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China: Pre-Congress Clampdown Intensifies
Repression Campaign Escalates With Abduction and Violence
(New York, October 10, 2007) - The Chinese government is intensifying
repression ahead of the 17th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,
which
opens in Beijing next week, as the climax of a months-long campaign
to
silence dissent and impose a veneer of social harmony on the capital,
Human
Rights Watch said today.
The latest moves in the crackdown, which began in August, have included
the
abduction, arrest, or violent intimidation of dozens of perceived
dissidents who the government fears may protest on the streets of
Beijing.
In an internal March speech, Yu Hongyuan, the deputy bureau chief of
the
Beijing Public Security Bureau and the Beijing Olympics Security
Protection
Center's commander-in-chief, advocated "harshly penalizing one person
in
order to . . . frighten many more into submission" in order to ensure
the
success of the Party Congress, the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, and
the
60th anniversary celebrations of the People's Republic of China in
2009.
"This week we're seeing the culmination of months of targeted tightening
of
controls on media, the internet, and freedom of movement for
dissidents
designed to impose 'stability' during the Party Congress," said
Sophie
Richardson, Asia advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "But real
stability is a product of responding to criticism, not quashing it,
and
until the party and the government accept that, their goal of a
'harmonious
society' is simply unattainable."
The period leading up to and during the Party Congress, which occurs
only
every five years, is an extremely sensitive time for the government
because
it is the forum in which the future leadership of the Chinese
Communist
Party will be announced. This congress entails secretive meetings to
determine who will succeed President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao
in
2012. The Party Congress is also a magnet for Chinese citizens hoping
to
petition government leaders for redress of grievances unresolved by
grassroots officials.
Recent comments by officials confirm the ongoing crackdown, which is
more
systematic than the seasonal lockdowns on dissidents ahead of the
annual
meetings of China's parliament, the National People's Congress.
Yu's speech also instructed police to "swiftly uncover, control and
take
away" any individuals behaving "abnormally" in order to smother
possible
public protests ahead of and during the Party Congress. His comments
were
followed in September by China's Public Security Minister Zhou
Yongkang's
call for vigilance against possible public unrest.
To counter those perceived threats ahead of the Party Congress, the
police
have used house arrest, abduction and extrajudicial detention to clear
the
streets of any possible sources of public dissent. Human Rights Watch
said
that, since August, the government has particularly targeted petitioners,
a
floating population of thousands of impoverished and marginalized
rural
residents who come to the capital to seek redress for injustices
ranging
from official corruption to illegal land seizures.
Rural residents preparing to go to Beijing to petition for redress
during
the Party Congress were placed under heightened surveillance by police
and
in many cases illegally barred from leaving their homes or villages.
In
September, municipal and provincial police units arrested dozens of
petitioners in Beijing and other provinces and either returned them
to
their home provinces or detained them incommunicado in facilities
including
requisitioned state-owned hotels. A group of 12 petitioners from Chengdu
in
Sichuan province who were detained by Beijing police in mid-September
remain in custody, while a separate group of 60 petitioners from
Shanghai
detained and forcibly returned on September 18 by police have likewise
not
yet been released.
In September, Beijing municipal officials began demolishing a settlement
in
Beijing where 4,000 petitioners lived on the pretext of road
construction.
Dozens of petitioners evicted from the Fengtai settlement have ended up
in
extrajudicial detention at a de facto private jail in Beijing where
they
are held incommunicado and denied access to legal counsel.
"This abuse of petitioners' rights clearly demonstrates the Chinese
Communist Party's intolerance of criticism, particularly during the
Party
Congress," Richardson said. "The party says it abides by the rule of
law,
yet it deliberately abuses those who try to raise their grievances
against
local officials peacefully and legally."
Already strict controls on the domestic media and internet were
further
tightened on August 15 with the announcement of a two-month crackdown
on
"false news." Liu Binjie, director of China's official General
Administration of Press and Publications, justified the campaign as
essential to "a healthy and harmonious environment for a successful
17th
Party Congress," but the crackdown appears designed to quash coverage
of
events embarrassing to the Chinese Communist Party, including
disasters,
corruption, and official malfeasance.
One of the victims of that campaign is freelance writer Lu Gengsong,
detained in August and subsequently formally charged with "inciting
subversion of state power." Lu had published reports on foreign
websites
detailing human rights abuses and corruption, which his police
interrogators claimed "attacked the Communist Party."
The government has shut down an official estimate of more than 18,000
individual blogs and websites since April and closed entire internet
data
centers, which host thousands of websites. In August, Cai Mingzhao,
deputy
director of the Information Office at the State Council, defended the
closures, noting that "good publicity" was the "primary task" of the
country's internet media ahead of the congress.
The crackdown has also targeted specific individuals. On September 29,
Li
Heping, a Beijing-based lawyer best known for representing
human-rights-related cases, was abducted by plainclothes assailants
who
beat and tortured him with electric prods before releasing him. Li, who
has
been under intense police surveillance for the past year, said his
assailants repeated an earlier verbal warning issued by Beijing police
that
he should leave Beijing ahead of the Party Congress.
In a separate incident, the brother and son of Ye Guozhu, jailed in
2004
for four years after leading protests against evictions related to the
2008
Olympic Games, were apparently detained by state security officers on
September 29 and September 30, respectively, but there has been no
formal
notification of what charges they might be facing or even if they are
in
police custody.
The actions against Li and Ye's relatives follow the apparent
incommunicado
detention last month of Gao Zhisheng, a prominent human rights defender
who
wrote a letter last month to the US Congress opposing the 2008
Olympic
Games in Beijing due to China's human rights conditions. Gao was last
seen
in the presence of municipal Public Security Officers at his Beijing
home
on September 22 and has not been seen or heard of since.
"If the Chinese government continues abusing lawyers, jailing
dissidents,
and harassing petitioners - rather than dealing with their concerns -
it
will probably still be dealing with similar if not more unrest at the
next
Party Congress five years from now," Richardson said. "Sweeping these
problems under the rug for every high-profile party event will do
nothing
to solve them."
For more information on the pre-Congress clampdown in China, please
see:
"China: Beijing Petitioners' Village Faces Demolition," September
2007:
"China: Media Chokehold Tightens Before Party Congress," August 2007:
"China: Government Must End Crackdown on Lawyers," August 2006:
For further information, contact Phelim Kine (English, Mandarin),
Hong
Kong, mobile: +85 2 6604 9792; Nicholas Bequelin (English, French,
Mandarin), Paris, mobile: +85 2 8198 1040; Sophie Richardson
(English,
Mandarin), Washington, DC, tel: +1 202 612 4341, mobile: +1 917 721
7473;
or Human Rights Watch, Washington Office, 1522 K Street, N.W.,
Washington,
DC 20005-1202, U.S.A., tel: +1 202 371 6592, fax: +1 202 371 0124,
e-mail:
hrwdc@hrw.org, Internet: http://www.hrw.org/
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