REAL LIFE IN CHINA

"You cannot be a rights lawyer in this country without becoming a rights case yourself."
—Lawyer Gao Zhisheng, December 2007.

In China, meeting as a group is illegal

In China, religions are illegal

In China, protest is illegal.

In China, blogging negatively about the government is illegal

YI KAIXUAN

His name was Yi Kaixuan. He was 6 months old. It seemed like a clear-cut liability case;  Sanlu – the manufacturer of the powdered milk that killed Yi - has been at the center of China’s biggest contaminated food crisis in years. But as in two other courts dealing with related lawsuits, judges have declined to hear the case.

In February, 2008, Zhang Jianzhong, one of China’s most prominent and outspoken defense attorneys, was tried in Beijing on charges of assisting in the fabrication of evidence in a major corruption case.  Zhang’s case has sent shockwaves through China’s legal profession.

Ye Guozhu is a 52-year-old housing advocate was detained on suspicion of "disturbing social order" and sentenced to four years in prison for "quarrellig and making trouble."

Wang Dejia: Wang wrote articles criticizing Beijing for human rights abuses, and stated that China's central government was ignoring the needs of common people in the lead-up to the Olympics and was more concerned about cracking down on dissidents and building new venues. Wang was detained on December 14, 2008, on a charge of "subverting state authority."

In April, in the southeastern province of Zhejiang, 60,000 people burned police cars, smashed windows, and injured more than thirty government workers in protest of pollution from nearby chemical plants. The protest was a partial success: six chemical facilities were shut down or relocated.

In July, in Xinchang, a city south of Shanghai, 15,000 people rioted for three days against a ten-year-old pharmaceutical plant.

Government figures, notable only for their underreporting say there were 74,000 large protests in China in 2007.

The recent jailing of parents, who asked for investigations into why school buildings collapsed during the recent earthquakes, killing thousands of children, while government buildings suffered so much less damage, only highlights the profound inequity between what Chinese leadership says and what it does.

China’s “Constitution” proclaims equality for all and protection from illegal search and arrest. In reality, China’s Constitution protects only politicians, the military and the police while they harass and jail anyone or any group who even remotely threatens “social order.”

Source - http://www.chinanews.org.html – APRIL 10, 2008

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