Posted on 02/25/2006 9:34:34 AM PST by Cornpone
At least eight prominent Chinese human rights activists have vanished after they joined one of the first overt attempts to coordinate a nationwide protest against the authorities since the 1989 democracy demonstrations.
Political security police are thought to have detained the campaigners, who disappeared soon after they joined a relay hunger strike that has reportedly attracted several dozen participants in 16 provinces.
No official explanation has been given. The government's propaganda department has forbidden the domestic media from reporting anything to do with the campaign, which was launched by a Beijing lawyer, Gao Zhisheng, on February 4 to protest police brutality.
Gao said at least a dozen participants had been detained, although some were released on condition that they drop their involvement. Many are veteran rights campaigners who have been held in the past.
Among those still missing is Hu Jia, who played a leading role in exposing the contaminated blood scandal that infected tens -- and possibly hundreds -- of thousands of people with HIV in Henan province. Hu was one of the first to join the relay, staging a 24-hour hunger strike.
He was last seen on February 16 by associates who said he was followed by plainclothes police. His wife said she filed a missing person's report, but police have given her no information about her husband's condition or whereabouts.
A similar fate has befallen Qi Zhiyong, a pro-democracy activist whose legs were amputated after he was shot during the 1989 protests. He disappeared on February 15.
The press freedom group Reporters sans Frontières said another hunger striker, Yu Zhijian -- a former teacher who threw paint on a vast portrait of Mao Zedong in central Beijing during the 1989 demonstrations -- has been charged with subversion. His detention came in the same week that his friend and fellow portrait defacer Yu Dongyue was released after almost 17 years in prison. Solitary confinement and other forms of psychological torture had taken such a toll that he was unable to recognise his mother.
Human rights groups fear that those arrested in the past fortnight could also be subjected to torture and ill treatment.
"The irregular nature of their detention makes it even more difficult than normal to monitor their situation, and the authorities take no responsibility for the disappearances," said the China-based group Civil Rights Defenders. "Law-enforcement officials and local authorities who violate the law by subjecting these people to arbitrary detention or torture must be investigated and prosecuted."
The authorities have been struggling to control a wave of unrest. The ministry of public security reported 87 000 protests, riots or other "mass incidents" last year, up 6,6% from 2004. Almost all protests have been confined to specific local issues -- usually disputes over land -- but security officials fear that malcontents are becoming more organised.
Lawyers, academics and local activists are increasingly roaming the country, coordinating demonstrations and educating farmers about their legal rights.
Until now, there has been no nationwide campaign. But this month the dissident lawyer, Gao, began one by organising a hunger strike to protest beatings by police and thugs of rights activists in Guangdong and Shandong provinces.
Security officials appear to be taking no chances that the hunger strike might spread. Detainees can be held for a few days informally -- often in cheap hotels -- or kept in jail if there is a possibility that they will be charged with subversion or endangering national security.
< /sarcasm >
Neither apparently can the U.A.E. Sorry, I had to say that.
Funny, isn't it, the privileges that money can buy?
They are working in slave labor reeducation camps producing products for the evil anti-union Wal*Mart.
See also this thread
Tainted Blood--it's not just from the Clintons anymore.
No cheers, unfortunately.
The diseased blood from Clinton's prison scheme made its way all over the world, including China, so far as we could determine. Once those viruses are turned loose, they keep going and going. There's no doubt in my mind that the contaminated blood is still wreaking havoc, especially in Africa and China and elsewhere in the third world. (Viruses are spread more readily in the poor sanitary conditions in underdeveloped areas.)
Lol.
It's amazing, innit?
Back in 1980, IRAQ could do no wrong. The U.S. backed Sadaam Hussein, a KNOWN monster in the area. I was living in the area at the time. The Arabs and other Mulsims could NOT understand why the U.S. was backing, financing and arming such a KNOWN terrorist monster. He had been murdering, looting and torturing his own people since the mid-70's.
He had risen to power on the back of successful assassination after successful assassination. You know, he's the first and only Iraqi president NOT to have been assassinated while in power.
There HAD to have been another way to "get back" at Iran.
After 9 long fruitless years of stalemate fighting, where only the weapons merchants got STINKING rich, Iraq had to sue the Iranians for peace. The Iranians were JUBILENT, as they had fought back the U.S.-backed, -financed and -armed Iraqi army. MUD on our face, yet again.
And, then, one year later, that same Butcher of Baghdad, extremely well-armed by you-know-who, invaded Kuwait.
And here we are, 15 years later, STILL fighting.
Iraq could do no wrong.
At LEAST, the U.A.E. are itsy-bitsy, peaceful desert emirates (That would be tribes.) who have no modern record of the monstronsities of the still-alive-and-screaming-kicking Butcher of Baghdad and his Baath Party.
CHINA does have a modern-day history of heinous slaughter and human rights abuses.....and we are yet backing another monster-based regime--this one COMMUNIST to boot.
Makes me wonder sometimes about our foreign policy.
I'm sure the rest of the people in Red China can access any information on the hunger strike by Googling away.
Hey Google! Google this!
No, they can't.
Didn't you read about the deal google made with the Chinese a few weeks ago? Google agreed to block FOR ALL OF CHINA all the sites about "free china," democracy movements and that crazy religion guang something....with an internet nanny. The Chinese remain ignorant, thanks to google's $$deal$$ with the U.S.'s most favored trade nation.
Europe made the same deal YEARS ago with the Internet servers to block pro-nazi sites. In Europe it's also a crime, punishable by fines and prison, to deny the holocaust. David Irving is on trial now in Austria for it.
America is one of the few countries with a modicum of free speech left. Who knows how long that will last.
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