News: July 2010 Archives
By Andrew Jacobs | The New York Times
July 30, 2010
Three men accused of "endangering state security" for their roles in maintaining popular Uighur-language Web sites have been sentenced to prison terms of 3 to 10 years, according to exile groups and court officials.
The sentences, the outcome of a one-day trial last week, are the latest indication that Beijing is intensifying its crackdown on any dissent that questions Chinese rule in Xinjiang, the far western region where ethnic rioting last summer killed nearly 200 people, many of them Han Chinese whose growing numbers have stoked resentment among Uighurs.
Each of the accused men maintained a different site, each of which was shut down in the days after the unrest began in Urumqi, the regional capital. The three Web sites featured news articles and lively exchanges in Uighur, a Turkic language that is spoken by nearly half Xinjiang's 22 million people, the majority of whom are Muslim.
Friends and family members of the three convicted Webmasters said they were prosecuted for failing to quickly delete content that openly discussed the difficulties of life in Xinjiang and, in one case, for allowing users to post messages last summer announcing the protests that turned violent. Although the government maintains armies of paid censors, those who run Internet forums are ultimately responsible for removing so-called politically sensitive content.
Dilimulati Paerhati, the brother of one of the convicted men, has said he and his brother were scrupulous about deleting antigovernment postings on their site, Diyarim. He said his brother, Dilshat Perhat, even called the police to tell them about messages announcing the rally in Urumqi and was praised for his vigilance.
"My brother didn't do anything, this guy was honest," Mr. Paerhati told a student newspaper in Britain, where he is studying. "We'd never, never do anything against Chinese policy and the Chinese government."
In addition to his brother, who received a five-year sentence, the other convicted men are Nijat Azat, who was given 10 years, and Nureli, who received 3 years. A court official who answered the phone at the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court confirmed the sentences but declined to discuss the cases or give his name.
Although more than 1,000 people were detained in the days and weeks following the violence in Xinjiang -- at least two dozen have been sentenced to death -- Uighur exiles said the authorities appeared to be tightening the noose also around those engaged in nonviolent activities.
Last Friday, the government handed down a 15-year sentence to a Uighur journalist who wrote for another Web site. The writer, Gheyret Niyaz, was also convicted on state security charges, although his most egregious crime appears to have been giving an interview to a Hong Kong publication. Those who know Mr. Niyaz said they were stunned by the sentence, given his moderate political views.
Dilxat Raxit, a spokesman for the World Uighur Congress in Sweden, said his organization knew of at least 76 people who had been detained for activities related to the Internet. Nearly all of them, he said, have been held incommunicado.
He said the government's campaign against Web-based expression seemed to have a twofold purpose: preventing negative news from reaching the outside world and preventing Uighurs from sharing such news -- or government criticism -- with one another. It was only in May, after a 10-month blackout, that Internet service was restored to the region.
"People have become terrified of surfing the Web," he said. "They're afraid that they land on the wrong page or write the wrong thing and they'll be taken away."
Ilham Tohti, a prominent Uighur academic in Beijing whose own Web site has been blocked for more than a year, said the detentions had put a chill on communications and discourse among the country's Uighurs, some of whom have a limited ability to read and write in Chinese. "We don't have many outlets in the traditional media," he said. "For the Uighur people, this is how we express ourselves, but at the moment, we're being silenced."
By Edward Wong | The New York Times
24 July 2010
They come by new high-altitude trains, four a day, cruising 1,200 miles past snow-capped mountains. And they come by military truck convoy, lumbering across the roof of the world.
Han Chinese workers, investors, merchants, teachers and soldiers are pouring into remote Tibet. After the violence that ravaged this region in 2008, China's aim is to make Tibet wealthier -- and more Chinese.
Chinese leaders see development, along with an enhanced security presence, as the key to pacifying the Buddhist region. The central government invested $3 billion in the Tibet Autonomous Region last year, a 31 percent increase over 2008. Tibet's gross domestic product is growing at a 12 percent annual rate, faster than the robust Chinese national average.
Simple restaurants located in white prefabricated houses and run by ethnic Han businesspeople who take the train have sprung up even at a remote lake north of Lhasa. About 1.2 million rural Tibetans, nearly 40 percent of the region's population, have been moved into new residences under a "comfortable housing" program. And officials promise to increase tourism fourfold by 2020, to 20 million visitors a year.
But if the influx of money and people has brought new prosperity, it has also deepened the resentment among many Tibetans. Migrant Han entrepreneurs elbow out Tibetan rivals, then return home for the winter after reaping profits. Large Han-owned companies dominate the main industries, from mining to construction to tourism.
"Why did I come here? To make money, of course!" said Xiong Zhahua, a migrant from Sichuan Province who spends five months a year running a restaurant on the shores of chilly Nam Tso, the lake north of Lhasa.
A rare five-day official tour of Tibet, though carefully managed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, provided a glimpse of life in the region during a period of tight political and military control.
Tibet is more stable after security forces quelled the worst uprising against Chinese rule in five decades. But the increased ethnic Han presence -- and the uneven benefits of Han-led investment -- have kept the region on edge.
Some Chinese officials acknowledge the disenfranchisement of Tibetans, though they defend the right of Han to migrate here.
