Hu Jia has long been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. Last week, about to fly to
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,2085006,00.html
Enemy of the state
Hu Jia has long been a thorn in the side of the Chinese government. Last week, about to fly to
The Guardian
Today Hu Jia is free. No one stops him as he walks into a restaurant in downtown
In recent months, the Chinese government has tightened its censorship of the media and the internet. Civil groups have been brought under closer control, critical scholars have been silenced and lawyers harassed. As a protest, a civil rights defence movement has started a rotating strike, with each activist taking turns to fast for 24 hours. There may be only a few dozen people involved, but they have used the internet and mobile phones to form a network. As the protest spreads around
The activists are, naturally, under surveillance. At a table nearby, two lugubrious men sit smoking in silence, without ordering anything. "They listen to my phone, they read my emails. They know everything," Hu says. "There is no avoiding it."
Today is an important day for Hu. He is going to resign from the Loving Source Aids support group, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) he has been running. "I will become a full-time democracy activist," he says. In
February 11
A text message comes from Hu Jia. "I'm under house arrest again."
Plain-clothes officers are standing watch outside Hu's home, day and night. Their job is to see to it that he does not leave the house.
This is a familiar practice. In
February 17
The phone rings in the morning. The caller is Hu Jia's wife, Zeng Jinyan.
"Hu Jia is missing. No one knows where he is. His mobile phone is switched off."
The previous morning Zeng had left for work, leaving Hu in their apartment. When she returned, the place was empty. There were no signs of a struggle, but the men guarding the building have vanished.
March 21
It is crowded on
Inside the hotel itself, they are talking about a different Chinese reality. Some of Hu Jia's supporters have invited foreign journalists to a press briefing. The location has been passed on by text message at the last minute, so that state security has no time to react.
On a sofa in a room in the hotel sits Hu Jia's wife Zeng Jinyan, 22.
"I'm scared that Hu Jia is being kept in a dark cellar and beaten up," she says.
Hu has been involved in many controversial subjects in his 32 years. In the mid-1990s, as an economics student, he joined the environmental organisation Friends of Nature, and made several trips to
He has gone missing several times before. Usually word has come down from officials that he has been taken into custody. This time, nobody is saying anything. Zeng and Hu's family have gone to the police station several times to file a missing-person report - but the police have refused to accept it.
Zeng is fretting about her husband's health. Hu has Hepatitis B, a common virus in
March 28
Zeng has not heard from her husband for six weeks, but today, finally, her phone rings at work. "I've been freed," Hu Jia says.
When she has stopped crying, Zeng begins calling around to friends and to foreign journalists. The sketchy details of Hu's disappearance come out. Hu Jia was abducted by plain-clothed men who kept him prisoner for 41 days at an unknown address.
May 8
Hu Jia has been admitted to hospital. There is a white sedan with no licence plates parked in front of the hospital. Two bored-looking men sit inside the car. Fortunately there is a side entrance to the building.
"The car without plates belongs to state security people," says Hu Jia, sitting on a hospital bed in his pyjamas.
After being held for 41 days, Hu needed medical treatment. Now, hospitalised for a second time, he has been in this
"The doctor said I have serious liver damage. He asked if I drink a lot," he says.
A devout Buddhist, Hu does not touch alcohol. But Hepatitis B, an inflammation of the liver, can lead to cirrhosis, especially without medication. Hu's health also suffered during his detention because he refused to eat.
On the morning of his abduction, February 16, Hu had wanted to leave for an NGO meeting in
At the destination, the first thing he saw once his hood was removed, was a uniformed policeman. There were five or six other men in the room, all in civilian clothes. No one showed him any identification.
The men wanted Hu to tell them about the activists' hunger strike. Who organised it? Who was involved? Hu refused to talk.
He demanded a phone call, but the men refused. Frustrated, Hu grabbed a lamp from a table and hit himself with it. "I'm a Buddhist, so I do not hit other people. I smashed the lamp on to my own head, because I thought then they would have to take me to a hospital."
Instead, he was left bleeding in the room.
