Du Bin is my friend and hometown. He lives in Linshu County, Shandong Province, less than 100 kilometers from my Home town of Shuanghou, and was working as a photographer for the Workers’ Daily when we met in 2001. We became friends when the editor-in-chief, Ms. Wu Yan, arranged for him to come to my hotel to take pictures for an interview with me in the Workers’ Daily. Because of his excellent photography skills, Mr. Zhou Kan, the then New York Times bureau chief in China, liked his photos very much, and later Du Bin moved to the Beijing branch of the New York Times as a photojournalist.
He was witty, shrewd, nimble, and well versed in how the Chinese Communist Party controls its mouthpiece, and therefore how to get around it. As a result, he has always been concerned with public events and social issues in China, and has constantly used his camera to record the evils of the CCP system and expose them in every possible way. Although the State Security and the State Security Guard have been watching him, he has managed to get through twenty years without any danger.
His novel “The Woman on the Head of the Kid”, which exposed the persecution of female Falun Gong practitioners at the Masanjia Labor Camp, caused a great deal of reaction in the world at the Time, and helped the world further understand the evils of the Chinese Communist regime.
On December 27, 2006, my lawyer Li Fangping and Li Jinsong broke through the obstruction of the Chinese Communist Party guards and went from Beijing to meet with me at the detention center, but on Linyi Linxi Road 5, they were beaten with iron bars by the Chinese Communist Party’s instructed thugs, and their wounds reached the skull. At that time, the police did not come out, allowing the criminals to go free (in fact, everyone knows that this is their own work, what police). The two lawyers had to go to the hospital to simply treat the wound, and then returned to Beijing for treatment.
Once they returned to Beijing, many of their lawyer friends took Fang Ping and Jinsong to the lobby of a hotel. At that time, the lobby was filled with state security police, and the situation was a red terror. Just when the event was about to end, Du Bin suddenly appeared from nowhere, took a set of photos quickly with the camera in his hand, recorded the historical scene of Fang Ping’s head wrapped with bandages, and then quickly left …….
I remember in the summer of 2002, I took him and another reporter to interview a barefoot lawyer’s home in Mengyin County. Just as we were about to leave after the interview, the village secretary walked into the courtyard with people from the Propaganda Department of Mengyin County and insisted on inviting us to the village office to talk, saying that the leaders of the Propaganda Department were waiting there (which shows how many eyes in the village are ready to report on the enemy). They refused to answer any questions and just asked us to go with him. After coping, we left in a cab, and the Propaganda Department people then drove up after us. We had no choice but to let the narrow mountain road pass us, and their car, though much better, could not overtake us. I said in the car, “It’s a pity I didn’t get a picture of them.” Dubin said, “I would have taken it long ago. As soon as they entered the yard, I took …… a picture.” After going all the way to the main road a few kilometers away, before they could overtake the front, we stopped and circled them …….
Du Bin, an outstanding citizen who documented China with his camera, was criminally detained by the Chinese Communist Party on December 18, 2020 for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. It’s been five weeks since today (January 20, 2021) and no new news has come out about him.
My friend Du Bin! Can you get enough Food in the detention center? It is a glorious and noble certification to be an enemy of the party state …… Under the high wall grid, the most crucial thing is to take care of your health. We will always fight alongside you until the communist dictatorship goes up in smoke.
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