Chinese police are trying to disrupt a student pro-workers’ movement by playing videos to its members of forced confessions made by jailed fellow activists.
Authorities are stepping up efforts to quash a new wave of leftist student activity in China. More than 48 students and other activists who had supported a workers’ strike in southern China in July last year remain in detention.
The students, many of whom are members of Marxist student societies at China’s top universities, had tried to help workers unionise at a Jasic Technology factory in Shenzhen. The protest that followed sparked one of the most contentious crackdowns on students since the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 and suggested that authorities in Beijing see Marxist student activists as posing a challenge to their own legitimacy.