Activist flees
January 13, 2012
The escape of Chinese author Yu Jie came out of the blue. His arrival in Washington D.C. last week with his wife and son was captured on video and posted on the website of the US radio station "Voice of America".
Yu has long been a thorn in the side of the Chinese authorities. His articles for weblogs and media outlets in Hong Kong are critical of the government, much to the chagrin of the ruling elite.
Police had warned him that he would simply disappear if he continued to write on issues deemed inappropriate.
"Despite these threats, Yu had always hoped that the situation of dissenters would improve before his departure," said Tienchi Martin-Liao, chairman of the independent Chinese PEN Center. Martin-Liao is an old friend of Yu’s and says she has been in contact with him since he fled China.
"That he resorted to this step [leaving China] shows that the situation for authors and intellectuals in China has not only not improved, but will continue to deteriorate."
Martin-Liao said Yu had planned to leave China long ago: "He told me that he can’t stay in China anymore, because his personal safety is no longer guaranteed." She received Yu’s email from Virginia state in the morning, confirming he was “staying with friends at the moment. He will fill me in on his future plans and the whole thing later."
Yu’s decision to leave China followed one particular incident early last year. "At that time Yu was abducted by the Chinese security authorities. Police bagged his head and dragged him to the middle of nowhere, where he was thrashed brutally," tells Martin-Liao.
"The policemen stripped off his clothes and took naked photos of him."
Forbidden criticism
The 38-year-old Yu is a close friend of the imprisoned Chinese Nobel Peace laureate Liu Xiaobo and one of the signatories to "Charter 08", a manifesto for freedom of expression and democracy in China. Furthermore, Yu is active in a Christian underground church. Because of this, he had the chance to meet with the Christian former US president George W. Bush.
Yu is best-known for his book "China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao", in which he speaks his mind on the Chinese premier, breaking a taboo in the country. The book was published in Hong Kong but banned on the Mainland.
Yu’s most famous work was recently turned into an audiobook by the Chinese language service at Deutsche Welle under the DW-Project China's Forbidden Library, and can be downloaded from the Deutsche Welle website free of charge.
"Either as a critic of Wen Jiabao or the Chinese government, or as a general critic, we are all in a process of learning, which means I must learn to express my judgments more rationally and more objectively. As for the government, it should learn how to deal with criticisms," said Yu in an interview with Deutsche Welle in summer 2010.
Home raid
The fate of another well-known human rights activist, Hu Jia, also shows how the Chinese government deals with criticism. Hu - who was released from prison last June after serving a three-and-a half-year sentence for "inciting subversion of state power" - recently raised the point on microblogging service Twitter that authorities were denying jailed human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng visitors. Hu initiated an online petition calling on the government to allow Gao’s family to see him. Hu's punishment for these acts was a police raid on his apartment and a subsequent interrogation earlier this week. Police confiscated his and his wife’s computers to search for more dissenting material.
With such measures commonplace, it seems that dissidents in China will continue to face three scenarios: being muzzled, detained or forced to flee the country.
Author: Christoph Ricking / mw
Editor: Darren Mara