China: Protesters Sent to Labor Camp
HONG KONG -
Two people from mainland China are reported to have been sentenced to one-year terms in a labor camp for attending a march in Hong Kong earlier this month.
The South China Morning Post and Radio Free Asia said the
two mainlanders - who were among hundreds of Chinese who attended the march - had unsuccessfully petitioned mainland officials to investigate the unexplained deaths of their spouses.
Labor camps are often used to punish dissidents and other troublemakers. A recent Al Jazeera documentary said they are part of China's vast network of work farms and forced-labor prisons - ''the biggest penal colony in the world'' - that is collectively known as the ''laogai.''
News of the mainlanders' detentions for ''anti-China activity'' came as the U.S. State Department gave another grim analysis of human rights abuses in China, as Rebecca Berg reports in The New York Times.
''Our message to the Chinese government is, you've made progress on the economic front,'' Michael H. Posner, the assistant secretary for democracy, human rights and labor, said at a briefing. ''This is the moment to open up the space to allow people to dissent, to question government actions, and to do so without fear of retribution.''
Mr. Posner also said, ''The overall human rights situation in China continues to deteriorate.'' His comments came after an annual human rights dialogue between China and the United States. A State Department transcript of the briefing is here.
Song Ningsheng, 44, and Zeng Jiuzi, 53, both from Ningdu County in Jiangxi Province, were helped in their trip to Hong Kong by a rights group based here. The group's leader, Liu Weiping, said undercover security police from the mainland had tracked the two during their visit.
''This is a
really big deal that the state security police followed them all the way to Hong Kong,'' Mr. Liu said, quoted by R.F.A. ''Hong Kong and mainland China are supposed to be separate systems that don't mingle with each other.
''The Chinese government should understand that they're not going to frighten off most petitioners just by punishing one or two of them,'' he said. ''The petitioners are no longer afraid to die.''
Mr. Liu, in a brief conversation with Rendezvous on Thursday, said it was now ''very dangerous'' for mainland protesters in Hong Kong, although he himself did not feel threatened. He also confirmed having assisted Mr. Song and Ms. Zeng.
Ms. Zeng's son said that his mother had learned of her sentence from the local police.
''The police said that my mother and Song Ningsheng went to Hong Kong and took part in an illegal demonstration,'' said the son, Liu Zhonghua. ''They had also petitioned illegally in Beijing a number of times.
''I asked whether they would give me an official notification document, and he said there was no need, because they could just do this with a nod to the people at the labor camp.''
The Morning Post, which reported the two marchers had received 14-month sentences, said it had seen the first page of the official two-page judgment. A rights activist who was allowed to visit Ms. Zeng at the labor camp surreptitiously took a photo of the document.
The Hong Kong march that they joined is held each year on July 1 to mark the anniversary of the British handover of the territory to China in 1997.
Many of the marchers decry the restrictions on democracy, free speech and free assembly on the mainland.
This year's event was one of the largest protests in Hong Kong in the past decade, with organizers estimating the crowd at 400,000. All such large-scale protests, of course, are banned on the mainland.
This year, in addition, a new Hong Kong chief executive was inaugurated at a ceremony overseen by President Hu Jintao of China. The new leader, Leung Chun-ying, gave his inaugural address in Mandarin, which surprised many Hong Kongers who saw it as an obeisance to the mainland. The vast majority of Hong Kong citizens speak another dialect, Cantonese.
In reporting about the march, my colleague Keith Bradsher said that ''an unexpected element of the demonstration that may discomfit Beijing officials lay in the participation of hundreds of mainland Chinese who carried banners denouncing the confiscation of their farms for government-backed real estate projects in communities near Hong Kong.''
''It is not possible to protest in China, so we come here instead,'' a middle-aged mainlander told Keith during the march, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid government retaliation.
People from the mainland have attended other vigils and protests here, but usually more discreetly and usually at night. (The July 1 gathering this year began in the afternoon.) And they typically do not carry banners about their complaints, as they did quite openly, which might have made them easier for undercover police to identify.
As R.F.A. reported about this year's march: ''The protesters carried banners that read 'We are from mainland China,' and 'Smash the black jails,' in a reference to China's network of unofficial detention centers used to hold those who complain about the government.''
People presenting grievances in China can fare poorly at the hands of the authorities. Most often the petitioners are simply ignored or turned away by local officials, although some decide to press their complaints in Beijing. That ups the ante, as it were, and the resulting punishments can be harsh.
According to their sentencing document, Mr. Song and Ms. Zeng, who are described by the Morning Post as ''activists,'' went to Beijing to twice present their petitions after their trip to Hong Kong.
My colleague Andrew Jacobs has reported on China's black jails, where many petitioners end up. An excerpt from one of Andrew's stories from Beijing in 2009:
They are often tucked away in the rough-and-tumble sections of the city's south side, hidden beneath dingy hotels and guarded by men in dark coats. Known as ''black houses,'' they are unofficial jails for the pesky hordes of petitioners who flock to the capital seeking justice.
This month, Wang Shixiang, a 48-year-old businessman from Heilongjong Province, came to Beijing to agitate for the prosecution of corrupt policemen. Instead, he was seized and confined to a dank room underneath the Juyuan Hotel with 40 other abducted petitioners.
During his two days in captivity, Mr. Wang said, he was beaten and deprived of food, and then bundled onto an overnight train. Guards who were paid with government money, he said, made sure he arrived at his front door.
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