April 2007 Archives
By Maureen Fan | The Washington Post
April 30, 2007
Olympics an Excuse for Arrests, Amnesty Says
The 2008 Olympic Games have become a catalyst for more repression in China, not less, according to an Amnesty International report released today and aimed at pressuring the Beijing government a year before the start of the world's premier sporting event.
The 22-page report says China's illegal detention and imprisonment of activists and other measures have overshadowed some modest reforms, including how the Chinese legal system reviews death penalty cases and the loosening of some restrictions on the foreign press. The report marks the latest effort by human rights organizations and individuals to try to use the Olympics, and the international spotlight they place on China, to push for broader reforms.
To win its first-ever Olympics bid, China promised in 2001 to improve human rights, increase environmental protections and address the city's traffic problems. The Games are expected to attract 500,000 visitors, including thousands of journalists, giving China a chance to showcase itself before a huge international audience.
In recent weeks, however, various groups have begun arguing that China has not done enough.
Last Wednesday, four American tourists were detained after unfurling a banner at a base camp on Mount Everest that read, "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," a play on the Beijing Olympics motto.
By Evan Mantyk | The Epoch Times (New York)
April 28, 2009
Chinese-Consulate-linked student group attempts to disrupt
NEW YORK—An International human rights lawyer brought his shocking investigative report into allegations of organ harvesting to Columbia University on April 20. The lawyer, David Matas, detailed 31 pieces of evidence proving that adherents of the persecuted spiritual practice Falun Gong are having their organs forcibly removed in state-controlled hospitals in Communist China. The forum was titled, "China's New Genocide."
Those in attendance included medical doctors, community members, as well as university professors and students, including foreign students from a Chinese student club—said to be under the direction of the Chinese Consulate of New York City—who mobilized to disrupt the forum.
Matas's report features recorded interviews with doctors in China, people who have traveled to China for transplants, and the wife of a surgeon who harvested organs from Falun Gong adherents. The report has stirred up the international community, leading some to seriously question the integrity of China's rulers and the appropriateness of its holding the 2008 Olympics, scheduled for Beijing.
"I think that people who turn a blind eye to human rights violations in China are hurting China not helping China," said Matas, who worked with a former Canadian Secretary of State for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour to compile the independent report. The Chinese Communist regime has recently admitted to the harvesting of organs from executed prisoners, likely in an attempt to shift media attention away from the harvesting of Falun Gong adherents' organs, which it denies.
The Communist regime's only reply to Matas' investigation amounted to a tacit acknowledgement of its claims. Matas said the "reply" consisted of a denunciation of Falun Gong and harped on a clerical error it spotted, listing two Chinese cities in the wrong provinces.
Matas said the report hits on deeper ethical issues plaguing China. "Aside from getting the harvesting to stop against Falun Gong practitioners, all three of these should be addressed: the persecution of Falun Gong should stop, the precautions that are not put in place should be put in place [to stop organ harvesting], and prisoners of no matter what source should not be the source of organs."
At the forum, Dr. Charles Lee, a medical doctor and Falun Gong adherent from California, shared his experience of being tortured and brainwashed with communist propaganda while a prisoner of conscience in China for three years.
Lee said, "We are not talking about China as a whole. We are talking about the Chinese Communist regime, who has been persecuting Chinese people for 56 years."
The forum was co-sponsored by Columbia University's Amnesty International chapter and the Falun Dafa Club.
Students Attempt to 'Refute'
Two dozen or so members from the Columbia University Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CUCSSA) attended the forum apparently in an attempt to disrupt and "refute" it.
CUCSSA students held signs bearing communist slogans and hate speech typically used by state-controlled media in Mainland China.
University police were dispatched to the forum after the CUCSSA email was intercepted and university officials alerted to their plans. Police sought to ensure that the students from the CUCSSA didn't interfere with the event, according to a statement from Columbia University.
Two students were forced to leave the forum after disruptively waving offensive signs and interrupting forum speakers.
One event attendee, a Columbia graduate student, remarked afterwards that the CUCSSA group made a "display of obstinance, narrow-mindedness, rigidness, and a lack of independent and critical thinking... and denial." She attributed the group's conduct to "early trauma from years of brainwashing imbedded in the culture [of Communist China] and its political history."
