Freedom of Press: June 2008 Archives
By Jim Yardley | The New York Times
22 June 2008
The visit of the Olympic torch to the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, came and went in about two hours on Saturday. Leaders of the ruling Communist Party probably exhaled once the flame was trundled onto an airplane without incident and flown out of a city that only three months ago had erupted in violent anti-Chinese protests.
But if Chinese leaders were anxious to avoid protests, they did not avoid using the torch relay as a stage to again lash out at the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. Zhang Qingli, the Communist Party secretary of Tibet, stood beneath the Potala Palace, the historic seat of the Dalai Lama, and bid farewell to the flame with a speech that at times was itself fiery. "Tibet's sky will never change and the red flag with five stars will forever flutter high above it," Mr. Zhang said, according to Reuters. "We will certainly be able to totally smash the splittist schemes of the Dalai Lama clique."
The broadside against the Dalai Lama punctuated an abbreviated torch relay in Lhasa that was partly broadcast on state television and that quickly brought criticism from pro-Tibetan groups outside China. For months, advocates for Tibet have demanded in vain that China not take the torch through Lhasa.
"The torch relay in Lhasa is China's latest episode in a series of betrayals of everything the Olympics represent," Kate Woznow, campaign director of Students for a Free Tibet, said in a statement. "Parading the torch through Lhasa while Tibetans live under virtual martial law is China's most egregious exploitation of the Games yet."
The Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan regions of western China have been under a security crackdown since March, when violent protests broke out in Lhasa and spread. China has accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding the uprising, a charge he denies. Last week, he called on Tibetans not to protest when the torch passed through Lhasa.
Only a few months ago, the controversy in Tibet appeared likely to cast a pall over the Summer Olympics in Beijing. China had designed the global torch relay as the longest and grandest ever. But it had become the occasion for large protests in London, Paris, San Francisco and elsewhere, as pro-Tibet advocates clashed with Chinese supporters. Talk of boycotting the opening ceremonies of the Games spread through European capitals.
By Agence France Presse
June 21, 2008
It is unacceptable for China to block Internet content, a European Commissioner said Friday, calling the Internet a free and open medium.
"We say for instance to the Chinese, very clearly so, that their blocking of certain Internet content is absolutely unacceptable," said Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Information Society and Media.
"So Europe speaks up in this sense, and is fighting for the freedom of speech and the freedom to receive the news," she said.
Her comments to the Foreign Correspondents' Association of Singapore came after she was asked what concerns she had about freedom of expression in Asia.
China maintains some of the strictest Internet censorship in the world with its "Great Firewall" regularly blocking any kind of information or content that the ruling communist party views as improper, unhealthy or anti-China.
An activist said in Tokyo on Thursday that Chinese censorship of the Internet and restrictions on reporting have worsened despite Beijing's pledge to improve media freedom ahead of the August Olympic Games.
China has actually tightened control of the Internet as the Olympics approaches, said Zhang Yu, a member of the Independent Chinese PEN Centre, a branch of International PEN, a writers' association.
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS | The New York Times
18 June 2008
A retired Chinese schoolteacher who criticized the construction of schools that collapsed in last month's powerful earthquake has been detained, a Hong Kong-based human rights organization said Wednesday.
Police detained Zeng Hongling in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province, on charges of ''inciting state subversion,'' according to the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
Zeng wrote three articles for an overseas Web site that criticized the shoddy construction of many schools that collapsed during the devastating 7.9-magnitude quake centered in Sichuan, killing hundreds of children.
The series of articles titled ''My personal experience in the earthquake'' appeared on www.ObserveChina.com, a Chinese-language Web site hosted in the United States. One was titled ''Earthquake relief efforts fully reveal the true face of Party officials,'' which questions the role of Sichuan officials in relief efforts.
School collapses have become one of the most heated issues in the earthquake recovery process -- and one that local communist leaders seem anxious to suppress.
State-controlled media have largely ignored the topic and parents and volunteers who have questioned authorities have been detained and threatened.
