Hu Jia imprisoned, wife Zeng Jinyan & baby cut off... China makes great pre-Olympic impression.

This video on YouTube is Part 1 from a documentary shot by AIDS activist Hu Jia, showing in detail what it is like to live with your family under house arrest. The full series can be watched here.

Late last month, in between Christmas and New Year - which happens to be when the maximum number of foreign correspondents are on vacation - Hu Jia was arrested on charges of "subversion against the state." People close to him believe the charges are based on an article he co-authored in September titled "The Truth About China Before the Olympics."  Hu's co-author told RFA last week that "Hu Jia wasn’t against the Olympics, but rather that he had called publicly for an improvement to Chinese society as a result of the Olympics."  As John Kennedy recently wrote on Global Voices Online, his lawyers have been denied access to him.

Hu had been under tight surveillance ever since his first detention in early 2006.  Hu has a blog, where he has been writing about the harassment and detention of other activists, in addition to documenting how he, his wife Zeng Jinyan (featured in TIME last year for her outspoken blog) and their small baby have been under tight house arrest and surveillance. He had lately taken to signing off his posts by noting the number of days until the Olympics. The message is clear when you see like this one, ending with a photo of a police surveillance car taken from the window, followed by the words: "230 days until the Olympics opening ceremony."

Quite a few Chinese bloggers have had the guts to rally behind the couple, and John's GVO post shows. The RFA has a roundup quoting Isaac Mao and Zhai Minglei here. People have been trying to send baby milk powder to Jinyan, and have grown increasingly outraged by reports now circulating around the Internet that the goons guarding Jinyan's apartment are stopping much of it from being delivered. Guo "Daxia" has published an open letter to President Hu Jintao by human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong calling for Hu Jia's release. I hope somebody takes the time to translate the whole thing into English (it's very long). In the concluding paragraph Xu points out that 2008 is not only the Olympics but the 30th anniversary of China's reform and opening to the outside world. He concludes: "we are expecting and working for a modern and civilized China."

Meanwhile, I'm getting more and more e-mails with links to clever works of anti-Olympics viral activism like this:

"Chinese olympics logo 2008"

As the "Zhongnanhai" blogger points out, if the Chinese government continues to let the State Security Bureau goons behave in the thuggish way they've been behaving so far, they're asking for it.

And it's definitely coming.

Lindsey Hilsum of Britain's Channel 4 News describes her shouted exchange through a window with Zeng Jinyan, whose state security captors won't let her out of the house, while young Olympic hostesses showed off their etiquette training to the media elsewhere in Beijing:

The government's fear is that people like Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan will spoil the party by presenting a bad image of China to the world - their solution is to lock them up.

But that will cause far more trouble. The images which will resonate around the world are not the identikit young women in immaculate uniforms learning to walk gracefully, but one young woman holding a tiny baby, shouting through the bars that they took her husband away and have imprisoned her at home.

As Sarah Cook writes in the National Post that the international community is shamefully silent:

... With no outcry from the International Olympic Committee or Western governments since his detention, his lawyers are now blocked from visiting him, placing him at greater risk of torture.

That is why the international community cannot stand on the sidelines. Silence is a stance in itself--a stance on the side of the authoritarian Communist Party's regime. And if Hu and Gao's work shows anything, it is that this is not the side that tens of millions of Chinese people really want us on.

In the Boston Globe, the executive director of Reporters Without Borders, Robert Menard points out that "the International Olympic Committee is saying nothing and is rejecting all appeals for help. The Olympic sponsors are not saying anything either." He also points out that Hu was not against the Olympics being held in China and did not support a boycott - he merely dared to speak out about the problems behind the facade.

The Chinese people deserve better than this. They deserve to be feted during the Olympics for their many very real achievements since reforms started 30 years ago. Instead, the state security apparatus and the control-freaks running the country are making the whole country seem to many outsiders like a miserable place. Shame on them.

Comments

[Shen Congwen]

It would be ethical to note that a number of your selected books are written by your father.

[Rebecca MacKinnon]

Thanks, I figured it is pretty obvious that he is related to me.

[mahathir_fan]

This video capture is a good start.

But it is terribly lacking in details to prosecute. The video shows several people harrassing some lady (not Hu Jia himself). For all we know, they could be loan sharks.

