I mentioned in one of my articles that a police state is the natural enemy of the rule of law; today's China is a complete police state. In recent years, the police in China have become a gangster-like organization so quickly that civilized societies find it hard to believe. It is especially true in economically-developed areas like Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. If China's police have all along been a group of gangsters, the evilness, the brutality, and the unscrupulousness of this group have reached its zenith in recent years.
In the face of police becoming gangsters and the justice system losing its functions to maintain the most basic rights of humanity, millions of citizens have nowhere to turn when they have complaints. Not only that, they have been deprived of the right to peacefully demand and end to and punishment for a crime, or the right to file their complaints with the appeals offices.
Worse, their attempts to exercise such rights have become excuses that cold-blooded local officials use to suppress them and persecute rights activists. These officials no longer hesitate to kill those citizens who have resorted to peaceful means to fight for their lost rights. The oppressions of basic human dignity and yearning for survival in local areas have become outrageous.
Over the past decades, local authorities have employed lies and violence and other tactics such as illegal arrests as their major means to maintain stability. Now the local governments face a serious problem: no matter how hysterical they are in their publicity campaigns, people just don't believe the lies in it anymore, and that has made the local officials mad. (During this year's Spring Festival, I found in northern Shanxi that many farmers simply didn't turn on their TVs when CCTV was showing its annual gala. When asked why, they answered honestly, "CCTV never tells the truth!")
Such madness has caused them to go to extremes in dealing with social issues and conflicts. One of the representatives of petitioners said, "In the past, [the local officials] might arrest us, beat us, and detain us on any grounds. But now it has become, they can arrest us, beat us, and detain us without any grounds."
In February 2006, I proposed to start a Relay Hunger Strike for Human Rights out of my continued concern that police have openly taken gangster-like steps and that basic human rights and legal protection are violently abused. I had hoped to protest the gangster-like harassment by the police through hunger strikes, a peaceful, moderate, and controlled way of resistance that only inflicts harm to our own bodies.
At the same time, I had wanted to remind the manipulators of the system, who have never been able to know the real situations at the local level, that if the gangster-like actions of the police are not stopped, the lawless police will drag China into a volatile abyss soon. Even with such helpless, restrained, and small-scale resistance, what we were met with was intensified inhumane suppression by local police, who use even more unscrupulous, gangster-like measures.
All the citizens who have participated in the hunger strike have, without exception, been harassed, illegally interrogated, and intimidated by thuggish police. The worst happened in Beijing and Shanghai, where whoever participated in the hunger strike was arrested without any grounds or due process. In wantonly depriving people of their civil liberties, the acts of these thuggish police bear no resemblance to the lawful exercise of police power on behalf of the state anymore.
Even the specialists and scholars who have shown their sympathy have been illegally summoned and interrogated, and their families have been continuously harassed and intimidated by police officers. For example, the police harassed Dr. Fan Yafeng in his home several times each day, and they even repeatedly harassed his mother, a reclusive, old lady. The horrifying nature of these thuggish officers and the manipulators behind them is beyond description!
Given the madness as reflected in such police savagery and gangster-like behavior, a considerable number of specialists and scholars in China have recently advised me through various channels that I should stop the hunger strike at an appropriate time. For that I express my appreciation and understanding to them. Since I cannot reply to them one by one, I will tell them what I think here. We are protesting the way the Chinese government condones the gangster-like practices of its police forces through moderate resistance, and, as a result, are met with more intensified illegal persecution by the government.
On the one hand, these are not the conditions we need to see met before stopping such resistance. If we give it up now, it means we give up the fight for basic human justice. It also means we abandon our inherent right to protect basic human dignity and capitulate to these rogue authorities. The police authorities in China will thus entertain the perverted logic that Chinese are best managed with gangster-like measures, and such measures will produce instant results.
On the other hand, the surging waves of hunger strikes across the nation stem from decades of rampant oppressions by authorities, and they are not driven by any individual's initiative. With its powerful machinery of oppression, the authorities know only coercion and violence as their ways to silence people, and do not understand, or do not want to understand, the importance of responding to people's voices with good will. I will stick to my belief and action against violence until there is a change in the attitude of the authorities. I am prepared for any consequences.
As I was concluding my article, I just learned that three representatives of demobilized soldiers from Zhejiang Province, Jiangsu Province, and Shanghai and two representatives of teachers from Shanxi Province came to see me, but were stopped by plainclothes police, who took them to Xiaoguan Police Station, the Public Security Bureau of Chaoyang District. They were searched, photographed, and beaten by thuggish officers.
Questioned by teacher Zhang Dongcui as to why they were arrested, this pack of thugs, feeling guilty and yet defiant, barked, "Gao Zhisheng is a bad guy. How can I allow you to see a bad guy? We are carrying out a police officer's duty!" Teacher Zhang Dongcui challenged, "Please tell us the bad things the bad guy Gao Zhisheng has done!" The thugs became speechless immediately. The brave Chinese citizens are teacher Liu Xinjie, teacher Zhang Dongcui, Wu Changjiang and two others.
Today there are still 80 to 90 plainclothes policemen and thugs who are watching and following me.
At about 10 o'clock this morning, two tall, plainclothes policemen deliberately ran into me in the hallway. We became physical by pushing and pulling one another for about four minutes. They withdrew, for they obviously knew they were in the wrong. In the end, they ran off followed by the laughter of onlookers. The excitement lasted but a moment. Once they are gone, my life returns to calm again.
The short fight today has not occurred without any benefit. A few lovely and respectable Beijing residents took the opportunity to slip into my office and clean it up for me.
There is loss for every gain, too. My wife was so happy to find a tenant today. But good news did not last—Beijing police wasted no time forcing the prospective tenant to renege on the lease agreement.
Gao Zhisheng, surrounded by plain clothes police in Beijing
February 21
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