Ma Yalian was sentenced to 18 months’ “Re-education Through Labour (RTL)” in March 2004 for an article she wrote in which she criticised the Chinese Petitioning system. The article, entitled “A True Record of Being Turned Away from the National Petitions and Letters Office and the Petitions Bureau of the National Congress”, was posted on a Chinese law website, www.chineselawyer.com.cn and on www.djiyun.com, a website run by the Falun Gong, a spiritual group proscribed by the Chinese authorities.
In her article, Ma provided an eyewitness account of the physical abuse meted out to petitioners by the police and officials outside Beijing’s petitions offices. As well as detailing her own physical abuse at the hands of the authorities, Ma’s article also included the personal experiences of other individuals who had been abused while attempting to file a petition. The article also included accounts about individuals who had committed suicide outside the said offices.
According to reports, Shanghai’s RTL Administrative Committee stated in its decision to send Ma to a re-education camp, “…from July 2003 until February 2004, Ma Yalian on numerous occasions posted on www.chineselawyer.com.cn , www.djiyun.com and other websites, articles falsely accusing the Shanghai authorities of causing her physical injury...” It added, irritably, that Ma Yalian had ”turned petitioning into pestering...”
Ma Yalian has previously been sentenced to a year’s “re-education” by the Shanghai Public Security Bureau in August 2001 after several complaints she had filed after being evicted from her Shanghai residence as a result of an urban re-development scheme. According to sources, Ma had both her legs broken while in detention, and has since been disabled.
In June 2004, the free expression group Reporters Sans Frontièrs (RSF) noted that China has bought technololgy from the US based Cisco systems to for a comprehensive surveillance system. It reports that the authorities can now: 'read data transmitted on the Internet and spot subversive key words. The police are able to identify who visits banned sites and who sends dangerous e-mail messages.' RSF also reported that: 'To keep its foothold in this market, Yahoo! agreed to censor the Chinese version of its search engine and to control its discussion forums. So, if you enter 'Taiwan independence' into its search engine, you get no results. If you try to post a message on this subject in a discussion forum, it never appears online. The US giant is ready to do anything to conquer the Chinese Internet market.'
Ma Yalian is one of a growing number of Chinese cyber-dissidents who have fallen victim not only to their own government’s traditional repression of their right to free speech, but also the new technology supplied by Western-based internet service providers.
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Letters may be sent to the Chinese authorities protesting the detention of Ma Yalian and calling for her release addressed to:His Excellency Hu Jintao, President of the People's Republic of China, State Council, Beijing 100032, P.R.China.
Additional material on Ma Yalian and China:
Human Rights in China
Epoch Times
Associated Press report
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