During the Shanghai Expo there’s little to be seen of the political protest that surrounded the Beijing Olympic Games. Why are the human rights activists keeping so quiet?

A year ago Jiang Danwen had already been told to keep a low profile during Expo 2010 in Shanghai. And now the world fair has opened, the secret service is regularly placing him under house arrest.

Jiang Danwen is a senior figure in the writers’ organisation PEN in China, and campaigns for freedom of expression. He knows only too well what consequences this sort of activity can have in China. His friend Liu Xiaobo has spent 11 years behind bars after writing the Charter 8 manifesto, an appeal for democratic reform which was signed by more than 10,000 people in China, including Jiang Danwen.

House arrest
I hear from Jiang Danwen that he can’t come to the place we’ve arranged to meet because suddenly he’s been forbidden to leave the house. So I talk to him over the phone. It’s a bad line, but he’s determined to tell his story.

Jiang Danwen thinks people should know there’s more going on in Shanghai than just a spectacular Expo and the visible economic progress. “On one side there’s the China that’s rapidly developing. On the other side there’s the China where people are being oppressed. People like me, who give their opinion, live on the other side of the real China.”

Before the Olympic Games, activists still thought China could change, says Jiang Danwen, but their hopes were crushed. People fighting for human rights like Liu Xiaobo were arrested, and others were threatened by the police. And this has been highly effective. “Many activists were disappointed. The oppression of all the people who signed Charter 8 made it clear that human rights in China will never develop to an adequate level. The people fighting for it can’t help China to change.”

Courageous
Another inhabitant of ‘the other China’ is Ma Yalian. She campaigns against illegal land grabs – an increasingly common occurrence in a rapidly expanding Shanghai. Ma Yalian, once a respectable accountant, became militant after she was evicted from her home in 1998. She received no compensation and her attempts to fight for her rights were futile. Twice she ended up in jail herself, where she was physically humiliated. To her it was a sign that anyone in China can fall victim to the failing legal system.

Ma Yalian is also keen to talk about human rights in Shanghai, so we arrange to meet in a park. When I arrive by taxi, she is already flanked by two plain-clothes police officers. Evidently the secret service has found out about our appointment. She jumps in the taxi and shoves the policewoman away, shouting to the driver, “Get out of here!”

In a café, kilometres away, she tells me her story. She says the secret police are managing to keep most people silent during the Shanghai Expo. “Like today, for example. If you’d arrived five minutes later, the police would already have taken me away. Then you wouldn’t have heard my voice. A less courageous person would have already gone with the police. That’s why you’re hearing so little from human rights activists during the Expo.”

Disappointed
According to Ma Yalian the lack of attention from overseas is also undermining the rights activists. It was a different matter during the Olympic Games in Beijing. Then the international community did respond to dissidents protesting at injustice in China.

This time there is no response, and the activists are deeply disappointed, says Ma Yalian. “All they can see is a black hole.” Nevertheless, she says, like her they won’t be keeping their mouths shut. Just as writer Jiang Danwen refuses to be muzzled.

Ma Yalian has no idea what consequences our meeting may have, so I call her a day later. All is well, she says, she hasn’t been arrested. She even wants to try and visit the Shanghai Expo. She’s been forbidden to do so – which only makes her want to go there all the more.