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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.
Hu Jia’s birthday is coming up on July 25th. Last year, Hu’s wife Zeng Jinyan tried to write him a letter for his birthday but got frustrated with the prison’s requirement of closely examining the content of all their letters. Instead of a letter, she wrote a poem. Hong Kong based folk band, Mininoise turned the poem into a song. Check it out:
And here is the poem in Chinese with the English translation slightly modified from the version distributed by Amnesty International:
如果你想我，請給風兒捎信;
如果你念我，請讓流水帶來;
請把你的秘密，藏在千年的樹洞裏;
請把你的惦記，折成紙飛機;
我一一收起。
螞蟻搬運大地，
縮短相見的距離。
If you think of me, please ask the wind to bring me a letter;
If you miss me, ask the flowing water bring me your feeling;
Please hide your secret inside the hole at the thousand year old tree;
Please fold your memory into paper airplanes;
I shall collect all of them one by one.
Ants move the earth,
To shorten the distance between the last and next time we meet.
It’s been difficult to keep up with thousands of media reports published this week about the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. Many new videos were created as well. Here is a sample of them.
Zeng Jinyan, the wife of imprisoned activist Hu Jia, was prevented from leaving her home this week. She did not have any planned activity for the Tiananmen anniversary. She was only going to go to her mother’s birthday celebration and the police forced her and her daughter back into their apartment. She became very upset after that incident. Reuters had a phone interview with her about it:
AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL
News Flash
3 June 2009
China: Harassment of activists escalates ahead of Tiananmen Anniversary
Chinese authorities have stepped up curbs on dissenting voices and escalated censorship of activists throughout the country, a day before the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown.
“Cutting off communication and preventing movement will not stop activists from fighting for their rights and will not stop people from marking the 20th anniversary of the crackdown,” said Roseann Rife, Asia-Pacific Deputy Director at Amnesty International. “The quest for truth will only be fuelled by excessive harassment.”
Over the past few days, Amnesty International has received reports of serious harassment of human rights activists:
- In Beijing, HIV/AIDS activist, Wan Yanhai, was forced to travel to the northern city of Changchun ahead of the anniversary. Police officers knocked at his door and requested he leave to “avoid possible conflict”. He refused but was forced to board a train to leave the capital with his family.
- On 3 June, Zeng Jinyan, carrying her infant daughter, attempted to leave home to attend her mother’s birthday celebration. Five policemen roughly pushed her back inside and told her she was not allowed to leave the house in the coming days.
- On 3 June, in Hangzhou, police officers gathered outside the house of human rights activists Wen Kejian and invited him for a “talk”.
- On 2 June, two police officers and four “Neighbourhood/Residential Committee” members were stationed outside the Shanghai-based reproductive rights activist, Mao Hengfeng’s house. They forced her back inside after she attempted to leave and told her she was forbidden to go out until the 4 June anniversary was over.
- On 2 June, in Inner Mongolia, internal security police reportedly took away internet writer Tian Yongde at around 3:30pm, while he was visiting his mother in hospital. His whereabouts are currently unknown.
- On 1 June, police took up positions outside the houses of lawyers Jiang Tianyong and Li Xiongbing, and other police drive them wherever they go.
- At midnight on 2 June, lawyers Lan Zhixue and Tang Jitian were discussing a case in the offices of an NGO. When they were leaving in the early hours of 3 June, police took the two lawyers in for questioning. They have not yet been released.
- In order to limit communication between activists and internet campaigners, Chinese authorities shut down Twitter, Flickr and Hotmail.
Background
Amnesty International has documented at least one hundred cases of activists who have been detained briefly or faced violence from authorities in 2009 as they defended land rights, housing rights and labour rights. Signatories of the Charter 08, a petition calling for legal and political reforms, continue to face questioning.
Recently, lawyers have been threatened with denial of the licenses in retaliation for their work on human rights defence cases. On 31 May, at least 18 lawyers still had not received their license renewals by the 6pm deadline. These lawyers, from eleven different law firms, are involved in defending and providing legal aid to Tibetans who were detained in connection with March 2008 protests, Falun Gong practitioners, human rights defenders detained for exercising freedom of expression, families of victims of the Sichuan earthquake, families of victims of poisoned milk powder scandal and other public interest cases. Some of them have called for democratic election of Beijing lawyers Association executive committee members and are thus being targeted.
The award ceremony of the 2008 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought was held at a plenary session of the European Parliament earlier today. Hu Jia was announced to be the winner of the prize about two months ago. While Hu is in prison, his wife Zeng Jinyan is under house arrest with her passport confiscated by the authorities so she cannot travel to Europe to receive the prize on Hu’s behalf. Nevertheless, Zeng sent a video message to the European Parliament and it was shown at the award ceremony. She also posted a written acceptance speech in Chinese and English on her blog.
Related news and links:
- European Parliament: Sakharov human rights prize awarded to China’s Hu Jia
- Eurinfo (weekly TV program of the European Parliament): 2008 Sakharov Prize to Hu Jia (requires Windows Media Player)
- Amnesty International: Standing ovation for jailed Chinese dissident
- Reporters Without Borders: Hu Jia’s wife sends message of “hope for an open China” to European parliament
- BBC News: China dissident wins rights prize
- Associated Press: EU honors Chinese dissident Hu Jia in absentia
- AFP: EU assembly awards prize in absentia to Chinese dissident
Update (12-18-2008):
- EUbusiness: China dissident has prison visits cancelled after EU award: wife
- Associated Press: Visits to jailed China activist curbed after award
Germany based Best of the Blogs (BOBs) – Deutsche Welle International Weblog Awards, announced this year’s winners yesterday. Chinese blogger and citizen journalist Zhou Shuguang was a member of the jury for the awards. He was invited to go to Germany to attend the award ceremony but the authorities would not allow him to leave the country.
