Big Brother Is Alive and Kicking in China (Notes from the Paris Conference)

We all admire those courageous souls who under the most draconian circumstances manage to rise from the mud and set an example of how to fight for freedom and the right cause in seemingly impossible countries.

Gao Yu, an award winning freelance journalist in China (being a freelance journalist in China is one of those most difficult things to do in the world), has upped the ante time and again when it comes to courageous reporting in the world’s top jailer of journalists.

And at the Paris conference, she gave a sober analysis of what her tormentors have been up to lately.

Big Brother Is Alive and Kicking in China
By Gao Yu
We know that all of these problems in China didn't occur just in 2008.

I was arrested in October. It took the Chinese judges 18 months to sentence me to six years in prison and one year of deprivation of citizen rights. My crime was to have written two editorials for a Hong Kong magazine called The Mirror. And they considered this as “divulging state secrets.”

One way that Chinese authorities were dissatisfied with the Olympics not getting the IOC nod some time ago was because some human rights concerns were raised.

In 1997, the Chinese president went to the U.S. and President Bill Clinton went to China the next year, but until 1999 I was not released.

Only then could I get medical treatment and released for that purpose. During the term of my imprisonment, people next to me went to the Foreign Affairs Ministry to express to them support for me, there was even a lot of pressure on China from international media.

Compared with others, my sentence was heavier and my right to fair trial was less respected. I was accused of state secrets divulgation, but in 1993, we were closer to the Tiananmen incident.

But in spite of everything, the situation is even worse today when it comes to press freedoms. These issues are not due to the organization of the Olympics, it's been 60 years since the Chinese Communists came to power, and the reforms have moved toward markets and openings, but there have been gaps between rich and poor.

“Harmonious Society” is the new slogan, but it doesn't allow the people to examine what's happened in the last 60 years. Older generations do know the situation in China, but few can look at it closely. These are people who are 60 and 70 who aren't allowed to seek redress.

Control over the press is ultimately a tool to impeding people learning about the true face of things. Journalists and information workers have not enjoyed any legal protection for the past 60 years.

Whether you look at central or other levels of government, there are all kinds of examples of ways that people can run into legal complications for breaching the law, by using their right to expression.

There may not be explicit legal provisions allowing this, but there are no problems finding ways to impede their rights. The rights to free expression of peasants and ordinary people whose lands have been expropriated are not upheld.

Criticism from abroad helps, especially now with the Olympic Games. In China, you can be branded with a political label because of anything you do. When it comes to criticism from abroad, the Chinese government turns it around and labels it as “attempts to politicize the Olympics.”

There has been significant economic development in China in the last number of years. The ministry of propaganda is able to spin things significantly. They extend their control over all of the publications. The government of China brings back to work retired journalists to report on what they find, and to "edit" publications to bring them into line.

There are standing orders for everyone to stick to what the agency wants reported. There can be complete shutdowns on coverage of certain issues, like natural disasters. A journalist can't visit the location of a disaster unless you're with the Xinhua official news agency or affiliated with them.

Instructions are given orally to publications so that there's no written record about unseemly issues.

We wanted to write about inflation and Hunan Economic Channel wanted to speak about it, but they got a call from the National Development Council and they were told that they needed to be back in line, and they had to say that the information they'd divulged before was unfounded and had to be rescinded.

There are other examples of semi-official or official publications where journalists were not officially accredited and a contribution was made, and the journalist in question may be fired from instructions of the authorities.

There are other examples. A party head sent his own private guards to beat up someone whose articles they weren't satisfied with. Advertising can be withheld from a publication, especially by newspapers that have a history of writing about sensitive issues.

We know that there is a certain line set about the Dalai Lama and his clique. You can't say anything good about the Tibetans. Journalists are likely to conform to what's expected of them. As they move toward a more free market with economic realities, one becomes aware of the "soft" powers.

Because a journalist hadn't written for three years, he was accused of being a fake journalist, and was beaten to death.

I visited a famous journalist, now 92 years old, and he asked me to convey to you the following message: Don't expect the Party or the Communists to solve the human rights issues in the run-up to the Olympics.

Even so, we hope the authorities will free all prisoners of opinion and cyber-journalists who are locked up in China.

Gao Yu is a freelance journalist who won the 195 Golden Pen of Freedom. He’s also First Laureate (1997) of UNESCO’s annual World Press Freedom Prize.