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Chinese Communist party veterans defy censors with call for free speech

Thursday, October 14, 2010 19:54

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Former party officials renew attack on ‘invisible black hand’ after open letter erased from websites.

Tania Branigan in Beijing
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 October 2010 14.39 BST
Article history

Protesters in Hong Kong carry placards of the Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo during a march to demand his release. Photograph: Ym Yik/EPA

Communist party elders are defying China‘s censors by pressing ahead with a bold demand for freedom of expression, after authorities erased their attack on the “invisible black hand” of central propaganda officials.

Twenty-three former senior officials known for their reformist views, including Mao Zedong’s secretary Li Rui and a former editor of the People’s Daily, Hu Jiwei, signed the open letter.

Analysts expressed scepticism about the prospects for change in the near future, and stressed that the signatories no longer had power, but said their action might help people within the leadership to push for reforms.

Members of the group said they would publish the letter formally tomorrow, with hundreds more signatures, after censors scrubbed the call from websites.

“The truth can’t be blocked; now the letter has spread,” said Xin Ziling, one of its authors and a former official at the China National Defence University.

“We will release a formal version tomorrow and you will see the names of all the 500 people who signed.”

Xiao Mo, another signatory and formerly a senior architecture official, added: “They can keep deleting, but we will keep posting. We will not be silenced so easily.”

He added: “Currently the central propaganda department is the most conservative and stupid force. If one day the Chinese Communist party really goes down, I think the propaganda department should take quite a lot of credit.”

The letter accuses officials of ignoring China’s constitution, which guarantees the rights of free speech and a free press. “This false democracy of formal avowal and concrete denial has become a scandalous mark on the history of world democracy,” it says.

Several of the signatories have been prevented from publishing books themselves.

The document began appearing on websites yesterday, days after the government denounced the decision to give the Nobel peace prize to the dissident Liu Xiaobo, who was jailed after co-writing a document calling for democratic reforms, and before a major political meeting which begins on Friday. It also follows repeated, highly unusual remarks by the Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, about political reform, most recently in a CNN interview.

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