{"id":9692,"date":"2016-12-02T14:42:24","date_gmt":"2016-12-02T06:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=9692"},"modified":"2021-10-20T17:23:17","modified_gmt":"2021-10-20T09:23:17","slug":"zhao-sile-activist-feminist-journalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2016\/12\/zhao-sile-activist-feminist-journalist\/","title":{"rendered":"The Activist Journalist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Zhao Sile juggles her roles as a reporter and Chinese rights advocate<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Rammie Chui<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zhao Sile shows Varsity<\/em> her documentary for Feminist Voices<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dozens of international and local journalists gathered in May this year to celebrate and recognise achievements in human rights reporting at the annual Hong Kong Human Rights Press Awards ceremony. When the grand prize for Chinese News and Features was announced, an elegantly dressed young woman walked onto the stage to receive the prize for her story, \u201cThe Fate of Chinese Rights NGOs\u201d.<\/p>\n

Zhao Sile, a 26-year-old mainland freelance journalist currently writing for the Hong Kong-based online news outlet, Initium Media, told the audience she felt ambivalent, to say the least, about her award.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy stories are derived from others\u2019 suffering,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Zhao, who has received three Human Rights Press Awards, has built her journalistic career on chronicling China\u2019s human rights defenders and their suffering. But for her this is a calling, not a career choice.<\/p>\n

She did not always plan to be a journalist. Zhao studied financial engineering at Nanjing University but she had a long-standing interest in journalism due to her daily exposure to Hong Kong television throughout her childhood. She was born and raised in Guangzhou and was greatly influenced by Hong Kong culture.<\/p>\n

Zhao watched TVB every day throughout her youth and admired the journalists and broadcasters who were able to disseminate news and information to large audiences. When she was around 10 years old, Zhao began to notice the differences between the Hong Kong society she saw on the screen and the mainland society in which she lived.<\/p>\n

By the time she entered her third year at university and had been on an exchange programme in Taiwan, the differences between mainland culture and the outside world had become even clearer to her. She had been approached to write for the now defunct iSun Affairs <\/em>magazine after an editor noticed some articles she had written about the chopping down of Nanjing\u2019s historic plane trees to make way for a new subway line in 2011.<\/p>\n

In Taiwan, she began reporting on the 2012 presidential election for iSun Affairs<\/em>, the Hong Kong-based politics weekly set up by \u00e9migr\u00e9 mainland journalists, while she was on a semester exchange. It was a door-opening and eye-opening experience and she even managed to interview the incumbent Ma Ying-jeou and attend an international press conference held by his challenger Tsai Ing-wen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought this society was miraculous. I, as a mainland student who had stumbled into political reporting and social observation, [found] people were welcoming me, opening doors for me,\u201d says Zhao, who felt a kind of certainty and security she had never experienced before.
\n
\nAround this time, Zhao was contacted online by agents of the Chinese Ministry of State Security \u2013 also well known as the Chinese secret police \u2013 for Taiwanese political information. She began to see what she thought were abnormalities within Chinese society and politics. Zhao says she saw her life in Taiwan as that of \u201ca prisoner in a place with freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

After she returned to the Mainland, Zhao soon discovered the police were investigating her, inquiring about her daily schedule in Taiwan. She quickly realised she was being monitored by the government. Subsequently, policemen approached her at her university where they questioned her for five hours to get information about her involvement with Taiwan politics. Despite these encounters while she was still a student, Zhao continued to write after graduating because, \u201cif you want to do it, then you can.\u201d She says this is a mentality she acquired while reporting in Taiwan.<\/p>\n

Her determination put her in good stead when she went to Wukan later that year to work on an investigative report for iSun Affairs<\/em> in the village that had been rocked by anti-corruption protests just months earlier. She soon discovered reporting in Wukan was very different to reporting in Taiwan. Fear and uncertainty loomed wherever she went, \u201cYou couldn\u2019t tell where it was safe or dangerous, you couldn\u2019t tell what would happen tomorrow,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

