Scentless Apprentice

Zeng Jinyan, the wife of imprisoned human rights activist Hu Jia, responded to the mail sent to her by members of Amnesty International. She posted her thank-you letter on her blog. Here’s the English translation:

Dear members of Amnesty International,

Dear Christine, Morag Anne Elder, Elisabeth Flett, James, Mel, Anna Ferretti … and many, many friends. I am not able to list all your names here.

Thank you very much for your letters to me and to my family!

After three weeks away in Fujian at my parent’s home, last night I returned home to Beijing. The atmosphere in my parent’s home town was a bit relaxed, now I return to the “prison” in the Freedom City. There are many police surrounding my house. This morning I saw three police cars and many plain clothes police arrive at my building. I was a bit uncomfortable to see within the three cars, two are new numbers and the police surrounding me also have many new faces. This is adding pressure to me. Being put under house arrest is nothing to be happy about; however, at times I still prefer to deal with the police who have already been here for years, rather than new ones. I feel a bit depressed. With a little hope, I tried to open my mail box, and found nearly a hundred letters and postcards.

I held them in my arms and took them home, and opened them one by one slowly and preciously. I saw rock mountains, icebergs, castles, beaches, yolks, birds, churches, streets in somewhere of the world, puppets and different kind of flowers, and hand drawings of very bright orange coloured trees and sun and paper rings children made …… All these colourful wonder worlds, vast and selfless nature never leave us even during the political darkness, or when human rights abuses happen. On these cards carried your messages in English and Chinese and other languages: “You are not alone and we think of you. Could this flower bring you hope and support”, “We lobby for Hu Jia and wish him released soon. “, “Please take care of your child and yourself “, “The whole world is helping you”, “Don’t worry, freedom is with you”, “Stay hopeful”, “Happiness will always work, even when darkness works”, “Sorrow, sorrow, everywhere, make that sorrow into happy cheers”, “Please accept our best wishes, and keep courage “, “Stay in justice, think of freedom, you won’t go wrong, because that’s the way”, “Be strong”, “we fully support you”, “Everything to be all right, so stay positive”, “I send bundles of love”. Dear Amnesty International members, thank you so much for the courage and love and blessing, thus me and my family are no more alone!

Among those letters, I also received one sent from my husband in prison; it brings me lots of comfort. In the letter, Hu Jia mentioned our daughter, born on November 13 last year, Qianci, he said, “….. she has been to Beijing city police detention center, she has been to the First Beijing Intermediate People’s Court, she has been to Chaobai prison, at such a young age, she has seen the world a lot. When she grows up, she may be confused why such abuses happened in her past, just as our generation could not understand and could not imagine the time from 1957 to 1978, when our people went through a tragic, dark era when people were forced to torture themselves or each other. But I believe children at that time, just as we do now, at least understood that civil society is continuously progressing, although during this process, there are tragic incidents, conflicts and contrast, that conscious citizen always pay more to build a better world for future generations. I believe when it is up to my daughter’s generation, Article 105 (2) of criminal law (incitement of subversion) will already have been abolished. That civil society could fully exercise their rights to freedom of expression, to criticise government’s wrong practice, and monitor their government’s behavior and policy. In our society, nothing more than the government needs to be monitored, nothing more than power needs to be put under control …..” I would like to share these words from Hu Jia, to those children who wrote us letters.

Tonight I pray, and send you in my prayers flowers and love!

Wishing you peace and all the good luck!

From a friend far away, Zeng Jinyan
Sunday June 29, 2008

Today has been marked for Bloggers Unite for Human Rights. I was super busy with my day job and Amnesty work lately that I haven’t touch this blog for a while. I have ideas running in my head the last few weeks but when it’s time to blog for human rights today, I am drawing a blank, otherwise feeling a bit uneasy with the Sichuan earthquake aftermath. Perhaps a shout out to the lunch panel hosted by the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs tomorrow would not be out of line.

The panel titled, “Olympic Mettle: Business, Civil Society, and Politics During the Beijing Games” will have several speakers including Robert Corcoran, General Electric VP of Corporate Citizenship. Since GE is one of the corporate sponsors of the IOC, it would be interesting to hear whether the company has discussed China’s human rights issues with the IOC. From what I heard, some of the corporate sponsors claimed they have done it but they would not go into details on how and what concerns they raised to the IOC.

While looking up for more info on the panel, I found out the Carnegie Council puts out audio recordings of past events. I listened to the panel “Cyberethics: The Emerging Codes of Online Conduct” as a podcast and it’s quite good. I hope tomorrow’s panel won’t take long to get archived.

