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I am not on Facebook, period. I am sure a ton of people would say I am way behind the curve, not hip, or even old fashion. My main reason is security. Since China’s human rights is my main focus as a volunteer of AIUSA, I know far too well about the consequences of being an activist (or a dissident as the general Chinese community would call it). Dissidents in China are constantly harassed, detained, tortured and imprisoned everyday. Their friends and family members are harassed just the same. Take the case of Hu Jia and Chen Guangcheng. Zeng Jinyan (Hu’s wife) is under house arrest with their young daughter. When she leaves her apartment, the police follows her constantly. Yuan Weijing (Chen’s wife) is also under house arrest but she has police surrounding her home 24/7. She has been beaten several times for simply trying to leave her home for some errands, such as going to see a dentist. She has not been allowed to visit her husband in prison for a long time. Combined this type of harassment of family members with the technological advance in internet censorship in China, being on Facebook seems like a huge security risk to me.
My theory came true when Wired magazine published a story about a few Egyptian activists’ attempt to organize a protest backfired through Facebook. It became clear to me that my decision to stay away from the increasingly popular social network is the right decision. But I doubt myself from time to time. A lot of my family and friends are on Facebook. My friends have many times told me they haven’t heard from me for a long time while they chitchat on Facebook regularly. I feel really bad not being able to keep up with family and friends. Believe me, it is a very difficult choice. Recently, one of my uncles passed away. My mom who can barely send an email said my brother found out my uncle became ill through Facebooking with my cousins. Mom (who is not on Facebook) said if I wanted to be kept up to date, go to Facebook. In less than a month, my uncle passed away. I felt a bit guilty. Even my husband’s grandmother is on Facebook. She posts updates all the time.
The main issue of security for me is exposing my social graph that could land in the hands of any authorities. In the digital age, nothing is private. Earlier this week, NPR broadcast a series on online privacy. The Facebook episode highlighted the issue of third-party snooping in which even private Facebook accounts could be exposed. The concluding episode pointed out that if the content is on someone else server, users don’t have as much privacy protection as the physical documents sitting in our desk drawers under the Fourth Amendment. Email is just as vulnerable in this category because messages leave packets of information at every intersection they pass through. And in the case of Shi Tao, he landed a 10-year jail sentence due to an email he sent to a US-based website and Yahoo provided his user account information to the Chinese authorities that became one of the evidence in his conviction.
Putting the security issue aside, I’ve heard a lot of people speaking excitedly about organizing on Facebook. But most of them seem to come from folks who have not done their homework on Facebook activism. Recently, AIUSA held a meeting for a specific group of volunteers. Facebook was proposed as a way to recruit new people to our work on human rights. It is easy to set up a group or cause on Facebook and ask people to join. But after you get 1,000 or even a million clicks, then what? I am convinced on the attention-getting part of Facebook but in terms of turning the hyped attention into real activism (such as sending hard copy letters to foreign governments, calling our politicians about US domestic or foreign policies, etc), I doubt we will get real results. Washington Post calls this the “Click-through Activism”. There is also Ethan Zuckerman’s blog post on this topic reflecting on the short-lived Facebook movement that followed the “Saffron Revolution” in Burma in 2007. DigiActive published a handbook on Facebook activism last year which details what needs to be done after starting a Facebook group.
I had the fortune to attend a presentation by social media guru Beth Kanter a long time ago. She gave examples of nonprofits using social media but she warned that to be successful, an organization needs to assign a staff to spend 2-3 hours a day on this new medium. She quoted Micah Sifry of Personal Democracy Forum:
If you want your organization to become an online activism hub, it takes a deep level of engagement to build a successful socnet. Staff need to spend real-time cultivating people and need to be given real authority to speak on behalf of the organization.
This expert advice is contrary to the proposed strategy of using volunteers to recruit new members on Facebook for a cash-strapped membership organization. Volunteers are rarely given “real authority” to speak on behalf of an organization to begin with. Can we expect a volunteer to spend a minimum of 10 hours a week on Facebook solely for an organization? I am sure there are some die-hard Facebookers ready to do it but can they do it for a long time (a year or longer) without pay? Last year’s election was successful in this volunteer front but long-term membership engagement can’t be done by volunteers only, can it?
