tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6795214191094660842024-03-13T02:29:56.260-07:00Diary in Exile4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-51311006712073024332017-06-28T18:22:00.002-07:002017-06-28T18:22:58.355-07:00SIGN THE PETITION: Urgent Appeal for the Immediate Transfer of Liu Xiaobo to the United States for Cancer Treatment<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img alt="" border="0" data-original-height="324" data-original-width="1208" height="169" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ChYHWcIcjdRMzoM6a0KWBclb7SX8hXDLd6F_SBhDn3pWdNMkDL4Uo-EuNCrBu-x6rPHhquvo6RU7dqwDDruekTbd03URZfaDZ64WpbByvH_oxF1djC-T43D0IHb9ArmyQ9amnx1vSoYW/s640/Screen+shot+2017-06-28+at+8.11.28+PM.png" title="" width="640" /><a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/urgent-appeal-immediate-transfer-liu-xiaobo-united-states-cancer-treatment">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/urgent-appeal-immediate-transfer-liu-xiaobo-united-states-cancer-treatment</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Urgent Appeal for the Immediate Transfer of Liu Xiaobo to the United States for Cancer Treatment</b></span></h2>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chinese dissident icon and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned in 2009 for his role in the drafting and publication of Charter 08, a manifesto calling for the observance of human rights, the elimination of communist single-party rule, and the establishment of a democratic system of governance in People's Republic of China. <b>Most recently, Dr. Liu has been diagnosed with advanced liver cancer and was placed medical parole. He and his wife Liu Xia have expressed desperate wishes for medical treatment abroad, which they are not allowed to access.</b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Intellectuals, activists, and leaders from all across the cultural, political, and geographic spectra-from the Dalai Lama to Marco Rubio--have condemned the Communist Party's decision to incarcerate Dr. Liu. Although the government granted him parole, the decision is in no way an act of compassion. <b>Chinese human rights activists are voicing outrage instead of delight because the authorities remained silent and held Dr. Liu in custody until his cancer reached its terminal stage. </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dr. Liu's wife, a poet and artist, has also been under house arrest in Beijing since her husband received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010. According to her circle of close friends, she has been suffering depression and heart diseases as a result of prolonged and severe isolation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China declared in its <i>Statement on the Medical Parole of Noble Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo that</i> "[Dr. Liu's] 8 years of imprisonment—due to his eloquent appeals for non-violent political reform and protection of basic rights—remain a travesty of justice and a stain on China's rights record. Liu Xiaobo, and countless others like him who courageously seek peaceful change in China, are heroes worthy of honor, not criminals deserving to be tortured or unjustly punished.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given the extreme urgency of his medical situation, we appeal to the White House and President Trump to seek immediate transfer of Dr. Liu and his wife to the United States for cancer treatment. This petition is authored by Chinese immigrants, and all are called to sign in support:</span></div>
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<a href="https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/urgent-appeal-immediate-transfer-liu-xiaobo-united-states-cancer-treatment"><b><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/urgent-appeal-immediate-transfer-liu-xiaobo-united-states-cancer-treatment</span></b></a></div>
4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-56407290117391229062014-09-30T18:22:00.002-07:002014-09-30T23:13:47.816-07:00Hong Kong People!<div id="fb-root" font size="medium">
Support Hong Kong! Sign the petition! </div>
<div id="fb-root"><a href="https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Qiao_Xiaoyang_Chairman_of_the_Chinese_National_Peoples_Congress_One_Country_Two_Systems_a_promise_broken_please_sign_the/?rc=fbdm&pv=14">
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Qiao_Xiaoyang_Chairman_of_the_Chinese_National_Peoples_Congress_One_Country_Two_Systems_a_promise_broken_please_sign_the/?rc=fbdm&pv=14</a>
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<a href="https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152724052814929">Post</a> by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/julian.yip">Julian Yip</a>.</div>
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4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-87561625742617538562014-06-04T12:23:00.002-07:002014-06-06T08:28:14.925-07:00'Shadow Play' Visualizing Urbanization of China with New MediaOn the 25th. Anniversary of Student Protest at Tiananmen Square 1989, New Radio and Performing Art INC, a non-profit cultural institution based in New York, announced their new commission of net-art project, <b><i>‘Shadow Play: Tales of Urbanization of China’</i></b> by Lily & Honglei Art Studio. The artwork is currently viewable via NRPA's website -<br />
<a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/" target="_blank">http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay</a><br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
(image courtesy of Turbulence.org)</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/img/Snapshot2-detail.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" src="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/img/Snapshot2-detail.jpg" height="206" id="lightboxImage" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shadow Play, Chapter I. The Land: Death of the Village Head</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/img/Snapshot3-detail.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" src="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/img/Snapshot3-detail.jpg" height="206" id="lightboxImage" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shadow Play, Chapter II. The Ruins: Lost Children</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<blockquote>
‘Over the past few decades China has been urbanizing at an astounding pace. In 2013, the People’s Republic unveiled its plan to relocate 260 million people from China’s countryside to one of 21 “mega regions” by 2020 (cbsnews.com). Such a significant shift will undoubtedly transform China’s national character, which has been predominantly agrarian for millennia. Shadow Play weaves three interfaces, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Physical Reality (PR), and combines the past and present – through time-honored imagery, paint, shadow play, and new media technologies – to immerse participants in the realities of contemporary China.’ – Turbulence.org.</blockquote>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/img/construction_detail3.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" src="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/img/construction_detail3.jpg" height="206" id="lightboxImage" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shadow Play, Chapter III. The City: Into the Void</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lilyhonglei.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vr-c4-3a.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Lily & Honglei, new media art of China" src="http://lilyhonglei.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/vr-c4-3a.jpg?w=600&h=309" height="206" id="lightboxImage" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shadow Play, Chapter IV. The Maze: No Exit</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: center;">
‘Shadow Play,’ according to the artists, ‘creates an opportunity for
the audience to experience the changing landscapes of contemporary
China. In four chapters, virtual installation sheds light upon real-life
incidents such as clashes during land evictions resulting from urban
expansion, children abductions, suicides of migrant workers, and
predicaments involving the cultural and environmental degradation.</div>
<a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/vr-shadowplay.html#c1">Chapter I.</a> <i>The Land: Death of the Village Head</i><br />
<a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/vr-shadowplay.html#c2">Chapter II.</a> <i>The Ruins: Lost Children</i><br />
<a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/vr-shadowplay.html#c3">Chapter III.</a> <i>The City: Into the Void</i><br />
<a href="http://turbulence.org/Works/shadowplay/vr-shadowplay.html#c4">Chapter IV.</a><i> The Maze: No Exit</i>‘<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNZ1PKFE5jmnT4OQjabHDTXtJ3p_lkSjoasYPY6vyYNIq_BFaf1mQpX5ExbboZDD2nr4SOykb4mYjeQy9A1vZa2kk8vWw-8SaYHxtQkMwCJlluOyqv0srsyF-NNCsuI02mF6EatKyiiqUT/s1600/c2-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNZ1PKFE5jmnT4OQjabHDTXtJ3p_lkSjoasYPY6vyYNIq_BFaf1mQpX5ExbboZDD2nr4SOykb4mYjeQy9A1vZa2kk8vWw-8SaYHxtQkMwCJlluOyqv0srsyF-NNCsuI02mF6EatKyiiqUT/s1600/c2-3.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chapter II. The Ruins: Lost Children (AR screenshot)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5XpiRA6859LWahJYzQ1-TZUPURcoYPBN8ZJLnQMckYoXbpFXixUNznrDc3hNxzpKxnjkOxvUEwInOD2WKjzpje0dxmD03VJzdAzbTGbz0NGitw4pcQkWZYOYPTf4ZIw3iUVrP95tPHnHe/s1600/c3-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5XpiRA6859LWahJYzQ1-TZUPURcoYPBN8ZJLnQMckYoXbpFXixUNznrDc3hNxzpKxnjkOxvUEwInOD2WKjzpje0dxmD03VJzdAzbTGbz0NGitw4pcQkWZYOYPTf4ZIw3iUVrP95tPHnHe/s1600/c3-4.jpg" height="400" width="277" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chapter III. The City: Into the Void (AR screenshot)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyzyaYemISfM0A7-Ov3cH2y66M49uNV2FaLdZum486yu3m9T_PptYmwTw3iGEBi8qB5tPNKn1NUGkhz7E5n3IPxyCN4KQiT-II4TMANmthAHzZm6Nx7-HsZQX4c82QGlRDUsYkIb9bKlcc/s1600/c3-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyzyaYemISfM0A7-Ov3cH2y66M49uNV2FaLdZum486yu3m9T_PptYmwTw3iGEBi8qB5tPNKn1NUGkhz7E5n3IPxyCN4KQiT-II4TMANmthAHzZm6Nx7-HsZQX4c82QGlRDUsYkIb9bKlcc/s1600/c3-6.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chapter III. The City: Into the Void (AR screenshot)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKkVyil1uDxrjqIMvVHVg1pvPkNV_01IKT3HihAEoRMys-EvNDl4MlRu4fmdTOUIDm0iz9septWmCAwgSYeFg7uZJ8X4dEdBn1FHgKRuficj3Ts8YnAk7BgWeqU1vsIDSNqgQHmvPx0Uj7/s1600/c4-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKkVyil1uDxrjqIMvVHVg1pvPkNV_01IKT3HihAEoRMys-EvNDl4MlRu4fmdTOUIDm0iz9septWmCAwgSYeFg7uZJ8X4dEdBn1FHgKRuficj3Ts8YnAk7BgWeqU1vsIDSNqgQHmvPx0Uj7/s1600/c4-7.jpg" height="243" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chapter IV. The Maze: No Exit (AR screenshot)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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‘Shadow Play’ has been selected by the<i><b> Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art</b></i>, to become part of the Special Collections at Cornell University, NY.<br />
<br />
To commemorate Tiananmen Protest, the artist collective presents once again their award-winning piece<b> <i>Forbidden City </i></b>produced in 2008.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="375" mozallowfullscreen="" src="//player.vimeo.com/video/29802942?byline=0&portrait=0&autoplay=1&loop=1" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe></div>
4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-85844551802107591892014-05-24T13:08:00.001-07:002014-05-24T13:11:17.223-07:00Tiananmen: How Wrong We Were - by Jonathan Mirsky Source<br />
<a href="http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/20/tiananmen-how-wrong-we-were/" target="_blank">http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/20/tiananmen-how-wrong-we-were/</a><br />
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... ...
The next morning, Sunday, June 4, I cycled back to the edge of the square just in time to see soldiers mow down parents of students who had come to look for those who had not returned home and who were feared to have been killed and their bodies burned. While I lay in the grass at the side of the avenue, doctors and nurses from the Peking Union Hospital (where my father had briefly worked in the early Thirties) arrived in an ambulance and in their bloodstained gowns went among the fallen; the soldiers shot them down, too. I managed to fly back to London later that day.
Hundreds were shot in the square that night and the following morning, or crushed by tanks, and the shooting up and down the streets and avenues of the capital continued for several days. Long red and gold signs hanging outside buildings that had said, “Support the Students,” were quickly replaced with others proclaiming, “Support the Party.” A decree went out: “No Laughing in Tiananmen Square.” Tank tread-marks scarred the main roads for a year and bullet holes pockmarked the buildings along those roads. Those scars remained until 1990 when the center of capital was scoured clean for the Asian Games.
... ...4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-37916913952345064002014-05-16T13:37:00.001-07:002014-05-16T13:38:13.697-07:0025 Years AgoFrom CNN on May 16, 1989:<br />
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/wNEW1Uh0lz0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>[Note that the first part of this video is the CNN broadcast from May
16. The second half is footage of the "Tank Man" confronting government
tanks, which did not take place until June 5, 1989.]</p>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-84879237037934336382014-05-16T09:38:00.001-07:002014-05-16T09:50:59.469-07:00 Genevieve Quick: 'Augmented Reality: The Political Potential of Hybridized Space'http://www.artpractical.com/column/locating-technology-/<br />
<span class="author">By <a href="http://www.artpractical.com/archive/contributor/genevieve-quick">Genevieve Quick</a>
</span>
<i class="date">May 14, 2014</i> <br />
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Artists have long used approaches like elaborate and surreal
narratives and phenomenological or physical experiences to explore the
breadth of reality. At its most basic level, reality is a physical or
social interaction with a string of consequences that extends beyond
oneself. Artists, philosophers, scientists, and technologists continue
to unravel reality as a complicated matrix of self and perception. The
emerging technology of augmented reality (AR) creates hybridized spaces
that merge virtual objects and narratives with the everyday space we
inhabit. As AR develops solutions for the many real-world issues it
faces (like application, ownership, access, adoption, and format), these
issues affect AR’s artistic and political potential.<br />
......<br />
Using smartphones,<sup>1</sup> AR participants scan a Quick Response
(QR) code or AR symbol to interact with virtual objects that appear
superimposed on the everyday world through their phone’s screen. Unlike
two-dimensional images, AR objects are vector-based renderings with X,Y,
and Z axes—the same type of data used in 3D printing. Moreover, artists
and designers assign global positioning satellite (GPS) coordinates to
their objects, placing them in a meta-space that overlaps the tangible
space users occupy. Users’ phones coordinate their GPS location with
that of the AR object; as participants move through space, the virtual
images on their smartphones shift in perspective. As its name suggests,
AR attempts to augment, which on a rhetorical level is an improvement
made through addition. In contrast, its technological cousin virtual
reality (VR) attempts to simulate, which allows designers and artists
unlimited freedom to create the context for their narrative or
experience. While apps like Layar<sup>2</sup> suggest that AR is an
additional level placed upon reality, it is actually a hybrid space that
merges users’ real, physical embodied location with the virtual and
visual experience.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivXu0XBtXSJG27_YknNbTOAzMEFZzCDV76VsTprvccSJ9IIoE8XPvoz2zmwEyrCeEEtIaTCx1-kguXqnO2sf2rh_SesdTjf8RS93byp1chGRasXwMHqrKtO5Xf9uh5Vv2-g32uq9qnQdIj/s1600/01_Locating_Tech_AR_4Gentlemen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivXu0XBtXSJG27_YknNbTOAzMEFZzCDV76VsTprvccSJ9IIoE8XPvoz2zmwEyrCeEEtIaTCx1-kguXqnO2sf2rh_SesdTjf8RS93byp1chGRasXwMHqrKtO5Xf9uh5Vv2-g32uq9qnQdIj/s1600/01_Locating_Tech_AR_4Gentlemen.jpg" height="326" width="400" /></a></div>
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Subsequent to the 1989 Tiananmen uprising, when the People’s Liberation
Army violently thwarted protestors, Chinese government censors have
attempted to eliminate references to the uprising on the internet and
mass media.<sup>5</sup> In response, the exiled and anonymous collective 4Gentlemen<sup>6</sup>
created 3D models of the Goddess of Democracy—like the one erected by
students at the Central Academy of Fine Arts during the
demonstration—and “Tank Man,” the anonymous figure who stood against a
plethora of tanks on Chang’an Avenue. Photographs of the Goddess of
Democracy and “Tank Man” are widely circulated around the world and have
become iconic images of individual bravery and military authority.
4Gentlemen have placed their AR objects at the GPS locations of the
Tiananmen Square protests. Additionally, Google Maps indicates that the
AR Goddess of Democracy has been placed at international squares of
public protest, like Green Square, Tripoli, Libya; Al Tahrir Square,
Cairo, Egypt; Tahrir Square, Sana’a, Yemen; Pearl Square, Al Manama,
Bahrain; Union Square, NY; and Piazzo San Marco, Venice, Italy, to name a
few.<sup>7</sup> Although erecting physical monuments of protest is
challenging in repressive regimes, thus far these AR objects seem to be
able to resist censorship. Unlike physical monuments, these AR monuments
are easily replicated and moved, and can linger long after protests
have occurred.<br />
...... <br />
<br />
With fundamental questions about the platform and its use, adoption, and
so on still to be determined, AR poses a potential political and
economic battle for the everyday space we inhabit. As billboards sprung
up along the once ill-defined spaces of the interstates, these routes
became commodifiable. Additionally, the internet, the so-called “super
highway,” has become dotted with banner ads as commercial interests
compete for our attention. Our everyday space, like when walking down
the street, may also become a contested zone, as every physical point is
a GPS location with the potential for being a pop-up ad or a location
for governmental censorship or surveillance. <br />
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4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-70377234678381267292012-07-11T10:13:00.001-07:002012-07-11T10:18:14.185-07:00Diosa de la Democracia en la Avenida Reforma en la ciudad de México / Goddess of Democracy on Reforma Avenue in Mexico CityEN ESPAÑOL
<br>
En apoyo al movimiento de protesta estudiantil mexicano "<a href="http://www.yosoy132media.org/">YoSoy132</a>" 4Gentlemen ha puesto una versión del proyecto de arte público de realidad aumentada "<a href="http://augmentationistinternational.wordpress.com/tiananmen-squared/">Goddess of Democracy</a>" en la Avenida Reforma cerca de donde los estudiantes han estado organizando en un intento de bloquear la calle en protesta por la corrupción política.
<br>
IN ENGLISH
<br>
In support of the Mexican student protest movement "<a href="http://www.yosoy132media.org/">YoSoy132</a>," 4Gentlemen has placed a version of the augmented reality public art project "<a href="http://augmentationistinternational.wordpress.com/tiananmen-squared/">Goddess of Democracy</a>" on Reforma Avenue near where the students have been organizing in an attempt to block the street in protest of political corruption.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPB3i2OGkyU31-w-0nUiTh7tP9OomvhWk7PuQJQbOtb6nl_7y3b_8JIsZhLtUaLOjf02mD6VwOuCv-5d6u5AnvXgkVWU8QxXyXnsMNFFZnLobTcWKq8KnyQWveWQ5njlDgbs91bFcz8w/s1600/Reforma_Avenue_Mexico_City.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="225" width="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZPB3i2OGkyU31-w-0nUiTh7tP9OomvhWk7PuQJQbOtb6nl_7y3b_8JIsZhLtUaLOjf02mD6VwOuCv-5d6u5AnvXgkVWU8QxXyXnsMNFFZnLobTcWKq8KnyQWveWQ5njlDgbs91bFcz8w/s400/Reforma_Avenue_Mexico_City.png" /></a></div>
EN ESPAÑOL
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Ver el proyecto ahora en Monumento un Cuauhtémocmáis en el Paseo de La Reforma en tu Android o iPhone a ahora. Escriba <a href="http://m.layar.com/open/tsquare">http://m.layar.com/open/tsquare</a> en los teléfonos de su explorador web o escanear este código QR. Necesitará descargar el navegador de realidad aumentada Layar libre, <a href="http://layar.com">http://layar.com</a>.
