Detention of Critic of Child Abuse Draws Ire in China

BEIJING â€" The first urgent message came at 11.41 in the morning of Thursday, May 30: Ye Haiyan, a campaigner against child abuse and for the rights of sex workers and those with HIV/AIDS, wrote that her home had been invaded and she was being physically attacked in Bobai, Guangxi Province.

“Now there are four or five women in my home, beating me,” wrote 37-year-old Ms. Ye on Sina Weibo, the discussion platform that is often likened to China’s “town square.” She had just returned from nearby Hainan Island where she had staged a mocking protest outside a school whose principal is in detention on suspicion of sexually abusing minors, one of many similar cases that have come to light in China recently, attracting wide attention and disgust.

A minute later, at 11:42, Ms. Ye pleaded: “Please everyone call the police, there’s only me and my daughter at home.”

At 11:58: “11 people in total. One is a man. About 10 women.”

And the last message at 11:59, before she disappeared into 13-day-long police detention: “They’re still blocking the stairs at my building. Please everyone report it to the police. Though it’s no use. But I still want a record, to solve it through legal means.”

Here’s a screenshot of Ms. Ye on the homepage of her Weibo account:

Public attention on Ms. Ye, 37, a well-know advocate for women and children’s rights, was already high for her staging of the Hainan protest, during which she stood in front of the Wanning Elementary School with a placard that read: “Principal, if you want to ‘get a room’ look for me; leave the students alone!”

The protest was in reference to a case in early May where the school principal and another state employee were accused of molesting or raping six girls in a hotel. The facts of the case are unclear, with the Wanning police and the girls’ parents offering differing accounts.

And currently there is intense interest among ordinary Chinese over Ms. Ye’s fate; activists have launched a campaign calling on people to address a postcard and mail it to the Guangxi police in protest; some have posted online photographs of themselves with the same sign, including the dissident Ai Weiwei.

The police said they detained Ms. Ye for using a knife during the incident and injuring three persons. Ms. Ye said she was acting in self-defense, and that she had been attacked in the past by people she calls “alternative mafia” and says: “people in the government are out to get me,” according to The Shanghaiist blog.

Her lawyer, Wang Yu, said the people barged into her home uninvited and threatened her verbally and physically and that her client acted in self defense. Ms. Ye is suing the police seeking cancellation of her detention order and 10,000 renminbi in compensation for mental suffering.

Reached by telephone, a person at the the Bobai Public Security Bureau who identified herself as a policewoman declined to tell a reporter more, but seemed anxious to disown Ms. Ye.

“Ye Haiyan is not from Bobai. She just lives here,” said the woman, who gave her surname as Qin, declining to give her first name.

Asked about the incident, she referred a caller to the Bobai police Weibo account. She then hustled a caller off the phone, saying the line should only be used “for work purposes.”

On the police Weibo account is a short statement, posted on June 3, saying: “Ye Haiyan has been detained for 13 days for deliberate injury; it has nothing to do with her online action”  â€" an apparent reference to the Hainan protest, images of which circulated widely online.

The account showed what it said was a “vegetable knife” (it looks like a chopper) used by Ms. Ye to attack the three women, whom the police say were the owners of hotels in the area identified by Ms. Ye last year as being “10 kuai brothels” used by the cheapest of prostitutes. The women claimed their family and business reputations were injured by Ms. Ye, the account said.

Ms. Ye is well known for an action last year where she offered herself as a “10 kuai” (about a dollar and a half) prostitute, to highlight the plight of women who offer sex for that small amount. She says many are fleeing abusive husbands or working to support children alone, and are often picked up by the police and fined, even jailed.

Here’s how the Global Network of Sex Work Projects, a non-governmental organization, describes Ms. Ye: “Ye has a long history of activism related to gender, child abuse, and sex work. She blogs avidly about women’s rights in China, and is known for volunteering as a no-fee sex worker at a ’10 RMB brothel’ to protest the poor working conditions of migrant sex workers. She was also attacked in 2010, after organizing China’s first sex workers’ rally.”

Here’s how Frontline Defenders, a human rights NGO that has issued an urgent appeal for her, described the incident: “In an effort to defend herself and her daughter she used a knife to drive her attackers away, reportedly injuring three of them in the process. Shortly thereafter she was taken into custody by police and is being detained on suspicion of ‘causing intentional injury’.”

Ms. Ye is due to be released next week.

Alcohol, Islam and Turkey’s Founding Fathers

LONDON â€" Abdullah Gul, Turkey’s president, was reported on Thursday to be wavering over implementation of a controversial law restricting alcohol use, a measure seen by some as the kind of assault on personal freedom that has spurred a week of anti-government protests.

Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News reported that he had told a delegation of tradespeople, who expressed concerns about the commercial impact of the law, that he would examine whether the restrictions contradicted the country’s Constitution.

The Turkish Parliament passed legislation on May 24 to ban advertising of alcohol and outlaw sales of alcoholic drinks between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., except in tourist zones. Alcohol sales near mosques and schools were also prohibited.

The government said the measures were aimed at protecting young people from the evils of alcohol, but secularist critics said they were part of a creeping Islamization on the part of the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr. Erdogan, the target of a wave of unrest against what is seen as his high-handed governing style, once advised Turks that they should eat grapes instead of drinking wine.

My colleague Andrew Finkel, a veteran observer of Turkish life, has suggested that alcohol consumption is scarcely a pressing issue in a country where less than one in five of the population drinks.

“Given such low levels of consumption, the government’s haste in passing anti-alcohol measures makes little sense,” he wrote at the Latitude blog.

The alcohol law nevertheless has its defenders, including Ceylan Ozbudak, a Turkish television presenter who said drink was responsible for a majority of traffic accidents and a range of violent crimes in Turkey.

“Is the new regulation of sales of alcoholic drinks really about banning alcohol in Turkey for religious reasons?” she asked in an article for Al Arabiya, “Or is this just another excuse for the opposition to steal the public eye, and attack Erdogan?”

She said the measures were far from being an outright ban and were less strict than restrictions on alcohol consumption, not only in the Muslim world, but also in parts of Europe and the United States.

The controversy over the alcohol law might be viewed as another expression of the tensions between religion and secularism in the Turkish Republic. If so, it is nothing new.

A search of the New York Times archive turns up a gem from 1924 in which Louis Rich reported the decision of the Turkish government to end a one-year experiment in prohibition.

He wrote that the founders of the newly established Republic had originally imposed an alcohol ban in response to a booze epidemic caused by a flood of inferior American liquor in the years after World War I.

“Another factor tending toward intemperance,” he wrote, “was the large number of prescriptions issued to Mohammedans by Greek physicians for dietary purposes. Intoxication became so noticeable that the leaders of Turkey became alarmed.”

He noted, however, that prohibition not only deprived the government of a rich source of revenue but also was at odds with the secularism of the founding fathers. Their decision to repeal the ban reflected the belief that the state had no business to enforce an article of religious faith.

In a sentence that might resonate today among Turkey’s protesters, he wrote, “The Turks must be taught that religious and legal duties are not one and the same thing, that the former are entirely a matter of conscience and that the Government is not obligated to enforce them.”

IHT Quick Read: June 6

NEWS The Obama administration is secretly carrying out a domestic surveillance program under which it is collecting business communications records involving Americans under a hotly debated section of the Patriot Act, according to a highly classified court order disclosed on Wednesday night. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt report from Washington.

The Syrian government said it had recaptured the key town of Qusayr, though it appeared to owe that victory to the help of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite Muslim organization that has allied itself with the regime. Anne Barnard reports from Beirut.

The city of Qum, a center of spirituality in Iran, is drawing the country’s presidential candidates as they seek the support of the city’s influential religious leaders. Thomas Erdbrink reports from Qum, Iran.

More than 70 medical, research and advocacy organizations from 41 countries have agreed to create organized databases of genetic and clinical information that would be open to researchers and doctors all over the world. Gina Kolata reports.

Researchers announced on Wednesday that they had found the earliest fossil primate ever, dating to 55 million years ago. The creature was an early ancestor of the tarsier, and weighed no more than an ounce. John Noble Wilford reports.

Countries around the world are offering incentives to lure foreign entrepreneurs from the United States. But it’s hard to resist the seduction of Silicon Valley. Somini Sengupta reports from San Francisco.

As China seeks to become more competitive, scientists on the job in the United States are being asked to share technology data. Edward Wong reports from Shenzhen and Beijing, and Didi Kirsten Tatlow from Beijing.

The International Monetary Fund released an internal report that sharply criticizes its first bailout program for Greece, saying it seriously underestimated the severity of the country’s downturn. Annie Lowrey reports from Washington.

ARTS “The Encyclopedic Palace,” the main show of the 55th Venice Biennale, is organized by the chief curator of the New Museum of Manhattan. It includes work from more than 150 artists spread over two sites. Holland Cotter reviews from Venice.

In “Manet: The Return to Venice,” a far-ranging exhibition in the Doge’s Palace in Venice, works are shown that illustrate how the Old Masters inspired the French artist. Roderick Conway Morris reviews from Venice.

SPORTS Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic â€" the two finalists from last year’s French Open â€" will meet again this year on Wednesday, but in the semifinal. Christopher Clarey reports from Paris.