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Chinese Government Tightens Constraints on Press Freedom
HONG KONG — China introduced new restrictions on what the government has called “critical” news articles and barred Chinese journalists from doing work outside their beats or regions, putting further restraints on reporters in one of the world’s most controlled news media environments.
Reporters in China must now seek permission from their employers before undertaking “critical reports” and are barred from setting up their own websites, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television announced in new rules Wednesday.
The state agency said in a statement on its website that the rules came after a series of cases involving misconduct by journalists, including extortion. But journalists and rights activists said the rules could have a chilling effect on reporting in China, a country already ranked 173rd out of 179 countries on the press freedom index published by Reporters Without Borders.
Yet despite the restrictions on reporters, newspapers and magazines such as Southern Weekend and Caixin routinely publish scathing investigative articles that expose social ills and corruption. Caixin, for example, broke a series of articles about the business interests of the family of the former security chief Zhou Yongkang starting late last year.
That kind of reporting may be more difficult under the new rules, said Ji Shuoming, a Chinese journalist now based in Hong Kong, who added that aggressive investigative journalists will find it hard to write articles without venturing outside their beats or regions. That puts them at risk if their work draws the anger of any officials, he said.
“Now they have this rule, if they don’t like what you wrote they can say you violated the rules,” said Mr. Ji, who this year wrote an exposé about the business interests of Li Xiaolin, the daughter of former Prime Minister Li Peng.
The new rules come amid a surge in restrictions on expression following the elevation of Xi Jinping to the top leadership posts in November 2012. Last year, several bloggers were arrested after new restrictions onpublishing “rumors” were established by the state. Activists who have called for officials to declare their assets have been jailed.
With China’s severe pollution, food-safety worries and widespread official corruption, high-quality journalism is needed more than ever, said Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch.
“What public health scare or environmental disaster or toxic product won’t get reported?” Ms. Richardson said. “What corruption cases, unrest, or prosecutions won’t people get to know about? Closing the already narrow space for independent, critical journalism is a tremendous mistake.”
BEIJING — Even by the standards of the clampdowns that routinely mark politically sensitive dates in China, the approach this year to June 4, the anniversary of the day in 1989 when soldiers brutally ended student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, has been particularly severe.
The days preceding June 4 often mean house arrest for vocal government critics and an Internet scrubbed free of even coded references to the crackdown that dare not speak its name.
But this year, the 25th anniversary of the bloodshed that convulsed the nation and nearly sundered the Communist Party, censors and security forces have waged an aggressive “stability maintenance” campaign that has sent a chill through the ranks of Chinese legal advocates, liberal intellectuals and foreign journalists.
In recent weeks, a dozen prominent scholars and activists have been arrested or criminally detained, and even seemingly harmless gestures, like posting a selfie in Tiananmen Square while flashing a V for victory, have led to detentions.
Photo
Hong Kong protesters held a picture of Pu Zhiqiang, a lawyer who was arrested.CreditPhilippe Lopez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The police have been warning Western journalists to stay away from the square in the coming days or “face grave consequences,” according to several reporters summoned to meetings with stone-faced public security officials. Amnesty International has compiled a list of nearly 50 people across the country that it says have been jailed, interrogated or placed under house arrest.
“They say it’s springtime in Beijing, but it feels like winter,” said Hu Jia, an AIDS activist and seasoned dissident who has been forcibly confined to his apartment for the past three months.
The growing list of those swept up by China’s expansive security apparatus includes a group of gay rights advocates gathered at a Beijing hotel, several Buddhists arrested as they were meditating in the central Chinese city of Wuhan and an ex-soldier turned artist who staged in a friend’s studio a performance piece that was inspired by the government’s efforts to impose amnesia on an entire nation.
“The response has been harsher and more intense than we’ve ever seen,” said Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong.
To political analysts and rights advocates, the campaign provides further evidence that President Xi Jinping, 15 months into the job, is determined to stamp out dissent amid an ideological assault against liberal ideas that many view as part of a wide-ranging drive to consolidate power. “Until this latest crackdown I was agnostic about Xi, but recent events suggest he would like to be a Mao-style strongman if he could,” said Perry Link, a China scholar at the University of California, Riverside.