All these arguments might not be enough for me to resist Facebook. A recap of a recent event at UC Berkeley titled, “Social Networks Friend or Foe?” pointed out that social networking may one day become as essential as the telephone. New positive arguments for Facebook are showing up everyday. When a new urge or guilt comes to me, I will just remind myself about a TED video featuring writer Evgeny Morozov. In the video, Morozov explained how the internet helps the authoritarian regimes. Facebook might have been very useful for activists in the post-election protests in Iran but:
In the past it would take you weeks, if not months, to identify how Iranian activists connect to each other. Now you actually know how they connect to each other by looking at their Facebook page. I mean KGB, and not just KGB, used to torture in order to actually get this data. Now it’s all available online.
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
PRESS RELEASE
28 September 2009
China: Human Rights Activists not welcome at 60th Anniversary Party
Chinese authorities have increased surveillance, harassment and imprisonment of activists ahead of the country’s 60th anniversary on 1 October to prevent them from raising human rights concerns that challenge the authorities’ image of social harmony, Amnesty International said today.
Amnesty International estimates that several hundred activists and dissidents are under various kinds of surveillance or house arrest and thousands of petitioners are being swept out of Beijing. The organization continues to receive reports that petitioners are being kept in “black jails” and other informal detention facilities outside Beijing.
“The Chinese government wants to celebrate the country’s success while ensuring that no dissenting view or complaint is heard,” said Roseann Rife, Amnesty International Asia Pacific deputy director. “As a result, what the Chinese government is highlighting is its own fear of giving the Chinese people a real voice to talk about the reality of their lives, good and bad.”
In the past few weeks, the authorities have increased their surveillance of petitioners, human rights activists, religious practitioners and ethnic minorities to ensure that they do not raise human rights issues and complaints in any forums during the National Day celebrations.
Petitioners seek justice directly by presenting their cases to central authorities in Beijing after failing to redress their grievances locally.
On Friday 25 September, Chinese media reported that local authorities were told by the central government departments that manage petitioners – the State Bureau for Letters and Visits and the Public Security Bureau – that they should review their records and keep anyone who has filed a petition under local surveillance during this time period.
Beijing authorities regularly forcibly return petitioners to their hometowns before major events or celebrations as they believe petitioners would reflect badly on the country’s international public image.
“We call on the authorities to immediately and unconditionally lift all restrictions on human rights activists and release all prisoners of conscience across the country,” said Roseann Rife.
Amnesty International has recently recorded the following incidents:
- Zeng Jinyan, wife of imprisoned human rights activists Hu Jia, was asked by authorities to leave Beijing on 25 September and not to return until after 10 October. Zeng Jinyan has been under tight surveillance since her husband was imprisoned in April 2008, effectively halting much of the couple’s human rights work.
- On 23 September, police informed the lawyer of detained human rights activist Liu Xiaobo that his client had to remain in detention for further investigation of suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power”. Liu Xiaobo was seized from his home in Beijing by the police on 8 December 2008, two days before he was due to launch Charter 08, a blueprint for legal and political reform in China.
- In mid September, several Beijing activists were forced to leave the city. Those included former political prisoner and China Democratic Party member Gao Hongming, housing rights activist Wang Ling, who was sent to Re-education Through Labour during the 2008 Olympics, and pro-democracy activist Qi Zhiyong who was left disabled from a gunshot injury during the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.
- Since 22 September, Tian Qizhuang, a director of the Open Constitution Initiative (OCI), has not been seen by his family. On 24 September, he called his son explaining he is under police surveillance and asking him to prepare some clothes for him. OCI Founder Xu Zhiyong remains under surveillance and the organization’s finance secretary Zhuang Lu has had only limited contact with her immediate family since her release on 23 August.
- Two dozen plain-clothed security forces have been stationed outside the home of Yuan Weijing, wife of imprisoned activist Chen Guangcheng. Her phone is also intermittently cut off. Together with Chen Guangcheng, Yuan Weijing defended the rights of people with disabilities and women affected by abuses of enforcement of family planning policies in Linyi city, Shandong province.
- In Zhejiang province, several members of the banned China Democratic Party, including Zhu Zhengming, Zhu Yufu, Mao Qingxiang, and Hu Xiaoling have had police stationed in front of their homes to prevent them leaving.
- Earlier in September, China Democratic Party member Xie Changfa was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment on “subversion” charges in Hunan province. This is one of the longest sentences given to human rights or political activists in recent years.
- Four female petitioners, Yang Xinmei, Li Suping, Wang Lina and Sun Li from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region were detained in Beijing in late August. They were originally placed under 15 days’ administrative detention and now have been sent to 2 years of Re-education Through Labour to prevent them from further petitioning over the National Day holiday. The women were petitioning about several issues including land confiscation and miscarriage of justice.
Amnesty International
21 April 2009
Wife of Chinese human rights activist beaten
The wife of imprisoned Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng was attacked and beaten early Sunday morning, as she tried to leave her home to visit grieving relatives.
Yuan Weijing was forced back into her home by nine men as she was leaving to visit her family, following the death of her brother-in-law, Luo Kengren. The men punched and kicked her as they dragged her back to her house in Shandong province.
Amnesty International has called on the Shandong authorities to stop the continuing harassment and attacks on Yang Weijing, who despite never having been charged or tried for a criminal offence, remains under tight surveillance.
Yuan Weijing has experienced several similar violent encounters with local authorities over the years. They have prevented her from meeting journalists and lawyers. In 2007 she was prevented from travelling to the Philippines to receive the Magsaysay award (described as Asia’s Nobel Prize) on behalf of her husband. The couple’s children have been prevented from registering at school.
Her husband Chen Guangcheng, 38, was sentenced to four years and three months in prison for “intentionally damaging property” and “gathering a crowd to block traffic”. He had been campaigning against the alleged forced abortions and sterilizations in pursuit of birth quotas that have affected thousands of local women.
Human rights activists believe this was the real reason why he was put under house arrest alongside his wife in 2005 and then imprisoned in 2006. He is currently held at Linyi Prison in Shandong province.
“The continued virtual house arrest of Yuan Weijing is illegal. While national authorities are touting the new National Human Rights Action Plan, we see local authorities flagrantly violating the law in this case,” said Roseann Rife, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific Programme.
“Beating up the wife of a human rights activist as she attempts to reach her grieving family deserves wide condemnation.”
I was on a conference call with a couple of people today about planning some work for the Olympics campaign in the next few months. Some questions that came up really bother me. It started from a comment that the AI campaign materials for the Beijing Olympics do not have much attraction for the media. I responded that some prisoners-focused materials will be released soon and they might help.
A question came up about whether families of prisoners would be available for media interview. For some countries, it might be possible. But in China, most family members stay away from any involvement with the prisoners because of the consequences that come along simply for being related to a political prisoner. Take the case of Shi Tao. Since he was jailed for sending an email to a US-based website about a government order, his wife was questioned by security officials daily. She was also pressured to divorce him and she eventually did although she had not done any outspoken advocating for him. Shi Tao’s brother and uncle were harassed by the authorities. The only person who dare to speak up is his mother, Gao Qinsheng but she also experienced monitoring and harassment until she turned her attention to Yahoo because they provided to the authorities Shi Tao’s email account holder information that became part of the evidence for his conviction.
In recent years, a few wives of prisoners are much more fearless than others. Yuan Weijing, the wife of blind activist Chen Guangcheng has been consistently prevented from traveling freely inside China including trips to visit her parents and to see a dentist. It did not prevent her from being mobile. Last August, she planned a visit to the Philippines to accept an award for Chen. She made it all the way from Shandong to Beijing but the authorities caught up with her at the airport.
