Interview with Tienchi Martin-Liao, Independent Chinese PEN Centre President

I don’t have fear, but I do have hatred, I do have enemies. I hate this oppression, and I hate the system, and the system is made by people. I hate those who deprive my colleagues and friends their freedom of expression and basic human rights. I not only hate them, I try to fight against them. But as for my person, I really don’t have any fear.

Continue reading this interview at Sampsonia Way Magazine.

Excerpt: Liao Yiwu’s For a Song and a Hundred Songs

Sampsonia Way presents an exclusive excerpt from Liao Yiwu’s not-yet-published book, For a Song and a Hundred Songs. The book, which won the German Book Trade’s Peace Prize last fall, chronicles his arrest and time in prison for criticizing the Chinese government. 

This excerpt details Liao’s 1990 arrest and the CCP’s subsequent arrests of the poets, artists, and intellectuals in Liao’s circle of friends.

Continue reading this excerpt at Sampsonia Way Magazine.

Tienchi Martin-Liao: When the Police Persecute a 10-Year-Old Girl

Ten-year-old Anni looks mature for her age. She is used to the uniformed police, who often come to search her home. Sometimes they took her father away, but he usually returned home after a short time. However, a recent incident on February 27 did frighten her. When school ended in the afternoon, the fourth grader was going home, and suddenly four sturdy men blocked her way. They dragged her and stuffed her into a car, then brought her to the Hubo police station in Hefei, the capital city of Anhui. Anni was detained alone in one room for the rest of the day, and did not know that her father, Zhang Lin, was also detained on the third floor of the same building. 

Continue reading this column at Sampsonia Way Magazine.

Slideshow: Weiwei-isms

Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist. He works in a variety of mediums including sculpture, photography, architecture and the written word. Weiwei is a heavy critic of the repressive Chinese government, and as a result, he was arrested in 2011 at a Beijing airport and held for two months under unknown charges.

Sampsonia Way chose ten quotes from the section “On Freedom of Expression” ofWeiwei-isms to showcase Weiwei’s astounding ability to share incredibly powerful ideas about censorship and every human’s right to freedom of speech in very few words.

View the slideshow on Sampsonia Way Magazine.

Yuan Tengfei: A Free Spirit in Darkness

If you were to attend one of Yuan Tengfei’s history lectures at Beijing’s Haidian Teachers Training College, you might think that you’re in the United States, Taiwan, or Hong Kong, where freedom of speech and research are guaranteed. For example, Yuan might say: “During the first 20 years or so of the People’s Republic of China the Red Terror cost more than 20 million innocent lives” or “The Mao Mausoleum in Beijing should change its name to the Holocaust Museum, for there lies a man whose hands are stained with blood.”

Continue reading this column at Sampsonia Way Magazine.