<br>
IN ENGLISH
<br>
View the project now at Monumento a Cuauhtémocmáis on Paseo de La Reforma on your Android or iPhone now. Enter <a href="http://m.layar.com/open/tsquare">http://m.layar.com/open/tsquare</a> on your phones web browser or scan this QR code. You will need to download the free Layar augmented reality browser, <a href="http://layar.com">http://layar.com</a>.
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgCp2PIR0QB3J_m5PbhSB96Boq6BumecS-RfzN3KZi6zm0b2P35Du1MHLY4fJ_pNXAsdcQn4QO-3BF_woKCnE1LIqVWNro9qAKNbmu7NHGwDHcnYUgJCmCwHsDV8_AKoNN6VS3uigdzM/s1600/Tiananmen_SquARed_QR.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="248" width="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkgCp2PIR0QB3J_m5PbhSB96Boq6BumecS-RfzN3KZi6zm0b2P35Du1MHLY4fJ_pNXAsdcQn4QO-3BF_woKCnE1LIqVWNro9qAKNbmu7NHGwDHcnYUgJCmCwHsDV8_AKoNN6VS3uigdzM/s400/Tiananmen_SquARed_QR.png" /></a></div>
FREemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05214547704271730400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-23709504057742290742012-06-25T15:12:00.001-07:002012-06-25T15:14:29.883-07:00That Year, These Years: Stories of TiananmenBy Li Xuewen<br />
Translated by Little Bluegill<br />
Original text <a href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/chinese/2012/06/%E9%82%A3%E4%B8%80%E5%B9%B4%EF%BC%8C%E8%BF%99%E4%BA%9B%E5%B9%B4%EF%BC%9A%E4%B8%8E%E5%85%AD%E5%9B%9B%E6%9C%89%E5%85%B3%E7%9A%84%E6%95%85%E4%BA%8B/">here</a>.<br />
<blockquote>
That Year, I was twelve years old and in the fifth grade.
The happiest part of my day: I would come home from school, turn on our
battered black-and-white TV and listen to my older brother, who was a
student at the local teacher’s college, passionately detail the day’s
happenings in Beijing. Scenes of waving flags, young faces and
screeching ambulances flashed across the screen, brimming with energy
and a feeling of meaning and weight.<br />
That Year, the summer was especially hot.<br />
After
school, my friends and I walked through the pockmarked roads of our
village. We no longer goofed around like before. By that time, a few of
us buddies had started to talk about the big affairs of the country.
“Let’s write a letter to <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/zhao-ziyang/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with Zhao Ziyang">Zhao Ziyang</a>,”
I suggested. My friends replied, “You write it. Your essays are very
well written.” But I had no idea what I should write. I just had this
vague notion that we should do something.<br />
My father came home from
our county seat. He said that someone had tried to hand him a flyer as
he was riding his bike down the street. He didn’t take it. It was not
long before he had peddled away.<br />
Father was the principal of the
village elementary school. In the past, he had never been admitted to
the Party because of his poor family background. He cried loudly about
this in the past. He was afraid.<br />
Later, the youthful energy on TV became a bloody scream.<br />
July
was torrid. My older brother, who had graduated by then, hadn’t come
home. Father became worried and went to the school to look for him.<br />
As
Father stepped off the bus, the head of my brother’s department was
there waiting for him. The department head’s first words when they met
were, “Your son was sent to be re-educated.” When he heard this, Father
collapsed on the ground, foaming at the mouth.<br />
Holding my father in his arms, the department said over and over, “It’s okay. It’s okay.”<br />
When
Father came home, he told the family that my brother was a student
leader and had taken students to protest in the streets. Five students
from his college were sent to be re-educated, and my brother was one of
them. He would probably not receive his diploma and wouldn’t get a work
assignment.<br />
I had a vague sense of pride for my brother, but the despair in Father’s voice troubled me.<br />
A
month later, my brother came home. He wasn’t the cheerful person he
once was. Rather, he was silent. Everyday he would wander around the
village fields, brooding with a furrowed brow. No one knew what he was
thinking about.<br />
Father forced my brother to go to the County Board
of Education every day to inquire about work assignments. My brother
was the first person from our village to attend college, and Father had
endured many hardships. Father wanted my brother to leave the village
and get a job.<br />
My brother often quarreled with Father. Later on,
my brother was finally assigned a job and went to town to be a middle
school teacher. Eventually he tested into graduate school, got his
doctorate and became an assistant professor at a prestigious university.<br />
Some
time later, as my brother and I were reminiscing about the past, he
told me that during the protests, they were passing a military district.
Many of the students wanted to rush in, but as student leader my
brother did everything in his power to stop them.<br />
Perhaps it is because of this that he was eventually assigned a job.<br />
By
chance, I once ran into the head of my brother’s department. He told
me, “Your father is a good person. Your brother and the others are
hot-blooded youth.”<br />
That summer, something took root in the heart of a twelve-year-old boy.<br />
The memories of that year influenced the rest of my life.<br />
One day in 1995 when I was at university, I ran into an old classmate and started talking about <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/tiananmen/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with Tiananmen">Tiananmen</a>.
He mentioned he had a whole batch of photos from that time, all taken
by his brother. I was excited and asked him to bring them for me to see.
I saw the <a href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/05/poem-waiting-for-you-to-come/goddess-of-democracy/">Goddess of Democracy</a>
standing gloriously aloft the square, and a sea of people wearing white
bandanas. “These pictures are treasures. You must take good care of
them,” I implored my classmate. He didn’t seem to feel the same way. “If
you like them, take them.” I hurriedly stored them away, as if I had
discovered rare jewels.<br />
After graduation, I was assigned to be an
elementary school teacher back home. Once, as my colleagues and I were
chatting about the events of That Year, a female colleague noticed how
impassioned I was on the subject. She snorted, “You’re so excited. You
know, in ’89 I was a senior in high school. None of us could take the
college entrance exams because of the student protests. I went back home
to work on the farm. Now I’m just a private tutor.”<br />
I was speechless. It was only then I realized the events of that year had altered her entire life.<br />
It
was also at that time I began spending entire nights listening to the
Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. I heard many more Tiananmen
stories. I also began reading books like He Qinglian’s <i>The Trap of Modernization</i> and the Liu Junning’s edited volume <i>Public Forum</i>. I became a liberal.<br />
In
1998 my younger brother opened a bookstore. He sold pirated books from
Hong Kong and Taiwan that he bought at a market in Wuhan, including
titles like <i>The Real June Fourth</i>, <i>Tiananmen</i> and the memoirs of people like Wang Dan and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_Congde">Feng Congde</a>.
Those books sold like crazy. Most of the people buying them were
retired workers from state-owned enterprises. They never haggled. My
younger brother was quite brazen about it too, strutting about as he put
those books on the shelves. Eventually, a teacher reported our store in
a letter to the <i>Hubei Daily</i>, saying we were selling vast numbers of reactionary books.<br />
People from the cultural center stormed in holding copies of the <i>Hubei Daily</i> and confiscated all of these books.<br />
Since
we couldn’t sell them in the open, we started selling them discreetly.
In the winter, my younger brother and I hid copies of the illegal books
in our thick cotton coats. Whenever an old worker would come asking
about them, we would slide the books out of our coats make a sales
pitch. We sold many books this way, and my younger brother was very
pleased with the money he was earning.<br />
It wasn’t long before my
brother came back from a trip to Wuhan looking very dejected. The book
market had been shut down for selling pornography. We had no way to
bring in new copies.<br />
Our store never sold those books again.<br />
Around
the dinner table one day, we were discussing June Fourth when my
brother-in-law, who worked as a local government official, said, “You
read those reactionary books every day, crying out for justice, but do
you ever think about what it would be like if the crackdown never
happened? What about this decade of economic growth and the life our
family enjoys today? Stability trumps all!”<br />
I left the table, furious.<br />
On
June 4, 1999, I fasted and wrote an essay titled “Thoughts on the Tenth
Anniversary of June Fourth.” This marked my passage into spiritual
maturity.<br />
In 2000 I moved to Hangzhou. Living in a dormitory at
Zhejiang University, I took the graduate school exams. On the school web
forum, students were downloading a documentary titled <i>Tiananmen</i>, which had gone viral.<br />
In
Hangzhou I met Fu Guoyong. In his simple apartment, I listened to him
recall his story. That Year, he joined the student movement. He gave a
public speech on Tiananmen Square. He met his wife. Then he was
arrested, put on a train, shackled from hand to foot, thrown in jail.
His mother went gray overnight. His wife, who was a top student at
Beijing Normal University, never gained recognition at school because of
her anti-revolutionary family. He showed me pictures of his wife and
child visiting him in jail, the three of them with pure, resplendent
smiles on their faces.<br />
It was the most beautiful photo I had ever seen.<br />
One day in 2002, a friend arranged for me to visit the student leader <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/wang-youcai/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with wang youcai">Wang Youcai</a>.
Wang was sent to jail for organizing the Democratic Party of China. His
wife, Hu Jiangxia, was at home. Making wide detours to avoid being
followed, my friend and I wound our way to <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/wang-youcai/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with wang youcai">Wang Youcai</a>’s
house in Hangzhou’s Emerald Garden neighborhood. At last we met Hu
Jiangxia and had a lively conversation. Not long afterwards, I heard
Wang and Hu filed for divorce. Some time after that, Wang was sent to
the United States through negotiations between the Chinese and American
governments. Eventually, Hu Jiangxia also made her way to the U.S.. I
heard that they remarried.<br />
In Hangzhou, there was a boss of a
large company who asked to borrow my copy of Wang Dan’s prison memoirs.
He kept it for a long time. Only later did I realize that in That Year
he had been the chairmen of Zhejiang University’s autonomous student
council. The summer of That Year, one of his toes was broken off. He
changed course and went on to become a successful businessman.<br />
In
2003 my friend and I began hosting an academic salon at Sanlian
Bookstore in Hangzhou. According to Fu Guoyong, this was the first time
since the crackdown on the pro-democracy movement that an open,
grassroots activity was publically hosted in Hangzhou. We invited Fu
Guoyong to give a lecture. That was the first time he spoke at a public
gathering since leaving prison.<br />
In 2005, I started graduate school
in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. During class one day, the
teacher suddenly began speaking to us dozen or so students about June
Fourth. He said some of the events of That Year were perfectly pure,
others extremely foul. Our teacher was a graduate student in Beijing at
the time of the crackdown. He personally experienced all that happened
that summer. I was shocked to hear this. He wasn’t merely a professor.
He was the principal of the school—a bona fide official. This was the
first time I heard someone from inside the system speak openly about
June Fourth in a classroom.<br />
After class, I excitedly shared my own
June Fourth story with several classmates. A few female students born
in the 80s listened to me wide-eyed, as if they were listening to
fantastical stories from some strange, far-off land. “Is it true, what
he’s saying?” they asked the class monitor, who had been standing nearby
listening. He nodded his head. “It’s true. It’s all true. I was there
at Tiananmen at the time. I even slept there a few nights.” Our class
monitor was born in 1968. He had taken part in June Fourth.<br />
Still, those young classmates couldn’t believe it. “How come we never knew anything about this before?” they asked with a sigh.<br />
My
roommate Old Yang was a graduate student in the Fine Arts Department.
He was born in the 70s, a party member and a university lecturer. One
night, as we lay awake talking, he told me about a student from his
village who went to Tsinghua University. During June Fourth he
disappeared. Twenty years had passed, and no one knew anything about
what had happened to him. If he was alive, no one had seen his face; if
he was dead, no one had viewed the body. He was the only student from
that village to ever attend a prestigious university. “I hate the
Communist Party,” Old Yang spat.<br />
That Year, a professor from my
department supported the student protesters in Yunnan. He shared with me
what happened when he lead the students. They scaled the university
walls and took to the streets, shouting protest slogans. After the June
Fourth Massacre, the professor organized Yunnan Province’s first protest
march. As autumn came, his actions caught up with him. He was suspended
from teaching and put under investigation. With documents piled before
him, his investigators demanded he admit his crimes. His students
protected him, saying they marched of their own volition, without any
encouragement from their teacher. He kept his job, but he began to fall
in love with one female student after another. He divorced several
times, becoming dissolute. Although he should have been made department
head long ago, he was never promoted. Once, at a banquet, he berated the
Party in front of all the university leaders. “The Chinese Communist
Party should have collapsed back in 1989! They should have died out a
long time ago, damn it!”<br />
The room fell silent.<br />
The other
professors say he turned into a different person after June Fourth,
cursing the Communist Party and womanizing his students.<br />
My
graduate adviser was an old professor and a member of the Democratic
Party. After June Fourth, the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee
organized a forum with democracy advocates. “I’ve never understood how
June Fourth was handled,” he said in a speech there. “Why did the
government have to do what it did?” Twenty years on, he still couldn’t
make sense of it.<br />
In 2009, I graduated and stuck around campus to
take the university’s employment test. I received the top score. The
Yunnan Security Agency opened a political investigation on me because I
had previously published a few articles on foreign websites. That was
the first time I ever dealt with security officials, and it filled me
with dread.<br />
A deputy director from the security agency asked me,
“What are your thoughts on June Fourth?” I paused, then said, “June
Fourth doesn’t concern my generation. It’s very complicated.” He stared
at me for a long time, then retorted, “You mean you don’t think the
decisive action taken by the Party in that year was the reason for our
prosperity and success today?”<br />
I remembered the argument with my
brother-in-law. They had the same logic—the same inhumane logic. I
stayed silent. I didn’t dare refute him, afraid of losing my chance at a
teaching position.<br />
Regardless, I failed to pass my political
investigation. The university Party committee rejected my application on
the grounds that I “did not fervently love my country and socialism.”<br />
To this day, I still feel guilty for the cowardice I showed when confronted by the <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/stability-maintenance/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with stability maintenance">stability maintenance</a>
system. June Fourth is not just a matter for the generation that came
to age in 1989. It’s a matter that relates to every person on Chinese
soil. It is blood spilled by tyranny. It is an open wound on the body of
this nation that will never close. Whatever you think of June Fourth,
you cannot have a muddled opinion on it, you cannot make haphazard
excuses for it. You must say no to atrocity, you must say no to the
truth written in blood and the lies written in ink. One’s opinion of
June Fourth is the most basic measure of the morality of every Chinese
person, the touchstone that torments every Chinese person’s conscience
and humanity. Any action or expression that crosses that bottom line is
an injustice that violates one’s very conscience.<br />
After my
expulsion from the university in 2009, I made my way to Beijing. Since
then, I have met many teachers and friends, and I heard even more
stories of Tiananmen.<br />
When I first arrived in Beijing, I became a
reporter for a Party-affiliated magazine. One day, an older female
colleague recounted a story from her university years. It was the early
90s and a soldier had an eye for her, was courting her, but she had no
feelings for him. One day, as they were walking together, the soldier
asked her, “Do you college students still hate us soldiers?” She didn’t
respond. The soldier continued, “I didn’t fire my gun.”<br />
Another
female colleague of mine, born in the 80s, held an advanced degree from
Wuhan University. Her boyfriend was an army officer. One day she heard
some of us chatting about June Fourth and was shocked. When she got home
that night she asked her boyfriend about it. He told her that the guns
were not loaded that day. She called me late that night and yelled, “Did
people really die or not? Who should I believe?” I answered her
question with a question of my own. “If there were no bullets in their
guns, how did all those students and ordinary citizens die?” After
arguing for half an hour she still didn’t know if she should trust her
boyfriend or me.<br />
She broke up with her boyfriend. I don’t know the reason why.<br />
In
a restaurant in Beijing’s Haidian District, professor Yu Shuo, who had
arrived in Beijing from Hong Kong, shared with me her own June Fourth
story. At that time she was a young lecturer in <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/renmin-university/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with Renmin University">Renmin University</a>’s
sociology department. She and Liu Xiaobo came from the same hometown
and were friends. That whole summer, she carried a camera and tape
recorder around Tiananmen Square, interviewing students, intellectuals
and city residents. She wanted a record of everything. On the night of
June 3, she was preparing to evacuate the square with the last wave of
students. Liu Xiaobo had told her his bag was left at a corner of the
Monument to the People’s Heros, with his money and his passport that he
would need to travel to the U.S. still inside. While the students were
retreating, Yu Shuo ran over to the monument to retrieve the bag, but a
student patrol grabbed her and threw her to the ground, yelling, “Do you
want to die?” After she returned back to campus, she showed her photos
to a leader from her department. One of the photos showed the body of a
student who had been beaten to death near the gate of China University
of Political Science, his brains spilling onto the ground. The
department leader began to wail. He grabbed a pile of blank letterhead
and stamped them all with his official seal. He gave them to Yu Shuo,
saying, “Child, run away, quickly. This is all I can do to help you.” Yu
told me she’d always remember that department leader, who risked a
great deal to help her. It’s ordinary people like him whose souls shine.<br />
With these letters in hand, she scrambled her way to Guangdong and then <a href="http://maryannodonnell.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/the-shekou-tempest-translation/">Shekou</a>,
preparing to look for Yuan Geng. She hid on and island for half a
month, then went to Hong Kong as the first person rescued through <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Yellowbird">Operation Yellowbird</a>.
She later moved to France, where she married a French citizen. She
earned a Ph.D. in anthropology and became a professor. Today, she works
to facilitate academic exchange between China and Europe.<br />
While visiting his home in the Beijing suburb of Songzhuang, <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/yu-jianrong/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with Yu Jianrong">Yu Jianrong</a>
shared his own story with me. During June Fourth, Yu was in his
hometown of Hengyang in Hunan Province, where he worked as a secretary
for the municipal government. Yu had a classmate, the child of
high-ranking cadres, who was a flag bearer on Tiananmen Square. After
June Fourth his classmate fled home and Yu found him a place to stay.
Finally, security officials found Yu. His classmate was left unscathed,
but they investigated Yu. The investigation scared Yu enough for him to
quit his job and become a businessman. He went on to earn over two
million yuan, after which he moved to Taiwan and became an academic,
earning his doctorate. He eventually became a well-known scholar. June
Fourth changed his entire life.<br />
Late one night in a Beijing bar,
the artist Gao Huijun shared his June Fourth story with me. He was a
college student at the time. On the night of June 3, Gao and his
classmates were on Changan Avenue, bullets screeching past their ears.
Suddenly, a stray bullet bounced off the ground and struck one of his
classmates in the chest. He died at the scene. He collapsed to the
ground, then crawled for a few hundred meters before falling still. Old
Gao spoke breathlessly, as if it were transpiring before him. A crystal
teardrop flickered from behind his thick eyeglasses.<br />
Once during a
banquet at a restaurant near West Fourth Ring Road in Beijing, my good
friend Wen Kejian introduced me to a middle-aged man sitting at the
table. “That’s Ma Shaofang,” Wen said. Stunned, I asked, “You’re Ma
Shaofang from the June Fourth wanted list?” Ma, nodding his head,
replied, “I never thought, after twenty years, there would still be
young people like you who remember me.” I immediately took up my glass
and toasted him, saying, “There are certain people and certain things
that are unforgettable.”<br />
Ma Shaofang was the first student leader I
had ever met. After his release from prison, Ma became a businessman.