I want to offer some advice:
Can Hu Jia get a video of him being prevented from leaving his home? (in that video, a woman was harrassed, but she was allowed to leave after that thus this does not constitute house arrest because she left after a few seconds of delay)

Can he get a video and audio recording of the people guarding him that they are from the government?

Does he have documentation that he is officially under house arrest?

If not, can he file an official complain that these people below his apartment are harrassing him and document that the Public Security Bereau is refusing to assist him to deal with these harassers?

Please, think like a lawyer. Get REAL evidence. Also, provide evidence that Hu Jia had indeed tried to get assistance from official channels regarding these harassers.

It seems to me that even if his claim is true, these guards are non-threatening enough that a woman dared to boldly hold up a protest card in front of these guards. This is puzzling. Another puzzing aspect is that we routinely read about AIDS being a serious problem in China, so why is Hu Jia prosecuted while others are not? There must be more to this story.

I am dismissing this issue as a hoax. Not that it is non-existent, but that there is more to this story than just a simple AIDs activist that the media and you are not reporting. Or that the victim is not seeking the right assistance to get rid of his harassers from the official channels but is exploiting their stupidity for media attention.

[Richardlee]

As a common Chinese, I am really ambivalent about Hujia's arrest. I admire people like him. At least at the beginning, he had passion for the cause he thought he should do. But if he has gone too far, that's not good. I guess he had sort of connection with foreign Human rights orgs. That's why it is getting on CCP's nerves. And being too radical is not good. Calling foreigners to boycott BEijing Olympic games is not wise either. This is a dilemma for the people like him: how to fight against CCP but as the same time, not to be the people's enemy?

[mahathir_fan]

oh...so you mean to say that hu jia is using his "aids activism" as a platform to subvert the socialist system? if so, then that explains the rationale for the house arrest. journalists should explain both sides of the story! what i have been reading on and off about him from the foreign media seem to imply that he is just an innocent aids activists which is highly doubtful given size of the response from the government.

i hope he gets off soon from this arrest anyway. in a democracy like China, Hu Jia can always take his issue at the ballot boxes which is held once every 5 years. I think they just had the Beijing election a few months ago. There is no need to resort to undercutting China's democracy through external means when a fair and just system exists and that is through the ballot boxes - or he could have even run for office himself.

[Charles Liu]

Look at those who have ideologically invaded China. Can you really blame the Chinese?

- Radio Free Asia is the official US propaganda outlet.

- Reporters Without Border(RSF) receives funding from the NED and European Commission to do their political bidding.

- Student For a Free Tibet in Canada is linked to Harper advisor Tenzin Khangsar (former leader of Tibet Commission)

- Falun Gong is getting millions from US Congress thru a quasi-government organization "Friends of Falun Gong" run by Congressman Tom Lanto's wife, operated by embassador Mark Palmer, co-founder of the NED.)

So next year when some Far Long Gone nutcase torch themselves in Beijin, remember it's our tax dollar at work.

[mahathir_fan]

There also isn't enough Marxism education in China. A lot of Chinese I have met have never read Marx. Contrary to what the Western press reports, Chinese from China do know a lot about Tiananmen protests, (The Western press claims that a generation of Chinese are growing up ignorant about the 89 protests). but not enough Marxism.

Also, the department of Marxism in Chinese universities should be combined with the Department of economics. It is dangerous to give Marx its own department for it confines critical thinking into a box. Its study should be combined with that of other theories, free to be critiqued and analyzed.

So while China is being invaded by foreign ideological departments, it itself is also not doing enough to counter such attacks.

Marxism is relevant in the world today, and labour not oil should be the most important commodity in the world. we have oil cartels, why is there no labour cartels??

[Sophie]

To mahathir_fan

I was very shocked at what your advice was about how Hu Jia should try to get "real" evidence that the government is trying to prevent them from getting out of the house.

Perhaps you dont understand how powerful the government is or how dangerous it is for him to try to make an extra move which can easily jeopardize the safety of his newborn baby.

I'm not here to talk you down or anything, but i just want to remind you the nature of his house arrest and I really think that they're doing everything they can to get the media's attention without bring more trouble unto themselves.

[xiaoxi liu]

Congwen,

I found the books by Rebecca's father on China are among the best in the field I ever read, well-documented and researched, and well balanced. I see nothing unethical for her to recommend them here if she truely likes them and if she thinks that they are worth your while to read. Besides, she only chose her father's books on journalism....