MCLC: journalist missing ahead of anniversary

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: journalist missing ahead of anniversary
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Source: NYT (4/29/14):
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/30/world/asia/chinese-journalist-missing-ahe
ad-of-tiananmen-commemoration.html

Journalist Missing Ahead of Tiananmen Anniversary
By MICHAEL FORSYTHE and CHRIS BUCKLEY

HONG KONG — Gao Yu, a prominent Chinese journalist who was imprisoned
following the 1989 suppression of the student protests in Tiananmen Square
in Beijing, is missing, with friends saying she may have been detained
ahead of the 25th anniversary of the crackdown.

Yao Jianfu, a retired party official and policy researcher in Beijing who
is friends with Ms. Gao, said the journalist had been scheduled to attend
a meeting on Saturday in Beijing to commemorate the People’s Daily
editorial of April 26, 1989, that declared the student protests to be
“turmoil” and magnified divisions about how the leadership should deal
with the demonstrators occupying Tiananmen Square. The gathering of former
officials and scholars was also to commemorate Chen Yizi, a former adviser
to Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party secretary who opposed the crackdown,
Mr. Yao said. Mr. Chen, an important figure in the 1989 uprising, died in
Los Angeles this month.

“She’s been out of contact for three days,” Mr. Yao said in a telephone
interview from Beijing. “She had said she’d go, but didn’t turn up, and
then we couldn’t get in contact with her.” Her phone and her son’s went
unanswered, he said.

Teng Biao, a lawyer and human rights activist, said on his Twitter account
on Sunday that she had been missing for four days. The Chinese-language
edition of the German news service Deutsche Welle, which published Ms.
Gao’s columns, said in a statement
<http://www.dw.de/%E8%91%97%E5%90%8D%E8%AE%B0%E8%80%85%E9%AB%98%E7%91%9C%E5
%A4%B1%E8%B8%AA/a-17595380> that she last emailed on Wednesday and that
the news service had not been able to reach her since. Ms. Gao, active on
social media, last posted a message on Twitter on April 23.

Activists in China are often detained ahead of major anniversaries, and
the quarter-century commemoration of the June 4 killings is the subject of
intense focus by scholars and activists who aim to preserve memories of
the event in the face of government efforts to ban discussion of the
subject. That would suggest Ms. Gao’s disappearance may be among the first
of many ahead of this year’s anniversary.

Ms. Gao spent years in prison in China because of official outrage over
her articles. In 1988, she wrote an article for the Hong Kong publication
Mirror Monthly that the Beijing mayor labeled a blueprint for “turmoil and
rebellion,” and she was detained for 14 months after the Tiananmen
crackdown, according to a biography on the website of Unesco, which
awarded her the Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize in 1997. She was
later arrested and imprisoned from 1993 to 1999 on charges of leaking
state secrets. She was released in 1999 on medical parole. While in
prison, she also received the Courage in Journalism award in 1995 from the
International Women’s Media Foundation.

Her columns for Deutsche Welle have often featured acerbic criticisms of
the party leadership, including the general secretary, Xi Jinping, and
they have also shared news and speculation about the political elite.

Ms. Gao had been warned by the authorities not to speak to reporters ahead
of the June 4 anniversary, Mr. Yao said in a telephone interview.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of people died on June 3 and 4, 1989, as army
troops moved into the Chinese capital to forcibly remove student
demonstrators from the square. The bloody suppression of the
demonstrations signaled the end of widespread movements within society and
the government to push for political liberalization.

Mr. Yao said Ms. Gao had been detained several times before. Mr. Yao said
some of Ms. Gao’s friends had speculated that her outspoken commentaries
and interviews with foreign reporters may have vexed the authorities at a
delicate time.

“The authorities probably told her that she shouldn’t speak out before
June 4, like they have told other people, such as Bao Tong and me,” said
Mr. Yao, referring to a former aide to Mr. Zhao who was imprisoned
following the 1989 crackdown.