MCLC: Pussy Riot and China (2)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: martin winter (dujuan99 at gmail.com)
Subject: Pussy Riot and China (2)
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Unfortunately, I can't agree with Jonathan Campbell that yaogun could
galvanize China like Pussy Riot seems to have galvanized opposition in
Russia, at least for a memorable moment. Cui Jian did have some very
memorable moments, and people in China do remember them, and they will
tell you readily about the parts before 1989, mostly. But those moments in
1989 were so painful in the end that no one knows if there will ever be a
similar broad-based protest movement again. 1989 brought hope in Europe.
Risk, very risky change, and some very ugly violence in Romania. But
overall there was hope, and whatever came out of it, 1989 is generally
remembered as a year of wonder. In China it's a trauma. A wound that is
usually covered up, but even China is very much connected to the world
nowadays, and the world knows. And there are much deeper and older
traumata, which can be accessed and shared via 1989. So in that way, there
is hope. Connected to underground music. Like the kind that Liao Yiwu's
music comes from.

There are parallels, certainly. Parallels between Pussy Riot and Ai
Weiwei, in the pornography. Parallels in the way of some Ai Weiwei news or
other embarrassing news everyone gets to know about, and the dark stuff
below.

The disappearances, the longer ones, see Gao Zhisheng. And the corpses. I
learned about the late attorney Sergei Magnitsky via Pussy Riot. He died in
jail in 2009, and among people concerned with Russia he is as famous as Gao
is in and outside China, which means not so many people want to talk about
him or even admit they've heard of cases like that.

Martin