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May 17, 2006
12 year sentence for blogging (while the world yawns)
Speaking of unpaid volunteers, earlier I was trying to ascertain the proper term to describe the imprisoned writer in this story. Headlined "Chinese writer sentenced to 12 years for subversion," it uses a variety of terms to describe online Chinese, um, journalists: BEIJING - A free-lance writer was sentenced to 12 years in prison yesterday, receiving an unusually harsh penalty amid one of China's most severe media crackdowns since the 1980s.What is the right word? Writer? Reporter? Journalist? Isn't there another word? The "B" word? "Was that guy a blogger?" I wondered to myself. Sure enough, the Times Online said he was, and they're not afraid to use the "B" word. Their headline reads, "Blogger jailed for backing elections." While I don't have time to check out the entire blogosphere, I see that Captain Ed headlines his post "China Jails Dissident Blogger For Twelve Years." He concludes, . . .we can show our solidarity by at least noting the muzzling of one of our own, and reminding everyone of the complicity of those firms that assist China to achieve the silence that will never come.Not that it matters a whole lot whether Yang is called a blogger or a journalist, a writer, or a reporter. (Frankly, I've been having a lot of trouble finding any of Yang's postings anywhere, so I can't honestly declare him a "blogger.") What should matter is that he received a twelve year sentence for his writing. (And according to International PEN, "at least five writers were jailed for up to 10 years last year as part of a government crackdown on free speech." More on China's reopening of charges against the New York Times researcher.) The world should be outraged. Where's the outrage, you might ask? When I last looked, Ed's post received a single, very outraged comment. But the outrage was over an unrelated issue and the commenter was smugly unsympathetic to Yang's plight: Chinese dissident goes to jail? yeah... too bad about that. At least in China they enforce their laws.....Nice. I hope such callusedness doesn't typify the American viewpoint, but I suspect a lot of Americans not only couldn't care less, but won't even be as honest as Captain Ed's commenter in saying so. That's why the Beijing rulers are getting away with it: Beijing's economic success has persuaded its leaders that they can ''basically behave like they want," said Jean Philippe Beja, research director at the Paris-based Center for International Studies and Research. While Ed's commenter's lack of sympathy was based on anger over immigration (what that has to do with free speech in China, I'm not sure), most Americans have their pet peeves -- all of which are far more important than human rights in China: those who bitch and moan about a secretive Bush administration, secret prisons for terrorists or listening in on the telephone calls of suspected terrorists do nothing to enlighten the American people about the truly heinous abuses of freedom around the world. Yet, they still somehow find time for three weeks to cover a vice president who accidentally shot his hunting partner, a week to talk about Exxon’s excessive profit this year or four months to discuss a single girl missing in Aruba.That's about right. Well, I cared enough to write a post about Alaa, the blogger jailed in Egypt. And I figured that if bloggers in China are being imprisoned for twelve years that I should at least say something in a blog post. It beats boycotting China. (That's a "B" word less likely to be used in conjunction with China than "blogger.") Seriously, can anyone imagine how difficult it would be to do that? Even for a day? posted by Eric on 05.17.06 at 09:10 AM |
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