Ding Zilin has disappeared.Liu Xia, the wife of the 2010 Nobel peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo, was able to communicate the news to the outside world last Thursday, in spite of being under house arrest.
The last time I talked to her was Oct. 8 when Liu Xiaobo won the peace prize. We were so happy. We're really worried she's been taken away. When she was detained before, she would make contact. What if it's worse this time?, Xu Jue, a friend of Ding Zilin told AP.
A former professor of philosophy at Beijing’s People‘s University, Ding Zilin founded the NGO Tiananmen Mothers, following the death of her son Jiang Jielian.
Shot by soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army, he bled to death on the night of June 3, 1989. He was seventeen…
She established Tiananmen Mothers with other grieving relatives of those who died on June 4, 1989.
A common group of citizens brought together by a shared fate and suffering, to quote its founder, it is composed of the families of some 125 activists killed during the 1989 protests.
The organization demands that the Chinese government conduct a full investigation of the June 4 Massacre and provide a comprehensive account of all the casualties that ensued. It also demands a formal apology from the Chinese government.
I cannot turn a blind eye to the pain of those who suffer my same fate. As a group, they have been forgotten and forsaken by society. I made the firm decision to continue in my mission of locating and helping June Fourth families, until the government itself actively takes up this project and there is no longer any need for our efforts, she told the author Merle Goldman.
Needless to say, Ding Zilin, as well as her husband and associate in this enterprise, Jiang Peikun, formerly head of the Aesthetics Institute at Beijing’s People’s University, have been persecuted by the regime ever since.
In 1991, she was jailed for some forty days and forced to retire from the university.
She was arrested in 1994, and again in 1995.
The following year, Jiang Jielian was also fired from People’s University.
Since February 2000, she has been under around-the-clock surveillance.
Nevertheless, she has been relentlessly investigating the June 4 Massacre on her own and able to document the death of 186 activists so far.
Shortly before the fifteenth anniversary of the Massacre, she was placed under house arrest.
Such have been her circumstances ever since, apart from a brief interlude in 2008.
As a precautionary measure no doubt, and to keep her away from Western media, she was banished from Beijing shortly before the 2008 Olympic Games…
The current whereabouts of the woman Liu Xiaobo had himself considered worthy of receiving the Nobel Peace Prize are unknown…
Since the announcement on October 8 that Liu Xiaobo had won the award, the autocrats in Beijing have avenged what they construed as a slap in the face inflicted by the West by persecuting the few but brave Chinese human rights activists.
Fan Yafeng, one such activist, has been molested by the police who shadow his every move.
Zhou Duo, who demonstrated with Liu Xiaobo in Tiananmen Square in 1989, has been prevented from leaving his house.
The police now also follow the writer Yu Jie wherever he goes. There are three domestic security cops who are watching me. When I am home, they are downstairs; when I go out, I have to go in their car. Now I am in the supermarket buying stuff and they are here as well, he told The Guardian.
Signatories of Charter 08, the document co-written by Liu Xiaobo, are particularly targeted at this time.
I'm so sorry. I have a lot to say, but I don't dare to talk. I've been confronted several times by police already since Liu Xiaobo won the prize.
Anyone who signed the charter is under surveillance. I hope you understand this life we lead, the writer and Charter supporter Zhao Shiying told AP.
Liu Xia herself may be about to go on a tour, courtesy of the regime and thus out of the reach of the Western media.
Initially, the Chinese media refrained from commenting on Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize.
Only a statement by Ma Chaoxu, the Foreign Ministry spokesman was released and publicized.
On October 14, or six days later however, two major articles were posted on Netease and Sina, leading Chinese news site entitled From the Dalai Lama to Liu Xiaobo: What the Nobel Peace Prize tells us and Giving the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo was an especially big mistake.
