Ordie
07-03-2009, 01:10 AM
China's lonely heretic
Rowan Callick | July 03, 2009
Article from: The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/)
CHINA'S most famous dissident, the courtly, professorial Liu Xiaobo, 53, was taken by security officers from his home in Beijing last December and held incommunicado for six months, mostly in a room without windows at a secret location.
Last week he was shifted to a detention centre and charged with inciting subversion of state power, the crime for which other dissidents, such as activist Hu Jia, also have been sentenced. For those found guilty, the maximum penalty is 15 years.
His plight was highlighted by the Australian government at its annual human rights dialogue with China and, since his formal arrest, Australia has joined the EU, the US and other nations in risking Beijing's wrath by calling for his release.
Liu's last interview before his arrest was with The Australian. "No matter how rich a society is, as long as it is ruled by a privileged class (that) gains its wealth from an unbalanced and opaque system, there will be strong discontent," he said.
"And any defence of this group's economic interests will evolve into a defence of its political rights."
His determination to remain in China and to communicate through whatever channels remain open - from now on, probably none - as well as his good-humoured decency have made him an inspiration to other independent-minded spirits in the country.
A petition urging his release was signed last week by 52 leading Chinese academics and writers, including historian Qin Hui, philosopher Xu Youyu and economist Mao Yushi.
Fan Yafeng, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says: "Liu is a great example of a Chinese intellectual whose imprisonment, his purgatory, has given him added strength and underlined his status. Our intellectuals have had our backbones bent but Liu pulls us upright again."
The charges against Liu confirm fears that the tightening of China's controls on free speech will persist beyond the period of anxiety surrounding the 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, massacre in and around Tiananmen Square.
His conviction is inevitable. Beijing's Public Security Bureau claims Liu has "fully confessed". His crime appears to have been that he helped draft and circulate Charter 08, a manifesto calling for human rights, democracy and - the crucial line that the signatories dared to cross - an end to the dominance of the Communist Party.
The original draft was signed by 303 people from a cross-section of society, including retired party officials, former newspaper editors, lawyers, academics and artists, as well as some who described themselves as peasants or workers.
The authorities were especially concerned about the charter because its supporters extended beyond the usual suspects - mainly veteran dissidents - and because it had proved possible for those behind it to generate nationwide support without apparent detection until the last days before publication, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The manifesto took its name from Charter77, a petition written in 1977 by Czech intellectuals and artists that helped to undermine the Soviet empire in eastern Europe.
The charter calls for a new constitution that guarantees human rights, including taxpayer rights, requires public officials to be elected, expands freedom of religion and expression, and ends the Communist Party's domination of the army, the courts and the government.
China's state news agency Xinhua last week quoted police as saying that "Liu has been engaged in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumours and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialist system".
Such dissidents tend to suffer a lonely fate, given that most members of the intellectual elite have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to the party. Others have taken refuge abroad, chiefly in the US.
Liu refuses to move overseas, although he has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Oslo and Hawaii and at Columbia University in New York, and has spent several months at the Australian National University in Canberra as well as in Sydney, where he has friends and intellectual contacts.
His wife, painter and poet Liu Xia, was allowed to see him twice during his six months of "residential surveillance" without charge. On January 1 he was brought to a hotel in outer Beijing, where they dined at a table with flowers, a bottle of red wine and two police officers. They met again on March30, once more in the company of police. She says he seemed to be "in a good frame of mind" but looked pale and thin, as he had not been allowed outside to exercise.
Liu Xia says even before his arrest "all he had was a pen and some paper", and, occasionally, access to the internet, the only place where he has been able to publish his writings. Even then, they have often been followed by police visits and the swift removal of his posts. Liu Xia tried to send him pens and paper following his arrest, but the writing materials were returned.
Liu Xiaobo is not a member or organiser of any group or party except for Charter 08 and PEN, the international writers association. As a literary critic, he was for several years chairman of PEN's Chinese chapter. Leading authors who have called for his release include Margaret Atwood, Seamus Heaney, Edward Albee and Michael Ondaatje.
