50 Years On: China’s ‘rightists’ remember

 The Anti-Rightist Movement (反右派运动) of the People’s Republic of China in the 1950s and early 1960s consisted of a series of campaigns to purge alleged “rightists” within the Communist Party of China and abroad. The campaigns were instigated by the Chairman, Mao Zedong.

— Wikipedia

“At that time there were huge struggle meetings with more than 1,400 people attending. I was struggled for an entire day. I was 22 years old. The mayor and the Chengdu municipal Party secretary even attended. They told me to speak up for myself, and I said three things. One was that I had never hated the Communist Party because I was born to a poor family and my father had never been punished by the Party; the second was that I loved socialism and the Communist Party. The third was that I was not a rightist. They said I was diehard and sent me off to the labor camp for re-education through labor.”

— former ‘rightist’ Tie Liu

Bao Tong on the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Campaign

This essay was broadcast exclusively on RFA’s Mandarin service June 14 under the title, 论反右派斗争的非法性-为反右派斗争五十周年作:

On the illegality of the anti-rightist struggle–written on the 50th anniversary of the Anti-Rightist Movement.

By Bao Tong

What sort of a crime is denying the leadership of the Party or reversing the direction of socialism? Citizens have a right to express agreement or disagreement with the Party’s leadership or with the direction of socialism. This is a legal act. The State and the law have a responsibility to protect it, not the right to punish it. Didn’t “we” allow tens of millions of people to starve to death through the “progress” achieved through the Party’s leadership and socialism, and persecute two hundred million more? The label “murderous spirit” should rather be applied to Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, who wiped out 550,000 people.

Confinement and Discrimination: Disabled in North Korea

Based on accounts by North Korean defectors, it appears that the disabled are one of the most vulnerable categories within a general population that has long been suffering from severe food shortages and the de facto collapse of the health system. According to the defectors, the disabled are held in contempt, marginalized, and often confined to their homes for long periods of time, since no appropriate disability welfare or rehabilitation systems are in place. Derogatory terms are habitually used in relation to the disabled, and if disabled babies are born into families that reside in Pyongyang, these families are often forcibly relocated to the rural areas.

Poems for June 4: Wang Dan and Luo Yihe

These poems are taken from a collection published on RFA’s Mandarin Web site for the 18th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 crackdown, in which hundreds, perhaps thousands of people were killed by People’s Liberation Army troops. Wang Dan (ZH) was a prominent leader of the student protest on Tiananmen Square, and spent seven years in prison in the northeastern city of Liaoning. He was exiled to the United States and is currently a PhD student at Harvard. Luo Yihe (1961-1989) was a professional poet who died on hunger strike during the pro-democracy protests of 1989:

 

in the hours between dusk and dawn
we believe in everything –
taste the revenge of time
in joys not yet arrived

 

– Wang Dan

Bao Tong’s June 4 essay: Pressure is a good thing

UPDATE: Poems for June 4th. This essay was broadcast recently by RFA’s Mandarin service, to commemorate the 18th anniversary of the military crackdown on June 4, 1989. Here is their anniversary page (ZH), including a collection of poems written for the occasion by prominent intellectuals and dissidents:

“An utterly repressive society leads to an utterly corrupt prosperity. Repression has split China down the middle, into a paradise for corrupt officials, and a purgatory for those with no power. The one-party, authoritarian system dominates China: it is used to deploy personnel, to make laws, to administer the country, to administer judicial affairs; it is the supreme principle to which all others must bow, for all its corruption.” – Bao Tong

Video: Xiamen protest over chemical plant

This video was sent to RFA’s Cantonese service by a participant.

Residents of Xiamen city in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian marched to the municipal government offices Friday to protest against a PX (related to benzene) chemical plant which is planned for the area. Carrying banners which read “Protect Xiamen’s environment” and shouting “Protect our homes!”, “Protect Xiamen!”, they also called for the resignation of the city’s mayor.

Propaganda Train or Friendship Train?

-A Few Remarks on the Historic Inter-Korean Rail Run-

Last May 17, a North Korean train crossed the DMZ into South Korea for the first time in decades. The train’s shrieking brakes suggested that the carriages and diesel locomotive suffered from old age, but a great paint job aimed to cover it all up.

Although its value is barely more than symbolic, the re-opening of the railway connection between the two Koreas was an event worth celebrating by Koreans on both sides of the DMZ.

Newsdesk: Family planning protests continue, officials try to make quiet amends

The Guangxi family planning unrest continues in Rong county. If you want the original Chinese, you can catch the latest from RFA’s Cantonese service and Mandarin service. There is plenty of background in English, from this blog, from the RFA Web site, and from ESWN. Here is a summarized version of a recent Cantonese report:

A year and a half for threatening to commit suicide

On April 27th, a couple living in Hexi village, Qingdao city of Shandong Province, climbed on the roof of their home where from they were being evicted and threatened to set themselves on fire. The home was quickly surrounded by demolition crews and enforcement staff. In the end, the couple was arrested and they were sentenced to one and one and a half years in prison last week.

RFA’s Mandarin service obtained a clandestine video of the event last April.

Newsdesk: China’s publishing crackdown to begin July 1

China is planning to bring in new regulations aimed at tightening up its magazine and periodicals market as part of a general tidy-up by the General Administration of Press and Publishing (GAPP) ahead of the 2008 Olympics. This is related to the leaked but unconfirmed document we blogged about earlier this month, in that it seems to tie in with the ‘main theme’ campaign of the Party’s powerful Propaganda Department. From Mandarin service(ZH) reporter Ding Xiao in Hong Kong: