Freedom of Press: October 2009 Archives
By Michael Bristow | BBC World News
October 21, 2009
Dozens of ethnic Uighurs have disappeared since being detained in the wake of the riots in China's Xinjiang region, a human rights group has said.
Human Rights Watch said the 43 men and teenaged boys were taken in police sweeps of Uighur districts of Urumqi, and had since vanished without a trace.
The riots and protests in the city in early July left nearly 200 people dead.
China's central government declined to answer questions about those detained by the authorities in Xinjiang.
It referred questions about the ethnic unrest to the regional government, which also did not respond to enquiries from the BBC.
'Not global leadership'
"The cases we documented are likely just the tip of the iceberg," said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
The rights group is calling for the Chinese government to give details of everyone it is holding in detention.
In a report on the disappeared people, HRW said the police had searched two Uighur areas of Urumqi immediately after the riots. At least 43 people were taken away and had not been heard of since.
"According to witnesses, the security forces sealed off entire neighbourhoods, searching for young Uighur men," the group said.
HRW said most of those taken away were young Uighur men in their 20s. The youngest are reported to have been 12 and 14.
In many cases, families had been unable to find out what had happened to their relatives, said Human Rights Watch, whose report was based on interviews with local people.
"China should only use official places of detention so that everyone being held can contact family members and legal counsel," said Mr Adams.
"Disappearing people is not the behaviour of countries aspiring to global leadership."
Ethnic Uighurs, the original inhabitants of Xinjiang, went on the rampage after reports of Uighur deaths in southern China.
They mainly targeted Urumqi's Han Chinese community - a group that has moved into the western region more recently - killing scores of people.
Uighurs say their culture has been undermined since the arrival of millions of Han people from other parts of China.
Two months after the riots by Uighurs, Hans staged their own protests.
Afterwards, a confused pictured emerged about exactly how many people had been arrested, partly due to a reluctance by the authorities to provide detailed figures.
At one point the authorities said more than 1,500 people were in detention, but so far only a handful have been prosecuted.
The first trials began last week. A total of nine people have been sentenced to death for their involvement in the riots.
Critics say the trials do not meet international standards.
By Christopher Walker and Sarah Cook | Far Eastern Economic Review
October 12, 2009
The Chinese government's effort to prevent dissident authors from taking part in the prestigious Frankfurt Book Fair, an international showcase for freedom of expression, has offered Germany a close-up view of China's intolerance of dissent.
In September, two Chinese writers, journalist Dai Qing and poet Bei Ling, had their invitations to the fair revoked by German event organizers after China's organizing committee complained. The Chinese delegation threatened a boycott over invitations to the writers for a September symposium promoting the Frankfurt Book Fair, which begins on October 14. In the face of this pressure, the event's organizers withdrew the invitations. The writers' participation was ultimately enabled when the German PEN club of independent writers invited the two Chinese dissidents.
While Beijing's coercive behavior caught many Germans off guard, it should not have come as a surprise; the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) censorship ambitions are neither new, nor limited to Germany. In fact, this action is just the latest example of an ongoing pattern of interference, cooptation and intimidation beyond China's borders used to muzzle voices critical of the Chinese government.
Two days after the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair, a film festival in Taiwan's second largest city, Kaohsiung, will begin. It, too, has come under pressure to censor. In this instance the issue is a planned screening of "The 10 Conditions of Love," a documentary about exiled Uighur rights activist Rebiya Kadeer. Chinese authorities assert Kadeer has terrorist links, unsubstantiated claims not accepted by most Western countries or independent analysts. Despite pressure to shelve the film--linked to fears that the city's growing industry servicing mainland tourists could be hurt--the Kaohsiung Film Archive and the organizing committee of the 2009 Kaohsiung Film Festival announced on September 27 that it would go ahead with the screening. A similar series of events unfolded at the Melbourne Film Festival this summer.