Hu speaks about his kidnapping in a clear and consistent fashion, but many of the details cannot be verified from other sources. The authorities refuse to talk.
He says he was kept in two different places, neither of which was a police station. In one, he was taken to a small suite or apartment, apparently in a hotel on the outskirts of
Hu says that he was kept in the smaller of the rooms. In the other, three or four men kept watch around the clock. When Hu wanted to use the toilet, he had to leave the door open.
Days turned into weeks. He asked them to get his medicine. The answer was no.
According to Hu, his minders told him they were police officers, working for the Domestic Security Unit of the Public Security Bureau. He recognised some of the men who had kept watch outside his home earlier. Others visited the room from time to time - agents from the Ministry of State Security, Hu concluded. These two organisations are special units with a remit to maintain communist rule.
Hu says he was never given a reason for his kidnapping. In the car on the way to freedom, he was threatened with another detention if he did not give up his civil-rights work.
"I will start digging your graves," the hooded Hu said defiantly, before being dumped in the parking lot of a shopping mall.
He has recovered well. One night he even managed to slip out of the ward without the security agents noticing, and had dinner at a restaurant with friends, still dressed in his hospital pyjamas. The hunger strike has withered because the participants have been arrested and harassed.
Now Hu is making new plans.
May 10
Hu has been released from hospital and is free again, after a fashion. He can leave his home, but is trailed by police everywhere he goes. "Sometimes they are quite candid about it," he says. "Sometimes they hide clumsily behind an opened newspaper."
Hu winds up his stalkers by taking photographs of them.
July 17
"Back under house arrest," says another text message from Hu.
August 3
Hu Jia lives on the east side of
Somebody shouts on seeing me, but I slip between the men, run up the four flights of stairs and ring the doorbell. Hu Jia opens the door and looks astonished. "This is miraculous," he says, shaking his head.
In recent weeks, nobody has made it in to see Hu and Zeng.
My host suggests we watch a home video. A group of men appear on the screen, smoking and playing cards in the yard in front of the house. "That's them," says Hu.
He has been filming his minders in secret from the apartment balcony and from the upstairs landing. The close-ups show the unsmiling faces of bored-looking men.
The video picks out Zeng walking out of the building and across the yard. She is wearing a T-shirt, with a slogan on the back that reads "Tailing, Surveillance, Shameful".
In the past few days, Zeng has been allowed off the premises, but she is always followed by eight police officers. If she takes the car, they tail her in two cars.
Hu has studied his jailers carefully. The video image focuses to show the licence-plate on a black Hyundai sedan: "Peking G24758."
"Those two guys may be the same ones who beat up the lawyer, Gao," says Hu.
He is referring to Gao Zhisheng, a well-known critic of the government. Three days ago, Gao was beaten up outside his house. He managed to take some pictures of his assailants' car. It was this black Hyundai with the same licence plate. The tape goes on. A white van draws up outside Hu's building. "That's a delivery van from the restaurant. It brings food for the policemen. We've lived here for two years and that van has been out front every morning and evening."
Zeng brings juice and watermelon to the table. The
Zeng sits next to her husband on the sofa. The couple celebrated their first wedding anniversary the previous week. They spent it at home, prisoners in their own apartment.
Hu leads me through to his study. On his laptop is a picture of a smiling Dalai Lama. Hu admires the Tibetan spiritual leader, who has lived in exile since 1959, almost since
Hu Jia, too, feels he is fighting against injustice. He wants an independent judiciary, free media, and competing political parties. "Only then can
According to the government itself, in 2005 there were some 87,000 "mass incidents", meaning demonstrations, riots or other public disturbances. Most are small and localised. The Communist Party's fear is that these disgruntled elements will join forces and form a nationwide movement.
Hu is constantly writing letters on these matters to government offices, appeals to international organisations, memos and updates to journalists. It is the work of a lobbyist. And it is unpaid. Zeng is the breadwinner. She works at a decorating supplies firm owned by Hu's father.
Hu's father also sees to the mortgage repayments on the couple's apartment. He takes no part in his son's activism. In the days of Mao's purges of 1957, Hu's father was branded a rightist and subjected to "re-education through labour". He spent more than 20 years in forced labour, in prisons and camps around the countryside.