The primary message of the AI’s Beijing Olympics campaign focuses on the legacy of the Games. The “Legacy of the Beijing Olympics” or “Olympic Legacy” has been the key phrase. It is not very catchy but it relies on the fact that China would definitely prefer to have a positive legacy for the Olympics rather than a negative one. Following the tradition of Chinese seals, an “Olympic Legacy” stamp design was created to compliment the campaign. Rubber stamps were made for stamping letters to the authorities and other aspects of the campaign.

Ever since I first saw the stamp design, I thought it would be perfect to make it into a lapel pin because pin trading happens at most of the modern Olympic Games. Getting lapel pins made is not cheap however. After many months of waiting, there is finally budget for AIUSA to order the pins. I saw them for the first time at the Annual General Meeting (AGM) last weekend and they look great. I attached mine to the lanyard of my name tag and proudly wore it throughout the AGM.

I am sure many AIUSA activists would like to receive the pins but I would rather see them getting into the hands of people going to the Olympics, such as athletes, tourists and volunteers. It would be even better if they end up in the pin trading circuit. I thought the pins should also be given to journalists but I was told that journalists are not allowed to wear such things, like a button supporting a presidential candidate. I understand that journalists are required to remain impartial on political issues but are they really not allowed to wear anything representing a certain cause? No Live Strong yellow bands, red AIDS ribbon, or Save Darfur green bands? I can’t believe it.

My mom loves watching the Olympics so I grew up watching the Games. In the back of my mind, I remember strongly a rather cheesy segment of Katie Couric or another NBC reporter talked fondly about trading pins at the Olympics ages ago. At an international sporting event, shouldn’t the dress code be relaxed just a little for journalists? I can’t imaging seeing a reporter wearing full suit and tie at the track and field or swimming event.

Besides, the Olympic Legacy pin does not have the AI logo or lettering and it doesn’t even say human rights. On the other hand, Reporters Without Borders is promoting the “Freedom Badge” which sounds more like trouble to me. To all the journalists who are heading to the Beijing Olympics, would you wear a special pin or badge while you are in China? If so, call the AIUSA Media Relations department (202-544-0200 ext. 302) and ask for an Olympic Legacy pin. If you got the guts to wear something printed with AI, ask for the AIUSA lanyard and some T-shirts, too.

In recent weeks, the protests in Tibet has led to a show down between pro-Tibet and pro-China people when the Olympic torch relay stops in London, Paris and San Francisco were disrupted. Away from the torch relay, similar protests took place in Seattle last week during the Seeds of Compassion gathering where the Dalai Lama was the main speaker, and most significantly at Duke University. In the eyes of a human rights activist, I embrace the fact that the two sides have their opportunity to voice their opinions in public. This kind of public exercise of freedom of expression is not likely to be seen in China.

But the protest at Duke turned sour quickly after Chinese student Grace Wang (Wang Qianyuan) attempted to promote a dialogue between the two sides. The pro-China students accused her of promoting Tibet’s independence which she is definitely not doing. Since the protest, Wang received threatening phone calls and emails (see reporting in Duke’s independent daily newspaper The Chronicle and the blog section of national publication US News). Her parents’ home in China was vandalized. There was also a fake apology letter from someone who pretended to write as her father. As Wang’s personal safety got compromised by Web 2.0 through internet posting of her personal information, the firestorm continues through comments on the two articles of The Chronicle (over 500 submissions for the one published on April 14th and another 300+ of them directed to the April 16th piece) and the additional verbal abuse towards Wang on an online forum in China.

Wang is not the only one being called a traitor these days. Chang Ping, an editor of the Southern Metropolis Weekly in China questioned the reporting of the protests in Lhasa by both western and Chinese media in an essay, titled “Where does the truth about Lhasa come from?” (check out the translated version and the original Chinese version). He pointed out that while many Chinese internet users questioned the objectivity of western media reports on Tibet, they do not question their own media in China. He further raised the danger of state-controlled media:

If the netizens genuinely care about news values, they should not only be exposing the fake reports by the western media and they should also be challenging the control by the Chinese government over news sources and the Chinese media. There is no doubt that the harm from the latter is even worse than the former. When individual media outlets make fake reports about real events, it is easy to correct because just a few meticulous Chinese netizens can do the job. When media control is exercised by the state authorities, the whole world is helpless.

Chang’s essay snowballed into another online debate in China and more name calling ensued. While Wang called for an open dialogue over Tibet and Chang was calling for press freedom, they were both called a traitor. Is it unpatriotic to criticize your country? I see it as the other way around. Only those who care less about the actions of their leaders turn a blind eye and go about business as usual, or the other reason might be that they know the consequences of speaking up are too much to take the risk. Those who raise their voices over the shortcomings of their country are just as patriotic as those who defend their country at all times.