He is staunchly determined never to leave China.<br />
In Tianjin’s TEDA Arts Center, I once conversed with the renowned collector <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/ma-huidong/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with Ma Huidong">Ma Huidong</a>
over drinks. As the wine warmed us up, Mr. Ma told me that after he
graduated from China University of Political Science in the late 80s, he
entered a <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/re-education/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with re-education">re-education</a>
center. After he’d been washed clean, he escaped from the center and
began doing business. Twenty years after June Fourth, he’s still never
been back to Tiananmen Square. Whenever he’s about to pass it in his
car, he takes a detour. “After the gunfire of June Fourth, reform died,”
Mr. Ma said.<br />
The famous philosopher <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/li-ming/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with Li Ming">Li Ming</a>
is my good friend, despite our age difference. In the 80s, before his
hair had turned gray, he was already known for his work on the editorial
board of the <i>Walking Towards the Future</i> series. He told me he
was the research director of Youth Political College during June Fourth.
After the crackdown, he was fired from his job, then arrested. In all
these years, he never received a single penny from the Communist Party.
His pay suspended, Li Ming scraped by with translation and writing.<br />
At
the artists village in Songzhuang, I once shared drinks and
conversation with the renowned poet Mang Ke. He told me how he returned
to Beijing from abroad in early 1989 to celebrate the tenth anniversary
of <i>Today</i> magazine. Along with Bei Dao and others like him, he
added his name to an open letter calling for the release of Wei
Jingsheng. After June Fourth, Mang Ke was detained at his home. A black
bag was placed over his head and he was taken to a place he didn’t know.
After two days, he was released. The people who took him said he was
detained for his own safety. Afterwards, Mang Ke relied on painting to
make a living.<br />
Once at a teahouse, I spoke with a middle-aged
businessman who had served twenty years in the army. When the topic of
June Fourth came up, he couldn’t stop talking. At that time, he worked
in the basement of the Tiananmen Square command center. He was in charge
of intelligence collection. Hundreds of informants were sent out from
the center every day. Every avenue and alley of Beijing was closely
monitored. He said during that time, Mayor Chen Xitong would visit the
command center almost daily.<br />
Mr. Yu, a publisher in Beijing, is a
friend from my hometown. He also told his June Fourth story to me. That
Year, he was teaching middle school in a remote village in Hubei
Province. He was extremely depressed. During his time there, he wrote an
essay titled “Where China Is Going?” He made ten mimeographed copies
and gave them to his classmates and friends. As a result, he was
reported to the authorities and arrested. He spent a year in a detention
center before being released without ever having stood trial. “China’s
detention centers are the cruelest places on earth,” he told me. “I
crawled out of there.” After he left, he learned his grandmother, whom
he loved dearly, passed away the very day he was detained. Some time
later, his wife divorced him. He began to wander aimlessly.<br />
The
author Li Jianmang lives in Europe. I once met him during one of his
trips back to Beijing. During June Fourth, a classmate of his, He
Zhijing, who also happened to be the cousin of Beijing Film Academy
professor He Jian, went missing. Later at the hospital, Li was saw He
Zhijing’s body. He had been beaten to death. Li Jianmang said before all
this his father wrote him a letter. “Don’t be a hero. When you hear the
guns, hit the ground,” his father wrote. “My son, you do not know their
ruthlessness.”<br />
After the advent of <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/weibo/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with weibo">Weibo</a>
I made many new friends online, some famous and some not. One of them
is a Beijing girl named Keke who maintains a government website. She
told me that during June Fourth she was in second grade. Keke’s birthday
happens to fall on June 3. That Year on June 3, her family celebrated
her birthday at her grandmother’s house. Afterward she walked from
Hujialou to Gongzhufen. On the road, she saw buses on fire, roadblocks,
twisted bicycle frames and pedestrians navigating their way through the
carnage. It was a terrifying, unforgettable scene. Memories of June
Fourth have lingered in her mind ever since. After getting on <a class="st_tag internal_tag" href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/weibo/" rel="tag" title="Posts tagged with weibo">Weibo</a>, she frequently posted images and documents from June Fourth. Her account was quickly shut down. She is <a href="http://chinadigitaltimes.net/space/Reincarnate">reincarnated</a> all the time.<br />
My
friend Hai Tao is a writer from the Beijing suburb of Tongzhou. He
recalled to me that after June Fourth, the older men and women of town
were sent to downtown Beijing everyday to dance and sing patriotic
songs. When they became tired they wanted to buy popsicles, but the
streets peddlers wouldn’t let them buy any. “You have no conscience,”
the peddlers would say.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
* * *</div>
There are still many stories of Tiananmen to tell.<br />
That
year, the author Ye Fu worked as a police officer in Hainan. Facing the
massacre, he cast away his uniform, submitted his resignation letter
and bid farewell to the system forever. Then he was reported to the
authorities in Wuhan and imprisoned. Then his mother drowned herself in
the Yangtze River. Then he wrote his famous work, <i>My Mother on the Yangtze</i>…<br />
That
year, my friend Du Daobin left his hometown for the provincial capital
of Wuhan to participate in the protests. Then he published some critical
political commentary online. Then he was arrested. Then he became a
famous dissident…<br />
That year, many parents couldn’t find their
children, many families lost their loved ones. That year, many talented
people left the country, many people died away from home, never to
return. That year, China became a broken world, a world of life and
death, a watershed. That year, China’s twentieth century came to an end.<br />
One
afternoon in Spring 2010, I passed through the heart of Beijing on the
subway, traveling from the eastern suburbs to the western neighborhood
of Muxidi. Sitting on the side of the road in Muxidi, I thought about
all the blood and tears shed some twenty years ago right there. I
thought about the Tiananmen Mothers. I thought about the countrymen we
lost forever. For a very, very long time, with a heavy heart, choking
back tears, silently, I sat there until dusk. That afternoon, I quietly
wrote this poem:<br />
<br />
At Muxidi, Thinking of Someone<br />
—for the Mother <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_Zilin">Ding Zilin</a><br />
Today, I am at Muxidi<br />
Thinking of someone<br />
I don’t know him<br />
But I will remember him forever<br />
At this moment, I miss him<br />
Like I would miss a long lost brother<br />
That was twenty-one years ago<br />
Right here, at Muxidi<br />
An unforgettable place<br />
That merciless summer<br />
A single bullet<br />
Passed through his body<br />
His sixteen-year-old body<br />
He let out his final scream<br />
And then bid farewell to this world<br />
This evil, gory and lie-filled world<br />
He left<br />
This sixteen-year-old youth<br />
This eternal youth<br />
He’ll never grow up<br />
But we, in this world without him<br />
Grow older by the day<br />
Until the present<br />
All these years<br />
Seem like a century<br />
No, many centuries<br />
We watch ourselves grow old<br />
But are powerless<br />
We tell ourselves, we are alive<br />
We need to live<br />
And we tell ourselves we need to make peace with this world<br />
But we know<br />
We are not fated to make peace with this world<br />
For no other reason<br />
Only because of this young man<br />
He will never grow up<br />
So we must grow old<br />
To grow old, is really to die<br />
Today, at Muxidi<br />
I am thinking of someone<br />
I miss him<br />
Like I would miss a long lost brother<br />
A brother lost twenty-one years ago<br />
I miss him<br />
This eternal youth<br />
I want to cry, but I cannot<br />
I know we have no more tears<br />
Even worse than having no tears<br />
We don’t even have any blood<br />
Our souls were hollowed long ago<br />
In the gunfire, among the bullets<br />
In twisted, hidden history<br />
All we can still do<br />
Is come here<br />
Thinking of this youth<br />
Like missing a long lost brother<br />
A brother lost for 21 years<br />
He never left<br />
But we’ll never have him back<br />
<br />
Time
is like a murderer. Twenty-three years have flashed by. Countless
countrymen have forgotten, countless others have remembered. I am from
the post-June Fourth generation. On this twenty-third anniversary, I
earnestly write this record, like putting my heart on an altar of blood.
I do this for nothing more than the justice we are yet to receive. I
believe blood was not spilt in vain. Judgment will surely come.<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
June 4, 2012, on the banks of the Xiang River, Hunan</div>
</blockquote>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-8664733513850658692012-04-19T19:31:00.008-07:002012-04-19T19:53:29.221-07:00arOCCUPY May Day<div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhryXFFtUg_1OOYszT8blQ5GK0JO-LxdUCaJpzia7x3sfmsx2io_giVzTcVeExretY7UQgzS-CDvyK9NhcuQ9P4tNuZVRSjkpjFsAU1LjZxLY1Pemf87Nr6rHKhcfeo2y6pM1uqetb4_70/s1600/Goddess_of_Democracy_Red_Square.png"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhryXFFtUg_1OOYszT8blQ5GK0JO-LxdUCaJpzia7x3sfmsx2io_giVzTcVeExretY7UQgzS-CDvyK9NhcuQ9P4tNuZVRSjkpjFsAU1LjZxLY1Pemf87Nr6rHKhcfeo2y6pM1uqetb4_70/s400/Goddess_of_Democracy_Red_Square.png" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733305359068499650" /></a><br /><center>Goddess of Democracy, 4Gentlemen, Red Square, Moscow Russia, 2012.</center><br /><br />arOCCUPY May Day is a non-violent action meant to send a message to the 1%. Augmented art works from around the world will take over the financial district on May 1st. The global community will be heard in the heart land of the 1%. arOCCUPY May Day is being organized by <a href="http://www.markskwarek.com/">Mark Skwarek</a> (US) and <a href="http://www.unseensculptures.com/?page_id=20">Warren Armstrong</a> (AU) from <a href="http://manifestarblog.wordpress.com/">ManifestAR</a> and <a href="http://augmentedrealityactivists.blogspot.com/">Augmented Reality Activists</a>.<br /><br /><center><table><tbody><tr><td><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBzpf1BXGZZMwPV1g0y3iEoyf-DdGiUKW4QYJvoJrIYIFxNwS5E5NcWHlBe2NXfrZgenccpFcsQ4RZIoHgj9FpdjL38VhRNWaUxLq4VW3LFP04yjWBPkkWBG0dU7TnijEPqSNYGM6eELU/s1600/20111111170108.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBzpf1BXGZZMwPV1g0y3iEoyf-DdGiUKW4QYJvoJrIYIFxNwS5E5NcWHlBe2NXfrZgenccpFcsQ4RZIoHgj9FpdjL38VhRNWaUxLq4VW3LFP04yjWBPkkWBG0dU7TnijEPqSNYGM6eELU/s200/20111111170108.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733308462571636610" /></a></td><br /><td><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjerHPU_PnQyF15zy-sk8HnWmfzusEPTuHWnAm5rPAgpLc9ZEzO_BUBsK0k9KunadsB_w9eyhOc1tkIJhbyco55UXVphbfz8ftLGbV-W3tWTOWN6Os8L42HCxyjcBEmoJUZ8zj0fICyvug/s1600/20111111171355.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjerHPU_PnQyF15zy-sk8HnWmfzusEPTuHWnAm5rPAgpLc9ZEzO_BUBsK0k9KunadsB_w9eyhOc1tkIJhbyco55UXVphbfz8ftLGbV-W3tWTOWN6Os8L42HCxyjcBEmoJUZ8zj0fICyvug/s200/20111111171355.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733308792786538354" /></a></td><br /><td><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWmk6AVCzYGpbKeJWyjhsXB4n37_00LXoYPX0Z8zuD4jC19jjEoYEUuhw8u05XaZlpJX1Hx9B8EnBxK8ZwpVuBQCSyE4VBv23aaWM2fbeb2jmaDniUdOEUNIVA9L8K5800BVWynKKd9Q/s1600/20111111172851.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 112px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtWmk6AVCzYGpbKeJWyjhsXB4n37_00LXoYPX0Z8zuD4jC19jjEoYEUuhw8u05XaZlpJX1Hx9B8EnBxK8ZwpVuBQCSyE4VBv23aaWM2fbeb2jmaDniUdOEUNIVA9L8K5800BVWynKKd9Q/s200/20111111172851.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733309370221567426" /></a></td><br /></tr></tbody></table></center><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Dk0gG2OCQtfx1BF8mSPi5Ww-z5Bvw8R8J7VsbiuV6I677qO1Qcpdmqsa29vVjEF6na-YV9IWIR2QIR7LCgvenN8pDuVjXFtqR_pnuk9Zce0TljmDyOVufkMBjWzrNX-KA7KFWUgomO0/s1600/20111111165218.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Dk0gG2OCQtfx1BF8mSPi5Ww-z5Bvw8R8J7VsbiuV6I677qO1Qcpdmqsa29vVjEF6na-YV9IWIR2QIR7LCgvenN8pDuVjXFtqR_pnuk9Zce0TljmDyOVufkMBjWzrNX-KA7KFWUgomO0/s400/20111111165218.jpeg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5733310378521428482" /></a><br /></div>FREemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05214547704271730400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-37678588490994062002012-04-01T11:51:00.000-07:002012-05-29T07:50:11.348-07:00Artwork reflecting Organ Harvest in China<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><b>Chinese
Takeout</b></i></span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Artists:
4 Gentleman</span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Year
of Production: 2012</span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Medium:
Digital Art</span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Dimension:
Varied</span></div>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCZF99-oHxcPruMHv8L-88fnhYX2owlOjZ-RRuu-zFYNr_kgVCyXXXvvRAQH_EP83LgXQ17-FMuE-_jyySqSu2ZVNx0G0Lx14cUVTBDHAh475Y0_udHYrHCXgK3ppl35yU5LmVqlZtfup5/s1600/chineseTakeout.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="305" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCZF99-oHxcPruMHv8L-88fnhYX2owlOjZ-RRuu-zFYNr_kgVCyXXXvvRAQH_EP83LgXQ17-FMuE-_jyySqSu2ZVNx0G0Lx14cUVTBDHAh475Y0_udHYrHCXgK3ppl35yU5LmVqlZtfup5/s400/chineseTakeout.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Statement</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
work visualizes gruesome reality that Chinese government has been
systematically harvesting organs from live Falungong practitioners
for profit. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-top: 0.17in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
inhuman practices were exposed by </span></span><span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">David
Matas and </span></span><span style="color: navy;"><span lang="zxx"><u><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">David
Kilgour</span></span></u></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">'s
investigation report </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><a href="http://organharvestinvestigation.net/report0701/report20070131.htm" target="_blank">Bloody Harvest</a> </i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">in
2007</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>.
</i></span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">In
2012, this issue again came to light when a Chinese official, who
fled to U.S. </span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">Consulate
in Chengdu,</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
revealed evidences of human rights violations in China, in exchange
for political asylum. However, this topic remains a taboo among
Chinese intellectuals fearing </span></span><span style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">persecution</span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;">
by the Party. While the country set new regulations prioritizing
organ transplantation operation for domestic patients, demands from
foreigners has driven the 'market' initially and continuously. We
therefore intent to arouse greater awareness within the international
community by visualizing the issue with art. </span></span>
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://augmentationistinternational.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/golden_gate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://augmentationistinternational.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/golden_gate.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Find more at: <a href="http://augmentationistinternational.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/chinese-take-out/">http://augmentationistinternational.wordpress.com/2012/05/28/chinese-take-out/</a></div>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></span></div>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-49380690944713030212012-03-03T06:09:00.001-08:002012-04-01T11:44:15.445-07:00Public Art in the Virtual Sphere & I'm Crime4Gentlemen's Augmented Reality art was exhibited and reviewed at following events in CA recently:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
CAA Los Angles panel discussion on Mobile Art:<br />
<br />
<h2>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;">Public Art in the Virtual Sphere</span></h2>
</div>
<div class="entry" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #545454; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<div class="wp-caption alignnone" id="attachment_5402" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #fafafa; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-color: rgb(233, 233, 233); border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(233, 233, 233); border-right-width: 1px; border-style: initial; border-top-color: rgb(233, 233, 233); border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 20px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-top: 1px; text-align: center; vertical-align: baseline; width: 550px;">
<a href="http://vaneeesab.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/caa-pad3.jpg" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #5bb1c1; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-5402" src="http://vaneeesab.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/caa-pad3.jpg?w=540&h=171" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; max-width: 620px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 4px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 4px; vertical-align: baseline;" title="CAA-PAD3" /></a><br />
<div class="wp-caption-text" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; font-size: 0.9em; line-height: 1.5em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
Physical and Virtual versions of the Goddess of Democracy sculpture.</div>
</div>
<div style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.2em; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<strong style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">LOS ANGELES, February 23 — CAA Panel: Public Art Dialog: <em style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Public Art in the Virtual Sphere</em></strong></div>
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During this panel John Craig Freeman told a story, the most remarkable testament to Augmented Reality (AR) as an art & culture medium that I’ve ever heard: During the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, protesters created “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goddess_of_Democracy" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #488793; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Goddess of Democracy</a>,” a 10-meter-tall (33 ft) statue. A couple of decades later, 4Gentlemen created a virtual Goddess of Democracy and placed an Augmented Reality version at the precise location of the original in<a href="http://augmentationistinternational.wordpress.com/tiananmen-squared/" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #488793; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tiananmen Square</a>. That’s very cool. But what is extraordinary is that during the protests in Tahrir Square, Cairo last year, 4Gentlemen took the digital Goddess of Democracy object and AR placed her in physical <a href="http://fourgentlemen.blogspot.com/2011/02/egypt-china.html" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; color: #488793; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Tahrir Square</a>. Incredible! (read <a href="http://vaneeesa.com/2012/02/24/public-art-virtual-sphere/" target="_blank">more</a>)</div>
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SOMARTS ART CENTER</div>
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<a href="http://www.somarts.org/iamcrime/">http://www.somarts.org/iamcrime/</a><br />
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<h2 class="entry-title" style="background-color: #dbf0f5; color: #3f3f3f; font-family: proxima-nova-extra-condensed-1, proxima-nova-extra-condensed-2, Impact, sans-serif; font-size: 38px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 36px; margin-bottom: 21px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: center; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; text-transform: uppercase;">
I AM CRIME: ART ON THE EDGE OF LAW</h2>
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<em style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">I Am Crime: Art on the Edge of Law</em> is an exhibition of more than 30 artists and collectives that challenge, question or circumvent the law through their work. Curated by Justin Hoover, <em style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">I Am Crime</em>touches on issues of equity—who gets to break the law, when, and why.</div>
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“True Crime,” a collaborative installation conceived by Critical Art Ensemble, invites any visitor to become part of the exhibition– <a href="http://www.somarts.org/truecrime" style="-webkit-transition-delay: initial; -webkit-transition-duration: 0.25s; -webkit-transition-property: color; -webkit-transition-timing-function: initial; color: #017490; text-decoration: none; text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">click here</a> for details.</div>
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In <em style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">I Am Crime</em> some artists’ criminal trespasses are virtual or accidental, while others contribute documentation of carefully planned civil disobedience. Still others exhibit the residue of artworks which have actually been intervened upon by the United States legal system.<br />
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Dreamers Adrift, a group founded by Jesus Iñiguez and Julio Salgado, approach illegality from a different angle. “Undocumented and Awkward,” a series of skits on video created by and for undocumented youth, highlights social inequalities faced by American immigrants.<br />
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<strong style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Non-anonymous exhibiting artists include:</strong></div>
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<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;" width="237">4Gentlemen</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;" width="162">Scott Kildall</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">E. Clair Acuda Bandersnatch</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Stewart Long</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Miguel Arzabe</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Mark McCloud</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Ray Beldner</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Ann Messner</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Francis Baker</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Julio Cesar Morales</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Oscar Brett</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Jeremy Novy</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Lisa K. Blatt</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Nite Owl</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Mike Bonanno</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Guy Overfelt</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Danny Buskirk</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">PLOTS</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Susie Cagle</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Neil Rivas (Clavo)</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Critical Art Ensemble/Steve Kurtz</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Favianna Rodriguez</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Marque Cornblatt</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Victoria Scott</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Dreamers Adrift</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Julio Salgado</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Corbett Griffith</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Eric Stewart</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">John Craig Freeman</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Luther Thie</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Molly Hankwitz</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Zefrey Throwell</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Jessica Hess</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Hans Winkler</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Jesus Iñiguez</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">The Yes Men</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Lily & Honglei</td><td style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Michael Zheng</td></tr>
<tr style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;"><td height="18" style="text-rendering: optimizelegibility;">Scott Kildall</td></tr>
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</div>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-32818222241636688672012-02-02T05:10:00.000-08:002012-02-02T15:22:16.488-08:00Human Rights World Report 2012 - China<a href="http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012" target="_blank"> http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012:</a><br />
<p>
Against a backdrop of rapid socio-economic change and modernization, China
continues to be an authoritarian one-party state that imposes sharp curbs on
freedom of expression, association, and religion; openly rejects judicial independence
and press freedom; and arbitrarily restricts and suppresses human
rights defenders and organizations, often through extra-judicial measures.
