Archives for posts with tag: reporters

Stuff about Shanghai cop killer Yang Jia （杨佳）

October 21, 08 //
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Some interesting statements during the court proceedings:

　杨佳当庭直言：我是无罪的，是他们违法，有罪的是他们。（指警察，发人深思啊）
[Yang Jia: I am innocent, is they who are guilty of breaking the law.]

　法官问：你有什么补充意见？杨佳说：“这些警察之所以敢这样，都是因为他们的背后有你们”。
[Judge asks: do you have any thing to add to your statement? Yang Jia: "the reason the police dare to act the way they do is because
you guys stand behind them."]

　法庭最后陈述，杨佳说：“被这样的警察管理着的国家，一个遵纪守法二十几年的公民最后都会被判刑坐牢。” （说出了绝大多数民众的心里话）

杨佳最著名语录：你不给我一个说法，我就给你一个说法。

[Closing statement. Yang Jia says: "a country run by policemen such as this will force someone who has been law-abiding for twenty some years to end up going to jail." The blogger says: (these are the true feelings of the overwhelming majority of people).

Yang Jia's most famous quote: If you don't give me an explanation, I will give you one.]

Elsewhere, citizen blogger and journalist Zola reposts a general letter calling for amnesty for Yang. The letter states a few reasons for this, beginning with some general reasons (the world is generally moving away from capital punishment, even some war criminals were pardoned in China) and then moving to some specific issues relating to how the case was handled (judicial mishandling, interference). Zola states what most others have said about this case: that the tragedy of Yang is that he was an ordinary fellow that was driven to homicidal rage by the pigs. Left with no legal recourse, stymied by a system that was patently designed to thwart demands like his, he had no other choice but to exact his revenge in blood. This open letter was signed by the following people:

中华人民共和国公民：（按签名顺序排，第一批签名人员名单）

艾未未（北京艺术家）、茅于轼（北京经济学家）、杜光（北京离休人员）、于浩成（北京法学家）、戴晴（北京学者）、张祖桦（北京学者）、王俊秀（北京学者）、古川（北京编辑）、陈永苗（北京律师）、李苏滨（北京律师）、江天勇（北京律师）、黎雄兵（北京律师）、唐吉田（北京律师）、杨凤春（北京学者）、王治晶（北京自由撰稿人）、夏业良（北京学者）、冉云飞（四川编辑）、廖亦武（四川作家）、张博树（北京法学家）、萧默（北京学者）、刘序盾（北京学者）、李智英（北京学者）、李槟（南京教师）、孙岩力（北京教师）、王卫星（北京记者）、谭洪安（北京编辑）、于赤阳（黑龙江公民）、张辉（山西民主人士）、贾瑞明（河北农民）、谢军（深圳设计）、王靖禹（旅英学者）、华乔（上海摄影师）、释妙觉慈智（广东法师）、林树坤（瑞士出版人）、范冲（北京学生）、张志强（北京打工之友）、李勉之（深圳工程师）、曹王澜（广东民工）、张赞宁（江苏教师)、龚光云(广东学者)、郭玉闪（北京学者）、周曙光（楚国人）、淮生（北京自由职业者）、马萧（北京记者）

2008年10月20日

YOu can see that Ai Weiwei (Mr. I hate my bird nest and the fake Olympics) among many other scholars, writers, and intellectuals from around the country. There was only one person from Shanghai that signed it, and that was photographer Hua Qiao.

The story has gathered some steam and AFP and a bunch of other western media sources are running this story, noting that there were protests in Shanghai outside the courtroom where Yang’s trial was held:

Huang Xuemin, a grey-haired protester, complained police beat her when she tried to enter the court premises.

“You see how police were treating us, and you could imagine how badly Yang Jia must be treated,” she said, showing the assembled crowd scratches on her forearms that she said were from her scuffle with police.

Obviously, this is only the tip of the iceberg, and there are vast amounts of debates going on online … personally, I just want to know the truth about what happened to the guy. I want there to be an investigation into whether or not he was mistreated by the police. I think that’s what most of his supporters want. As to whether or not he should die–well, he did kill a lot of people, and I don’t think there is any justification even if you were insulted or beaten or otherwise felt your dignity to have suffered as a results of other people’s actions. That said, I am *almost* categorically against the death penalty, because I feel uneasy with the idea of the state arrogating to itself to mete out this kind of brutal punishment.

Oh well. Yang Jia will face the firing squad, a dead chicken for all the rebellious monkeys lurking in the underbelly of Chinese society. And for those that support or otherwise sympathize for Yang, that will just prove what they’ve been saying all along.

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Chinese reporter: why I quit being a journalist

October 19, 08 //
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This too is a thread from Xici, and in it a reporter talks about the various things that he/she has seen or done in a ten year career as a journalist in China.

说不清我为什么要告别记者生涯，尽管在几年前我已厌倦了这份工作，但真正咬牙下定决心离开，还是年初的事。我揣着记者证，我的社会身份是“记者”，可是这些年来我何尝有机会做过真正的记者？两千多年前太史公秉笔直书不讳君恶，我们今天都做不到。不能真实地记录，不能自由地表达，我还算什么记者？无非是为稻粱谋而已！这样的“记者”生涯，为什么不向它说再见？

[rough trans: I left this work because even though I had been tired of it for awhile, I hadn't worked up the courage to leave until earlier this year. 2000 years ago, Taishigong could directly criticize the rulers, but we cannot do that now. We cannot truthfully record or express what happens, so in what sense are we journalists?] (more…)

Chinese journalist Jing Jianfeng to go on trial

October 19, 08 //
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Just saw this on a Xici thread.