As Beijing based BBC journalist Paul Danahar explained the fallout of reporting on Tibet, he posted the famous quote of the 16th century satirist Pietro Aretino:

I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.

It has been a busy couple of days at AIUSA. First, another issue of the Olympics countdown report came out yesterday. The media staff wrote a press release last Friday and I had little time to do some edits. And then this afternoon, we were anticipating for Hu Jia’s trial verdict to come out tonight so we had another round of press release work. A few hours ago, a staff called to let me know Hu Jia got sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.

It is a sad day for human rights. All Hu Jia had done was speaking his mind and helped others who couldn’t speak for themselves by letting their experience and thoughts be known around the world. He is probably the first person to use the Internet and technology in China extensively for advocacy work. The tools of the trade for him and his wife Zeng Jinyan are blogs, cellphones, photos, videos, and audio recordings. There are as much materials produced by the couple themselves as there are news articles about them. They have demonstrated that Web 2.0 is great for getting the word out about your cause but at the same time, user generated content can become the road to imprisonment in some countries.

One day before the verdict was released, Zeng published a post on her blog detailing Hu Jia’s off and on detention and house arrest in the last four years. She marked April 3, 2004 as the first day of his informal imprisonment. On the 4th anniversary of the start of his gradual loss of freedom, Hu Jia was finally sentenced to prison. I am not surprised but I am saddened. I don’t think we have seen the worst of it in the run-up to the Olympics. I suspect there will be more arrests and detention. This year’s Olympics will sure go down in history as the most controversial one ever.

Related news and links:

• BBC News: Olympics ‘worsening China rights’
• Global Voices Advocacy: China: Hu Jia to be sentenced today
• The China Blog: Activist Hu Jia Gets Three and a Half Years
• Washington Post: Subversion Conviction - Chinese Rights Advocate Gets 3 1/2-Year Prison Term
• BBC News: Jail for Chinese rights activist

Update (4-3-2008): The AI Urgent Action for the couple has been updated to reflect the prison sentence. Meanwhile, here are more news and reactions about the verdict and the AI report.

• Voice of America: IOC Rejects Amnesty Report on China’s Human Rights Record
• AIUSA: Hu Jia Verdict a ‘Blatant Perversion of Justice,’ Charges Amnesty International, Demanding Activist’s Release
• AI: Hu Jia jailed for three and a half years (include link to online action)
• Human Rights in China: Statement - HRIC Denounces Conviction of Prominent Activist Hu Jia
• HRIC: “The Real Situation in Pre-Olympics China” (English translation of article written by Teng Biao and Hu Jia on human rights in the lead-up to the Olympics - this article was mentioned in the charges against Hu Jia)
• Voice of America: Chinese Court Sentences Civil Rights Activist to Jail
• Voice of America: US Dismayed Over Sentencing of Chinese Dissident
• Radio Free Asia: Chinese Activist Hu Jia Jailed for Subversion
• Associated Press: China Sentences Rights Activist to Jail
• New York Times: Chinese Rights Activist Is Jailed

Zeng Jinyan (L), wife of activist Hu Jia, walked next to
Hu’s mother after he was sentenced to prison
Source: The Christian Science Monitor

The UN Human Rights Council is holding its 7th session this month in Geneva. One of the items scheduled for discussion yesterday was the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action which was a human rights declaration adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights in June 1993. AI utilized the Vienna Declaration to raise the issue of Tibet in its oral statement to the Council. Other countries and NGO’s have also made statements on Tibet. However, the Chinese delegate interrupted those statements repeatedly arguing that a country specific discussion was out of order. Nevertheless, the AI delegate read about a third of her prepared statement.

Related news and links:

• AI: Tibet off the Human Rights Council’s agenda
• AFP: China untouchable by UN rights council: activists
• Reuters: China pressed at U.N. rights body to re-open Tibet
• Human Rights Watch: UN: Rights Council Should Address Tibet Crisis
• Human Rights Watch: Statement on Minority Rights - Intervention under Agenda Item 8 of the Human Rights Council

I took a glance at the AI website today and learned that the director of AI-Nepal, Rameshwar Nepal was arrested. He was part of a group of activists that were getting ready for a vigil on Tibet. I’ve been part of AI for almost a decade and have never heard of any section director getting arrested. Meanwhile, Tibetan protests carry on in China. There was also a brief incident at the Olympic torch lighting ceremony in Greece when a protester from Reporters Without Borders waving a black flag ran up behind Liu Qi, head of the Beijing Olympic organizing committee as Liu was giving a speech.

