Megan's blog

A Tibetan Buddhist lama, Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche, was sentenced to 8 years in the Laogai on December 23, 2009, on charges of "illegal possession of ammunition and embezzlement." According to his lawyer, Jiang Tianyong, he denies all charges.

Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche, who lived and preached in the Tibetan region of Sichuan Province known as Garze, was first arrested in May 2008 following the unrest in Tibet and surrounding areas that took place in March of that year. At the time of his arrest, human rights groups alleged that Chinese police had planted ammunition at Phurbu Tsering Rinpoche's home. He was tried and charged in April of 2009, but his sentence was not announced until December 23, 2009.

More than a year after being detained, and sixth months after being charged with subversion, prominent dissident and long-time democracy activist Liu Xiaobo was finally given a trial on December 23rd. Foreign diplomats, including US embassy officials, were barred from attending Mr. Liu's two-hour trial and instead congregated outside the court to await the verdict. The Chinese government shrewdly waited until Christmas Day to announce that Liu Xiaobo would be sentenced to eleven years in the Laogai. Despite the timing of the sentencing, numerous governments and human rights activists have already condemned Mr. Liu's harsh sentence. According to the verdict, which can be seen here (in Chinese), Mr. Liu was arrested on purely political grounds, and his harsh sentence comes in response to numerous articles he has published on the Internet. Hong Kong-based journalist Willy Lam argues in this article that the regime handed down such a harsh sentence in order to instill fear in the general public, as "mass incidents" are on the rise (an estimated 100,000 demonstrations in 2009 alone) and more and more Chinese internet users are exploiting cracks in China's Great Firewall to push for freedom of speech.

Despite months and months of relentless international pressure, Chinese authorities have finally set a date for the trial of one of China's most well-known dissidents and long-time democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo. According to Mr. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, and his lawyer, Shang Baojun, Mr. Liu's trial will take place this Wednesday in Beijing. He is charged with subversion, and given the high conviction rate in China's judicial system, particularly for politically sensitive cases, Mr. Liu will almost certainly be found guilty. He faces up to fifteen years in prison due to pro-Democracy articles he has written and his involvement with Charter 08, an online petition calling on the government to respect human rights and begin a peaceful transition to a democratic system.

It seems that the authorities in Beijing are hoping to avoid international criticism by holding Mr. Liu's trial on December 23rd, when most of the west will be distracted by Christmas. But Ding Zilin, of the Tiananmen Mothers (a group that organizes the family members of those killed in the Tiananmen Massacre), is urging fellow signatories of Charter 08 to show up for Mr. Liu's trial in Beijing. They will almost certainly be denied entry into the court room, but Ms. Ding is hoping to provide some moral support to Mr. Liu and his wife by this brave act of solidarity.

Laogai Research Foundation is attending Human Rights in China's first Banned Book Fair, cohosted by Fordham Law School's Leitner Center for International Law and Justice.

Be sure to check the HRIC video feed of events - watch for Harry Wu around 4:45 (EST) this afternoon!

Editor's note: This event has already passed. Please listen to audio of Harry's speech here.

There are quite a few human rights organizations participating: International Campaign for Tibet, Students for a Free Tibet, the Uyghur American Association, PEN American Center/Independent Chinese PEN, Human Rights Watch, Freedom House, and Reporters Without Borders (hope we're not forgetting any!). For more on the Book Fair, click here.

When I tell people about China's Laogai, often the first question people ask me is "What's wrong with prison labor?" Many people say that prisoners ought to labor, either as punishment or to pay for the cost of their imprisonment, and point out that the U.S. allows prison labor. I recently read a blog post arguing that prison labor would be a better deterrent to crime than just prison. Usually I respond by saying that prison labor in the U.S. is different from prison labor in China--working conditions in the Laogai are appalling, prisoners are forced to work, are not compensated for their work, and if they don't meet their production quotas prisoners are often beaten or have their meals withheld. So although the U.S. allows prison labor, it is very different from prison labor in China. Even so, there are some fundamental problems with prison labor in general that are worth pointing out.

Prison labor, particularly unpaid prison labor as they have in China, creates problems for those who wish to keep prison populations small and minimize arbitrary or unnecessary detention, and for those who believe in free markets with true competition. To the first point, a system in which the government stands to profit from imprisoning its people provides a perverse incentive for that government to continue to imprison more and more people. Many U.S. states already have prison labor, and, in fact, the five states with the highest incarceration rates as of 2007 (Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama, respectively) all have active prison labor programs. (This fact also discredits the deterrent argument.) To be fair, the state with the lowest incarceration rate, Maine, also allows prison labor, so it is ambiguous whether the U.S. use of prison labor contributes to our notoriously high incarceration rates, but the connection should at the very least give us pause.  (More after the jump)

Mr. Huang was sentenced today to three years in prison, charged with possessing state secrets. According to the Washington Post, Mr. Huang's wife believes Chinese authorities intentionally waited until after President Obama's trip to sentence Mr. Huang in order to reduce the chance of international criticism. Mr Huang's wife also believes restrictions on human rights activists inside China have grown worse since Mr. Obama's departure, and the recent detention of several prominent human rights lawyers would support this claim.

