Chinese state security officers arrested Wei Jingsheng, an electrician, on March 29, 1979. Among his major crimes: writing essays arguing for democracy. Wei, who would spend 18 years in jail and become a prominent symbol of the power of the written word, was placed in the Beijing detention center. Chinese authorities feared Wei, recognizing that writing has an almost magical power: Words on paper, created by ordinary citizens, have overthrown governments and changed the course of history. So powerful is writing that the beginnings of civilization and history are most often defined as the moment cultures develop it.Wei was beaten, starved, left in a room four and a half feet by nine feet, and kept on constant observation to make sure he never wrote another word. After 18 years, Wei was finally released and brought to America - his body hardly anything but bones, his teeth rotting - where his words and letters he was able to smuggle were made into a book. Can you imagine something like this happening in America? Or what it would be like to live in China, where the idea of democracy would have you thrown in jail for years?
The Power of Writing
By Joel L. Swerdlow
4 comments:
I am glad that America has freedom of speach and it is protected. It would be awful to be punished for writing an essay on something I had an opinion about.
This is indeed food for thought. So often we need to stand back and look a little more objectively at our situation to see things in perspective. Having grown up in an oppressed society myself, I realize the privilege we have here in America to speak freely. Let us use this freedom wisely, that is, use critical thinking to think for ourselves so that we will be able to speak up when necessary.
Americans take many freedoms for granted and we complain because we want more from our government. I'm not saying it's wrong to ask for ligitimate things from our government, but we seem to want everything. If people would just travel or pick up a book they could see how others live and how luck we are to live in the United States.
Americans complian because they are ungrateful.If only they could live in a third world country for two weeks they would be changed forever.
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