Apart from Fu Wa, we have Hu Jia

Watching the Olympic new on T.V, I laughed until tears came out.

The news about the Olympic torch is never ending. Details like whether our chief executive Donald Tsang’s arm is strong enough to hold the torch and run for 200km are reported in length. As for Hu Jia, who has been sentenced to 3.5 years imprisonment because of “sedition of the state power”, has been sidelined by piles of Olympic public relation news. The International Olympic Committee and T.V station want us to see a colourful Beijing, with grand spectacles. I looked at the smiling face of the news anchor, it looked like the Olympic symbols – Fu Wa.

In Hong Kong, even the news about Cheng Cheong’s probation failed to catch the public attention, Hu Jia, an ordinary looking person, of course would easily be ignored. Even if people didn’t mistake him as an Olympic sport man, what occurred in their mind would probably be: here come another dissent. To be frank, I find myself losing my feeling. Leung Mantao recently asked us not to fear about China, I am more worried about our impression of China has been reduced to the images on the indifferent T.V screen.

However, I do have some special feeling towards Hu Jia. In the summer of 2001, I met him in Beijing. At that time I was still a research student and by chance participated in a small seminar organized by an international and Hong Kong based environmental organization. He was the webmaster of Tibetan Antelope Information Centre, already a well known environmentalist. In the meeting, he talked about the protection of wildlife. After so many years, I only remember we had climbed the Xiang Shan together, drank beer and had noodle. I barely remember the details of our conversation. My impression is that he talked cautiously and paid attention to others’ opinion.

Later I also heard from some of my friends in China that he is a very determined person and respected by his colleagues. No wonder there were more than 200 friends waiting outside the court on the date he received his sentence.

All these years, I have never been in touch with him and seldom visited his websites. However, looking at his face from the news report, I feel close with him. After the brief meeting in 2001, I was reminded of him again when he was detained in his house at “BoBo Free City”. It is so ironic, the so-called “Bobo Free City” in trendy China with the newly emerged BoBo class who enjoys all kinds of free choices. Then it turned into a prison, of course not for the BoBo class.
I searched in the internet for more information, tried to put together a clear picture. I was still confused. In the summer of 2001, I could never imagined that Hu Jia would move from environmental concern to become an AIDS activist and then a human right activist. All these years, he has visited former Primer Zhao Ziyang’s family, joined the Defend Daiyu Island trip and joined various political protests. I couldn’t imagine that he was walking towards the prison especially in the joyful Olympic year. The sedition charge is so non-sense. He is so unorganized and “unprofessional”. He acts according to his will. A few years ago, he went to Tiananmen to offer flowers to the dead. The police demanded his mother to bring him to the mental hospital for a check up. All these struggles are so loose and chaotic without a clear orbit. What you can see is a single-minded Buddhist.

His wife Zhen Jinyan, a mother of a new born baby, is also a human right activist. A few weeks ago, some friends tried to deliver milk powder to her house when she was under house arrest. When interviewed by reporters, she didn’t have any “sharp quotes” and acted like an ordinary citizen having bad luck. The couple takes everything as part of their ordinary life. I guess Hu Jia didn’t anticipate what happened to him today. He was so optimistic. Indeed 2003 was the year of civic right in China. The Sun Zhi-gang incident leaded to the abolition of the detention system. At the same time, civic rights movement was blooming even though it encountered official repression.

In 2001, Hu Jia probably didn’t notice that a new system that affected him deeply has emerged – the setting up of internal national security system.

Hong Kong people have the wrong impression that Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabo have started an open and free future. We tend to forget what they have inherited from the past. In 1999, in order to coup with Fan Lu Kung, Jiang Zeming established a working team in June 10; the team is therefore named “610 office”. The responsibility of the office is to coordinate the collection of information, monitor and arrest dissents across the countries. Later on, Jiang want to extend the system to the police department. Hu and Wen took up the work and extended the system. Each province and municipality has set up a “internal national security defense department”, each city a “national security defense team”, each district has a “sub-team”. Its function is no longer limited to Fa Lun Kung but has extended to the monitoring of political dissents, visitors for political appeal, human right activists, civic groups, journalists, academics and intellectuals. In a nutshell, the big brother is watching you and Hu Jia of course becomes one of their target.

A joke has been circulated in the internet: when Hu was not yet the president of the nation, he complained about Jiang’s idea in expanding the “610 office”: “we have to extend the government structure and spend more budget…” Jiang hit the table with anger, Hu then lowered his head and wrote down “610” in his notebook like a school kid.

Some people feel that it is normal for a country to have its national security system. However, many people in mainland criticized that the present system is similar to the Nazi organization, “Gestapo”. It is different from the national security department directly under the central government. Police department should be responsible for the rule of law and social order, it shouldn’t be political. Now the police has to participate in political monitoring work across the countries and penetrating to the community level. Moreover, the national security guards act in secret, they don’t need to wear uniform and can hide their identities with unrestrictive power. In the past few years, Hu Jia had been arrested and detained in his house several times. He had even been beaten in the street by the national security guards!

When compared with Gestapo, the Chinese system is far less violent, it is rather “friendly”. Recently a national security staff invited a friend of mine who spend most of his time in the ivory tower for tea and asked him for advice on academic matter. This friend was flattered with fear. Later his colleagues told him not to worry as all department members had similar encounter before. Hu Jia has gone through monitoring to house arrest to imprisonment; it seems like a very particular case but at the same time very “everyday life”. He has just written some articles, handed in some protesting letters, nothing more. No wonder people say that Hu Jia is just a “chicken” prosecuted for his speech for 3.5 years to give warning to thousands of monkeys who are monitored by the national security guards.

Mega-event becomes a development style in China. After the Olympics, we have the World Expo in Shanghai and World University Game in Shenzhen. Apart from mega-event, we have the ordinary China, which has been evolving quietly without our knowledge. Such evolution happens in far away Tibetan region, in colorful cities, among Fu-wa like people, and among ordinary people like Hu Jia.

(This article is written by Ip Iam-chong on April 6 published by Ming pao daily.)