Although the red line of permissible public discourse often shifts with the seasons and the whims of those in power, many longtime China watchers say the changes have caught even the most battle-scarred dissidents off guard.
As evidence, they point to the authorities’ forceful response to a seminar, held at a private home in early May, during which more than a dozen people met to discuss the events of 1989. In the days that followed, the participants, including relatives of those killed during the crackdown, were summoned for questioning by the police.
But unlike a similar, much larger event in 2009, five of the attendees were formally arrested. Among them: Hao Jian, a professor at the Beijing Film Academy; Xu Youyu, a philosophy scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; and Pu Zhiqiang, a charismatic rights lawyer. All face charges of “creating a public disturbance.”
Since then, the police have repeatedly searched Mr. Pu’s law office and home, carting away computers, financial documents and a DVD of a documentary about the dissident artist Ai Weiwei, a former client.
In an interview, one of his lawyers, Zhang Sizhi, described the charges as illogical. “How can you create a public disturbance while meeting in a private residence?” he asked.
Mr. Zhang and others say it seems increasingly unlikely Mr. Pu will be released after June 4, the pattern of previous anniversary-related detentions.
In building a case against him, the authorities have rounded up a number of Mr. Pu’s friends and associates, among them Vivian Wu, an independent journalist, and Xin Jiang, a news assistant with the Japanese newspaper Nikkei. Friends say they are unclear why the authorities detained Ms. Xin, although some thought it might be related to an earlier interview she conducted with Mr. Pu.
On Tuesday, two weeks after her disappearance, Ms. Xin’s husband took to social media, posting a family photo and a frantic cry for help. “It’s a mess at home,” the husband, Wang Haichun, wrote. “Please come back. I can’t bear this alone.”
The anguish is shared by friends of Liu Wei, a young factory worker from southwest China who was detained on criminal charges on May 17 after returning home to Chongqing from a visit to Beijing. According to a friend, Huang Chengcheng, Mr. Liu’s apparent crime was posting online photos of himself in Tiananmen Square, including one in which he flashed a victory sign, a common pose among Chinese tourists that can also be seen as a sly act of subversion.
Gay rights advocates have also been feeling the heat. Over the past few weeks, the authorities have canceled a number of events in Beijing, including a film screening and a panel discussion to mark International Day Against Homophobia. Earlier this month, the police raided a hotel where a group of civil society advocates had gathered for a seminar focused on the obstacles facing gay and AIDS nonprofits.
Yu Fangqiang, one of the event organizers, said the police arrived at 1:30 a.m., confiscated his cellphone and then used it to text about 30 other would-be participants, telling them the event had been canceled. Mr. Yu and eight others were then bundled off for interrogations that, for several detainees, stretched into the following evening.
Sometimes the authorities’ fears of public unrest have led to confounding measures, like the postponement of a restaurant awards ceremony scheduled for Thursday night in the capital.
Other times their efforts were nothing if not creative.
Chen Yongmiao, a political commentator and rights activist in Beijing, said the police gave him the equivalent of $800 to leave town. “They just don’t want people from the opposition in the political center of Beijing,” Mr. Chen said by phone last week as he traveled through northwest China.
In past years, the noose would tighten in mid-April, coinciding with the anniversary of the death of Hu Yaobang, the reformist Communist Party secretary purged for his “bourgeois” liberal leanings in 1989. It was an outpouring of public mourning after his death on April 15 that coalesced into the demonstrations that swept the nation with demands for justice, democracy and an end to official corruption.
This year, however, many activists say restrictions kicked in months earlier. When they placed him under house arrest in late February, Mr. Hu, the AIDS activist, said the police told him this was an “especially sensitive” year and that they were taking no chances. “The authorities want to create an atmosphere of terror, something they’ve largely succeeded in doing,” he said by phone, listing a number of friends who had been compelled by the police to “go on holiday” and leave Beijing for May.
But Mr. Hu said he thought the campaign was ham-handed and ultimately ineffective. Although party leaders have expunged the episode from Chinese history books and the Internet, leaving a younger generation unfamiliar with the events of June 3-4, Mr. Hu estimated that a million or more people were on the streets of Beijing the night soldiers opened fire on unarmed civilians, killing hundreds, if not more.