In Wukan, Zhao was aware she was working in a very traditional patriarchal society. She saw there were many women involved in the village protests and continuing struggle. These women played many different roles in the struggle but their stories were never told. This made her resolve to tell the story of the women of Wukan and other women in China who were fighting for their rights.<\/p>\n

In 2013, iSun Affairs<\/em> Affairs magazine closed down and after her graduation, Zhao became more actively involved in social issues. She joined Feminist Voices, a media organisation advocating for the protection of women\u2019s rights. There, Zhao and her colleagues called for the abolition of the Custody and Education system which is mainly used to imprison female sex workers for up to two years without trial.<\/p>\n

Zhao applied the skills she learned as a journalist to maximize coverage and discussion on the issue. She wrote 320 letters to government officials requesting the disclosure of information related to the Custody and Education system, which were all turned down. This did not stop Zhao, who sued the government for disclosure of the documents. The ensuing legal battle became a hot topic and generated a lot of media coverage.<\/p>\n

Zhao says her experience working with Feminist Voices helped to shape her views and she now sees herself as combination of journalist and activist. She wants to report on China\u2019s feminists and their stories as there is still a lack of support for, and awareness of, female human rights defenders.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the tightening grip on civil society in the Mainland has seen crackdowns on the feminist movement. The most prominent incident was the arrest and detention of the so-called Feminist Five, who are friends of Zhao. This suppression of feminist voices in the Mainland has severely affected the movement.
\nAround the time of the crackdown on the Feminist Five, Zhao\u2019s then husband, rights lawyer Liu Jianshu, was detained by the government following accusations of his involvement with the Occupy Movement in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

Liu was employed by a legal aid organisation that was being investigated by the government for inciting and spreading ideas related to Hong Kong\u2019s Umbrella Movement due to an incident involving a former employee and his girlfriend.<\/p>\n

Following his arrest, Zhao suspended her work with Feminist Voices in order to concentrate all her efforts and use all possible means to free her husband. She gave interviews to the media and hired lawyers to ensure Liu\u2019s safety. This brought her into conflict with Liu\u2019s parents who were opposed to such a high-profile defence.<\/p>\n

Liu was released within a month but the marriage did not survive the ongoing conflict with Liu\u2019s parents. \u201cI had nothing at all. I lost my family, my job, my advocacy work, my income. I had nothing left,\u201d Zhao says reflecting on the events.<\/p>\n

She says Occupy Central and the Communist Party destroyed her life. \u201cThe most intense feeling is that these things were unavoidable and that I cannot go back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zhao threw herself back into journalism, working as a freelancer for the Hong Kong-based online news site Initium. In her article, The Fate of Chinese Rights NGOs<\/em>, Zhao relates the experiences of her now ex-husband and her own work in rights advocacy. In it, she interviews people with similar experiences and backgrounds and sets out the everyday struggle between conformity and freedom.<\/p>\n

She describes herself as being almost cold-blooded when conducting interviews in order to tap into interviewees\u2019 emotions and stories.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not that I don\u2019t have emotions, but I suppress them when I am writing. Then when I am finished, I release them,\u201d says Zhao. \u201cIt\u2019s like I\u2019ve peeled off a layer of skin after I finish an article.\u201d<\/p>\n

Every story is hard to write; she jokes she wants to retire every time she completes one, but Zhao is determined to soldier on. She says that with freedom of speech and expression coming under threat in Hong Kong she feels a sense of responsibility to continue writing. But she is also keenly aware that with the rising trend of localism in Hong Kong, there is a falling demand for stories related to advocacy and human rights in China.<\/p>\n

Ironically, it is her activist side that drives her to continue her journalism despite all the challenges she may face. \u201cI think that if you don\u2019t do it [report on the issues] then no one will do it, and then it may disappear altogether,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Edited by Zoe Lai<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young and fearless, Zhao Sile is a feminist, human rights activist and journalist. She tells Varsity about the ups and downs of her career and how she persists in writing stories about controversial subjects in face of adversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1816,79],"tags":[315,538,534,539,535],"class_list":["post-9692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-issue-142","category-people","tag-activist","tag-human-rights","tag-journalist","tag-wukan","tag-zhao-sile"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9692"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11831,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9692\/revisions\/11831"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}