Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong.
Again I was asked. "Why do you use Zhao Zi Yang for your T-shirts and Art?" This time by a man who was in Beijing in 1989. "Although I agree with what he did in 1989, I don’t think I can support him as a whole."
I replied, "Because he is the man China wants to hide most. Because we need a symbol for our cause."
And again today we see a journalist jailed because he tried to publish the fallen Premier’s words. I don’t know if Premier Zhao is likable, nor that he did everything right in his time. But his last public act has everything to do with compassion for to those who seek democracy when faced with losing all the power he obtained. That is clear. Ambigious cult of personality abounds. What is Che but a rich boy who went around on a motorcycle but found his calling? But he stands for something we understand, that is bigger than his reality. It is the shared meaning behind an image that makes it powerful.
—-
Hong Kong Reporter Being Held By China
Writer Sought Records Of Secret Interviews
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 30, 2005; A01
Ching’s detention appears to be related to a
high-priority government investigation aimed at preventing the
publication of a series of secret interviews conducted over the past
several years with Zhao Ziyang, the former premier and party chief who
opposed the Tiananmen massacre and died in January after nearly 16
years under house arrest…Lau said her husband learned of Zong’s second
manuscript late last year and met with Zong’s editor not long after
Zhao’s death. At the time, Zong’s editor wanted to publish the
manuscript but was worried security agents would intercept it if he
attempted to use the same people who published Zong’s memoir, she said.
Ching then agreed to help bring the manuscript to Hong Kong, Lau said.Lau said Ching never disclosed the identity
of the source to her and that she suspected Chinese security agents
might have tricked him into traveling to the mainland. A day after he
was detained, she said, he called her and arranged for his laptop
computer to be brought to the mainland, too.Washington Post: Hong Kong Reporter Being Held in China
Hong Kong Reporter Being Held By China
Writer Sought Records Of Secret Interviews
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 30, 2005; A01
HONG
KONG — China has detained a prominent member of Hong Kong’s
international press corps who traveled to the mainland to obtain a
collection of secret interviews with a Communist leader purged for
opposing the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Security agents
apprehended Ching Cheong, chief China correspondent for Singapore’s
Straits Times newspaper, on April 22 in the southern city of Guangzhou,
where he was scheduled to meet a source who had promised to give him a
copy of the politically sensitive manuscript, according to the
journalist’s wife, Mary Lau.
Lau said Chinese authorities warned
her and the Straits Times not to disclose her husband’s detention, and
she stayed silent for weeks in the hope he would be released. She said
she decided to go public last week after a mainland official told her
privately that the government was preparing to charge him with
"stealing core state secrets."
If charged, Ching would be the
second journalist for a foreign newspaper arrested by the government of
President Hu Jintao in the past year. Zhao Yan, a researcher in the
Beijing bureau of the New York Times, was arrested by the State
Security Ministry in September on similar charges and has been held
incommunicado without trial since.
The arrests could have a
chilling effect on foreign news operations in China. The Chinese
government often jails Chinese journalists and writers — the advocacy
group Reporters Without Borders says there are more journalists in
prison in China than anywhere else in the world — but in the past it
has generally refrained from arresting individuals employed by foreign
news agencies.
The Straits Times, which has not reported the
detention of its correspondent, said in a written statement Sunday that
it had been told by the Chinese Embassy in Singapore that Ching "is
assisting security authorities in Beijing with an investigation into a
matter not related to the Straits Times."
"Ching Cheong has
served us with distinction as a very well-informed correspondent and
analyst," the newspaper added. "We have no cause to doubt that
throughout his stint of reporting and commenting on China, he has
conducted himself with the utmost professionalism."
There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Ching,
55, a Hong Kong citizen and a permanent legal resident of Singapore, is
widely considered one of the most knowledgeable correspondents covering
China, and he enjoys extensive contacts in the government and military
developed over a 31-year career.
His detention could prompt an
outcry in Hong Kong, where residents have complained since the return
of the former British colony to Chinese rule in 1997 about their lack
of consular protections when traveling on the mainland. Though China
has granted Hong Kong residents some special rights and privileges,
they are treated as Chinese citizens under international law.
In
his writings and in conversations, Ching has developed a reputation as
a Chinese nationalist who favors the mainland’s unification with Taiwan
and objects to U.S. interference in the Taiwan Strait. He spent 15
years working for Wen Wei Po, a Hong Kong newspaper with close ties to
the Communist Party, but resigned in protest with 40 other journalists
after the violent 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in
Tiananmen Square.
Ching’s detention appears to be related to a
high-priority government investigation aimed at preventing the
publication of a series of secret interviews conducted over the past
several years with Zhao Ziyang, the former premier and party chief who
opposed the Tiananmen massacre and died in January after nearly 16
years under house arrest.
What Zhao said in those interviews is
unknown, but months after his death, China’s Communist leaders appear
worried that his words might pose a threat to the party’s grip on power
by reviving memories of the Tiananmen Square massacre and triggering
fresh demands for democratic reform.
The interviews were
conducted by Zong Fengmin, a retired party official and longtime
associate of Zhao’s who managed to visit the fallen leader regularly
while he was under house arrest.
In a memoir published last year,
Zong quoted briefly from his interviews with Zhao and indicated he was
preparing a second book titled, "Conversations with Zhao Ziyang in
House Arrest." Ching was the first journalist to obtain Zong’s memoir
and write about Zhao’s remarks.
Reached by telephone in Beijing,
Zong confirmed the government had pressured him not to publish a book
based on his conversations with Zhao. He said he had not finalized the
manuscript and expressed surprise that Ching might have been detained
for trying to obtain it. He denied ever meeting Ching in person.
Xiang
Chuxin, Zong’s publisher, said Chinese intelligence agents visited him
at his apartment in Hong Kong in October and asked polite questions
about Zong’s memoir. But after Zhao’s death on Jan. 17, police detained
him in the southern city of Shenzhen and interrogated him for several
hours in an attempt to discover who brought him the book, he said.
Police
also placed one of Xiang’s mainland employees, Huang Wei, under house
arrest for several weeks. Reached by phone, she said she gave a copy of
the memoir to Ching at Zong’s request. She also said she sent text
messages to Ching’s cell phone pleading for help while trying to evade
the authorities, but added the police never asked about him when
questioning her.
Lau said her husband learned of Zong’s second
manuscript late last year and met with Zong’s editor not long after
Zhao’s death. At the time, Zong’s editor wanted to publish the
manuscript but was worried security agents would intercept it if he
attempted to use the same people who published Zong’s memoir, she said.
Ching then agreed to help bring the manuscript to Hong Kong, Lau said.
Lau
said her husband told her a source attempted to e-mail the document to
him several times without success. Then, in late April, he received a
call from someone asking him to travel to Guangzhou to pick up the
manuscript, she said.
Lau said Ching never disclosed the identity
of the source to her and that she suspected Chinese security agents
might have tricked him into traveling to the mainland. A day after he
was detained, she said, he called her and arranged for his laptop
computer to be brought to the mainland, too.
Security agents have
allowed Ching to call her four more times, she said. In the latest
call, on Sunday morning, Ching urged her not to tell reporters about
his detention. But when a security agent picked up the phone and
invited Lau to come to Beijing to see her husband, he grabbed the phone
and told her to stay in Hong Kong, she said.
"He told me to work on his behalf in Hong Kong," Lau said. "He told me to visit his mother and father more."
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 