By Cara Anna - The Associated Press - via ABC NEWS
June 15, 2008
A photograph hinting at shoddy school construction was pulled from an exhibition about last month's devastating earthquake, an apparent indication of rising government sensitivity over an issue that has already prompted angry protests from parents of children killed.
The photo showed a hand clutching a twisted piece of steel rebar that looked no thicker than a pencil, taken from the ruins of the middle school in the town of Juyuan that was one of 40 that collapsed in the May 12 quake.
The picture featured prominently among a collection of quake artifacts when it opened to the public last week. By the weekend, though, it was gone. Organizers were reluctant to say exactly why.
"We don't know if we were told to remove the photo," said Wu Zhiwei, assistant to the general manager of Museum Cluster Jianchuan, the organizer of the exhibit and the largest privately run museum in China. "And if we were told to remove the photo, we're not sure we could tell you."
School collapses have become one of the most charged issues in the quake recovery process, and one that local communist leaders seem anxious to suppress.
The entire state-controlled media have almost completely ignored the issue, apparently under the instructions of the propaganda bureau. Parents and volunteers helping them who have questioned authorities about the issue have been rounded up, detained, and threatened.
By Edward Wong | The New York Times
June 13, 2008
Parents who lost children in a particularly horrific school collapse during the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province scrapped their plan for a one-month mourning ceremony on Thursday after local officials warned them not to go through with it, two of the parents said.
In telephone interviews, the two parents said the group's members were told not to contact one another and not to stay in the town of Juyuan, the site of the collapse of a middle school that left hundreds of children crushed to death.
Officials spoke to some parents on Wednesday night to persuade them to cancel the memorial service, said the two parents, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal by the government.
On Thursday, the government used buses to take different groups of parents to different sites outside town, the two parents said. There, the parents were given food and water.
Officials have offered the parents who lost a child the equivalent of $1,740 on behalf of the central government and $435 on behalf of the local education department, the two parents said. The parents have been told that they will get more than $4,600 from the central government, but that the money will be distributed in stages.
Government officials could not be reached on Thursday evening for comment.
An estimated 10,000 students died in school collapses during the 7.9-magnitude earthquake that ravaged southwest China. In late May, parents from several schools began holding vigorous protests to denounce corruption and to call for investigations into the collapses. The protests spiraled into the biggest political challenge to the government in the aftermath of the earthquake.
So starting last week, local officials and police officers began clamping down on the protests. More than 100 parents who lost children in Juyuan protested in front of the courthouse in the nearby town of Dujiangyan on June 3, only to be surrounded by police officers. Several crying mothers clutching framed portraits of their dead children were hauled off to a neighboring building while journalists were barred from covering the event.
Police officers and soldiers also set up cordons around the most prominent collapsed schools and prevented journalists from approaching.
The night before the June 3 protest, officials in Juyuan persuaded six of seven parent leaders not to attend the rally, one mother said.
Chinese journalists said the central government had ordered Chinese news organizations to stop reporting on the school collapses.
By Dan Martin - Agence France Presse | via (uncensored) Yahoo! News
June 12, 2008
Police on Thursday kicked foreign journalists out of a city where the collapse of several schools in China's earthquake drew charges of corruption from parents of dead children.
The action, which came one month after the May 12 quake, followed a promise the day before by China that foreign reporters would be allowed unfettered access to report on the disaster aftermath.
The reporters' expulsions appeared to underline government unease over smouldering parent anger following the collapse of schools in the quake, which many parents blame on corruption that led to shoddy construction of buildings.
Two AFP staff members were among at least six foreign media representatives held by police when they tried to report at collapsed schools on Thursday.
Police grabbed the AFP staff and roughly threw them into a police van, damaging a camera, near the Juyuan Middle School where hundreds of students died in the quake.
They were later taken to government headquarters in Dujiangyan city and held there for more than an hour before being ordered out of the city.
"You cannot report anywhere in Dujiangyan. You must leave," a police officer said to the pair as they were being held.
Despite promises of free reporting, authorities have displayed increasing unease over the issue of the roughly 7,000 collapsed schools, many of which crumbled while adjacent buildings held firm.
