Sun Wenguang: The Bastard Who Won't Stop

At 80, Sun Wenguang probably has the dubious honor of being China's oldest pro-democracy activist.  At sensitive times of the Chinese calender - the anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre, the anniversary of the Sichuan Earthquake to name but two - a guard is placed on duty outside his apartment.  During the Bo Xi Lai trial last month, a government rent-a-goon prevented his door from evening opening.

"I am, in their view, a bastard who just won't stop," he says, chuckling in his study late one night after his monitors had left"If my rights are infringed then I have to fight back. I can't just give up my rights."

Branded a counter-revolutionary at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Sun was sent to prisons camps across the country, and was locked up in 1974.  He used the time to contemplate the problems dogging China and it's Communist leadership.  His books, the first one containing essays he wrote on toilet paper using straw from his bed as a pen, eventually earned him a ban on ever leaving the Chinese mainland.

Unlike many from his generation, who've long since given up any hope of political reform in China, he carries on with a determination rarely found in the newer generation of activists.  Directly challenging the authorities instead of trying follow China's malleable laws, he is, as Hu Jia puts it, an icon for Chinese dissidents.

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