News: Voices of dissent meet for a rare – but tranquil – Easter lunch

CHINA:

Activists talk of beatings, imprisonment, and the need to continue their struggle
South China Morning Post
Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Over a wooden table laden with steaming plates of stewed pork, tofu and vegetable fritters, seven men and a woman bowed their heads, clasped hands and did something risky: they prayed.

“Our people have suffered so much,” says Wang Meiru, the host, her eyes tightly shut. “So many of them are in prison. So many of them are in pain. Please, God, be with them.”

The setting for the Easter lunch was idyllic: the breezy courtyard of Ms Wang’s brick home, tucked in a maze of fruit trees and farmland 90 minutes northwest of Beijing.

But it was a rare, politically charged – and in the eyes of the leadership, potentially dangerous – event: a gathering of some of its few remaining active dissidents to offer mutual support and voice discontent with the government.

Though only some in the group are Christians, it is a custom they observe on Christian holidays, when they can disguise a political forum as a gathering for religious festivities. Even so, open worship outside government-sanctioned churches is perilous.

Together, the guests have logged hundreds of detentions and been beaten by police or put under house arrest for speaking out or posting essays on the internet. Many are ageing or ill.

They included Ren Wanding, who has spent 11 years in prison for advocating democracy, and Ye Guozhu, a voice for people who lost their homes to make way for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

With the 15-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown approaching, the activists say things are going to get even harder as the government steps up monitoring during the sensitive period.

“You won’t be able to see us in a month,” says Yang Jing, 57, who spent eight years in prison for helping to print a reformist magazine during the 1978-79 Democracy Wall movement, a predecessor of the 1989 protests.

Activists Xiang Nanfu and Mr Ye agree. They tell stories of tapped telephones and surveillance.

“To venture out near the Tiananmen anniversary would be asking for a beating,” says Ms Wang, a plump, carefully made-up 62-year-old who says she has been branded a “modern counter-revolutionary” by the authorities.

With a resounding “Amen!”, the prayer session ends and the meal begins.

“This is indeed a rare occasion,” says Mr Xiang, 52, chewing on a roasted pepper. “Only here do we have the freedom to say what we want. Outside, there are ears everywhere.”

The setting is tranquil, but the talk jarring – of the torture, arrests and deaths of fellow dissidents. When a neighbour drops by, the conversation becomes quieter to ensure that he does not report the gathering to the Communist Party’s neighbourhood watch committee.

“We aren’t afraid, though,” Mr Ye insists. “We believe in international human rights. We have to shout out for the sake of the people who have suffered, because there are so many of them.”

Mr Ye says he has been beaten or imprisoned scores of times for protesting at the loss of his house to development for the Olympics. “This government is a savage, brutal one. They have absolutely no sense of human rights.”

When asked about the recent amendment to the constitution that declares the government’s respect for human rights, Mr Ye scoffs: “It’s all in writing. None of it is applicable to everyday life.”

And if struggle ends with death, “it’s a necessary sacrifice”, says 60-year-old Mr Ren.