Hu Jia (Chinese: ooo; pinyin: Hú Jiā; original name ooo; born July 25, 1973 in Beijing), with online name Freeborn, is one of China’s most prominent environmental activists and AIDS activists, was involved as an auxiliary member of the team to save the Tibetan Antelope and served as the Executive Director of the AIZHI Institute of Health Education, one of the founders of the AIDS NGO Loving Source. (wikipedia).
Gao Zhisheng’s First Contact with Outside World Since His Unlawful Secret Arrest, Nov. 3, 2007.
He says: “They listen to my phone, they read my emails. They know everything. There is no avoiding it” … “I will become a full time democracy activist” … “In the past 20 years and more China’s economy has developed immensely. But the political system remains the same: it’s still just the one party in power. That is why there is conflict in the society” … “I believe I have been born to fight for justice. I can’t stand injustice. Even at school I was always the one who defended girls who were teased or bullied” … (more texts in this article).
China To Face UN Human Rights Body’s Scrutiny in 2009, Nov. 12, 2007.
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Hu Jia – China
China crackdown on dissidents before congress, Oct. 16, 2007.
2007/11/9 ooo June 4 disabled Qi was again restricted exit (automatically translated by google from chinese): June 4 Adams Qi is disabled, he is suffering from diabetes, hypertension and hepatitis C. ooo … As he is suffering from high amputation and a number of chronic diseases肢残, if not healed skin left, prosthetics need very high technical standards, ooo … The Chinese mainland’s enterprises failed prosthetics. ooo … Australia churches and friends for a part of the donor resources Qi, Qi arrangements
Zhiyong to Hong Kong to check and the production of artificial limbs … (more text).
Web dissent on the rise in China, Oct. 16, 2007.
The Year of the Dog – A Chinese activist’s story – Hu Jia spent 168 days under house arrest in 2006. This year promises to be little different. FEBRUARY 7, 2006: Today Hu Jia is free. No one stops him as he walks into a restaurant in downtown Beijing. The small, bespectacled man in his 30s who sits down at the table is one of China’s most prominent dissidents, and in the last couple of weeks Hu has been so closely monitored by the state security apparatus that it has been difficult to arrange a meeting with him.
Now the restaurant, in a modern shopping mall, is full of lively discussions and the ring-tones of mobile phones, as well-dressed Beijingers enjoy their business lunches. Many of them are still in holiday mood. The Chinese New Year has just passed, and The Year of the Dog has begun. Hu does not eat anything. He is on a hunger strike.
In recent months the Chinese government has tightened its censorship of the media and the Internet. Civil groups and NGOs have been brought under closer control; critical scholars have been silenced, and lawyers harassed. As a protest, a civil rights defence movement has started a rotating strike with each one of the activists taking turns in fasting for 24 hours. There may only be few dozen people involved in the hunger strike, but they have used the Internet and mobile phones to form a network. For the first time in years there is an organised protest going on, and it is spreading around China.
The State Security apparatus is getting nervous. The Communist Party has been able to suppress large demonstrations against its monopoly of power ever since 1989, when it crushed the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square. The activists are naturally already under surveillance. It seems like someone also knew in advance about Hu’s lunch meeting today. At one of the tables nearby, two lugubrious men sit smoking in silence, without ordering anything … (full long text).
Higher Power Involved in Unprecedented Politburo Lawsuit, Nov. 5, 2007.
Biography: Hu Jia’s parents were students at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Nankai University in Tianjin in 1957 when they were labeled as rightists. They were assigned to work in remote areas of Hebei, Gansu and Hunan. His parents often had to live apart until 1978 when Deng Xiaoping came to power and political label held against them was dropped.
In 1996 Hu Jia graduated from the Beijing School of Economics (now renamed Capital University of Economics and Trade, ooo) as an Information Engineering major … (full text).
Hu Jia was held at an unspecified location by police from his local Tongzhou police station in eastern Beijing and came back « weak and possibly suffering from kidney damage » as a result of not getting regular medicine to treat his hepatitis B, his wife Zeng Jinyan said … (full text).
Tiananmen Square protester laid to rest, Nov. 2, 2007.
Beijing-based AIDS activist Hu Jia, who suffers from hepatitis B, was seized by officers from the internal security department of the city’s police force on Feb. 16. He was driven with a hood over his head to a rural resort, held without his medication, and questioned for 41 days after taking part in a rolling hunger strike to protest police brutality in China. He told RFA reporter Lin Di about his ordeal: I was kidnapped by police at around 9 a.m. on Feb. 16. I was told yesterday that they would be able to release me, and in the morning they dropped me off about an hour’s walk from my house. They didn’t bring me home, but made me walk the rest of the way.
On the morning of Feb. 16 I was heading out to a meeting of non-governmental AIDS organizations, and the State Security Bureau of the Tongzhou county police department had already checked with their superiors and said I could go. At the time I was under house arrest.
But they said I had to go in to the meeting in a police car. I wasn’t in the slightest bit suspicious, and I got into the police vehicle. But then I realized that the four officers in the police vehicle weren’t the same as the ones from before … (full interview text).
AIDS activist Hu Jia’s wife Zeng Jinyan reports on her blog that he was dropped off by police yesterday outside a shopping center about an hour’s walk from his home on the outskirts of Beijing. In the 41 days of his detention he had no idea what was happening in the outside world. She says he returned exhausted, witha long beard. She took him to the hospital for a checkup in the morning and they found liver problems he hasn’t had before. More tests, treatment, and follow-up will be needed. Meanwhile Reuters spoke to Hu Jia and here is an exceprt of the story: … (full text, March 30, 2006).
Chinese activist says security officers barred him, others from veteran dissident’s funeral, Nov. 3, 2007.
This is not the first time Hu Jia has been abducted by the communist regime. However, this time is different from the countless times in the past. The danger here is in the secrecy — 11 days into the abduction and the regime still has not yet admitted it. If Hu Jia later shows up alive, the whole world could call us liars. But if the policemen made a mistake and killed Hu Jia, the communist regime could not be called thugs — what evidence, they could ask, is there to prove they abducted him? (full text, March 2, 2006).
One of China’s most prominent human rights activists has been blocked from travelling to the UK, just a day after the foreign secretary Margaret Beckett called on Beijing to allow more freedom of expression during her visit to the country. Police detained Hu Jia, a pro-democracy campaigner and HIV-Aids activist, as he prepared to catch a flight to Europe via Hong Kong. Organisations in several European countries had invited him to speak about human rights violations in China. (full text, March 18, 2007).
China: Stop HIV, Not People Living With HIV, November 9, 2007?
links:
Chinese Environmentalist Liang Congjie On NGO Life;
The great bore of the people, Oct. 18, 2007;
The Soul of China’s Environmental NGOs;
Tang Xiyang’s Letter About Green Camp Trip to Yunnan and Loss of His Wife;
A Section Censored from Environmental Book « A Green World Tour« ;
Health professional action, Hu Jia, HIV/AIDS activist, 23 February 2006.