IN THE days leading up to a high-level plenum of the Beijing leadership, a letter by senior Communist veterans calling for freedom of expression has joined a growing number of calls for reform from within the party ranks.
In a letter to the party-controlled parliament, a group of 23 retired Chinese officials, including Li Rui, once the secretary to late revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, and Jiang Ping, a former member of the Chinese parliament’s legal affairs committee.
The letter was dated October 1st, before dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize and brought global attention to China’s record on freedom of speech and human rights, but follows on from comments by Premier Wen Jiabao on several occasions recently.
The letter focused on reforming freedom of speech by getting rid of controls in the media, treating journalists with more respect and removing restrictions of media monitoring at a provincial level to allow journalists to work more freely.
It also calls for the “Great Firewall of China”, which censors the internet’s use in China, to be demolished. It also demands that the people be told about the Communist Party’s “past sins and faults”.
Meanwhile, Liu Xia, Liu Xiaobo’s wife, hopes to travel to Norway to collect the Nobel Peace Prize on his behalf, though for now she can only leave her Beijing home under police escort. China has again expressed its anger at the award, calling it an attack on the country and an attempt to change its political system.
“If some people try to change China’s political system in this way, and try to stop the Chinese people from moving forward, that is obviously making a mistake,” said foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu.
“This is not only disrespect for China’s judicial system, but also puts a big question mark on their true intentions,” he said, adding that it was up to the judiciary to decide whether Mr Liu would be allowed to collect the award on December 10th.
In a separate incident, a group of Christians from one of China’s underground churches has been prevented by security officials from leaving Beijing to attend a major evangelical meeting in South Africa.
The small group of five Christians were planning to fly at the weekend to Cape Town for the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelisation, which takes place from October 16th to 25th, and will include thousands of Christian leaders from all over the world. Liu Guan, a member of the Shouwang home church, said that public security officials had warned its members not to go in recent days.
“Every one of us has been talked to by someone – they didn’t show us any identification, they just said they were from the government and warned us not to join the Lausanne Congress,” he said.
Mr Liu was told there were “reactionary elements” involved in the conference which could harm the nation and he should reconsider his decision to go.
Since the end of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, the Communist Party has allowed the practice of religion in certain circumstances but only under the strict supervision of the state.
However, there are thousands of unregistered, underground religious movements – some of them more mainstream than others, such as the underground Roman Catholic church.