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi says: "Liu's arrest for peacefully criticising his government and advocating for human rights violates provisions in China's constitution as well as international human rights standards. The courageous efforts of Liu and the other signatories of Charter 08 to express themselves in the face of harassment, intimidation and detention are an inspiration to the entire world."
A series of demonstrations has been held in Hong Kong against Liu's arrest that has reinforced opposition to government moves to introduce new security legislation as mandated by Beijing.
According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, "Foreign countries should respect China's judicial sovereignty. We firmly oppose anyone's wrong remarks and deeds that interfere in China's internal affairs."
Liu's incarceration also has attracted widespread criticism within China. His lawyers Shang Baojun and Ding Xikui, who were not allowed to meet him until last Friday, say officials have violated legal procedures on several occasions.
Another Beijing lawyer, Hao Jinsong, says: "I respect Liu immensely. The sacrifices he has made are not something many others could do. I used to talk with him occasionally, and you can tell from looking into his eyes how strong he is inside."
The wryly fatalistic Liu - a former professor of literature at Beijing Normal University, which sacked him in 2005 - was jailed for 20 months in 1989 for joining a hunger strike on June 2 to support the democracy movement. He remained in Tiananmen Square through to the bitter end two days later, in vain urging the demonstrators to disband and leave to avoid bloodshed.
In October 1996 he began three years at a re-education camp, without trial, for questioning the Communist Party's governance, "spreading rumours and libel" and "disturbing public order".
Liu met The Australian at a tea-house near his home in outer Beijing. Sometimes he was followed, he said, but usually the police just hung out in a specially built control room near his flat and took note of his visitors.
But although the party continued to parade its determination to silence its critics, its control was decreasing, he said.
"It has lost its capacity to persuade people through its ideology. In Mao's time, one sentence or one decision from him, and all the country would know it. But now people don't believe in their ideology. No one can be persuaded to learn this or that communist dogma. And in Mao's day all the rice bowls were distributed by the party.
"Today, even if I am not inside that party-state system, I can still make a living via other economic channels. The moral campaigns they have launched recently have been laughable in the eyes of most people: Hu Jintao's eight dos and don'ts, Jiang Zemin's rallying the nation behind good morals, they're all a joke in China today."
Today's party, according to Liu, stands for little more than its own interests. "That's what unites its members. It has changed from a revolutionary party to one of beneficiaries. All the families enmeshed within the party, down to the local level, are in business. That's not a secret."
For instance, he said, President Hu's son Hu Haifeng won a multibillion-dollar tender to supply, via his company Nuctech, 147 Chinese airports with scanners that detected explosives. "Can you imagine an Australian prime minister's son winning such a vast contract?" he asked.
While the Chinese elite was largely content with its privileged life, discontent bubbled away below.
But the party-state was "better equipped through its telecommunications companies and other agencies to better suppress any uprising before it happens", Liu said. A key issue facing China was that "human beings are not only economic animals. To democratise China would mean challenging the unbalanced distribution of wealth."
Political activity "traditionally takes place inside a dark box in China. Everything is a state secret, even a leader's health.
"They have logistics teams responsible, for example, for supplying daily commodities for the leadership.
"Here in Beijing there is a large farm at the foot of the Fragrant Hills to the west of the city, defended by (the) People's Armed Police, which provides the vegetables for the national leaders. It is very pure, very organic.
"The party's leaders view themselves as like members of the imperial family, who won the land and the sky through battles. In the past it was the emperors and their families who conquered all and thus gained the right to rule alone.
"Since the Communist Party of China defeated the other parties, now it believes the land and sky belong to it. And this party rule extends further than family rule ever did.
"The imperial family penetrated, in power terms, to county level officials, but the Communist Party has penetrated deep into villages, deep into all administrative levels.
"Obviously all the essential power in China is still in the hands of the Communist Party."
That includes prosecutors and courts. All significant legal decisions are made in the party's political and legal committees. This includes decisions about Liu's hearings.
