Wei Qiang, 21-Year-Old Chinese Dissident, Sentenced To Labor Camp Over 'Jasmine Revolution' Protest

BEIJING (Reuters) - A 21-year-old Chinese man who attended a proposed pro-democracy "Jasmine Revolution" protest in Beijing was sentenced to labor re-education, in the first confirmed punishment for the Middle East-inspired gatherings that were squashed by wary authorities.

The man, Wei Qiang, was sentenced to 2 years in a labor re-education camp. He was a former art student who did some work at the studio of the detained artist-activist Ai Weiwei, according to two friends of Wei, who confirmed his sentence to Reuters.

That connection may be one element that helps explain why authorities moved against Ai, whose detention sparked an outcry from Washington and other Western capitals critical of the Chinese Communist Party's crackdown on dissent.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday it was unhappy with foreign support for Ai, an internationally known artist, as well as a vocal critic of censorship.

Wei was seized by police in Beijing on February 25 for participating "in an illegal assembly and demonstration" at Beijing's downtown Wangfujing shopping street on February 20 and then held in a detention center in the capital, according to two of his friends who had spoken to Wei's father.

An overseas Chinese website had spread calls for pro-democracy gatherings in Beijing and other Chinese cities, citing uprisings across the Arab world as inspiration.

Wei's parents were told last week that he had been sent to a labor re-education camp in Yan'an city in central Shaanxi province, Yang Hai, a close friend of Wei's family, told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"He is full of integrity and has a strong sense of righteousness," said Yang, 43, who lives in Xi'an, the provincial capital of Shaanxi. "But to send someone to labor camp, it's such a pity. It's outrageous. For someone still so young, the mental blow will be too huge."

Another friend of Wei confirmed the labor re-education sentence. That friend spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing reprisals from authorities.

DOZENS DETAINED

Chinese authorities have detained dozens of dissidents, human rights lawyers and bloggers following the calls for the "Jasmine" protests, which were poorly attended but quickly snuffed out by the authorities.

Wei's photographs of the gathering at Wangfujing on his Twitter account, which has more than 3,200 followers, showed a crowd of reporters and policemen standing guard outside the McDonald's restaurant.

"These two police officers shamelessly kept on telling me: 'Walk on, walk on, what's there to look at? Disperse, disperse!'" he wrote in a message on February 20.

China's "re-education through labor" system empowers police and other agencies to sentence people to up to four years' confinement without going through the courts.

It is a system that critics say undermines rule of law, and rights activists say it targets political prisoners, as well as prostitutes and drug users.

"This is very arbitrary, there's often no logic," said Wang Songlian of rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders. "He's not a well-known activist so they might just want to send him to a labor camp and not bother with a trial."

The EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Tuesday she was deeply concerned at the "deterioration in the human rights situation in China."

"Arbitrary arrests and disappearances must cease," she said in a statement. "I urge the Chinese authorities to clarify the whereabouts of all persons who have disappeared recently."

But Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said the detention of Ai Weiwei was dealt in accordance with the law.

"The Chinese people also feel baffled -- why do some people in some countries treat Chinese crime suspect as a hero? The Chinese people are unhappy about this. The handling of this matter will show that China is a country ruled by law."

(Additional reporting by Chris Buckley and Sabrina Mao; Editing by Alex Richardson)

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions.

Comments

[Pod-gers]

05:42 PM on 04/14/2011

Not a very harsh sentance for sedition. Good thing he didn't try and pull this kind of action here. Gitmo is waiting.

[chinchilla]

03:38 PM on 04/13/2011

And America sends and keeps innocent Muslims in Gitmo for less than that.

Yet America thinks it has the right to bash China's human rights issues?

[iceburg]

03:14 PM on 04/13/2011

One laughable matter behind this kind of government action is that the ideology which the CCP used as a brainwash theory has been reduced to such puerile terms as "It's an honor to talk about science, and a shame to talk about superstition; it's an honor to be on healthy terms, and a shame to use dirty words, etc. " Anything new? Yes, there is a newly invented morning ritual in kindergartens and primary schools all over China, during which the kids are ordered to stand facing the Communist Party's flag, and recite that they will be faithful to the Chinese Communist Party forever. What kind of a government is this?

[Alexodia]

11:19 AM on 04/13/2011

Once there he will be silenced, accidently of course, by a accident, perhaps a stray bull... brick will land on him and of course the chinese will be all awash in shame that such a thing could happen. But should the international community protest his death the Chinese will get pissed again and shoot another person for proof of how mad they are.

[Pod-gers]

12:38 PM on 04/13/2011

LOL It sounds to me you are describing Taiwan political elections not China's reeducation program.

[Alexodia]

01:27 PM on 04/13/2011

Actually was referencing general history when it comes to political dissent in countries like Russia, China, and Cuba. They did alot of disappearing acts and "accidents" to political opposition.

[pierre F Lherisson]

11:10 AM on 04/13/2011

The Chinese government failed to communicate with its people.The government should made it obligatory for Chinese to watch in every medium the states of abject poverty and degradation that was imposed to them by the British colonial power from 1839 to 1949. The Chinese were looks down,view with contempt and were equated as laughingstock and the pariah of the world as the presently do with the Haitians until a competent leader named Mao Tse Tung put a break to this injustice. Now the Chinese are respected and feared even by the foolhardy thugs.

