MCLC: Li Bifeng jailed for 12 years (1,2)

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Martin Winter <dujuan99 at gmail.com>
Subject: Li Bifeng jailed for 12 years (1)
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Source: New York Daily News (11/20/12):
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/11/in-this-country-we-can-o
nly-hibernate-chinese-poet-li-bifeng-sentenced-to-12-years

'In this country, we can only hibernate': Chinese poet Li Bifeng sentenced
to 12 years imprisonment
BY Christopher Young

Li Bifeng, the Chinese poet and dissident, has been imprisoned for 12 years
on a charge of contract fraud - a charge that many find suspect, given
Beijing's well-known intolerance of artists who refuse to follow the party
line. According to the Guardian, Li - who has already been imprisoned once
for his role in the Tiananmen Square movement - has said he would appeal
The sentence he received in Shehong county court in the South-Western
Province of Sichuan: "We believe the verdict was not based on the facts
and the prosecutors and the court violated procedural laws and
regulations."

Zhan Xia, Li's wife, explained that the charge related to a sales agreement
Li had signed with an alcohol company to sell apartments. "After the
apartments were sold," she said "the company sued him for breach of
contract - which is groundless."

The literary establishment has rallied in support of Li, with the Nobel
prize winner Herta Muller and National Book Award winner Ha Jin among those
to join an international appeal established by Li's friend Liao Yiwu, who
Is himself an exiled dissident. In May of this year, Liao observed that
Were Li to be sentenced after his initial detention, it "would be more
absurd than what happens in Kafka's The Trial." It seems this absurdity
has now become truth.

This is far from a new development in terms of the supression of art and
free speech in the People's Republic. Amongst many notable cases, the
celebrated artist Ai Weiwei was arrested at Beijing airport in 2011 and
Held for over two months, for no ostensible reason other than to prove
that noone was untouchable.

 
Shehong authorities have so far been silent on the subject, but there is
hope if people like Li continue to speak out. Li was perhaps best able to
summarize the state of free speech in his country in the titles to one of
his most famous poems: "In This Country, We Can Only Hibernate."

==============================================

From: Martin Winter <dujuan99 at gmail.com>
Source: Li Bifeng jailed for 12 years (2)

Source: The Daily Beast (11/23/12):
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/23/china-cracks-down-on-poet-
li-bifeng-and-dissident-writer-li-yuanlong.html

China Cracks Down on Poet Li Bifeng and Dissident Writer Li Yuanlong
Nov 23, 2012 1:40 PM EST

Even as the country's new leaders promise reform, in the past week,
officials have jailed a famous pro-democracy poet, a Twitter prankster, and
an investigative journalist. Duncan Hewitt reports on the disconnect
Between party promises and the ongoing silencing of public critics.

Just a week after new Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping took power, with
pledges to root out corruption and sweep away entrenched bureaucratic ways,
there have been signs that, in some areas of life at least, it remains
business as usual in China. Last weekend, poet Li Bifeng was jailed for 12
years in Sichuan province, in a case that friends and family said was
politically motivated. Li, who was previously jailed for involvement in the
Tiananmen democracy protests of 1989, had been in detention for more than a
year on charges of contract fraud in a business deal. But his supporters
Say that he was punished because the authorities believed he had helped
one of his friends, well-known dissident writer Liao Yiwu, escape from
China last year. Liao, who is now in Germany, says Li played no part in
his escape, and has organized an online petition calling for his release.

It also emerged this week that a Beijing citizen who compared the scene at
this month's Communist Party Congress to a horror movie, and suggested in a
post on Twitter that all the delegates would die when the building
collapsed, has been detained for the past fortnight on suspicion of
'spreading terrorist information'.

Zhai Xiaobing tweeted that the congress would be the setting for the next
installment of the horror film Final Destination, saying the date of its
opening, November 8, would see a "shocking world premiere." His friends say
the post was obviously a joke-but Zhai was reportedly taken away by
Security officials in the suburban Beijing county of Miyun the day before
the Congress opened, and held for  investigation.

