January 2009 Archives

The New Straits Times Press (Malayasia) - By BERNAMA
January 29, 2009

Malaysia Airlines (MAS) has removed chicken from its inflight menu for flights out of China, effective today.

This follows the government's indefinite ban on chicken imports from that country.

In a statement here, the airline said fish, mixed seafood and beef would be served, depending on the sectors.

However, it said chicken would remain on the menu for flights out of Malaysia, as the meat here is sourced from local farms.

Its general manager for inflight services, Hayati Ali said the safety of passengers was the priority for MAS.

>> Original source

By Karl Malakunas - Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
January 23, 2009

Angry parents of victims in China's milk scandal accused the government Friday of holding show trials and giving little help to their sick children, after the high-profile sentencing of 21 people.

A court in northern China on Thursday gave two men the death penalty and jailed 18 others for terms ranging from two years to life for their roles in the poisoning of milk last year with the industrial chemical melamine.

The melamine was mixed into watered-down milk in what was apparently a widespread practice to give dairy products the appearance of higher protein content.

The state-run media said the verdicts had delivered justice to the families of the six babies who died and nearly 300,000 others who fell ill after drinking the contaminated milk last year.

But parents contacted by AFP disagreed.

"Of course the verdicts are not just, especially the verdict of Tian Wenhua," said Li Xuemei, the mother of a sick baby, referring to a life term given to the former boss of the main dairy firm implicated in the scandal.

Li and other parents wanted the death penalty for Tian, 66, a former member of China's ruling Communist Party and head of the Sanlu dairy company who is the highest-profile person to have faced court over the scandal.

They questioned whether she may have got a lighter sentence because of her contacts with powerful people.

They also asked why no government officials had been charged, while referring to long-standing accusations that local authorities in the northern city of Shijiazhuang where Sanlu is based were part of a cover up.

"So far no-one in the Shijiazhuang government has been punished," said Ma Hongbin, the father of a sick baby in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, who is informally representing other parents.

>> Complete report

By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
January 21, 2009

China has censored parts of the new US president's inauguration speech that have appeared on a number of websites.

Live footage of the event on state television also cut away from Barack Obama when communism was mentioned.

China's leaders appear to have been upset by references to facing down communism and silencing dissent.

English-language versions of the speech have been allowed on the internet, but many of the Chinese translations have omitted sensitive sections.

Selective editing

China keeps a firm grip on the country's media outlets and censors their news reports as a matter of routine.

Like the rest of the world, it has been keenly following developments in the United States; President Obama's inauguration was front page news.

But the authorities seem not to want ordinary Chinese people to read the full, unexpurgated version of the president's speech.

In his inauguration address, President Obama said: "Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions."

That entire passage was retained for an English-language version of the speech that appeared on the website of state-run Xinhua news agency.

But in the Chinese-language version, the word "communism" was taken out.

President Obama's comments addressed to world leaders who "blame their society's ills on the West" also fell foul of the censor's red pen.

"To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history," the president said.

Once again, Xinhua included the passage in full in its English version, but the sentence was taken out of the Chinese translation.

Similar changes were made to versions of the speech that appeared on other websites based in China.

And websites were not the only media organisations that struggled to report some of the comments made by President Obama.

China Central Television, the country's main broadcaster, aired the speech live with a simultaneous Chinese translation.

But when the translator got to the part where President Obama talked about facing down communism, her voice suddenly faded away.

The programme suddenly cut back to the studio, where an off-guard presenter had to quickly ask a guest a question.

Censoring sensitive news reports is nothing new in China, where officials go to great lengths to cut critical material.

These officials appear a little nervous about the arrival of a new US President, who might not be as friendly to China as President George W. Bush.

As an editorial in the state-run China Daily put it: "Given the popular American eagerness for a break from the Bush years, many wonder, or worry to be precise, whether the new president would ignore the hard-earned progress in bilateral ties."

>> Original source

By Edward Wong | THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 16, 2009

A legal advocate who was arrested after applying to hold a protest in Beijing during the Olympic Games in August has been sentenced to three years in prison, said a lawyer who has been asked to represent the man in the appeals process.

The advocate, Ji Sizun, 58, was sentenced on Jan. 7 by a judge in the city of Fuzhou for forging official seals and documents, the lawyer, Lin Kaihua, said Thursday.

