Tag: Political Prisoners

Defecting From North Korea Is Now Far Harder

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The North Korean software engineer was desperate. He had been sent to northeastern China in 2019 to earn money for the North Korean regime. After working long hours under the constant watch of his minders, he found an email address on a website and sent a harrowing message in 2021: “I am writing at the risk of losing my life,” pleaded the engineer. A young woman who had been smuggled by human traffickers from North Korea into China in 2018 contacted the owner of the same website early this year.…

After China Arrested Her Husband, A Wife Discovered His Secret Dissident Blog

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It wasn’t as if Bei Zhenying didn’t know that her husband was unusual, or even that he had some secrets. He was a talented computer programmer, and she fell for his inquisitive intelligence and playfulness when they met at university in Shanghai. But he was also proudly nonconformist — refusing to use social media or buy new clothes — and intensely private, disappearing into his study to do work he wouldn’t discuss. Ms. Bei, 45, accepted those quirks as the habits of a professional geek, someone engrossed in a world…

Blinken in China: What to Know

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Antony J. Blinken landed in Beijing on Sunday morning, making him the first U.S. secretary of state to visit since 2018. Tense relations have delayed the trip for months: He had intended to visit in February, but postponed after the Pentagon announced that a Chinese surveillance balloon was drifting across the continental United States. Mr. Blinken and other American officials have expressed hope that the visit might open a more constructive era of diplomacy. But China has maintained a confrontational stance in recent weeks, raising concerns that the meetings in…

Tiananmen Exhibit Is ‘a Symbol of Defiance’

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Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we will look at plans for a New York City memorial to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre. We’ll also update you on a legal skirmish over cannabis regulation. A new exhibition is set to open in Midtown Manhattan memorializing those killed when Chinese troops opened fire on pro-democracy protesters who had gathered in Tiananmen Square in 1989. The exhibit, which will open this month, comes two years after officials in Hong Kong cracked down on commemorations of the Tiananmen Square protests. The 2,000-square-foot…

Chinese Dissident Sentenced to 8 Years After He Tried to Fly to His Dying Wife

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A court in southern China has sentenced one of the country’s most unyielding human rights activists to eight years in prison for essays he wrote and a website he created, in the ruling Communist Party’s latest warning blow against political dissent. The activist, Yang Maodong, was detained in 2021 when he tried to catch a flight to the United States to be with his wife, who was gravely ill. Mr. Yang — who is better known by his pen name, Guo Feixiong — was sentenced at the end of a…

China Accuses Liberal Columnist of Espionage After a Lunch With Diplomat

Chin@Strategy

BEIJING — A high-ranking editor at a Chinese Communist Party newspaper who often wrote liberal-leaning commentaries is expected to stand trial for espionage in Beijing, after he was arrested while eating lunch with a Japanese diplomat. The editor, Dong Yuyu, was a columnist and deputy editor of the editorial section at Guangming Daily, one of the party’s major newspapers. For decades, he had routinely met with foreigners, including diplomats and journalists, in part to inform his own prolific writing. But now the authorities are eyeing those interactions as proof that…

Lonely Cry for Action as China Locks Up Japanese Citizens on Spy Charges

Chin@Strategy

Hideji Suzuki served six years in a Chinese prison on spying charges — a sentence that stemmed, he said, from a dinner party where he did nothing more than try to make small talk with a Chinese academic about North Korea. Since returning to Japan in October, he has tried to raise the alarm about China’s seemingly arbitrary detentions of Japanese citizens. He is one of 17 Japanese nationals detained on similar charges since 2015, but the only one to speak out about his experience and what he describes as…

In Hong Kong, 47 Democracy Leaders on Trial for Security Charges

Chin@Strategy

The political candidates represented the vanguard of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Numbering in the dozens, they had planned to run for the city’s legislature in 2020, after months of turbulent protests calling for greater freedom from China. By the time the election was held, more than a year later, none of the candidates could run. Most were in jail, where many still languish today, charged with subversion in the largest case yet involving the national security law Beijing imposed on the city in 2020. Their arrests laid bare the lengths…

In Hostage Diplomacy, It’s Often the Hostage-Takers Who Pay

Chin@Strategy

Brittney Griner’s release, nearly a year after Russian authorities detained her, is once more forcing a difficult question in Washington and other capitals. What is the least bad option in dealing with hostage diplomacy? The practice, which has grown somewhat more common in recent years, involves imprisoning a foreigner, usually on spurious or exaggerated charges, for the purpose of extracting concessions from that person’s government. For the victim’s government, giving in risks encouraging hostile states to take more hostages. But holding out prolongs the hostage’s suffering, as well as sending…

Meet the World’s New Human Rights Crisis Manager. He Has a Lot to Do.

Chin@Strategy

GENEVA — Barely a month after taking office as the United Nations’ new human rights chief, Volker Türk was in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region last week meeting victims of a conflict that has displaced millions. A day later, in the capital, Khartoum, he met the generals who were clinging to power with the help of troops using lethal force against protesters. He told the generals that Sudan needed to transition to civilian rule and “make sure that the human rights for all people of Sudan are the driving force behind…