The CUCSSA group was likely put to task by the Chinese Consulate of New York City. The club's advisory board is composed of two high-ranking members from the consulate, Mr. Fanglin Ai and Mr. Da Yao, and the club's website boasts that its constitution was reviewed by the consulate.
A spokesman for the consulate, Mr. Wenqi Gao, said he had not heard of the forum and would not answer any questions regarding Mr. Fanglin Ai or Mr. Da Yao, and hung up the phone when directly asked if he knew who they were. He also refused to acknowledge that Falun Gong practitioners are being persecuted in China, something that is regarded as fact by many international human rights organizations, the United Nations, the U.S. government, and several thousand eye-witnesses who have sought to document such abuses.
Speakers at the forum each devoted some of their time to addressing CUCSSA students and their apparent misunderstandings on events in China.
Matas pointed out that the student club's actions reflect the "demonization of Falun Gong by the Chinese Communist Party" and how "easy it is, under such social conditions, for the Chinese Communist Party to harvest organs from Falun Gong practitioners."
By Radio Free Asia
April 27, 2007
Chinese authorities repeatedly and separately questioned five Americans detained for two days after they staged an Olympic-related protest on Mount Everest before expelling them on Friday, one of the protesters has told Radio Free Asia.
“There were about five questions,” Tibetan-American Tenzin Dorje told RFA’s Tibetan service. “Their main question was whether anyone helped from inside Tibet—who helped us to write in Tibetan and Chinese, and so on. Where did we eat? Where did we go by vehicle?”
On arriving at the base camp, the five—all activists from the U.S.-based Students for a Free Tibet group—unfurled a banner saying, “One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008.” They were identified as Tenzin Dorje, the first known exiled Tibetan to return to the region to protest, Kirsten Westby, Mac Sutherlin, Jeff Friesen, and videographer Shannon Service.
Their protest came on the eve of an announcement of the route to be taken by the Olympic torch to Beijing, which will host the 2008 Games. The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the five were detained for “carrying out illegal activities aimed at splitting China” for which they must be expelled from China.
“Finally we were released this morning and transported to the [Nepal] border post at Drum,” Tenzin Dorje said. “When we were first detained, we were taken to an office right at the base camp of Mount Everest…They started interrogating us there. They didn’t ask us questions in a group but took each individual to a separate room and conducted their interrogation there. One police officer asks questions, another takes notes, and two or three stand by with rifles ready. We were detained in the same office from 9.30 a.m. to about 10 p.m.”
By REUTERS | The New York Times
27 April 2007
China deported five American tourists after they demonstrated for a free Tibet and protested against the 2008 Beijing Olympics at the base of Mount Everest, and said it had urged Washington to prevent a recurrence.
China made ``solemn representation'' with the United States, demanding it ensure American tourists abide by Chinese laws and not engage in any illegal activities, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Friday.
``The U.S. side ... should prevent similar incidents from happening again,'' the ministry said in a faxed statement.
``Tibet is an inseparable part of China. The Chinese government and people will never tolerate any activities aimed at splitting China,'' the ministry said.
It did not identify the five or give details of what they did.
China has ruled Tibet with an iron fist since People's Liberation Army troops occupied the region in 1950 and has vowed to bring economic prosperity to the poor Himalayan region.
Students for a Free Tibet said four protesters, including a Tibetan-American, unfurled a banner reading ``One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008'' in English, and one in Tibetan and Chinese saying ``Free Tibet.''
The four were at a base camp on the Tibetan side of Mount Everest, which is being used by a Chinese team doing trial runs to take the Olympic torch up the mountain, the group said, adding the information had come via text message.
``One World, one Dream'' is the motto for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Beijing officials have said the Olympic torch will enter Tibet after ascending the southern slope of Mount Everest -- known in China by its Tibetan name, Qomalangma -- in Nepal.
The ministry did not give a reason for the discrepancy in the number of protesters.
By Radio Free Asia | www.rfa.org
April 25, 2007
KATHMANDU, April 25, 2007—Chinese authorities have detained four U.S. citizens who staged a protest at the Chinese Everest base camp against Beijing's plans to bring the Olympic torch through the region.