Besides the bad news, there was also good news. Zeng Jinyan’s blog shared the Reporters Without Borders Prize with Persian blog 4equality. The BOBs staff contacted Zeng by phone to inform her about the award. When the staff asked her how she felt, Zeng was too tired to give any reaction but it cheered her up.
In response to the award, Zeng detailed the history of her blogging experience through a blog post titled, “Thanksgiving” (Simplified Chinese). She started blogging in 2005 after she read her friend’s blog and she thought it looked like fun. She has been writing in a diary as a habit she started when she was little. She thought blogging was simply posting her diary entries online limiting the access to a few friends.
Then on February 16, 2006, Hu Jia disappeared. Zeng thought that the police would return him home just like the previous times he disappeared. But this time around, the police denied they detained Hu Jia. Zeng became nervous and started looking everywhere for him. She also started posting updates of her search on the blog and later opened it to the public so more people could help her look for Hu Jia.
Hu Jia returned home after disappearing for 41 days. By that time, Zeng wasn’t sure if she should continue updating her blog or return it to private access. She fell in love with blogging. She made friends with a lot of like-minded people whom she wanted to maintain contacts. She also thought about what to do the next time Hu Jia disappears. She consulted with several veterans who encouraged her to continue blogging.
By 2007, a friend told her he could no longer read her blog because most of the content made him feel suppressed. Although he was already aware of the reality in society, Zeng’s blog re-posted this reality and brought him unbearable pain. Zeng was feeling exhausted for a while and felt very pessimistic about the current situation of China’s human rights. But when she heard the appeals and calls for help from human rights defenders and their families, she hoped the rest of the world could hear those stories and that she could make a small contribution to China’s human rights movement. On May 6, 2007, she was interviewed by Time magazine for its Time 100 Most Influential People in the World. In the interview, she explained blogging has very important significance and role in an environment where freedom of expression is limited.
Now, she feels the same about blogging and even becomes optimistic. Blogs can be a completely independent medium as long as you insist on speaking the truth, writing about what is happening around you, and insist on independent thinking. Or if you focus on a specific topic, your blog will eventually become its own brand and it can become a trusted source in a society overloaded with information. And in a society filled with hollow propaganda news, blogs are even more precious.
Zeng further explained that speaking the truth needs more than courage, it sometimes takes serious sacrifices. In your blog, you are not responsible for any political or for-profit organization, the leadership, or your boss. You are only responsible for your good conscience. You can express your personal feelings and even immature thoughts, and get inspired through discussions with other Internet users. Even traditional media and organizations started to distribute information through blogs because they cannot ignore the effectiveness and convenience of blogs. In China’s grassroots citizen movement, a lot of cases and topics are not allowed to be reported in traditional media so blogs fill this gap.
Zeng Jinyan concluded her blog post with the following:
One computer, one blog, limitless grassroots voices. When you carefully watch all the people speaking constantly, it looks like a giant wave from a distance. The invisible affects the visible. The wave advances and retreats with ease and it will eventually become an unstoppable surge.
Amnesty International Press Statement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Amnesty International Reiterates Call for China to Release Activist Hu Jia
Now Recipient of European Parliament’s Human Rights Award
Contact: AIUSA media office, 202-544-0200 x302, lspann@aiusa.org
(Washington) – The awarding of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought is a significant acknowledgment of the work of Hu Jia, said Amnesty International as the prize was announced today by the European Parliament.
The organization, which has worked with Hu Jia and his family in campaigning for human rights in China, repeated its call on the Chinese authorities to release him from prison immediately and stop the harassment of his wife Zeng Jinyan and the couple’s 11-month-old daughter.
The award highlights the work of all activists in China who stand up against human rights abuses.
Background
Hu Jia is one of China’s best-known environmental and human rights activists. He was one of the founders of the Beijing-based HIV/AIDS nongovernmental organization Loving Source, a grassroots organization dedicated to helping children from AIDS families. Together with his wife, Zeng Jinyan, he regularly informed overseas journalists and human rights organizations of abuses taking place in China.
Hu Jia was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on April 3, 2008 for “inciting subversion.” Amnesty International considers Hu Jia a prisoner of conscience and has demanded his immediate and unconditional release.
Hu Jia is serving his sentence in Beijing City prison. His family is concerned that he is not receiving adequate treatment in prison for his liver disease but the authorities rejected an application for his release on medical parole. Zeng Jinyan and the couple’s daughter remain under tight police surveillance with officers stationed outside their home, limiting their visitors and following them when they go out. For the duration of the Olympic Games, they were moved outside Beijing.
Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.2 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.
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Related news and links:
- Reporters Without Borders: Award of European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize to Hu Jia hailed as “great victory for Chinese prisoners of conscience”
- Human Rights in China: HRIC Congratulates Hu Jia, Recipient of 2008 Sakharov Prize
- Radio Free Asia: Jailed Chinese Dissident Wins EU Prize
- BBC News: Hu Jia wins European rights prize
- New York Times: Chinese Activist Wins Rights Prize
- The Guardian: A life of purity and dignity
