Activists from around China have been converging on an eastern town during the Lunar New Year holiday to demand an investigation into the death of a fellow activist’s father at a government building.
Activists are saying the outpouring is a sign of their movement’s resilience in the face of a recent spate of court convictions cracking down on rallies by fellow members of loosely knit grassroots groups.
They estimate that 60 to 100 activists have gone to Qufu in Shandong Province over a period usually devoted solely to family reunions.
“More of us should move from the Internet to real life and show the power we have as citizens,” Yang Chong (楊崇), an activist who came from Guangzhou to Qufu for the rally, said in a telephone interview.
The Qufu gathering was triggered by the sudden death of Xue Fushun (薛福順), the father of Xue Mingkai (薛明凱), a dissident who has been jailed twice for his opposition to China’s one-party rule.
Friends and supporters say the elder Xue went to the Qufu Prosecutors’ Office to argue for his freedom after local authorities detained him and his wife in a guesthouse — a common tactic to quell dissent by targeting the relatives of dissidents.
He fell to his death from the building’s fourth floor on Jan. 29.
Police ruled the incident a suicide and declined to investigate further, but the family’s lawyers and supporters say the death is suspicious and are demanding an unbiased investigation.
“He was seeking freedom from state security and how on earth would he want to kill himself?” Beijing-based human rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong (江天勇) said.
A worker at a Qufu police station confirmed that many supporters of Xue’s family had visited the police station, but that he could not reveal more details.
A man who answered the phone at a Qufu Government office on Friday said he had no knowledge about the case.
The first grassroots activist arrived on Jan. 31 in Qufu, known as the hometown of Confucius (孔子). More arrived in the ensuing days, eventually reaching at least 60 and forming an impromptu citizen watchers group, six of them said in interviews.
The visits began days after the conviction and sentencing of Xu Zhiyong (許志永), the Beijing-based founder of the New Citizens Movement, to four years in prison for taking part in small public rallies, amid a broader crackdown on dissent.
Several other members of the movement, as well as a key member of a Guangzhou-based group called the Southern Street Movement, were also put on trial last month.
Many of the activists showing up in Qufu are from Southern Street, but they have been joined by activists based elsewhere as well.
They say they have been rounded up, interrogated by police and sent away on trains, although many have managed to stay in the vicinity.
“The government tries to create fear, but as an awakened citizen, I must go forward even if there is fear,” said Ou Biaofeng, who traveled from Hunan Province to join the Qufu rally.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion