Freedom of Press: July 2009 Archives

By PRWeb
July 29, 2009

China's Communist Party attacks "Dalai Lama Renaissance" (www.DalaiLamaFilm.com), a documentary film about the Dalai Lama narrated by Harrison Ford, after the film premieres in Taiwan and receives front page positive Taiwanese press. China's response likely an attempt to counteract the Chinese language Taiwanese press which is often read in China. Film to be released in China, under the radar of the Chinese government.

The Chinese government often has the clout and muscle to prevent Hollywood films from being released in Asia, and can even discourage films from having an extended release in the West if they are perceived to threaten Chinese policy.

Films starring such big name stars as Richard Gere and Sharon Stone were boycotted by China after the actors expressed support for the Tibet Independence Movement. After Disney released "Kundun," Martin Scorsese's 1997 feature film about the Dalai Lama, the studio incurred the wrath of the Chinese government, and Disney films were banned for an indefinite period of time.

Recently, after a theatrical documentary film about the Dalai Lama and narrated by Harrison Ford entitled Dalai Lama Renaissance (www.DalaiLamaFilm.com) was released in theaters in Taiwan this summer and received front page positive press in the Chinese language Taiwanese newspapers, the Chinese government took keen notice.

The People's Daily, a daily newspaper and media arm of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, quickly and sharply criticized "Dalai Lama Renaissance" in an article in its online edition.

The article, posted July 14th in the People's Daily Online entitled "Western Movies Build Grand and Perfect Image of Dalai Lama," argues that "in recent years, a wave of 'Dalai Lama fever' has appeared in the Western movie industry... describing the Chinese government's peaceful liberation of Tibet as 'cruel oppression,' and depicting the Dalai Lama's life in India as difficult... Some movies even advocate the Dalai Lama's concept of [Tibetan 'independence.'"

Although the title of the article refers to "Movies," the article exclusively focuses on "Dalai Lama Renaissance." Referring to the film, which has been distributed in cinemas around the world, the article criticizes that "the part of the movie related to the peaceful liberation of Tibet was filled with political bias, reflecting the director's ignorance and misunderstanding of Tibet's history... The movie transforms the Dalai Lama into an omniscient sage, reflecting a 'misunderstanding' of the Dalai Lama's image in the West... In fact, what these movies depict is just the 'anesthesia' given by the Dalai Lama to the West."

The fact that the Chinese Communist Party's main media organization has chosen to criticize the film may be a defensive reaction to the very positive press that Dalaki Lama Renaissance received in the Chinese language media in Taiwan, where it premiered in front of sold-out audiences on June 1. And it may be an attempt to counteract any effect on readers in mainland China, who often have access to Chinese language news from Taiwan.

Taiwan's best-selling weekly newspaper, E Weekly, gave the film a rating of 82, which is one of the highest ratings that a film has received in the past year in Taiwan. According to its Taiwanese theatrical distributor, Blockbuster of Taiwan (no relation to Blockbuster video in the United States), E Weekly regularly gives films far lower ratings. FTV, a television station in Taiwan, also reported that that the premiere of the film in Taiwan was very successful, with not an empty seat in the cinema, and that "many people were touched after watching the film." The Taipei Times wrote that "the film rapidly grabs hold of you... an insightful documentary."

Ironically, the Chinese Communist Party may feel most threatened by the idea brought up in the film regarding economic sanctions against China from the West. But despite this being a near unanimous suggestion by the Westerners in a scene in "Dalai Lama Renaissance," the Dalai Lama discouraged the proposal.

The Taiwanese newspaper The Liberty Times points out that, in the film, "the Dalai Lama thinks that humanity is the most important thing in the world and economic sanctions might affect many Chinese citizens, thus he is hesitant whether such an approach is right."

The People's Daily also tries to discredit the producer-director of the film, Khashyar Darvich. In its article, the newspaper claims that the director is a "follower" of the Dalai Lama, and supports this assertion by referring to an interview where Darvich mentioned that he produced the film party for the opportunity to spend time with the exiled Tibetan leader.

