While welcoming their release, Human Rights Watch stressed that the government’s restrictions on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) continued to leave tens of thousands of civil society organizations across the country vulnerable to arbitrary political and administrative interference.

“These releases are a step in the right direction, but we remain deeply concerned about the government’s tight grip on civil society,” said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The arrests all appear to have taken place as a result of peaceful activities, and these releases should not be confused with an overall improvement in the government’s attitude toward civil society.”

Xu Zhiyong, the founder of the legal advocacy group Open Constitution Initiative (also known by its Chinese name, Gongmeng), and Zhuang Lu, its financial manager, were released by the Public Security Bureau on August 23 and 22, 2009, respectively. They had been arrested on July 29, for allegedly evading tax payments on a grant from Yale University, while Gongmeng itself was fined 1.4 million yuan (US$206,000). Although Xu was released on bail and can technically still be prosecuted, his lawyer has indicated that the authorities were most likely to drop the criminal charges against him.

Under China’s highly restrictive NGO regulations, only organizations that have gained approval by the government prior to their establishment can register as non-profit entities; many who were set up without prior government approval opt to register as commercial enterprises to try to comply with the law. The Beijing authorities’ decision to suspend Gongmeng on the grounds that it had “falsely registered as a commercial enterprise in view of carrying out civic non-commercial activities” has sent waves of concern through China’s non-profit community. While Xu and Zhuang have now been released, it is not clear whether Gongmeng will be able to resume its operations and to continue representing clients in court given that it has no registration as an NGO and that all its work files, computers, and archives remain in the hands of the police.

In a separate development, the police also released Ilham Tohti, a Uighur professor at Beijing’s Nationalities University, on July 23. Tohti was arrested on July 8, shortly after the governor of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region had blamed Uighur Online, a website run by Tohti, for helping spark the July 5 riots in Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital. Tohti had written on the website about the central government’s discriminatory policies in Xinjiang and warned about the risks of ethnic unrest. Tohti’s website was shut down shortly after his arrest, in the same way that Gongmeng’s websites were shut down after Xu’s arrest.

Both cases had caused considerable alarm over a possible hardening of the government’s attitude toward NGOs that had previously managed to operate and create space within the confines of the Chinese government’s restrictions.

In recent years, China has witnessed an explosion of grassroots civic organizations working on social and legal issues, ranging from environmental protection to women’s rights, HIV/AIDS and public health, consumer rights, rural poverty, and marginalized social groups. The government has publicly recognized the positive contribution that nongovernmental groups make to Chinese society.

Yet despite that rhetorical recognition, the government insists on registration and operational requirements that few organizations can meet, and that are incompatible with China’s obligations to the right to freedom of association under international human rights law, such as being affiliated with a designated government entity.

As a result of these restrictions, the majority of China’s civic organizations are either registered as commercial entities or simply operate without legal status, which leaves them open to potential prosecution for operating an “illegal organization.”

“Civic organizations play an essential role in remedying social tensions and bringing about better governance,” said Richardson. “The government claims to want to foster a ‘harmonious society;’ it should foster an autonomous civil society rather than try to control and constrain it.”

Human Rights Watch

The post China: Advocates Freed, Restrictions on Civil Society Remain appeared first on uighur.nl.

HONG KONG—A prominent Beijing-based economist and member of China’s Uyghur ethnic minority has been released without charge after he was detained for allegedly promoting separatism, but he said police then visited his home to warn him he could still be tried and executed.

Ilham Tohti, a professor at Beijing’s Central Nationalities University, said his cell phone resumed service Saturday and he was released after more than one month in custody.

But he said police knocked on his door late Monday to warn him against speaking out against the government’s handling of deadly July 5 riots that pitted mainly Muslim Uyghurs against majority Han Chinese in Urumqi, capital of China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.

“They told me I could soon be sentenced—be sentenced to death, be ‘dealt with,’” Tohti said.

Tohti said that one police officer remained in his home and stood by his side as he spoke with RFA in a telephone interview.

“I did not want to see what happened in Xinjiang on July 5. Ordinary citizens must be left alone to go on with their lives…I do not harbor any conspiracies, but I want to firmly defend the legal rights of the Uyghur people,” he said.

Detention

Tohti said he had been detained partly in his home and in a hotel “somewhere near Beijing” for two weeks, during which time three or four policemen “chatted with me endlessly” both day and night.

“I was unable to tell day from night. My head was spinning [from the questioning]…I spent more than 20 hours a day with them,” Tohti said.

Tohti said he was never treated inhumanely during his detention, calling his captors “courteous” and “civilized,” even while he knew the “procedure was illegal.”

“[They produced] nothing to indicate what they were doing was in accordance with the law,” he said, adding that he was never accused of committing a specific crime.

“But since the chatting was done with the secret police, it definitely had something to do with national security and politics,” Tohti said.

Tohti said his captors “expressed particular concern” about the July 5 riots and an earlier clash between Han and Uyghur factory workers in China’s southern Guangdong province that sparked the Urumqi unrest.

“They were concerned about what I had said.”

‘This is a political issue’

Tohti went missing after he reported police had summoned him from his Beijing home following the July 5 riots in Urumqi.

He was detained after writing about the violence on his Web site, Uyghur Online.

Chinese officials responded to inquiries about Tohti during his detention by saying that he had left Beijing with his family for a summer vacation, which he has denied.

Tohti said that although he had been released after an investigation determined he had not violated the law or attempted to incite violence, he remains concerned that authorities will continue to monitor his actions.

“They say I am cleared of any problems, but they do not call the shots. This is a political issue. I don’t know what the higher-ups are thinking. By ‘higher-ups’ I mean leaders at the highest level,” he said.

Uyghur Online

Tohti said that his online activities have been carefully scrutinized by the government and that members of the Uyghur Online staff had been summoned by authorities for questioning as early as March this year.

“We do not know the whereabouts of the majority of the editors and staff of Uyghur Online,” Tohti said.

He said one Uyghur service reporter for official CCTV had been missing for more than a month.

“He’s been detained. That has been confirmed. But it was not done according to the proper procedure of the law,” Tohti said.

Tohti said he was unsure how Uyghur Online would operate after his detention.

“It used to be like Global Times,” he said, referring to another China-based news Web site. “We yielded to the government.”

“After all, China is moving ahead. We should respect one another. There should be a greater effort to achieve social justice.”

Tohti’s blog, Uyghur Online, publishes in Chinese and Uyghur and is widely seen as a moderate, intellectual Web site addressing social issues. Authorities have closed it on several previous occasions.

Uyghur Online was specifically targeted, along with exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer, in a July 5 speech by the governor of Xinjiang, Nur Bekri, as an instigator of the clashes.

Tohti has said he was interrogated repeatedly and accused of separatism after he spoke out in March against Chinese policies in Xinjiang, particularly the disproportionately high unemployment there among Uyghurs compared with Han Chinese.

Original reporting by Ding Xiao for RFA’s Mandarin service and by Ho Shan for RFA’s Cantonese service. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Translated by Jennifer Chou and Ho Shan. Written for the Web in English by Joshua Lipes. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

Radio Free Asia

The post Uyghur Economist Freed, Warned appeared first on uighur.nl.