Fear of political protests leads govt to impose strict rules on festival
By Peh Shing Huei 8 April 2009
BEIJING: A traditional Chinese festival to honour the dead became a violently painful one for some this year as the authorities are believed to have come down hard on them for paying tributes to sensitive people and events.
The Qing Ming festival, which fell on Saturday, saw activists being beaten or detained as the Chinese government took a hardline stance in a year packed with politically-sensitive anniversaries.
Retired professor Sun Wenguang said yesterday that he was brutally beaten by five unidentified men as he returned from paying respects to the late reformist leader Zhao Ziyang on Saturday.
Zhao, who died in 2005, was purged from the Chinese Communist Party for opposing the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown - a controversial event which marks its 20th anniversary this June 4.
Prof Sun, who suffered three broken ribs, was attacked on his way down a hill in Jinan, the capital of the coastal Shandong province. It is unclear who assaulted him, but local authorities in China have been known to hire thugs to intimidate activists.
‘What they did was audacious... Very savage. Especially as they did it to me before thousands of people,’ he told the Agence France-Presse from his hospital bed. ‘They wanted to punish me and let people know that Zhao Ziyang is not allowed to be memorialised.’
Besides Prof Sun, several people commemorating the infamous cop-killer Yang Jia in Beijing were also taken away by police. Prominent activist Ai Weiwei also had his car windscreen smashed and a video camera stolen before he could pay his respects to Yang.
Yang, a Beijinger, stabbed six policemen to death in Shanghai last year but was hailed as a hero by many Chinese for daring to stand up to the authorities. He was executed last year.
Qing Ming, or ‘tomb sweeping day’, has traditionally taken on political overtones in China, where it is used by common people as a convenient date to remember the dead and to express their unhappiness towards the government.
In 1976, thousands gathered at the Tiananmen Square on Qing Ming to place wreaths and flowers to remember beloved former premier Zhou Enlai, who died in January that year.
But they also took the chance to show their dissatisfaction towards the leaders led by Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing, prompting the police to clear the square by clobbering them with clubs.
Beijing did not want to take any chances this year. To prevent similar incidents this Qing Ming - declared a national holiday starting last year - Beijing imposed fresh restrictions on mourning.
The authorities announced two weeks ago that registrations with identity cards were required to enter all columbaria and cemeteries. Refusal to comply could lead to detention.
Sichuan environmental activist and writer Tan Zuoren was detained a week before Qing Ming, which derailed his attempts to publicly list the children killed in last year’s Sichuan earthquake as tens of thousands of grieving families trudged back to quake-hit areas like Beichuan county.
The government has refused to reveal the total number of children killed in the quake, and has insisted that their deaths were caused by the quake and not the shoddiness of the school buildings that collapsed.
1 comment:
China clamps down on Qing Ming
Fear of political protests leads govt to impose strict rules on festival
By Peh Shing Huei
8 April 2009
BEIJING: A traditional Chinese festival to honour the dead became a violently painful one for some this year as the authorities are believed to have come down hard on them for paying tributes to sensitive people and events.
The Qing Ming festival, which fell on Saturday, saw activists being beaten or detained as the Chinese government took a hardline stance in a year packed with politically-sensitive anniversaries.
Retired professor Sun Wenguang said yesterday that he was brutally beaten by five unidentified men as he returned from paying respects to the late reformist leader Zhao Ziyang on Saturday.
Zhao, who died in 2005, was purged from the Chinese Communist Party for opposing the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown - a controversial event which marks its 20th anniversary this June 4.
Prof Sun, who suffered three broken ribs, was attacked on his way down a hill in Jinan, the capital of the coastal Shandong province. It is unclear who assaulted him, but local authorities in China have been known to hire thugs to intimidate activists.
‘What they did was audacious... Very savage. Especially as they did it to me before thousands of people,’ he told the Agence France-Presse from his hospital bed. ‘They wanted to punish me and let people know that Zhao Ziyang is not allowed to be memorialised.’
Besides Prof Sun, several people commemorating the infamous cop-killer Yang Jia in Beijing were also taken away by police. Prominent activist Ai Weiwei also had his car windscreen smashed and a video camera stolen before he could pay his respects to Yang.
Yang, a Beijinger, stabbed six policemen to death in Shanghai last year but was hailed as a hero by many Chinese for daring to stand up to the authorities. He was executed last year.
Qing Ming, or ‘tomb sweeping day’, has traditionally taken on political overtones in China, where it is used by common people as a convenient date to remember the dead and to express their unhappiness towards the government.
In 1976, thousands gathered at the Tiananmen Square on Qing Ming to place wreaths and flowers to remember beloved former premier Zhou Enlai, who died in January that year.
But they also took the chance to show their dissatisfaction towards the leaders led by Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing, prompting the police to clear the square by clobbering them with clubs.
Beijing did not want to take any chances this year. To prevent similar incidents this Qing Ming - declared a national holiday starting last year - Beijing imposed fresh restrictions on mourning.
The authorities announced two weeks ago that registrations with identity cards were required to enter all columbaria and cemeteries. Refusal to comply could lead to detention.
Sichuan environmental activist and writer Tan Zuoren was detained a week before Qing Ming, which derailed his attempts to publicly list the children killed in last year’s Sichuan earthquake as tens of thousands of grieving families trudged back to quake-hit areas like Beichuan county.
The government has refused to reveal the total number of children killed in the quake, and has insisted that their deaths were caused by the quake and not the shoddiness of the school buildings that collapsed.
Post a Comment