Activism in China: Testing the Waters

Times are always tricky for activists and human rights workers in China but the current post-Olympics period is particularly odd. As this story from AFP flags, activists are groping around trying to figure out where the boundaries are now that the Games are over. Will the authorities relax or will the tough attitude that preceded the Olympics continue? The only way to find out of course is to test the limits. Legal activist Xu Zhiyong (who tipped me off to a particularly flagrant breach of justice which I then wrote about here) and the blogger/citizen reporter Zola (our profile here) set out recently to see if they could do something about the makeshift prisons (so-called "black jails") that provincial authorities maintain in the capital to deal with pesky petitioners. The results were mixed (see the ever excellent Global Voices Online translation of accounts of what happened here) but it's interesting that they were out there trying at all, considering the kill-the-chicken-to-scare-the-monkey fate of activists like Hu Jia.