[Alexodia]

11:21 AM on 04/13/2011

Yes. They shoot their own dissidents, They murder their own people. The Abject Poverty is still there with little improvement. Just another band of maniacs

[DAE]

02:29 AM on 04/13/2011

Let's get real. I'm sure Wei Qiong is a nice guy and I applaud his commitment. But in Bahrain they have detained between 400-600 people, perhaps up to 4 people are reported to have died in detention and dozens if not hundred have been gunned down in the streets, with barely a beep in the press. Bahrain has a population of either 600,000 or 1,200,000 depending on the source. Let's be the larger population which is about 1000th (.001) the size of China. If a similar number of people were detained in China that would amount to 400-600,000 detainees, perhaps 4000 dying in detention and tens of thousands shot down in the streets. That is obviously not the case.

[Alexodia]

11:22 AM on 04/13/2011

Its bahrain. They will be dust soon as the oil runs out so why worry about their dissidents? -Hypothetical Republican Spokesman.

[Pod-gers]

12:16 AM on 04/13/2011

In the US we call people who work to attack our form of government "American militants," and, yes, we detain them indefinately without trial.

What we are looking at here, folks, is a double standard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqxyyYSvKhE

The current leader of Students for a Free Tibet has called for Tiananmen 2.0, where many innocent people were killed. The people behind the call for a Jasmine Revolution, were also involved in the ecallation of the Tiananmen Sq incident AFTER the strudents went back to school and the Union called off the strike. Wu'er Kai Shi, for example, claimed he saw a massacre that actually never happened, but later it was discovered he was eating dinner in a restaraunt with his "handelers."

These so called 'dissodents" are funded by various NGOs funded by the NED, the privitized arm of the CIA.

In the US, American "islamic extreemists" who "plan" or "plot" against the US are not considered "dissidents" but "millitants." One was arrested and convicted because he had taken photos of JFK airport.

Some folks believe a sovergn nation, ie a country, does NOT have a right to defend itself, but not everyone agrees with that notion.

What is really sad is how "activists" funded by some government's covert ops, seduce youth in other countries to carry out their dirty work. This is no more than the western perversion of the Innocents Club.
http://www.heretical.com/miscella/munzen.html

[Pod-gers]

12:53 AM on 04/13/2011

In Egypt a blogger got three years, not two, for criticizing the military.

http://cryptogon.com/?p=21747

And here in the US Bradley manning is belig held in Naked Confinement!
http://shoe08.blogspot.com/2011/03/us-military-covers-up-naked-truth.html

Folks, latent racism mixed with McCarthyism stinks the place up something fierce!

[toocoolfoschool1234]

01:34 AM on 04/13/2011

You are so full of it.

[Pod-gers]

12:37 PM on 04/13/2011

Am I now?
http://diggchina.blogspot.com/
Dig a little deeper than the vectors of propaganda. You may be shocked by the true facts, but it is what it is.

:)

[jedwightn]

07:34 PM on 04/12/2011

Chinese are repressive creeps. Somehow our great American companies bastardize our ideals in search of their lowest possible cost and maximum possible profit.

[StuffMoreStuff]

05:36 PM on 04/12/2011

Great to see the gulag system is fine and well in China. China certainly is an interesting bedfellow, no?

[TYRANNASAURUS]

05:27 PM on 04/12/2011

Chinese Dissident Sent To Labor Camp Over 'Jasmine' Protest.....

Every so often China's arrogance shows through that inscrutable smile of theirs.....and you can see what a controlling unrelenting dictatorship it really is.

[Alexodia]

11:26 AM on 04/13/2011

"Foolish people often walk into sharp tings" -Evil Genious Chinese Badguy.

[AgingLady]

04:34 PM on 04/12/2011

China making comments about U.S. but then does this. Hey out there, we have the internet!!

[StuffMoreStuff]

05:34 PM on 04/12/2011

You must have not seen the comments yesterday equivocating China's treatment of its citizen's with that of the US's treatment of its citizens.

[calypsolouie]

03:53 PM on 04/12/2011

at least he will learn a trade

[iceburg]

02:26 PM on 04/12/2011

It's outrageous! But it also shows how frightened the communist regime is. It's already been in the nightmare.

[DAE]

04:17 PM on 04/12/2011

Look at Egypt (military rule), Iran (theocratic rule), Bahrain (monarchist rule), etc., etc. It has nothing to do with ideology. It has more to do with traditional modes of asserting absolutist power otherwise known as oriental despotism. Its been that way for centuries if not millenia. It will eventually change but it will still take a while.

[jedwightn]

07:36 PM on 04/12/2011

Keeps control and riches in the fewest hands possible.

[DAE]

01:22 PM on 04/12/2011

Well the Jasmine Revolution has resulted in much the same thing in Egypt as reported here at HP (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/11/maikel-nabil-egypt-blogger-jailed_n_847620.html#comments). There is the once popular concept of "oriental despotism" which attempted to explain the mindset of ruling elites in the Middle East and Asia. Its still very much in play no matter if you are socialist, communist, capitalist or monarchist. It is a deeply ingrained political culture that will not be easily transformed in China, Egypt, Iran and myriad other countries. We have to put things in perspective. We value our freedoms as we rightfully should. But their are other values that have to be taken into account as well, such as the degree to which a government feeds, houses and educates its population. For now at least those are perhaps better criteria to judge a country's success or failure.

[Erewhon7]

01:09 PM on 04/12/2011

Of course, the arrest and sentence is unjust. This non-conformism must be released immediately.
But at the same time, I hope Chinese people can avoid the siren song of Western-style bourgeois democracy.
While in-itself bourgeois democracy isn't so horrible, the transition to it would most likely result in years ( if not decades) of weakness, instability, areas of civil struggle and utter misery for the poor and the weak.
Why bother, when China is enjoying an unprecedented prosperity and stability under sober and competent CCP leadership.