By Mo Zhixu, April 13, 2016 “When the Southern activists stood amidst heavy traffic and photographed themselves holding placards of protest, the feeling it gives is a little surreal….”   On April 8, 2016, after a year and half in detention, two activists arrested in 2014 for holding banners on the streets of Guangzhou in support of Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement—Wang Mo (王默) and Xie Wenfei (謝文飛, real name Xie Fengxia 謝豐夏)—were sentenced to four and a half years imprisonment by the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court. In addition, they will be deprived of political rights for three years. On the same day Zhang Shengyu (張聖雨, real name Zhang Rongping 張榮平), who held a placard in support of the Hong Kong students, was sentenced to four […]

By Xiao Shu, published: January 8, 2015 A verdict awaits the pioneer of China’s rights movement after he stood trial the second time last November. Veteran commentator Xiao Shu, writing originally in the New York Times Chinese, places Guo Feixiong in the larger picture of the rights struggle in China. – The Editor   A civil rights movement has been unfolding in China. As Martin Luther King Jr. was to the American civil rights movement, essential figures have been emerging from the movement in China. Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄), who was tried on November 28 for “gathering a crowd to disrupt order in a public place,” is one of them. While the American Civil Rights Movement fought for the rights of millions of African Americans, the […]

By Xiao Shu, published: July 7, 2014   Guo Feixiong (郭飞雄, pen name of Yang Maodong)  was arrested on August 8, 2013, and indicted on June 19, 2014, on charges of “gathering a crowd to disturb order in a public place.” Specifically, he is accused of organizing a demonstration outside the Southern Weekly headquarters during the paper’s New Year Greetings incident in January 2013, and of planning to hold signs in eight cities in the spring of 2013 calling for officials to disclose assets and for China to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But cowardly, the indictment made no mention of his call for press freedom, asset disclosure and the ratification of ICCPR. His lawyer Sui Muqing stated that the case […]

By China Change, published: December 29, 2013   For China watchers, the year of 2013 began promptly with the Southern Weekend incident. As a New Year’s tradition, the liberal-leaning, Guangzhou-based paper issued its New Year’s greetings in an essay calling for a “dream of constitutionalism.” The essay drew the ire of the censors at the paper, was intercepted in the editing room, butchered, turned into something towing the Party’s line, all without the knowledge of the journalists working there. A few Weibo complaints morphed into national, then international, news in a matter of hours. In a few days, the paper was shushed and back to its normal operations with outsiders knowing very little about the internal repercussions and handling of the events. Now, at the […]

Guangdong Province Guangzhou Municipality Tianhe District People’s Procuratorate Indictment  Tianhe Procuratorate  public criminal indictment [2013] No. 2242   Defendant Liu Yuandong, male, born March 30, 1978, ID number 44142419780330****, Han ethnicity, undergraduate university education, place of household registration: Guangdong province, Wuhua county, Shuizhai township neighborhood committee township government dormitory. Criminally detained on March 11, 2013, by Guangzhou Municipality Public Security Bureau Tianhe District Branch on suspicion of capital withdrawal. On April 3, 2013, the Tianhe District People’s Procuratorate approved the the arrest of the defendant, who was arrested on April 4 of the same year by Guangzhou Municipality Public Security Bureau Tianhe District Branch. Defendant Yang Jinghu, male, born July 14, 1973, ID number  44082419730714****, Han ethnicity, undergraduate university education, place of household registration: Apt. […]

The first overview in English. By China Change, published October 19, 2013   In recent years, street banner protests have become an emerging phenomena in China. We often see photos of petitioners rolling out banners to protest injustice or forced demolitions. But prior to this year, when the Chinese government launched a more severe crackdown in an attempt to put an end to these activities, cities such as Guangzhou, Shenzhen and others had seen frequent street banner protests. Different from rights defense demonstrations, these street protests called for government officials to publicly disclose their finances and, more broadly, for democratic freedoms. They are a form of direct, conscious political behavior. 37-year-old Wang Aizhong (王爱忠)attended  a university in Guangzhou in the 1990s and has since lived […]