"It's interesting that the Chinese Communist Party refers to me as a follower of the Dalai Lama," Darvich responded. "Although I respect the Dalai Lama as a man of peace, just as the Nobel Peace Prize Committee did by awarding him the Nobel Peace prize, and as do most governments around the world, I am not a Dalai Lama groupie. When I began the film, I was not very familiar with the Dalai Lama's ideas. I think that his actions, and the respect that he garners around the world, speaks for itself."

Despite the Chinese Communist Party's attempt to discredit the film, Producer-Director Khashyar Darvich states that his production company, Wakan Films, has just signed an agreement to release "Dalai Lama Renaissance" unofficially into China itself, under the radar of the Chinese Government.

"My hope," says Darvich, "is that the film will open a dialog between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama, and that the average Chinese citizen will be able to see that the Dalai Lama is not such a bad guy and is interested in a solution to the Tibet issue that serves the highest good and benefits both the Chinese and Tibetans. I would be happy to attend a screening of the film in China and conduct a Q&A with Chinese audiences as a way to contribute to positive dialog."

For more information on "Dalai Lama Renaissance," go to www.DalaiLamaFilm.com.

>> Original source

By BBC World News
July 29, 2009

By RADIO FREE ASIA
July 24, 2009

Chinese Web sites tying the president's son to news of a corruption probe are shut down and later reopened with the related stories missing.

Chinese authorities shut down sections of two major Web portals in the wake of news reports that President Hu Jintao's son is linked to a Namibian graft probe, industry sources said.

The popular Web sites 163.com and Sina had their technology sections closed simultaneously Tuesday, with messages announcing that they did not exist.

State-run media ignored the reports.

"It was probably around 11:00 a.m. [on Tuesday] that we were unable to visit the technology sections of 163.com and Sina," a former employee at one of the portals said.

"This really is not normal. A quick keyword search confirmed that the report [about a graft probe involving President Hu's son, Hu Haifeng] had been posted on both of those technology sections, and that other Web sites were linking to it," he said.

The industry source said: "Both sections were back online at around 5:00 p.m. My sources had told me they expected the two sites to be closed for at least a day."

The report related to Hu Haifeng had been deleted from both Web sites when their technology sections came back online.

Allegations of graft

Namibia's Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has called on Hu Haifeng, who headed state-controlled Chinese security equipment provider Nuctech until last year, to assist in the investigation into the disappearance of millions of U.S. dollars linked to a government supply contract in Namibia.

Two Namibians and a Chinese national were arrested last week in Namibia as part of a probe into bribery allegations involving Nuctech, a company headed until last year by Hu's 38-year-old son, Hu Haifeng, who is now Communist Party secretary of Nuctech's parent company.

Their arrest was followed swiftly by the suspension of the country's defense force chief amid allegations that he too was linked to the Nuctech case.

Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba said in a statement: "The decision to suspend Lieutenant General Martin Shalli stems from serious allegations of irregularities, which must be thoroughly investigated."

Namibian media reported on Thursday that Shalli was accused of allegedly having millions of Namibian dollars transferred to him, through a third party, by the Chinese company.

Nuctech representative Yang Fan and two Namibians, Teckla Lameck and Jerobeam Mokaxwa, were arrested after Namibia's ACC said they had taken money from a U.S. $12.8 million down payment on security scanning equipment, which Nuctech was supplying to the Namibian government, financed by a Chinese government loan.

The supply contract and loan were inked on Hu Jintao's 2007 trip to Namibia.

Likely to face sanctions

In China, another industry insider who declined to give his name said that both Sina and 163.com were likely to face official sanctions following the posting of a report titled "No sooner has Hu Jintao vowed to battle graft, than his son is in trouble."

"If the news story contained the name of one of China's leaders, and if it was posted by an editor after it had been deleted according to the rules, then that is a very big problem," he said.

Professor Joseph Cheng, of Hong Kong's City University, agreed.

"Even if there is a case of this kind, it can't be allowed to involve either Hu Jintao or his family members," Cheng said.