“No matter how hard they try,” he said, “they cannot erase this experience from everyone’s memories.”
SYDNEY, Australia — On May 6 three of my friends were arrested in Beijing on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” They are Xu Youyu, a scholar and former researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Prof. Hao Jian of the Beijing Film Academy, and Pu Zhiqiang, a prominent human rights attorney.
Three days earlier my three friends and a dozen other people had gathered at Hao Jian’s home to discuss the Tiananmen Square crackdown 25 years ago, when a huge number of students and other protesters took to the streets calling for democracy and an end to dictatorial rule and official corruption. The peaceful protests lasted nearly two months, but in the end the government sent troops and tanks, killing several hundred — possibly several thousand — unarmed citizens. Hao Jian’s cousin was among the dead.
I wanted to attend the gathering, but I had to travel to Australia, where I am a writer in residence at Sydney University. One of those present read out an essay I wrote about the Tiananmen crackdown. Hard as it may seem to believe — I have a law degree, and I myself can hardly believe it — reciting such an essay at a private gathering can violate China’s laws. By the government’s logic, I too have committed the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.”
I am going to turn myself in.
For me, the Tiananmen crackdown was the beginning of a gradual awakening. I was only 15 in 1989, a middle school student in a remote mountain hamlet in China’s far northeastern province of Jilin. Everything I knew about the events of that year came entirely from China’s state-run television station, CCTV: The demonstrators were counter-revolutionary rioters. The People’s Liberation Army exercised great restraint and did not open fire, whereas some rioters burned soldiers alive. I believed it all. I was even grateful to the government and the army for rescuing the nation.
Gradually, the events of 1989 receded from center stage. Everyone was busy earning university degrees or getting rich, as if nothing had ever happened. Even today, the Tiananmen crackdown remains one of the biggest taboos in modern China. Beijing has been attempting to expunge our collective memory through the worship of a soaring economy. But this most traumatic of memories has never truly faded. It continues to live among the people, despite Beijing’s determined efforts to suppress its history.
Soon after I entered university in 1992, a senior student came to our dormitory, sat down and demanded a cigarette. He then asked if we knew what had happened at the school in 1989. We said we didn’t know. He took a deep drag, then told us solemnly that during the Tiananmen incident students from our school, the China University of Political Science and Law, were the first to take to the streets. They were, he said, the first to coordinate links with protesters from other universities. The first president of the Beijing Students Autonomous Federation was from our school. Our university, he told us, had “19 firsts.”
Since then, I came to understand what really happened in 1989 and its significance to China and the world. The government may have condemned the participants as “criminals,” but we students considered it a glorious moment. We regard it as a great honor to have had even the slightest connection with the democracy movement.
My university’s “19 firsts” may not have been entirely accurate, but they became a legend, passed down from one student body to the next. In 1994, when I was the wise senior who visited the new students’ dormitory, I too drew deeply on my cigarette and solemnly intoned: “During the Tiananmen incident of 1989 this university had 19 firsts ... ”
By then, all traces of blood on Tiananmen Square had been scrubbed clean and the bullet holes cemented over, but in the nooks and crannies of the city the story passed from person to person. Around 2003, a friend bought a documentary about the crackdown in Hong Kong. In no time we all made copies. One day I watched it with some friends in a bar in the southern city of Guangzhou. One scene in particular struck me. A youth lay prone on a broad avenue amid the sound of intermittent gunfire. We thought he was dead, but then he suddenly began crawling in a circle. He did not dare stand up, but he didn’t want to stay where he was, pretending to be dead. Crawling was better than doing nothing. “If I were there,” said a migrant worker from Sichuan Province who was standing behind us, “I’d have carried him to safety.”
Whenever I’m asked about China’s future I recount this anecdote of the migrant worker from Sichuan.