Mr. Ji was one of many victims of a tactic employed by the central government during the Beijing Olympics that has angered human rights advocates and has raised questions about whether the International Olympic Committee should have put more pressure on the Chinese government to respect human rights and freedom of speech.

In the prelude to the Games, the government announced that it had designated three parks in Beijing as legal protest zones and that anyone could apply to hold protests in them. When people did apply, however, their requests were ignored or they were detained and arrested.

The government did not allow a single protest to be held in any of the parks. In the most infamous incident of would-be protesters being arrested, two women in their 70s were detained for applying to hold a protest over a land dispute. The women were sentenced to re-education through labor, a punishment handed down to dissidents without judicial review.

Mr. Ji, from the coastal province of Fujian, met with a similar fate. He arrived in Beijing planning to hold a protest against government corruption, an issue that angers many Chinese and that undermines the legitimacy of the government.

On Aug. 9, Mr. Ji went to the Deshengmenwai police station to apply for a permit to protest at the Purple Bamboo Park, one of the three designated protest areas. Mr. Ji had several reporters accompany him because he feared being arrested. He tried to submit his application but was questioned intensely by police officers. The reporters who accompanied him said they were harassed. Mr. Ji left the station that day, but returned two days later to check on the status of his application. The police arrested him then.

He was sentenced by the Taijiang District People's Court in Fuzhou. No one answered the telephone at the court when calls were made seeking comment on Thursday.

Mr. Lin, the lawyer, said that Mr. Ji had asked for his representation during the appeals process but had yet to raise the money to pay the legal fees.

Jonathan Ansfield contributed reporting.

>> Original source

By Agence France-Presse | THE NEW YORK TIMES
January 12, 2009

Amnesty International said Monday that its Web site had again been blocked in China and it urged the government to reopen access to it immediately. Roseann Rife, deputy director of the Asia-Pacific program of Amnesty, a London-based human rights group, expressed fear that the action indicated an expanded crackdown by the Chinese authorities, "particularly as 2009 will see a number of important commemorations." She was referring to the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests in Beijing, the 30th anniversary of the Democracy Wall movement and the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation.

>> Original source

The Associated Press | MSNBC.com
January 08, 2009

Veteran campaigner attempted to establish opposition political party

A 65-year-old democracy activist who tried to set up an opposition party in China has been sentenced to six years in jail, a human rights group said Thursday.

A court in Hangzhou, a prosperous city in eastern Zhejiang province, sentenced Wang Rongqing on Wednesday on charges of subverting state power for organizing the banned China Democracy Party, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Wang was detained in June, two months before the Olympic Games started, the group said. Wang's brother, Wang Rongyao, confirmed the sentence. The Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court could not be immediately be reached for comment.

Wang has been repeatedly harassed and detained by police during his years of activism, which started in the late 1970s as China's hard-line Maoist era came to a close and some started calling for democracy. He was detained for two months in 1999.

'Good spirits'
"He was not in good physical condition and he stood in court with the assistance of the police, but he was in good spirits," said Zou Wei, a friend and fellow dissident of Wang who was in court Wednesday.

Founded by dissidents in mid-1998, the China Democracy Party was quashed just six months later by the Communist Party, which allows no challenge to its political monopoly. Dozens of activists were arrested and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison, most on charges of subverting state power.

China allows a small number of officially recognized alternative parties, although they serve as advisers to rather than competitors to the ruling Communist Party.

More than 100 co-signers of a Chinese petition calling for democracy and an end to the dominance of the Communist Party have been harassed or summoned for questioning by police, Chinese Human Rights Defenders said Thursday.

The group said the signers were pressured by police because of their support for "Charter 08," an unusually open call for civil rights and political reforms released early last month.

Lawyers involved in the case could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The rights group also said efforts have been made to stifle information about the charter on the Internet. Searches for "Charter 08" on the three main search engines in China -- Baidu, Google.cn and Yahoo -- turn up blank pages. China routinely censors Web sites that contain unsavory or subversive information.

Calls to the Ministry of Public Security were not answered Thursday.

>> Original source

By Matthias Kehrein and Florian Godovits | The Epoch Times
January 05, 2009

The Uighurs, a nine million Muslim minority, residing in Eastern Turkistan in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region, are one of the worst abused people at the hands of the Chinese regime.