"Of course, some executive from the compan[ies] will take all the blame. Even the suspicion of involvement by family members will have a big effect on the image of China's leaders," he said.

Searches for information on the case and Hu Haifeng's connection to it on Chinese Web portals turned up error messages such as: "The search results may contain content not in line with relevant laws, regulations, and policies."

This message is commonly found when Internet users attempt to access forbidden material online.

China habitually adds information about the country's top leaders to its lists of banned keywords, prompting deletion and self-censorship by Web sites providing news.

Any attempt to search with the "forbidden words" returns a similar message.

US-based China Digital Times, which monitors Web usage in China, said propaganda officials had issued an order banning Internet searches related to the Nuctech case.

Neither company confirmed that the sites had been blocked by the authorities or that their blockage was linked to any content, however.

But a customer service executive at Sina.com said the site had experienced technical problems.

"The technical problems experienced by our technology section are believed to have originated with a server or network error, and our engineers are investigating the reason," he said.

Officials at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology press office declined to comment on the closures.

Foreign ministry officials have referred media inquiries to Nuctech.

Government pressure

Beijing-based journalist Gao Yu said Beijing wasn't showing much reaction to the case on the outside, but that top officials would be scrambling to put out fires behind the scenes..

"This is a really big story of the utmost urgency for them," said Gao, deputy chief editor of Economics Weekly.

"Of course they must try to play it down, and whatever happens, Prince Hu musn't be touched by it," she said, referring to Hu Haifeng.

Gao said she believed the Chinese government had already leaned heavily on Namibian authorities, resulting in the postponement of a bail hearing for the three suspects until next week.

"Of course there is Chinese involvement in the postponement of the hearing by Namibia," she said. "China will keep a poker face, trying to play it down to the outside world, and never admitting it inside China."

City University's Cheng agreed the case would evoke a negative response from within the country.

"Whenever the Chinese Communist Party leadership makes any plans to stamp out corruption, it's going to reduce public confidence," Cheng said.

"Most people believe that at the highest echelons of leadership, the Party won't do anything about corruption, and that if they do, it's not about corruption, but rather about a political power struggle," he said.

China is rapidly building strong economic and diplomatic ties among African countries, which will help ensure future energy security for its booming economy, markets for its goods, and a place to invest its capital, experts say.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Ding Xiao and in Cantonese by Grace Kei Lai-see. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Translated and written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original source

By Rob Taylor | REUTERS | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
July 14, 2009

China's government, entangled in a row with Australia over alleged commercial spying, has stirred more controversy by demanding a documentary about restive ethnic Uighurs be dropped from Australia's largest film festival.

Chinese consular staff contacted organizers of the Melbourne International Film Festival urging them to dump a film about exiled Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, blamed by Beijing for instigating this month's ethnic riots in Xinjiang.

China's consulate in Melbourne phoned last week to insist the documentary "The 10 Conditions of Love" be withdrawn ahead of its August 8 premiere and demanding justification for its inclusion, festival director Richard Moore said on Wednesday.

"No-one reacts well to strident approaches, or to the appearance of being bullied. I don't think it's a positive way of behaving," Moore told Reuters.

The call, he said, came from the new Melbourne cultural attache Chunmei Chen. Calls to the consulate by Reuters on Wednesday went unanswered.

"She urged me to withdraw the film from the festival and then told me in no uncertain terms that I should justify my decision to include the film in the festival program," Moore said.

The incident is attracting widespread media attention in Australia.

The film tells of Kadeer's relationship with activist husband Sidik Rouzi and the fallout on her 11 children of her push for more autonomy for China's 10 million mainly-Muslim Uighurs. Three of her children have been jailed.

China's government accuses Kadeer's World Uighur Congress of being a front for extremist militants pushing for a separate East Turkistan homeland. She was arrested in 1999 and found guilty of "providing secret information to foreigners."

China's embassies and consular staff are keeping a low profile in Australia since the detention last week by Chinese security officials of four staff working for global miner Rio Tinto, related to accusations of commercial spying.

>> Complete report

By Radio Free Asia
08 July 2009

Authorities in the northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have blocked access to certain key government Web sites around the region, which has been rocked in recent days by ethnic violence.