He does not want to see his son's life destroyed, too. He has urged Hu to turn away from revolt and to concentrate on his own life, to act like other young people.
In a corner of the study there is a small altar, with candles and a statue of Buddha. Hu and Zeng often pray together. Hu turned to Buddhism after the Tiananmen massacre, because the faith emphasised non-violence. "According to Buddhist doctrines it is wrong to feel anger," he says. "But I am often angry at the actions of the police or for various injustices. I should learn mercy."
September 12
Hu's home phone line and internet connection have been cut off.
October 29
Hu feels the net tightening around him. One after another, leading rights defenders are being rounded up and arrested, most recently the lawyer, Guo Feixiong, a close friend of Gao Zhisheng. He sends me a list of his relatives' phone numbers by email. "In case something happens to me," he says.
A longtime friend believes that Hu has set his course on martyrdom. "Hu Jia believes that society needs people like himself. His thinking is that change will come only if there are some who are willing to put their lives on the line for it."
Hu is alone at home. Surprisingly, Zeng has been given permission to travel abroad. The government presumably had no idea what she was planning. She travelled to
December 19
Hu's house arrest has lasted more than five months. There has been no arrest warrant, no charges brought, no legal procedure, nothing. How can the government justify its actions?
The ministry of justice refuses to comment. The ministry of state security is ex-directory. So I ask a foreign ministry spokesperson why a human rights activist is being kept prisoner in his own home. "I am not aware of the case you are talking about," Qin Gang replies. "
Teng Biao, a professor at China University of Political Science and Law, says Hu Jia's house arrest is "utterly illegal".
Over the phone, Hu sounds rather down. Imprisoned in his own home, he finds it hard to entertain himself. "When I want to relax, I go out on to my balcony and stare into the distance."
It is a cold day, so the men watching Hu Jia's home have gone inside. I peek through the front door into the stairwell. The men are playing cards, sitting on picnic chairs.
I open the door and rush past them up the flights of stairs. They either have no time or no inclination to stop me.
The residents of
Hu looks pale, but he sounds cheerful enough. "My health has not changed for the worse or for the better."
In the living room, Hu places his chair on a spot where the sun shines in through the balcony windows. Zeng brings him a cup of yoghurt.
There are a couple of weeks left of the year of the dog. But at the turn of the western calendar year, Hu has a habit of counting up the days he has spent detained or under house arrest in the past 12 months.
In 2006 there were 168 such days, more than ever before in his life. Hu was also missing for 41 days in February and March after being kidnapped, and the rest of the days he was followed everywhere he went: "2006 was a very tight year," Hu says.
In the course of the year, the government crushed the leaders of the civil-rights movement. A dozen leading members were imprisoned or detained and many others were beaten up and harassed.
Hu is the most prominent of those who were not totally silenced. Why? Perhaps
"The police told me that five years ago I would already have been locked up in prison for what I do," Hu says. He doesn't blame the activists who have been scared into silence: "They have to think first and foremost about their families. But when the others keep silent, it is even more important that I speak out."
February 5
Hu Jia has always answered my questions. But there is something personal I have hesitated to ask. Over the phone, he answers even that.
His wife, he says, wants a child really badly. "But my life is not stable. Any moment I can be detained or sent to prison. That would break Jinyan's heart. I don't want our child to be raised in such a terrible situation."
May 18
There is hope in the air. Hu and Zeng have been invited to go to
"The officials told us we are both now suspected of threatening state security," Hu tells me on his return.
"Threatening state security," usually spells big trouble. In the past, it has often meant legal charges and lengthy imprisonment.
Hu and Zeng are not going to
· This article was first published in the Helsingin Sanomat.
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…
En Marzo de 1965, Miguel Angel Granados Chapa, de 23 años de edad, pasante de derecho y estudiante de periodismo en la Escuela de Ciencias Políticas fue secuestrado por un comando del MURO integrado por seis sujetos que lo subieron a un lujoso automóvil y lo condujeron a un sitio desierto por el rumbo de Contreras.
