After the earthquake and in the months before the Olympic Games in Beijing, which begin Aug. 8, China seemed to be moving into a new era of openness, with vigorous reporting from domestic news organizations. But local government officials and law enforcement officers have been trying to quell demonstrations, banning news coverage, blocking parents’ protests and offering parents payments and pensions in exchange for their silence. “Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education through labor to silence and lock up concerned citizens,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of the rights group, in a statement. Since June, the authorities have also detained at least three people who collected and spread information about shoddy school construction. Huang Qi, a human rights advocate based in Chengdu, the provincial capital, was charged with illegal possession of state secrets this month after meeting with bereaved parents and publishing articles about structural problems at schools. The police have not allowed his lawyers and family to meet with him. Zeng Hongling, a retired teacher who wrote three essays that criticized the government’s earthquake response and blamed corruption for poor workmanship in school buildings, was detained in June on suspicion of inciting subversion, according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a group based in Hong Kong. Journalist Jake Hooker was a volunteer in the Peace Corps in China starting in 2000 teaching English at a middle school in Wanxian, a small town along the middle reach of the Yangtze River, near the Three Gorges.
Jake Hooker writes: A school employee in Sichuan Province has been ordered to a labor camp for a year for taking photographs of schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake and posting them on the Internet
Penalty for China Quake Photos Reported
By JAKE HOOKER
Published: July 31, 2008
BEIJING — A school employee in Sichuan Province has been ordered to a labor camp for a year for taking photographs of schools that collapsed in the powerful May 12 earthquake and posting them on the Internet, a human rights group reported Wednesday.
The worker, Liu Shaokun, 54, was detained at Guanghan Middle School on June 25, according to the group, Human Rights in China, which is based in New York. Family members informed the group that Mr. Liu had posted the photographs online; that has not been independently verified.
The order against Mr. Liu, for “re-education through labor,” is an extrajudicial punishment that does not require a trial.
The quake killed nearly 70,000 people as it collapsed buildings and roads and sent boulders tumbling from hills and mountains. There is no official figure for the number of students who were killed, but the Chinese government reported that 7,000 classrooms and dormitories had been destroyed, raising questions about building standards in the countryside. Devastated parents held demonstrations and protests. Because of China’s one-child policy, many lost their only child.
After the earthquake and in the months before the Olympic Games in Beijing, which begin Aug. 8, China seemed to be moving into a new era of openness, with vigorous reporting from domestic news organizations. But local government officials and law enforcement officers have been trying to quell demonstrations, banning news coverage, blocking parents’ protests and offering parents payments and pensions in exchange for their silence.
“Instead of investigating and pursuing accountability for shoddy and dangerous school buildings, the authorities are resorting to re-education through labor to silence and lock up concerned citizens,” said Sharon Hom, executive director of the rights group, in a statement.
Since June, the authorities have also detained at least three people who collected and spread information about shoddy school construction.
Huang Qi, a human rights advocate based in Chengdu, the provincial capital, was charged with illegal possession of state secrets this month after meeting with bereaved parents and publishing articles about structural problems at schools. The police have not allowed his lawyers and family to meet with him.
Zeng Hongling, a retired teacher who wrote three essays that criticized the government’s earthquake response and blamed corruption for poor workmanship in school buildings, was detained in June on suspicion of inciting subversion, according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, a group based in Hong Kong.
In June, the state-run Deyang Daily said that Mr. Liu had visited schools in several cities ravaged by the earthquake and tried to organize parents to protest. The report said he was detained for “inciting people to illegally petition” the government and for “seriously disrupting social order.”
“To protect social stability, the police decided to criminally detain him,” the report said.
The crackdown has raised concern among some Chinese. Four prominent Sichuan intellectuals published a letter this month raising questions about Mr. Huang’s arrest and characterizing it as part of a broader effort to clamp down on civil society. “We don’t want to see this case once again attract international attention to China’s terrible human rights record in this Olympic year,” they wrote.