The Web sites of the regional government and all regional state-run media were inaccessible from outside Xinjiang on Wednesday.

Municipal Web sites and official radio, television stations, and newspapers in Urumqi, Kashgar, Ili, and Hotan cities were also offline. Shache and Aksu city governments and media were also unavailable.

China's net police have also blocked access by Chinese netizens to popular micro-blogging platform Twitter and similar sites, with limited success.

Foreign journalists on the ground in Urumqi said mobile phone networks had also been affected by the security clampdown, with some able to send updates only via Twitter using the Web, instead of by text message as is usually possible.

Exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer said the government was trying to prevent further information about the recent unrest from spreading amid great tension.

YouTube blocked

"The Chinese government is now blocking information by shutting down all cell phone networks and radio stations," Kadeer said.

"The current situation is very dangerous."

Twitter and video-sharing site YouTube were blocked by Tuesday afternoon.

Posts on forums and bulletin boards about the riots were deleted immediately, although comments made on old posts related to Xinjiang lasted somewhat longer, netizens said.

Guangdong-based cyber commentator Bei Feng said he didn't think the government's measures would be entirely successful, especially in Xinjiang.

"From a technical point of view, Twitter is hard to block. Netizens can outwit the blockade by using the cyber technique called 'wall-scaling,'" Bei Feng said.

"In fact, online browsers can now obtain plenty of information from both domestic and foreign sources. For instance, the Associated Press reported the latest demonstration by about 300 people in the southern Xinjiang city of Kashgar. Chinese netizens got this information right away," he said.

Beijing-based Tibetan writer Woeser agreed, saying that many netizens in China could now access information more easily.

"In China, people can now use a skill online called 'wall-scaling,'" Woeser said. "Through proxy servers, we can see overseas Web sites. Bloggers on large Chinese Web sites carry instant opinions from the people," she said.

Original reporting in Mandarin by Tang Qiwei and He Ping, and by RFA's Uyghur and Cantonese services. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Uyghur service director: Dolkun Kamberi. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Translated by Chen Ping. Written for the Web in English by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Sarah Jackson-Han.

>> Original source

By BBC World News
July 8, 2009

Ethnic violence has erupted in China's western province of Xinjiang, with scores of people being killed and hundreds injured.

Here are some of the most recent developments:

5 JULY

A small number of Uighurs - Muslim inhabitants of Xinjiang region - gather in the provincial capital, Urumqi, to protest.

Anger has been seeping through the Uighur community for weeks, following a brawl between Uighurs and ethnic Han Chinese in June, in Guangdong province 2,000 miles away (3,200km).

The Uighurs say they were demanding justice for their compatriots - two of whom died in the brawl.

"We are mourning our compatriots who were beaten to death in Guangdong," one protester tells the Associated Press.

But the small protest quickly spreads across the city - where Han Chinese account for three-quarters of the population.

The state-run news agency, Xinhua, says rioters are "attacking passers-by and setting fire to vehicles", adding that police have been sent to quell the disturbances.

But witnesses are soon describing hundreds - possibly thousands - of Uighurs rampaging through Urumqi, attacking Han Chinese, setting light to cars and smashing up shops.

In the late evening in China, the first reports of deaths emerge with Xinhua saying "three ordinary people of the Han ethnic group" were killed.

Uighur groups say hundreds of police began opening fire indiscriminately on protesters, and claim the death toll is much higher than reported.

6 JULY

Officials revise their figures of the number of dead, saying 140 people were killed in Sunday's violence.

Residents of Urumqi describe the city as in "lock-down" as Chinese security forces arrive to ensure there can be no further unrest.

Officials begin to enforce a communications blackout, with internet users complaining of no connection.

One mobile-phone operator, China Mobile, tells the Associated Press it has suspended its services in the region "to help keep the peace and prevent the incident from spreading further".

Meanwhile, officials apportion blame firmly on the shoulders of exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.

"Rebiya had phone conversations with people in China on 5 July in order to incite," Xinjiang Governor Nur Bekri said in a televised address.

