Prominent Chinese dissident Hu Jia (胡佳) said he wants to resume his activism, but was weighing the impact on his family, in his first reported comments after being released from prison at the weekend.
During a telephone interview with Hong Kong’s Cable TV, Hu stressed the importance of “loyalty to morality, loyalty to the rights of citizens.”
“You should be loyal to your conscience,” he said in comments broadcast late on Sunday.
One of China’s leading rights activists and government critics, Hu returned to his Beijing home early on Sunday, his wife Zeng Jinyan (曾金燕) said on Twitter, after completing a more than three-year sentence for subversion.
Hu’s release came just days after outspoken artist Ai Weiwei (艾未未) returned to his Beijing home after nearly three months in police custody.
Hu, 37, was jailed in April 2008, just ahead of the Beijing Olympics, after angering the Chinese Communist Party through years of bold campaigning for civil rights, the environment and AIDS sufferers.
He won the Sakharov Prize, the European Parliament’s highest human rights honor, later that year while in prison.
Hu now faces one year of “deprivation of political rights” — essentially a ban on political activities that typically includes not talking to the media.
Chinese police have blocked access to his Beijing home, suggesting he may have been placed under some form of house arrest.
Hu said in the interview that his family was pressuring him to stay out of trouble.
“They have told me: ‘Live an -ordinary life and don’t clash with the regime because this regime is very cruel and it arbitrarily violates the dignity of its citizens,’” Hu said.
“I must try to console my parents and do what I can to console them ... but I can only tell them I’ll be careful,” he added, in a strong indication he would like to return to activism.
Hu is widely expected to be hit with the same strict curbs as those apparently applied to Ai and a range of other activists and rights lawyers, who seem to have been ordered to keep quiet after their release from custody.
On her Twitter page yesterday, Zeng said well-wishers hoping to visit Hu would not be allowed in, apparently referring to the police surrounding their apartment.
“I’m slowly reintroducing him into society and arranging his life and work. I don’t think it is necessary to say anything more.”
Last week, Zeng said her husband needed treatment for cirrhosis of the liver, a disease that worsened while he was in prison as a result of inadequate medical care.
An editorial in yesterday’s -English-language Global Times, which is published for foreign consumption, complained that the support Hu enjoys in the West was linked to a Western bias against China’s government.
“Hu and other people win Western applause not because of what they have done for Chinese society and world peace, but simply because they are anti-Chinese government,” the editorial said, in the only mention of Hu in state media.
“Mr. Hu had better keep a sober mind in the face of Western praise, just as China should keep its eye on the various comments coming from the West,” it added.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS