From The Guardian’s editorial Europe should put a brake on Beijing’s excesses
The Chinese government is not immune to pressure. It respects economic power. It does not heed its internal critics because they are commercially irrelevant.
Also very quotable, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry recently said:
Sphere: Related ContentChinese people know best about China’s human rights situation.
Last week a shocking incident of violence against foreigners in Beijing was perpetrated by the police in an apparent drug sweep. The Guardian writes about it in Beijing police round up and beat African expats.
According to five bystanders, teams of police, dressed in black jumpsuits and reportedly wielding batons and taser guns, cordoned off a street in the popular Sanlitun nightclub district at around midnight and rounded up almost all the black men there. Many of the men were beaten.
The raid took place in front of hundreds of stunned expatriates outside the packed bars and clubs of the neighbourhood, which is popular with Beijing’s burgeoning foreign community.
“I saw a guy being beaten by these kids. He wasn’t doing anything. He wasn’t fighting back,” said one witness, a white American college graduate working in Beijing.
“I have not really ever seen anything so brutal,” said another American. “There was blood on the streets. They were basically beating up any black person they could find.”
Among the victims were at least 20 black men, including students, tourists and the son of a diplomat.
If ever there was a year for China to work on their dismal reputation in the world, it should be this year. Unfortunately this seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. The harsh treatment once reserved for their own people, now seems to be extended to their foreign guests. In addition to the attacks on blacks, all refugees and asylum seekers who have sought safe harbor in China will also be deported or repatriated before next summer’s Olympics. It seems unlikely that attacks on foriegners safety and human rights will abate anytime before the Olympic Games.
Sphere: Related ContentLi Heping is a prominent human rights lawyer in China. The New York Times reports in Chinese Lawyer Recounts Abduction that he was kidnapped and tortured in Beijing on the eve of China’s National Day holiday.
In the telephone interview on Tuesday night, Mr. Li said he was followed after leaving his office late Saturday by a group of men who eventually grabbed him, put a bag over his head and drove him to a location where they beat him in a basement, sometimes tormenting him with a high-powered electric rod.
Later, he said, the abductors drove him to another location in the suburbs of Beijing, where they left him and told him that he and his family ought to leave Beijing immediately.
After being released by his abductors, Mr. Li said he returned home to discover that some of his personal belongings were missing, including legal files and his license to practice law.
In a statement released to a human rights group, Mr. Li said: “As a lawyer, I had the chance to experience electric punishment and torture. I was rolling on the ground and they continued laughing and beating me. This torture lasted about four or five hours.”
The complete article describes Li Heping as a lawyer who has become well known for his defense of environmental activists, imprisoned lawyers and church leaders.
Sphere: Related ContentThe online edition of Time includes a neat little exposé on the harsh realities facing China’s athletes when they retire.
According to the China Sports Daily, nearly 80% of China’s 300,000 retired athletes are struggling with joblessness, injury or poverty. Many athletes suffer from sports injuries and health problems caused by their training.
The Time article follows the appalling legacy of female weightlifter Zou Chunlan. Recruited at an early age, Zou was required to take pills that her coach claimed were “nutrition boosters.” They made her grow a beard and develop a prominent Adam’s apple and a deep voice. She is now infertile and must shave every couple of days.
When Zou Chunlan left school to become a professional athlete, her recruiting coach assured the 13-year-old that the nation’s huge sports bureaucracy would look after her for the rest of her life. All she had to worry about was winning. For a decade, Zou followed his advice, winning the 48-kg national weightlifting title in 1990 when she was 19 years old and pocketing four other national championships. But when she retired in 1993, Zou discovered that the coach’s side of the bargain wasn’t going to be met. After three years of menial jobs in the women’s weightlifting team’s kitchen, she was asked to leave.
With her little education and total ignorance of the real world, Zou had little choice but to turn to physical labor. After stints carrying sacks on a construction site and selling lamb kebabs in the street, she ended up as a masseuse in a public bathhouse earning $60 a month. Her fate isn’t unusual. A weightlifting coach explained to the Beijing News that Zou wasn’t the only retired weightlifter struggling with the real world. “Zou’s national medals are worthless. There are world champions who end up jobless after retirement.”
It is shocking treatment in a country that places a great deal of importance on winning athletic competitions. Much like the Soviet Union before them, China sees athletic competitions as a means of strengthening nationalism and providing a measuring stick to other countries such as the United States. We are sure to see in the upcoming Beijing Olympics that little matters more than the total medal count. The athletes that have given their entire lives to building the image of a strong socialist nation, could soon find themselves in menial jobs after the games are over.
Read the complete China’s Disposable Athletes on the Time website.
Sphere: Related ContentA Windows Live Spaces blogger has written a disturbing piece on Chinese apathy and injustice. On June 28, a middle school student from Chongqing was stabbed after arguing with two classmates. He lay injured outside the school gates for 30 minutes while pedestrians and school staff did nothing. He eventually bled to death.
The following morning, family members, including the mother, protested outside the school demanding an explanation. Police came to remove the family, hauling away the mother and assaulting the deceased’s nine year old sister and an aunt. Outraged members of the public protested outside a country government building and vandalized a police car.
It is a shocking story, and a clear illustration of the apathy and injustice that building a “harmonious society” breeds. Rather than dealing fairly with the relatives of the victim, local officials were quick to act forcefully in the name of maintaining “social order.”
The original blogger has posted pictures of the school and spontaneous protests which were gleaned off the Internet. Read the original post: Chinese Apathy and Injustice.
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