Rowan Callick is The Australian's Asia-Pacific editor
Source:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25723965-25837,00.html
Rowan Callick | July 03, 2009
Article from: The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/)
CHINA'S most famous dissident, the courtly, professorial Liu Xiaobo, 53, was taken by security officers from his home in Beijing last December and held incommunicado for six months, mostly in a room without windows at a secret location.
Last week he was shifted to a detention centre and charged with inciting subversion of state power, the crime for which other dissidents, such as activist Hu Jia, also have been sentenced. For those found guilty, the maximum penalty is 15 years.
His plight was highlighted by the Australian government at its annual human rights dialogue with China and, since his formal arrest, Australia has joined the EU, the US and other nations in risking Beijing's wrath by calling for his release.
Liu's last interview before his arrest was with The Australian. "No matter how rich a society is, as long as it is ruled by a privileged class (that) gains its wealth from an unbalanced and opaque system, there will be strong discontent," he said.
"And any defence of this group's economic interests will evolve into a defence of its political rights."
His determination to remain in China and to communicate through whatever channels remain open - from now on, probably none - as well as his good-humoured decency have made him an inspiration to other independent-minded spirits in the country.
A petition urging his release was signed last week by 52 leading Chinese academics and writers, including historian Qin Hui, philosopher Xu Youyu and economist Mao Yushi.
Fan Yafeng, a researcher at the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says: "Liu is a great example of a Chinese intellectual whose imprisonment, his purgatory, has given him added strength and underlined his status. Our intellectuals have had our backbones bent but Liu pulls us upright again."
The charges against Liu confirm fears that the tightening of China's controls on free speech will persist beyond the period of anxiety surrounding the 20th anniversary of the June 4, 1989, massacre in and around Tiananmen Square.
His conviction is inevitable. Beijing's Public Security Bureau claims Liu has "fully confessed". His crime appears to have been that he helped draft and circulate Charter 08, a manifesto calling for human rights, democracy and - the crucial line that the signatories dared to cross - an end to the dominance of the Communist Party.
The original draft was signed by 303 people from a cross-section of society, including retired party officials, former newspaper editors, lawyers, academics and artists, as well as some who described themselves as peasants or workers.
The authorities were especially concerned about the charter because its supporters extended beyond the usual suspects - mainly veteran dissidents - and because it had proved possible for those behind it to generate nationwide support without apparent detection until the last days before publication, on the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The manifesto took its name from Charter77, a petition written in 1977 by Czech intellectuals and artists that helped to undermine the Soviet empire in eastern Europe.
The charter calls for a new constitution that guarantees human rights, including taxpayer rights, requires public officials to be elected, expands freedom of religion and expression, and ends the Communist Party's domination of the army, the courts and the government.
China's state news agency Xinhua last week quoted police as saying that "Liu has been engaged in agitation activities, such as spreading of rumours and defaming of the government, aimed at subversion of the state and overthrowing the socialist system".
Such dissidents tend to suffer a lonely fate, given that most members of the intellectual elite have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to the party. Others have taken refuge abroad, chiefly in the US.
Liu refuses to move overseas, although he has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Oslo and Hawaii and at Columbia University in New York, and has spent several months at the Australian National University in Canberra as well as in Sydney, where he has friends and intellectual contacts.
His wife, painter and poet Liu Xia, was allowed to see him twice during his six months of "residential surveillance" without charge. On January 1 he was brought to a hotel in outer Beijing, where they dined at a table with flowers, a bottle of red wine and two police officers. They met again on March30, once more in the company of police. She says he seemed to be "in a good frame of mind" but looked pale and thin, as he had not been allowed outside to exercise.
Liu Xia says even before his arrest "all he had was a pen and some paper", and, occasionally, access to the internet, the only place where he has been able to publish his writings. Even then, they have often been followed by police visits and the swift removal of his posts. Liu Xia tried to send him pens and paper following his arrest, but the writing materials were returned.
Liu Xiaobo is not a member or organiser of any group or party except for Charter 08 and PEN, the international writers association. As a literary critic, he was for several years chairman of PEN's Chinese chapter. Leading authors who have called for his release include Margaret Atwood, Seamus Heaney, Edward Albee and Michael Ondaatje.
