Party and State: Tiananmen Square

Showing posts with label Tiananmen Square. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Human Rights Blighting China's Future

Sick and tired of having do-gooders like Europe and America slamming the terrible human rights record in China, China has once again pointed out that only Chinese people can really attack the terrible human rights record in China. If they're not already in jail for doing so that is.

Yesterday was, of course, International Human Rights Day, according to the UN General Assembly. You'd think that with their recent appointment to the UN Human Rights Council, China would've at least started to pull their punches when it come to be dishing out beatings to the poor folks that trek to Beijing to file petitions against corrupt officials, and other grievances they might have. Not so, according to a retired army officer, Gao Hongyi, who went to Beijing's UN offices.

"After I got there, the place was packed with people and large numbers of police," Henan petitioner Shi Yuhong told RFA's Cantonese Service. "We were all put onto buses and taken to the holding centers," he said. "I was put on the 47th bus [to Jiujingzhuang detention center]," he said.

So everything's going well in that department, then. Fearful that Chinese people would criticise the Chinese stance on human rights, the authorities went even further, making sure that no one at the train stations wouldn't get a chance to file their petitions, or make their opinions heard on what was supposed to be a day of building awareness about human rights violations.

They detained a few more people near the southern railway station in Beijing," said a petitioner surnamed Liu from the northeastern province of Jilin. "A lot of people are planning to head up to the UN at Liangmaqiao and the new premises of China Central Television to call for better human rights," Liu said.

"I saw a lot of police and their vehicles by the southern railway station," he added. "They treat petitioners as the enemy."

All of this is, of course, par for the course, when it comes to dealing with complaints made by the little people in China, it doesn't say much for a government which claims to have fought a revolution in the name of the rural poor. Over the past year, censorship and suppression of protestors have increased, ranging from high profile arrests of troublemakers on Weibo to the quiet detentions of activists placed under house arrest. Treatment of minorities in places like Xinjiang have gone from bad to worse, with arbitrary executions taking place without due process or supervision.

China treads a fine line between presenting itself as a modern, rising economy and superpower, but the actual mechanics underneath the shock and awe PR haven't changed since tanks were ordered to clear Tiananmen Square. Despite the best efforts of the Chinese government, they just can't get away from the thuggish tactics that haven't worked in the past, and continue to blight China's future.

Thousands of Petitioners Arrested in Beijing on International Human Rights Day

On Human Rights Day, I'll be thinking of my father in a Chinese prison | Ti-Anna Wang

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Mosque Raid Linked to Tian'anmen Crash

Asia Times Online postulates on the credible connection between a police raid on a mosque in Xinjiang and the car crash in Beijing last week.

The driver of the car Usmen Hesen who was killed along with his wife and mother had quite vocally declared his intentions to seek revenge for the raid on his local mosque after police tore down the courtyard that Hesen had contributed a large portion of the funds to. The police in Yengi Aymaq village in Xinjiang's Akto county had declared the courtyard an illegal extension and tore it down when they raided the mosque exactly a year before the car attack in Tian'anmen.

Hesen made the speech as he told the mosque community to stand down after they argued with the armed police.
"At that time, Usmen Hesen jumped in and persuaded the community to disperse by saying, 'Today they have won and we have lost because they are carrying guns and we have nothing, but don't worry, one day we will do something ourselves'," Turdi said.

In a masterstroke of obfuscation, the local authorities had said that even though building permits had been successfully applied for and the 200,000rmb mosque, an amount that took three years to raise, the proper paperwork for the extension and courtyard (another 30,000 kuai) hadn't been completed properly and was therefore illegal. Bloody red tape, eh?

Hesen made the speech as he told the mosque community to stand down after they argued with the armed police.

"At that time, Usmen Hesen jumped in and persuaded the community to disperse by saying, 'Today they have won and we have lost because they are carrying guns and we have nothing, but don't worry, one day we will do something ourselves'," Turdi said.