The first piece begins thus: A few people abroad have reacted to the news with joy, frolicking around as though they’ve taken drugs. One of these people is the Dalai Lama, who won the Peace Prize in 1989. It’s a good thing the Dalai Lama came out [to congratulate Liu Xiaobo] because it reminds every Chinese person to think about why these two men won the Nobel Peace Prize. What’s the underlying link?
The answer, naturally, is obvious:
The Dalai Lama and Liu Xiaobo are the political dolls of Western forces.
The autocracy’s strategy is far from complex. The aim is to discredit the recipient by linking him to the regime’s old nemesis, the Dalai Lama accused by Beijing of being a splitist intent on undermining China, and to a prize that the regime claims is a Western tool to inhibit the rise of China by fomenting division and strife.
Would that be sufficient to sway Chinese public opinion?
Perhaps not, for the regime is under increasing pressure to allow greater freedom of expression and not only from the West, but also more importantly, from within China itself.
An open letter written before the Nobel Peace Prize announcement but released a few days after demands that the regime respect at last the Chinese Constitution and, in particular, Article 35, which states that Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.
The twenty-three authors of the letter, all former senior Communist party officials, such as Li Rui, Chairman Mao’s former aide, accused the government of deliberately imposing regulations and ordinances to render null and void Article 35.
This false democracy of formal avowal and concrete denial has become a scandalous mark on the history of world democracy, they wrote.
As such, what do the authors demand?
Our core demand is that the system of censorship be dismantled in favour of a system of legal responsibility.
This entails not only the abolishing of all party control on the media, but also the privatization of newspapers and periodicals.
A new law regulating the media would ensure that it would no longer require approval before publishing or broadcasting a report, but, as in every other democratic nation, be held legally responsible for its contents.
England did away with censorship in 1695. France abolished its censorship system in 1881, and the publication of newspapers and periodicals thereafter required only a simple declaration, which was signed by the representatives of the publication and mailed to the office of the procurator of the republic. Our present system of censorship leaves news and book publishing in our country 315 years behind England and 129 years behind France, they added.
The authors also deplored the fact that even Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao did not enjoy the right of freedom of speech.
Earlier this month, on October 3, Wen Jiabao told CNN that the people’s wishes for, and needs for, democracy and freedom are irresistible.
The party, he added, should act according to the constitution and law…In spite of some resistance, I will act in accordance with these ideals unswervingly and advance, within the realm of my capabilities, political restructuring.
Last august, the Premier had criticized the excessive concentration of unrestrained power.
We must not only push economic reforms, but also promote political reforms. Without the protection afforded by political reforms, the gains we have made from economic reforms will be lost, and our goal of modernization cannot be realized, he added in his Shenzen speech.
Yet, in both cases, official Chinese media failed to mention his comments on democratization, highlighting instead only those pertaining to the economy.
Moreover, last Thursday, some one hundred Chinese human rights activists released a letter demanding the release of Liu Xiaobo, who they characterized as a splendid choice for the Nobel Peace Prize, and all the other political prisoners currently detained by the regime.
China should join the mainstream of civilized humanity by embracing universal values. Such is the only route to becoming a 'great nation' that is capable of playing a positive and responsible role on the world stage, the authors added.
Signatories included Xu Youyu, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the lawyers Teng Biao, one of the founders of the Open Constitution Initiative and Pu Zhiqiang and Woeser, a Tibetan poet.
The authorities have also hounded the authors of this letter…
We are increasingly concerned about the escalation of measures taken against dissidents and activists at the moment. There is a flagrant contradiction. On the one hand they argue the Nobel should not be awarded to a criminal. At the same time they are implementing unlawful measures against dozens of people, including Liu Xia, Nicholas Bequelin, of Human Rights Watch Asia, told The Guardian.
Will repression by the Chinese autocrats constitute the sole response to these developments?
Are they capable of any other?
The Chinese Communist Party Central Committee’s Fifth Plenum opened on Friday.