Related links:

• AI: Nepal: Clampdown on Tibet demonstrators must stop immediately and protesters released
• AI: Hundreds of Tibet protesters arrested in Nepal

Update: Below is copied from AI-Nepal’s website.

Human Rights Defenders Arrested while trying to stage a peaceful demonstration

Human Rights Defenders including officials of Amnesty International (AI) Nepal got arrested ahead of staging a peaceful vigil on 24 March in Kathmandu. The arrest has violated the rights including freedom of assembly peacefully guaranteed by the Constitution of Nepal as well as several other laws.

AI Nepal had planned a peaceful demonstration on 24 March at Maitighar Mandala in Kathmandu to call an end of current human rights crisis in Tibet. Human rights defenders including those invited and arrived to attend the demonstration were arrested before they started their planned program. Former Member of National Human Rights Commission Sushil Pyakurel, Former Chairperson of AI Nepal Charan Prasai, General Secretary Chandra Adhikari, National Executive Committee Members Keshab Sigdel and Deepar Rajbhandari, Director Rameshwar Nepal, Human Rights Defenders Govinda Bandi, Shobhakar Budhathoki and Deependra Jha, Convener of AI Nepal Group 80 Surya Bahadur Adhikari, Staff Members of AI Nepal Pralhad Basnet and Jannath Acharya were arrested before the program started and were taken to Singha Durbar police station. All the 12 named above and 5 Tibetan demonstrators arrested later from the same place were release later on the same day. The move by the District Administration to prevent a peaceful demonstration from taking place is against Article 12 of the Constitution of Nepal. There are also no legal grounds to pre-ban demonstrations.

It was reported that about one hundred fifty Tibetans were arrested. The event was monitored by the National Human Rights Commission and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Richard Bennet, the Chief of the OHCHR Nepal visited Singha Durbar police station and met the human rights defenders detained there.

Amnesty International reiterated its call for the Chinese government to allow an independent UN investigation into the events in Tibet which prompted demonstrations in Nepal. It also called on the Chinese government to address the underlying grievances of the Tibetan people and long-term policies that have generated such resentment.

Amnesty International is seriously concern over the arrest which has violets the right to assembly and freedom of expression.

Last week’s protests in Tibet heightened attention on AI both from the media and activists. Media is calling for interviews while activists want to take action. It is rather difficult, however, for AI to react immediately on a crisis. AI’s work is always based on credible reports. When information is tightly controlled in places like China, it takes time to verify claims of human rights abuses channeling from various sources. Eventually, several press releases and statements were made public:

• March 12: Concern grows over crackdown on Tibetan protesters
• March 13: Crackdown on activists and minorities in China
• March 15: Independent UN investigation needed
• March 17: UN scrutiny of Tibet crisis required
• March 18: Tension in Tibet as police raid homes

Yesterday, an Urgent Action was issued for 15 Tibetan monks that have been detained for starting a peaceful demonstration in Barkhor, Lhasa on March 10. The monks began marching from Sera Monastery to join other monks calling on the Chinese government to ease a “patriotic re-education” campaign which forces them to denounce the Dalai Lama and subjects them to government propaganda. The names and other details of those 15 monks are:

• Samten, age 17, Lungkar Monastery, Qinghai Province
• Trulku Tenpa Rigsang, age 26, Lungkar Monastery, Qinghai Province
• Gelek Pel, age 32, Lungkar Monastery, Qinghai Province
• Lobsang, age 15, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Lobsang Thukjey, age 19, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Tsultrim Palden, age 20, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Lobsher, age 20, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Phurden, age 22, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Thupdon, age 24, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Lobsang Ngodup, age 29, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Lodoe, age 30, Onpo Monastery, Sichuan Province
• Thupwang, age 30, Darthang Monastery
• Pema Garwang, age 30, Darthang Monastery
• Tsegyam, age 22, Kashi Monastery
• Soepa, age 30, Mangye Monastery

Photos of the monks are available through the Tibetan Centre on Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD), based in Dharamsala, India. In the upcoming days and weeks, credible information will likely be coming from organizations like TCHRD while the Chinese authorities set up a near complete block of information in and out of Tibet. Journalists have not been able to obtain permits to enter Tibet since March 12. Foreign journalists were also barred or removed from areas in Gansu, Sichuan and Qinghai provinces where the unrest has spread. Time magazine journalist, Simon Elegant described briefly on such difficulties in his post on The China Blog. More details were recorded by Reporters Without Borders.