Cubierto el rostro con cinta adhesiva, Granados Chapa fue atado a un árbol y sometido a una golpiza a puntapiés. “!Esta es una advertencia, la próxima te va peor!”, le gritó uno de los sujetos antes de dejarlo abandonado.
El Yunque: La Ultraderecha en el Poder. Alvaro Delgado. Plaza y Janés. 2003.
El Yunque luego tomó al “tonto útil” (El PAN) para la “causa”. Capturé imágenes mejor porque me ganó la fiaca, ahí pueden terminar de leer que sustenta lo que viene.
¿Qué es lo que intento demostrar HOY? Bien, les traigo otra de mis teorías “excéntricas”. Siguen los expertos perdidos en sus análisis lineales, y pecan no solo de “buena voluntad” sino inclusive de ingenuidad, comp@s. Tal cual me ocurrió a mí. Pero VAAA:
El Gobierno de FCH con todo el dispendio no ha podido dar un solo resultado. Por cierto, eso de los dineros en propaganda, no es tan visible en comerciales hasta la náusea como en el sexenio pasado, porque los spots no es el objetivo, búsquenle, búsquenle. Regresando al punto, la gente del “gran billete” está perdiendo la paciencia. ¿No se los avisé con toda antelación? Lo que quieren ellos YA, YA, YA son privilegio$$$.
¿’Tons? ¡Ya suelta la sopa! Es fácil. ¿No es cierto que, según este libro de Alvaro Delgado, los del Yunque apoyados por empresarios tomaron por asalto al PAN desplazando a los “panistas tradicionales”? Pues ahí tienen todos esos movimientos que parecen contradictorios muy en el fondo no lo son. Los empresarios están ahora mandando como ariete al Yunque para desestabilizar a CaldeRON, esas son las relativamente buenas noticias.
Así, dados los últimos desatinos del primer mandatario; como ese de descalificar el exhorto de la permanente del Congreso de la Unión para sacar al ejército del combate al narcotráfico es un mensaje gravísimo. Después de todo, el Legislativo es uno de los poderes en una República Federalista como la nuestra, güeno hasta HOY. Sin embargo, yo no me contradigo, combatir al narcotráfico es sólo una cortina de humo para instalar un estado totalitario, con todo y esos clasemedieros que se sienten como para portada del CARAS.
Pero, los de la Resistencia podemos aprovechar esta coyuntura para tratar intensificar nuestras acciones de boicoteo económico, repito, ahí está la clave. Porque son tan impacientes que no van a soportar como todos nosotros la panza farol (chin, otra vez hablando a la Tampiqueña), ¡sí, cómo no! Nombre, son tan chillones que cuando vean disminuciones en sus ganancias del siguiente trimestre van a tirarse al piso y aguantar la respiración hasta ponerse morados como berrinche. Y luego van a ir por el Chaparrito. ‘Tons comp@s, please aguanten y sigánle con el boicot, ya verán que se van a despedazar entre los azules.
¿La mala? No permitan, ni de chiste que vaya a llegar un Yunqueto a la “interina”. Esa va a ser nuestra otra trinchera, buscar a un “moderado”. En otras circunstancias propondría al Cuauh, pero mejor nel, anda rechaquetero. Bueno, según “el maestro” es porque lo tienen bien agarrado del cogote por ciertos “guardaditos” de su vástago. Anyway, el Cuauh tiene varias cuentas pendientes con los Zapat@s. De todos modos, en su momento ya buscaremos a uno de transición, por ahora lo que urge es desquiciarlos económicamente para que se aniquilen entre sí. Esto tampoco es nuevo Jalife ya lo había mencionado en boca de Wallerstein, el presidente Mexicano no va a durar ni dos años, al tiempo.
He dicho.
M@rcogote;
Pilona DECAPITADA:
Manejo implacable mi nave cibernética
entre aquel laberinto de los planetas muertos
y cual si fuera la espuma de un anuncio de cerveza
una marca me ha vendido ya, la forma de mi cabeza
- No tengo tiempo (Rockdrigo).
... for the cause.
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