Chapter 1: The Pressure from Above
Regional Focus: Crackdowns in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia I was shaken. In the end I decided to leave my loved ones and worldly possessions, took a wild chance, and fled China. I kept my plan to myself. I didn’t follow my usual routine of asking my police handlers for permission. Instead, I packed some clothes, my Chinese flute, a Tibetan singing bowl and two of my prized books, “The Records of the Grand Historian” and the “I Ching.” Then I left home while the police were not watching, and traveled to Yunnan. I switched off my cellphone after making brief contacts with my friends in the West, who had collaborated on the plan. Several days later, I reached a small border town, where I could see Vietnam across a fast-flowing river. At 10 a.m. on July 2, I walked 100 yards to the border post, fully prepared for the worst, but a miracle occurred. The officer checked my papers, stared at me momentarily and then stamped my passport. Without stopping, I traveled to Hanoi and boarded a flight to Poland and then to Germany. Thanks to God and the spirits of the multitudes who have died wrongful deaths, I succeeded. Now, as I sit at my peaceful writing desk in Germany, the criminal gangs in my homeland are fighting ever more fiercely. Wang Lijun was on the run and Bo Xilai was chasing him. But in the end, they were both seized, by bigger and more ruthless gang leaders. Meanwhile, this year’s National People’s Congress unanimously approved the most draconian law in its history for dealing with “terrorists”—including “cultural terrorists” like me. Now the gangster’s police can detain anyone and “according to law” detain him for six months without even notifying his family.
Liao Yiwu is a writer who lived under surveillance and constant threat after being imprisoned after the Tiananmen Square crackdown. A member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, Liao chronicles the lives of ordinary, underrepresented Chinese citizens.
While mainland Chinese writers, lawyers, and intellectuals have contended with successive waves of repression since the 2008 Beijing Olympics, those who are living and working in the western provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang and in Inner Mongolia, already outside the scope of China’s Olympic-year pledges, have struggled against even greater censorship and restrictions.
Tibet The site of a major uprising and harsh government crackdown in March 2008, the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) never felt the reach of relaxed press restrictions before and during the Beijing Olympics. During that crackdown, Chinese authorities cut off or interrupted telephone and Internet services in Lhasa and elsewhere in Tibet, significantly hindering the flow of eyewitness reports and other information as violence spread and the number of deaths rose. Since then, foreign journalists have only been allowed into Tibetan areas on government-orchestrated visits, always chaperoned and closely monitored by Chinese officials. Those who have attempted on their own to enter the Tibet Autonomous Region and neighboring Tibetan areas in Sichuan, Qinghai, Yunnan, and Gansu Provinces were briefly detained or turned away. Nonetheless, reports periodically emerge of continuing unrest in the region, many centred on questions of linguistic rights and the transition to Mandarin instruction in Tibetan schools in more urban areas. Tibetan children are permitted only three years of primary education in Tibetan, after which all subjects, except Tibetan language, are instructed in Mandarin. Tibetan students must pass an examination in Mandarin to proceed to middle school. The result of this has been two-fold: the drop-out rate has increased because children cannot pass the test, and literacy in the Tibetan tongue has decreased for both those who cannot
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