Activist Hu Jia’s wife, Zeng Jinyan blogged about her experience when Hu was detained by the authorities and assisted him making videos of their daily lives when he was under house arrest for over 200 days in 2006. She herself is now under house arrest along with their two month old baby ever since Hu was taken away by police in late December. The officials sent the family a formal arrest notification today. AI extended last month’s Urgent Action for the couple.
When I found it hard for anyone to be ignorant about the danger of speaking up for prisoners in China, another strange question came up during the call. The question was whether any prisoners of conscience that AI is featuring in the Olympics campaign has athletic abilities. First of all, sports is a state-sponsored program in China. If you are a trouble-maker, you are out of the program. Secondly, recreational sports is not accessible to most people in China. Those who are lucky to attend a nice school might get a chance to take PE in school. Once the adult age is reached, people focus on making a living and simple survival for daily necessities. Finally, those who became political prisoners had to dedicate most of their free time to their cause.
Human rights is a hard sell to the media. For those of us who fight for the true heroes around the world, the work is not sexy. But I believe in simple story telling. When you can connect a human rights abuse to a real person, you can no longer deny the horrible things we do to each other.
The Philippines based Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation announced the winners of its annual award this week. Blind activist, Chen Guangcheng who is currently serving a prison sentence of four years and three months was selected for the award in the Emergent Leadership category. Just over a month ago, I wrote a post about Chen being tortured in prison. I hope that the award would bring some relief to prison conditions and also improve Chen’s visiting rights with his wife and lawyer.
Related news:
- Reuters AlertNet: Jailed blind China activist wins Asian Nobel award
- The Standard: Three Chinese activists to get ‘Asia’s Nobel’
- Inquirer: Chinese RM awardees unlike China’s ‘me-generation’
Update: Chen’s wife, Yuan Weijing was prevented from leaving the country on August 24th to go to the Philippines to collect the award for her husband. The authorities attempted to stop her earlier but Yuan eventually made it as far as the airport where she was detained.
- BBC News: China block on wife of activist
- Time – The China Blog: Activist Disappears at Beijing Airport
- Time – The China Blog: Activist Disappears Part 2: Back Home
Blind activist Chen Guangcheng was recently beaten by other prisoners. Chen is serving a sentence of four years and three months as a result of helping villagers to take legal action against the Linyi city authorities who carried out forced abortion and sterilization to meet birth quotas. He said he was punished for insisting on filing an appeal to the provincial higher court which required the help of his lawyer or his wife due to his disability. Visits by his wife or lawyer have been limited to 30 minutes per month so it is not possible to put together the appeal. After the beating, he began a hunger strike on the same day. He had not been given any medical attention although he complained his ribs hurt and suspected one of them was broken. An Urgent Action (AI and AIUSA versions) is in effect until August 2nd.
UK based magazine Index on Censorship announced this year’s winners of the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards. Among the five categories, the Index Whistleblower Award was given to Chen Guangcheng, the blind activist who uncovered the forced abortions and sterilizations of women in Linyi City, Shandong province of China. He is currently serving a prison term of four years and three months due to the authorities’ ruthless attempts to silence him.
Related news and links:
- BBC News: Awards for free speech defenders
- IFEX: Index on Censorship Seeks Nominations for Free Expression Awards
- Amnesty International: Worldwide Appeal – CHINA: Prisoner of conscience sentenced
- Taylor & Francis Group: Index on Censorship subscription info
Update (3-17-2007)
- Index on Censorship: Index Freedom of Expression Awards 2007 – winners and nominees
A few days after reading the latest Time article online, I found another article about Chen in an old copy of the magazine left in the lunch room at work. This one touched me more so than many other pieces I read about him. It described the first meetings of Chen with magazine reporter, Hannah Beech in 2005 and his first encounter with the authorities that took place hours about one of those meetings. It is hard to imagine meeting an activist in person and then hearing about his detention afterwards. I hope the magazine would continue to provide updates on Chen and other activists like him.
Amnesty International recently updated its appeal for Chen Guangcheng with specifics on writing letters to the Minister of Justice in Beijing.
