SHAKEN AND STIRRED

Although protests have ebbed and authorities are regaining control, activists hope that the recent unrest in China, amplified by the diaspora, could be a harbinger of major changes

- NAMRATA BIJI AHUJA

Teng Biao was born in the small village of Xiaochengzi in northeast China, where he lived a frugal life—financially and intellectually—until he joined Peking University in Beijing at the age of 18. The university threw open before him new avenues and ideas and he was fascinated by the concepts of human rights and liberal democracy. Teng was excited to read books that spoke unabashedly about ideas which were alien to him during his growing up years under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. Teng joined Peking University in

1991, two years after the Tiananmen Square protests. That summer witnessed a series of geopolitical upheavals which altered the existing global order beyond recognition. The fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union and its east European satellites brought a surge of democratic spirit to large swathes of Asia and Europe. Although the CCP stood unwaveringly firm, the global churn saw the rise of human rights activism in China as well.

“In the early 2000s, I was one of the initial promoters of the humanitarian movement in China. It was called the Rights Defence Movement, which succeeded the Xidan Democracy Wall movement of the late 1970s and the Tiananmen Democracy movement in 1989, in which Chinese citizens asserted their constitutional rights through legal means,’’ said Teng. “Finally, my passport was seized. I was kidnapped and tortured thrice—in 2007, 2011 and 2012.’’