On arriving at the base camp, the activists from the U.S.-based Students for a Free Tibet group unfurled a banner which read "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet 2008," Kirsten Westby from Boulder, Colorado told RFA's Tibetan service by telephone from a holding cell.
"We had everything on video and we wore shirts with a message to the International Olympic Committee that said, 'No torch through Tibet,'" Westby said. The video was later made available on YouTube.
Four detained on Everest
The protesters were identified by a statement on the group's Web site as Tenzin Dorje, the first known exiled Tibetan to return to the region to protest, Kirsten Westby, Mac Sutherlin, and videographer Shannon Service.
They were detained by base camp authorities shortly after staging a brief ceremony in which they lit an Olympic torch and sang the Tibetan National Anthem, members of the group said.
"It's five of us involved in the action and four of us at this point in time have been detained," Westby said by mobile phone from inside what appeared to be a police cell.
"We are sitting at Everest base camp in a small building with bars on the windows. We were detained by the authorities here at the base camp. One of the members of our team who has been detained is a journalist videographer."
By The Associated Press | The New York Times
April 26, 2007
The flood of pirated movies and other goods from China is growing despite increased enforcement, two U.S. business groups said Thursday, appealing to Beijing for tougher action.
Beijing's anti-piracy activity ''is either not enough or not of the right kind,'' the American Chamber of Commerce in China and the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai said in a report released on International Intellectual Property Day.
Forty percent of companies surveyed said the volume of counterfeiting of their products in China increased, while only 4 percent saw a decline, said the report, an annual review of Chinese business conditions.
Chinese product piracy has worsened tensions with Washington, which filed a World Trade Organization complaint this month accusing Beijing of violating trade commitments by failing to protect copyrights, patents and other intellectual property rights.
Beijing should ''continue raising deterrents to IPR infringement,'' the report said. It said the risk of fines and seizures now is so small that Chinese pirates can treat it as a cost of doing business.
By Reuters | via CNN
April 23, 2007
BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- Chinese President Hu Jintao on Monday launched a campaign to rid the country's sprawling Internet of "unhealthy" content and make it a springboard for Communist Party doctrine, state television reported.
With Hu presiding, the Communist Party Politburo -- its 24-member inner council -- discussed cleaning up the Internet, state television reported. The meeting promised to place the often unruly medium more firmly under propaganda controls.
"Development and administration of Internet culture must stick to the direction of socialist advanced culture, adhere to correct propaganda guidance," said a summary of the meeting read on the news broadcast.
"Internet cultural units must conscientiously take on the responsibility of encouraging development of a system of core socialist values."
The meeting was far from the first time China has sought to rein in the Internet. In January, Hu made a similar call to "purify" it, and there have been many such calls before.
But the announcement indicated that Hu wants ever tighter controls as he braces for a series of political hurdles and seeks to govern a generation of young Chinese for whom Mao Zedong's socialist revolution is a hazy history lesson.
"Consolidate the guiding status of Marxism in the ideological sphere," the party meeting urged, calling for more Marxist education on the Internet.
By Lu Jianhui | The Epoch Times
April 22, 2007
HONG KONG—Retired doctor Gao Yaojie of Henan Province, who is named as China's first civil AIDS spokesperson, has been put under house arrest again when she returned to Henan from the U.S. after receiving an award a report states. She sighs mournfully about herself. She believes that death is a relief and she wants to die on the same day that her husband passed away.
The current issue of Asia Weekly published an interview with Dr. Gao that revealed she was placed under house arrest again after she traveled to the U.S. to receive the "Global Women Leaders Award" and returned home to Zhengzhou City. Even her visitors are monitored and have to register.
Dr. Gao said, "I am now being monitored and have become blind, deaf and dumb. The authorities' actions are an outrage. Once I die, they will be relieved. However, I want to let everyone know that my death is due to those corrupt officials."
Dr. Gao took out a cell phone she had been using for years; the message "unregistered SIM card" appeared on it. An hour ago she received a phone call from her younger sister in the U.S. who told Dr. Gao that she had made at least ten phone calls to Dr. Gao's home, but no one answered. Dr. Gao was always at home, but her phone did not ring.
The report said, "It was only then that Gao realized she was being monitored by the Henan local government again and they were trying to block her from having contact with the outside world."
Once before, the Henan authorities sent ten policemen to surround her home. They cut off her phone lines to stop her contact with outsiders in order to prevent her from going to the U.S. to accept the award.
Dr. Gao went to accept her award on February 26.
When she returned to Zhengzhou her phone could be used at first, but soon after it was cut off. Dr. Gao said, "I am not so optimistic regarding the problem of AIDS in China; I don't know what it will be like in the future. I have put my life into it."
The report didn't explain how they were able to conduct the interview with Dr. Gao during her house arrest.
BBC News
20 April 2007
Canada has condemned the authorities in China for sentencing a Canadian Uighur rights activist to life imprisonment.
Huseyincan Celil was jailed for crimes of "splitting the motherland" and participating in terrorist groups, according to China's state media.
Celil, who was born in China but gained Canadian citizenship as a political refugee, was arrested in Uzbekistan and deported to China last year.
Canada said it was concerned about claims that Celil had been tortured.
Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said he was disappointed at the sentence and said the case had harmed relations between the two countries.
"The stakes are very high for Mr Celil, and certainly this case has had a spillover impact on Canada's relationship with China," Mr MacKay told reporters.
By REUTERS | The New York Times
April 18, 2007
LONDON (Reuters) - China will overtake the United States as the world's biggest emitter of heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) either this year or next, the International Energy Agency said on Wednesday.
The estimate is much firmer than the IEA's previous forecast, last November, that on current trends China would overtake the United States before 2010.
``Either this year or next year,'' IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol told Reuters, in answer to the question of when China would overtake the United States.
The IEA is energy adviser to 26 rich nations and Birol is a key author of the Paris-based agency's annual World Energy Outlook report.
China is set to become the world's top carbon emitter just as serious talks start to extend the U.N.-sponsored Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012, potentially heaping pressure on Beijing to take more action on climate change.
A copy of a so-far unpublished Chinese government global warming report, seen by Reuters, rejects binding caps on carbon emissions until the country's modernization, by the middle of this century, opting instead to brake emissions growth.
By RadioFreeEurope * RadioLiberty
April 17, 2007
A court in China's western Xinjiang Province has sentenced the son of a prominent Uyghur activist to nine years in prison on charges of "instigating and engaging in secessionist activities."
China's Xinhua news agency gave no further details on the charges against Ablikim Abdiriyim.
Abdiriyim's mother, Uyghur rights activist Rebiya Kadeer, formerly served as a top government official, but was jailed for five years and later went into exile in the United States.
Two other sons of Kadeer have faced tax-evasion charges.
By Agence France Press | The Nation (Thailand)
April 12, 2007
Beijing - China should loosen its grip on the media beyond the Olympic Games and not just for foreign reporters, the European Union's media commissioner said here Thursday.
"We appreciate that there is some kind of opening with the Olympic Games," European Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding told reporters on the second day of her visit to Beijing.
"I hope that this opening will continue also after the Olympic Games."
Reding said China's communist rulers should loosen the shackles on the domestic press both in the traditional as well as new forms of media.
"My opinion is very simple. I am against any government intervention in the media, whatever the media are, if it is a print or it is a new media," she said.
"It is not the business of the government whatsoever to intervene in whatever way on the Internet. Leave the Internet free without government intervention."
Reding brought the issue up in her discussions with ministers in charge of information and scientific research, saying a free society is a prerequisite for the development of a successful economy.
"I don't believe that you can separate one from the other," she said.
On January 1 China lifted some restrictions for foreign reporters, giving them more freedom to work and travel in a bid to improve its image before the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
But domestic media, including the Internet, continue to be tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party which fears instability and challenges to its power.
The country is ranked by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders as the 163rd out of 167 countries on its global press freedom index.
http://www.nationmultimedia.com
By David Barboza | The New York Times
12 April 2007
XUZHOU, China, April 10 — Behind an unmarked gate in this booming city well north of Shanghai lies a large building at the heart of an investigation over tainted pet food that has killed at least 16 cats and dogs in the United States, sickened 12,000 and prompted a nationwide recall.
This is the property of the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Company, a small agricultural products business that investigators have identified as the source of contaminated wheat gluten that was shipped to a major pet food supplier in the United States.
Some American regulators suspect there was deliberate mixing of substances. They are looking into the possibility that melamine, the chemical linked to the pets’ deaths, was mixed into the wheat gluten in China as a way to bolster the protein content, according to a person who was briefed on the investigation.
Though American and Chinese regulators are searching for answers, local residents and workers are unwittingly providing clues about how the pet food supply may have become contaminated.
The case is also exposing some of the enormous challenges confronting the global marketplace as China becomes a worldwide supplier of agricultural products.
There are strong indications that Xuzhou Anying, a company with a main office that seems to consist of just two rooms and an adjoining warehouse here, possessed substantial supplies of melamine and even sought to buy quantities of it over the Internet.
If melamine was intentionally blended into the wheat gluten, the findings could become a vast setback for agricultural trade between the United States and China, a country known for lax food-safety regulations.
Stephen Sundlof, director of the Center for Veterinary Medicine at the Food and Drug Administration, said at a news conference last week that the agency had found unusually high concentrations of melamine in some batches of wheat gluten, as much as 6.6 percent.
Xuzhou Anying, though, has tried to distance itself from the pet food recall in the United States, saying it does not manufacture or export wheat gluten and acts only as a middleman trading in agricultural goods and chemicals.
In a telephone interview last week, the company’s manager, Mao Lijun, said he had no idea how wheat gluten with his company’s label ended up in the United States or how melamine, a chemical commonly used to make plastics, fertilizer and fire retardant, was mixed into a product that was eventually shipped there.
Mixing melamine and wheat gluten is an unlikely practice here, according to local industry participants. Nonetheless, the company’s wheat gluten, tainted with melamine, ended up in millions of packages sent to the United States and Canada, leading to one of the biggest pet food recalls ever.
ChemNutra, the Las Vegas-based company that acknowledges it imported the wheat gluten from Xuzhou for sale to pet food producers in North America, says Xuzhou Anying provided chemical analyses that showed no impurities or contamination in the packages of wheat gluten.
Though some American scientists still question whether melamine is toxic enough to kill pets, the chemical is not approved for use in human or pet food in the United States. The F.D.A. says it may have led to kidney failure in some animals.
The question that regulators, agriculture experts, and food producers and distributors may now be asking is whether other substances added to food imports can broadly contaminate the American food supply. The F.D.A. has said none of the contaminated wheat gluten leaked into human food.
Here in Xuzhou, a metropolitan region of about 1.6 million, Mr. Mao turned away visitors to his office, declaring that he had nothing more to say on the matter.
But there are indications that Xu- zhou Anying has manufacturing facilities in this area and also had access to melamine, which is sometimes used as a fertilizer in Asia. For instance, in recent months Xuzhou Anying has posted several requests on Web trading sites seeking to purchase large quantities of melamine.
In a March 29 posting on a site operated by Sohu.net, a big Chinese company, officials of Xuzhou Anying wrote, “Our company buys large quantities of melamine scrap all year around.” There were also postings on several other trading sites like ChemAbc.net.
By Joseph Kahn | The New York Times
10 April 2007
BEIJING, April 9 — Gao Zhisheng, one of China’s most outspoken dissidents until his conviction on sedition charges late last year, said in a recorded statement made available over the weekend that while his confession had resulted in a light sentence, it had been made under mental and physical duress.
Mr. Gao’s remarks, recorded by a close friend and offered to journalists in Beijing, were his first public statement since he was convicted in December. He was given a suspended sentence.
His confession brought criticism from some other human rights advocates.
Mr. Gao lives in Beijing with his wife and children. But he said he remained in nearly total isolation, surrounded by plainclothes security forces and forbidden to leave his home, use his telephone or computer or otherwise communicate with the outside world.
He also said that a lengthy confession letter released to the public by the authorities after his conviction, while genuine, had come only after he had been subjected to torture. He said his interrogators repeatedly threatened to punish his wife and children unless he admitted the crimes they said he had committed.
