The New York Times - USA (2020-07-31)

A12 Y THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL FRIDAY, JULY 31, 2020

BRUSSELS — The European
Union will not provide funding to
six Polish towns that have de-
clared themselves “L.G.B.T.-free
zones,” a rare financial sanction of
a member nation for issues relat-
ed to the equal treatment of its citi-
zens.
Although the amounts of money
being withheld are modest — from
$6,000 to $29,000 — the exclusion
of the towns from funding for a
program that connects local com-
munities across Europe was in-
tended to have a deeper symbolic
resonance.
“E.U. values and fundamental
rights must be respected by Mem-
ber States and state authorities,”
Helena Dalli, the European Union
commissioner for equality, wrote
on Twitter. The Polish authorities
that adopted “L.G.B.T.-free zones”
or “family rights” resolutions
failed to protect those rights, she
wrote, and their funding applica-
tions had therefore been rejected.
The decision comes just days af-
ter the leaders of the 27-nation Eu-
ropean Union bowed to pressure
from Poland and Hungary and re-
laxed a framework devised to tie
long-term budget spending by the
bloc to issues related to rule of law.
Both countries, to different de-
grees, have steadily chipped away
at some of the bedrock institutions
that allow for a healthy democra-
cy, including a free press and a ju-
dicial system free of political influ-
ence.
But even as Poland and Hunga-
ry have caused increasing con-
sternation in Brussels — both
countries have been threatened
with having their voting rights in
the bloc suspended — they have

faced little in the way of concrete punishments. Even by the often brutal stand- ards of Polish politics, however, the demonization of gay men and lesbians by government officials over the past two years has been ferocious. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the governing party, has repeat- edly told supporters that Poles will not be forced “to stand under the rainbow flag.” He has said that homosexuality represents a “threat to Polish identity, to our nation, to its existence and thus to the Polish state.” The campaign has been ampli- fied by state television, which has been turned into a propaganda arm of the government, and by prominent members of the Catho- lic clergy. Nearly 100 local governments, representing a third of Poland’s territory, declared themselves

“free from L.G.B.T. ideology.” Although the declarations do not have legal force, they are viewed by many as menacing. And the heated rhetoric has been blamed for violence against gay men and lesbians. When marchers tried to take part in a gay pride parade in a con- servative city, Bialystok, last sum- mer, opponents threw bricks, stones and fireworks at them. Some protesters were attacked, and as the violent clashes escalat- ed, with dozens wounded, the police deployed tear gas. In December, the European Parliament condemned discrimi- nation against the L.G.B.T.Q. com- munity and called on the government to take action to revoke the declarations by local authorities. Nothing was done. During Poland’s recent presi- dential election in July, the governing party once again targeted

gay men, lesbians and transsexu- als. President Andrzej Duda said “L.G.B.T. ideology” was more dangerous than communist doc- trine, and he made it the central is- sue of his campaign. He narrowly won a second term, but the close fight and divi- sive rhetoric polarized Polish soci- ety even further. And the anti-L.G.B.T. invective has come at a cost. According to a 2020 survey by ILGA, an international gay rights organization, Po- land is now the most homophobic country in the European Union. Some Western European mu- nicipalities, such as St.-Jean-de- Braye in the north-central French region of Loiret, have already suspended cooperation with towns they were twinned with in Poland that declared themselves “L.G.B.T. free.” The Polish justice minister, Zbigniew Ziobro, said on Wednes- day that the funding decision was “unfounded and unlawful,” argu- ing that European institutions should respect the national identi- ties of all member countries. Mr. Ziobro denounced the Euro- pean Commission, saying that some of its members were “ideo- logically obstinate” and wanted to impose “the agenda of homosex- ual activists” on others. But Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Com- mission, which distributes Euro- pean Union funding, defended the decision to not send money to the Polish towns. “Our treaties ensure that every person in Europe is free to be who they are, live where they like, love who they want, and aim as high as they want,” she said in a statement on Thursday.

E.U. Punishes Polish Towns That Say They’re ‘L.G.B.T.-Free’

By MONIKA PRONCZUK

A march in Warsaw in 2019 supporting L.G.B.T. equal rights.

ANNA LIMINOWICZ FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

On the day of his release from
prison, Wang Quanzhang, one of
China’s most prominent human
rights lawyers, thought he was fi-
nally free.
After being held for nearly five
years on charges of subversion of
state power, Mr. Wang was es-
corted by the police to an apart-
ment building in the eastern city
of Jinan. He was given a room
with iron bars on the windows,
and 20 police officers stood guard
outside. His mobile phone was
confiscated, and his use of it was
later restricted and monitored.
Mr. Wang was effectively under
temporary house arrest, but the
authorities had another name for
it: quarantine.
Rights activists say the coro-
navirus has given the Chinese au-
thorities a new pretext for detain-
ing dissidents. Summary quaran-
tines — often imposed just after
detainees, like Mr. Wang, had
cleared a previous one — are the
latest way to silence dissent, part
of a broader campaign under Chi-
na’s top leader, Xi Jinping, to
stamp out activism through ar-
rests, detentions and harsher in-
ternet controls, activists say.
Before the pandemic, China had
already mounted an intensive
crackdown on human rights,
which many activists have de-
scribed as the most aggressive
since the aftermath of the Tianan-
men Square protests in 1989.
Activists in quarantine are of-
ten detained without their fam-
ilies’ knowledge. They are typical-
ly “not allowed to communicate
with the outside world, held in a
secret location and not given the
option to self-isolate at home,”
said Frances Eve, deputy director
of research at Chinese Human
Rights Defenders, a rights watch-
dog. “This treatment is de facto
enforced disappearance.”
Though two-week quarantines
are common in Asia for returning
travelers, and prisons have been
identified as hot spots for coro-

navirus transmission, the details of Mr. Wang’s case suggest that he was not detained purely for public health reasons. When he was forced into a two- week quarantine in April, the outbreak had already been tamed in Jinan, and people were free to move about the city and return to work. Mr. Wang said he had already tested negative for the virus five times in prison and had completed a 14-day quarantine before his release. “All of China now is about epidemic prevention,” said Mr. Wang, who was kept in prison for three years before even being charged, and who was the last of hundreds of human rights lawyers to be tried and sentenced after their arrests in 2015. “Under such a big slogan, per- sonal freedom can be compro- mised and you can’t say any- thing,” he said. Yaqiu Wang, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the pandemic had given the govern-

ment an excuse to restrict move- ment so that it could “justify the violation of people’s human rights.” “These people are clearly not in any condition that needs to be quarantined,” Ms. Wang said. “It’s not science-based; it’s just an excuse for the government to restrict their movements and sup- press their speech.” Ms. Eve said her rights group had documented nine cases of activists who were recently released from prison and then held in quarantine, but added that “there are likely many more.” The group says those detained in quarantine include a citizen journalist who tried to raise

awareness about the initial coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan; five labor rights activists; and a laid- off worker who, interviewed by a foreign news outlet, had urged people to take up arms against the ruling Communist Party. China’s Ministry of Public Secu- rity did not respond to a request for comment. China’s government is not the only one to use the pandemic as an excuse to grab more power, restrict rights or crack down on dissent. The Indian government has rounded up and detained critics. President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines empowered the police to enter people’s homes searching for the sick. Although Chinese law grants the government emergency powers to quarantine people during a public health emergency, several local officials have indicated that the practice of putting released convicts into quarantine violates those regulations. In the central province of Hubei, the police said that prisoners who completed their jail terms needed to be released within 24 hours, according to Shanghai Observer, a state-controlled news website. The Paper, a news site run by Shanghai’s government, cited police officials in Sichuan Province as saying that prisoners had to be released “in accordance with the law” after a 14-day quarantine in- side the prison and a physical ex- amination, which includes a nu- cleic acid test for the coronavirus, blood tests and a CT scan. Jiang Jiawen, 65 — the laid-off worker mentioned by Chinese Hu- man Rights Defenders, who had called for resisting the Commu- nist Party — completed a one-and- a-half-year sentence in March for “picking quarrels and causing trouble.” In July, he was en route to meet a friend at a Beijing rail- way station when he was waylaid by state security officers. They took him to a detention center and interrogated him, Mr. Jiang said. Then they told him he had to be quarantined, and they brought him to a hotel room in the

northern city of Dandong, more than 500 miles away. The room had iron bars on the door and the windows. Two police officers and two government officials kept watch outside. No one took his temperature during the 14-day quarantine, Mr. Jiang said. Officials initially asked him to pay the $17 daily charge for the quarantine, he said, but he re- fused. “They just want to find a reason to detain us,” he said. “The epidemic has given them a good reason.” Ding Yajun, a 51-year-old woman who had protested the forced demolition of her home, was released from prison on May 11 in the northern city of Harbin after serving a three-year sentence, also for “picking quarrels and causing trouble.” When she was in prison, officials swabbed her throat, did a blood test and sub- jected her to quarantine. Still, upon her release, Ms. Ding was quarantined again. For over a month, she was held in a window- less room that was locked with an iron baton, she said. She was fi- nally released on June 16. Liu Xianbin, who spent 10 years in prison for writing articles criti- cal of the Chinese government, was released on June 27 and told to complete a 14-day quarantine. But he was allowed to do so at home in the southwestern province of Sichuan, according to his wife, Chen Mingxian. “This is the national policy, and these are special circumstances,” said Ms. Chen said. “So we support and understand it.” Mr. Wang, the human rights lawyer, is now back in Beijing with his family. He says he is occasion- ally followed but does not believe he is under round-the-clock sur- veillance, as most dissidents are after being freed from prison. Recalling his time in quarantine after his release, Mr. Wang said that police officers often checked on him, even though he was sup- posed to be in isolation. “It was ab- surd,” he said. “The real purpose was to shut me up and tell me not to contact my friends.”

Protesters in Hong Kong in 2010 demanding the release of Liu Xianbin. Freed in June, he was told to undergo quarantine at home.

MIKE CLARKE/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

Activists Say China Uses Quarantines to Stifle Dissent

By SUI-LEE WEE

Liu Yi contributed research.

House arrest under

the guise of fighting a

virus’s spread.

HONG KONG — Weeks after the Chinese government imposed a new national security law on Hong Kong, raising fears of a broader crackdown on the semiautonomous territory, the city’s authorities have taken aggressive steps against the pro-democracy opposition. Officials on Thursday barred 12 candidates, including well-known pro-democracy figures, from the September legislative election. The disqualifications came a day after the police made what ap- peared to be the first targeted arrests of four activists accused of posting pro-independence mes- sages online. Local news outlets also re- ported that the government was considering postponing the election by as much as a year because of the coronavirus pandemic, though pro-democracy lawmakers argued it would be a naked at- tempt to avoid a loss at the polls. Opposition candidates said they had hoped to ride a wave of protests and public discontent to elec- toral success on Sept. 6. But they had also acknowledged the fear that the government would dis- qualify candidates on the nebu- lous grounds that they would not uphold the Basic Law, the Hong Kong Constitution. The candidates who said they were barred included Joshua Wong, a prominent activist, and Gwyneth Ho, a former journalist, both of them front-runners in an unofficial democratic primary this month. The list also includes four sitting lawmakers, including members of the moderate pro-democracy Civic Party. Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong said it supported the disqualifications. Hong Kong’s government said more could follow. It also said in a statement that grounds for disqualification included advocating Hong Kong’s independence or self-determina- tion, soliciting intervention from foreign governments, expressing an objection in principle to the national security law Beijing imposed last month, or vowing to vote indiscriminately against government proposals. “The excuse they use is that I describe national security law as a draconian law, which shows that I do not support this sweeping law,” Mr. Wong, 23, wrote on Facebook. “Clearly, Beijing shows a total dis- regard for the will of the Hongkongers, tramples upon the city’s last pillar of vanishing au- tonomy and attempts to keep Hong Kong’s legislature under its firm grip.” Disqualification letters sent to the pro-democracy lawmakers Al- vin Yeung, Dennis Kwok and Ken- neth Leung said their calls for the United States to impose sanctions on those responsible for rights abuses in Hong Kong would vio- late the national security law. Mr. Yeung and Mr. Kwok said in their reply that their visit to New York last August and a joint letter they sent in September to U.S. senators took place months before the national security law took effect. Though the security law could not be applied retroactively, election officers said candidates’ past actions and remarks reflected their true intentions. Mr. Yeung’s disqualification letter also accused him, along with other members of the Civic Party, of planning to “indiscriminately vote down” government proposals. Under the Basic Law, the chief executive must call for a new legislative election if the government cannot pass a budget. If it happens again under a new legislature, the chief executive must step down. Eric Cheung, a law lecturer at the University of Hong Kong, said he believed that lawmakers had the constitutional right to block government proposals and com- pel the leader to step down. He said the mass disqualifications showed that Hong Kong was growing increasingly similar to mainland China. “According to the legal system in the mainland, one cannot openly oppose the regime, which is considered to be beyond the lim- its of free speech,” he said. “Only allowing certain people they find acceptable to run isn’t a free elec-

