Tag: Political Prisoners

Bao Tong, 90, Dies; Top Chinese Official Imprisoned After Tiananmen

Chin@Strategy

Mr. Bao’s wife, Jiang Zongcao, died on Aug. 21 at 90. Their deaths have been widely mourned by friends and supporters in China, although official media have not mentioned the deaths and social media sites have tried to stifle the news. Bao Tong was born on Nov. 5, 1932, in Haining, Zhejiang Province, in eastern China, the third of six children. His father, Bao Peiren, a manager in an enamel products factory, and his mother, Wu Heng, a homemaker, immersed their children in learning. The family fled the Japanese invasion…

Why People Are Flocking to a Symbol of Taiwan’s Authoritarian Past

Chin@Strategy

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Ringed by barbed wire and high gray walls, and once the site of a secretive military detention center, the museum just south of Taipei makes for a surprising tourist hot spot. The Jing-Mei White Terror Memorial Park, housed on the campus of a former military school, is a chilling reminder of the excesses of Taiwan’s not-so-distant authoritarian past when its rulers imposed martial law for four decades. The moldering concrete buildings with fading paint were once the site of secret tribunals where political dissidents were tried and…

For Uyghurs, U.N. Report on China’s Abuses Is Long-Awaited Vindication

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HONG KONG — At first China said there was “no such thing” as re-education centers that held vast numbers of people in its far western Xinjiang region. Then, as more reports emerged that hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs and members of other largely Muslim groups were being detained, Beijing acknowledged the camps’ existence but described them as vocational training centers. When overseas Uyghurs spoke out about the authorities’ abuses in Xinjiang, China targeted their families back home, sentencing their relatives to long prison terms and using the full weight of…

Your Tuesday Briefing: Kenya’s Next President?

Chin@Strategy

Good morning. We’re covering uncertain election results in Kenya and a possible prisoner swap between Russia and the U.S. A new Kenyan president? Kenya’s vice president, William Ruto, won the country’s presidential election, the head of the electoral commission said yesterday. The result came days after a cliffhanger vote. Ruto gained 50.5 percent of the vote, narrowly defeating Raila Odinga, a former prime minister, said a top official. That percentage is enough to avert a runoff vote, but a majority of election commissioners refused to verify the results. Here are…

In Turbulent Times, Xi Builds a Security Fortress for China, and Himself

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Over informal, private meals with American leaders, China’s Xi Jinping let his guard down a little. It was a decade ago, relations were less strained, and Mr. Xi, still cementing his power, hinted he worried about the Chinese Communist Party’s grip. Speaking privately with President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, Mr. Xi suggested that China was a target of “color revolutions,” a phrase the party adopted from Russia for popular unrest in the name of democracy and blamed on the West. The recent “Arab Spring” uprisings across the…

Chinese Activists Face Subversion Charges for Weekend Gathering

Chin@Strategy

Twenty or so lawyers and activists quietly arrived at a gaudy “Nice Home Party” rental villa near the Chinese seaside. They ate takeout food, sang along to a karaoke machine and played table soccer. But they also had a serious purpose: discussing China’s besieged human rights movement. Two years after that weekend gathering in December 2019, the two best-known attendees — Xu Zhiyong and Ding Jiaxi — are awaiting trial on subversion charges related to the gathering, according to indictments. Police and prosecutors have seized on the weekend meeting to…

Ahead of Biden’s Democracy Summit, China Says: We’re Also a Democracy

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BEIJING — As President Biden prepares to host a “summit for democracy” this week, China has counterattacked with an improbable claim: It’s a democracy, too. No matter that the Communist Party of China rules the country’s 1.4 billion people with no tolerance for opposition parties; that its leader, Xi Jinping, rose to power through an opaque political process without popular elections; that publicly calling for democracy in China is punished harshly, often with long prison sentences. “There is no fixed model of democracy; it manifests itself in many forms,” the…

Uyghurs Seek Emotional Help as Families in China Suffer

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Organizers of the mental health initiatives say they have so far seen a positive, if cautious, response from diaspora Uyghurs. One big challenge, they say, has been overcoming the cultural stigma of therapy, pervasive in Uyghur and many other cultures. Linguistic barriers are also a problem; relatively few professionally trained mental health counselors speak Uyghur. Other challenges are more administrative, like the difficulty in the United States of finding mental health care that is covered by insurance. Some who have made it past the barriers, like Mamutjan Abdurehim, say that…

Luo Changping Detained in China After Criticizing ‘The Battle at Lake Changjin’

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Luo Changping built a reputation as a muckraking journalist in China, a place where few dare pursue the calling, until he was forced out of the industry in 2014. Now a businessman, he has run afoul of the authorities again, this time over a critique spurred by a blockbuster movie about the Korean War. The police detained Mr. Luo, 40, on Thursday, two days after he posted commentary on social media questioning China’s role in the war, the subject of a new film, “The Battle at Lake Changjin.” The movie…

American Siblings Barred From Leaving China for 3 Years Return to U.S.

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American officials told Chinese officials repeatedly that exit bans of U.S. citizens were a major concern. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken pressed senior Chinese officials about exit bans during talks in Anchorage in March, and raised cases of Americans trapped in exit bans during a phone call with China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, in June. When the deputy secretary of state, Wendy R. Sherman, visited China for talks in July, she “raised the cases of American and Canadian citizens” detained in China or held under exit bans,…