Now, in the age of the Internet, the government cannot possibly control all information. More and more people hold their own commemorations for the Tiananmen victims. Every year on the 4th of June virtual candles are lit. Photos are circulated online. Government censors put in a lot of overtime as they delete any combination of the numbers 6 and 4, as well as any reference to Tiananmen, the “Gate of Heavenly Peace.” Despite censorship, hundreds of thousands of people persist. If they are unable to include “6/4” in a post they try “5/35.” If the censors block a post with the number “1989,” they change it to “the last year of the 1980s” or “the year before 1990.” Can’t mention “tanks”? Then try “tractors.”
Beijing has been in denial for 25 years, and now President Xi Jinping’s administration appears more paranoid than its predecessors. The gathering in Hao Jian’s home was merely a “June 4th commemoration.” A similar gathering was held five years ago during President Hu Jintao’s reign, but no one was arrested.
On the surface the government appears to be stronger than ever, with over 80 million Communist Party members, millions of soldiers, and nearly $4 trillion in foreign exchange reserves — yet it is actually so fragile that its leaders lose sleep when a few scholars meet and talk in a private home.
After my friends were arrested I announced on the Internet that I would turn myself over to the authorities as soon as I return from Australia in July because I too had participated in “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” Most of my friends have warned me to lay low for a while, but I have thought it through: If the situation in China continues to deteriorate, I cannot stand idly by. If I too am arrested, perhaps more Chinese people will awaken to the realities of their situation. My arrest will be my contribution to resisting government efforts to erase the nation’s memory.
I have seen China change. I have seen the Internet awaken its people. In 1989 one person was brave enough to stand before a column of tanks rolling through Beijing. If the same thing happens again, I am certain hundreds of ordinary citizens will defy the tanks, and if they come under fire, there will be thousands of other citizens with the courage to face the guns and say, “I will carry them to safety.”
Murong Xuecun, a novelist and blogger, is the author of “Leave Me Alone: A Novel of Chengdu” and “Dancing Through Red Dust.” This article was translated by The New York Times from the Chinese.
... infligiram tantos sofrimentos a tanta gente. Nunca antes neste país, seres tão desprezíveis mostraram tanta conivência com atos tão bárbaros. Aliás são coniventes com muitas outras coisas, como o fascismo assassino, ali ao lado. Seres despreziveis são assim...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Um desertor norte-coreano: “Delatei minha mãe por uma ração de arroz”
A ONU documenta crimes contra a humanidade na Coreia do Norte
Nesse país de 25 milhões de habitantes, existem cerca de 100 mil presos em campos de concentração
A Coreia do Norte, esse país mega-hermético que exerce uma estranha fascinação por sua estética de história em quadrinho e as extravagâncias de seus líderes, é cenário de crimes contra a humanidade que foram documentados por uma comissão de investigação das Nações Unidas que escutou 80 testemunhas, entre prisioneiros de 80 antigos campos de prisioneiros políticos, desertores e especialistas. Os investigadores apresentaram suas conclusões nessa segunda-feira em Genebra (Suiça). Essas incluem a história de Shin Dong-hyuk, de 30 anos, que contou sua vida aos enviados da ONU no dia 30 de agosto passado, numa audiência pública em Seul (Coreia do Sul): nasceu em um campo de prisioneiros políticos concebido por um casal que foi obrigado a se unir, a primeira coisa de sua infância de que se lembra foi uma execução, tinha 13 anos quando delatou sua mãe depois de ouvi-la sussurrar um plano de fuga e 14 quando teve que assistir ao seu enforcamento público e ver também como fuzilavam seu irmão mais velho. Aos 22, conseguiu escapar do denominado campo 14, um gulag de 125 quilômetros quadrados que fica a 65 quilômetros da capital, Pyongyang. Nesse país de 25 milhões de habitantes, existem cerca de 100.000 internos em campos de concentração.
“Eu informei o guarda sobre os seus planos (de fugir) porque eram as normas. Estava realmente orgulhoso de mim mesmo. Pedi ao meu supervisor para me recompensar, para me dar uma ração completa de arroz para encher o estômago”, relatou Shin naquela tarde em Seul. Até os 22 anos mal sobreviveu, oprimido sempre por uma fome atroz, resultado da ração diária: 400 gramas de mingau de milho. Tanta fome que, se o guarda de plantão o autorizava, comia ratos vivos.