The government also censors the internet; maintains highly repressive policies
in ethnic minority areas such as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia; systematically
condones—with rare exceptions—abuses of power in the name of “social
stability”; and rejects domestic and international scrutiny of its human rights
record as attempts to destabilize and impose “Western values” on the country.
The security apparatus—hostile to liberalization and legal reform—seems to
have steadily increased its power since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. China’s
“social stability maintenance” expenses are now larger than its defense budget.
At the same time Chinese citizens are increasingly rights-conscious and challenging
the authorities over livelihood issues, land seizures, forced evictions,
abuses of power by corrupt cadres, discrimination, and economic inequalities.
Official and scholarly statistics estimate that 250-500 protests occur per day;
participants number from ten to tens of thousands. Internet users and reformoriented
media are aggressively pushing the boundaries of censorship, despite
the risks of doing so, by advocating for the rule of law and transparency, exposing
official wrong-doing, and calling for reforms.</p>
<p>Despite their precarious legal status and surveillance by the authorities, civil
society groups continue to try to expand their work, and increasingly engage
with international NGOs. A small but dedicated network of activists continues
to exposes abuses as part of the weiquan (“rights defense”)movement, despite
systematic repression ranging from police monitoring to detention, arrest, enforced disappearance, and torture.<br />
</p>
<h3 align='center'>
Human Rights Defenders</h3>
<p>In February 2011, unnerved by the pro-democracy Arab Spring movements and a
scheduled Chinese leadership transition in October 2012, the government
launched the largest crackdown on human rights lawyers, activists, and critics
in a decade. The authorities also strengthened internet and press censorship,
put the activities of many dissidents and critics under surveillance, restricted
their activities, and took the unprecedented step of rounding up over 30 of the
most outspoken critics and “disappearing” them for weeks.</p>
<p>The April 3 arrest of contemporary artist and outspoken government critic <u><b>Ai
Weiwei</b></u>, who was detained in an undisclosed location without access to a
lawyer, prompted an international outcry and contributed to his release on bail
on June 22. Tax authorities notified him on November 1 that he had to pay
US$2.4 million in tax arrears and fines for the company registered in his wife’s
name. Most of the other activists were also ultimately released, but forced to
adopt a much less vocal stance for fear of further reprisals. Several lawyers
detained in 2011, including<b><u> Liu Shihui</u></b>, described being interrogated, tortured,
threatened, and released only upon signing “confessions” and pledges not to
use Twitter, or talk to media, human rights groups, or foreign diplomats about
their detention.</p>
<p>The government continues to impose indefinite house arrest on its critics. <u><b>Liu
Xia</b></u>, the wife of imprisoned Nobel Peace Laureate Liu Xiaobo, has been missing
since December 2010 and is believed to be under house arrest to prevent her
from campaigning on her husband’s behalf. In February 2011 she said in a brief
online exchange that she and her family were like “hostages” and that she felt
“miserable.” She is allowed to visit <u><b>Liu Xiaobo</b></u> once a month, subject to agreement
from the prison authorities. </p>
<p><u><b>Chen Guangcheng</b></u>, a blind legal activist who was released from prison in
September 2010, remained under house arrest in 2011. Security personnel
assaulted Chen and his wife in February after he released footage documenting
his family’s house arrest. Noted activist <u><b>Hu Jia</b></u>, who was released after completing
a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence in June, is also under house arrest
in Beijing, the capital, with his activist wife <u><b>Zeng Jinyan</b></u> and their daughter.<br />
Grave concerns exist about the fate of lawyer <u><b>Gao Zhisheng</b></u>, who was “disappeared”
by the authorities in September 2009 and briefly surfaced in March
2010 detailing severe and continuous torture against him, before going missing
again that April.</p>
<p>On June 12, 2011, despite the steady deterioration in China’s human rights environment,
the Chinese government declared it had fulfilled “all tasks and targets”
of its National Human Rights Action Plans (2009-2010).</p>
<h3 align='center'>Legal Reforms</h3>
<p>While legal awareness among citizens continues to grow, the government’s
overt hostility towards genuine judicial independence undercuts legal reform
and defeats efforts to limit the Chinese Communist Party’s authority over all
judicial institutions and mechanisms.</p>
<p>The police dominate the criminal justice system, which relies disproportionately
on defendants’ confessions. Weak courts and tight limits on the rights of the
defense mean that forced confessions under torture remain prevalent and miscarriages
of justice frequent. In August 2011, in an effort to reduce such cases
and improve the administration of justice, the government published new rules
to eliminate unlawfully obtained evidence and strengthened the procedural
rights of the defense in its draft revisions to the Criminal Procedure Law. It is
likely it will be adopted in March 2012.</p>
<p>However, the draft revisions also introduced <b>an alarming provision that would
effectively legalize enforced disappearances by allowing police to secretly
detain suspects for up to six months at a location of their choice in “state security,
terrorism and major corruption cases.” </b>The measure would put suspects at
great risk of torture while giving the government justification for the “disappearance”
of dissidents and activists in the future. Adoption of this measure—which
is hotly criticized in Chinese media by human rights lawyers, activists, and part
of the legal community—would significantly deviate from China’s previous
stance of gradual convergence with international norms on administering justice,
such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which
China signed in 1997 but has yet to ratify.</p>
<p>China continued in 2011 to lead the world in executions. The exact number
remains a state secret but is estimated to range from 5,000 to 8,000 a year.<p>
<h3 align='center'>Freedom of Expression</h3>
<p>The government continued in 2011 to violate domestic and international legal
guarantees of freedom of press and expression by restricting bloggers, journalists,
and an estimated more than 500 million internet users. The government
requires internet search firms and state media to censor issues deemed officially
“sensitive,” and <b>blocks access to foreign websites including Facebook,
Twitter, and YouTube</b>. However, the rise of Chinese online social networks—in
particularly Sina’s Weibo, which has 200 million users—has created a new platform
for citizens to express opinions and to challenge official limitations on
freedom of speech despite intense scrutiny by China’s censors.</p>
<p>On January 30 official concern about Egyptian anti-government protests prompted
a ban on internet searches for “Egypt.” On February 20 internet rumors
about a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution” resulted in a ban on web searches for
“jasmine.” In August a cascade of internet criticism of the government’s
response to the July 23 Wenzhou train crash prompted the government to warn
of new penalties, including suspension of microblog access, against bloggers
who transmit “false or misleading information.”</p>
<p>Ambiguous “inciting subversion” and “revealing state secrets” laws contributed
to the imprisonment of at least 34 Chinese journalists. Those jailed
include <b><u>Qi Chonghuai</b></u>, originally sentenced to a four-year prison term in August
2008 for “extortion and blackmail” after exposing government corruption in his
home province of Shandong. His prison sentence was extended in June for
eight years when the same court found him guilty of fresh charges of extortion
and “embezzlement.”</p>
<p>Censorship restrictions continue to pose a threat to journalists whose reporting
oversteps official guidelines. In May Southern Metropolis Daily editor <b><u>Song Zhibiao </b></u> was demoted as a reprisal for criticism of the government’s 2008 Sichuan earthquake recovery efforts. In June the government threatened to
blacklist journalists guilty of “distorted” reporting of food safety scandals. In July the China Economic Times disbanded its investigative unit, an apparent
response to official pressure against its outspoken reporting on official malfeasance.
Physical violence against journalists who report on “sensitive” topics remained
a problem in 2011. On June 1, plainclothes Beijing police assaulted and injured
two Beijing Times reporters who refused to delete photos they had taken at the
scene of a stabbing. The two officers were subsequently suspended. On
September 19 <b><u>Li Xiang</b></u>, a reporter with Henan province’s Luoyang Television,
was stabbed to death in what has been widely speculated was retaliation for
his exposé of a local food safety scandal. Police have arrested two suspects
and insist that Li’s murder was due to a robbery.</P>
<P>Police deliberately targeted foreign correspondents with physical violence at
the site of a rumored anti-government protest in Beijing on February 27. A video
journalist at the scene required medical treatment for severe bruising and possible
internal injuries after men who appeared to be plain clothes security officers
repeatedly punched and kicked him in the face. Uniformed police manhandled,
detained, and delayed more than a dozen other foreign media at the
scene.</p>
<p>Government and security bureaus prevented the biennial Beijing Queer Film
Festival from screening in Beijing’s Xicheng District. Parts of the festival were
held surreptitiously in community venues.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Freedom of Religion</h3>
<p>The Chinese government limits religious practices to officially-approved temples,
monasteries, churches, and mosques despite a constitutional guarantee
of freedom of religion. Religious institutions must submit data—including financial
records, activities, and employee details—for periodic official audits. The
government also reviews seminary applications and religious publications, and
approves all religious personnel appointments. Protestant “house churches”
and other unregistered spiritual organizations are considered illegal and their
members subject to prosecution and fines. The Falun Gong and some other groups are deemed “evil cults” and members risk intimidation, harassment,
and arrest.</p>
<p>In April the government pressured the landlord of the Beijing Shouwang
Church, a “house church” with 1,000 congregants, to evict the church from its
location in a Beijing restaurant. Over the course of at least five Sundays in April
and May, the Shouwang congregation held its services in outdoor locations,
attracting police attention and resulting in the temporary detention of more
than 100 of its members.</p>
<p>The government continues to heavily restrict religious activities in the name of
security in ethnic minority areas. See sections below on Tibet and Xinjiang.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Health</h3>
<p>On August 2 the government announced the closure of 583 battery-recycling
factories linked to widespread lead poisoning. However, it has failed to substantively
recognize and address abuses including denial of treatment for child
lead poisoning victims and harassment of parents seeking legal redress that
Human Rights Watch uncovered in a June 2011 report of lead poisoning in
Henan, Yunnan, Shaanxi, and Hunan.</p>
<p>People with HIV/AIDS continued to face discrimination. In September an HIVpositive
female burn victim was denied treatment at three hospitals in
Guangdong province due to stigma about her status. On September 8 an HIVpositive
school teacher launched a wrongful dismissal suit against the Guizhou
provincial government after it refused to hire him on April 3 due to his HIV status.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Disability Rights</h3>
<p>The Chinese government is inadequately protecting the rights of people with
disabilities, despite its ratification of the Convention on the Rights of Persons
with Disabilities (CRPD), and its forthcoming review by the treaty’s monitoring
body.</p>
<p>In September a group of part-time teachers with disabilities requested that
China’s Ministry of Education lift restrictions imposed by 20 cities and
provinces on full-time employment of teachers with physical disabilities. On
September 7, Henan officials freed 30 people with mental disabilities who had
been abducted and trafficked into slave labor conditions in illegal brick kiln
factories in the province. The discovery cast doubt on official efforts to end
such abuses in the wake of a similar scandal in Shaanxi in 2007.</p>
<p>On August 10 the Chinese government invited public comment on its longawaited
draft mental health law. Domestic legal experts warn the draft contains
potentially serious risks to the rights of persons with mental disabilities,
including involuntary institutionalization, forced treatment and deprivation
of legal capacity.</P>
<h3 align='center'>Migrant and Labor Rights</h3>
<p>Lack of meaningful union representation remained an obstacle to systemic
improvement in workers’ wages and conditions in 2011.The government prohibits
independent labor unions, so the official All-China Federation of Trade
Unions (ACFTU) is the sole legal representative of China’s workers. A persistent
labor shortage linked to changing demographics—official statistics indicate
that nationwide job vacancies outpaced available workers by five percent in the
first three months of 2011—has led to occasional reports of rising wages and
improved benefits for some workers.</p>
<p>In January a government survey of migrant workers indicated that the hukou
(household registration) system continued to impose systemic discrimination
on migrants. Survey respondents blamed the hukou system, which the government
has repeatedly promised to abolish, for unfairly limiting their access to
housing, medical services, and education. In August 2011 the Beijing city government
ordered the closure of 24 illegal private schools that catered to
migrant children. Most found alternate schools, although an estimated 10 to 20
percent had to be separated from their parents and sent to their hukou-linked
rural hometowns due to their parents’ inability to secure suitable and affordable
schooling in Beijing.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Women’s Rights</h3>
<p>Women’s reproductive rights remain severely curtailed in 2011 under China’s
family planning regulations. Administrative sanctions, fines, and forced abortions
continue to be imposed, if somewhat erratically, on rural women, including
when they become migrant laborers in urban or manufacturing areas, and
are increasingly extended to ethnic minority areas such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
These policies contribute to an increasing gender-imbalance (118.08 males for
every 100 females according to the 2010 census), which in turn fuels trafficking
and prostitution.</p>
<p>Sex workers, numbering four to ten million, remain a particularly vulnerable
segment of the population due to the government’s harsh policies and regular
mobilization campaigns to crack down on prostitution.</p>
<p>Although the government acknowledges that domestic violence, employment
discrimination, and discriminatory social attitudes remain acute and widespread
problems, it continues to stunt the development of independent
women’s rights groups and discourages public interest litigation. A new interpretation
of the country’s Marriage Law by the Supreme People’s Court in
August 2011 might further exacerbate the gender wealth gap by stating that
after divorce, marital property belongs solely to the person who took out a
mortgage and registered as the homeowner, which in most cases is the husband.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Illegal Adoptions and Child Trafficking</h3>
<p>On August 16 the Chinese government announced it would tighten rules to prevent
illegal adoptions and child trafficking. Revised Registration Measures for
the Adoption of Children by Chinese Citizens were expected to be introduced by
the end of 2011 and would restrict the source of adoptions to orphanages,
rather than hospitals or other institutions. The planned rule change follows revelations
in May 2011 that members of a government family planning unit in
Hunan had kidnapped and trafficked at least 15 babies to couples in the United
States and Holland for US$3,000 each between 2002 and 2005. A subsequent
police investigation determined there had been no illegal trafficking, despite testimony from parents who insist their children were abducted and subsequently trafficked overseas.
<h3 align='center'>Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity</h3>
<p>In 1997 the government decriminalized homosexual conduct and in 2001
ceased to classify homosexuality as a mental illness. However, police continue
to occasionally raid popular gay venues in what activists describe as deliberate
harassment. Same-sex relationships are not legally recognized, adoption rights
are denied to people in same-sex relationships, and there are no anti-discrimination
laws based on sexual orientation. On April 4, 2011, Shanghai police raided
Q Bar, a popular gay venue, alleging it was staging “pornographic shows.”
Police detained more than 60 people, including customers and bar staff, and
released them later that day. High-profile public support for overcoming social
and official prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
people is increasingly common. On July 5 a China Central Television talk show
host criticized homophobic online comments posted by a famous Chinese
actress and urged respect for the LGBT community.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Tibet</h3>
<p>The situation in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and the neighboring
Tibetan autonomous areas of Qinghai, Sichuan, Gansu, and Yunnan province,
remained tense in 2011 following the massive crackdown on popular protests
that swept the plateau in 2008. Chinese security forces maintain a heavy presence
and the authorities continue to tightly restrict access and travel to Tibetan
areas, particularly for journalists and foreign visitors. Tibetans suspected of
being critical of political, religious, cultural, or economic state policies are targeted
on charges of “separatism.”</p>
<p>The government continues to build a “new socialist countryside” by relocating
and rehousing up to 80 percent of the TAR population, including all pastoralists
and nomads.</p>
<p>The Chinese government has given no indication it would accommodate the
aspirations of Tibetan people for greater autonomy, even within the narrow confines of the country’s autonomy law on ethnic minorities’ areas. It has rejected holding negotiations with the new elected leader of the Tibetan community in
exile, Lobsang Sangay, and warned that it would designate the next Dalai Lama itself.</p>
<p>In August Sichuan authorities imposed heavy prison sentences on three ethnic
Tibetan monks from the Kirti monastery for assisting another monk who selfimmolated
in protest in March. Ten more Tibetan monks and one nun had selfimmolated
through mid-November, all expressing their desperation over the lack of religious freedom.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Xinjiang</h3>
<p>The Urumqi riots of July 2009—the most deadly episode of ethnic unrest in
recent Chinese history—continued to cast a shadow over developments in the
Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The government has not accounted for
hundreds of persons detained after the riots, nor investigated the serious allegations
of torture and ill-treatment of detainees that have surfaced in testimonies
of refugees and relatives living outside China. The few publicized trials
of suspected rioters were marred by restrictions on legal representation, overt
politicization of the judiciary, and failure to publish notification of the trials and
to hold genuinely open trials as mandated by law.</P>
<p>Several violent incidents occurred in the region in 2011, though culpability
remains unclear. On July 12 the government said it had killed 14 Uighur attackers
who had overrun a police station in Hetian and were holding several
hostages. On July 30 and 31 a series of knife and bomb attacks took place in
Kashgar. In both cases the government blamed Islamist extremists. In mid-
August it launched a two-month “strike hard” campaign aimed at “destroying a
number of violent terrorist groups and ensuring the region’s stability.”