Over the past week, the ruins of several such schools have been sealed off after increasingly vocal demands by parents for an investigation.
Parents said earlier this week they had received condolence letters and offers of "comfort money" from the Sichuan provincial government, but what they wanted was a full investigation and justice for their dead children.
"We refuse to accept the money until the government investigates what happened," a parent who gave only his surname, Liu, told AFP on Thursday.
The man's 13-year-old son, his only child, died at Juyuan Middle School. Parents say about 500 children died there.
Liu said parents had been offered amounts ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 yuan (2,900-4,300 dollars).
"Corruption was definitely involved in these cases," he said.
On Wednesday, a top national official denied to some of the same journalists who were expelled that China was tightening up on media coverage in the disaster zone.
By Dan Southerland | The Christian Science Monitor
June 11, 2008
China's media covered the country's earthquake tragedy more openly than any past disaster. But the Chinese government still maintains a blackout over news from Tibet, which experienced its biggest uprising in decades this spring.
The blackout explains why you probably haven't heard about continuing sporadic protests by Buddhist monks and nuns in eastern Tibet, along with further arrests by the Chinese police. As China consolidates control of territory it considers its own, many Tibetans are placing their hopes on a Chinese offer of talks, now postponed, with representatives of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader-in-exile.
Previous talks have failed - and not just because of calcified mistrust. Rather, China appears to see its "Tibet problem" as a question of economic development, and seems unable to grasp the centrality of Buddhism to the Tibetan people's national and cultural identity.
One high-ranking Communist Party official this spring called the Dalai Lama "a wolf in a monk's robes, a devil with a human face but the heart of a beast." Such language deeply offends many Tibetans.
Still, optimists are watching for signs that Beijing is serious this time about discussing the Dalai Lama's proposal for "meaningful autonomy" for Tibet. At the heart of this hope is a belief that a newly confident China, bolstered by its relatively open and rapid response to the earthquake and then by the Beijing Olympics, will agree to loosen its hold over the region.
Pessimists note that China may have agreed to the talks simply to deflect international pressure prior to the Olympics while pursuing a harsh policy of arrests and "patriotic education" campaigns inside Tibet.
I saw all this two decades before as a reporter covering three Tibetan uprisings in Lhasa in 1987, 1988, and 1989.
Then, as now, it began with Buddhist monks protesting and shouting slogans. The police then detained and beat up some of the monks. Other Tibetans reacted violently. Blaming the Dalai Lama for causing all the trouble, Beijing finally reacted with massive force.
Western governments urged talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama, and Beijing ultimately agreed. But in the end those talks led nowhere.
The two sides reopened "informal" talks on May 4, and what the Tibetans describe as a more formal meeting was set to begin June 11, but China has now postponed that meeting.
By RADIO FREE ASIA
June 06, 2008
Parents across southwestern China are struggling to hold local officials accountable for allegedly shoddy construction standards in school buildings that collapsed during the May 12 earthquake.
Authorities in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan have prevented journalists from gaining access to a school that collapsed during the May 12 earthquake, amid widespread calls for investigations into the quality of school buildings.
The Sichuan provincial Public Security Bureau has ordered all media to stop covering Juyuan Middle School, where buildings collapsed during the quake, killing 280 students and teachers, a local official said.
"On June 2, the Sichuan provincial Public Security Bureau ordered all media to leave Juyuan Middle School alone," an official at the Dujiangyan Disaster Relief Information Center said.
She said police had cordoned off the area. "Some parents are very emotionally disturbed and they are not emotionally stable. So for the time being, authorities have to make some temporary rules," she said.
Police have cordoned off the school site and escorted two foreign journalists away from the school, grieving parents at the site said.
"The school site has been sealed off. No media are allowed," a woman surnamed Dong who lost a child in the collapse of the school said. "More than 100 police are present at the scene. Today, Australian journalists were expelled from the school site," she added.
Lawyers hard to find
She said local officials had pledged to give each victim's family 32,000 yuan (U.S. $4,600) in comfort money--higher than the standard 5,000 yuan compensation for other quake victims.
