{"id":49518,"date":"2015-09-24T22:28:00","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T22:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=49518 "},"modified":"2015-09-24T22:28:00","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T22:28:00","slug":"49518-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=49518","title":{"rendered":"China\\&#8217;s Xi Defends Censorship Amid Chorus of Support For Embattled Rights Community"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>2015-09-24<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><div>Activists stepped up calls for Chinese President Xi Jinping to end an ongoing crackdown on rights activists back home as he defended his government&#8217;s tight controls on the Internet on Thursday.<\/div><\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Xi, who traveled from Washington state to Washington, D.C. on Thursday ahead of talks with Obama and a state dinner at the White House on Friday, has been greeted by protesters at every stop of his state visit to the United States this week.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Activists have hit out at the continued detention of prisoners of conscience, an ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers, mistreatment of Tibetans and Uyghurs and continued harassment of non-governmental and civic organizations.<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>According to U.S.-based veteran dissident Yang Jianli, a raft of new laws aimed at bolstering &#8220;national security&#8221; is putting increasing pressure on activists and non-government groups.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;They will probably run into a lot of trouble when trying to carry out their work,&#8221; Yang told RFA. &#8220;They could even be styled as carrying out overseas sabotage operations or even espionage under national security laws and regulations.&#8221;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&#8220;This is going to put a huge obstacle in the way of social progress and civil society in China.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Jailed for &#8216;rumor mongering&#8217;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div>Many activists and lawyers currently in detention or under police surveillance in China have been detained under laws governing national security or online &#8220;rumor-mongering.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>But in an apparent reference to criticism of the ruling Chinese Communist Party&#8217;s tight censorship of what the country&#8217;s 668 million netizens can see or write online, Xi told a meeting with top U.S. tech leaders including Apple&#8217;s Tim Cook and Facebook&#8217;s Mark Zuckerberg, that Internet policy should be &#8220;aligned with national realities.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The U.S. has repeatedly hit out at China&#8217;s censorship of news and social media sites, as well the government&#8217;s demands that its Internet service providers hand over huge swathes of data on their users.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>But Xi said Beijing&#8217;s focus is on online security instead.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;A secure, stable and prosperous cyberspace is of great significance to the world,&#8221; the Seattle Times quoted him as saying.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>As Xi headed to the U.S. capital, lawyers for five feminist activists detained for planning an anti-sexual harassment campaign ahead of Internet Women&#8217;s Day this year have penned an open letter to the United Nations about Beijing&#8217;s ongoing persecution of the women.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Li Tingting, Wu Rongrong, Wei Tingting, Wang Man, and Zheng Churan were released &#8220;on bail&#8221; in April after being detained on suspicion of &#8220;picking quarrels and stirring up trouble&#8221; on March 6, two days ahead of International Women&#8217;s Day.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>The five women, whose detention prompted an international outcry, are still officially regarded as criminal suspects, and are now calling for all charges against them to be dropped unconditionally.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;Under current laws, the actions of these five feminists did not in any way constitute a crime,&#8221; Wei&#8217;s lawyer Ge Wenxiu told RFA on Thursday. &#8220;We have complained many times to the relevant departments, including the Beijing municipal prosecutor, asking them to oversee the case and to correct the situation.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;But they have ignored us from start to finish.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Wei cited concerns over the impact of the ordeal on Li Tingting in particular, who is a frequent target of police harassment.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;We are all very angry about this, so we are writing a letter to U.N. Women ahead of the summit on gender equality and women&#8217;s empowerment [at U.N. headquarters on Sept. 27],&#8221; he said.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;We want international women&#8217;s groups to add their voices to the calls for justice.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>Wu&#8217;s lawyer Liu Shuqing said the women have done nothing but work for gender equality.<\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&#8220;This case should be totally dropped,&#8221; Liu said. &#8220;This isn&#8217;t against the law in any country. It&#8217;s not even a sensitive topic.&#8221;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div>&nbsp;<\/div><div><\/div><div><\/div><div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/china-xi-09242015154122.html\">For detail please visit here<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&lt;div&gt;Activists have hit out at the continued detention of prisoners of conscience, an ongoing crackdown on human rights lawyers, mistreatment of Tibetans and Uyghurs and continued harassment of non-governmental and civic organizations.&lt;\/div&gt;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}