Swedish Newspaper Reports on the Chinese Authorities Suppression of the Rising Human Rights Activists

On March 11th, Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet published a report by its correspondent Ulrika K Engstrom concerning the hunger strike rights movement in China. The following is an excerpt from the article:

The Chinese authority suppresses the rising human rights activists.

In order to gain freedom and human rights, nearly eight hundred people in China participated in a hunger strike to protect their rights.

Before the holding of conferences by the National People's Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the Chinese authorities arrested several hundred participants. Before the participants were arrested or became missing, the staff reporter talked to several of them.
Hu Jia was an AIDS activist. He was busy moving things in his office while talking with me. He explained to me why he and other participants chose the non-violent method of hunger strike to fight for freedom and human rights.

"When the channel of law was blocked in China, we can only use our lives and the most primitive body to resist."

One hour after the talk, Hu Jia was taken away by the police and is still missing.
Several famous democratic activists in China who participated in the hunger strike were arrested too. For instance: Qi Zhiyong, who lost a leg due to a bullet wound in the Tiananmen incident in 1989; Yan Zhengxueh, an artist in Beijing and Ouyang Xiaorung, an internet writer.

Human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng said, "We have no basic human rights, we have no option but to engage in a hunger strike for a long time. This is a tragedy."

Gao Zhisheng was the initiator of the hunger strike. He served as the legal representative for dissidents and Falun Gong practitioners in the past and once wrote open letters to the Chinese leaders criticising the government. He was almost assassinated.

China’s economic reforms in the past twenty five years created unfair distribution of resources and raised the people's consciousness about rights. Conflicts between the government and the people increased. Counts of protests rose to 87,000 in 2005 from 8,700 in 1993. The scale of protest expanded too. Even peasants learned to form organisations and disseminate news by means of mobile phones and the internet.

The hunger strike that began in February shocked China