A Study Group is Crushed in China's Grip

Washington Post ^ | 4.25.04 | Philip P. Pan

[Dr. Marten]

A Study Group Is Crushed in China's Grip
Beliefs Are Tested in Saga Of Sacrifice and Betrayal

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, April 23, 2004; Page A01

BEIJING -- On a Saturday morning in the summer of 2000, eight young people met in a shabby apartment near Beijing University and started a study group to debate the need for political reform in China. Some were students. Others were recent graduates. Not one was over 30.

Relatives of the New Youth Study Group's members

and potential witnesses were barred from a courtroom

in October during an appeal hearing. From left: Lu Kun,

Yang Zili's wife; an unidentified friend; Jin Haike's father;

Zhang Yanhua; Fan Erjun; and Huang Haixia. (Family Photo)

 

They were still friends back then, brought together by a shared desire to change their country for the better. After lunch, the group -- seven men and one woman -- took a stroll across campus, earnestly discussing the nation's problems under the willow trees surrounding a green lake.

Two days later, one of the students recorded the day's events on a sheet of lined paper under his university's letterhead.

"I attended a meeting of the New Youth Study Group," Li Yuzhou, a philosophy major at People's University, wrote in a hurried script. He noted the time of the gathering -- 10 a.m., Aug. 19 -- and the names of all the participants. He described their views on political change, asserting that some favored "violent methods." He added that his friends wanted to keep the group confidential.

And then he delivered the report to the Ministry of State Security.

Three and a half years later, four members of the study group are in prison, serving sentences of eight or 10 years on subversion charges. Two are free but living with the shame of implicating the others when interrogated by police. And Li has fled to Thailand, where one recent afternoon he leafed through some of his reports and struggled to explain why he became an informer and betrayed his friends.

 

[Dr. Marten]

 

[genefromjersey]

I have a relative doing NGO "good works" in China.I'll say this carefully:my relative's mail and packages are opened as a matter of course,apartment is searched on a daily basis by bldg. mgt.,email is monitored and censored.

This is SOP for foreigners.

This relative started out as a "liberal";will probably be somewhere to the right of Rush Limbaugh once home.

[Dr. Marten]

Yes, nearly all of the mail that is sent to or from foreigners receives special "attention".

I can't testify as to the apartments being searched, but I do know that email always has an extra eye and phone conversations have an extra ear.

[Dr. Marten]

Ping.

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

Thanks for the ping.