審查 in China

審查

[the Chinese characters for censorship]

Censorship (according to The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07):

official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order. It may be imposed by governmental authority, local or national, by a religious body, or occasionally by a powerful private group. It may be applied to the mails, speech, the press, the theater, dance, art, literature, photography, the cinema, radio, television, or computer networks. Censorship may be either preventive or punitive, according to whether it is exercised before or after the expression has been made public. In use since antiquity, the practice has been particularly thoroughgoing under autocratic and heavily centralized governments, from the Roman Empire to the totalitarian states of the 20th cent.

This results, for example, in China not allowing you to view this website from within their borders as it is critical of their limitation on thinking and speaking and reading and expressing opinions.

A few apt quotes regarding censorship:

• "Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it, forever."
  -Nadine Gordimer, “Censorship and its Aftermath”, June 1990, Address to the international Writer’s Day conference, London.
• "... censorship often boils down to some male judges getting to read a lot of dirty books—with one hand."
  -Robin Morgan, The Word of a Woman, part 1 (1992).
• "Assassination is the extreme form of censorship."
  -George Bernard Shaw, The Shewing-up of Blanco Posnet, preface.
• "I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticise their own public officials."
  -President Woodrow Wilson, letter to Arthur Brisbane, April 25, 1917.
• "C'est le propre de la censure violente d'accréditer les opinions qu'elle attaque."
  -Voltare, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne.
• "Ecrire c'est lever toutes les censures."
  -Jean Genet.

These are thoughts for the entire world to keep in mind during the next days as the Olympics transpire under a cloud of censorship of the press and access to information and a denial of rights to the citizens of that country hosting it. Perhaps we can all do more to ensure that ALL speak freely everywhere.

(And we can also demand TRUE justice for those denied it everywhere: If someone is guilty of a crime, he/she can be tried under rules of jurisprudence applicable to all and his guilt can be proven or his innocence proclaimed. Only the guilty should be punished. This also applies to the inmates of Guantánamo.)

And here is Chinese freedom:

Shitao (1642-1707) "Tous les sens sont convoqués dans un survol et une précision jaillissante de liberté," is what Philippe Sollers says about this great painter, thinker, and poet in Éloge de l'infini.