Chinese dissident Zeng Jinyan said she wanted to keep speaking out on human rights despite her fear of intimidation of her and her jailed husband, who had been touted for the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I think that I will not give up on further efforts,” Zeng said in a rare interview after sneaking downstairs from her third floor flat in the Bobo Freedom Village in Beijing to speak to an AFP reporter.
“But sometimes I hesitate,” she said. “I can’t make the decision because I am not completely sure about the risks I am facing.
“Who knows what will happen?”
The 25-year-old has used her Internet blog to challenge China about the detentions and current imprisonment of her husband, Hu Jia.
Hu, 35, had been considered one of the favourites to win the peace prize, but the Norwegian Nobel Committee instead honoured Finnish peace mediator Martti Ahtisaari.
Talking nervously behind a gate at the back entrance of her flat, knowing she was being watched, Zeng discussed her fear of speaking out, but also the need to continue the fight for rights in China.


“A lot of people are scared (of speaking out). Even I have to make efforts to get rid of the fear, but if we are not serious about this, the end result will be even more terrifying,” she said.
“Especially now that we have children, we have to think of them, of the next generation, as I really don’t want my baby to lead the same life as me.”
Zeng has been confined to her flat, where she lives with her 11-month-old daughter, under a form of unofficial house arrest.
During the Beijing Olympics in August, Zeng was taken away by authorities for 16 days to the coastal city of Dalian, in an apparent bid to prevent her activism embarrassing China during the Games.
Hu was jailed in April for three-and-a-half years on subversion charges, after he used blogs, emails, and interviews with foreign reporters to highlight various rights abuses in China.
He has campaigned against government abuses, environmental degradation and the plight of China’s AIDS sufferers.

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