Chinese Netizens Rally in Support of Hu Jia

2008.01.18

Video documentary made by Hu and Zeng last summer, while Hu was still under house arrest. Courtesy of Hu Jia.

HONG KONG—Ordinary Chinese have left numerous support messages online for detained AIDS activist Hu Jia and his wife and baby, who remain under tight restriction at the couple’s Beijing apartment. Authorities are meanwhile clamping down on blog posts and comments about Hu, who some believe was detained for his outspokenness around the Beijing Olympics.

“I am a neighbor,” read one comment to Zeng’s blog, which has now been blocked. “Please tell me how I can deliver baby formula to you.”

“This is to add my comment to the others, and to tell the world that the Chinese people love justice and we love the light,” said another. “We are praying for you.”

The authorities have cut off Hu’s wife Zeng Jinyan from telephone and Internet access, effectively detaining her and her baby daughter under house arrest.

Video taken by the couple in recent months shows a team of national security police camped outside the couple’s apartment round the clock; the police are turning away any journalists who try to visit Zeng, but she was briefly captured by a UK television crew peering from the window, her baby in her arms.

Chinese blogger Isaac Mao said it had taken some time for the news of Hu’s Dec. 27 detention for “subverting state power,” to filter through to Chinese netizens, but that now they were reacting.

Hu Jia and his wife, Zeng Jinyan, January 2007. Photo courtesy of Hu Jia.

“They have almost certainly got wind of the news via the overseas media,” Mao told RFA’s Mandarin service. “Now, a lot of the grassroots media in China are reporting Hu Jia’s detention.”

“Some are even getting together to send Zeng some baby milk powder. There is a lot of concern, because some of the milk powder was not delivered but was intercepted by those guarding the door,” Mao said.

“People are not only sending the milk powder but are also making a public record of the fact. People have got used to much more intellectual freedom in the past year or so they are willing to make judgments and even to play a part in spreading the news of events like this,” said Mao, a keen proponent of citizen journalism and grassroots Web development.
Call to action

The overseas-based Chinese-language news site Boxun.com carried an announcement calling on people to travel to Hu and Zeng’s home in Beijing’s Bobo Freedom City on Sunday.

Meanwhile, former journalist and editor of the nonprofit Minjian magazine Zhai Minglei said his news blog had been blocked after he posted an article in support of Hu by Guangdong-based university professor Ai Xiaoming.

“I think it’s because I’ve been doing some posts on the situation of Hu Jia,” Zhai told Mandarin reporter Ding Xiao.

“It was blocked soon after I posted an article from Ai Xiaoming entitled ‘Saving an ordinary person in a everyday way,’” Zhai said.

Ai was warned off public comment by authorities in 2005 after writing an article strongly supporting the campaign in Guangdong’s Taishi village to remove an elected village chief accused of corruption amid a land dispute.

“It must be that, because I have been posting articles about him and appeals on his behalf since the blog was unblocked. I posted three in a row,” Zhai said.
Sensitive reaction

People are not only sending the milk powder but are also making a public record of the fact. People have got used to much more intellectual freedom in the past year or so they are willing to make judgments and even to play a part in spreading the news of events like this.

Chinese blogger Isaac Mao

Typically, blogs containing posts that the government deems politically subversive are deleted, and the author warned by the government. Those hosted on overseas servers are filtered from Chinese netizens through the use of forbidden keywords, so they are removed from search engine results.

Zhai said the government’s reaction appeared to be even more sensitive than usual, given the tenor of many of the comments and blog posts.

“Most people who are making these comments have no knowledge of China’s civil rights movement, and they are commenting from a humanitarian perspective, because Jinyan hasn’t managed to get milk to feed the baby, and she still has big black bruises on her arm where the national security police gripped her. The articles that I have written, as Hu Jia’s friend, and which have been written by Li Jinsong and Ai Xiaoming, are pretty middle-of-the-road and moderate. I don’t think it’s very wise of the government to suppress such moderate hopes that the government will manage to reconcile its differences with Hu Jia.”

Beijing-based legal scholar Teng Biao said he has been frequently taken in for questioning and warnings by national security police since Hu’s detention.

“Sometimes it’s the national security police from Changping county. When things are more serious, then it’s a more senior level of national security police. They basically tell me not to get involved in Hu Jia’s case, and threaten and warn me, saying that I could end up being fired and detained myself if I insist on continuing to represent all these human rights cases.”

Teng said authorities had asked him specifically about an article he and Hu published in September 2007 titled “The truth about China before the Olympics,” detailing widespread rights violations directly linked to the Olympics, including mass evictions and the illegal detention of those making complaints against the government through legal channels.

“I wrote that article with him last September. They asked me if I wrote it. I said that it was mostly written by me, and that Hu Jia had just added on a bit specifically to do with AIDS.”

Teng said the charges of incitement to overthrow state power against Hu were unfounded. He said Hu Jia wasn’t against the Olympics, but rather that he had called publicly for an improvement to Chinese society as a result of the Olympics.

Prominent AIDS activist Wan Yanhai was also taken in by police for questioning on the day of Hu’s arrest, Dec. 27. And Gao Yaojie, a well-known AIDS doctor, says that the day Hu Jia was detained she received a “mysterious phone call” from a stranger inviting her to attend an AIDS seminar. Upon verification she learned that there was no such seminar.

The 80-year-old doctor says she believes that it was a trick to lure her out of her house. She says her phone line is being tapped, her e-mail has been blocked, and her family has been harassed and even threatened.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Ding Xiao. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.