Senior Chinese leaders were planning to discuss economic issues and a possible promotion for Xi Jinping, probable successor of current President Hu Jintao in 2012.
Yet, given the current context, can they afford to ignore Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize, as well as calls from within for greater democratization?
It seems highly improbable that the autocrats will feel the need to change policies.
In all likelihood, only a fraction of the Chinese elite support the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s choice for the 2010 award, and are genuinely concerned by the regime’s persecution of human rights activists.
As long as the economy keeps growing at a steady pace, and the regime is able to satisfy the material needs of the Chinese people, calls for reform and democratization can be ignored if not dismissed.
There is never a response to such demands, Yu Haocheng, a signatory of both Charter 08 and the letter demanding an end to censorship, told the NYT.
With the passing of time, Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Peace Prize may become irrelevant as well. Ultimately, it may not mean anything, because there are so many other things that don’t mean anything today either, things that aren’t even in history books, like ‘6/4’ itself (the June 4 Massacre) one businessman told the NYT.
In addition, how seriously should we consider Premier Wen Jiabao’s endorsement of political reform?
Were his declarations simply designed to appeal to a Western audience?
It is pie in the sky. He only has two years left in office; even if he really sincerely wants it to happen, he cannot make it. For political reform to take place we need a really powerful leader to face the bureaucracy that's constituted by so many people, to challenge it and to defeat it. Only Mao or Deng has had that kind of power, Cheng Yongmiao, an activist, told The Guardian.
Who in the leadership has the necessary clout and determination to risk that kind of confrontation with the apparatus?
No one. In addition, no one will even attempt such a Sisyphean task unless he is compelled to do so by an acute social and economic crisis, for instance.
China’s image around the world has undeniably suffered, however.
The regime had impressed the international community with its flawless organization of the 2008 Summer Olympic Games and 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai…
Many, particularly in the West, envy its booming economy.
Yet, the regime’s treatment of Liu Xiaobo will have alienated many as well.
You cannot make your political system very appealing to global public opinion when you have a Nobel Peace Prize winner in prison and his wife under house arrest, Nicholas Bequelin of HRW, told the NYT.
What fate, then, awaits Liu Xiaobo?
They can’t kill him. They can’t let him live. They can’t jail him, he’s already in jail. They can’t shut him up. They’ll have to force him out, one Chinese businessman told the NYT.
It is clear that Liu will refuse to leave China. He had already refused to do so after the June 4 Massacre.
I did not leave because I owe a debt to the victims of Tiananmen.
No one can hear the voices of the victims. That is why I must be their spokesman for as long as I live, he told the French journalist Robert Neville in an interview for the weekly L’Express in 2007.
The Chinese will have to deport him forcefully if it is indeed their intention to banish him to the West.
Regardless, Liu is convinced that the Chinese will one day be free.
When and how depends entirely on the Chinese people.
This is a long evolutionary process. Those in power have no ideal and those who do have no power. The Chinese government does not have the means to annihilate the conscience of the Chinese people. That is why I think the future of freedom in China depends on its people, he told Neville.
Thirty-five years ago, the Nobel Committee sent a clear message that the free world was on our side. This gave renewed strength to dissidents in a time of persecution and imprisonment. No less important, this message was heard by millions of silent sympathizers and served as an unspoken rallying cry that is helping to hollow out the once-impregnable edifice of the regime’s authority, the former Soviet dissident, and current Israeli politician Natan Sharansky wrote in the NYT.
A mere fifteen years after the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Soviet Union disintegrated…
Hopefully, it will soon be the Chinese people’s turn to build a democratic society of their own…
In the meantime, it is the duty of all free men and women everywhere to support Liu Xiaobo, Ding Zilin and all the other brave Chinese human rights activists currently persecuted by the autocrats in Beijing.
Time is on their side.
Authoritarian regimes always collapse under the weight of their own moral corruption…
(the photograph on top of Ding Zilin is by Muhammed Muheisen/AP)
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