From a number of sources, unfortunately all in chinese (google translate isn’t fantastic) as well as jinyan’s blog, a few activists who are asking for the release of Hu Jia are wanted by the police and are currently in hiding. The chinese link is “here” so you may read it using whatever translation tool you prefer.
Categories: Part 6: Who support them? · other materials
RSF
Leading human rights activist Hu Jia today spent his 35th birthday alone in his cell in Hubai prison in Tianjin (200 km southeast of Beijing). His wife, Zeng Jinyan, his mother and his sister were not allowed to see him. The police told them they were “too busy to make the necessary arrangements.” The last time his mother and sister were allowed to see him was on 4 May.
“The police have behaved disgracefully,” Reporters Without Borders said. “It is unacceptable that Hu Jia’s family has not been allowed to visit him on his birthday. We are worried about his health which is worsening steadily. He suffers from cirrhosis, as a result of an attack of hepatitis, but he has not had a single medical examination since his arrest. It is appalling that, just a few days before the start of the Olympic Games, a prisoner of conscience is not even being allowed to see his wife on his birthday.”[continues...]
Categories: Part 5: What about Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan now? · Press
Background reading From China HRW by Phelim Kine;
English version of Phelim Kine’s op-ed “China’s Olympisch gebrek aan mensenrechten,” published in the Dutch magazine Idee (July 2008).
The Olympic torch relay passed through Lhasa on June 21 with precious little hint of respect for the “fundamental ethical values” enshrined in the Olympic Charter. Instead of cheering sports fans, the streets were filled with thousands of police in riot gear surveilling the hand-picked crowds and the foreign journalists flown in specially to cover the event.
These controls are just the latest evidence of how the March 14-15 violence in the Tibetan capital has prompted the most systematic and prolonged crackdown on human rights in China since the June 1989 Tiananmen Massacre. The government broke up peaceful demonstrators criticizing Chinese rule in Tibet, after which violent protests erupted, which in turn gave the government a rationale to invoke when it kicked the foreign media out of the region and launched an intensive security operation involving hundreds of thousands of armed police and military.[continues...]
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Yahoo!
Jailed Chinese rights campaigner Hu Jia is in deteriorating health and police have barred relatives from seeing him on his birthday on Friday, the activist’s wife has written on her blog.
Police also prevented AFP reporters on Thursday from visiting his wife, Zeng Jinyan, despite China’s promises to allow foreign journalists freedom to report in the lead up to the Beijing Olympics.
The police action comes amid reports of a steady stream of arrests of dissidents and rights activists in the run-up to next month’s Games.
Zeng, who is confined to their small home in the “Bobo Freedom Village” apartment complex in Beijing with the couple’s nine-month-old baby, wrote on her blog that in a July 9 visit with Hu, he showed possible signs of anaemia.[continues...]
Categories: Part 2: What's happened to him and her? · Part 5: What about Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan now? · Press
From AI Australia
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan has written an open letter to China’s President Hu Jintao.
8 July 2008
Your Excellency
With one month remaining until the much-anticipated start of the XXIX Olympiad in Beijing, I ask you to take five steps toward the “development of human rights” pledged by the Beijing Olympics Bid Committee in 2001. Over the last year Amnesty International has collected hundreds of thousands of voices from around the world echoing this call. I join them in urging you to take this historic opportunity to act.
Amnesty International recognises the Chinese Government’s efforts to address some longstanding human rights concerns. I am particularly encouraged by the apparent progress made in reducing the use of the death penalty through the Supreme Peoples Court review process. [continues...]
Categories: Part 6: Who support them? · Press
From “News Desk”
Recently, renowned Beijing human rights advocate Hu Jia was transferred to Chaobai Prison in Tianjin. He has since been placed under heavy restrictions, in which four prisoners have been instructed to teach him the prison code. Hu’s mother, wife and daughter had visited him on June fifth. Subsequently Hu wrote separate letters to his parents, wife Jin Yan and young daughter.
According to insiders, there are policies in place that should allow for a family visit on the fifth of July, however officials have used “The Olympics” as an excuse to forbid the regular family visits. The title of Hu’s letter to his parents was “To Nurture”, to his wife he wrote “Like trees, thinking of each other”, and the letter for his daughter was entitled “Thanksgiving”.[continues...]
Categories: Part 5: What about Hu Jia and Zeng Jinyan now? · Press
BEIJING (AFP) - A leading US congressman said Tuesday China was carrying out a tragic crackdown to smother dissent during the Olympics, triggering a warning by Beijing to butt out or risk harming Sino-US ties.
“Tragically, the Olympics has triggered a massive crackdown designed to silence and put beyond reach all those whose views differ from the official ‘harmonious’ government line,” U.S. Representative Christopher Smith told journalists.
“On Sunday night, three human rights lawyers with whom we had scheduled to have dinner, were threatened, then taken away or placed under house arrest by the police. Our meeting never occurred.”
The detained rights lawyers, veteran activists Teng Biao, Li Heping and Li Baiguang, had not violated any law, he said.[continues...]
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