20100710 Chinese writer and dissident a big Twitter fan

Chinese writer and dissident a big Twitter fan

AFP , BEIJING
Saturday, Jul 10, 2010, Page 4

“In China, you have to get around the Great Firewall, so those who use Twitter are usually interested in politics.”— dissident writer Yu Jie

Chinese dissident writer Yu Jie (余杰) spends his days between two worlds — the spiritual, with the Bible to offer him guidance, and the virtual, with Twitter as the best way to get his message out.

Yu, 36, was detained and questioned by secret police for four and a half hours on Monday after he used the popular microblogging site to reveal his plans to publish Wen Jiabao: China’s Best Actor, a critical look at the premier.

The rebel author — an often harsh critic of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) — says his interrogators threatened him with jail if he goes ahead with the project, set to be released in Hong Kong, but he remains undaunted.

“Foreign media outlets and experts, along with the Chinese media, have a favorable view of Wen, describing him as a progressive and a political reformer, but for me, that view is a skewed one,” Yu said in a recent interview.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

The 67-year-old premier — often called “Grandpa Wen” for his ability to connect with the people — has instead worked with President Hu Jintao to further restrict civil liberties and increase the powers of China’s feared secret police, he said.

Immediately upon his detention, Yu — who has a literature degree from prestigious Peking University, but no steady job at the moment — turned to the power of Twitter.

He sent a text message to his wife, who then announced to the blogosphere that Yu had been taken away by the police. “Friends found out about it that way, as did the foreign journalists who then contacted her,” said the dissident, whose books have been banned in China since 2004 but remain widely available in Hong Kong.

His Twitter account name is provocative — “Yujie89” refers to the army’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989.

Yu is one of the most active Chinese dissidents using Twitter. Since December, when he joined the social networking site, he has amassed more than 10,000 followers.

PROXY NETWORKS

The Chinese government blocks Twitter, but many people access it in China via virtual proxy networks. Yu says that this was evidence of the slightly different role the site plays in China, as compared to the West.

“In China, you have to get around the Great Firewall, so those who use Twitter are usually interested in politics,” explained the bespectacled writer, speaking slowly and deliberately.

“For me, it’s a very important way for me to express my political opinions.”

While he defended his right to freedom of expression as enshrined in the Chinese constitution, Yu said the police warned him about endangering national security with his book on Wen, which he plans to publish sometime in the next three months.

“The state security forces are my best publicity agents,” he wrote in one Twitter post.

On Tuesday, he published an open letter to the premier, calling on him to disband the secret police.

“They told me it would be the makings of a serious criminal dossier that would see me sent to prison like Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波),” said Yu, who has a two-year-old son.

Liu, a writer and former professor, was sentenced to 11 years in prison in December on subversion charges, a year after he co-authored Charter 08, a bold manifesto calling for political reform in China.

OUTRAGE

Liu’s case sparked outrage in the West, but Yu says the secret police tried to convince him that Western countries were more interested in China’s increasing economic might.

“When they interrogated me, they told me that for Western countries, human rights in China has taken a backseat to trade,” Yu said.

“I responded that I had never counted on the West’s protection when I criticized the Chinese government.”

Yu said he drew almost as much strength from his Twitter supporters as he did from religion, which has become a big part of his life since he became a Christian on Christmas Day 2003.

“Religion gives me spiritual support. I no longer feel alone or weak when faced with the Communist Party, he said.

His next book? It will be about the “power of Christianity,” he said.