerong, a scholar from Oxford University who
researched the Korean War, was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment for
"illegally providing information abroad." Qingshuijun [Huang Jinqiu],
a freelance writer, was sentenced to a 12-year term for his online
publications. Some writers and dissidents are prohibited from going
abroad; others from returning to China.
Every year in mainland China, countless websites are closed, blogs
deleted, sensitive words filtered. Many websites hosted abroad are
blocked. Overseas radio and television programs are interfered with or
strictly prohibited. Although the Chinese government has promised
media freedom for foreign journalists for 22 months, before, during,
and after the Beijing Olympics, and ending on October 17, 2008, an
FCCC [Foreign Correspondents Club in China] survey showed that 40
percent of foreign correspondents have experienced harassment,
detention or an official warning during news gathering in Beijing and
other areas. Some re****ters have complained about repeated violent
police interference at the time they were speaking with interviewees.
Most seriously, Chinese interviewees usually become vulnerable as a
result. In June 2006, Fu Xiancai was beaten and paralyzed after being
interviewed by German media. In March 2007, Zheng Dajing was beaten
and arrested after being interviewed by a British TV station.
Religious freedom is still under repression. In 2005, a Beijing
pastor, Cai Zhuohua, was sentenced to three years for printing Bibles.
Zhou Heng, a house church pastor in Xinjiang, was charged with running
an "illegal operation" for receiving dozens of boxes of Bibles. From
April to June 2007, China expelled over 100 suspected U.S., South
Korean, Canadian, Australian, and other missionaries. Among them were
humanitarian workers and language educators who had been teaching
English in China for 15 years. During this so-called Typhoon 5
campaign, authorities took aim at missionary activities so as to
prevent their recurrence during the Olympics.
On September 30, 2006, Chinese soldiers opened fire on 71 Tibetans who
were escaping to Nepal. A 17-year-old nun died and a 20-year-old man
was severely injured. Despite numerous international witnesses, the
Chinese police insisted that the shooting was in self-defense. One
year later, China tightened its control over Tibetan Buddhism. A
September 1, 2007, regulation requires all reincarnated lamas to be
approved by Chinese authorities, a requirement that flagrantly
interferes with the tradition of reincarnation of living Buddhas as
practiced in Tibet for thousands of years. In addition, Chinese
authorities still ban the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet
and a world-renowned pacifist, from returning to Tibet.
Since 1999, the government has banned many religious beliefs such as
Falungong and the Three Servants. Their followers have experienced
extremely cruel and planned persecutions. Many died from abuse,
suffered torture, brainwa****ng, imprisonment and labor camp internment
for persisting in their faith, possessing religious books, making DVDs
and writing articles to expose the truth of the persecution.
China has the highest death penalty rate in the world. Execution
statistics are treated as "state secrets." However, experts estimate
that 8,000-10,000 people are sentenced to death in China every year,
among them not only criminals and economic convicts, but totally
innocent citizens, such as Nie Shubin, Teng Xingshan, Cao Haixin and
Hugejiletu, whose innocence was proven only after they were already
dead.
Another eight innocent farmers, Chen Guoqing, He Guoqiang, Yang
****liang, Zhu Yanqiang, Huang Zhixiang, Fang Chunping, Cheng Fagen and
Cheng Lihe, who confessed their "crimes" after being cruelly tortured
by the police, have been sentenced to death and are currently held in
prisons in Hebei [province] and in Jingdezhen [in Jiangxi province].
Torture is very common in China's detention centers, labor camps and
prisons. Torture methods include electric shock, burning, use of
electric needles, beating and hanging, sleep deprivation, forced
chemical injection causing nerve damage, and piercing the fingers with
needles. Every year, there are re****ted cases of Chinese citizens
being disabled or killed by police torture.
Labor camps are still retained as a convenient Chinese system which
allows the police to lock up citizens without trial for up to four
years. The detention system is another practice that the police favor,
freeing them to detain citizens for six months to two years.
