Twenty three former senior Chinese Communist Party officials are calling on the ruling regime to allow freedom of speech and press in the country. But as soon as their letter was published, it’s was removed from Chinese websites.
The group of retired communist party elders, including the former publisher of the state-run People’s Daily, sent the open letter on Monday to the regime’s de facto legislative body. The letter urged the National People’s Congress, or NPC, to uphold the constitution and abolish the country’s system of censorship.
The letter describes the regime’s Central Propaganda Department as an “invisible black hand,” and questions why it has the authority to censor recent calls by Premier Wen Jiabao for political reform.
[Yu Meisun, Supporter of Open Letter]: (male, Chinese)
“The Central Propaganda Department is firstly led by the Party Central, and cannot go above the Party Central. So the Communist Party’s central has its own rules of operations. It does not really want to realize democracy or rule of law, and so it would of course suppress freedom of speech.”
One of the signatories of the open letter Xin Zhiling, former director of the editorial desk at China National Defense University, says the regime’s policy of suppressing freedom of speech is a failed policy.
[Xin Ziling, Signatory of Open Letter]: (male, Chinese)
“China, having come to this stage, must immediately adopt press freedom, or the country will lose its direction for progressing. Maintaining social order is itself disrupting social order, and is a failed policy because it does not protect the public’s view, but rather suppresses it.”
A supporter of the letter Yu Meisun comments on the need for press freedom.
[Yu Meisun, Supporter of Open Letter]: (male, Chinese)
“It would force people to revolt, and so press freedom is just like the air valve for a pressure cooker. If this valve is blocked, then the pressure will explode, the society would explode.”
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