Suffer the little children
June 4, 2011
By Verna Yu, South China Morning Post
Grace Geng used to be a cheerful, outgoing girl, but now, aged 18, instead of dreaming about what life might hold for her, she is suffering from depression and is constantly anxious about her missing father.
Gao Zhisheng , a high profile rights lawyer who ran foul of the mainland government after openly accusing it of persecuting members of the banned Falun Gong sect and underground Christians, has not been heard from for more than a year.
This is not the first time he has been in trouble. In recent years, he has been periodically and arbitrarily detained by police for long periods of time, and has said he has suffered torture while incarcerated.
And his wife and two children have suffered with him.
In 2005, the authorities revoked his lawyer’s licence and placed the family under 24-hour surveillance.
Policemen started following Grace to school – she was only 12.
They detained Gao the following summer, and he was given a suspended three-year sentence in December 2006 for “inciting subversion of state power”. He was allowed to return home – but the whole family was placed under house arrest.
Security personnel guarded their front door and watched their every move from a flat opposite. Police even moved into their home for a time. On occasion, Grace and her mother were beaten by police.
Grace’s every move at school was monitored by half a dozen security agents and her friends started distancing themselves from her.
“The teacher said whoever spoke to me would be regarded as a political criminal, so I became an outcast,” she reminisced from the United States, where she now lives.
Grace inflicted wounds on herself with a knife several times and was constantly tormented by nightmares.
“I just didn’t want to live, but I had no choice but to carry on,” she said, her sense of despair and helplessness still palpable in her voice. “I felt hopeless.”
Her mother, Geng He, and the children fled China in January 2009 and sought asylum in the United States. A month later, Gao disappeared after being dragged away by police. He re-emerged in March last year and phoned his family, but disappeared again a few weeks later.
Grace is just one of dozens of children of mainland dissidents and rights advocates who struggle to overcome their fears over their parents’ sudden disappearances and long absences. They also have to cope with the immense pressure and humiliation in a society in which their parents are considered enemies of the state.
The spouse, usually the mother, often tries to hide from the children that their fathers are incarcerated for expressing their political convictions, fearing that would trouble them even more.
Li Jing – the wife of university lecturer Guo Quan , who was jailed for 10 years in 2009 on subversion charges – told their 10-year old son his father had gone to the United States.
“It’s just too difficult to explain why his dad is a good person but had to go to jail … I don’t want him to have a sense of hatred [towards society],” she said.
Initially, she asked a friend living in the US to write him letters, pretending to be his dad. Later, Guo sent his son letters from prison, painting a vivid picture of a happy life abroad.
“He writes about his walks in the hills, his new life teaching children Chinese,” Li said. “But I can’t look at those letters. It upsets me.”
Often, the terror caused by a parent’s jailing casts a long shadow over the children’s lives and leaves indelible scars, their mothers say.
The eight-year-old daughter of Jiang Tianyong , another rights lawyer who disappeared for two months after being taken away by police, shook like a leaf when police stormed into their home in the middle of the night in February. The girl awoke and was terrified to see them searching through the flat and removing her father’s possessions.
“She was sitting on the bed, trembling, and she feared that I would also be taken away,” Jiang’s wife, Jin Bianling, said before her husband was released in April.
When she was seven, she witnessed her father being dragged away by police and her mother thrown to the ground. Later, police came to her school to interrogate her and made her sign a testimonial.
Since then, she has found it hard to concentrate in class, and suffers constantly from anxiety and sometimes outright terror. “She has become very sensitive,” Jin said. “She listens in when I talk to others and asks questions like: ‘Are they after my dad again?’ ”
Dr Eric Chui, at the department of social work and social administration at the University of Hong Kong, said children of political prisoners can be devastated by their parents’ incarceration, and their frustrations are often manifested in self harm and even mental illness.
The youngsters often cannot understand why their fathers, whom they adore, are seen as criminals by the authorities just for voicing their beliefs.
“Often subject to fear, suspicion, social isolation and immense stress, these children would be particularly traumatised,” Chui said. “They find it hard to trust others and are often confused about moral rights and wrongs … Some may harbour feelings of resentment towards society.”
Historians and legal experts say that zhu lian – the implication by association of family members of political criminals – is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture.
In the Ming and Qing dynasties, known for the harsh suppression of government critics, even distant relatives of political criminals could be persecuted and put to death.
More recently, during the Cultural Revolution, children or spouses of people belonging to the “black five categories” – landlords, rich peasants, counter-revolutionaries, “bad elements” and rightists – were often persecuted just because of the family link.
Veteran Chinese law expert Professor Jerome Cohen of New York University said threats of punishment against family members were often effective in silencing critics of the government.
Almost all of the once-outspoken rights lawyers released after being detained for two months in the recent crackdown on dissent, including Jiang, have ceased talking to the press and commenting online.
“One of the most civilised developments in the 20th century was for the Chinese government to end collective punishment. But what these people have done is bring it back – not in principle but in practice,” Cohen said.
“It’s all de facto – they don’t sentence people but they punish them.”
Beijing-based historian Zhang Lifan – who was forced to denounce his cabinet minister father, Zhang Naiqi , in the antirightist movement in 1957 when he was seven – said the persecution of family members “is a continuation of the mentality of the Chinese autocratic system”.
“Sometimes the psychological damage is beyond repair,” said Zhang, who was jailed at age 19 for nine years for doubting Mao Zedong’s supremacy.
And a similar fate for her children is indeed Gao’s wife’s worst fear. Their children are now aged 18 and eight.
Last year, Grace wrote a letter to US President Barack Obama, pleading him to bring up her father’s case with President Hu Jintao .
“I’m old enough to understand that it might be better for my father to be dead than for him to undergo more unspeakable torture,” she wrote. “But for my brother, Peter, who is only seven, not knowing whether our father is alive or dead is an unfathomable cruelty.”
Peter, who burst into tears when he saw policemen as a toddler, gets upset when he sees his classmates picked up at school by their fathers.
Grace, who still suffers depression, says she finds it hard to trust others.
“It’s no fault of the children’s …when I see them like this I feel dreadful,” Geng said tearfully.
“The shadows will never go away.”
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