China Labour Bulletin appears in this article. Copyright remains with the original publisher.
Twenty years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre and still banned from China, Han Dongfang says that his activism has become more sophisticated and that his passion for workers’ rights is undiminished
Robin Munro likes to tell a story about his close friend, fellow rights campaigner and veteran of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Han Dongfang (韓東方).
Han became admired not just for his leading role in the protests that ended in a military assault and the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of unarmed civilians.
While he was among the group that formed China’s first independent trade union in the square during those months of protest, it was a subsequent series of high-profile acts of defiance that earned him enduring respect.
After recovering from tuberculosis in the US, he sneaked back into China.
He was thrown out, but held a sit-in on the bridge dividing China from Hong Kong, then still a British territory, demanding to be let back in.
While his determination to overturn what he sees as the perversions of the Communist system is still just as fierce, his approach has shifted from sensational defiance to a pragmatic, though unremitting, assault.
“Demonstrations produce slogans, they produce strong characters and leadership, but they sometimes produce illusions,” he said in an interview.
In order to effect change, he said, “you have to start at the ground.”
He now campaigns internationally to raise awareness of rights abuses in China and has a radio program that he uses to directly advise workers and farmers across China on how to seek redress.
His rights group, CLB, also uses existing Chinese law to push for compensation and justice in China for victims of poor labor practices. And, at every opportunity, he fights for genuine trade unions.
“Do not think of us as animals, animals need protection because they cannot protect themselves. Workers in Asia have the ability to protect themselves — if they are given freedoms,” he said.
Han was born in Beijing in 1963, the son of a farmer and a domestic worker from northern Shanxi Province. His parents, who had moved to the capital when they were young, divorced soon after he was born and during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s his mother and Han were sent back to the family village in the mountains of Shanxi, where they survived with help from relatives.
In 1971 he and his mother returned to Beijing, where she toiled as a construction worker and was often away from home from 6am to 10pm.
Han said he struggled at school, but persevered before joining the army at 17. It proved a formative time, when he discovered how the Communist ideals of the classroom had been perverted.
“It was full of unfairness. The officers ate better than us — pork, chicken and alcohol — even though the budget for each person was the same,” he said.
“They told us we should sacrifice for our nation, then we realized the officers were not serving the people, they were serving themselves.”
His refusal to bow to his superiors meant he was overlooked for promotion and was repeatedly turned down for membership of the Communist Party. He left the army in 1984 and took a job on the railways as an electrician.
Any remaining illusions about the Communist system evaporated in 1987 when he saw police beat up a group of students demonstrating with such slogans as “We support the Communist Party” and “Fight Corruption.”
Despite his frustrations, his involvement with the 1989 protests was an accident. He lived near Tiananmen Square and happened to have three weeks’ leave when they started.
He has described the experience as an “education,” saying it was the first time he had heard the word “democracy” used properly.
During the time, Han was crucial in setting up the first independent trade union in China, the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Union, with around 100 other workers.
The fledgling movement struggled to attract major support from workers in the city, who were wary of an angry government reaction, but it was a huge step in China, where only the impotent official All-China Federation of Trade Unions is allowed to operate.
Munro, who met Han only several hours before the army began shooting on the night of June 3, was at the time working as an observer for global rights group Amnesty International.
“I was very impressed with him. He was very thoughtful and determined and serious about what he was doing,” he said. “He was only the spokesman, but he was as close as you got to having a leader of this group.”
Han escaped the violence of that night after he was carried out of his tent by strangers.
After fleeing to the countryside, he eventually presented himself to police when he saw his image on television as one of the government’s most-wanted.
He was interrogated almost endlessly for 10 days, as the authorities tried to make him admit that what he had done was wrong. Han refused and was jailed without trial in a cell with TB sufferers, a disease he eventually contracted.
“I feel extremely lucky that I could physically and mentally survive. I learned all these things about how human beings can be. People become animals when you deal with them in that way,” he said.
When he was eventually released on medical grounds, he was unable to walk or even talk properly.
He decided to have an operation in New York, despite warnings from friends that if he left China he would never be able to return. A year later he returned surreptitiously before being very publicly thrown out back to Hong Kong, at the time still a British colony.
He started CLB in an effort to remain engaged in the struggle. It was originally a newsletter sent to every Chinese factory he could find an address for, before developing into a Web site and now an advocacy group.
CLB last year funded 140 cases in China to try to redress abuses. Han says that each case, no matter how successful, helps change judges’ behavior.
The cases range from horrific work injuries to fair pay disputes, and the CLB approach works on the basis that much of existing Chinese labor law is sound.
“In China we have enough laws. Don’t get me wrong, making new good laws is necessary. The priority when you face the reality is waking up laws that have been sleeping,” he said.
He added that a new labor law introduced in January that provides extra labor protection is welcome, but only masks the horror of Chinese labor practices.
Author Alexandra Harney, whose book The China Price examines the conditions of Chinese factory workers, said CLB’s shift to legal work has led to real successes.
“They have a great network in China and great inroads into certain cases that really make a difference by providing legal advice and connecting people with the right lawyer,” she said.
In 1997, Han started what was to become, after prison, what he describes as the second defining part of his life, a program on Radio Free Asia through which he talks to workers across China about the problems they face in the workplace.
“In every conversation they give me a chance to see what is happening in the country on the ground,” he said. “Not from a researcher angle, but as someone having a conversation together, trying to find a solution.
“Sometimes I get sad, I cry, I get involved, I am part of it. I am not just reporting, I am trying to solve the problems,” he said.
During a recent show he advised a group of drivers who had lost their long-term jobs with the introduction of the new labor law. The law states that after working at a company for a certain number of years, employees are entitled to extra benefits, but the company decided to sack the workers rather than pay the extra costs.
Han listened patiently to the three men, gradually asking them if they had received any help from the company’s official union. One told him: “The union is just there to help the bosses, we do not trust it.”
Han regularly returns to the theme of gonghui (工會), the word for labor union, coaxing out information but also offering advice about redressing concerns.
He has had at least 1,000 of these conversations over the past 10 years, he said, and he believes it has given him a unique insight into the struggles people face in modern China.
“We have covered everything, from different locations, different families, farmers, land issues, housing issues, tax issues, the one-child policy issue, village officials, foreign workers, health matters, social security, retirement,” he said.
Han also spends part of his time talking to foreign-owned firms about improving their rights in China, and his approach is stern but pragmatic.
“Your company came to China to make money, not to support human rights,” he once told a foreign company at a meeting. “If you want to do good, read the law carefully, respect it and follow it.”
In an interview, he said: “We assume that the foreign companies are morally at a higher level, which is not the case, not in my experience. Never ask them to do more than their legal duty.”
He believes the codes of conduct that many multinationals produce are well-intentioned but essentially worthless.
“We go to church, we read the Bible, but when we come out of church we leave it at church,” he said.
Han concedes that China’s economic boom over the past 30 years has lifted hundreds of thousands out of gut-wrenching poverty, but he insists that without political change any economic slowdown would forestall disaster.
“In 1989, it was a question of which way to go first [political or economic progress]. Today there is no question, the political system has become a poisonous element to sustainable economic development,” he said. “The country is full of social unrest. You have environmental damage. You have no social involvement when they make economic policy decisions.”
Han said that his aim, above all, is to bring hope to people in desperate situations.
“We need a tiny bit of hope, even if it is an illusion. Otherwise you will again have revolution, again dictatorship, and then oppression,” he said.
Twenty years after the Tiananmen Square Massacre and still banned from China, Han Dongfang says that his activism has become more sophisticated and that his passion for workers’ rights is undiminished
By Guy Newey
AFP, HONG KONG
Thursday, Apr 24, 2008, Page 9
 |
Han had been released after two years in prison, as part of the crackdown after the protests, which saw the enormous Beijing square filled for weeks with thousands of students and workers demanding reform in China.
Despite being weak from tuberculosis he contracted in jail — it led to the loss of a lung — Han took the authorities to court to reclaim his house after it was seized following the death of his mother.
“He went to court to sue them. That was pretty rare in those days. He got physically thrown out of the courthouse and was beaten up,” said Munro, who now works for the rights group Han founded, China Labour Bulletin (CLB).
“I remember thinking, ‘This guy is just not prepared to back down. This guy is headed for a huge prison sentence, but he has just got integrity and determination,’” Munro said.
|
“[Han] believes the codes of conduct that many multinationals produce are well-intentioned but essentially worthless.” |
While he was among the group that formed China’s first independent trade union in the square during those months of protest, it was a subsequent series of high-profile acts of defiance that earned him enduring respect.
After recovering from tuberculosis in the US, he sneaked back into China.
He was thrown out, but held a sit-in on the bridge dividing China from Hong Kong, then still a British territory, demanding to be let back in.
While his determination to overturn what he sees as the perversions of the Communist system is still just as fierce, his approach has shifted from sensational defiance to a pragmatic, though unremitting, assault.
“Demonstrations produce slogans, they produce strong characters and leadership, but they sometimes produce illusions,” he said in an interview.
In order to effect change, he said, “you have to start at the ground.”
He now campaigns internationally to raise awareness of rights abuses in China and has a radio program that he uses to directly advise workers and farmers across China on how to seek redress.
His rights group, CLB, also uses existing Chinese law to push for compensation and justice in China for victims of poor labor practices. And, at every opportunity, he fights for genuine trade unions.
“Do not think of us as animals, animals need protection because they cannot protect themselves. Workers in Asia have the ability to protect themselves — if they are given freedoms,” he said.
Han was born in Beijing in 1963, the son of a farmer and a domestic worker from northern Shanxi Province. His parents, who had moved to the capital when they were young, divorced soon after he was born and during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s his mother and Han were sent back to the family village in the mountains of Shanxi, where they survived with help from relatives.
In 1971 he and his mother returned to Beijing, where she toiled as a construction worker and was often away from home from 6am to 10pm.
Han said he struggled at school, but persevered before joining the army at 17. It proved a formative time, when he discovered how the Communist ideals of the classroom had been perverted.
“It was full of unfairness. The officers ate better than us — pork, chicken and alcohol — even though the budget for each person was the same,” he said.
“They told us we should sacrifice for our nation, then we realized the officers were not serving the people, they were serving themselves.”
His refusal to bow to his superiors meant he was overlooked for promotion and was repeatedly turned down for membership of the Communist Party. He left the army in 1984 and took a job on the railways as an electrician.
Any remaining illusions about the Communist system evaporated in 1987 when he saw police beat up a group of students demonstrating with such slogans as “We support the Communist Party” and “Fight Corruption.”
Despite his frustrations, his involvement with the 1989 protests was an accident. He lived near Tiananmen Square and happened to have three weeks’ leave when they started.
He has described the experience as an “education,” saying it was the first time he had heard the word “democracy” used properly.
During the time, Han was crucial in setting up the first independent trade union in China, the Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Union, with around 100 other workers.
The fledgling movement struggled to attract major support from workers in the city, who were wary of an angry government reaction, but it was a huge step in China, where only the impotent official All-China Federation of Trade Unions is allowed to operate.
Munro, who met Han only several hours before the army began shooting on the night of June 3, was at the time working as an observer for global rights group Amnesty International.
“I was very impressed with him. He was very thoughtful and determined and serious about what he was doing,” he said. “He was only the spokesman, but he was as close as you got to having a leader of this group.”
Han escaped the violence of that night after he was carried out of his tent by strangers.
After fleeing to the countryside, he eventually presented himself to police when he saw his image on television as one of the government’s most-wanted.
He was interrogated almost endlessly for 10 days, as the authorities tried to make him admit that what he had done was wrong. Han refused and was jailed without trial in a cell with TB sufferers, a disease he eventually contracted.
“I feel extremely lucky that I could physically and mentally survive. I learned all these things about how human beings can be. People become animals when you deal with them in that way,” he said.
When he was eventually released on medical grounds, he was unable to walk or even talk properly.
He decided to have an operation in New York, despite warnings from friends that if he left China he would never be able to return. A year later he returned surreptitiously before being very publicly thrown out back to Hong Kong, at the time still a British colony.
He started CLB in an effort to remain engaged in the struggle. It was originally a newsletter sent to every Chinese factory he could find an address for, before developing into a Web site and now an advocacy group.
CLB last year funded 140 cases in China to try to redress abuses. Han says that each case, no matter how successful, helps change judges’ behavior.
The cases range from horrific work injuries to fair pay disputes, and the CLB approach works on the basis that much of existing Chinese labor law is sound.
“In China we have enough laws. Don’t get me wrong, making new good laws is necessary. The priority when you face the reality is waking up laws that have been sleeping,” he said.
He added that a new labor law introduced in January that provides extra labor protection is welcome, but only masks the horror of Chinese labor practices.
Author Alexandra Harney, whose book The China Price examines the conditions of Chinese factory workers, said CLB’s shift to legal work has led to real successes.
“They have a great network in China and great inroads into certain cases that really make a difference by providing legal advice and connecting people with the right lawyer,” she said.
In 1997, Han started what was to become, after prison, what he describes as the second defining part of his life, a program on Radio Free Asia through which he talks to workers across China about the problems they face in the workplace.
“In every conversation they give me a chance to see what is happening in the country on the ground,” he said. “Not from a researcher angle, but as someone having a conversation together, trying to find a solution.
“Sometimes I get sad, I cry, I get involved, I am part of it. I am not just reporting, I am trying to solve the problems,” he said.
During a recent show he advised a group of drivers who had lost their long-term jobs with the introduction of the new labor law. The law states that after working at a company for a certain number of years, employees are entitled to extra benefits, but the company decided to sack the workers rather than pay the extra costs.
Han listened patiently to the three men, gradually asking them if they had received any help from the company’s official union. One told him: “The union is just there to help the bosses, we do not trust it.”
Han regularly returns to the theme of gonghui (工會), the word for labor union, coaxing out information but also offering advice about redressing concerns.
He has had at least 1,000 of these conversations over the past 10 years, he said, and he believes it has given him a unique insight into the struggles people face in modern China.
“We have covered everything, from different locations, different families, farmers, land issues, housing issues, tax issues, the one-child policy issue, village officials, foreign workers, health matters, social security, retirement,” he said.
Han also spends part of his time talking to foreign-owned firms about improving their rights in China, and his approach is stern but pragmatic.
“Your company came to China to make money, not to support human rights,” he once told a foreign company at a meeting. “If you want to do good, read the law carefully, respect it and follow it.”
In an interview, he said: “We assume that the foreign companies are morally at a higher level, which is not the case, not in my experience. Never ask them to do more than their legal duty.”
He believes the codes of conduct that many multinationals produce are well-intentioned but essentially worthless.
“We go to church, we read the Bible, but when we come out of church we leave it at church,” he said.
Han concedes that China’s economic boom over the past 30 years has lifted hundreds of thousands out of gut-wrenching poverty, but he insists that without political change any economic slowdown would forestall disaster.
“In 1989, it was a question of which way to go first [political or economic progress]. Today there is no question, the political system has become a poisonous element to sustainable economic development,” he said. “The country is full of social unrest. You have environmental damage. You have no social involvement when they make economic policy decisions.”
Han said that his aim, above all, is to bring hope to people in desperate situations.
“We need a tiny bit of hope, even if it is an illusion. Otherwise you will again have revolution, again dictatorship, and then oppression,” he said.