Dissent by Association

Hu

Jiangxia never aspired to be an activist. Studious and soft-spoken, she preferred math textbooks to politics. While her contemporaries marched on Tiananmen Square in 1989, Hu remained at home in central China cramming for college entrance exams. The work paid off. She earned a spot at Shanghai's prestigious Jiaotong University and later a job as a software programmer at one of China's most successful companies in the eastern lakefront city of Hangzhou. It was there that Wang Youcai, a lanky fellow programmer, first asked her for a date. She turned him down. He'd spent four years in prison for helping lead the Tiananmen uprising and she assumed, as she had been taught, "that made him a bad person." But he was fun. He made her laugh. And slowly, he won her over. In 1995 they married, took a honeymoon cruise down the Yangtze and bought an apartment big enough to fit the refrigerator in the kitchen instead of the living room. They had become Chinese yuppies.

Today, Hu is 29 and a reluctant leader of a campaign that undercuts Beijing's effort to show a kinder face to the world. In 1999 her husband received an 11-year sentence for organizing the Chinese Democracy Party, the biggest opposition party in 50 years of communist rule. Hu had remained an observer, serving snacks at party meetings. But suddenly faced with finding a lawyer, arranging prison visits and protecting her husband's rights, she began sharing tea and tales with the wives of other political prisoners in Hangzhou. One of them was an outspoken college student named Shan Chengfeng whose husband, Wu Yilong, had co-founded Wang's party. Shan's sharp pen had won her a national essay contest, and she had written much of the party's material. Unlikely allies, the two women took their cause public. Late last year they rounded up 28 signatories for an open letter urging the International Olympic Committee (i.o.c) to appeal for the release of their husbands.

Thanks to the government's heavy-handed tactics, the wives and relatives of dissidents have become dissidents themselves. This couldn't come at a worse time for China's leaders. The i.o.c will vote in July on whether to award Beijing the 2008 Games and the world recognition that goes with them, much of which will accrue to the Communist Party. The letter's timing wrong-footed Beijing in other ways too. The U.N. High Commission on Human Rights meets in Geneva next week and the U.S. recently announced its intention to sponsor a resolution to censure China for its human rights record. The government is clearly worried by the women's actions: police detained Hu for eight hours in mid-January. Shan suffered much worse. She was sentenced without trial to two years re-education through labor for "disturbing social order."

Beijing has a history of releasing dissidents when it can win points internationally; human rights activists call it "hostage politics." Just before the i.o.c. voted in 1993 on Beijing's bid to host the 2000 Games, authorities released famous political prisoners Wang Dan, Wei Jingsheng and Xu Wenli. They remained stubbornly critical of the government and Beijing lost the bid to Sydney by two votes. That's one reason why a quick release of opposition party organizers now is unlikely. Besides, Wang Youcai had challenged the government directly by trying to register his party, insisting that China's constitution guarantees him that right. Wu Yilong had traveled the country by train, expanding the party's membership to more than 1,000. A court sentenced him to 11 years.

With nearly all Chinese dissidents in jail or cowed into silence, their activism has passed to their families. In Beijing, Liu Jing and Zhang Hong, the sister and wife of jailed dissidents, issued a separate letter to the i.o.c. on Feb 15. The two had met in August 1999 through their lawyer. Both were enraged by the treatment meted out to their loved ones. Zhang, a retired shop clerk, saw her husband Jiang Qisheng jailed for four years when he urged Beijing residents to light candles in their windows to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre. Liu says her brother Fang Jue—who called for direct elections in 1997 and is serving a four-year term on murky charges of illegal business dealings—has suffered frostbite while in solitary confinement where he has spent much of the winter sleeping on the bare cement of his sub-freezing cell. Guards denied her request to bring him a blanket. "I was so angry but felt so powerless," says Liu, a ticket seller in a Beijing park for the past 20 years. In their letter the two invited i.o.c. members to meet them personally for "a true and complete inspection of the city."

When news of their letter hit the international press, police summoned Liu and warned her to avoid further publicity if she didn't want her brother's life to get worse. Last week during the visit of U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights Mary Robinson to Beijing, both Liu and Zhang were kept under close police scrutiny. Plain clothes cops wielding video cameras even followed them to the park where they often meet to chat during their morning exercises. Fearful of what the police might do, Liu didn't dare talk to her friend. She met Zhang's worried gaze with a nod of her head and returned home—silenced for the moment, but determined not to stay that way for long. "Now," she says, "even if my brother is released, I'll continue to campaign for the rights of others."