World Affairs
Yes, we have no political prisoners
Published 11 December 2006
China holds its first human rights exhibition but the public may not enter
My guide at China's first human-rights exhibition explained that the purpose was to raise people's awareness of this important issue. "Human rights are written into our constitution!" he said proudly.
Why, then, the bevy of police officers with walkie-talkies, next to a phalanx of police cars, preventing the public from entering? "For security," explained Li Xiaojun of the State Council information service, whose unhappy task it was to show me around. "Because it is too crowded."
A desultory smattering of people wandered around the photographs of happy Tibetans and videos of singing children enjoying their human rights. Only those allocated tickets by their work unit - a remnant of China's communist system of control - had been granted entry.
Secret policemen in black leather jackets firmly turned away an old lady in a red windcheater who tried to come in off the street. Anyone who might be a "petitioner" with a grievance was put on a waiting bus. We filmed it moving off, another old lady staring at us plaintively from the back window, until our guide carefully placed himself in between the vehicle and our lens.
I asked Li if I could see the exhibit on political prisoners. "China has no political prisoners," he replied. "Political prisoners exist only in the minds and hearts of westerners."
Strictly speaking, he was right. In China, the courts do not convict people of disagreeing with the government, but find other reasons to lock them up. I asked about one of the country's most celebrated prisoners, Chen Guan cheng, a blind, self-taught lawyer who was to be retried two days after I attended the exhibition.
Chen was convicted in August of "organising a mob to disrupt traffic" and "damaging public property". His real crime, however, was to represent the women of Linyi, in his native Shandong Province, who were suing the local authorities for forcing them to have abortions in the eighth month of pregnancy.
International human-rights groups and even the US state department protested about the original trial, which Chen's lawyers were barred from attending. Two witnesses later claimed to have been tortured. Someone seems to have decided that it couldn't stand, so the verdict was overturned on appeal and the case sent back to be heard again. All this appeared to have escaped Li. "I've never heard of the person," he said.
Neither, apparently, had he heard of Ching Cheong, the Hong Kong-based reporter for the Straits Times of Singapore whose conviction for spying for Taiwan was upheld on 24 November. "I don't know what you're talking about," said Li. "In China we have freedom of the press. We have 9,468 kinds of magazine and 1,931 newspapers!"
Well, two can play the numbers game. Am nes ty International, I countered, says China imprisons more journalists than any other country. "That's not true!" said Li, who was beginning to sound quite hurt. "Anyway, we think Amnesty International is hostile to China." That's why the Amnesty website is blocked, he explained.
We took a quick canter around the pictures of cheerful Roman Catholics worshipping at state-approved churches. Underground churches? "They do not exist!" NGOs? Li said there were 170,000 - or maybe it was 17,000.
While we were perusing a photograph of NGO workers at a "training session on capacity building", Wan Yanghou, who heads a small NGO that campaigns for those who have contracted Aids and hepatitis from contaminated blood supplies, was helping police with their inquiries. They had shut down the meeting he was trying to hold and hauled him off to an anonymous room for two days of questioning.
When I saw him on his release, he was looking on the bright side. "I don't normally get that much time to talk to government officials about what we're trying to do," he said. "It's useful, because we want to work with the government."
Meanwhile, Chen Guancheng's retrial has just ended with the court upholding his conviction. His wife, Yuan Weijin, who was allowed to testify in his defence, was briefly arrested the following day. That the authorities retried the blind lawyer at all suggests that international pressure does have an impact. Growing numbers of Chinese travel abroad and read foreign publications online - Beijing doesn't block everything.
Li seemed relieved when I said we had seen enough, but also slightly worried that I might have misinterpreted some of his remarks.
"There is some dialogue with Amnesty International," he said. "And I do know that we have quite a long way to go on human rights."
Lindsey Hilsum is China correspondent for Channel 4 News
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