The Chinese government has continued its crackdown on environmental and social activists this month with the shocking sentence handed down for Xu Zhiyong, a former law professor who simply campaigned for the right of children in rural areas to be educated in cities and not barred from equal opportunity.
The Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court found Xu guilty of “gathering a crowd to disturb public order.” Putting aside the dubious crime, the sentence for such an occurrence is just another outrage from the “Worker’s Paradise.” As if to amplify the authoritarian character of the proceedings, the court rejected the 68 witnesses brought to the trial by the defense. Diplomats were also barred from attending.
The Communist Party continues to struggle to hold on to power by jailing those who question corruption or the lack of equal opportunity. The Chinese police has also interrogated one of China’s most prominent civil libertarians, Hu Jia, on “suspicion of causing a disturbance”.
The arrest of XU is part of a crackdown against the “New Citizens’ Movement”, which advocates working within the system to press for change. Everything about that title worries the Communist regime which does not like “new” notions of rights or any “movement” launched by citizens. The government has also crackdown on a movement to press for asset disclosure by government officials, who are widely viewed as corrupt.
The arrests show Xi Jinping remains a totalitarian leader.
Xu taught law at a Beijing university and opposed the arbitrary detention used by local governments to sweep homeless and other undesirables from the streets.
Source: Yahoo
Just the normal state of things in the PRC.
The american analog of this is all the politicians advocating technical colleges. it says the message, “we don’t need americans who can think, we just need americans who work and consume.”
it’s really our “leadership” turning their backs on the enlightement promise of a humanist education for everybody. Some of the early public education bills in Massachusetts really express the content of this promise in a remarkably lucid fashion.
the age of reason as run its course. We’re entering a new age of irrationality and barbarism.
…Contrast that to… (correction)
A bad scene but lets not condemn a hugely improving country where more than 95% of the people have more & more freedoms as the years go by. Contract that to America since 9/11. Still. this kind of suppression has to be brought to worldwide attention until it gets better, just as we expose Bush & Obama’s crimes against freedom in America & laud heroes like Snowden while our government would prefer to jail them for life or drive them to suicide.
Seems like the Mao’s Cultural Revolution of 1966 has an acultural descendant in the right wing Republicans perception of how to keep the USA safe . Their embracing of the Opportunities for An American Gulag Surveillance State Doctrine is apparently a secretive right to make available nonsense of very thoughtful constitutional arguments to solve this abhorrent nihiliism we are being sold . Let’s all become diplomats for common sense when it comes to decent advocacy work , careers of our choice , liveable income boosts and privacy issues .
Porkchop has hit the nail on the head. That is the precise policy of the Capitalist Communist Multitasking Chinese Government. China is a lot of different angles but one is they need the minions to work the farms and stay out of the cities which are too crowded.
But international “convergence” has happened. Communist countries became Capitalist and Capitalist free countries became authoritarian. That is why Snowden could flee of all places to the Soviet Union, oops Russian. America is outdoing the Stasi states in Stasihood.
StasiHood.
That is a word we should begin employing.
How else are you going to keep them down on the farm?
China placates the world through exporting cheap junk, and pacifies its population through oppression.
He was guilty of drawing a crowd! Imagine what would have happened to him if he had actually dared to speak against JIn Ping directly. Wowl.
Unionization of teachers in China. If you thought 4 years in prison for suggesting equal education of rural children was bad, watch what happens to the person who suggests collective action against the state.
The teachers need to unionize, then the children will get the education they deserve.
One more sign China has no intention of remotely slowing its “development” despite the pollution that is making large swaths of the country uninhabitable. Absent a regulatory culture, the only policy is to jail those who complain about “a little smoke.”
Did you say china…. It could be anyplace in the us….. Ever tried to get the party in power to actually allow folks with dissenting opinions testify at committee hearings…… They usually pack the room….
Just because they are Capitalists doesn’t mean they aren’t still Communists.