Times Are Changing
In Beijing, a 21-year old girl stabbed and killed an official of the Communist Party as he tried to force himself upon her. Normally this story would have stayed low and local, and the girl would have been charged with manslaughter in a discreet case, but the Internet has changed all of that.
When the story got posted online that the girl was going to be charged on a count of manslaughter, outrage among the public broke out. The Internet community was so against this decision that, to quell the e-riot, Chinese officials had to censor and ban vehement online comments.
Under intense public pressure, the court exonerated the girl of any manslaughter charges and declared her free to go. The Internet is a medium to tell the plight of forgotten mistreated and not allow them to be pigeonholed, and this is a prime example of this truth. The courts wanted to put this girl away because it was a Communist official, but the people would allow none of that injustice. Bob Dylan was right, the times are a’ changing.
This case has proven to be a catalyst of social change, and many past and more to follow will solidify it. People are fed up with officials treatment of them. Experts say that the once downtrodden are slowly waking up to the epiphany that they can fight and have a voice, even in the authoritarian and austere China.
China still rules with an iron fist over Internet users though, employing masses to monitor online traffic and with their self-imposed blockades that have come to be known by the epithet “The Great Firewall Of China.”
Late last year, an official in the Guangdong Province beat up a young girl and sneered at the operator of the video camera, “I’m above the law.” In a supposedly Communist egalitarian nation, photos were taken of a Nanjing city official who was seen wearing a super-swanky watch and smoking some luxurious 22$ dollar a pack cigarettes. Earlier this year, an Internet investigation revealed footage of Chinese officials beating a prisoner to death, and offered no mitigations in their favor. Recently, a team of officials in the Yunnan Province “beat” a strain of rabies that had broken out by beating and killing almost 50,000 dogs. The Internet community blew up over this blatant flaunting of power, and rattled the minds of the oppressed peoples with a new round of jading: Was everything really equal in Communist China?
The people have decided to fight back. Some are civil-minded, and simply post a dissertation of their grievances, but others are out for blood: they sometimes post personal information, embarrassing slander, or simply bombard the offending party with incendiary messages.
And they have seen positive sanctions! The man who beat up the girl was incarcerated the extravagant official was given the boot, the Chinese jailors having to serve time themselves, and the anti-cur dog beaters were socially ostracized for their canine genocide.
The young girl’s story (Ms. Deng) has been more sonorous than all of them; accumulating almost 4 million blog posts. She defended herself in court with a telling of the story.
On May 10, Ms. Deng was washing dishes in her restaurant when Huang Weide, a local official came in and demanded she take a bath with him. The bath of their restaurant was often used for prostitution but Ms. Deng herself was not one of the them. After she refused, a struggle led to the bathroom, where Weide and his two cohorts tried to hold her down. One of them was Deng Guida, (No relation to Ms. Deng) who was stabbed and killed after Ms. Deng reached in her purse to get a knife to protect herself. She was incarcerated and actually taken to a mental institute because police found prescription anti-depressants in her bag.
A blogger, Wu Gan, heard about her case, put it online, and propagated it to the world. He supported Ms. Deng, and even helped her buy a lawyer. In an effort to pacify the public, the court released her on bail. Soon enough, scared by the negative P.R. and intense backlash they were getting about the case, the nation began to censor blog posts, and even block people from these areas where the incident occurred.
Inspired by the whole fiasco, a group of young people randomly amidst a throng of people in downtown Beijing, carrying a woman with a mask on and completely wrapped in white. After they set her down, they left a sign saying “Anyone could be Ms. Deng.”
These are turbulent times, and especially so with a social change in order. If a blogger hadn’t of been able to use the Internet to reveal this Ms. Deng’s mistreatment to the world, she would likely be sitting in jail right now. There must always be free and unrestricted access to the Internet at all times.
Censorship sometimes limits this necessity. If the government begins to censor such important information, the citizens should turn to an anonymous proxy for justice. This can do a number of things, including getting by these government blocks. Once by them however, it is important to not be caught. This can be done also. An anonymous proxy will actually change your IP address, which can act as a device that shows your location, who you are, etc. So have no fear, once the proxy gets you the inside access, you will have no fears about being caught accessing what you should be able to anyway, because they cannot trace your IP address, for you will adopt the proxy server’s. So if the peeping government came by to find out who you are, with the IP changer in place they would see the proxy server’s name, and not yours.
