China: Wen Jiabao's dream of harmony in the People's Republic remains a pipe dream

"For the German government to speak only of the singular prominent cases, like that of artist Ai Weiwei, to Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao is to ignore the catastrophic human rights situation in the People's Republic of China," criticized the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) on Monday in Göttingen. Some 500 mass protests are taking place in China every day, and the authorities are reacting with brutal violence and repression. "Chinese authorities must be pressed to respect their own laws at the very least. The repressed Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, for example, must at long last be granted the autonomy to which they are entitled under Chinese law."

"The harmony so highly praised in China's state propaganda is showing huge cracks," asserted the head of the STP's Asia section, Ulrich Delius. "Some regions are like a powder keg – one spark will be enough to shatter the trumpeted stability." Following demonstrations in Tibetan settlement areas in the province of Sichuan, at least 60 critics of Chinese government policies have been arrested in the last ten days. Among those arrested are at least nine Buddhist monks from eight different monasteries, as well as fifteen nuns. These Tibetans had distributed flyers in market squares and demonstrated publicly for freedom of religion and for the Dalai Lama.

In Urumchi, too – the capital of the neighboring Xinjiang region (East Turkestan) – the presence of security forces has been massively built up as new protests by indigenous Uighurs are feared. Almost two years ago serious fighting broke out here between Han Chinese and the Muslim minority, and more than 200 people were killed. The fear of new conflicts has led the authorities to install 40,000 more security cameras in Xinjiang, with the hope of nipping Uighur protests in the bud.

In Inner Mongolia, another minority area, more than 110 students, teachers and university professors were imprisoned for political reasons following protests by Mongolians in late May/early June 2011. Their whereabouts remain for the most part unknown.

Not only the minorities in China are demanding their rights. More and more Chinese people are rising up against the abuse of power and the repression by local party functionaries. Chinese scientists have estimated that 180,000 mass protests were held in the People's Republic in 2010, double the number held in 2006.