tion — it’s what totalitarian governments do.” The disqualifications came on the heels of the arrests of four people accused of publishing social media posts that called for the city to become independent from China. The sweep on Wednesday was an early indication that the authorities would strictly enforce the new law and crack down on speech now considered illegal. The police said the activists, three men and one woman aged 16 to 21, were arrested in the New Territories area of Hong Kong for the “publishing of content about secession and for inciting or abet- ting others for the commission of secession.” Officers seized mobile phones, computers and docu- ments during the roundup. Li Kwai-wah, a senior superin- tendent of the Hong Kong police’s new national security department, said the arrests were made after an organization posted on social media about creating a party to promote Hong Kong independence. Its “declarations” re- ferred to establishing a “Hong Kong country” and using “all means” to attain its goals, he said. Mr. Li gave no further informa- tion about the organization or the four people arrested. He said the comments had been posted after the security law took effect, but he would not say whether they had been taken down or elaborate further on their content. A political organization called Studentlocalism said its former convener, Tony Chung, was among those arrested. When the national security law took effect, the group said that it had ended its

operations in Hong Kong but that some members would continue to work overseas. The legislation came into force a month ago and gives the Chi- nese government broad powers over the semiautonomous territory. The law targets subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign powers, and many of its clauses indicate they were written to curb the protests. For a city that generally had strong pro- tections for free speech, the legislation represented a drastic shift. The law had already been cited in the arrests of about a dozen people during several demonstra- tions, including on July 1, the anni- versary of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese control. Human rights groups denounced those street arrests, saying they showed that the authorities intended to use the new powers to clamp down on peaceful activities. The Wednes- day arrests, rights groups said, sent another chilling message and raised concerns about a crackdown on activism and political speech in Hong Kong. “The gross misuse of this draconian law makes clear that the aim is to silence dissent, not protect national security,” said Sophie Richardson, the China director for Human Rights Watch. Under the new law, Chinese security agencies can now operate openly in Hong Kong. But the Hong Kong police said the arrests had been carried out by its own national security department. Beijing imposed the security law after more than a year of large protests in Hong Kong, many of which involved violent clashes with the police. The protests were set off by a proposal to allow ex- traditions to mainland China from Hong Kong, which is guaranteed its own legal system under the terms of the former British colo- ny’s return to Chinese rule in 1997. The protests evolved to encom- pass more issues, including the use of force by the police and calls for expanding direct elections. This month, over 600,000 people participated in a primary for the pro-democracy camp despite the government’s warnings that it might be illegal. That show of support followed a landslide win for opposition candidates in district council elections in November.

Some Civic Party members who were barred from elections held a news conference on Thursday. Three are sitting lawmakers.

LAM YIK FEI FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Hong Kong Disqualifies

Pro-Democracy Hopefuls

From Legislative Races

This article is by Austin Ramzy , Elaine Yu and Tiffany May.

A crackdown on the

opposition follows the

arrests of 4 activists.

BD

The New York Times - USA (2020-07-31)

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