Crass Obstinacy: the Zhongnanhai Psychosis
http://www.theage.com.au/
As the early dawn began to light up Beijing on the morning of 4th June 20 years ago, the tragic scene on the left was a shocking reality for the staff at hospitals all over the city.
Unless you adhere to the CCP handbook, that is; in which case nothing happened and anything that suggests otherwise must be hidden at all costs.
In a country where filial piety is valued highly, one would think that a man attempting to visit his ailing parents would be lauded. But instead of allowing human compassion to win the day, the Chinese government decided to detain him without charge. The reason? He was in Beijing in 1989 for the event that never happened.
This report from Yahoo News gives more details:
BEIJING – An exiled Chinese dissident and a leading figure in the 1989 pro-democracy movement has been detained trying to enter mainland China from Hong Kong and held without charge for more than six months, his family said Wednesday.
The phone call from police was the first official acknowledgment of Zhou’s detention. Shenzhen officials repeatedly denied having him in custody, Sufen said from the provincial capital of Chengdu.
It was the second time Zhou Yongjun, a permanent U.S. resident, has been detained while trying to enter China to visit his family. He spent more than two years in a Chinese labor camp in the late 1990s after being detained in Shenzhen, a southeastern city next to Hong Kong.
Zhou’s elder sister, Zhou Sufen, said Wednesday that her brother disappeared in October last year after entering the mainland from Hong Kong. Police informed her Monday that her brother had been transferred from a detention center in Shenzhen to Suining city in the family’s home province of Sichuan.
What is wrong with those fuckers?
I know, I know; it comes as no surprise that they behave in this way, and yet I cling to the expectation that sooner or later they’ll react in a less thuggish and infantile manner. It looks like it’s going to be later. Much later.
Update
The latest of The China Beat’s excellent series of excerpts taken from Phil Cunningham’s forthcoming Tiananmen Moon is now available. Well worth a visit.