“Although in the past I had some idea of how this group ignores justice, how they nakedly and impudently use evil means to realize their objectives, I really did not understand well enough,” Mr. Gao said, referring to Chinese public security forces.
He said his captors had forced him to sit motionless in an iron chair for extended sessions that totaled hundreds of hours, surrounded him with bright lights and used other torture techniques aimed at breaking his will. He said he had agreed to their terms because they repeatedly intimated that the well-being of his wife and children could not be guaranteed unless he cooperated.
“In the end I decided I could not haggle about my children’s future,” he said.
Mr. Gao, a lawyer, gained prominence among human rights advocates and grass-roots organizers in China and their supporters overseas for his uncompromising denunciations of police and judicial abuses and his scathing open letters to senior Communist Party leaders.
He called attention to what he described as systematic abuses against members of the Falun Gong spiritual sect, which is banned in China. He also helped organize a hunger strike against intimidation tactics used by the country’s State Security forces.
By Howard W. French | The New York Times
April 07, 2007
WHEN Qiu Xiaolong reflects on his life, the path has an air almost of inevitability.
The arc includes an inquisitive childhood in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution; studying poetry in Beijing, where he translated the complete works of T. S. Eliot; traveling in the early days of détente to the United States, where he eventually became a professor; and finally his status today as perhaps the most successful author of detective stories set in China.
Nothing, of course, seemed clear or preordained at the time. Not even, he says, for a single moment.
Life for Mr. Qiu (pronounced Cho) has been a series of accidents, though for him often very fortunate ones. At 54, like most Chinese people of his generation, he has been through an awful lot. But in telling his own story, there is a particular grace about this optimistic man, who pauses at the mention of great coincidences and laughs deeply at the mystery of it all.
Mr. Qiu, who teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, was ostensibly visiting the city of his youth to attend an international literary festival here, and to promote his latest book, “A Case of Two Cities.” This too, however, would be a gross oversimplification.
Shanghai is much more than his hometown. It is his muse, and it has been the one consistent subject of his fiction, the four Inspector Chen detective novels he has written so far, which have sold over 700,000 copies and have been translated into 16 languages, including Chinese.
Chinese? Yes, since leaving the country at the age of 35 in 1988 on a Ford Foundation fellowship, Mr. Qiu has written in English instead of his native language. The choice, which today sometimes displeases Chinese authorities, he said, has been forced upon him by circumstances in his own country — from the bloody antidemocracy crackdown at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, to the many restrictions on speech, especially anything construed as political speech, that have followed.
He was reminded of these restrictions during his current visit home, when he wrote an article in homage of Yang Xianyi, an aging and infirm translator of Chinese classics into English. Mr. Yang became a hero to his generation of intellectuals for his decision to resign from the Communist Party over its handling of the pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square.
When Mr. Qiu approached Chinese magazines to get it published, they were unfailingly polite but unyielding. “We’re sorry,” he said editors would announce with a smile. “It’s very interesting, but for certain reasons, we’re afraid we can’t publish it.”
Mr. Qiu’s first inklings that he might be able to write date from an experience that still looms large in his life: the hounding and humiliation of his father, a businessman who was labeled a class enemy, or tagged “black” in the language of the Cultural Revolution.
While his father was hospitalized for cataract surgery and temporarily unable to see, he was ordered to write a self-criticism. Mr. Qiu, who was in his early teens at the time, stood in for him, writing the document.
By Alexa Olesen | Associated Press | via (uncensored) yahoo!news
06 April 2007
China has denied responsibility for several pet deaths in the United States which U.S. authorities blame on a batch of chemically contaminated wheat gluten from China, state media reported.
But differing statements on whether China has even exported wheat gluten to the U.S. revealed confusion that points to serious problems in the regulation of China's exports and its dismal record on food safety.
"China has nothing to do with the pet poisoning in the United States," said a report in the official newspaper of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which monitors the export of food, animals and farm products.
The China Inspection and Quarantine Times said in a report on its Web site dated Tuesday that as of March 29, 2007, China had "never exported wheat or wheat gluten to ... the United States."
This contradicted comments by two employees at the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co., this week who said the company had shipped wheat gluten to the United States.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has identified Xuzhou Anying as the supplier of the tainted gluten.