Under the guise of counterterrorism and anti-separatism efforts, the government
also maintains a pervasive system of ethnic discrimination against
Uighurs and other ethnic minorities, along with sharp curbs on religious and
cultural expression and politically motivated arrests.</p>
<p>The first national Work Conference on Xinjiang, held in 2010, endorsed economic
measures that may generate revenue but are likely to further marginalize ethnic
minorities. By the end of 2011, 80 percent of traditional neighborhoods in
the ancient Uighur city of Kashgar will have been razed. Many Uighur inhabitants
have been forcibly evicted and relocated to make way for a new city likely
to be dominated by the Han population.
<h3 align='center'>Hong Kong</h3>
<p>Hong Kong immigration authorities’ refusal in 2011 to grant entry to several visitors
critical of the Chinese government’s human rights record raised concerns
that the territory’s autonomy was being eroded. Concerns about police powers
also continue to grow following heavy restrictions imposed on students and
media during the visit of a Chinese state leader in September 2011.</p>
<p>The status of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong was strengthened in
September when a court judged that rules excluding those workers from seeking
the right of abode were unconstitutional. However, the Hong Kong government
suggested it would appeal to Beijing for a review, further eroding the territory’s
judicial autonomy.</p>
<h3 align='center'>Key International Actors</h3>
<p>Despite voting in favor of a Security Council resolution referring Libya to the
International Criminal Court (ICC) in February, the Chinese government continued
to ignore or undermine international human rights norms and institutions.
In June, amidst outcry against the visit, China hosted Sudanese President Omar
al-Bashir, who is wanted by the ICC on charges of war crimes, crimes against
humanity, and genocide. In 2011 it significantly increased pressure on governments
in Central and Southeast Asia to forcibly return Uighur refugees, leading
to the refoulement of at least 20 people, and in October prevailed upon the
South African government to deny a visa to the Dalai Lama, who wished to
attend the birthday celebrations of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. That same
month it exercised a rare veto together with Russia at the Security Council to
help defeat a resolution condemning gross human rights abuses in Syria.</p>
<p>Although several dozen governments attended the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies
honoring activist Liu Xiaobo, relatively few engaged in effective advocacy
on behalf of human rights in China during 2011. While the US emphasized
human rights issues during Hu Jintao’s January state visit to Washington, that
emphasis—and the attention of other governments—declined precipitously
once the Arab Spring began, making it easier for the Chinese government to
silence dissent. Few audibly continued their calls for the release of Liu and others.
Perhaps demonstrating the influence of growing popular objections to abusive
Chinese investment projects, the Burmese government made a surprise
announcement in September that it would suspend the primarily Chinesebacked
and highly controversial Myitsone Dam. In Zambia, Chinese-run mining
firms announced a sudden wage increase following the election of the opposition
Patriotic Front, which had campaigned in part on securing minimum wage
guarantees.</p>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-32372336031395506712012-01-29T19:00:00.000-08:002012-01-29T19:05:31.825-08:00I Am Crime<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQQ1_14B3ZVY1-hiIeW4pWZugmv3O42GWsIYkK5GffJhlqJ1B0NOf9J6GYLzTYOxrOsPMP7RN_m-jI1_Qk4JOrXHuZhPDf43_0tBDZKv8_GhkEnw98q3AJcjD8J5xasGfFAbhns0Xi6BZ/s1600/goddess+of+democracy.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibQQ1_14B3ZVY1-hiIeW4pWZugmv3O42GWsIYkK5GffJhlqJ1B0NOf9J6GYLzTYOxrOsPMP7RN_m-jI1_Qk4JOrXHuZhPDf43_0tBDZKv8_GhkEnw98q3AJcjD8J5xasGfFAbhns0Xi6BZ/s640/goddess+of+democracy.jpeg" width="361" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mobile phone screenshot: Goddess of Democracy, in front of SOMart gallery building, San Francisco</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiThreNjGF7gUgfDLgYG8sgwXdsYfKLQi7sZAGdCgiWzxRX9eUTLG9rLxrAB7taOdveasL1GdxrhQ2TQ9L1OgK6OUtmriAw4tLPpupSA8qMAMpHSFKdUmInEA45ChEpFgQIB0QPcXQuScQR/s1600/goddess+of+democracy2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiThreNjGF7gUgfDLgYG8sgwXdsYfKLQi7sZAGdCgiWzxRX9eUTLG9rLxrAB7taOdveasL1GdxrhQ2TQ9L1OgK6OUtmriAw4tLPpupSA8qMAMpHSFKdUmInEA45ChEpFgQIB0QPcXQuScQR/s640/goddess+of+democracy2.jpeg" width="361" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container"><tbody>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Goddess of Democracy, in SOMart gallery, San Francisco</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4dQus6fwSXJPfwPtIHDJGviuA3xx1JgKckAlWXpoQwtlNXmJXG3Rm6qXmNjoKnS-7p5lKyL3pAgqoBMKbkVFfrRJMUXClCMahDDf8UuJiRUY69VESnUXIMROr9vip3ASh4ZfBMw1VRa4i/s640/tank-man.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="361" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container"><tbody>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tank Man, in SOMart gallery, San Francisco
</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7KWWjD6Z222xowfgj1IgTTWzvosv_xF_vDisJWEbUSo6gClnH5huKXiCO1I62jDZYSkRLx0nO1wexD9tFc29gVGr9GdFOPNcrrHgAtb0nKmWkjPyVKBIFJvRjvv_BC_MWPTzIs2umW2bE/s640/Tank_Man_SomARTS.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tank Man, in front of SOMart gallery building, San Francisco</td></tr>
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<b>Tiananmen SquARed<br />By 4Gentlemen</b></div>
<br />
Tiananmen SquARed is a two
part augmented reality public art project and memorial, dedicated human
rights and democracy world-wide. The project includes virtual replicas
of the Goddess of Democracy and Tank Man from the 1989 student uprising
in <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1327892146_1">Tiananmen Square</span>. Both augmentations have been placed in Beijing at the precise GPS coordinates where the original incidents took place.<br />
<br />
The
Goddess of Democracy was a 33-foot tall statue, constructed in only
four days out of foam and papier-mâché over a metal armature. Students
from an art institute created the statue, placing it to face toward a
huge picture of the late Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong. Tanks
later flattened the statue when China’s military crushed the protest.<br />
<br />
Tank
Man was an anonymous man who stood in front of a column of Chinese Type
59 tanks the morning after the Chinese military forcibly removed
protestors from in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 5,
1989. The man achieved widespread international recognition due to the
videotape and photographs taken of the incident.<br />
<br />
Although it has
been more than twenty years since Tiananman Protest took place, the
authorities persistently use all means possible to erase the fact that
the Chinese people pursued democracy in this democratic and
anti-corruption movement. Today in China, young people are not aware of
the courageous actions that Tank Man and the Goddess of Democracy
represent. Nonetheless, history should not be forgotten.<br />
<br />
Information
and communication technologies have inspired people to express their
thoughts freely. We as artists, taking advantages of the development of
mobile phone technology and smartphone applications, have revived the
history of 1989 Tiananman Protest that has tremendous implications
waiting for further examinations by our contemporaries.<br />
<br />
Once the
audience downloads the Layar Augmented Reality Browser to their Android
or iPhone, he or she could stand in Tiananmen Square and point their
device’s camera towards the northern side of the plaza where the Goddess
of Democracy was originally erected. The application uses geolocation
software to superimpose a computer generated 3D graphic of the Goddess
of Democracy at the precise GPS coordinates of the original, enabling
them to see the augmentation integrated into the physical location as if
it existed in the real world. Similarly, the Tank Man augmentation
would be placed on Chang’an Avenue northeast of Tiananmen Square in the
exact location of the original event. Both augmentations will appear in
the original scale and orientation.<br />
<br />
Both virtual objects have been place at <a href="http://www.somarts.org/" target="_blank">SOMArts</a> in San Francisco as part of the I Am Crime exhibition.<br />
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<br />4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-32846826815575129822012-01-28T14:04:00.000-08:002012-01-28T14:05:07.235-08:00Communist Leaders' Portraits Unveiled in Tibet on Lunar New Year EveNew Tang Dynasty TV posted a video today, in which they outline a <b><a href="http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/news_china/2012-01-27/tibetan-temples-forced-to-display-communist-leader-portraits.html">policy that will bring an abundance of CCP symbols to Tibetan populated areas</a></b>. From the transcript:<br />
<blockquote>
January
22nd, 2012, the eve of Chinese New Year. Chinese officials in the Tibet
Autonomous Region held a ceremony to unveil a portrait of four
Communist leaders: Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.
They go on to state that they will send these portraits, as well as
Communist flags, to villages, homes, and temples in the region.<br />
[...]In
December 2011, authorities in Tibet introduced the “Nine Must-Haves”
policy. It dictates nine items that all temples must display or carry
portraits of Communist leaders, the Communist flag and a copy of the
state-run People’s Daily.</blockquote>
<a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/2011/11/ten-awkward-questions-to-ask-crazy-crab-cartoonist-who-challenges-china%E2%80%99s-great-firewall/">Crazy Crab</a>,
the artist responsible for the Hexie Farm satirical cartoons, has been
aiming many of his recent pieces at the situation in Tibet. <b><a href="http://hexiefarm.wordpress.com/">His latest addition ridicules the “Nine-Must-Haves” policy</a></b>:4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-46686102668939062852012-01-20T05:55:00.001-08:002012-01-20T06:20:00.659-08:00<h3 align="center">
Exposing CPC Tyranny and Running to the Free World: My Statement on Leaving China
</h3>
<div align="center">
<b>Yu Jie</b>
</div>
<div align="center" style="font-size: 10px;">
<b>January 18, 2012</b>
</div>
<div align="center" style="font-size: 11px;">
<b>[English Translation by <a href="http://hrichina.org/content/5778" target="_blank">Human Rights in China</a>]</b>
</div>
<p>In the afternoon of January 11, 2012 in the Beijing airport, my family
of three boarded a plane bound for the United States. We were escorted
from our home to the boarding gate by five state security officers who
then demanded to take a photo with me, after which they stalked off.</p>
<p>The choice to leave China was a difficult one for me to make. It also took a very long time.
</p>
<p>Since I published <i>Fire and Ice</i> (火与冰) in 1998 when I was still
in university, I have been closely watched by the Central Propaganda
Department and police. After receiving an M.A. from Peking University in
2000, I was unable to find a job due to governmental interference and
had to make a living as a “not-free writer.” During the Jiang Zemin era
[1989-2002], I had been able to publish some of my works in China—there
was still a certain space for free speech in China. After Hu Jintao and
Wen Jiabao took power in 2004, I was totally blocked. Since that time,
no media in mainland China would print a single word by me, and articles
by others which mentioned my name would be deleted. Though I was
physically in China, I became an “exile at heart” and a “non-existent
person” in the public space.
</p>
<p>Despite that, I still did not stop writing. As an independent
intellectual, I continued to criticize the CPC's autocratic system and
became good friends with Liu Xiaobo, with whom I fought side by side. I
have published fifteen or so books and over a thousand articles
overseas. For this, I have been repeatedly harassed—summoned, placed
under house arrest, threatened—and things worsened over time. In those
years, during my visits to the U.S. and Europe, my friends would try to
persuade me to stay, but I would answer, “So long as my life is not in
danger, I will not leave China.” As a writer, freedom of speech and the
freedom to publish are most fundamental. As a Christian, freedom of
religion is essential. As an ordinary person, the freedom to live
without fear is indispensable.
</p>
<p>But I lost these most basic freedoms on October 8, 2010, after they
announced that my best friend Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize; illegal house arrests, torture, surveillance, tracking, and being
taken on “trips” became part of my everyday life. After over a year of
inhumane treatment and painful struggle, I had no choice but to leave
China, to make a complete break from the fascist, barbaric, and brutal
regime of the Communist Party of China.
</p>
<p>This is what I have experienced over the past year: On October 8,
2010, the day that the Nobel Peace Prize for Liu Xiaobo was announced, I
was on a visit to the U.S. I had given a speech at University of
Southern California that day and heard the news that night. I was
immensely excited and encouraged at the time, and immediately began
preparations to return to China. Some friends warned me that the
government must be in a rage from the humiliation, and, as a result, the
human rights situation in China would worsen rapidly, and tried to
persuade me to remain in the U.S. for a while. But for a decade, Liu
Xiaobo had been my brother and closest friend; when he was the president
of the Independent Chinese PEN Center, I was vice president; and I had
personally experienced almost all of the human rights activities that he
participated in. After Liu Xiaobo was arrested in December 2008, I was
authorized by his wife, Liu Xia, to write his biography. That was why I
urgently wanted to return to China and continue with my interviews of
Liu's friends and family, so that I could complete this important work
as soon as possible.</p>
<p>
On October 13, five days after the Nobel Peace Prize was announced, I
returned to China. As soon as I stepped off the plane, I was put under
house arrest by Beijing’s state security officers. Four plainclothes
policemen watched the entrance to my home 24 hours a day, even pressing a
table against the main door and installing six cameras and infrared
detectors at the front and back of my house. They surrounded us like a
dragnet, as if facing a formidable foe.
</p>
<p>For the first few days my wife was still able to go to work. Liu Xia
had asked Liu Xiaobo’s brother and my wife to buy some clothing and food
for Liu Xiaobo. Unfortunately, one day the police found a note from Liu
Xia to my wife when searching Liu’s brother. After that, my wife's
mobile phone was abruptly shut down and she was similarly put under
house arrest round-the-clock and not allowed to go to work.
</p>
<p>One day, my wife got sick with a fever of over 40 °C [104 °F]; though
she was nearly unconscious, the police would not allow her to go to the
hospital. A state security officer from the Chaoyang District Public
Security Bureau named Hao Qi (郝琪) threatened viciously, “Even if you die
at home, I wouldn't let you out. If you die, someone from the higher up
will come and deal with it!” Extremely anxious, I turned to the
Internet for help, and a kind friend saw my call for help on Twitter and
called an ambulance. But the police still blocked the medics at the
door. Thankfully, the doctor persisted and eventually they were allowed
in to take my wife's temperature. The doctor said that her temperature
was dangerously high and that she must go to the hospital for IV
treatment. After several rounds of negotiations, my wife was finally
taken to the hospital in the ambulance in early morning. Six police
officers followed her closely, but I was not allowed to go with my wife.
</p>
<p>The situation only continued to worsen. At the beginning of November,
my phone, Internet, and mobile services were all cut off, so no one
could contact us; my wife and I were at home in a state of total
isolation. The everyday items that we needed, we could only write them
down on a piece of paper and the state security officers would buy them
for us, and then we would pay them. We did not know anything that was
happening outside. We could not contact our parents or our child. This
continued day after day, and we did not know when it would end and felt
that it was even worse than being in prison. In prison, you have a
specific prison term; you have the right to family visits; and each day
you are let out for exercise. But we had basically fallen into an
endless black hole, and every day felt like a year. This continued for
almost two months.</p>
<p>
December 9, the day before the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, was the
darkest moment in my life. Just after 1 p.m., Wang Chunhui (王春辉), a
state security officer from Chaoyang District whom I had been in contact
with regularly, knocked on my door with Deputy Director Ma of the
Dougezhuang substation—my local police station—and said, “Our boss wants
to talk to you.” I did not suspect at all that this was a trap; I put
on a coat over my house clothes and went with them.
</p>
<p>I realized as soon as I went downstairs that something was up. Over a
dozen plainclothes officers and several cars were waiting there.
Immediately, two burly men charged at me, slapping the glasses from my
face and covering my head with a black hood, and then forcing me into
the back of a car. The car left at once, and two plainclothes officers
sat on either side of me, twisting my hands, not allowing me to move.
</p>
<p>After more than an hour, we arrived at some secret location. One of
the state security officers wedged my head under his armpit and dragged
me into a room. They ordered me to sit on a chair and not move—if I did,
they'd beat me. I was wearing the black hood the entire time, so
breathing was very difficult.
</p>
<p>At around 10 p.m., they removed the black hood. Just as I was taking a
breath, several of the plainclothes officials came at me again and
began beating me in the head and the face without explanation. They
stripped off all my clothes and pushed me, naked, to the ground, and
kicked me maniacally. They also had a camera and were taking pictures as
I was being beaten, saying with glee that they would post the naked
photos online.
</p>
<p>They forced me to kneel and slapped me over a hundred times in the
face. They even forced me to slap myself. They would be satisfied only
when they heard the slapping sound, and laughed madly. They also kicked
me in the chest and then stood on me after I had fallen to the ground.
One of my ribs hurt for a month, as if broken; even bending to get out
of bed was very difficult.
</p>
<p>They forced me to spread out my hands and bent my fingers backwards
one by one. They said, “You've written many articles attacking the
Communist Party with these hands, so we want to break your fingers one
by one.” They also brought lit cigarette butts near my face, causing my
skin to burn with pain, and they insultingly blew their cigarette smoke
in my face.
</p>
</p>They verbally abused me nonstop with vulgar language, calling me a
traitor to the state and to the Chinese people, and trash. They also
insulted my friends and family. Then they forced me to use their words
to insult myself; if I did not, they would beat and kick me harder.
</p>
<p>The head state security officer announced, “There are three charges
against you: one, you took an active part over the past ten years in all
of the reactionary things that Liu Xiaobo had done; you both were tools
of imperialism used to subvert China. Two, in a book you published in
Hong Kong, <i>China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao</i> (中国影帝温家宝), you
viciously attacked a leader of the Party and state; you did not listen
to any of our good advice, so we can only use violence against you.
Three, you’re even writing Liu Xiaobo’s biography; if you publish this
book, we’re definitely going to send you to jail.”
</p>
<p>He went on, “If the order comes from above, we can dig a pit to bury
you alive in half an hour, and no one on earth would know. Right now,
foreigners are awarding Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Peace Prize, humiliating
our Party and government. We’ll pound you to death to avenge this.” He
added, “As far as we, state security, can tell, there are no more than
200 intellectuals in the country who oppose the Communist Party and are
influential. If the central authorities think that their rule is facing a
crisis, they can capture them all in one night and bury them alive.”
</p>
<p>I do not know for how many hours the physical and verbal abuse
continued. Then I fainted and my body would not stop twitching. They
drove me to a hospital to try to rescue me. At that time, I was largely
unconscious and only heard hazily that this was a hospital in Changping
in the outskirts of Beijing. I heard the doctor say that I was severely
injured, that they didn’t have the wherewithal to treat me, and that the
police had to try at a larger hospital in the city. The police said,
“Then you send him in an ambulance; we’ll pay.” The doctor said, “Our
ambulance doesn’t have the equipment he needs. You need to immediately
get one from the city that has emergency care equipment, otherwise he
won’t be saved.”
</p>
<p>Soon, an ambulance from the city arrived and took me to a hospital for
Party elites, Beijing Hospital. The police gave me the fake name of Li
Li (李力) and told the hospital, “This man is having epileptic seizures.”
</p>
<p>I was wrestled from the brink of death after several hours of
emergency treatment. Early the next morning, a doctor came to my room on
his rounds and asked about my condition. Just as I struggled to say,
“They beat me,” a policeman beside me quickly pulled the doctor aside.
Another leaned close and hissed into my ear, “If you talk this kind of
nonsense again, we’ll pull out all the tubes from your body and let you
die.”
</p>
<p>In the afternoon of December 10, they said that I was out of danger,
so they checked me out of the hospital and took me to the hotel next
door, where I rested for the afternoon. That night they told me that
their boss wanted to see me, so they took me to another suite. The
official who came to see me said his name was Yu and he was the deputy
director of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau and head of the
State Security Brigade. He said deceitfully, “What happened yesterday
was a misunderstanding—my subordinates’ mistakes. Don’t tell anyone
outside about this.” For the next few days, I stayed in a place on the
outskirts of Beijing that they had arranged. There they interrogated me
every day about what I had done over the past few years, what I had
written. They forced me to write a statement of promises, including not
meeting with foreign reporters, not accepting interviews, not contacting
anyone from the foreign embassies, and not criticizing by name the nine
members of the Standing Committee [of the CPC’s Politburo] in my
articles.
</p>
<p>On December 13, 2010, I was released. For the following two weeks, my
wife and I were able to leave our home, though we had to inform the
state security officers stationed downstairs on a 24-hour watch where we
were going and when we would return home. At the end of December, I
went to my hometown in Sichuan, and they escorted me to the airport. I
stayed there at my former home for four months. While I was there, state
security officers would come by every half month or so to interrogate
me about what I was up to. Someone who said his name was Jiang and that
he was a department head, another person who said his name was Zhang
and that he was a section chief, and some other junior officers—they
were the “team” in charge of my case.
</p>
<p>For the following year, at any “sensitive moment,” such as a holiday, a
memorial day, an opening day for a major governmental meeting, or a day
when foreign dignitaries would be visiting, I would be illegally placed
under house arrest in my home or asked to leave the city on a trip.
This happened nearly every few days, so for nearly half the time I lost
my freedom totally or partially. I was also forced to stop publishing
articles overseas almost entirely, because every time I published an
article, state security would come to my door at once with threats.
There are three people in my family, but we were forced to live in three
separate places: I was put under surveillance away from home; my wife
worked in Beijing; and my son was being cared for by my parents in my
hometown in Sichuan. Soon my wife lost her job because state security
police put pressures on her company three times, and this was not the
first time this kind of thing occurred. Most of the time, I was also
unable to go to church or attend Bible study meetings and could not
regularly practice my faith as a Christian. To me, this was an extremely
painful thing.
</p>
<p>During this time of great difficulty, when even the basic way of life
could not continue, when the family could not live together, when I lost
my freedom to write totally, when personal safety could not be
guaranteed, and after persisting for 14 years as an intellectual in
China speaking the truth, I was forced to make the decision to leave
China.
</p>
<p>However, in summer 2011, when I made the request to go abroad with
state security authorities, they informed me that their superiors would
not permit me and my wife to leave the country. We talked back and forth
until finally I was told that they would consider my request after
Christmas. After Christmas, I bought plane tickets to the U.S. and told
the state security police that I would go no matter what, and if they
detained me at the airport, I would do everything in my power to resist
and tell everything. They said that they would do their best to get
their superiors to remove the ban on my wife and me to leave the
country.
</p>
<p>On January 9, two days before I was to leave for the U.S., Jiang, the
department head at the Beijing State Security Brigade, informed me the
new deputy director of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau (and
head of the State Security Brigade) wanted to see me. On January 10,
they took me to a suite in a hotel. The official said his name was Liu
and was the successor to Yu, the official I had met previously. He told
me to write a letter of guarantee, and then they would consider my
request. He said, “China is growing stronger by the day, while the U.S.
is getting weaker by the day, so why go there?” Would he dare question
Vice President Xi Jinping about his sending his daughter to Harvard to
study?
</p>
<p>After finishing the letter of guarantee that I was forced to write, I
was approved to go. This senior official cautioned me, “Do not think
that you’ll be free once you get to the U.S. If you say or do something
that you shouldn’t, you won’t be able to return home. You still have
family here in China, and won’t you want to come back to visit them?
You need to continue to be careful in what you say and do.” That a
regime could go so far as to use withholding a citizen's
constitutionally-conferred right to enter and leave the country as a
threat only shows its hypocrisy and impotence.
</p>
<p>And that is how, on January 11, my family boarded a plane to the U.S. under the tight monitoring of state security officers.
</p>
<p>I am now in the United States, a free country. Here, I solemnly state
that [what I said in] the interrogations and the letter of guarantee
that I wrote were produced under torture and coercion, and against my
will, and they are completely null and void.
</p>
<p>I further state that I shall make public to the international
community all that I have endured over this past year and that I shall
file a complaint with the United Nations Human Rights Council and other
international agencies. I shall continue to criticize the Communist
Party dictatorship in my writings. This increasingly fascist, barbaric,
and brutal regime is the greatest threat to the free world and the
greatest threat to all freedom-loving people. I vow to continue to
oppose the tyranny of the Communist Party of China.
</p>
<p>After arriving in the U.S., my main writing plans for the near future
are: publish the Chinese edition of Liu Xiaobo’s biography two months
from now and various foreign language editions afterwards. I began
writing the biography in early 2009, and it is the only biography of Liu
Xiaobo authorized by Liu Xia. I hope, through this biography, to
comprehensively introduce Liu Xiaobo’s life, philosophy, and creativity,
and give readers around the world, including those inside China, a
deeper understanding of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. I will use this
book as an opportunity to call on people on every possible occasion to
continue to pay close attention to Liu Xiaobo’s and Liu Xia's fates so
that they can be freed as soon as possible.
</p>
<p>I also plan to publish a new book, <i>Hu Jintao: Cold-Blooded Tyrant</i> (冷血暴君胡锦涛), within the next six months. This will be the companion book to <i>China’s Best Actor: Wen Jiabao</i> and will be a eulogy for Hu Jintao as he exits the stage of history. <i>Hu Jintao</i>
will be a comprehensive analysis of Hu’s governance and provide
analysis and commentary on the major features of the Hu era, including
“harmonious society,” “the rise of a great nation,” “China model,” and
“stability maintenance.” It will enable readers in China and beyond as
well as the international community to see the truth behind China’s
economic growth—reckless autocracy, rampant corruption, deterioration of
human rights, damage to the environment, moral decline—and that Hu
Jintao and Wen Jiabao are sinners of history whose sins cannot be
forgiven.
</p>
<p>After I left China, many friends there showed sympathy for and
understanding of my decision and offered me encouragement and hope. I am
deeply touched and encouraged by this. In the free world, I can access
even more information, so my writing and thinking not only will not
regress, rather, they will advance and improve. I believe that I will
continue to write good works that will not betray the expectations of my
friends.
</p>
<p>On the other hand, I will put forth my voice on the broader
international platform on behalf of the struggle for democracy and
freedom in China. In particular, I shall urge the international
community to pay more attention to the situation of those deprived of
their liberty, e.g., Liu Xiaobo, Liu Xia, Chen Guangcheng, Gao Zhisheng,
Hu Jia, and Fan Yafeng, as well as those relatively unknown, such as
Liu Xianbin, Chen Wei, Chen Xi, and Yang Tianshui. I have already
attained my hard-won freedom and security; to speak out for my
compatriots who have neither freedom nor security is a responsibility
and a mission that I cannot shirk. Be bound with those who are bound,
and mourn with those who mourn—this too is God’s teaching to Christians.
</p>
<p>I am a true patriot. There is a line in <i>Macbeth</i> that goes, “I
think our country sinks beneath the yoke; / It weeps, it bleeds, and
each new day a gash / Is added to her wounds.” I worry and suffer about
this. I will make exposing and criticizing the tyrannical rule of the
CPC my life’s cause. For each day that this government that has robbed
and plundered China’s riches and enslaved and crippled the Chinese
people does not fall, I will not stop exposing and criticizing it. I
further believe that in the near future I will return to a China that
has achieved democracy and freedom. Then, our lives will be like those
described in the Bible, “[Behold,] how good and how pleasant it is for
brethren to dwell together in unity!” And those kleptocrats and traitors
who wrought tyranny, from Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao to every wicked
state security officer, will be put on trial to await an even more
shameful end than that of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, and Muammar
al-Gaddafi. Let us work together so that that day may come as soon as
possible.</p>
<br />
<div style="background-color: #ffffcc; border: thin solid #000000; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 10px; width: 90%;">
<h3 align="center">
揭露中共暴政,奔向自由世界</h3>
<h3 align="center">
——我的去国声明</h3>
<div align="center">
<strong>余杰</strong></div>
<p>2012年1月11日下午,我们一家三口登上了从北京赴美国的飞机。五名国保人员从家门口将我们一直押送到登机口,并要求与我合影照像,之后扬长而去。<br />
作出离开中国的选择,对我来说是艰难的,也是漫长的。</p>
<p>
我自1998年在北大读书期间出版第一本书《火与冰》,便受到中宣部和安全部门的严密监视。2000年从北大硕士毕业,在当局的干预下,一毕业即
失业,从此成为靠写作维持生活的"不自由撰稿人"。在江泽民时代,我的部分作品还能够在国内发表和出版,在国内还有一定的言论空间。2004年,胡温上台
之后,我遭到全面的封杀,从此不能在国内任何媒体上发表一个字,连其他人文章中提到我的名字都会被删去。我的人虽然在国内,却成了一名"内心的流亡者"和
一个在公共空间中"不存在的人"。</p>
<p>尽管如此,我仍然没有停止写作。作为一名独立知识分子,我持续地批判中共的专制体制,并与刘晓波成为亲密朋友,并肩作战。我在海外出版了十五本左
右的著作,发表了上千篇的文章。由此,我多次遭到传唤、软禁、恐吓等各种骚扰,处境日渐困难。那几年,我访问美国和欧洲国家的时侯,有朋友劝我留下来,我
的回答是:"只要没有生命危险,我就不会离开中国。"作为一名作家,言论自由和出版自由是最基本的;作为一名基督徒,宗教信仰自由是必不可少的;而作为一
名普通人,免于恐惧的自由是不可或缺的。</p>
<p>但是,从2010年10月8日我最好的朋友刘晓波获得诺贝尔和平奖的消息传出之后,我便失去了这几项最基本的自由,非法软禁、酷刑、监视、跟踪
和"被旅游"成为日常生活的一部分。历尽一年多的非人待遇和痛苦挣扎后,我不得不选择离开中国,与法西斯化的、野蛮的、残暴的中国共产党政府彻底决裂。</p>
<p>
这一年多以来我个人的遭遇是这样的:2010年10月8日,刘晓波获奖的消息被宣布的当天,我正在美国访问,白天在南加州大学发表一场演讲,晚间听到了刘
晓波获奖的消息。当时,我感到万分激动和鼓舞,立刻准备回国。有朋友告诫我说,中国当局的反应一定是恼羞成怒,并导致国内的人权状况急剧恶化,他们劝我暂
时先留在美国。但是,十年以来,刘晓波是我最亲密的兄长和朋友,刘晓波担任独立中文笔会会长期间,我是副会长,这些年他参与的几乎所有的人权活动,我都是
亲历者。从2008年12月刘晓波被捕之后,我就获得刘晓波的妻子刘霞的授权,开始着手写作刘晓波的传记。因此,我迫切的希望回到国内,继续访谈刘晓波的
亲友,以便尽快完成这本重要的著作。</p>
<p>
获奖消息颁布五天之后,10月13日,我就从美国回到了中国。一下飞机,立即被北京的国保警察非法软禁在家中。四名便衣警察24小时守候在我家门口,甚至直接用一张桌子抵住我家的大门,并在我家前后安装了六台摄像头和红外线探测器,天罗地网,如临大敌。<br />
刚开始几天,我妻子还可以出门上班,刘霞托他弟弟与我的妻子联系,帮刘晓波购买衣服和食品。不幸的是,有一天,警察从刘霞弟弟身上搜出刘霞写给我妻子的纸条。由此,我妻子的手机也突然被停机,同样被日夜软禁在家,不允许去上班。</p>
<p>
有一天,我妻子生病了,发高烧至四十度,几近昏厥,警察仍然不允许她去医院。朝阳区公安分局的一个名叫郝琪的国保穷凶极恶地扬言说:"你就是病死在家中,
我也不让你出门,你死了上面自然有人来负责!"万分焦急之际,我上网求救,有一位好心的朋友从推特上看到我的求救信息后,打电话叫来120救护车。但是警
察仍然把医生阻拦在门外,幸运的是,经过医生的力争,最终被同意进门来为我妻子量了体温。医生说高烧情形很危险,必须到医院输液救治。几经交涉,最后到了
凌晨,妻子终于被救护车送到医院,6名警察贴身跟随,而我被禁止陪同妻子去医院。</p>
<p>
接下来的情况越来越糟糕。从11月初开始,我家的电话、网络和手机等全部被切断,任何人都不能与我们接触,我和妻子在家中处于与世隔绝的状态。我们需要的
日常生活用品,只能写在纸条上,由守候在门口的国保警察代为购买,然后再付钱给他们。我们不知道外面发生了什么,不能与父母和孩子联系,这样的日子一天天
持续着,不知道何时是个尽头,感觉比坐牢还要艰难,坐牢还有个具体的刑期,有亲人探视的权利,每天还有放风的时间,但我们根本就是陷入无尽的黑洞,度日如
年。这样差不多持续了两个月时间。</p>
<p>
12月9日,诺贝尔和平奖颁奖典礼前一天,我一生中最黑暗的时刻降临了。下午一点多,此前常与我接触的朝阳区的一个名叫王春辉的国保,在我所在地豆各庄派
出所的马副所长的陪同下,敲开我家的家门说:"我们领导要找你谈话。"我完全没有怀疑这是一个陷阱,身上还穿着一套家居服,只是在外面罩了一件大衣,便随
同他们出门了。</p>
<p>
一走到楼下,我就发现情况不对。有十多名便衣和几辆汽车在楼下守候,瞬间两个彪形大汉冲到我面前,一巴掌打掉我的眼镜,用一个黑头套将我的头套住,并把我拖上一辆轿车的后排。汽车立即开动,两名便衣左右两边扭着我的双手,不准我动弹一下。</p>
<p>
大约过了一个多小时以后,车开到了一个秘密地点。一名国保把我的头夹在他的腋下,将我拖进一个房间。他们命令我端坐在椅子上面一动不能动,一动便对我拳打脚踢。整个过程中我一直被戴着黑头套,呼吸十分困难。</p>
<p>
到了大约晚上十点左右,他们解开我的黑头套,我刚要松一口气,立即又冲进来几个便衣,不由分说便对我进行劈头盖脸地殴打。他们脱光我的衣服,将我赤身裸体
地推倒在地上,疯狂地踢打。在殴打的过程中,他们还拿出照相机拍照,并得意洋洋地说,要将把我的裸体照片发在网络上。</p>
<p>
他们把我按住跪在地上,先后打了我一百多个耳光,甚至还强迫我打自己的耳光,我必须让他们听到响亮的声音,他们才满意,然后发狂地大笑。他们还用脚踢我的
胸口,把我踢倒在地上后再踩在我的身体上。我胸口的一根肋骨像断了一样,后来疼痛了长达一个月的时间,连弯腰起床都感觉十分困难。</p>
<p>
他们还强迫我摊开双手,然后将我的手指一根一根地往反方向掰。他们说:"你的两只手写了许多攻击共产党的文章,要把你的手指一根一根地折断。"他们还用用灼烧的烟头贴近我的脸,我的皮肤感受到了滚烫的疼痛,他们还侮辱性地将嘴里的烟喷到我的脸上。</p>
<p>
他们不断地用粗话辱骂我,骂我是卖国贼,是汉奸,是垃圾。同时,他们还辱骂我的家人和朋友。接着,他们强迫我跟着他们的说法来骂自己。如果我不骂自己,他们就加倍对我拳打脚踢。</p>
<p>
带头的那个国保警察宣布:"你有三个主要的罪状:第一,这十年来刘晓波做的所有反动的事情,你都积极参加,你们都是帝国主义颠覆中国的工具;第二,你在香
港出版《中国影帝温家宝》一书,恶毒攻击党和国家领导人,我们好言劝告你不听,就只能用暴力来对付你;第三,你还在写作刘晓波的传记,如果你要出版这本
书,我们肯定把你送进监狱。"</p>
<p>他还说:"如果上面下了命令,我们半个小时就可以在外面挖个坑把你活埋了,全世界都没有人知道。就在此时此刻,外国人在给刘晓波颁奖,羞辱我们的
党和政府,我们打死你来报复他们。"他接着说:"根据国保掌握的情况,国内反对共产党的、有影响力的知识分子,总共也不会超过两百个人,一旦中央觉得统治
出现危机,一夜之间就可以将这两百人全部抓捕,一起活埋。"</p>
<p>整个殴打辱骂的过程不知道持续了几个小时,后来我昏迷了过去,而且全身不断抽搐。他们开车将我送到医院抢救。那时,我已经没有了大部分知觉,只在
迷迷糊糊中听到,这是北京郊区昌平的一个医院。医生说,这个人伤势严重,我们这里没有办法抢救,你们得送到城里的大医院去试试看。警察说:"那么,你们派
个救护车,我们付钱。"医生说:"我们医院的救护车没有那些特殊设备,你们要立即从市内调有急救设备的车来,否则就没救了。"</p>
<p>不久,救护车从市内赶来,将我运送到市内的一家"高干医院"----北京医院。他们给我报了一个叫李力的假名字,对医院说:"这个人是癫痫病发作。"</p>
<p>
经过几个小时的抢救,我终于从死亡线上挣扎过来。到了第二天早晨,医生来查房,询问我的情况,我刚刚挣扎着说了一句"他们打我",在旁边的一个警察头子立
即将医生叫到一边。而另一名警察贴近我的耳边凶狠的说:"如果你再乱说话,我们把你身上的管子全都拔掉,你就去死吧。"</p>
<p>10日下午,他们看我已经脱离生命危险了,便将我从医院带出去,带到旁边的一个酒店,休息了一下午。傍晚,他们告诉我,他们的领导要来看我,就把
我带到另外一个套房中。来见我的官员自称姓于,是北京市公安局副局长和国保总队的总队长。他虚伪地说:"昨天的事情是个误会,是下面的人做得不对,你不要
对外说出去。"之后的几天,他们在郊外安排了一个地方让我去住,每天审讯我这些年从事的活动和写的文章。他们强迫我写下一份承诺书.</p>
<p>直到2010年12月13日,我被释放回家。此后两周,我和妻子可以出门,但必须告知在楼下24小时监控的国保警察,要去哪里,什么时候回家。十
二月底,我返回四川老家,他们把我送到机场。此后,我在老家居住了四个月。在这些时间里,差不多每隔半个月时间,国保警察便前来盘问我的生活情况。他们是
一个由一名自称姓姜的处长、自称姓张的科长和其他几名年轻下属组成专门负责我的"团队"。</p>
<p>此后一年,一遇到所谓的敏感时刻,比如节日、纪念日、开会日、外事访问日等,我就被非法监禁在家,或者被要求到外地去旅游。这样几乎三天两头,有
差不多一半的时间我都失去或部分失去自由。我也被迫几乎停止了在海外发表文章,因为每有文章发表,国保警察立即上门来威胁。我们一个三口之家,被迫生活在
三个不同地方:我被监控在外地,妻子在北京工作,孩子在四川老家由爷爷奶奶照顾。很快,由于国保警察三次去妻子工作的公司施加压力,她的工作也失去了,这
种情形不是第一次发生。在大部分时间里,我也不能到教会参加聚会和查经,不能过一个基督徒正常的信仰生活。这对我来说,是极为痛苦的事情。</p>
<p>在这样艰难到连基本的生活都不能为继的时侯,在一家人都不能生活在一起的时侯,在我的写作自由全部丧失的时候,在基本的生命安全也没有保障的时候,在坚持在国内做一个说真话的知识分子十四年之后,我被迫作出出国的决定。</p>
<p>但是,当2011年夏天我向国保方面提出出国的要求时,他们却告知上级不准我和妻子出境。经过反复的谈判,他们答应圣诞之后可以考虑我出国的事
情。圣诞之后,我购买了赴美的机票,并告知国保警察,无论如何我也要走,如果我在机场被扣留,我绝对要奋力反抗并说出一切真相。他们回答说,他们会尽量做
工作,让上级解除不准我和妻子出境的禁令。</p>
<p>1月9日,我的赴美机票时间的前两天,北京国保总队的姜姓处长告知,新任的北京市公安局刘副局长(兼北京市国保总队总队长)将约见我。1月10
日,他们将我接到一个酒店的套房内,与我会见的官员自称姓刘,是此前与我见过的于姓官员的继任者。他要求我写一份保证书。然后再考虑我的要求。他说:"中
国日渐强大,美国日渐衰落,你何必去美国呢?"他敢如此质疑送女儿去哈佛读书的习近平副主席吗?</p>
<p>在被迫写下这样的保证书后,我被批准放行。这名高级官员警告说:"不要以为到美国就自由了,如果你说了不该说的话,做了不该做的事,你就不可能回
国。你的家人还在国内,你难道不想回来探望他们吗?你要继续谨言慎行。"一个政权居然用宪法赋予公民的出入境自由来要挟其公民,可见它的虚伪和虚弱。</p>
<p>就这样,1月11日,我们全家在国保警察的严密监控下登上了到美国的飞机。</p>
<p>如今,我来到美国这个自由的国家。在此,我郑重宣布:在酷刑和逼迫情形下所作的笔录和保证书,是违背自己真实意愿的,全部作废。</p>
<p>我更宣布:我向国际社会公布自己这一年多以来我所遭遇的一切,并向联合国人权理事会等机构提出控诉。我将继续从事批判共产党专制制度的写作。这个日渐法西斯化,越来越野蛮和残暴的政权,是自由世界的最大威胁,是一切热爱自由的人的最大威胁。我将矢志不渝地反对中共的暴政。</p>
<p>赴美之后,我近期内的主要写作计划是:计划两个月以后出版《刘晓波传》的中文版,以后陆续出版此书的各种外文版本。这本传记在二零零九年初便开始
写作,也是由刘霞授权的惟一的一本刘晓波的传记。我期望通过这本传记全面地介绍刘晓波的生平、思想与创作,让包括中国人在内的全球读者更加深入地认识这位
诺贝尔和平奖得主。以此为契机,我将在一切可能的场合呼吁人们持续关注刘晓波和刘霞的命运,以便让他们早日获得自由。</p>
<p>我还将计划在半年内出版新书《冷血暴君胡锦涛》,这本书将成为《中国影帝温家宝》的姊妹篇,将是致即将退出历史舞台的胡锦涛的一份"悼词"。书中
将全面分析胡锦涛的执政方式,对"和谐社会"、"大国崛起"、"中国模式"、"维稳"等胡锦涛时代的重要特征进行分析和评述,让国内外的读者以及国际社会
认识到中国经济增长背后专制肆虐、腐败盛行、人权恶化、环境破坏、道德滑坡的诸多真相,而胡锦涛和温家宝是罪不可赦的历史罪人。</p>
<p>我离开中国之后,国内很多朋友对我的选择表示同情和理解,也对我提出一些鼓励和期望。对此,我深受感动与鼓舞。我在自由世界中可以接触到更多的资讯,由此我的写作和思考不仅不会退步,反倒会有进展与提升。我相信,我会不断写出不负朋友们期待的好作品。</p>
<p>另一方面,我也将在更加广阔的国际社会的平台上,为中国的民主与自由奋力发出自己的声音。特别是呼吁国际社会更多关注仍然被剥夺自由的人士的处
境,如刘晓波、刘霞、陈光诚、高智晟、胡佳、范亚峰以及相对不为人所知的刘贤斌,陈卫、陈西、杨天水等人。我已经获得了来之不易的自由与安全,为那些仍然
处在不自由、不安全的境况里的同胞仗义执言,是我不可推卸的责任和使命。与捆绑者同捆绑,与哀哭者同哀哭,也是上帝对基督徒的教导。</p>
<p>我是一名真正的爱国者。莎士比亚在《麦克白》中有这样一句台词:"我想我们的国家正在重轭之下沉沦,在哭泣,在流血。每一天,她的旧痕之上都在增
添着新伤。"我为此而忧伤痛苦,我将把揭露和批判共产党的暴政作为我一生的事业,这个窃取与掠夺中国财富,奴役与残害中国人民的政府一天不垮台,我对它的
揭露和批判就一天不会停止。我更相信,在不久的将来,我会回到实现民主自由的中国,那时,我们的生活将如同圣经所说"弟兄姊妹和睦同居,是何等的美,何等
的善"。而那些施行暴政的窃国贼者和卖国贼,从胡锦涛、温家宝到每一个作恶的国保警察,都将被送上审判席,等待他们的将是比萨达姆、穆巴拉克、卡扎菲们更
加可耻的下场。让我们为那一天的早日到来而共同努力。</p>
</div>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-9605469657020148782012-01-19T15:53:00.000-08:002012-01-19T17:58:35.371-08:00Things Happened on Christmas Days in ChinaDecember 25, 2011<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
... 13,000 Chinese citizens, furious over repeated rip-offs by their village elite, sent their leaders fleeing to safety and repulsed efforts by the police to retake Wukan (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/world/asia/in-china-the-wukan-revolt-could-be-a-harbinger.html?pagewanted=all">NYTimes</a>). </blockquote>
<br />
December 25, 2010<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Quian Yunhui, a popular village head leading petitions against government abuses of power, died after being crushed by the front wheel of a
truck loaded with rocks in eastern Zhejiang. Rumors emerged stating that Qian was
held on the ground by four men in security personnel uniforms while the
truck was driven slowly over him. </blockquote>
<br />
December 25, 2009<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Prominent dissent intellectual and activist Liu Xiaobo was sentence to 11 years in jail for 'Subversion of State Power.'</blockquote>
<br />
December 25, 2008 <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h2>
<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.bosnewslife.com/4645-china-launches-christmas-crackdown-on-christian-worship" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to China Launches Christmas Crackdown On Christian Worship">China Launches Christmas Crackdown On Christian Worship</a></span></h2>
</blockquote>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-29207343894972539402012-01-19T09:20:00.000-08:002012-01-19T16:24:13.144-08:00The Year of Dragon: Crackdown Continues on Activists in China<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/world/asia/china-continues-arrests-of-prominent-dissidents.html">NYTimes:</a> The Chinese authorities have responded by drastically intensifying a crackdown on rights activists that dated from December 2008, when the writer and intellectual <b>Liu Xiaobo</b> was detained after helping write the Charter 08 democracy manifesto.
Mr. Liu was convicted of subversion in December 2009, and in 2010, while serving an 11-year prison sentence, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Last March, a court in Sichuan Province sentenced another activist, <b>Liu Xianbin</b>, to 10 years in prison on subversion charges, and another prominent rights activist in Sichuan, <b>Chen Wei</b>, drew a nine-year subversion sentence in December. On Dec. 26, a Guizhou Province court sentenced <b>Chen Xi</b> to 10 years for subversion.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6dM9OAojspHkIWEwZGIQAdDuUeupfRBOg_Ijm-sP_0AYpPI63XL1a8ieH41oQAHn7Pws53_af9yqg7QUcUUxhNdokWAy-NNN9rQzGgU0ffBFkcEUEtKHYMeUBbbUBn2K3OY8j1AObJ35K/s1600/10890095_951037.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6dM9OAojspHkIWEwZGIQAdDuUeupfRBOg_Ijm-sP_0AYpPI63XL1a8ieH41oQAHn7Pws53_af9yqg7QUcUUxhNdokWAy-NNN9rQzGgU0ffBFkcEUEtKHYMeUBbbUBn2K3OY8j1AObJ35K/s1600/10890095_951037.jpg" /></a> </div>
<br />
Further readings: <span style="font-size: small;"> </span><br />
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_447051439"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Zhu Yufu</b> was </span></a><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/18/world/asia/china-continues-arrests-of-prominent-dissidents.html" target="_blank">charged with subversion</a> for writing a poem: </span><span style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;">"It's time, Chinese people! / The
square belongs to everyone / the feet are yours / it's time to use your
feet and take to the square to make a choice."</span><br />
<br />
<div id="sitbReaderBookTitle">
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0674061470/ref=rdr_ext_tmb" title="Go to "No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Poems" page">No Enemies, No Hatred: Selected Essays and Po…</a> <span id="sitbReaderBinding"></span></div>
by <b><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=rdr_ext_aut?_encoding=UTF8&index=books&field-author=Xiaobo%20Liu">Xiaobo Liu</a></b>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=rdr_ext_aut?_encoding=UTF8&index=books&field-author=Perry%20Link">Perry Link</a><br />
<h3 style="font-weight: normal; text-align: left;">
<a href="http://hrichina.org/content/5778" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: small;">Exposing CPC Tyranny and Running to the Free World: My Statement on Leaving China<b> </b>by<b> Yu Jie</b></span></a></h3>
<div align="center">
</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<h1 class="title" id="page-title" style="font-weight: normal;">
<span style="font-size: small;">It will enable readers in China and beyond as well as the international
community to see the truth behind China’s economic growth—reckless
autocracy, rampant corruption, deterioration of human rights, damage to
the environment, moral decline—and that Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao are
sinners of history whose sins cannot be forgiven.
</span></h1>
</blockquote>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-20854222289591375102012-01-08T07:01:00.000-08:002012-01-19T16:25:03.357-08:00Tiananmen SquARed: Tank Man and the Goddess of Democracy at LA Re.Play<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">4Gentlemen with <a href="http://manifestarblog.wordpress.com/la-re-play/">ManifestAR @ LA Re.Play</a></span></div>
<div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"><br /></span></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwNSOQRnOUrkZIa6GaQmc0EhYSjtpjWfTytLGt3s5zJgDJqCtsp1s8QjnDs5fsd2Ye5z35LeKUG6v4V5Bcc2mZp1w4fcqQg0PgXSLU72_N5rKwGfBHsSwptIXToNSPhEyXE4z7bTDy9M/s1600/Tank_Man_Los_Angeles.jpeg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5695277075703956146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMwNSOQRnOUrkZIa6GaQmc0EhYSjtpjWfTytLGt3s5zJgDJqCtsp1s8QjnDs5fsd2Ye5z35LeKUG6v4V5Bcc2mZp1w4fcqQg0PgXSLU72_N5rKwGfBHsSwptIXToNSPhEyXE4z7bTDy9M/s400/Tank_Man_Los_Angeles.jpeg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 225px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 400px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;"><a href="http://lareplay.net/" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;">LA Re.Play</a>, an Exhibition of Mobile Art in conjunction with <a href="http://conference.collegeart.org/2012/sessions/" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;">Mobile Art: The Aesthetics of Mobile Network Culture in Place-making</a> during the <a href="http://conference.collegeart.org/2012/" style="color: #0066cc; text-decoration: none;">College Arts Association Annual Meeting</a>, Los Angeles, February 22-29, 2012</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">Co-curators: Hana Iverson, Visiting Scholar, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Dr. Mimi Sheller, Director, Center for Mobilities Research and Policy, Drexel University and Jeremy Hight, independent artist and curator</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">Opening reception at CAA Convention Center LA Re.Play Hub Location, February 22, 5:30 – 7:30 pm</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">Reception: EDA Grad Art Gallery, Broad Art Center, UCLA, Friday, February 24, 6:00 – 8:00 pm</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Lucida Grande',Verdana,Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 16px;">Whereas the public square was once the quintessential place to air grievances, display solidarity, express difference, celebrate similarity, remember, mourn, and reinforce shared values of right and wrong, it is no longer the only anchor for interactions in the public realm. That geography has been relocated to a novel terrain, one that encourages exploration of mobile location based public art. Moreover, public space is now truly open, as artworks can be placed anywhere in the world, without prior permission from government or private authorities – with profound implications for art in the public sphere and the discourse that surrounds it.</span><br />FREemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05214547704271730400noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-92203934125700689992011-10-07T20:32:00.000-07:002012-01-19T14:49:37.386-08:00Three Wise Monkeys<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b> <span lang="EN-US"><i><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Three Wise Monkeys: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil</span></i></span></b></div>
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by 4Gentlemen</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKTMh7ouQDsveCkUoQdjTq5F-o_jQ9mok92ScCmVDND066jA2JJWMpWwqeZQky_7OA41pZQ-sBEbCB7s__Y5KstepjkTPfEmKN0b5frcUik8WvsKaU0NA9S0urOEZAr1XO3D6TUEcwYclL/s1600/aiweiwei.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKTMh7ouQDsveCkUoQdjTq5F-o_jQ9mok92ScCmVDND066jA2JJWMpWwqeZQky_7OA41pZQ-sBEbCB7s__Y5KstepjkTPfEmKN0b5frcUik8WvsKaU0NA9S0urOEZAr1XO3D6TUEcwYclL/s320/aiweiwei.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<span class="Normal" style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Portraying Chinese dissent artist Ai Weiwei, the work ironically refers to principles of Three Wise Monkeys: ‘hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil,’ that arguably originates from <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analects_of_Confucius" rel="nofollow" target="_blank" title="Analects of Confucius"><span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1318044413_1">Analects of Confucius</span></a></i>: "Look not at what is contrary to propriety; listen not to what is contrary to propriety; speak not what is contrary to propriety; make no movement which is contrary to propriety" (<span style="font-family: SimSun;">非禮勿視,非禮勿聽,非禮勿言非禮勿動)</span>. Instead of reviving its original teaching of moral value, the authorities adopt Confucianism in order to constrain freedom of speech in China in the 21<sup>st</sup> century. </span><br />
<span class="Normal" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> Being concurrent with social turbulence in Middle East since spring of 2011, many Chinese intellectuals and activists including Ai Weiwei have been secretly detained for criticizing social injustice that the government considers ‘inciting instability and subversion.’ The international community’s outcries for releasing dissidents have limited impact. Although released in August 2011 after spending 81 days in jail, Ai is not set free – he addresses worries of being a rights activist in the future, because "<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/17/us-china-ai-idUSTRE78G1E320110917" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">they can make me disappear</a>.”</span><br />
<span class="Normal" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> During Ai’s secretive detention, many <a href="http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/press-room/news/4034" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> leading global art institutions </a> call for the release of the artist. As Chinese, we intend to remind the world that freedom of speech remains gravely suppressed in this society that announces the ‘freedom’ is ‘evil’ for Chinese people. We intend to deploy AR technology to launch this project at leading art institutions around the world, therefore continue informing global audience of the condition of freedom of expression in China.</span><br />
<span class="Normal" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><i> Three Wise Monkeys</i> is also proposed to participate Manifest.AR group event <a href="http://manifestarblog.wordpress.com/daw-2011/">'The Art of a Placebo'</a> at Digital Art Week. The <i>Three Wise Monkey</i> is designed for citizens enduring oppression of free speech. It can be used as a part of psychological treatment after a major social crisis such as indicated by the image sequence: The self-immolation to protest religious policies (F1), subway trains crash (F2), mysterious death of the village head who led </span>petitions against alleged abuses by local government<span class="Normal" style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> (F3), or earthquake smashing poorly constructed school buildings to result death of thousands of students (F4). <i>Three Wise Monkey</i> will effectively help individuals quell anger, therefore never offend the authorities. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzQ2Purv31jP01yXBShoashR8w4ZL704scLU6Rxmz0jFLKQCLMOzR7DH9R5sdED8r65ghXFcSddC2Bx3qjPGHlRPLGuSBL2XI5AYuK41tP7HliQQedDJ5S2xjVEOhdJvEjCH6hspa3xOk/s1600/tibet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzQ2Purv31jP01yXBShoashR8w4ZL704scLU6Rxmz0jFLKQCLMOzR7DH9R5sdED8r65ghXFcSddC2Bx3qjPGHlRPLGuSBL2XI5AYuK41tP7HliQQedDJ5S2xjVEOhdJvEjCH6hspa3xOk/s320/tibet.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><b>F1</b>: </span><span style="color: #666666;">3 Wise Monkeys at</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"> </span><span style="color: #666666;">Aba County in Sichuan</span><span style="color: #666666;">, where a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8829891/Tibetan-monk-sets-himself-on-fire-in-protest-of-Chinese-rule-in-Tibet.html" target="_blank">Tibetan monk set himself ablaze</a></span></div><br/>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH2Tnt-MxHLfBOTZlxuvTu0QZQT2onxffR1Cf_9oijskVqnZL0BvQaZZS1uy5wqTaIgIR-7yD_C2yus3oVmxiXerVi560dVST8HCXPiOp4ycKQzGmR0yH3oaJHzEFZ366DViWK05BuUBnQ/s1600/ai-shanghai2-bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH2Tnt-MxHLfBOTZlxuvTu0QZQT2onxffR1Cf_9oijskVqnZL0BvQaZZS1uy5wqTaIgIR-7yD_C2yus3oVmxiXerVi560dVST8HCXPiOp4ycKQzGmR0yH3oaJHzEFZ366DViWK05BuUBnQ/s320/ai-shanghai2-bw.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><b>F2</b>: </span><span style="color: #666666;">3 Wise Monkeys at</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"> the scene </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/28/world/asia/shanghai-subway-accident-injures-hundreds.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #666666;">subway trains crashed in Shanghai</span></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX5MR14kSbiaSLk_x70-IOzB8Knm4-FxgR6m2IKmYUwYHboe0UTHviEGB7uoA0ZNzQeYBC0fXX6MxxLo0fJH9U4WJk8YSMvztzKZDDx7I3a-f41-eTKtyEP4eqOd8ntZ0KAsbf3mt9y1Jm/s1600/ai-qian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX5MR14kSbiaSLk_x70-IOzB8Knm4-FxgR6m2IKmYUwYHboe0UTHviEGB7uoA0ZNzQeYBC0fXX6MxxLo0fJH9U4WJk8YSMvztzKZDDx7I3a-f41-eTKtyEP4eqOd8ntZ0KAsbf3mt9y1Jm/s320/ai-qian.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><b>F3</b>: </span><span style="color: #666666;">3 Wise Monkeys at</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">eastern Zhejiang Province, where the popular village head </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qian_Yunhui" target="_blank">Qian Yunhui</a> killed by a 'traffic accident'</span><span style="color: #666666;"></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJ_FkwAZHrwyZm-ty2lX5uYhmGNdtGPagxZa5U3aPUUsTaoss12FFnJDAEJ3lUc6nbEqgbOxlxIS5bUs5FQwwE59BLEGWcrsWNbtS0mcUKEY4bJ8Rc3VGqiUiG9zL51Za7wUxbxxp14FF/s1600/ai-sichuan-bw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMJ_FkwAZHrwyZm-ty2lX5uYhmGNdtGPagxZa5U3aPUUsTaoss12FFnJDAEJ3lUc6nbEqgbOxlxIS5bUs5FQwwE59BLEGWcrsWNbtS0mcUKEY4bJ8Rc3VGqiUiG9zL51Za7wUxbxxp14FF/s320/ai-sichuan-bw.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><b>F4</b>: </span><span style="color: #666666;">3 Wise Monkeys at</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;">Sichuan, where </span><span style="color: #666666;">earthquake smashed<a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_918590364"><a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/science/topics/earthquakes/sichuan_province_china/index.html" target="_blank"> poorly constructed<br/>
school buildings to result death of thousands of students</a></div>
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<a href="http://manifestarblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/three-wise-monkeys-img_3506_2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-1896" height="675" src="http://manifestarblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/three-wise-monkeys-img_3506_2.jpg?w=450&h=675" title="Three Wise Monkeys IMG_3506_2" width="450" /></a></div>
<a href="http://manifestarblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/three-wise-ms-img_3505_2.jpg"><img alt="" class="size-full wp-image-1897" height="675" src="http://manifestarblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/three-wise-ms-img_3505_2.jpg?w=450&h=675" title="Three Wise Ms IMG_3505_2" width="450" /></a></div>
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screenshot at Open Space Gallery, Canada. Date: October 27, 2011.</div>
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More information: <a href="http://manifestarblog.wordpress.com/daw11/project-list/" target="_blank"><span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1318126894_0">http://manifestarblog.wordpress.com/daw11/project-list/</span></a></div>
4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-74033865284699659022011-09-27T19:52:00.000-07:002011-09-27T20:25:23.936-07:00The Great Firewall of China 伟大的中国防火墙<div style="text-align: center;">By 4Gentlemen</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder" /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://augmentationistinternational.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/great_firewall_of_china_screenshot_mocket_3201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://augmentationistinternational.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/great_firewall_of_china_screenshot_mocket_3201.jpg" width="192" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>During the Qin Dynasty, Emperor Qinshihuang began building the Great Wall to keep northern nomads out of China. In the Internet age, China has invented the Great Firewall to block free thinking, to censor messages and images which criticize government policies and draw attention to violations of human rights, and to keep this activity from circulating in the blogosphere. While the ancient Great Wall of China is regarded as a wonder of human civilizations, the Great Firewall in cyberspace becomes the most sophisticated, extensive and notorious project preventing the world’s largest population from expressing themselves with contemporary technologies. How does this invisible wall impact the lives of people within China and beyond in the information era?<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ls0AAhFDp2o" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>The Great Firewall of China is an augmented reality public art project. Built for smart phone mobile devices, the project seeks to make Internet repression visible by setting the Great Wall ablaze. The public can simply download and launch the project and aim their device’s cameras at the at Wall. The application uses geolocation software to superimpose flames at precise GPS coordinates along the Great Wall, enabling public to see the fire integrated into the physical location as if it existed in the real world.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">Explore Great Firewall AR on Google Earth</div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="250" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&ie=UTF8&t=e&ecpose=28.83171575,110.76127588,2262918.17,3.107,27.309,-0.742&msid=212635585748160329283.0004a792c8aabf9af1835&ll=39.97712,111.533203&spn=16.81921,39.462891&z=4&output=embed" width="450"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><small><a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&ie=UTF8&t=e&ecpose=28.83171575,110.76127588,2262918.17,3.107,27.309,-0.742&msid=212635585748160329283.0004a792c8aabf9af1835&ll=39.97712,111.533203&spn=16.81921,39.462891&z=4&source=embed" style="text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small></div><br />
Related projects also on view at <a href="http://distributedcollectives.net/">Distributed Collectives</a> exhibition at <a href="http://littleberlin.org/2011/07/distributed-collectives/">Little Berlin Gallery</a>, PA:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://manifestarblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/wall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="http://manifestarblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/wall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br class="webkit-block-placeholder" /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/6v9Y1Ip2HjM" width="560"></iframe></div>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-21943514528838041912011-06-30T03:58:00.000-07:002012-01-19T16:26:01.585-08:00Goddess of Democracy in Al Tahrir Square, Cairo<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisgarJYhYSIO2X9y2Lpomh1gNrzDblDalFacQmr93prVciPhmX_oCbUgHcrGbPD78qM8zxlpOk5mVxAu242bDhkbJyzHl6Cr6hgrdqHXS3vxrf6G3K-1Nz8xmMqhvaG2qOZc-1ge82eX8/s1600/267788_10150297042299108_675354107_9036169_3193537_n.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623966378080251314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisgarJYhYSIO2X9y2Lpomh1gNrzDblDalFacQmr93prVciPhmX_oCbUgHcrGbPD78qM8zxlpOk5mVxAu242bDhkbJyzHl6Cr6hgrdqHXS3vxrf6G3K-1Nz8xmMqhvaG2qOZc-1ge82eX8/s400/267788_10150297042299108_675354107_9036169_3193537_n.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwuZ6piBM42sGSRLdUZdDhUUp5dYKQIKMydCu0r3OXJHJ_bZQa5becLP6jCRMt61COS-gHuxGfTHGOd9ZFTYrhTBlnfCWQ5NUhqttozYRRHeFB2UHB7O8ezND7m5NkJ6xH5HNPAZFEgR8/s1600/264340_10150297042139108_675354107_9036168_6054341_n.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623966377177626866" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwuZ6piBM42sGSRLdUZdDhUUp5dYKQIKMydCu0r3OXJHJ_bZQa5becLP6jCRMt61COS-gHuxGfTHGOd9ZFTYrhTBlnfCWQ5NUhqttozYRRHeFB2UHB7O8ezND7m5NkJ6xH5HNPAZFEgR8/s400/264340_10150297042139108_675354107_9036168_6054341_n.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSrI3kSfWG7g5GmS3yDwwv7d6YuL6q8dSJkq05Fh4DrO8BFqN3IjIxcbUE3esBhqIJ6lfYAhOgsjgJlPybyDjp8-DLI4BmWXoGI-sFFCCceEq_FgSqmPSCBryC3TczQHMNpcgAu3t4Nqw/s1600/270399_10150297041979108_675354107_9036166_2953670_n.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5623966381928158258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSrI3kSfWG7g5GmS3yDwwv7d6YuL6q8dSJkq05Fh4DrO8BFqN3IjIxcbUE3esBhqIJ6lfYAhOgsjgJlPybyDjp8-DLI4BmWXoGI-sFFCCceEq_FgSqmPSCBryC3TczQHMNpcgAu3t4Nqw/s400/270399_10150297041979108_675354107_9036166_2953670_n.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 400px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 267px;" /></a><br />
The Goddess of Democracy installed in Al Tahrir Square, Cairo. Documented by Warren Armstrong, June 28, 2011.FREemanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05214547704271730400noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-42181981829448885162011-06-11T17:36:00.000-07:002012-01-19T16:26:21.668-08:00‘A single spark can start a prairie fire' 星星之火,可以燎原 - by 4 Gentlemen<div style="text-align: center;">
<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=212635585748160329283.0004a559978cdb27cbd0f&ll=36.173357,102.128906&spn=48.885745,74.707031&z=3&output=embed" width="425"></iframe></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
View <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=212635585748160329283.0004a559978cdb27cbd0f&ll=36.173357,102.128906&spn=48.885745,74.707031&z=3&source=embed" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">A Single Spark, by 4Gentelmen</a> in a larger map</div>
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'In the middle of these online discussions, a new type of political action, critical public debate, entered contemporary Chinese life.' </blockquote>
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'If state power and market forces have given birth to the Internet as a new sphere of social and political life, will the same forces take away this life, as they did in Habermas’s analysis of the eventual refeudalization of the public sphere?'<b><span style="font-family: Times-Bold; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Bold; font-size: small;"></span></span></b></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">First, the Internet has given rise to a new type of political action, online critical debate; it facilitates the articulation of social problems and has shown some potential to play a supervisory role in Chinese politics. Through the use of the Internet, citizens are becoming better informed about and more engaged in social and political affairs.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">Second, existing social organizations have developed an online presence while virtual communities have been built on the Internet. The use of the Internet by China’s environmental groups and NGOs demonstrates some new possibilities for organized civil society action. It also indicates how elements of Chinese civil society may be linked with the global civil society in ways previously unimaginable.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">Third, new forms and </span></span><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">dynamics of protest related to the Internet have appeared in Chinese civil society. Collective protest relies on communication media to spread its message and organize activities. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">Evidence </span></span><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">presented in this article shows that the Internet can facilitate protest activities in effective ways. Yet online protest is more than a new protest strategy. It is also a new field of struggle involving the uses and abuses of new information technologies. In this sense, online protest represents the growth of a contentious civil society in China.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">Public debate, social organization and protest that take place on the Internet in China are linked in umerous ways with the global community, including the Chinese diaspora around the world....The virtual community of the ‘Forum of Chinese Educated Youth’, for example, clearly crosses national boundaries. The porous and networked nature of the Internet thus ties China’s civil society to the global community. Their interpenetration is a source of energy for China’s incipient civil society. Such interpenetration enhances information flow critical to civil society activities. ...Foremost among these are the online constructions of personal and collective identities. Both personal and collective identities are tied to civil society, not the least because they directly affect what Chamberlain has called ‘the quality of civil societal life'.<span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">By this he means the internal solidarity of a civil society as </span></span><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">communities of autonomous individuals. It is not that the autonomy of civil society from the state is not important, but that it is not enough, because ‘<u>What bonds civil society and its components are forces working from the inside out, not from the outside in’</u>.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><b>...how does the use of the </b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><b>Internet shape personal identities? In the long run, can Internet-based discourse and interactions contribute to a civic and participatory culture? How may the Internet be used to articulate collective identities based on class, gender, ethnicity, region and above all, the nation?</b> <b>How do the online constructions of various forms of collective identities impinge on civil society in China?</b> ...</span></span><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times-Roman; font-size: small;">They are important areas for future research.</span></span></div>
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- GUOBIN YANG,<i> <a href="http://bc.barnard.columbia.edu/%7Egyang/Civil%20society%20web.pdf">The Internet and Civil Society in China: a preliminary assessment</a></i></blockquote>
</span>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-26955938488889312972011-06-03T05:12:00.000-07:002012-01-19T16:27:06.321-08:00AR Art at Venice Biennial 2011& Notes on the 22nd Anniversary of 1989 Tiananmen Protest<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
Augmented Reality virtual installations at Piazza San Marcos,</div>
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mobile phone screenshots taken in Venice Italy</div>
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by Four Gentlemen </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOU0_60DD1N9YuzMDIYGdQC8_486d0W98eR5stnRHdoj9sq-VLp68Fcxwfrt2bKs98Ti5nGRtuiwvJZCBt9hCnIEzE1ZGj5Jbyf_r8FOPBJW4nKn5SK3puhIua5ADYztesMu91BuoH2dD5/s1600/tank-man-venice-biennale.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOU0_60DD1N9YuzMDIYGdQC8_486d0W98eR5stnRHdoj9sq-VLp68Fcxwfrt2bKs98Ti5nGRtuiwvJZCBt9hCnIEzE1ZGj5Jbyf_r8FOPBJW4nKn5SK3puhIua5ADYztesMu91BuoH2dD5/s640/tank-man-venice-biennale.jpeg" width="384" /></a></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_UKNieif2ky1U8p8toHZT9NSwccFKQP2hiH4VG1hZESPmh1_hshclE4OI6rkc7LEfjbiMWGNTKmLWxrZjt29v9DmGJHBcfIKxkZRhko12jYqrNJGlp-ETD8WVyyH7l6e-bLBA-YduXDyf/s1600/20110604195649.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_UKNieif2ky1U8p8toHZT9NSwccFKQP2hiH4VG1hZESPmh1_hshclE4OI6rkc7LEfjbiMWGNTKmLWxrZjt29v9DmGJHBcfIKxkZRhko12jYqrNJGlp-ETD8WVyyH7l6e-bLBA-YduXDyf/s640/20110604195649.jpeg" width="384" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Tank Man' Augmented Reality at Piazza San Marcos, Venice</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGXLNXDu6kf2ypTj4IPaJErRaexfs5l5Cwy18Ph41lnKd-800RNOe0BIC-FlJDRk7sNYxysGosq0TUtMKYqx8xXf3MKpSlxXzYEnoAGVVYKoBqZKG1O5vTX2quROdOs9EjvS2xTWXnT2fe/s1600/20110604195526.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGXLNXDu6kf2ypTj4IPaJErRaexfs5l5Cwy18Ph41lnKd-800RNOe0BIC-FlJDRk7sNYxysGosq0TUtMKYqx8xXf3MKpSlxXzYEnoAGVVYKoBqZKG1O5vTX2quROdOs9EjvS2xTWXnT2fe/s640/20110604195526.jpeg" width="384" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">'Goddess of Democracy' Augmented Reality at Piazza San Marcos, Venice</td></tr>
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'The world without spirit is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting things around, changing the rules, and who's on top, and so forth. No, no! Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.' - Joseph Campbell, <i>'The Hero's Adventure,' The Power of Myth</i></blockquote>
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'BEIJING (AFP) – Thousands of Chinese and foreign tourists flocked to Tiananmen Square on Saturday, the anniversary of the deadly 1989 crackdown on mass pro-democracy protests, amid a noticeable police presence. ' </blockquote>
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<img alt="Tourists flock to Tiananmen Square for anniversary " id="photoMain" src="http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20110604/capt.photo_1307178533367-2-0.jpg?x=400&y=269&q=85&sig=z9YEvS_FLn4ZKP2KSPDGHQ--" /> </div>
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<a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110604/wl_asia_afp/chinarightstiananmenprotest">- http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110604/wl_asia_afp/chinarightstiananmenprotest </a></div>
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<img src="http://fast1.onesite.com/blogs.telegraph.co.uk/user/malcolmmoore/95f15c9d6a5a71ba10f1cb4c8ee683b4.jpg?v=135900" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="302" /></td></tr>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Astonishing scenes at Tiananmen Square vigil in Hong Kong, June 4th. 2011</span></h1>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Goddess of Democracy at Victoria Park, Hong Kong, </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">June 4th. 2011</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvAPSZb6mfbhl1GOjIjNYbz-_HkGLLksM52ikbMbQZbC0WK4_844K65jiSdnJXHuBJ9e5rBtKMH0AhXS3V7zjs-oT0NYQgNEB6wE0iVTe0KPUlKBf7GwTnPtBrvCXbpeXcz4ye-KUVT4N5/s1600/people-and-tanks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvAPSZb6mfbhl1GOjIjNYbz-_HkGLLksM52ikbMbQZbC0WK4_844K65jiSdnJXHuBJ9e5rBtKMH0AhXS3V7zjs-oT0NYQgNEB6wE0iVTe0KPUlKBf7GwTnPtBrvCXbpeXcz4ye-KUVT4N5/s400/people-and-tanks.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">People & Tanks, Chinese painting</td></tr>
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<a href="http://lilyhonglei.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/people-and-tanks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-15284766680471373662011-04-11T07:07:00.000-07:002012-01-19T16:27:36.504-08:00National Museum to launch Enlightenment Exhibition:The Art Newspaper <a href="http://www.theartnewspaper.com/articles/China%E2%80%99s+new+Age+of+Enlightenment/23495">reports</a>, Transformed from Revolutionary History Museum, National Museum of China, on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, is launching the first exhibition - <i>the European Enlightenment</i>, collaborating with Germany.<br />
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It is said Enlightenment concept about 'Science' and 'Democracy' had led to the formation of Chinese Communist Party since 4 May 1919 Student Movement. Ironically, the exhibition centering around history of Enlightenment and Tiananmen Square has to eliminate 1989 Tiananmen Student Protest, which Enlightenment spirit also profoundly contributed to.4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-679521419109466084.post-10775562432173535712011-03-30T19:15:00.000-07:002012-01-19T16:28:35.016-08:00Chinese Media Misstated Libyan against West | 中央电视台谎报“利比亚人民反对西方武力“<div class="photobox" id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_divFirstImage">
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<b>为什么利比亚出现中文标语?因为抗议者要告诉中国人民: 利比亚人民反对卡扎非,"法国万岁!" 央视宣传"利比亚人民反对西方武力"是谎言。</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?cid=1101&MainCatID=&id=20110328000107">Libyan protesters challenge Chinese media spin - </a></span></h1>
"Muammar Gaddafi is a liar": the banner in Chinese script by Libyan protestors is hard for the Chinese media to misinterpret. (Photo/Web)</div>
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The Chinese government has denounced the western-led military action against the forces of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, with the country's state-run media plying the line that Libyan citizens are strongly opposed to western intervention. However, Libyan protestors have sent another message, including using Chinese words, to express their anger against Gaddafi, making it hard for the Chinese media to push its own narrative.<br />
On Thursday (Mar. 24)<b> the state-run CCTV 4 reported on protesters in Benghazi, showing a banner with the words "Vive la France" (Long live France). The broadcaster's voice-over called this a Libyan outcry against the bombing of the city by coalition forces.</b><br />
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It is uncertain whether Libyan people have seen the reports from China's official media. But Libyan protestors later actually flashed a slogan written in Chinese characters to make sure the Chinese public really know their mind. The slogan read: "Muammar Gaddafi is a liar." <br />
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A netizen addressed the state-run media on Sina Weibo, China's largest microblog, "Now how can you lie? (You) are really hard on Libyan people. They are already so busy with the mess their country is in. Now they have to learn Chinese as well." <br />
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Another user said CCTV misreported the victims of attacks by Gaddafi's forces in Benghazi as the victims of multinational coalition forces by manipulating pictures.<br />
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Further report from <a href="http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE72M02I20110323">Reuters</a>4Gentlemenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00325033466187880760noreply@blogger.com0