In contrast to worldwide awareness of problems in Tibet, the Western media and politicians give little attention to these people's dilemmas. This might be due to cleverly manipulated Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, making people believe the Uighurs are allied with a network of Al Qaeda operatives.
 
The Uighurs have now chosen a spokesperson who shares the same charisma as the Tibetan leader--Rebiya Kadeer, once China's wealthiest woman. She was a respected businesswoman back in the 1990s and was elected to speak before the National People's Congress in Beijing on behalf of the Xinjiang Region. She chose not to hide her people's plight before the Chinese leadership and eventually found herself in solitary confinement in a Xinjiang forced labor camp, in China. Her ordeal lasted six years. She would hear agonizing screams from youths in neighboring cells whose will the abusers tried to break.
 
She is untiringly championing the cause of her people, in spite of threats and intimidation for those of her eleven children who had opted to remain in Xinjiang. [Please see addendum at the end of this interview]
 
The Uighur World Congress took place in Berlin, Germany between April 21 and 23, 2008. Rebiya Kadeer spoke with us about the plight of the Uighurs, her hopes, her views on the international community, and the parallels between her country and Tibet.
 
Epoch Times (ET): Why do so few Western media outlets report about the Uighurs and so much about Tibet?

Rebiya Kadeer (RK): The main reason is the Dalai Lama, who had raised so much awareness in the West these past years. He was fortunate to flee with some of his people and his government. Since he is also the Tibetan spiritual head, people recognized him as Tibet's leader.

For us, the Soviets coerced the Uighur leadership to negotiate with Mao, and they were supposed to fly to mainland China. There were assertions the plane had exploded, and seven Uighur leaders--the president and other ministers--were killed. Since then, the Soviets/Chinese control our territory. Our political administration was unable to flee.

Following that, the Chinese regime dispersed all other Uighurs who could have become leaders, making it impossible to select one overall leader for all the worldwide Uighur organizations.
 
The Chinese regime had dispatched numerous spies and informants in this game of "Divide and Conquer." But this time, following China's severe, grave suppression, the Uighurs have decided to unite. The international community and media had shown Tibet enough interest during the past few years. I am now the voice for the Uighurs.
 
Following the Tibetan protests, mostly Uighur women staged peaceful protests in Hotan on March 23 and 24. The Uighurs are convinced that should Tibet become free, we will also become free! Although the general public is largely unaware of our plight, politicians and scientists know of our dilemma. Even China looks upon us as a sensitive/delicate problem to deal with.

ET: What has it been like since the protests?

RK: Right now the circumstances are horrible. Chinese agents hunt down Uighurs and incarcerate them. Sometimes these CCP people go house-to-house, searching--abominable!

ET: Were there other recent demonstrations in East-Turkistan?

RK: Uighurs have protested the Chinese regime since the CCP had occupied our nation. The head judge of the highest court declared during a January 18, 2008 conference that there were 1,013 instances of unrest. That shows that similar protests have happened. The official line is that these were all "anti-government or separatists' activities."

ET: Forty-five Uighurs were arrested and accused of having planned terrorist activities; what is your opinion?

RK: Because of the events in Tibet, China has lost her credibility around the world. The world pays much attention to China. Now, China aims to draw attention away from herself.

Concurrently, the Chinese people focus on the regime's action at home, because the CCP hopes to direct the population's attention and sentiments toward [a new-found] nationalism, away from the regime's problems. The best "out" the regime had was the Uighurs. The regime once again deceived the Chinese population into believing Uighurs were terrorists, creating the whole story by concocting this ploy.

Initially, the Chinese regime insisted the airplane explosion and death of the Uighur politicians was factual, but never provided any evidence or proof. Following that, they arrested 45 of us, claiming these 45 wanted to abduct foreign journalists, reporters, and tourists. The CCP regime attempted to make these 45 of our countrymen appear to be like Bin Laden followers.
 
The anti-terrorist effort is a worldwide quest. That would have demanded of the CCP regime to prompt an international investigation to determine if these suspected terrorists are what the regime claimed them to be.

Nevertheless, the Uighurs are banned from ever engaging legal representation to defend themselves against unfounded accusations. The Chinese regime would extract confessions under torture, to make the unjustly accused confess things they had never done; even Uighurs detained at Guantanamo were found innocent! If the 45 in question were tried according to international law, I am convinced they would be found innocent.
[...]
 
ET: What could the West do to help Uighur?

RK: My hope for the long run is for the international community to consider our problem the way the Tibetan situation is handled. The international community could send investigation teams and reporters to discover what is happening with the Uighurs; to urge the Chinese during bilateral dialogue to respect our rights; to have Western leaders meet with us and express their empathy with our plight; to negotiate with the Chinese regime for a peaceful solution to our concerns. It would be marvelous if Western nations could dispatch teams to inspect our prisons and execution chambers; to witness how Chinese nationals torture and execute our people. The world needs to know!
 
Following incarceration at the hands of Chinese Communist rulers for allegedly having connections to national separatist activities, Ms. Kadeer was released into U.S. custody on March 15, 2005 and has since lived in Washington, D.C. with her family, except for her children who are still in Xinjiang, as mentioned in the above article.

>> Original source

By REUTERS | The Epoch Times
January 02, 2009

BEIJING--A group of parents whose children fell ill from drinking tainted Chinese milk have been detained by police apparently trying to block them from holding a news conference, one of the fathers said on Friday.

At least six children have died from kidney stones and more than 290,000 made ill from the melamine-contaminated milk, battering already dented faith in China-made products and prompting massive recalls around the world.

Tian Wenhua, 66-year-old former general manager of the now bankrupt Sanlu Group, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges of "producing and selling fake or substandard products". She is expected to be sentenced to life imprisonment, the Beijing News said.

One of the fathers, whose 13-month-old son suffers from severe kidney stones, said some parents, including himself, were taken to a labor camp on the outskirts of Beijing.

"We are under house arrest now, and they did not give us any reasons why they kept us here," the father told Reuters by phone.

Five parents had been detained, but the rest of the group held a news conference on Friday, calling attention to the plight of the children.

"The government said all the medical care is free, but when it comes to the local level, things change. I have already paid more than 50,000 yuan ($7,300) for the operation and cure," said the father, a migrant worker from Sichuan province.

Melamine, an industrial compound used in plastic and fertiliser, was added to milk to cheat protein tests.

Some 22 dairy firms, led by Sanlu, have apologised and asked forgiveness for the contamination.

"We are deeply sorry for the harm caused to the children and society," they said in a New Year text message to millions of phone subscribers.

"We sincerely apologise for that and we beg your forgiveness."

>> Original source

By Agence France Presse - via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
December 31, 2008

The 'Made-in-China' brand has been tarnished repeatedly in recent years as Chinese consumer goods and food have been recalled around the world after being found to be unsafe.

Here is a list of the key cases and some of the Chinese government responses:

- 2006-2007 - The cancer-causing red dye Sudan IV is found in a series of products in China ranging from cosmetics to poultry and chilli powder, despite being banned in the country.

- March 2007: Pet food in North America and elsewhere around the world is recalled after animals start dying in large numbers. The tainted ingredients turn out to be wheat and rice derivatives from China, to which the chemical melamine -- normally used to make plastic -- had been added to give the appearance of higher protein content.

- June 2007: Countries in several parts of the world recall Chinese-made toothpaste that is found to contain a chemical used in antifreeze for vehicles. China bans it after reports that dozens may have died in Latin America from ingesting it as an ingredient in medicine.

- June 2007 - Importers of Chinese toys to the United States issue recalls after some of these are found to be coated with toxic lead paint. Similar products are later banned in several countries.

- June 2007 - The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recalls 450,000 tyres made by leading manufacturer Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. The company denies that its tyres are defective.

- August 2007: Mattel recalls over 18 million Chinese-made toys over design faults and because some were coated with lead paint, although the US toy company takes responsibility for most of the problems and apologises.

- January 2008: At least 10 consumers in Japan fall ill after eating Chinese-made dumplings, causing a major scare. Chinese officials deny that the contamination originated in their country.

- September 2008: Countries around the world recall or ban Chinese dairy products after melamine is found in milk. At least six infants were known to have died, and 294,000 fell ill after ingesting the tainted milk.

- October 2008: The tainted milk scandal widens when melamine is found in eggs made by a Chinese company, which leads to confirmation the chemical had been added to animal feed.

- December 2008: China bans the use of 17 substances -- some commonly used as disinfectants or insecticides -- as food additives as part of a four-month safety campaign launched following the tainted milk scandal.