By HU PING
Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2005

Chinese human-rights activist Zhao Xin thought his troubles were over
when he was released by Beijing authorities earlier this year after
being briefly detained for trying to obtain a permit to hold a protest
commemorating Zhao Ziyang, the deceased party secretary who sided with
the students protesters in 1989. But last month he became the latest
victim to experience at firsthand how the real threat to those who
dare challenge the state in China does not come in a uniform anymore.

On Nov. 17, while on a holiday in Sichuan Province, the activist in
the Independent Chinese Pen Center, a group of writers that fights for
freedom of expression, was attacked with steel bars and other weapons
by a group of unidentified thugs. They shattered Mr. Zhou's right knee
and delivered head wounds that required 11 stitches in a carefully
targeted attack, since the other members of his tour group -- who were
all present at the time -- were left unharmed. Mr. Zhao said he had
been shadowed throughout his tour by an Audi sedan, a car renowned for
being used by members of China's State Security Bureau. No sooner was
the attack over than his tour group leader went over to the Audi to
report on Mr. Zhao's condition, after which it drove off.

This latest incident fits into a pattern of recent attacks on human
rights activists in China by unknown assailants. In a widely reported
incident in October, several outsiders were assaulted by unidentified
thugs while trying to enter Taishi village. This is the southern
Chinese village that became the scene of a rare revolt by local
villagers, who unsuccessfully tried to exercise their legal right to
remove the village chief, accusing him of corruption. Those attacked
included Professor Ai Xiaoming of Guangzhou's Sun Yat-sen University,
two lawyers, a journalist and rights activist Lu Banglie, whose
official position as a delegate to the local people's congress in
Hubei Province didn't save him from being beaten unconscious by the
thugs who had closed Taishi off to the outside world while the
villagers' protest was suppressed. Assailants attacked Prof. Ai while
she and a lawyer friend were riding a motorcycle on a busy roadway.
After smashing Prof. Ai's motorcycle, the thugs forced her onto the
roadway, where she was nearly crushed by another car. She finally
escaped by jumping onto a bus.

It is clear that the assailants involved in these attacks were not
ordinary muggers, hooligans or gangsters -- who just happened to
target human-rights activists, while leaving those accompanying them
unscathed. Judging from how afraid many are in China to discuss these
incidents it is clear that the thugs had powerful official backing.
The media were silent, even though ordinary criminal incidents are
usually reported by the Chinese press these days. And when Prof. Ai, a
well-known and highly respected academic, posted an account on the
Internet of how she had been roughed up by thugs, she found that very
few of her colleagues, friends or students dared protest or express
support for her.

As everyone knows, China has a huge police force quite capable of
enforcing the law if it chooses to do so. Yet the central government
has completely ignored these violent assaults. Although the violence
was almost certainly instigated by local government officials, they
acted secure in the knowledge of strong backing higher up. That was
proved after the Taishi incident when, instead of condemning the
violence, a Chinese government spokesman in Beijing instead criticized
foreign journalists for trying to visit the village. By responding in
such a way, the Chinese central government tacitly gives its consent
to such use of thugs for official purposes, by showing local officials
there is no danger of bearing any consequences for such actions.

Of course, Chinese officials could simply resort to using the police
or the military against such activists as they have done on many
occasions, most notably in Tiananmen Square in 1989. But even in China
there are laws and limits on how the Chinese authorities can openly
deploy their regular repressive apparatus to violently suppress the
rights of ordinary citizens. Chinese dissidents know those limits and
often engage in a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities. Most of the
time, they can correctly anticipate what response their actions will
elicit from the authorities and what consequences they will have to
face, allowing them to take acceptable risks in putting up limited but
effective resistance to state repression.

Yet the recent pattern of Chinese authorities stepping outside the
ranks of their regular repressive apparatus to use gangs of thugs to
target government critics has changed the rules of the game in a very
dangerous way. No matter how skillfully activists plan their protests,
they now face a very real risk of falling victim to such gangster
tactics.

International pressure needs to be brought on the Chinese central
government to put a stop to this appalling practice. The assailants
and their official backers need to be brought to justice and made to
pay the price for their malicious actions. Official gangsterism has no
place in any civilized society in this day and age -- and it is time
this was made clear in no uncertain terms to Beijing.

Mr. Hu is a prominent Chinese political commentator based in New York.
He is chief editor of the monthly magazine Beijing Spring, and a
member of the board of directors of Human Rights in China.

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