Updating the China items

Do visit that Four Corners program. The transcript is now up, but there is so much more besides. From the transcript:

…LIZ JACKSON: Before we leave China we travel to the industrial city of Jia Musi in the far north east of the country. It’s nearly 2,000 kilometres from Beijing, up near the Russian border.

It’s the home town of Yang Chunlin. Yang Chunlin is a former factory worker who gathered over 7,000 signatures from this far flung region for an online petition that was headed, “We want human rights, not the Olympics”.

Ten-thousand signatures were finally delivered to the International Olympic Committee in December last year, but by then Yang Chunlin had been detained and charged with incitement to subvert state power. Two months ago he was sentenced to five years in jail.

We’ve come here to talk with his sister.

LIZ JACKSON (to Yang Chunping): Why do you think he got the maximum sentence, five years?

YANG CHUNPING (subtitled): What he did attracted wide international attention of a very negative kind. We asked the Public Security Bureau about this and they said what he did was worse than murder, he tarnished the national reputation.

LIZ JACKSON: No-one from his family was allowed to see Yang Chunlin for the eight months he was held in jail waiting for his trial – not his sister, his wife, who’s helping prepare lunch, his mother, or his son.

For the first seven months his lawyers were barred as well.

LI FANG PING, LAWYER FOR YANG CHUNLIN (subtitled): They claimed that the case involved state secrets. Later however, we learnt from the court that state secrets were not involved. As a result, during the police investigation Yang Chunlin did not have a lawyer to defend him.

LIZ JACKSON: Much of the area around the town used to be worked by peasant farmers. Yang Chunlin was well known as a long time rural activist who supported the claims of farmers throughout the province that they’d been corruptly forced off their land. Many made up the thousands who signed the “Human rights before Olympics” petition.

Yang Chunlin also wrote strongly worded articles denouncing the Government and calling for human rights for all, including folk like these. Two of these articles became the critical evidence in his trial.

YANG CHUNPING (subtitled): He thinks China is too backward. He wanted to speed up the process of democratisation so China can catch up with the west. He wrote this in his articles, that China has lagged behind the west for about 500 years. If China wants improvement, we should learn from “good” countries, rather than countries like North Korea.

LIZ JACKSON: Yang Chunlin was sentenced to his five-year jail term in March this year…

LIZ JACKSON: As the Olympic Games draw closer, the organising committee is staging a “good luck” marathon as preparation for the real thing to come.

It starts, in the rain, in Tiananmen Square. The bloody repression here in June 1989 is still not acknowledged. Officially it’s as if it never occurred.

Those who witnessed what happened here then are however in no doubt that many things have changed for the better, but also, that some things have not.

WANG LIXIONG, WRITER (subtitled): There have been a lot of improvements in China’s human rights. But this doesn’t mean that the Maoist way of handling things has gone. It’s just that they have become more pragmatic and shrewd when calculating when these measures should be used. When the benefits clearly outweigh the costs, they will definitely go back to all the old measures.

TENG BIAO, LAWYER: We have no judicial independence, we have no free press, we have no free election, and we have very serious political corruption.

WANG LIXIONG, WRITER (subtitled): No government under the present system will ever welcome freedom of the press. It won’t be allowed.

So we should ask, “When will the system change?”…

LIZ JACKSON (to Li Fang Ping): Are you optimistic about the future?

LI FANG PING (subtitled): Yes, very optimistic. China has to embrace the rule of law. Many people hope so, and more and more people are prepared to act to defend their rights.

TENG BIAO, LAWYER: I believe the next generation will see a free China.

LIZ JACKSON: In less than a hundred days the world’s focus will be on the Beijing Olympics. Will this pressure improve China’s record on human rights?

LI FANG PING (subtitled): We hope so, we hope so.

Do make sure you see the video linked at Children & Students in Sichuan Earthquake 2008, or watch it in the VodPod on the right. It is both very moving and very well made. It comes from someone who was born and raised in Sichuan at the epicentre.

The transcript from tonight’s 7.30 Report isn’t up yet is now available: A report from the epicentre of China’s quake. Stephen McDonnell has just visited the town of Yingxiu in Wenchuan County. “The entire area has been flattened and remains cut off from the rest of the country.” Walkley Award stuff I’d say. Later tonight on Foreign Correspondent Stephen McDonell reports on the Three Gorges Dam.