In September, Uighur activist Dolkun Isa, who holds German citizenship, was denied entry into South Korea, to take part in a conference on democracy. China is South Korea's largest trading partner. Isa, who fled China in 1997 and obtained asylum in Germany, was held at the Seoul airport without explanation for two days after being denied entry to South Korea.
The Chinese authorities have developed an elaborate arsenal of censorship, including an extensive domestic apparatus of information control. Less appreciated and understood are the methods of interference and intimidation employed to muzzle critical voices abroad. Some of the modern authoritarian techniques the Chinese authorities use for this purpose beyond its borders are detailed in a study, "Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians," recently released by Freedom House, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia.
Economic coercion is a principal line of attack in the transnational suppression of issues deemed sensitive by China's rulers. The coercion is applied directly and indirectly.
Instances of direct economic coercion and censorship typically occur when an event has already been planned or already begun. Pressure is then applied by Chinese government representatives on the organizers or local authorities to suppress certain activities or appearances deemed undesirable by the CCP. In such instances, explicit or implicit threats of boycotts, trade sanctions, or withdrawal of Chinese government funding have been used to force the hand of those in charge. The CCP's Frankfurt Book Fair gambit fits this model, given the financial implications of the Chinese government's $15 million investment in the event.
More insidious has been an indirect form of economic intimidation, whereby publications, event organizers or governments engage in self-censorship on topics deemed sensitive to the mainland, a dynamic some have dubbed "pre-emptive kowtowing." Given their small size, proximity and relationship to the mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan are particularly vulnerable to this phenomenon.
This June, the Hong Kong edition of Esquire magazine, published by South China Media, pulled a feature story by journalist Daisy Chu on the Tiananmen Square massacre slated to run on the 20th anniversary. In 2008, a prominent legal journal in Hong Kong made a last-minute decision not to publish an article on Tibetan self-determination. A blackout on independent coverage of the Falun Gong is believed to be practiced among certain Hong Kong and Taiwanese outlets whose owners have close ties to Beijing or significant business interests on the mainland.
As China's economic clout and role on the global stage grows, it will inevitably exert greater influence beyond its borders. However, the issue is not whether China--which features one the world's least hospitable environments for free expression--will project influence but what shape this growing power will take. The CCP plans, for instance, to spend billions of dollars on expanding its overseas media operations in a potentially massive show of "soft power." But whether this enormous investment will simply project the deeply illiberal values that characterize China's domestic media scene to a wider playing field is a question advocates of free expression should seriously ponder.
This critical question, so far, does not provide an encouraging answer.
China's attempts to insinuate itself into Taiwan's media sector, and Beijing's ongoing efforts to limit the vitality of Hong Kong's media, are among the examples of this phenomenon in Asia. The CCP has recently demonstrated its willingness to suppress open expression in Germany and Australia. The United States is not immune to this pressure. The Dalai Lama will be waiting a bit longer for his meeting with President Obama.
The Chinese government's position at the vanguard of efforts to monitor and filter Internet content, using its wealth and technical acumen to devise methods to limit the free and independent flow of information online, also has serious transnational implications for free expression. China effectively serves as an incubator for new media suppression; authoritarian governments around the world carefully watch China's censorship techniques and learn from its innovations.
The community of democratic states must acknowledge the Chinese government's growing media ambitions and efforts to censor beyond its borders. Acquiescence in this challenge will only embolden the Chinese authorities.
Gulf Daily News - The Voice of Bahrain
October 07, 2009
Sixty years ago, his army victorious, Mao Zedong stood at the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen Square and announced a new era for China after a terrible civil war and the horrors of Japanese occupation.
The new national anthem urged the Chinese: "Stand up, those who refuse to be slaves!" and the Communists confidently proclaimed the People's Republic of China, "the people's government".
As Mao's doctor, Li Zhisui, later wrote in her memoirs, the leader was "China's saviour, the messiah in the flesh".
But revolutions, like Saturn, devour their own children. By a cruel irony of history, there followed 30 years, when the Chinese people were crushed and repressed, with a debauched and brutal Mao presiding over the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which between them claimed tens of millions of lives.