Dong said some parents had already received 12,000 yuan. "The government has pledged to take care of our health care and retirement, but it never said anything about seeking justice for our innocent children," she said.
She said the parents had hoped to band together and find a lawyer to sue the government for negligence, but so far no lawyer had been willing to take it on in the absence of an expert evaluation of the school's construction.
"No one dares to take the case," she said. "It all depends on how government defines the nature of the school buildings. If they say it was shoddy construction, then it was shoddy construction, but if they say it wasn't then it wasn't."
"If the court takes the case, it is like government suing itself. Therefore that's unlikely to happen. We don't want to withdraw our case by simply taking the 32,000 yuan from the government. We are hoping that a volunteer lawyer may take our case."
The story is being repeated in cities, towns, and villages around the quake-hit zone, where 10,000 schoolchildren are believed to have died in collapsed school buildings when the 7.9 magnitude tremor hit.
Call for investigation
In Shifang city, more than 200 parents called on the municipal government to publish a conclusion about safety standards in the collapsed school buildings.
"We want the government to tell us whether it was the earthquake or man-made factors that brought down the school buildings," grieving parent Wang Zhenfu said. "The township government told us that experts would come to investigate on June 5, but no one showed up either yesterday or today."
"They told us that the experts were very busy. They are just dragging out the issue as long as they can."
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By Associated Press | via ABC World News
June 03, 2008
DUJIANGYAN, China -- Chinese police dragged away more than 100 parents Tuesday while they were protesting the deaths of their children in poorly constructed schools that collapsed in last month's earthquake.
The parents, many holding pictures of their dead children, were pulled down the street away from a courthouse in Dujiangyan, a resort city northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu.
"Why?" some of them yelled. "Tell us something," they said as black-suited police wearing riot helmets yanked at them.
The parents had been kneeling in front of the courthouse yelling, "We want to sue." Their children attended a high school in Juyuan, near Dujiangyan, where 270 students died.
Police dragged an Associated Press reporter and two photographers who were covering the protest up the steps into the courthouse, trying to prevent them from seeing the demonstration.
"The parents were here to give their report to the court," said one police officer who refused to give his name.
Calls to local police were not answered Tuesday.
Asked why reporters were removed from the courthouse, an official from the foreign affairs office of the local government, Zao Ming, said "this is not a good place to do interviews. ... In a disaster like this, there will be a lot of opinions. The government will solve their problems."
There were also several Japanese reporters at the courthouse. One witness who did not want to be identified said police told the parents: "The Japanese are reporting bad things about you."
The protest happened while Chinese leader Li Changchun, the country's fifth-ranked ruler, was touring other parts of the city. The official Xinhua News Agency said Li was checking heritage sites damaged in the earthquake.
The government says the May 12 earthquake destroyed 7,000 classrooms. Many parents have accused contractors of cutting corners when building the classrooms, resulting in schools that could not withstand the 7.9-magnitude quake. Pictures of collapsed schools surrounded by buildings still standing have fueled anger.
More than 270 students died when one high school collapsed in Juyuan, near Dujiangyan. The Southern Metropolis News quoted a rescuer as saying that rubble from the school showed that no steel reinforcing bars had been used in construction, only iron wire.
By Mary-Anne Toy | The Sydney Morning Herald
June 04, 2008
Of all the taboos in modern China, the violent quelling of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests on June 4, 1989, remains the most sensitive.
Nineteen years later, China is now the world's fourth-largest economy, and proud host of this year's Olympic Games. But unlike other touchy subjects - Tibet, Taiwan and the Falun Gong group banned as a cult - there is no public discourse on the Tiananmen Square "incident". The real death toll is a state secret; more than a dozen protesters from that time, plus hundreds more dissidents, are in jail.
Is it fair to raise Tiananmen Square during the Olympic golden year? When the nation is mourning the almost 70,000 dead in the Sichuan earthquake, and Chinese people around the world remain sensitive about perceived anti-China bias after violent protests in London and Paris against the torch relay?
Ding Zilin, whose teenage son was one of the students killed 19 years ago in and around the square, says the Government is hoping that time and material prosperity will make people forget; that the members of a group known as the Tiananmen Mothers will die of old age and their cause with them.