A novidade desses relatos não é tanto seu conteúdo – Shin, testemunha número um da ONU, publicou sua autobiografia Fuga do Campo 14 (Ed. Intrínseca) em 2012 como fizeram outras dezenas de fugitivos –, mas sim o fato de contarem com o aval do organismo multilateral. As 372 páginas do relatório são um detalhado catálogo de um sistema repressivo que utiliza sistematicamente a tortura, a falta de comida, os assassinatos, os sequestros e os desaparecimentos para manter o povo controlado.
“A gravidade, a escala e a natureza das violações dos direitos humanos (documentadas) não têm paralelo no mundo contemporâneo”, dizem os investigadores. A Coreia do Norte, que não lhes permitiu entrar no país, rejeitou “drástica e totalmente” todas as acusações, que atribuiu às maquinações dos EUA, EU e Japão.
Os horrores “não tem paralelo no mundo atual”, diz um dos investigadores
O chefe da equipe, o juiz australiano Michael Kirby, explicou em sua audiência que as atrocidades descritas têm numerosos paralelismos com os crimes perpetrados pelos nazistas. Como exemplo, lembrou o relato de um prisioneiro, cujo trabalho incluía incinerar os cadáveres dos internos mortos de fome e usar as cinzas como fertilizante.
O juiz Kirby instou a comunidade internacional a passar para a ação. E enquanto brandia o relatório numa mão lembrou-lhes que não cabe apelar ao desconhecimento como se fez depois da Segunda Guerra Mundial. “Agora, a comunidade internacional sabe. Não existe desculpa para não agir porque não sabíamos”. A comissão instou o Conselho de Segurança a enviar as acusações para a Corte Penal Internacional. O maior entrave para isso seria o provável veto da China, principal aliado do regime que Kim Jong-un herdou de seu pai e este de seu avô. A comissão Kirby pretende que Kim e centenas de chefes do aparato de segurança prestem contas diante da justiça internacional por crimes contra a humanidade. Também recomendaram sanções individualizadas da ONU contra os altos cargos civis e militares pelos crimes mais graves.
Os depoimentos públicos e os privados (duzentos) incluíram alguns de antigos guardas. Ahn Myong-chol contou como um de seus companheiros matou um preso a pauladas no campo 22 por comer demasiado devagar. O assunto foi investigado, mas o guarda não foi castigado e sim premiado com “o direito de ir à universidade”.
Lealdade política para sobreviver
A ditadura dos Kim organizou toda a sociedade norte-coreana em função do grau de lealdade das famílias. Só as de fidelidade absoluta ao longo dos anos disfrutam do privilégio de viver em Pyongyang. E, como constatam os investigadores da ONU, “o monopólio do acesso à comida foi usado como instrumento importante para garantir a lealdade política”.
A fome que matou mais de um milhão de norte-coreanos (quase um em cada 20) em meados dos anos 90 resultou na proliferação de mercados informais que aliviaram a escassez de alimentos. Entretanto, a comissão de investigação da ONU frisa que “a distribuição da comida priorizou os que eram úteis para a sobrevivência do regime político, em detrimento daqueles considerados sacrificáveis”.
Os prisioneiros políticos recebem umas rações tão exíguas que o instinto de sobrevivência é mais forte do que o risco de ser imediatamente executado. Shin, a testemunha número um, contou à comissão que umas duas vezes por semana os guardas escolhiam uma criança e a revistavam para ver se havia surrupiado alguns grãos de cereal.
Os norte-coreanos estão divididos em castas desde que nascem: os afins, os duvidosos e os hostis. Basta que um parente tenha tentado escapar ou lutar no grupo errado na guerra para que toda a família seja considerada hostil. “Nasci criminoso e morreria criminoso. Esse era o meu destino”, disse uma testemunha. Isso influi nas rações. Os norte-coreanos mais desesperados fogem para a China, fronteira menos difícil de cruzar do que a zona desmilitarizada. A recompensa é imensa, mas o risco também porque Pequim repatria muitos, embora a ONU lhe recorde que isso é ilegal. Os que empreendem a fuga para serem livres (e comer até se fartar) se arriscam a que os matem, os prendam ou torturem. A eles e a suas famílias.