The whitewashed Mao now being presented to Chinese people is a myth based on lies.
The China of today was made not so much by the advent of Mao in 1949, but by that of Deng Xiaoping 30 years later.
It was Deng who in 1979 had the courage and vision to introduce economic reforms that put China on the road to the free market, giving it wealth at home and influence abroad. It should be a subject of great joy and celebration, not just to the Chinese but to people around the world, that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of misery to new lives of health, wealth and, at least in material terms, choice.
Yet Deng himself, fearful that reform would lead to the collapse of Communism, perpetuated the founding myth of Mao by declaring in 1981 that 70 per cent of what the "Great helmsman" had done was right, even if 30 per cent of it was wrong. This, too, was not just a lie but an absurd oversimplification.
A nation that cannot debate its past and cannot be candid about its present failings and achievements will struggle to make the most of its future and, in the case of China, build a society worthy of a 21st-century superpower.
Many younger Chinese are not taken in by the airbrushed cult of Mao the revolutionary hero. They are more interested in opportunities to get rich offered by the market economy - sometimes to the point of capitalist excess. For them, Mao is simply a face on kitsch mugs and T-shirts.
China's current rulers cling to the belief that they can combine Mao with McDonalds, capitalism with one-party rule, for which the official euphemism is "socialism with Chinese characteristics".
But they do not trust their own people: 60th anniversary regimented parade took place in streets cleared of all but approved spectators, with residents of Beijing told to watch the celebrations on television behind closed doors.
China's leaders were desperate to prevent any repetition of the Tiananmen pro-democracy protests of 20 years ago. They have still not learnt to tolerate dissent or to treat all citizens equally, from Tibet to the ethnic Uighurs of the Xinjiang region. President Hu Jintao's China can take pride in its huge advances. But it is not confident enough to give the Chinese people freedom of choice in a democratic vote. Until the rule of law is introduced, it will lack full legitimacy.
China also has to face up to its world role. Mr Hu made a good start at the UN General Assembly by taking the lead on climate change, and Beijing has another chance to pull its weight by helping the West to confront Iran over its nuclear programme.
Unless Beijing accepts the need for a firm stand on Iran, Zimbabwe or Darfur, it will fail to live up to the world power status it craves.
Too often it sees the world purely in terms of its interests and economic advantage. If this is to be "the Chinese century", it must put aside myth and confront its responsibilities.
The Chinese people have stood up - but for what?
By Radio Free Asia
01 October 2009
Cell phone technology provides a new method for exchanging information in Internet-censored China.
As Beijing redoubles its efforts to censor Internet content during sensitive National Day celebrations, netizens are turning to an existing form of mobile technology to exchange information, according to residents in southern China.
Many netizens are now making use of Bluetooth, an open wireless protocol for exchanging data, to create personal area networks with a range of up to 10 meters on their mobile devices and share information.
Xingzai, a netizen in China's southern Guangdong province, said the technology helps him to spread news from media organizations that are otherwise censored in China.
"I just want to spread the news to others...so they won't feel they have been left out. We download the news every day and transmit it to others," Xingzai said.
Most modern cell phones are equipped with Bluetooth technology, and when two or more cell phone users have the feature enabled, it is easy to share data such as downloaded audio or text files between devices.
Once a user offers to share files from his or her device, other devices in the area will receive a transmission request that they can either approve or reject.
If approved, the file will transmit to the device in a format that allows it to be read or listened to.
Xingzai said he offers to share files at bus stops and subway stations, where commuters are crowded together in an area serviceable by a Bluetooth network and are often looking for information to read as they wait.
"There are streams of people at bus stops or subway stations. Some of them are curious and want to receive real information... A good mobile phone can transmit data over a distance of 50 meters," he said.
Bluetooth is also an ideal method of sharing sensitive material anonymously, as no information about the sender is transmitted beyond what has been specified as a name for the device of origin.
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