The next time you listen to Social Conservatives, Evangelical Christians, teabaggers, and/or others on the Right bleating about “freedom” and “liberty and claiming to be “oppressed”, throw this back at them. Then tell them they have NO idea what they’re talking about. While they pontificate voluminously about oppression and government overreach, some in other parts of the world are actually victims of those things in ways we never could and never would be here in America.
Here in America, it’s a stretch to even think that you could be jailed as a subversive revolutionary. In China, a poem can, and in Zhu Yufu’s case did, result in you being thrown in jail.
In 2007, one year after Chinese activist Zhu Yufu completed a seven-year prison term for “subversion of state power,” he was sentenced to two years in prison for “obstructing official business.” Last March, Chinese officials again detained Zhu, whom they formally arrested and charged the following month with “inciting subversion of state power.” Among the materials prosecutors have cited as evidence in his latest trial is the following poem, which Zhu posted on the Internet. This translation of “It’s Time,” by A.E. Clark, is republished with permission:
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
The Square belongs to everyone.
With your own two feet
It’s time to head to the Square and make your choice.
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
A song belongs to everyone.
From your own throat
It’s time to voice the song in your heart.
It’s time, people of China! It’s time.
China belongs to everyone.
Of your own will
It’s time to choose what China shall be.