From the Washington Post: "Human rights lawyers and campaigners said today's tough sentence for the 46-year-old Huang -- the maximum penalty allowable under Chinese law -- was a sign that Chinese leaders were in no mood to make concessions on human rights and might even be engaged in a new crackdown targeting lawyers and prominent dissidents."

Chengdu-based human rights activist Huang Qi is scheduled to be sentenced at a hearing on Monday, November 23rd at 10 AM in the Wuhou District Court of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, according to his wife. Mr. Huang was the head of the Tianwang Human Rights Center in Chengdu, and was arrested in June of 2008 after posting the demands of parents of children killed in that year's devastating earthquake on the organization's website.

The parents called for an investigation into the quality of their children's schools, many of which collapsed in the earthquake even as other buildings nearby remained standing. They also called for those responsible for the shoddy construction and lack of oversight to be held accountable. Mr. Huang has been charged with illegally possessing state secrets and was tried in a closed hearing on August 5 of this year, although it is unclear why the government has waited so long to announce a verdict.

The trial of one of the student leaders from the Tiananmen Square protests, Zhou Rongjun, began today, according to his lawyer. Mr. Zhou is a permanent resident of the U.S. and has lived here for over ten years, but was arrested in September while attempting to return to China.

Mr. Zhou is being accused of fraud involving a bank in Hong Kong, but Mr. Zhou's lawyer, family, and others familiar with his case believe he was actually detained due to his years of involvement in the democracy movement. It's worth noting that Mr. Zhou's trial began one day after President Obama departed from his first official visit to China. Thanks to VOA's Chinese service for this update on Mr. Zhou's case.

I spend a lot of time reading about China on the Internet. It's my job, but even before it was my job it was a very serious hobby. I also like to look through readers' comments. Articles on China often hit a nerve with readers, Chinese and American (or otherwise) alike, and generate fierce debates, sometimes hundreds of comments even on a relatively brief article. But in the past few years these debates have been hijacked by the 五毛党(wu mao dang), or 50 Cent Party. They are the legion of young Chinese Internet users (some estimate there are 280,000 of them) who are paid 50 mao (roughly 7 cents) to post comments on blogs, news articles, bulletin boards, etc. that are pro-Communist Party, essentially to drown out critical voices. While they are most active on Chinese-language sites, the 50 Cent Party has found its way onto message boards, blogs and other forums in Western media, too, even spearheading the campaign against CNN's Jack Cafferty for calling the leadership in Beijing a bunch of "goons and thugs." David Bandurski wrote a great article in the Far Eastern Economic Review last year about this phenomenon.

I take issue with the 50 Cent Party for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that it intimidates Chinese netizens into witholding their true opinions (not only do they drown out dissenting voices, the 50 Cent Party report back to their Communist Party bosses on exactly who is making the critical comments). But what is most frustrating for me personally is the way the 50 Cent Party has made genuine debate online about China virtually impossible. First of all, the tactics of the 50 Cent Party are tried and true debate-killers -- "You can't talk, America had slavery" and the like -- trying to shift the focus of the debate away from the issue at hand and questioning anyone's right to even discuss China outside of China. What's worse, I find myself assuming that any pro-government comment is paid for by the Communist Party, thus dismissing what could in fact be genuine comments that deserve a closer look. The world -- and China -- would benefit from honest, rigorous debate about Chinese government policy and its impact beyond its borders. But the 50 Cent Party is rendering this impossible. (Read more)

This article from BBC News is so bizarre it is almost comical. A group of book salesmen were handing out pamphlets on a lecture at a primary school in Zhejiang Province. Somehow, a rumor spread that these men were actually a child trafficking gang trying to kidnap the students. Angry parents mobbed the five salesmen and beat them, according to reports from the local police. Eventually the police broke up the mob and sent the salesmen to a local hospital, but one of the men was beaten so severely he died soon afterwards. 

Assuming this report is true – and reports emerging from local police in China should always be taken with a grain of salt – it highlights several underlying human rights issues. The first issue is media censorship and the likelihood of rumors leading to violence in China (remember the Guangdong toy factory?). Rumors are common worldwide, but in China they are particularly dangerous for two reasons: one, due to media censorship, people trust rumors more than they trust what they see in the media; and two, because local officials, particularly police, are so often corrupt, upon hearing a rumor people in China are likely to turn to vigilante justice, rather than calling the police.