(L to R) Angela Gui, daughter of disappeared Hong Kong bookseller Gui
Minhai; Ilshat Hassan, president, Uyghur American Association; and Su
Yutong, journalist and internet activist, testify May 24, at the
Congressional-Executive Commission on China on China's global efforts to
silence critics. (Gary Feuerberg/ Epoch Times)
WASHINGTON—China’s repressive methods at home are well
documented and embedded in our memories. The 27th anniversary of the
student-led protests on Tiananmen Square and the bloodshed that followed
will be upon us next Saturday, June 4. What is much less well known is
the long reach of the Chinese communist regime beyond its borders to
intimidate and suppress criticism of its human rights record and
policies.
Today, China is in a strong position to employ its diplomatic
relationships and economic and trade powers to persuade its critics to
back off or self-censor.
Among the most disturbing examples of likely PRC interference in free
societies concerns the American Bar Association (ABA), which had made a
formal offer to well-known China human rights lawyer Dr. Teng Biao to
write a book about his work in China and the country’s judicial system
and the future. Although the publishing contract was signed, it was soon
rescinded because of fears that Teng’s book would offend the Chinese
regime.
Teng quotes the correspondent from the ABA with whom he had been
working. “There is concern that we run the risk of upsetting the Chinese
government by publishing your book, and because we have ABA commissions
working in China, there is fear that we would put them and their work
at risk.”
The source for the above quote is taken from Teng’s written testimony
prepared for a congressional hearing of the Congressional-Executive
Commission on China (CECC) held on May 24. The hearing’s aim was to
learn firsthand from Teng and other witnesses residing outside China’s
borders, who have been targets of China’s intimidation. The ABA declined
the Commission’s invitation to answer questions, but sent a letter that
the Chair entered into the hearing record.
Teng began testifying orally via satellite from London, when the
Chair stopped his speaking because the communication became too garbled.
In his written testimony, however, he says, “For my activism, I’ve
been banned from teaching, been forced out of a job, had my passport
confiscated, been disbarred from practicing law, and have even been
jailed and tortured.” He writes that he is one of many Chinese
activists, who he says must make sacrifices for the sake of the
country’s future.
Tiananmen Square Massacre Information Suppressed
“China has long used its visa denial and censorship policies to
muzzle discussion of the Tiananmen protests and their violent
suppression by punishing and marginalizing the former student leaders
and encouraging self-censorship among academics and foreign
journalists,” states the introductory description to the hearing.
Twenty-seven years after Tiananmen, “the methods used by Beijing to
enforce a code of silence have gone global,” said Rep. Christopher Smith
(R-N.J.), Chair of CECC. “The long reach of China extends beyond its
borders to Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, India, Kenya, at the U.N.,
and in the U.S.,” he said.
Some of the
witnesses that the Commission sought to invite to testify declined based
on very legitimate fears about what would happen to members of their
family who remain in China.
Smith said that last year, California-based LinkedIn blocked articles
related to Tiananmen that were posted inside China or by members hosted
on its Chinese site.
The Cochairman of the CECC Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said that
dissidents living in the safety aboard “regularly report that their
family members who remain in China are harassed, detained and even
imprisoned in retaliation for their truth-telling about the regime’s
abuses.” Rubio was incensed that “some of the witnesses that the
Commission sought to invite to testify declined based on very legitimate
fears about what would happen to members of their family who remain in
China.”
Daughter Misses Her Father
The hearing discussed the disappearance and alleged abduction of five
Hong Kong booksellers. Angela Gui, a 22-year old undergraduate student
at the University of Warwick, UK, testified regarding her father who is
one of the five. She said she always had regular communication via Skype
with her father, bookseller Gui Minhai, until October 13, when
communication was broken off. Later she learned from one of her father’s
colleagues (who would later be abducted himself) that three others who
worked at the same Hong Kong bookstore and publishing business were also
missing. Her father was last seen at his vacation home in Thailand.
Finally, the Chinese acknowledged they had her father but they claimed
he came to China voluntarily.
“In November and in January, [my father] sent me two messages in
Skype telling me to keep quiet. As his daughter, I could tell he sent
these under duress,” she said at the hearing.
She didn’t hear or see anything about her father until three months
after his disappearance on a “clearly a staged and badly put together
confession video of him aired on Chinese state TV in January.”
Her father is a Swedish citizen—the only citizenship he holds. He
could not have left Thailand voluntarily because there is no record of
his departure, she said. So, here is a Swedish citizen abducted by the
Chinese state agents from a third sovereign country, in violation of
international and China’s own law.
After eight months, “I still don’t know where he is [in China], how
he is being treated, or what his legal status is,” which is especially
troubling because he is Swedish citizen.
Self-Censorship
Although Dr. Teng Biao was unable to testify orally, his written testimony was especially cogent and powerful.
“The ABA is just one of the major Western institutions attempting to
promote change in China—on the Communist Party’s terms,” he writes.
He said that the ABA and other Western organizations’ training
programs for Chinese judges, prosecutors, police, and lawyers
associations might be in jeopardy if sensitive topics were not avoided,
such as the persecution of Falun Gong, the Tiananmen Square massacre,
and the Party’s politics in Tibet and Xinjiang.
The ABA is just one of the major Western institutions attempting to promote change in China—on the Communist Party’s terms.
“So without realizing it, Western institutions end up helping the
Chinese government to silence and marginalize the individuals and groups
it finds most troublesome. Self-censorship has become instinctive, and
now characterizes the very basis of their interactions with the regime,”
he writes.
Teng said that nearly all the funding of Western programs intended to
support the rule of law and human rights wind up lining the pockets of
government departments and scholars with state connections. Resources
intended to further the rule of law and human rights have fallen into
the hands “whose job is to trample human rights,” such as the courts,
Procuratorates, public security departments, and government lawyers
associations.
China’s Pressure on German Broadcaster
Su Yutong, Chinese journalist and human rights activist, was kept
under surveillance and periodically placed under house arrest, according
to her bio, because of her activities in the commemoration events
related to the Tiananmen massacre. In June 2010, her house was ransacked
by the police after she made public the personal diary of former
Chinese Premiere Li Peng. She was then forced to leave China. The same
year she became a journalist with the Chinese section of Deutsche Welle,
a German international broadcaster. She wrote nearly 1,500 articles
which often included reports about Chinese dissidents.
In 2014, a Beijing media consultant claimed that some Western media,
including Deutsche Welle, were unfair in their criticisms of the Chinese
regime’s crushing the Tiananmen protests, she said. Deutsche Welle came
under new management that wanted to take more “guidance and direction”
from China, she testified. Su Yutong was outspoken in opposing this
change in policy and the whitewashing of the 1989 events. She was fired
in August 2014.
So without
realizing it, Western institutions end up helping the Chinese government
to silence and marginalize the individuals and groups it finds most
troublesome.
Pressures on Family in China
China has punished the political activities of Ilshat Hassan by
making life difficult for his family. Hassan was born in Xinjiang,
China, which he calls East Turkistan. He taught college in Xinjiang for
15 years, but had to flee China in 2003 due to the constant “harassment,
threats, and persecution from the regional government’s secret service
agency.” He left behind his wife and child, parents, sisters and
brothers. He eventually came to the U.S. as a refugee. He currently is
very politically active and president of the Uyghur American
Association.
“In the beginning, the Chinese government held my family members
hostage, denying my wife and son passports.” This was when he was hoping
to resettle his family in Malaysia, before he came to America.
After seeing that his wife would never get a passport, and also to
protect her “from constant harassment from the Chinese government and
secret agents,” he made the “painful decision” to get a divorce. “But
that didn’t stop the Chinese [regime] from continuing to harass and
threaten my ex-wife, and she was constantly under surveillance and
threats,” he said.
More recently, on Aug. 17, 2014 around 1:30 a.m. Chinese authorities
suddenly entered his elder sister’s house, searched the house, seized
her son’s computer, and held her without charge in an undisclosed place
for around nine months.
“Even though she was released, she still has to report to the local
police regularly, and has to get approval even to visit her parents,” he
said.
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