Mrs Ding's long fight for justice might be a sobering thought for grieving parents now demanding political accountability for why so many schools were built so poorly that they collapsed instantly during the Sichuan earthquake, killing and injuring thousands of children.
Mrs Ding's son, Jielian, was hiding behind a floral democracy market at a road bridge leading to Tiananmen Square when he was shot in the chest. Earlier, he and classmates had appealed to the soldiers, telling them there was no violent riot needing to be quelled, but a patriotic surge against corruption and unfairness by ordinary people who believed in a better China.
When supporters mistook him for a protester and gave him food, Jielian passed it on to the soldiers.
His mother wonders sometimes if the bullet that tore through his heart later that evening on June 3 or early in the morning on June 4, was fired by a soldier who had accepted her son's food.
Mrs Ding says that if the Government has become more open after the earthquake, this has been forced by the public. But the national mourning is a watershed, she says.
"It's the first time the national flag has been flown at half-mast for ordinary people in China. In the past this was only done for leaders like Mao Zedong.
"Nineteen or 20 years cannot alleviate any of my pain," she says. "I keep asking myself if I am doing the right thing, according to what he would have wanted. If so, I will do so no matter how high the price. My son was peaceful and rational even though he was only 17 years old and politically naive."
"I feel so tired ... I know that the Government is trying to postpone, postpone, postpone until people forget and the families all die. So I don't expect justice in my lifetime. The only thing I can do is to leave more and more truth for the people."
The Tiananmen Mothers group has just set up a bilingual website and published two maps, showing where the 188 known victims died and the hospitals to which their bodies were taken.
Repression is lifting - slowly, Mrs Ding concedes. Last year she was allowed for the first time to visit the site where her son died to mark the 18th anniversary. The 24-hour security guards shadowing her movements also melted away last year, although her phone is still tapped.
Last week, as the anniversary loomed, the local police rang to politely ask if Mrs Ding had her annual open letter to the authorities ready. She told him they had presented letters during the annual National People's Congress in March but there was one message he could pass up to his seniors and the central government: "When will the national flag be lowered for our children?"
By USA TODAY
June 02, 2008
Foreigners attending the Beijing Olympics better behave -- or else.
The Beijing Olympic organizing committee issued a stern, nine-page document Monday that covers 57 topics. Written in Chinese only and posted on the official website, the guide covers everything from a ban on sleeping outdoors to the need for government permission to stage a protest.
Visitors also should know this:
• Those with "mental diseases" or contagious conditions will be barred.
• Some parts of the country are closed to visitors -- one of them Tibet.
• Olympic tickets are no guarantee of a visa to enter China.
Fearing protests during the Aug. 8-24 Olympics, China's authoritarian government has tightened controls on visas and residence permits for foreigners. It has also promised a massive security presence at the games, which may include undercover agents dressed as volunteers.
The guide said Olympic ticket holders "still need to visit China embassies and consulates and apply for visas according to the related rules."
The government hopes to keep out activists and students who might stage pro-Tibet rallies that would be broadcast around the world. It also fears protests over China's oil and arms trade with Sudan, and any disquiet from predominantly Muslim regions in western China.
"In order to hold any public gathering, parade or protest the organizer must apply with the local police authorities. No such activity can be held unless a permit is given. ... Any illegal gatherings, parades and protests and refusal to comply are subject to administrative punishments or criminal prosecution."
The document also warns against the display of insulting slogans or banners at any sports venue. It also forbids any religious or political banner at an Olympic venue that "disturbs the public order."
The guidelines seem to clash with a pledge made two month ago by International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, who said athletes could exercise freedom of speech in China. He asked only that athletes refrain from making political statements at certain official Olympics venues.
"Freedom of expression is something that is absolute," Rogge said in Beijing in April. "It's a human right. Athletes have it."
The detailed document is titled: "A guide to Chinese law for Foreigners coming to, leaving or staying in China during the Olympics." This appears under the slogan of the Beijing Olympics: "One World, One Dream."
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