“Inciting subversion of state authority” is a serious crime in China. For 36 year old dissident Hu Jia it has meant a jail sentence of three and half years imposed last year.
“Inciting subversion of state authority” is a serious crime in China. For 36 year old dissident Hu Jia it has meant a jail sentence of three and half years imposed last year. He was jailed and his wife and daughter put under house arrest - and all because Hu Jia has spoken out over AIDS and the environment in China. For his courage MEPs gave him the Parliament's top human rights award - the Sakharov prize. Six months later, we ask what has happened to him.
Hu Jia was sentenced on 3 April 2008 to three and a half years in prison for posting information about “matters of state” on websites based abroad. He is currently serving his sentence in a Beijing jail while his wife and their young daughter are under house arrest in Chinese capital. Hu Jia has been denied access to medical treatment, including necessary daily medication for liver disease resulting from a Hepatitis B infection.
A humanitarian activist since the start of the 1990s, Hu Jia has embraced a wide range of causes, including environmental issues, HIV/AIDS advocacy and a call for an official enquiry into the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. HU has used the Internet and especially his blog to expose the Chinese regime's repression of human rights defenders.
“We are counting the days”
Hu’s wife, Zeng Jinyan, and their daughter were able to visit, under supervision, Hu in February in the Beijing prison where he is currently held. It was the first time Zeng had been allowed to see him in three months. Hu seemed to have “aged” but was happy to see them. “We are counting the days one by one”, Zeng wrote in her widely-read blog.
An informal network of former Sakharov Prize winners is worried about Hu’s poor health and fears that he could be forced to work in a prison factory. His fitness for work was examined in February by the authorities. As the Chinese government has just announced a “human rights action plan”, the Sakharov Network thinks it is vital that the EU should press China’s representatives for concrete actions such as Hu’s release.
The case of Hu Jia was raised with the Chinese leadership in Prague on May 14 in the context of the 27th round of the “EU-China Dialogue on Human Rights”. In particular special concerns were raised about Hu Jia's health. A written answer on the state of the imprisoned human rights activist is still awaited.
The Chair of EP's human rights subcommittee Hélène Flautre told us that “20 years after the Tiananmen massacre, the European Parliament does not consider the ”file“ closed but continues its commitment to human rights in China. The awarding of the Sakharov Prize to Hu...is a continuation of our efforts to support him and human rights around the world.”
Representatives of silenced voices
Hu Jia is not the only past Sakharov laureate unable to receive the prize in person. Nelson Mandela, one of the first prize winners in 1988, was in jail, and Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi was already confined in her ever-continuing house arrest in 1990 when the Parliament marked her courage by awarding her its prominent human rights prize.
When opening the award ceremony last December, the EP's outgoing President Hans-Gert Pöttering reminded that the “2008 Sakharov Prize winner Hu Jia was nominated as the representative of the silenced voices of China and Tibet, but today we will hear that voice”.
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