Being sent ‘forced travel’ and cut off from outside contact
Ahead of the 34th anniversary (June 4) of the Tiananmen Square protests (Tiananmen incident), the Chinese government has strengthened surveillance and control of dissidents.
On the 3rd, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia reported that China’s leading dissidents, Hu Ji (胡佳) and Gao Yu (高瑜), had already been controlled by the authorities to prevent them from voicing criticism or were sent on ‘forced travel’. .
Forced travel measures mean that the Chinese government forcibly sends key figures, including dissidents living in the capital Beijing, to distant provinces under the surveillance of security personnel during a politically sensitive time at home.
In the case of Gao Yu, he was sent to Luoyang, Henan Province on the 1st, and allowed to return home to Beijing after a week.
Currently, he is known to be unable to receive cell phones, and his Twitter account has not been updated since the 31st of last month.
Gao Yu actively reported on the Tiananmen sit-in protest by college students in April 1989, when he was serving as the deputy editor of the “Economic Weekly”.
In October 1993, he was arrested for leaking state secrets and served six years in prison. He was arrested in April 2014 for leaking confidential information and sentenced to seven years in prison, before being released on bail in November 2015 for failing health.
Another dissident, the latter, was recently taken to a resort in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province by security officers and is effectively under arrest.
The latter was arrested in December 2007 after providing information to foreign media about the poor human rights protection in China, environmental destruction, abuse of government power, and oppression of dissidents.
Later, in April 2008, he was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months in prison for ‘incitement to subvert the state’ and was released in June 2011 on the condition that he not engage in public activities on the Internet.
Control over dissidents in China is getting tighter. It is known that thousands of people are subjected to ‘forced travel’ every year to silence their voices at politically sensitive times.
On the other hand, the Tiananmen Incident refers to an incident in which the Chinese government violently suppressed students, workers, and citizens who were holding sit-in protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square demanding democracy on June 4, 1989, resulting in casualties.
Authorities once said that there were 240 civilian victims during the Tiananmen Square massacre, but it is not known exactly how many victims there were. Families of missing persons have been demanding an explanation for the truth for decades.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.