Bloggers digging up facts and posting them online, attempting to right wrongs - it's a long established trend in China and requires a lot of guts. But now there is a new movement requiring even more courage from those wanting to challenge the official line - taking the protests to the streets.

By Sebastiaan Gottlieb and Wei Liu
 
Demonstrators recently stood eyeball to eyeball with police in the Chinese city of Fuzhou demanding justice in the case of the death of a young woman covered up by those very same police.
 
Filmmaker He Yang made a documentary about the Fuzhou city protest, where more than 200 people gathered to support rights campaigner You Jingyou. Mr You had spoken out on behalf of the mother of the young woman who had been murdered. He posted a video interview with her in which she questioned the official police report on her daughter's death.
 
Voice heard
"In February 2008 she died after being raped by police. After her death the court conducted an autopsy. But the scars on her body were not written into the court coroner's report. The large swollen bruise on her genitals wasn't recorded," says the girl's mother, Lin Xiuying, in the video.
 
The complaints were made known to the court but nothing happened - the official version of events was not about to be changed.
 
Appalled by the failure to take the mother's claims seriously, Mr You released the video interview. Two weeks later, he was arrested and charged with participating in criminal activities and spreading rumours. Two other blog activists were also charged.

You Jingyou hoped a fair trial would clear his name, but during his first appearance in court, his lawyer was not allowed to speak - the same happened the next time around too. "As soon as I stepped into the court, I realised that our legal system was corrupt. Trial becomes only a formality," You Jingyou says. He was sentenced to a year in prison.
 
Take it to the street
It was during the trial that the protests were organised outside the district court of Fuzhou. Famous Chinese rights activists, around 200 of them, came to support Mr You and his lawyer. They demanded the release of three detainees and confronted local police who barred them from getting close to the court.
 
Another activist, filmmaker Ai Xiaoming, was there:

"We saw the police acting unreasonably and citizens sensing injustice. We saw the legality of civic action, and - in my opinion the most important, the most inspiring - we also saw that state power can be dealt with this way. When state power is arbitrarily used to violate civil space that citizens have the right to protest and that civil protest can be quite positive and direct. Seeing so many ordinary people being so brave show us that being brave is entirely possible. That being brave is just part of being Chinese, that we're not as cynical as we are often made out to be, or as obedient, or as cowardly."

Following this event, according to He Yang, street protests organised through the internet have become a new tactic for protesters, and he points to other examples from throughout China.
 
Small individual actions
Dutch China watcher and journalist Willem Offenberg confirms there are more incidents of people protesting in the street. But he says:

"You must make a distinction between local spontaneous protest and organised political demonstrations. Local media write about these events and people go out on the streets when it concerns a case of obvious injustice.  As soon as it is about protests that people try to organise in a structured way, it will immediately be prohibited. That is exactly the same as it was in the past. But small individual actions have more and more success these days."
 
Give what they want
State intimidation of activists is also something that is still very much part of the Chinese system. After serving the year in jail You Jingyou was fired by his state-owned company, because 'a state-owned enterprise does not employ persons with criminal records', Mr You tells us.
 
Police also questioned You Jingyou's family members. But Mr You remains committed to his pursuit of the truth. "If we back down, then we give them what they want, that is us being afraid."
 
Chinese bloggers not welcome in Dutch pavilion
Last Sunday, the Chinese authorities prohibited a meeting of Chinese bloggers in Shanghai at the last minute. The meeting was organized by the Dutch embassy and foreign journalists in China, and was planned to take place in the Dutch pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai.
 
Bloggers who were planning to come to Shanghai were intimidated beforehand. This happened, for example, to playwright Sha Yexin. Bloggers from other parts of China who arrived at Shanghai airport were immediately sent home. To our knowledge no one was arrested. Bloggers had come together previously, for example inside foreign embassies over which which the Chinese authorities have no control.