The beginning of a citizens' movement?

Xu was on his way to Dongshigu, a village near Linyi (located in the vicinity of the east coast, north of Shanghai) when he was arrested by the police at the bus station.
Although not a militant or human rights activist, the forty-five-year-old Xu sought to visit Chen Guangcheng, a lawyer currently under house arrest.
I knew it was going to be dangerous, but I didn’t think it would be this dangerous, he told AP.
He was held for questioning, suspected of drug dealing, the police informed him.
He was eventually released and driven back home.
Gao Xinbo, a Chen supporter, managed to enter the village, but then was seized, beaten and robbed.
He was then thrown out of the car that had taken him away, forty miles from the village.
All those who have tried to see Chen have suffered a similar fate.
He is a legal citizen, not a criminal; we should have the right to visit him, Xu told AP.
Yet, some Chinese citizens are held incommunicado, although they have not been charged or convicted of any offense.
This policy is known as ruanjin, or soft detention. It is reserved for those Chinese such as lawyers, human rights activists and the like who have refused to be intimidated and submit to the will of the authorities, and yet have committed no crime.
Such rebels are also sometimes held in black jails (prisons that do not officially exist) or psychiatric wards (where Soviet dissidents were also held indefinitely).
In Chen Guangcheng’s case, soft detention began soon after his release following a four-year prison sentence for disturbing the peace and destroying public property.
Born in 1971, Chen lost his eyesight as a child due to illness.
Illiterate until his twenties, Chen attended a school for the blind, then studied medicine, before attending law classes.
A masseur at the Yunan county hospital, Chen began granting legal assistance to farmers threatened with the illegal seizure of their land.
In 2005, he defended the victims of a coercive abortion and sterilization program (even unlawful by Chinese standards) imposed in Shandong.
The authorities could not tolerate these revelations of abuse of power by local officials.
Chen was arrested, tried and jailed on bogus charges.
Upon his release in September 2010, he was placed under house arrest, a victim of soft detention.
I have come out of a small jail and walked into a bigger jail. What they are doing is thuggery…Why are they afraid of my talking to the outside world? Because they know full well that they are wrong. They know what they are doing is illegal, Chen proclaimed in a video that  found its way to the West, and which denounced his living conditions.
Chen, as well as his wife, Yuan Weijing, was severely beaten in retaliation for the video’s release.
Many of their belongings (computers, cameras) were confiscated, and the electricity cut off.
They had already been deprived of a telephone line.
Video cameras monitor their every move; sheets of metal cover their windows, while roads leading to their village are under constant surveillance by armed thugs.
Their six-year old daughter has also been compelled to remain indoors, and thus, is also under house arrest…
Yet, Chen’s fate has attracted the attention of Chinese citizens not previously active in the human rights movement.
The fundamental unfairness of that really strikes a chord with Chinese citizens, Phelim Kine, of Human Rights Watch in Hong Kong, told the WSJ.
Indeed, the ruanjin policy, because blatantly illegal, does not officially exist.
The authorities deny that the family is under any restrictions. Confronted by European diplomats, Chinese officials have insisted there is no such thing as house arrest in China. Reached by telephone on Wednesday, Xue Jie, the director of the Yinan County propaganda bureau, suggested that a reporter could simply call Mr. Chen or just drop by, wrote Andrew Jacobs and Jonathan Ansfield of the NYT last February. The NYT reporters tried to do just that but were harassed and compelled to leave...
Soft detention is simply one more expedient in China’s extra-legal arsenal to harass those rebels the authorities consider likely to undermine their authority should they be allowed to pursue their activities.
Moreover, if it can goad one such misfit into committing an illegal act liable to prosecution, conviction and incarceration, so much the better…
There are too many people doing too many different things, and the authorities know if they use so-called legal methods, it will only provoke a greater domestic backlash and more international pressure, Teng Biao, a lecturer at China University of Political Science and Law, told the NYT.
Discrete repression is, therefore, the preferred tactic of the regime.
But, their zeal to remain firmly in control of a population now adept at using the web to communicate and share information has led to an ever-harsher crackdown on those who refuse to submit.
The police are progressively trying new techniques, and it seems that Beijing is ready to go along.
We used to worry about people getting arrested and losing their jobs. Now we have to worry about them losing their lives, Nicholas Bequelin, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, told the NYT last February.
The authorities may be fighting a losing battle.
Activists have launched an internet campaign on behalf of Chen, particularly on Weibo, the popular Chinese microblogging site with over 200 million users.
The campaign, called Operation Free Chen Guangcheng has awakened the civic consciousness of even ordinary Chinese.
I couldn’t believe something so dark and evil could happen in my country, so I had to see for myself, a young computer salesman told the NYT.
Along with five other citizens, he attempted to visit Chen. Their vehicle was set upon even before they had reached the village.
Earlier this month, some twenty other citizens made similar attempts.
It was unexpected that there would be so many spontaneous responses to the calls to visit him, especially from so many ordinary people with no previous experience in rights defense work...If they continue to do this, it will soon become a citizens' movement, He Peirong, a Chinese activist told AP earlier this month.
He tried on four occasions to see Chen, but was rebuffed and assaulted each time…
I think the campaign has entered an important new phase.
This time the social elite and the media are standing up for him, he told the NYT.
Indeed, a Chinese newspaper suggested that the authorities make a more earnest effort to explain Chen’s status.
Yesterday, the WSJ reported that the authorities had at last allowed Chen’s daughter to go to school…
This first victory should encourage the nascent citizen’s movement to intensify its campaign on behalf of Chen and all the others in a similar predicament.
The authorities are obviously listening and may be more vulnerable then many thought…
(the photograph of Chen Guangcheng above was found here)

*In May 2010, I wrote this post about the disappearance of Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer, no doubt secretly arrested and detained by the regime…
Unfortunately, there has been absolutely no word since about his fate or whereabouts…