Basically, the story goes like this: Cheng Weixiu (成维秀), a migrant worker from Lin county in Shanxi province（陝西臨縣) was supposedly beaten to death by a coal mine boss Xue Sanwei (薛三卫) in 2007. Cheng’s relative (cousin?) Cheng Yunqiang (成运强) and some other relatives paid a visit to a hotel that Xue owned to seek redress, conflict ensued, and the local police detained Cheng Yunqiang on the grounds that they were inciting violence or crime. However, Cheng managed to escape to Beijing, where he got in touch with civil law journalist Jing Jianfeng (景剑峰) to discuss his case. However, the Lin county police came to Beijing and discovered Cheng’s whereabouts, detained him, and since Jing Jianfeng was there, detained him as well.

After Jing was taken, various rumors were spread around; some say he was extorting the mine boss for 7 million RMB.

The post then encourages people to pay attention to Jian’s case, because he is going on trial October 24, 2008 in Lvliang City, Shanxi province (山西省吕梁市临县) on three counts: obstruction of justice, hiding known fugitives, and receiving a bribe of a 8700 RMB valued laptop computer.

The writer of the post then encourages people to pay attention and stand up for Jian because, as a reporter, anyone of us could be next!

After reading this, I decided to find and read some other reports that Jian has written. The few that I have cursorily read are all quite interesting. There is one written this year about Foshan in Guangdong province, where a former village named Buxin (布心) was made part of Foshan city and all the former villagers given city hukous. However, they lost their livelihood in this process: formerly collectively owned agricultural land has been requisitioned by the government. This happened in 1992, and according to the report, the people of Buxin feel that their standard of living has suffered since then: one person said “before 1992, our lives were getting better day by day. And since 1992, our lives have been getting worse day by day.“

The developers are associated with the government. They gave the villagers compensation for the property and objects on the land, but crucially, not the land itself: in 1992 the land was worth 35,000 rmb per mu, and with 4000 mu or so that comes out to 150 million RMB. The price of land now is worth 450,000 RMB per mu, which means that their former land is now worth about 1.8 billion RMB.

In the beginning, the two development companies had given the villagers some jobs, but after some SOEs went bankrupt or laid off workers, most of the villagers lost their jobs, and being unemployed were not qualified for any compensation. Despite their low incomes they were not given any basic social welfare. Even though they have the hukous, they don’t have basic medical insurance, unemployment insurance, or retirement/old age insurance.

It is quite telling that many of the villagers in Buxin are actually envious of the neighboring villages, which have not become part of any cities, and therefore are able to keep their agricultural land, which provides a basic source of income, and which allowed them to create several enterprises as well.

There’s another interesting report Jian wrote about the so-called Guangzhou phenomenon, which basically means that down in Guangzhou, the representatives/legislators are encouraged to speak the truth. They are encouraged to openly communicate rather than repeat the same tired cliches and nostrums. They are encouraged to speak their minds, even if what they say could be–gasp!–wrong, or erroneous.

Further proof that in many regards, Guangzhou is the vanguard of Chinese political culture.

I don’t think that Jing is a real muckracker, but in a place like China, one wonders if not this whole business has not been vetted or at least conveniently ignored by the powers that be, and if that has anything to do with what Jian writes. I don’t know enough about Jian or his work to say. I think it’s safe enough to say that he is being placed on trial on account of this Cheng Yunqiang business, even though that is absurd as it is.

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So this is how we talk about Tiananmen Square

July 27, 08 //
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I was just reading through a blog post from the Phoenix TV reporter Lvqiu Luwei (闾丘露薇) writes about the changes that occurred in Beijing as a result of the Olympics. She hopes that the changes, whether it be better signs and transportation to more polite people and better service attitude, will become permanent. Fair enough. Then there’s a paragraph where she mentions the issue of foreign media broadcasting live from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics. It seems they are allowed to as long as they submit and receive approval. She says that perhaps some Chinese people will not understand why it’s such a big deal that they be able to broadcast from the Square. Her answer: because no skyline, however magnificent, could compare to the visual impact of the square, and broadcasting from there would make viewers understand that China has changed, become more open—because this place is a “complex” and a “symbol”.

I don’t know if there is anything really worth pointing about this. Of course, it’s more than just a symbol. It’s a place where history was made. It’s the unofficial national stage, where a great many national dramas are enacted. And it’s a place where people died. There’s almost no point in even writing this–what does one expect? There are clever ways of skirting the issue, and in any case, the blog post is not about the square per se. We can’t be clear about the real historical significance of the place and hence its value to western reporters who want to be able to broadcast live from the square. But to say that it’s a “complex” and a “symbol” is an accurate and fairly innocuous way of putting it. Here’s the original paragraph in Chinese:

虽然中国政府已经同意，经过申请的外国媒体可以在天安门广场进行直播，但是还是有不少的媒体在抱怨，限制太多，比如限制直播的时段，这样让和中国有时差的欧洲国家，没有可能利用天安门作为背景进行直播。也许很多人不明白，为何外国媒体如此执著于天安门广场，这是因为，再多的高楼大厦，再完美无缺的开幕仪式，都比不上外国记者，站在天安门，为自己国家的观众发回报道造成的视觉效果更加强烈，人们会因此而感受到中国变了，更加开放了的，因为这个地方，是一种情结和象征。