Apparently dismayed by the considerable political power of Bo Xilai (薄熙來), the fast-rising Communist Party leader in the south-central Chinese city of Chongqing, Fang Hong (方洪) went online in April to express his views about Bo’s regard for the rule of law — comparing it, in a stanza of crude verse, to excrement.
As a result, Fang, 45, a retired forestry worker, is serving a year’s sentence in a Chongqing re-education-through-labor camp.
His travails, which became known only this week, are a cautionary tale for anyone thinking about belittling party leaders. Particularly since the Middle East erupted in democratic revolts this year, China’s rulers have dealt ever more harshly with anything they deem a threat to stability, even while permitting freewheeling commentary on other issues.
However, Fang also picked an especially prominent official to mock. Bo, Chongqing’s populist party secretary, is widely seen as aiming for a spot in the nation’s ruling elite when China’s leadership turns over next year. He has made a national splash with theatrical political stunts, including an ordered-from-the-top revival of Mao-era songs and pageantry, and a bare-knuckles crackdown on corruption that some critics have called overzealous.
It was the anticorruption campaign that Fang challenged, and which drew the state’s swift retribution.
As reported this week by Britain’s Financial Times, Fang apparently went online to satirize Chongqing’s prosecution of Li Zhuang (李莊), a well-known lawyer who had defended one of the leading targets of Bo’s war on corrupt officials and their gangs of backers.
Li was convicted of perjury and spent 18 months in prison, but a range of critics complained that the prosecution had framed him for opposing Bo’s campaign, and that the case underscored the degree to which politics trumps the rule of law.
Fang posted his scatological criticism on April 21 on the Chinese social network Tencent. In it, he compared the case against Li to excrement that Bo had handed to his underlings for delivery to Li — who then returned it, with emphasis, to Bo. Fang’s online post made a crude sexual pun on Bo’s name for good measure.
On his microblog, Fang had commented on supposed miscarriages of justice many times before, but the reaction to his April post was swift. Censors ordered the post deleted the next day.
An account by Fang Hong’s son Fang Di (方迪), posted on the Web site of a Chongqing lawyer, Chen Youxi (陳有西), details what followed. The elder Fang was invited to visit the local police station for a talk, his house was placed under surveillance and his electricity and gas were shut off. On April 24, he was detained. And on April 25 he was shipped to a prison for re-education through labor, a punishment meted out to small-time criminals and political miscreants by police officials without judicial oversight.
Fang Hong’s last post appeared on April 25. It was a message to the lawyer, Chen, who has written about Li’s trial. It reads: “Hello, are you there? I’m looking for you. There is an extremely important matter.”
Attempts to reach Fang Di were unsuccessful. A post on an Internet site related to human rights, Weiquan Wang, says that Fang Di vanished on Tuesday afternoon after notifying his lawyer that he was at an office of the local public security police.
Most Internet references to the Fangs’ situation appear to have been erased by censors, but a few survive. In one of them, a political science professor at Beijing’s prestigious Renmin University, Zhang Ming (張鳴), wrote: “To say the Li Zhuang case is a turd earns you re-education? All right, then, I’ll say it, too: The Li Zhuang case is just a turd. Excuse me, -Chongqing police. Please re-educate me through labor.”
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