A list aids China's political prisoners
President Bush raised human rights with President Hu. His two-day visit ended Sunday.
In prisons across China, inmates languish for committing "political crime" - anything from starting an illegal newspaper, trade union, or unofficial religious church, or speaking a democracy slogan in public.
China is not a liberal state with tolerant laws, as its leaders agree. President Bush, showing solidarity with Christians who are sometimes arrested here, Sunday visited an official Protestant church in Beijing on the last leg of an Asia trip that has stressed what Mr. Bush called the "universal" value of freedom of expression.
In China, such expression can be prosecuted with zeal; sentences are stiff. Take Zhang Wei, in a Chongqing jail for six years for running unapproved news in his paper. Or Huang Aiping, in a Fujian jail seven years for being an elder in an illegal Protestant church that allowed "holy singing and dancing." Or two Uighur teens, serving 15 years in a Kashi jail for swapping China's flag for an east Turkistan one at 2 a.m.
What's remarkable is that such cases are known at all, say China experts. In fact, more than 4,000 political prisoners have been saved from obscurity by the Dui Hua Foundation in San Francisco. Their names go on lists shared with Western officials and presented to Chinese authorities, for better treatment and early release.
Protests by President Bush - and a list of human rights cases raised in September - nonetheless come at a time when China is systematically taking human rights off the table - with little complaint from foreign capitals. China has long engaged in what experts call a "game" of political prisoner releases ahead of visits by Western leaders as a show of good face. Rabiya Kadir, a leading Uigher was released before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit last spring.
As China gains greater international standing and market leverage, "there doesn't seem to be any discussion between China and the US regarding concrete prisoner release cases," says Joshua Rosenzweig, head of research at Dui Hua, which means "dialogue."
"Neither side is making it much of an issue. China seems less and less interested in even playing the game of releases."
Using prisoner lists, European and US officials and Dui Hua founder John Kamm have gained the release of several hundred prisoners held for political crime over the past decade. Tiananmen Square protesters, labor organizers, Tibetan dissidents, and Christians are among them. Many hundreds more have received better treatment. Prisoners identified by overseas groups are labeled "public," a higher category. Such prisoners qualify for early release.
Dui Hua, unlike some human rights groups banned in China, consciously develops a rapport with Chinese authorities on the ground. Mr. Kamm, former head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, talks with them, and develops guanxi, or influential connections.
Yet this fall, for the first time, the Ministry of Justice in Beijing would not longer accept Kamm's latest list; he was also shut out from a promised visit to a courtroom in Guangdong. This seems part of a larger crackdown on activity viewed as liberal and foreign, as well as areas dealing with expression, like the Chinese media and the Internet. "Restrictions are increasingly coming into play," Kamm finds.
(So, too, local news about political crime has dried up. Prosecutions remain high, with instability in the countryside. But reporting on it has disappeared, according to Human Rights in China.)
Chinese prisoner lists are something Kamm helped innovate. In China, political crime is rarely labeled as such. Sometimes it goes by "endangering state security." But it can be buried under other categories. The prisoner lists are compiled from public documents obtained in all provinces of China - public security yearbooks, court records, gazettes, and encyclopedias. Dui Hua combs local libraries and bookstores. "Most names are just sitting in books or court records," Kamm notes.
Dui Hua defines political prisoners as those "who would not be behind bars if there were channels for them to express themselves politically or openly," says Mr. Rosenzweig.
Shi Tao, the Hunan journalist whose identity was fingered by Yahoo's working with Chinese police, for example, was first discovered by Dui Hua. Mr. Tao received an eight-year prison term for e-mailing a New York democracy group about a newspaper staff meeting.
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