Sichuan-based rights activist Huang Qi was one of the first in China to use the Internet to carry out human rights work. His site helps people to track friends and loved ones kidnapped by human traffickers or otherwise unaccounted for. Jailed for five years for “incitement to subversion,” Huang was awarded the 2004 Internet Freedom Prize by Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres. He spoke to Jill Ku’s “Different Voices” in an in-depth interview for RFA’s Mandarin service.
Huang Qi: In 1998, a lot of women and children were getting kidnapped [for trafficking] and the government wasn’t really doing anything effective to prevent it. They had just about managed to set up a kidnapping office to deal with the trafficking in women and girls but it wasn’t really much use. So we set up the Tianwang Missing Persons Bureau to help tackle this problem. It was in operation from 1998-2002.
On Dec. 1 1998, the kidnapping office of the Chengdu municipal police department invited our group to take part in a meeting to tackle kidnapping. After the meeting the police told us that seven young women had been kidnapped and sold to Renshou county, but because of systemic problems the Chengdu police were only able to take on cases that originated in Chengdu city. We immediately agreed to help.
When we got to Renshou county things went fairly smoothly. We managed to rescue all seven women within about 10 hours of our arrival, and we hurried back to Chengdu. After we got back to Chengdu there was a lot of interest from both the local media and some national media because a private organization had become involved in such a major case, and in fact its success was entirely managed by Tianwang, with the help of the police.
Jill Ku: But then there was a dramatic turnaround in the attitude of the authorities. Huang’s work had evidently touched on some sensitive nerves.
Huang Qi: Then, after three days of news reports on the case, something happened. The media got a directive from the Sichuan provincial propaganda department clearly ordering them to stop all reports on this story. At that time in China, everybody knew that no sex industry operation could possibly hope to exist without the involvement of the local police force. Therefore the local police departments and the provincial police department were opposed to our making this matter public. This even included some of my friends in the Sichuan provincial police department who told me very clearly not to get involved in this sort of thing.
