International PEN
Writers in Prison Committee
8 March 2008 –
International Women’s Day
Women
Writing Under Surveillance in China
Five
months exactly before the opening of the Beijing Olympics on 8 August 2008,
International PEN is marking International Women’s Day (8 March) by
celebrating the work of three women writers under threat in China – Zeng
Jinyan, Tsering Woeser and Li
Jianhong. Whilst not actually detained, they are among the many
lesser-known dissidents suffering wide-ranging forms of harassment,
including brief detentions, periods of house arrest, travel restrictions,
loss of work, denial of access to information and communications, heavy
surveillance and censorship.
Each
of these women is continuing to write in the face of great personal risk.
They use the Internet to tell their own stories and those of others living
through similar injustices in China. Although they are all banned within
China itself, they strive to keep their voices heard, using what freedom
remains to them to seek out overseas Chinese websites, publishers, and
foreign news outlets. Amidst signs of an apparent crackdown on dissent as
the Olympic games approach, aimed at silencing those who may attempt to use
the Games as an opportunity to raise criticism of the authorities, there are
fears that all three women are at increasing risk of arrest and lengthy
imprisonment.
International
PEN’s Writers in Prison Committee is therefore calling upon its members to
protest the restrictions imposed on Zeng Jinyan, Tsering Woeser and Li
Jianhong, and demand that they are allowed to live and work freely, in
accordance with Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, to which China is a signatory.
Zeng
Jinyan
Twenty-four
year-old Zeng Jinyan is a Chinese human rights activist and internet writer.
She was placed under house arrest on 27 December 2007 following the arrest
of her husband, Hu Jia, at their shared flat in the ironically-named BoBo
Freedom City, a Beijing suburb close to the site of the Olympic stadium. Hu
Jia is prominent environmentalist and AIDS activist, accused of inciting
subversion against the Chinese government. Their baby daughter Qianci, born
in November 2007, was barely a month old at the time of her father’s
arrest.
The
couple have been under the watchful eye of the authorities for over two
years, and spent much of 2006 restricted to their apartment by the security
services. During this time, Hu Jia made a documentary entitled ‘Prisoners
of Freedom City’ (which can be viewed on You.Tube.com), whilst Zeng Jinyan
wrote a daily web-log about her experience of life under surveillance.
Zeng
Jinyan began Internet writing in early 2006 to publicize her husband’s
41-day detention, his successive and extended house arrests, and their
shared life of surveillance, threats and harassments. Through her daily
web-log she connected with many others in China who suffered similar
experiences, and she began re-telling their stories too. She quickly became
a prominent human rights reporter and campaigner, and inevitably attracted
the attention of the authorities. In September 2006 the Chinese authorities
blocked mainland access to her weblog, and but she continued to write for
overseas websites. Since her husband’s arrest, her phone line and internet
access have been cut, and as many as fifty security officers are currently
guarding her apartment.
Tsering
Woeser
Award-winning
Tibetan writer and poet, Woeser was born in 1966 in Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous
Region, where her father was a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army. As
a child of the Cultural Revolution, she was raised and educated entirely in
the Chinese language, and never learned to read or write in her native
Tibetan. Ironically, it is this that has enabled her to be such an
influential voice, and she is said to be the first Tibetan to have played
the role of a public intellectual in China. She writes to both a Han
(Chinese) and a Tibetan audience, and her writings are said to givie public
expression for the first time to the emotions and experiences of a people
and a culture previously hidden from the mainstream.
Woeser
studied Chinese literature at the Southwest Nationalities College in Chendu,
and began her professional career as a reporter for the Gardze
Daily newspaper in the province of Kham, Sichuan province, western
China. In March 1990, she became editor of the Lhasa-based Chinese-language
literary journal Tibetan Literature.
This was the start of her political awakening. She began writing poetry, and
read translations of foreign books smuggled into Tibet critical of the
Chinese government. Woeser’s first book was published in 1999, a
collection of poems entitled Xizang
Zai Shang (Tibet Above). She soon became a highly acclaimed and prolific writer
in Chinese. Through her education, journalistic training and literary
expertise, Woeser became a member Tibet’s ‘Chinese Writers’ Group’,
a small literary elite of Tibetans writing in the Chinese Ianguage.
Woeser’s
troubles began with her second book Xizang
Biji (Notes on Tibet), a collection of short stories and prose published
in Guanzhou in January 2003. The book was a best-seller in China, and was
banned in September of that year for revealing opinions ‘harmful to the
unification and solidarity of our nation’. In June 2004 she was dismissed
from her position at the Tibet Autonomous Region Literature Association, and
left Lhasa for Beijing in order to ‘follow her conscience as a writer’.
She continues to write from a small Beijing apartment where she lives with
her husband, writer Wang Lixiong, posting poetry and essays on Tibetan
culture on the Internet and publishing her books in Taiwan. In mainland
China her books are banned, her two web-logs have been shut down, she is
unemployed and her movements are sometimes restricted. Yet she has become
widely known as one of China’s most respected writers on Tibet.
Li
Jianhong
Chinese
freelance internet writer Li Jianhong (pen-name ‘Xiao
Qiao’) was
born in the city of Bangbu, Anhui Province, in 1968. She
graduated from Huadong Normal University in Shanghai with a MA in North
American studies in 1994, and has since worked as a teacher, journalist and
administrative manager. Li is a leading Shanghai-based dissident, and
vocal advocate for freedom of expression and the press. In
August 2002 Li Jianhong founded and edited an
independent Chinese website Qimeng
Luntan (Enlightenment Forum),
followed by Ziyou Zhongguo Luntan
(Free China Forum), both of which
are now blocked.
She
has been subject to intense police harassment since January 2005 for her
critical writings published online and peaceful dissident activities. She
has suffered numerous brief detentions and interrogations, repeated periods
of house arrest, and several dismissals from posts of employment. She
is a member of Independent Chinese PEN Centre (ICPC), and was a recipient of
the 2007 Lin Zhao Memorial Award but was prevented from collecting the
award. For an account of the crackdown on the awards dinner hosted by the
ICPC at which she was to be honored, see the following link:
http://pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1860/prmID/172
RECOMMENDED
ACTIONS
·
Please
send appeals:
-
Protesting
the harassment of dissident writers Zeng Jinyan, Tsering Woeser and Li
Jianhong, and urging that they are allowed to live and work freely without
restriction and fear of attack, in accordance with Article 19 of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China became
a signatory in 1998.
Appeals
to:
His
Excellency Hu Jintao
President
of the People’s Republic of China
State
Council
Beijing
100032
P.R.China.
Please
note that there are no fax numbers for the Chinese authorities. WiPC
recommends that you copy your appeal to the Chinese embassy in your country
asking them to forward it and welcoming any comments.
Please
copy appeals to the diplomatic representative for China in your country if
possible.
·
Letters
to the press
The
present press interest in China in the run-up to the Olympic Games alongside
the annual International Women’s Day on 8 March makes the concerns for
women writers in China more likely to be picked up by the press. Centres are
encouraged to use the material provided to publish articles in your local
press.
The
PEN WiPC has photographs of the three women and samples of their writing
available from the address below.
For
further information please contact Cathy McCann at International PEN Writers
in Prison Committee, Brownlow House, 50/51 High Holborn, London WC1V 6ER,
Tel.+ 44 (0) 20 7405 0338, Fax: +44 (0) 20 7405 0339, email:
cathy.mccann@internationalpen.org.uk