Dissidents and human rights activists are particularly vulnerable
targets and are often sent to labor camps, detention centers or even
mental hospitals by authorities who want to simplify legal procedures
and mislead the media.
China has the world's largest secret police system, the Ministry of
National Security (guo an) and the Internal Security Bureau (guo bao)
of the Ministry of Public Security, which exercise power beyond the
law. They can easily tap telephones, follow citizens, place them under
house arrest, detain them and impose torture. On June 3, 2004, the
Chinese secret police planted drugs on Chongqing dissident Xu Wanping
and later sentenced him to 12 years' imprisonment for "subversion of
state power."
Chinese citizens have no right to elect state leaders, local
government officials or representatives. In fact, there has never been
free exercise of election rights in town****p-level elections. Wuhan
resident Sun Bu'er, a member of the banned political party the Pan-
Blue Alliance, was brutally beaten in September 2006 for participating
as an independent candidate during an election of county-level
people's congress representatives. Mr. Sun disappeared on March 23,
2007.
China continues to cruelly discriminate against its rural population.
According to the Chinese election law, a farmer's right to vote is
worth one quarter of that of an urban resident. In June 2007, the
Shanxi kiln scandal was exposed by the media. Thousands of 8-
[to-]13[-]year-old trafficked children had been forced to labor in
illegal kilns, almost all with local government connections. Many of
the children were beaten, tortured and even buried alive.
The Chinese judiciary still illegally forbids any HIV/AIDS lawsuits
against government officials responsible for the tragedy. AIDS
sufferers and activists have been constantly harassed by the secret
police.
The Chinese government has been selling arms and weapons to Darfur and
other African regions to sup****t ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity. The Chinese authorities have forcibly repatriated North
Korean refugees, knowing that they would be sent to labor camps or
executed once back home. This significantly contravenes China's
accession to the "Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees" and
the "Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees."
=C2=B7 Please be aware that the Olympic Games will be held in a country
where there are no elections, no freedom of religion, no independent
courts, no independent trade unions; where demonstrations and strikes
are prohibited; where torture and discrimination are sup****ted by a
sophisticated system of secret police; where the government encourages
the violation of human rights and dignity, and is not willing to
undertake any of its international obligations.
=C2=B7 Please consider whether the Olympic Games should coexist with
religious persecution[,] labor camps, modern slavery, identity
discrimination, secret police and crimes against humanity.
As the Beijing Olympics slogan says, we live in "one world" with "one
dream." We hope that one day the Chinese people will be able to share
universal human rights, democracy and peace with people from all
around the world. However, we can see that the Chinese government
obviously is not yet prepared to honor its promise. As a matter of
fact, the preparations for the Olympics have provided the perfect
excuse for the Chinese government to restrict civil liberties and
suppress human rights!
We do not want China to be contained or isolated from the rest of the
world. We believe that only by adhering to the principles of human
rights and through open dialogue can the world community pressure the
Chinese government to change. Ignoring these realities and tolerating
barbaric atrocities in [the] name of the Beijing Olympics will
disgrace the Olympic Charter and shake the foundations of humanity.
Human rights improvement requires time, but we should at least stop
China's human rights situation from deteriorating. Having the Olympics
hosted in a country where human dignity is trampled on will not honor
its people or the Olympic Games.
We sincerely hope that the Olympic Games will bring the values of
peace, equality, freedom and justice to 1.3 billion Chinese citizens.
We pray that the Olympics will be held in a free China. We must push
for the 2008 Olympics to live up to the Olympic Charter[,] and we must
advocate for the realization of "one world" with "one human rights
dream." We believe that only an Olympic Games true to the Olympic
Charter can promote China's democratic progress, world peace and
development.
We firmly hold to the belief that there can be no true Olympic Games
without human rights and dignity. For China and for the Olympics,
human rights must be upheld!
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