In the afternoon, regional police officials speak of hundreds of people being arrested and dozens more "key suspects" being hunted.

And the unrest appears briefly to be spreading, with reports of protests in Kashgar.

But later reports suggest a small rally of about 200 Uighurs outside a Kashgar mosque is quickly dispersed by police, with no reports of casualties or fighting.

When asked about the violence, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urges governments to respect their people's right to protest.

"All the differences of opinion, whether domestic or international, must be resolved peacefully through dialogue," he says.

News of the violence enrages overseas Uighurs - groups of whom attack a Chinese embassy in the Netherlands with stones and burn a Chinese flag.

Xinhua reports say most of the dead and injured are Han Chinese, and officials insist the violence was premeditated, arranged through web forums.

The authorities feel sufficiently confident that they allow a group of foreign journalists into Urumqi for a supervised tour of the area where the violence took place.

7 JULY

Overnight officials again announce a higher death toll from Sunday's violence, with 156 people now confirmed to have died and more than 1,000 injured.

They also announce that 1,434 suspects have been detained in police operations since the violence began.

A group of overseas journalists on a supervised tour of the city then becomes the focus of a renewed protest - this time from a 200-strong group of Uighur women demanding that their men-folk be released.

In a public-relations disaster for the Chinese government, riot police move in to stop the protest in front of the watching photographers and journalists.

The BBC's Quentin Sommerville, who witnesses the protest, describes it as an extraordinary act of defiance in front of officers armed with rifles and tear gas.

Later, though, groups of Han Chinese armed with homemade weapons take to the streets - hundreds according to some reports, thousands according to others.

They seem bent on revenge for what they consider to be attacks on them by the Uighurs, and smash shops and stalls before confronting groups of Uighurs.

Riot police step in and quell the unrest, and officials announce a curfew that will run from 2100 until 0800.

8 JULY

As more troops are deployed to Urumqi, Chinese President Hu Jintao cuts short a visit to Italy, where he was due to attend a summit of world leaders, to deal with the crisis.

A BBC correspondent says security forces in full body armour and with semi-automatic weapons have drawn a line between the Han and Uighur communities, although areas have not been fully sealed off and people can still move about.

>> Original source

By Robert Mackey | THE NEW YORK TIMES
July 07, 2009

As my colleague Edward Wong reports from Urumqi, China, where rioting and ethnic clashes have led to more than 150 deaths, a government-organized tour for foreign and Chinese journalists went badly awry on Tuesday when hundreds of Uighur protesters made an unscheduled appearance:

A wailing crowd of women, joined later by scores of Uighur men, marched down a wide avenue Tuesday with raised fists and tearfully demanded that the police release Uighur men who they said had been seized from their homes after Sunday's violence. Some women waved the identification cards of men who had been detained.

As journalists watched, the demonstrators smashed the windshield of a police car and several police officers drew their pistols before the entire crowd was encircled by officers and paramilitary troops in riot gear.

Dan Chung and Tania Branigan of The Guardian were also on the media tour and they filed a video report and a slide show showing images of the Uighur protests witnessed by the foreign and Chinese press.

As if to underscore how very badly this attempt at media management by the Chinese government failed, it led to the image at the top of this post, of a lone woman standing before Chinese riot police, which evokes the iconic image of the Tiananmen Square protests, of a man confronting a row of Chinese tanks.

Similar shots of the woman in Urumqi today are featured in both The Guardian's video report and slide show.

In today's New York Times, Michael Wines reports that Chinese officials arranged the tour as part of a broad effort to manage media perceptions of the unrest. Apparently hoping to do more than just shut off the flow of unwelcome images of protests from appearing on the Web, as Iranian authorities did recently, China invited foreign journalists to take part in the official trip to Urumqi, the site of the unrest, "to know better about the riots." But China's ethnic minorities have a habit of not remaining placidly in the background during these sorts of state-managed photo-ops.

Image by David Gray / REUTERS

An elderly Uighur woman, leaning on a crutch, confronted riot police in Urumqi, China on Tuesday

>> Complete report