Blocked by police, Chinese campaigners get creative

March 2nd, 2012

FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda

In response, some 300 activists and ordinary citizens, marshalled through the
internet, have tried to visit him, but have all been repelled, according to
Wang Xuezhen, a 30-year-old who has tried to reach Mr Chen several times.

Last November 12, on Mr Chen’s birthday, the authorities managed to halt the
flow.

“There were armed police that day in Linyi [the nearest city], and only
senior leaders can order armed police, so we know there is no way to go now,”
said a 39-year-old English teacher who goes by the name “Pearl”,
one of the participants of “Operation Free Chen Guangcheng”.

“Five days before his birthday I was followed by the police. They went
with me wherever I went, even driving me to work. They offered to pay for a
nice holiday for me if I did not try to visit Chen, and when I turned them
down they simply locked me up,” she said.

So Mr Chen’s supporters have changed tack, creating an artistic and subversive
campaign designed to “go viral” over the internet. More than 4,000
of the bumper stickers have been handed out. Spray-painted graffiti of Mr
Chen has begun to pop in Chinese cities.

A flash mob of romantic couples, all wearing sunglasses like Mr Chen’s,
appeared at the beginning of December in the main square in Linyi,
unsettling the police enough to result in a group detention.

Helium-filled balloons printed with Mr Chen’s face have been released around
his village and a blind musician, Zhou Yunpeng, has written a protest song.
Each day, new photographs are posted on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter,
of people with his initials, CGC, written on their bodies or posing with
pictures of Mr Chen.

“The police do not notice the stickers,” said Pearl. “And if
they ask what Free GCC means, we say it is free KFC,” she added.

“In the past, dissidents have traditionally been quite confrontational
with the government, very direct, like two armies facing each other. But we
should learn how to express ourselves and protest in an orderly way, to use
art and entertainment more freely,” she said. “It is like Occupy
Wall Street”.

The authorities, meanwhile, have yet to work out a response. Pearl’s blog has
not been censored, and nor has her Weibo account, which has some 15,000
followers.

“They are inserting protest into the mundane aspects of every day life,”
said Joshua Rozensweig, an independent human rights researcher in Hong Kong.

“If you have lots of people wearing sunglasses, some people are going to
realise it is a statement and others may not get the point. But what are the
authorities going to do? Can you round up everyone wearing sunglasses? And
then the message will spread across the internet.”

This new type of art-as-protest owes a debt to Ai Weiwei, the dissident
artist, and spooked the Chinese government last year, when anonymous
messages called for a “Jasmine revolution”. Supporters were urged
simply to “take a stroll” in designated public areas, leaving the
authorities unable to tell who was protesting and who was not.

“You get people doing something that looks ordinary but to the people who
understand the meaning it is anything but,” said Mr Rozensweig.

Wen Yunchao, a social media expert and one of China’s best-known bloggers,
said viral campaigns dilute the risks of participation and are more
effective at beating the censors. “The changes are being driven by the
new sorts of media available and this type of campaign will develop more
frequently with the development of Weibo,” he said.

However, it remains to be seen whether such campaigns tailored to the internet
are effective, Mr Rozensweig noted. “They are short-acting phenomenons
and people’s attention can quickly move to something else,” he said. “And
of course you depend on the internet, which is something the authorities
have ways of controlling.”