China quake activist sentenced on subversion charges

A BBC article reports that Tan Zuoren, a Chinese activist, has been sentenced to five years in jail. One of Tan's lawyers, Pu Zhiqiang, said that "all of the proceedings were linked to 4 June (1989)." Tan was officially charged with igniting "subversion" related to the governmental suppression of the pro-democracy movement of the Tiananmen Square incident. However, Tan's supporters and human rights groups -- notably Amnesty International -- say that his investigation related to the construction-related causes of the 2008 Sichuan quake is the real reason for his conviction. Among the 80,000 that died in the 2008 earthquake, many were schoolchildren killed by the collapse of several thousand school buildings. Grieving parents and allegations of corruption in the school construction led to much public support for Tan's research, a fact that Roseann Rife, of Amnesty International, likely influenced the judicial decision to not include mention of the quake in the verdict, for fear of public backlash. Wang Quinghua, Tan's wife, said that "this isn't justice" and Pu said that Tan planned to appeal. Chinese artist and fellow activist for earthquake victims, Ai Weiwei, said that he thought this would be "a very important case for China...It shows the Chinese legal system has taken a big step backwards. Tan's crime was entirely one of speech, of conscience."

This case reveals a sad state for civil society in China. Like the situation of AIDS activist Wan Yanhai  who left China because of governmental pressure, this case involves undue suppression of interest groups and independent research. Yet Wan left the country as a preventive measure and was never arrested like Tan. In conducting research in the failed construction of schools, Tan was responding to public concerns, unlike the Chinese government who did not hold up promises of investigation. Chinese citizen-state relations are further compromised by the fact that Tan's original trial from last year was adjourned without a verdict, and this trial's verdict was decided upon and read out in about a mere ten minutes. A continual censorship of governmental criticism lends injury to the administration's legitimacy.

(Photo credit: Shanghaiist; BBC)

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AIDS Activist Leaves China After Government Pressure

“When I work in China, they can really find a target to attack. When I left, they no longer had a target.”

Wan Yanhai (CIES)

Edward Wong of the New York Times reports that, Wan Yanhai has left China for the U.S. with his family in order to better continue his work as an AIDS activist. Wan is the founder of a prominent AIDS activist group, the Aizhixing Institute (Bejjing), which had been the subject of increasing governmental pressure. Kate Krauss, Wan's friend and director of the AIDS Policy Project, said that it became "impossible for Wan Yanhai to remain in China" because of the government. The governmental pressures include scrutiny from the tax agencies. The tax officials were not local, but rather unusually, from a municipical authority. Wan's office was even investigated by the fire department, apparently to ensure the office was in line with fire safety codes. It is important to note that Wan is extremely notable in AIDS campaigning in China, and has, in fact, dealt with the government before. Aizhixing was founded in 1994, a time when AIDS was not spoken about much publicly. In 2002, Wan was detained for four weeks because of pointing his finger in the mid-'90s to the government’s negligence the cause of an HIV spread in Henan Province villages.

The inquiries on Wan are not isolated; they come at a time of increased inspection on all civil society groups -- particularly those that receive foreign investment. The vitality of grassroots organizations in an important indicator of the health of citizen-state relations. The fact that Wan had to relocate to Philadelphia in order to continue his activism is not a promising sign for the global legitimacy of the Chinese government. Also, in the last year, administrative pressure has been a method of pressure on civil society groups. For example, in July 2009, Gongmeng, a legal research organization in Beijing, was shut down and a leader detained after an investigation by tax officials.

Link to the English version of the Aizhixing site.