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Silent minority
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Prominent activist Hu Jia believed he would not be arrested before the Games because Beijing was under scrutiny from the international community. He was wrong.
Hu's wife, Zeng Jinyan, said her husband had been braced for the worst after the Games, but had not expected to be imprisoned so soon.
"It really hurts when I say this, but he was over-optimistic. He believed he would not be arrested before the Olympics," Ms Zeng said by phone from her home, where she was under house arrest with her five-month-old daughter.
"Although he was worried that there might be retaliation after the Olympics, he believed he wouldn't get into trouble before them."
In hindsight, Ms Zeng conceded she had also shared Hu's optimism. Her 35-year-old husband was sentenced on April 3 to 3-1/2 years in prison for "subverting the state" after a one-day trial in March.
Hu was convicted of inciting others to "subvert the state's political power and socialist system" by publishing articles on overseas-run websites and through interviews he gave to foreign media between August 2006 and October last year.
Of the five online articles that landed Hu in jail, one was co-written with outspoken lawyer Teng Biao, well-known for helping blind activist Chen Guangcheng expose violent birth control measures in Shandong .
The article, entitled The Real China and the Olympics, said Beijing had failed to live up to its pledges to protect human rights made during its application to host the Games and accused the state of rampant human rights violations.
"When you come to the Olympic Games in Beijing, you will see skyscrapers, spacious streets, modern stadiums and enthusiastic people. You will see the truth, but not the whole truth, just as you see only the tip of an iceberg," the two authors wrote in the article that was released in September last year and later translated into English and posted on the website of Human Rights Watch of China.
"You may not know that the flowers, smiles, harmony and prosperity are built on a base of grievances, tears, imprisonment, torture and blood," it said.
Mr Teng believed the article was a challenge to the authorities. The police told him the article was enough to send him to jail for subversion as well. He was taken into custody on March 6 and released two days later, after being warned he should write less, especially about the Olympics.
"They printed out my articles from the internet, including the article I co-authored with Hu Jia. They said the article had broken the law," said Mr Teng, who did not agree with the police assessment. "That article does not provoke people to overturn the government and it is not subverting the state power. We are just giving information and our opinions about human rights in China."
He was convinced the authorities were even angrier that the article had been translated into English, believing it would attract international criticism.
So far, any direct challenge to Beijing's hosting of the Olympics has sparked a swift response from authorities.
Take farmer Yang Chunlin . Some rural activists said the farmer from Fujin city , in Heilongjiang province , made a strategic mistake by jumbling land seizures and the Olympics in his slogan: "We want human rights, not Olympics."
Yang and his fellow villagers had been petitioning to reclaim farmland seized by the authorities over the years. He was arrested in July last year before his fellow villagers staged a bold campaign to announce private ownership of the farmland in December. Last month, Yang was sentenced to five years in jail for subversion.
Even activists who do not overtly oppose the Olympics can feel the chill as the Games draw near. The government is determined to clamp down on any negative publicity before thousands of foreign reporters land in Beijing in August, although Tibet seems to be a more urgent front in the public relations war.
Overseas human rights activists said Hu's role as an information hub for human rights activists on the mainland and abroad was the main reason for his arrest. Using his IT expertise, Hu updated overseas websites about harassments of dissidents by posting news, photos, audio files and videos.
Removing him would deal a heavy blow to the dissemination of news about human rights activities, activists said.
A Beijing-based lawyer said the so-called "rights-defending" lawyers - those willing to represent dissidents, petitioners - along with others who challenge the authorities, are under immense pressure. The Beijing bureau of justice is reviewing the licences of lawyers this month and those who have handled sensitive cases face delays in obtaining their renewals, or may even have their licences revoked to prohibit them from practising in the capital.
The pressure is set to intensify in the coming months, activists believe.
"The government's efforts have been geared towards information control: journalists, dissidents and rights activists that were challenging the government have been silenced, either through official intimidation or, in the cases of Hu Jia, Lu Gengsong , Ye Guozhu , Yang Chunlin and others, arrest and prosecution," said Nicholas Bequelin, researcher with the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch.
"NGOs, liberal academics and investigative journalists have decided to lie low and wait for the Games to be over so as not to invite predictable retaliation," Mr Bequelin said.
The government is also resorting to more sophisticated means to defuse the mounting tension, such as selectively resolving the problems of petitioners by giving compensation to some of them.
Veteran petitioner Wang Guilan , who collected 10,000 signatures for one petition in an earlier campaign, said many petitioners had swarmed to Beijing in recent weeks in the hope the government would resolve their problems before the Olympics.
"People are saying the government would try to resolve some cases before the Olympics, but if their cases could not be dealt with before May, there is no hope the government will pay attention to them any more," she said. "There are more petitioners in Beijing these days than my last visit to Beijing."
Ironically, Ms Wang was being detained in the Beijing representative office of her hometown Enshi city , Hubei province, when reached by the Post.
She was taken into custody after collecting 600 petition letters - short of the 1,000-letter goal - to send to President Hu Jintao .
Sichuan-based dissident Huang Qi , who managed a website campaigning for petitioners and people who had disappeared, said the government was adopting a two-pronged attack of crackdown and engagement, such as sending signals or messages to dissidents asking them not to create trouble during the Games.
However, Mr Huang believed the momentum for civil rights would not be dampened and the government had to face that. "Mass organisations to defend economic rights are sprawling everywhere. Economic interests are driving people to fight for their rights," he said.
Authorities are also stepping up measures to remove the so-called nail houses - residents who refuse to make way for the Olympics projects, green belts and other facelift projects in the capital.
The case of Wang Lianmin, who was briefly detained when his home in Yangshan village was forcibly torn down to make way for a green belt, underscored the nervousness of the authorities about more negative publicity amid the intense international pressure over Beijing's crackdown in Tibet.
Mr Wang said he was told by police that he had violated the law by filming his house being demolished. "I was asked to sign a confession letter saying I have violated the law by filming the demolition of my house or I would be detained for up to 15 days," he recalled.
But the problem remained that Mr Wang still did not understand why it was illegal to film his home being torn down.