An online petition calling for Zhai's freedom, started  by well-known
blogger and free-speech advocate Wen Yunchao, called on the police to
acquire a "sense of humor," and suggested that the authorities should not
undermine public "good will" towards the new party leadership.

Some prominent intellectuals have retained hopes that despite the presence
of several veteran conservatives in the new Politburo Standing Committee,
new top leaders Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang might still gradually usher in
changes to China's political system. Few expect major democratic reforms,
but hopes have been expressed that these younger leaders might at least be
more in tune with the far more open social atmosphere which has become the
norm in China since the dawn of Internet age-one  in which irreverent
comments and public criticism of officials are now commonplace.

There have been some recent victories for internet users: over the past two
months, several officials have lost their posts following online
Revelations of corruption. And a village official in the southern
municipality of Chongqing, who spent 15 months in labor reeducation after
denouncing the Communist Party and criticizing the city's former leader Bo
Xilai's anti-crime crackdown (which lawyers say flouted the rule of law)
and socialist-culture campaigns, was finally freed this week.

Ren Jianyu's release followed a campaign online and even in China's
Official media: a commentary in the Global Times newspaper (which is
published by party mouthpiece the People's Daily), for example, argued
that the "expression of public opinion and criticisms" was "the basis of
public supervision," and could "help improve social governance and push
forward society's progress." Jailing people for negative comments, it
argued, was "outdated" and "against today's freedom of speech and rule of
law."

However, some observers suggested that Ren's release could owe more to the
recent discrediting of Bo, who was sacked from the Politburo earlier this
year and is under investigation for corruption and possible collusion with
his wife, who in August was jailed for life for the murder of British
businessman Neil Heywood.

And while the authorities are now frequently claiming to welcome public
'scrutiny' online, paranoia over critics and whistleblowers clearly
continues. This week, a former journalist in southwestern Guizhou province
is reported to have been detained, after revealing on his blog the story of
five street children who died after taking shelter from the cold in a
Refuse bin. The story subsequently made global headlines, embarrassing the
authorities. The writer, Li Yuanlong, was forced to leave his home by
officials and taken for "a holiday" at an undisclosed location, according
To his son, who told Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper that
the authorities were "trying to prevent him [Li] from helping other
reporters follow up on the incident."

Li's detention echoes what is now a common pattern in China, in which
sensitive individuals are removed from circulation at sensitive times, and
held either under effective house arrest at home, or in what are known as
"black [i.e. unofficial] jails." During the run-up to the recent Communist
Party Congress, rights groups say over a hundred people faced such
treatment-including the well-known human-rights activist Hu Jia, who was
only released from a three-year jail sentence last year.

In some cases the hard line taken against dissidents may be the choice of
local authorities rather than necessarily being decreed from the center,
says Professor Kerry Brown, executive director of the China Studies Center
at the University of Sydney, but he adds that it is nevertheless a sign of
the prevailing mood in Chinese political circles:

"The golden rule seems to be that no one gets bad marks for picking on
dissidents and others labeled trouble makers," he says, "while for those
Who are lenient, on the other hand, the risks if things go wrong are still
high."

And Brown argues that a leadership worried about the potential for unrest
In a fast diversifying society with growing economic inequality is
unlikely to reverse the tough approach that has seen the rapid growth of
internal security budgets in recent years. "We see an unholy convergence
of security agencies keen to justify their budget bottom line by
proactively picking on good quality 'enemies', and an environment in which
elite leaders are risk averse, watching their backs all the time, and
therefore keen to compete with each other over who is the most zealous
defender of the faith," he says.

One prominent victim of this tough approach to security is Nobel Peace
Prize Winner Liu Xiaobo, who is still in jail serving an 11-year sentence
for subversion, after organizing an online petition calling for political
reform in 2008. (And dissident artist Ai Weiwei, though currently free
after his three-month detention in 2011, is still facing a fine of more
than $2 million for tax evasion.) Brown says it's not impossible that a
high-profile dissident like Liu might be released early, in a year or two,
and sent into exile in the U.S. in an attempt to assuage international
criticism. But in the current climate, even this faint glimmer of hope may
be out of reach for lesser-known dissidents.