As the sixth human rights conference in Beijing gets underway Chinese authorities continue to merrily roundup up high profile microbloggers. The New Citizen Movement, which says it works within the Chinese constitution, such as it is, is slowly being dismantled amid a raft of arrests and detentions by the Beijing authorities.
Wang Gongquan, a billionaire venture capitalist was detained on Friday under suspicion "of gathering a crowd to disturb order in public places.". The catch all accusation, along with "incitement to subvert state power" is used to cover a multitude of vague sins, no of which any officials are willing to fully explain to the press. Shit like this just happens in China. The Wall Street Journal reports that
it took 20 police officers to remove the dangerous individual from his home in Beijing.
Clearly hellbent on the destruction of the Chinese State, Wang's connections to the New Citizen Movement haven't done him any favors. The loosely connected group of wealthy white collar business men routinely speak out against the government online and call for officials to disclose their assets. One of the movement's founders, Professor Teng told the Daily Telegraph
“Of course Wang Gongquan didn’t commit any crime under the current legal system. Wang is a famous investor but he has [also] been supportive of civil society and human rights for many years.” “I don’t know what will happen to him [but] if Wang is not released within 24 hours it will be very worrying.".
Chen Min, a journalist who has championed Prof. Teng's movement in recent months said in the same interview that a "white terror" had descended on Beijing,
In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Wang had expressly said that he never posts calls to action on his Weibo account,
because he already knows that protesting on the streets in China is illegal. It obviously makes sense that he would be arrested for something that he'd already dismissed as a pointless course of action.
SCMP: Would you protest in front of any government agency?
Wang: I am against street actions. I have never encouraged street actions.
SCMP: Why is that?
Wang: Because the Communist Party doesn’t allow it. It's such a simple reason!
A
statement was released early on Saturday morning saying
Free Wang Gongquan. Give a chance to goodness, to freedom and justice, and to a peaceful transformation. Fellow Chinese, when the nest is upset no egg is left intact. Do not let our country fall any deeper into the abyss in the opposite direction of modern civilization without doing anything. Take actions to defend the effort to build a civil society, for, by doing so, we are defending ourselves, each one of us.
The arrest of Wang follows the detention and subsequent charging - Chinese police tend to arrest first and then find something that the poor sap languishing in the cells is guilty of - of lawyer Xi Zhiyong, who last June managed to film a statement from his cell, the uploaded video immediately going viral on China's social networks.
Another prominent critic of the Chinese government was also taken into custody on Friday. Microblogger (aren't there any megabloggers being arrested?)
Dong Shiru was detained when it was discovered that he mis-registered the amount of capital available to his business. The police acted swung into action only a week after Dong had openly admitted this "crime" to his 500,000 followers on Weibo. That transgression alone shouldn't land him in much hot water, as the Global Times pointed out
It is common for private enterprises to exaggerate their registered capital to imply that they are powerful and credible, Wu Dong, a Shanghai-based lawyer from the M&A Law Firm, told the Global Times.
Owners of such companies can be charged with a crime only if they cause financial damages of more than 100,000 yuan to others or carry on illicit activities, Wu said
What's more likely to get him in trouble is the fact that he often posts about those inconvenient deaths in police custody. One case that grabbed the headlines was a incident wherein
an inmate had brutally and savagely beaten himself to death during a game of hide and seek. Dong predicted his arrest when
his offices were raided by the police and three computers were confiscated, he even went so far as to list the possible offenses that he might be charged with
"What crime will they bring against me? Prostituting, gambling, using and selling drugs, evading tax, causing trouble on purpose, fabricating rumors, running a mafia online?"
Even Dong's close friends don't hold out much hope that they'll be seeing him any time soon, "If they want to punish you, they can always find an excuse," Dong's friend Zheng Xiejian said. "They could not find any wrongdoing against Dong and had to settle on this obscure charge."
