Human rights activist Charles remembers a time when civil society was blossoming in China, and he could dedicate his time to helping improve the lives of people struggling in blue-collar jobs. Now, 10 years into President Xi Jinping’s rule, community organisations such as Charles’s have been dismantled and hopes of a rebirth crushed. Charles has fled China and several of his activist friends are in jail. “After 2015, the whole of civil society began to collapse and become fragmented,” he told AFP.
Human rights activist Charles remembers a time when civil society was blossoming in China, and he could dedicate his time to helping improve the lives of people struggling in blue-collar jobs.
Now, 10 years into President Xi Jinping’s rule, community organisations such as Charles’s have been dismantled and hopes of a rebirth crushed.
Charles has fled China and several of his activist friends are in jail.
“After 2015, the whole of civil society began to collapse and become fragmented,” he told AFP, using a pseudonym for safety reasons.
Xi, on the brink of securing a third term at the apex of the world’s most populous country, has overseen a decade in which civil society movements, an emergent independent media and academic freedoms have been all but destroyed.
As Xi sought to eliminate any threats to the Communist Party, many non-governmental organisation workers, rights lawyers and activists were threatened, jailed or exiled.
AFP interviewed eight Chinese activists and intellectuals who described the collapse of civil society under Xi, though a few remain determined to keep working despite the risks.
Some face harassment from security officers who summon them weekly for questioning, while others cannot publish under their own names.
“My colleagues and I have frequently experienced interrogations lasting over 24 hours,” an LGBTQ rights NGO worker told AFP on condition of anonymity, adding that psychological trauma from the repeated questioning has compounded his woes.
“We’ve become more and more incapable, regardless of whether it’s from a financial or operational perspective, or on a personal level.”
‘709 crackdown’
The collapse of China’s civil society has been a long process riddled with obstacles for activists.
In 2015, more than 300 lawyers and rights defenders were arrested in a sweep named the “709 crackdown” after the date it was launched — July 9.
Many lawyers remained behind bars or under surveillance for years, while others were disbarred, according to rights groups.
Another watershed moment was the adoption in 2016 of the so-called foreign NGO law, which imposed restrictions and gave police wide-ranging powers over overseas NGOs operating in the country.
“In 2014, we could unfurl protest banners, conduct scientific fieldwork and collaborate with Chinese media to expose environmental abuses,” an environmental NGO worker told AFP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
“Now we must report to the police before we do anything. Each project must be in cooperation with a government department that feels more like a supervisory committee.”
Zero-tolerance
Today’s landscape is markedly different from even a few years ago, when civil society groups were able to operate in the relatively permissive climate that started under previous president Hu Jintao.
“At universities, several LGBTQ and gender-focused groups sprung up around 2015,” said Carl, an LGBTQ youth group member, although he felt a “tightening pressure”.
By 2018, the government’s zero-tolerance of activism came to a head with the authorities suppressing a budding #MeToo feminist movement and arresting dozens of student activists.
“Activities quietly permitted before were banned, while ideological work like political education classes ramped up”, said Carl.
In July 2022, Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University handed two students official warnings for distributing rainbow flags, while dozens of LGBTQ student groups’ social media pages were blocked.
‘Like grains of corn’
Another harbinger of regression was a 2013 internal Party communique that banned advocating what was described as Western liberal values, such as constitutional democracy and press freedom.
“It treated these ideologies as hostile, whereas in the 1980s we could discuss them and publish books about them,” said Gao Yu, a Beijing-based independent journalist who was either in prison or under house arrest between 2014 and 2020 for allegedly leaking the document.
“In a normal society, intellectuals can question the government’s mistakes. Otherwise… isn’t this the same as in the Mao era?” he asked, referring to Communist China’s founder Mao Zedong.
Now, 78-year-old Gao endures social media surveillance, has virtually no income and is blocked from overseas calls or gathering with friends.
“We are all like grains of corn ground down by the village millstone,” she said.
Replacing Gao and her peers are celebrity academics who parrot hawkish nationalist ideology, while others have been forced out of their positions or endure classroom surveillance from students.
“A kind of tattle-tale culture has flourished in China’s intellectual realm over the past decade,” said Wu Qiang, a former Tsinghua political science professor and Party critic.
“Students have become censors reviewing their professor’s every sentence, instead of learning through mutual discussion.”
‘Unwinnable war’
Faced with the increasingly harsh climate, many activists have either fled China or put their work on hold.
Only a handful persevere, despite growing hostility including online bullying.
“Perhaps right now we are at the bottom of a valley… but people are still tirelessly speaking out,” said Feng Yuan, founder of gender rights group Equity.
For others, like the environmental organisation worker, it is an “unwinnable war” against nationalist trolls who claim all NGO staff are “anti-China and brainwashed by the West”.
“It makes me feel like all my efforts have been wasted,” they said.
Charles’s friends, #MeToo advocate Huang Xueqin and labour activist Wang Jianbing, have been detained without trial for over a year on subversion charges.
He believes authorities viewed their gatherings of young activists as a threat — and the threshold for prosecution is getting lower.
“The government is now targeting individuals who do small-scale, subtle, low-key activism,” he said. “They have made sure there is no new generation of activists.” (This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Proximity is a modality of governance that yields mixed results, Raheja said. When politicians get close to constituents, either physically or digitally, they manage expectations and offer assurances to constituents. But they also expose themselves to scrutiny, giving people the chance to see beyond the performance into imperfect government workings.
India became a secular nation with the emphasis on caste-gender equality. The kingdoms where the kings ruled with the ‘divine authority’ were replaced by colonial period in India. During the plunder by colonial rulers there were other changes also which led to social changes. Introduction of transport, communication, modern education and modern administration provided the ground for changes in caste and gender equations and promoting the unity among different religious communities. Those who were the bearers of feudal mindset kept themselves aloof from this process of ‘nation making’. They helped British in their policy of ‘divide and rule’, leading to the tragic partition and the biggest ever mass migration in the sub-continent.
Another welcome part of Yatra is the pro active response of these social groups and many political parties to affirm the values of pluralism, diversity and democracy. There are many jarring parts of the yatra also. The route which it is has mapped so far seems to have lesser representation of Muslim majority areas. While we stand to criticize the fundamentalist elements of Muslim leadership, we need to connect to average Muslims (and Christians) who have been the major victims of the sectarian politics. Ridiculing Rahul Gandhi for marching with the little girl with Hijab was deliberately played up by the communal forces for sure. Yatra needs to stand up to associate with the religious minorities, emulating the Father of the Nation.
The Gutenberg era represented by this phenomenon lasted six centuries. Communication, which is a more recent phenomenon and which until now has only been possible with the Internet, is different. Communication is horizontal: I am a receiver, but I can also be a sender. There, power has much more power. 
Two factors contribute potently to this assault on the lives of citizens. One, practically anyone over the age of 18 can bear arms in America, even military grade assault rifles, in public. Two, there are enough depressed and mentally deranged citizens in the US who will use the guns to cool their rage. So, we have almost week after week chilling reports of some mass shooting or other in a mall or school or any other crowded place. The USA has become no doubt, a crazy ‘never never land’ where a former President recently organised an armed attack on the Capitol. Could you believe your eyes as they witnessed the violent and shocking visuals on our TV screens with security men running for cover like hunted-down rats? Has killing become a national obsession in the US? 
When a government in power does not want to allow such freedom of expression, one smells a rat. If it suppresses dissent with an iron rod, it is the end of the road. Many citizens are of opinion that the ruling BJP deals with every dissenting opinion as unwanted, often dubbed criminal act, sometimes even anti-national. Peaceful demonstrations, representations, meetings, gatherings, etc. are constitutionally guaranteed exercises of democratic freedom of expression. Surprisingly, even such acts or exercises invite the wrath of the powers that are. 
Last week measured at 1,044.03 feet, its lowest elevation since the lake was filled in the 1930s. If the reservoir dips below 895 feet — a possibility still years away — Lake Mead would reach dead pool, carrying enormous consequences for millions of people across Arizona, California, Nevada and parts of Mexico. A dead pool would not mean no water was left in the reservoir, but even before Lake Mead was hit, there were concerns that water levels could fall so low that hydroelectric power production would be hindered.
The prospect of upsetting Washington should be particularly concerning for Indian policymakers. The United States has become one of New Delhi’s most important partners, particularly as India tries to stand up to Chinese aggression in the Himalayas. But although Washington is not happy that New Delhi has refused to condemn Russian aggression, Indian policymakers have calculated that their country is so central to U.S. efforts to counterbalance China that India will remain immune to a potential backlash. So far, they’ve been right; the United States has issued only muted criticisms of Indian neutrality. Yet Washington’s patience is not endless, and the longer Russia prosecutes its war without India changing its position, the more likely the United States will be to view India as an unreliable partner. It may not want to, but ultimately New Delhi will have to pick between Russia and the West.
That founding ideology, however, has long been disputed by Hindu nationalists. “To be a Hindu means a person who sees this land, from the Indus River to the sea, as his country but also as his Holy Land,” wrote the politician and activist Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in his 1923 book, Hindutva: Who Is a Hindu? (Hindutva, meaning “Hindu-ness,” has become shorthand for Hindu nationalism itself.) In Savarkar’s view, only those who regard India as both their country and their sacred Hindu homeland could be truly Indian. While Christians and Muslims could fulfill the first requirement, of patriotism, they would never be able to achieve the second. “Their holyland is far off in Arabia or Palestine,” Savarkar wrote. “Consequently their names and their outlook smack of a foreign origin. Their love is divided.”