"As Usmen Hesen finished his emotional speech, [his mother] Kuwanhan Reyim went to him crying, and hugged and kissed his forehead because of her pride in him. The crowd was also moved to tears and retreated."

Beijing to strengthen security after Tian'anmen attack: party chief

'East Turkistan' behind Tian'anmen crash

China: Tiananmen Crash May Have Been A 'Revenge Attack'

Crash at Tiananmen Square Leaves at Least 5 Dead, 38 Injured

China Debates Terror Attacks Online

"Dog fuckers", a little known term of affection (we presume) for government officials, is how one Weibo user described the intended targets of yesterday's bomb in Taiyuan.

With public confidence in government officials not especially high these days. Xi's crackdown on graft is continuing, and a steady stream of videos and photos continue to emerge online of civil servants caught in compromising situations with women who aren't their wives, reactions to the bombings have been a little different to what you might expect.

David Wertime's analysis of the "lone wolf" attacks on Foreign Policy, shows there seems to be some debate in the Chinese webspace of whether exactly violent protest against the government is acceptable or not. Always a good sign the everyone's happy exactly the way things are.

1 killed in blasts at Communist Party's office in China

Suspected Bomb Blasts Hit Northern Chinese City

You: At least 1 killed in bombings at Communist Party office in China

Comment: Tiananmen attack spotlights China's beleaguered Uighurs

1 Killed, 8 Injured in Northern China Explosions - ABC News

Monday, February 28, 2011

China's Revolution Needs Supersizing

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="460" caption="move along, nothing to protest about here"]

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Chinese citizens were told to shout “We want food, we want work, we want housing, we want fairness”, referencing rising food and housing prices, the overqualified and underpaid ant-tribe, and massive government corruption and cronyism that has dogged the Chinese government since its inception.

While the protests in Egypt, Libya and Bahrain were gathering momentum, I found myself hoping that the same wouldn’t happen in China. If it did, I explain on Facebook, the government crackdown would make Gadhafi’s violent response look like a paintballing outing for extremely nervous insurance salesmen. The choice of venues (KFC and McDonalds) neatly illustrates the pampered nature of the Angry Young Men of China – we can have a protest, but we really need to go somewhere where we can get some food later on, possibly with a the local neighborhood American diplomat.

Suffice to say that the Chinese didn’t really grasp the nettle and give an all-out protest on the same scale as their Egyptian and Libyan counterparts. A number of factors conspired against them a) they publicized the whole thing on Twitter which is banned in China, b) the Chinese authorities are stupid, but they’re not too stupid not to use Twitter to keep tabs on troublemakers c) they used Google Maps to pinpoint exactly were the protests were being held. It was, to borrow one of Hannibal Lecter’s lines, a fledging protestor’s first attempt at a transformation, and not that great a success. That said, at least the members of one of the world’s largest standing armies had something to other than stand.

The authorities didn’t really do themselves any favors either. Fearing massive negative publicity, they duly phoned up every reporter in the city and told them not to go anywhere near Wangfujing or Tiananmen Square without special permission - which is a little like telling a two year old not to press, under any circumstances, the big red button with “danger – do not press” written in yellow and red letters above it. If anyone should be arrested for subverting state power, it’s the Chinese idiots who spread news to the people who didn’t even know there was news in the first place to be spread. It’s also given officials, as the 9/11 terror attacks in American gave the American officials, more wiggle room to collect in one place all the troublemakers, and any excuse to tighten the rules is a good excuse.

While their tactics have been quite simple, they have been quite effective – no one can argue that spraying water from a street cleaning van is a more acceptable than an M1 tank rumbling down the Wang Fu Jing. If the dissidents get the idea that the most they have to deal with is getting a little bit wet (which, admittedly for Chinese people is on the same level as contracting leprosy) every weekend, they may get that little bit bolder. It’s a shame that the Chinese police didn’t deal with the foreign news media. Nothing makes a western report moist with anticipation more than a protest in China, but nothing eats up column inches like reports of Chinese police beating the living daylights out of foreign reporters and illegally detaining those covering a protest in China.