US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi says: "Liu's arrest for peacefully criticising his government and advocating for human rights violates provisions in China's constitution as well as international human rights standards. The courageous efforts of Liu and the other signatories of Charter 08 to express themselves in the face of harassment, intimidation and detention are an inspiration to the entire world."
A series of demonstrations has been held in Hong Kong against Liu's arrest that has reinforced opposition to government moves to introduce new security legislation as mandated by Beijing.
According to Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, "Foreign countries should respect China's judicial sovereignty. We firmly oppose anyone's wrong remarks and deeds that interfere in China's internal affairs."
Liu's incarceration also has attracted widespread criticism within China. His lawyers Shang Baojun and Ding Xikui, who were not allowed to meet him until last Friday, say officials have violated legal procedures on several occasions.
Another Beijing lawyer, Hao Jinsong, says: "I respect Liu immensely. The sacrifices he has made are not something many others could do. I used to talk with him occasionally, and you can tell from looking into his eyes how strong he is inside."
The wryly fatalistic Liu - a former professor of literature at Beijing Normal University, which sacked him in 2005 - was jailed for 20 months in 1989 for joining a hunger strike on June 2 to support the democracy movement. He remained in Tiananmen Square through to the bitter end two days later, in vain urging the demonstrators to disband and leave to avoid bloodshed.
In October 1996 he began three years at a re-education camp, without trial, for questioning the Communist Party's governance, "spreading rumours and libel" and "disturbing public order".
Liu met The Australian at a tea-house near his home in outer Beijing. Sometimes he was followed, he said, but usually the police just hung out in a specially built control room near his flat and took note of his visitors.
But although the party continued to parade its determination to silence its critics, its control was decreasing, he said.
"It has lost its capacity to persuade people through its ideology. In Mao's time, one sentence or one decision from him, and all the country would know it. But now people don't believe in their ideology. No one can be persuaded to learn this or that communist dogma. And in Mao's day all the rice bowls were distributed by the party.
"Today, even if I am not inside that party-state system, I can still make a living via other economic channels. The moral campaigns they have launched recently have been laughable in the eyes of most people: Hu Jintao's eight dos and don'ts, Jiang Zemin's rallying the nation behind good morals, they're all a joke in China today."
Today's party, according to Liu, stands for little more than its own interests. "That's what unites its members. It has changed from a revolutionary party to one of beneficiaries. All the families enmeshed within the party, down to the local level, are in business. That's not a secret."
For instance, he said, President Hu's son Hu Haifeng won a multibillion-dollar tender to supply, via his company Nuctech, 147 Chinese airports with scanners that detected explosives. "Can you imagine an Australian prime minister's son winning such a vast contract?" he asked.
While the Chinese elite was largely content with its privileged life, discontent bubbled away below.
But the party-state was "better equipped through its telecommunications companies and other agencies to better suppress any uprising before it happens", Liu said. A key issue facing China was that "human beings are not only economic animals. To democratise China would mean challenging the unbalanced distribution of wealth."
Political activity "traditionally takes place inside a dark box in China. Everything is a state secret, even a leader's health.
"They have logistics teams responsible, for example, for supplying daily commodities for the leadership.
"Here in Beijing there is a large farm at the foot of the Fragrant Hills to the west of the city, defended by (the) People's Armed Police, which provides the vegetables for the national leaders. It is very pure, very organic.
"The party's leaders view themselves as like members of the imperial family, who won the land and the sky through battles. In the past it was the emperors and their families who conquered all and thus gained the right to rule alone.
"Since the Communist Party of China defeated the other parties, now it believes the land and sky belong to it. And this party rule extends further than family rule ever did.
"The imperial family penetrated, in power terms, to county level officials, but the Communist Party has penetrated deep into villages, deep into all administrative levels.
"Obviously all the essential power in China is still in the hands of the Communist Party."
That includes prosecutors and courts. All significant legal decisions are made in the party's political and legal committees. This includes decisions about Liu's hearings.
Rowan Callick is The Australian's Asia-Pacific editor
Source:http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25723965-25837,00.html