On Thursday, the Chinese company accused of selling chemical-tainted wheat gluten linked to the pet food deaths said that most of its sales were domestic, raising the possibility that people or animals in China might have been exposed to the chemical.
China has had problems with domestic food safety. In October, more than 200 students and teachers had food poisoning at a school in southern China. There have been at least eight other such incidents in the past year.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week blocked wheat gluten imports from the Xuzhou Anying Biologic Technology Development Co. in the eastern Chinese city of Xuzhou, saying they contained melamine, a chemical found in plastics and pesticides.
Anying produces and exports more than 10,000 tons of wheat gluten a year, according to its Web site, but only 873 tons were linked to tainted U.S. pet food, raising the possibility that more of the contaminated product could still be on the market in China, or abroad.
Li Cui, director of Anying's foreign exports, told The Associated Press on Thursday the United States is the company's only overseas market for wheat gluten, although it wasn't clear if the company had more than one customer in the U.S.
Li, Mao and other employees on Friday answered their phones but immediately hung up without comment.
Reporters Without Borders | Reporters Sans Frontières
March 30, 2007
The blocking of access to the Observatoire International des Crises website (www.communication-sensible.com) within China since late February after it posted an article, entitled “Shanghai, mon amour,” (Shangaï, my love) warning companies about the risks of trading with China shows that Chinese online censorship is by no means limited to “subversive” political content, Reporters Without Borders said today.
“Internet filtering is not just a problem for political activists, it also affects those who do business with China,” the press freedom organisation said. “How do you assess an investment opportunity if no reliable information about social tension, corruption or local trade unions is available? This case of censorship, affecting a very specialised site with solely French-language content, shows the government attaches as much importance to the censorship of economic data as political content.”
The press freedom organisation added: “The free flow of information online is not only a human rights issue, it is essential to lasting economic growth and the creation of solid trade relations with other countries.”
The Observatoire International des Crises (OIC) is a French organisation that produces a magazine on crisis management methods for businesses. The article that prompted China’s censorship, written by Didier Heiderich, said: “The Middle Kingdom has managed to divert international investments for its benefit, obtain technologies without anything in return other that the promises arising from our own imagination, gag its dissidents - including those abroad - and ensnare the west in its golden clutches (...) Perhaps it is time to realise this before we are closed in the Chinese trap for good.”
The Epoch Times
March 31, 2007
Ma Jian is the branch manager of the French PCM Pumping Industry company's Beijing office. He also manages the company's business in northern Asia. On February 28, 2007, Ma was arrested by Beijing police as he was working. He was secretly sent to a brainwashing class where he was tortured for 20 days. On March 19, Ma was transferred to the Detention Center in Beijing's Dongcheng District.
Ma, 38, has a Masters degree in Business Administration. Ma has worked in the French PCM company for nearly four years. He began to practice Falun Gong in 1996. Ma has remained steadfast in his practice even after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began to persecute Falun Gong in 1999.
According to a report on Clearwisdom.net, Ma was arrested by the police at about 5 p.m. on February 28. The arrest took place in Ma's office. Eyewitnesses revealed that Ma was beaten by police during the arrest. Ma's whereabouts had been since unknown after his arrest.
Ma's wife Yao Lian now resides in Canada. She has appealed to the international community in an effort to draw attention to her husband's unlawful arrest. Falun Gong practitioners in France and Canada are working on rescuing Ma.
On March 24, Yao and Amnesty International co-hosted a press conference in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Yao appealed to the international community to help rescue her husband. Mr. Sushil Handa from Amnesty International's Montreal branch called for international attention to the CCP's continuous cruel persecution of Falun Gong practitioners in mainland China. He also called for attention to the CCP's violation of human rights and international human rights treaties. The press conference was attended by many media groups including CBC French Radio.
Following Ma's unlawful arrest, his family went to the Dongcheng branch of Beijing Public Security Bureau to request information. A police officer from the Dongcheng branch denied that Ma was being held under arrest. Ma's father-in-law and mother-in-law were later asked to sign an arrest document for Ma Jian. On the written arrest document, the arrest date was many days later than the actual date on which Ma was arrested by police. Because of the inconsistencies in the record, Ma's in-laws refused to sign.
Subsequent to Ma's arrest, the PCM company sent a letter to the Beijing Public Security Bureau through the French Embassy in Beijing, inquiring why their employee in Beijing had been arrested. They have received no reply. When the company attempted to hire a lawyer to defend Ma, they were told that lawyers in China are not allowed to defend practitioners of Falun Gong.
By Radio Free Asia
29 March 2007
Chinese authorities in the northwestern Xinjiang region are forcing tens of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs into producing almonds for the county government without pay, local residents and one official say.
The labor recruiting drive began in Yarkand county near Kashgar on March 6, and it requires every Uyghur household to send one person and a donkey cart to help in a massive expansion of the region’s traditional almond industry.
The wife of a village official in Yaqa Eriq hamlet who answered the phone confirmed the existence of the unpaid labor conscription drive, which is known in the local Uyghur language as “hasha.”
“It’s been seven or eight days since the hasha started,” she told RFA’s Uyghur service. “It’s in the river valley between Yaqa Eriq and the Zarapshan River.”
'A lot of people'
“There are many places that have to be cultivated. So there are a lot of people there,” she said, confirming reports that around 100,000 people had been forced to take part.
We are now digging pits, and burying dung in the pits...They said 10 days at first. But they say it may take 20 days now.
Uyghur farmer in Yarkand county
Asked if the laborers would get paid for their work, she said: “Probably not,” adding that those who didn’t obey the order would be subject to “criticism” from local officials.
A secretary in the Yarkand county government confirmed that there was a major cultivation project in the area. “Yes, they are cultivating land there,” he said. “An almond base.” He said the project was being overseen by the deputy secretary of the county Communist Party committee, Rishat Osman.
By Daniel Schearf | Voice of America | voanews.com
March 31, 2007
The Chinese government is facing increasing calls for a boycott of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, in part because of Beijing's refusal to condemn the Sudanese government's actions in the war-torn Darfur region. Daniel Schearf reports from Beijing.
Celebrities and politicians are adding their voices to calls for a boycott of the Beijing 2008 Olympics to push China to use its leverage on Khartoum.
Advocates of a boycott say China, as the largest buyer of Sudan's oil and a veto-wielding member of the United Nations Security Council, is in a unique position to pressure Sudan. But they say Beijing ignores violence by government-backed militias in Darfur to maintain access to Sudanese oil.
American actress and U.N. Children's Fund goodwill ambassador Mia Farrow recently co-wrote an article in The Wall Street Journal calling for a boycott of the games and accusing Beijing of "bankrolling Darfur's genocide."
French presidential candidate Francois Bayrou has said French athletes should boycott the Beijing Olympics to force China to act on Darfur.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang says such efforts are misguided and self-serving.
"We do not think it is proper to connect the Darfur problem with the Olympics and we do not think it will be popularly accepted or echoed by people around the world," he said. "People are wrong if they think they can win votes or increase their reputation [this way]."
Khartoum is accused of supporting militias that have raped and killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in Darfur and left millions homeless in a four-year fight against rebels in the region.
Qin says China is just as concerned about peace in Darfur as the rest of the world.
But while China says it supports the deployment of U.N. peacekeepers, it continues to sell weapons to Khartoum, and last year, along with Russia, abstained from voting on sanctions against Sudan.
The U.S. has accused the Sudanese government of supporting genocide and has led an effort to get U.N. peacekeepers into Darfur.
These are not the first calls for a boycott of the 2008 games.
The media freedom organization Reporters Without Borders started calling for a boycott in 2001, just after the International Olympic Committee chose China to be the 2008 host.
Vincent Brossel, the head of the Asia Pacific Desk for Reporters Without Borders, says Beijing does not deserve to host the Olympics, because it continues to restrict freedom of speech and persecutes people for their political and religious beliefs.
"The human rights problem is still there and there is a concern, even at the IOC, that the human rights situation can jeopardize the success of the games and can put in danger all these universal values that are supposedly supported by the games," he said.
Brossel says tens of thousands have signed an online petition to support a boycott, but he says no government supports it. He also acknowledges arguments that having Beijing host the Olympic Games may also help to improve human rights by putting the international spotlight on China.
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