Enough is enough, PRC goons.

The New York times reported on the 7th of April that Sun Wenguang, a 75-year-old retired professor from the University of Shandong, while observing Qing Ming Jie (tomb sweeping day) on April 4th was attacked by a group of four to five men and beaten severely. This beating resulted in three broken ribs and injuries to his spine, head, back, arms and legs. He is now in a Jinan hospital, the capitol of Shandong province.

What brought about this sudden ill fate, you ask? Are there roaming bands of brigands in China's cemeteries? No, there aren't. But there are plain-clothes cops who will pound on you if you chose the wrong tomb to sweep. Sun came to remember Zhao Ziyang, a former prime minister and Communist Party general secretary who lost his party position and his freedom after sympathizing with student-led, pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Mr. Zhao, who died in 2005, is a martyr to some democracy advocates.

The attack on Prof. Sun was part of a concerted effort by the Chinese government to head off any efforts to memorialize the deaths of hundreds of Tiananmen Square protesters on June 4, the 20th anniversary of the government’s crackdown. China Human Rights Defenders, a Hong Kong-based group that has publicized this matter stated, “Chinese authorities are staging a campaign of terror to intimidate and suppress expressions of commemoration for the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.” The attack on Mr. Sun “is part of the overall campaign,” it said. Public security officials in Jinan referred calls about the attack to the propaganda office of the city’s Communist Party. No one answered phone calls to that office on Tuesday night, the NYT reported. (How curious).

The article goes on to say, "Mr. Sun said he had previously visited the cemetery on Qingming Day to honor Mr. Zhao’s death without serious incident. But this year, he said, he announced his forthcoming visit on the Internet. As he left the teacher’s dormitory at Shandong University, a public security officer and about 20(!) plainclothes officers tried to stop him. Quoting the former professor from a telephone interview from his hospital bed, “they said, ‘don’t go there today. So many people are going there. It is dangerous". When he got into a taxi, a car followed him. He said he had started down a cemetery path, carrying a banner that read “Condolences for the heroes who died for freedom,” when four or five men jumped him from behind, threw him into a ditch and beat him for more than 10 minutes. "It is important for China to restore the memory of its history. Zhao Ziyang is such an important person in Chinese history, and students today have no idea who he is. That is outrageous.”

Uh, that would be an understatement. To put in perspective Zhao's fall from grace one needs to understand that the General Secretary is the highest ranking official of the party and heads the Politburo Standing Committee. The General Secretary is usually the Paramount leader in China. Previous party worthies who have held this post, and whose names are better known than Zhou's, would be Deng Xioping, Jiang Zemin, and its current holder, Hu Jintao. Zhao's purgation was a watershed event in China. Since being removed from that post after having sided with the students and the intellectuals for the enactment of democratic reforms, his name has all but been erased from the history books in today's China. There has been no further nonsense talk amongst high rankers that economic progress is inextricably linked to democratization since his purge.

In the four days he has been in the hospital, the police have not shown up to investigate. (That's curious, too). Prof. Sun said, “I still feel very weak. And I think probably my days are numbered. But I don’t feel regret. I am 75 years old and I would be very happy to sacrifice my life for my ideals." Mr. Sun has a long history of activism. He was imprisoned for seven years in the 1970s for criticizing Mao and his successor, Hua Guofeng, and was among the first to sign Charter 08, a manifesto issued in December that calls for democratic reforms. Still, he said: “I didn’t expect this. I was not trying to organize any group of people. It was just a personal visit to a cemetery. In order to fight for democracy, we need to make personal efforts.”

The writer of this blog has to admit that in the course of the last 6 months that he has been stupefied by the events that have unfolded. The sheer volume of information and opinions regarding our current straits has left The Ant panting inside a tiny little air bubble, trying to intellectually dig out of this collapse, not to mention financially, and find some light. No doubt, this is the case for many at this time. However, for this type of villainy that just occurred in Shandong, I don't need a PhD in Economics in order to understand. This blog has existed from its beginning to speak up about this manner of thing in China. Beating a 75-year-old man in a cemetery for carrying out a religious observance is just pathetic and cowardly. Once again, PRC, you don't fail to arouse disgust with your gross human rights abuse.