"The flow of human resources follows the rule of market economics and is also indispensable for the development of Tibet," Hao Peng, vice chairman and deputy party secretary of the region, said at a news conference with a small group of foreign journalists. But the current system "may have caused an imbalanced distribution," he said. "We are taking measures to solve this problem."
The government bars foreign reporters from traveling independently in Tibet. Journalists on the tour were brought to several development projects by ministry officials, but were occasionally able to interview locals on their own. Tibetans interviewed independently expressed fear of the security forces and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One high school student complained that Tibetans could not compete for jobs with Han migrants who arrived with high school diplomas. "Tibetans just get low-end jobs," he said.
Chinese officials say Tibetans make up more than 95 percent of the region's 2.9 million people, but refuse to give estimates on Han migrants, who are not registered residents. In the cities of Lhasa and Shigatse, it is clear that Han neighborhoods are dwarfing Tibetan areas.
Resentment of the Han exploded during the March 2008 rioting -- Tibetans in Lhasa burned and looted hundreds of Han and ethnic Hui shops; at least 19 people died, most of them Han civilians, the Chinese government said. Han security forces then cracked down on Tibetans across the plateau.
Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibet at Columbia University, said the goal of maintaining double-digit growth in the region had worsened ethnic tensions.
"Of course, they achieved that, but it was disastrous," he said. "They had no priority on local human resources, so of course they relied on outside labor, and sucked in large migration into the towns."
Now, a heavy security presence is needed to keep control of Lhasa. Around the Barkhor, the city's central market, paramilitary officers in riot gear, all ethnic Han, march counterclockwise around the sacred Jokhang Temple, against the flow of Tibetan pilgrims. Armed men stand on rooftops near the temple.
Limits on religious freedom have been a major cause of discontent. In the Jokhang itself, and in the Potala Palace, the imposing white-walled winter fortress of the Dalai Lamas, images of the exiled 14th Dalai Lama have been banned. Pilgrims carry the Dalai Lama's photograph in hidden lockets or amulets. As the pilgrims circle the Potala, a loudspeaker in a small park blares Communist Party propaganda: "We are part of a Chinese nation contributing to a great future -- we are Chinese people."
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW for The New York Times
July 22, 2010
On a day in late March, Zhang Dazhong, one of China's richest men, struggled to speak through tears as he addressed his assembled guests.
"My mother died 40 years ago this year, but I never held a decent memorial for her," Mr. Zhang said. On the stage about him, in the red-carpeted hall of a luxury hotel, were flowers and a large portrait of a woman in a white shirt, her hair in pigtails.
"To this day, I don't know where she is buried," he said, voice cracking. "As her son, this troubles my conscience very much."
With the extraordinary ceremony on March 27, Mr. Zhang, founder of the Dazhong Electronics appliance stores, and his younger sister, Zhang Kexin, did something very few relatives of the nearly two million people killed from 1966 to 1976 during the Cultural Revolution dare to do to this day: publicly honor an ordinary victim of Maoist terror.
Their mother, Wang Peiying, a widow with seven children, was a worker at the Ministry of Railways. The famine precipitated by the Great Leap Forward, which killed perhaps 30 million people by the early 1960s, had horrified her, and as political turmoil began again only a few years later, she publicly called on China's leader, Mao Zedong, to take responsibility for his mistakes and resign.
Ms. Wang was sent to a psychiatric hospital and drugged. Released and paraded around the capital, she refused to recant. Instead, she repeated her accusations. Her jaw was broken to stop her from talking. After a mass trial at the Workers' Stadium on Jan. 27, 1970, she was executed.
"She was a kindhearted woman who was unflinching in the face of evil," said Mr. Zhang, a man of medium height with coal-black hair and a slightly jowly face, dressed in a black suit, white shirt and black tie. "Her brave stance, her unvarying faith, were completely correct. She symbolizes truth and justice."
Criticism of Mao flowed freely among speakers at the event. Mao Yushi, a prominent economist, said the violence and subsequent cover-up lingered. "Chinese society is not normal enough," he said.
Also on display was an electrifying new documentary by an independent filmmaker, Hu Jie, called "My Mother Wang Peiying."
Like Mr. Zhang's memorial, the film challenges the government's deliberate forgetting about the era, said Zhou Xun, a historian at Hong Kong University who is finishing a book about the Great Leap Forward famine.
"In the case of China's recent history, we are not talking about the truth, because the public has never been informed about the complexity of the whole period. There is not even any room for discussion and debate," Ms. Zhou said.
Not far from the hotel where Mr. Zhang, 62, conducted his memorial, Wang Jingyao, 89, keeps a shrine to his late wife, Bian Zhongyun, in the study of his modest apartment.
He has also refused to forget.
The day after students at an elite Beijing girls' school beat Ms. Bian to death with nail-studded planks on Aug. 5, 1966, he did something deeply audacious. Grieving but clearheaded, Mr. Wang took a bus to the Xidan shopping district and bought a camera -- a Shanghai brand, model 202.
He returned to the Post Office Hospital, opposite the Beijing Normal University High School, where Ms. Bian had been vice principal, and began photographing her naked and bruised body.
The pictures are unflinching, well- composed, hard to look at. Mr. Wang had worked as a photographer and journalist before the 1949 revolution, for the Americans and the Chinese Communists. "History must be recorded," he said.
For years, Mr. Wang said, he tried to sue the people involved in his wife's killing, but courts rejected the cases. Today, he assembles evidence -- her wristwatch, smashed during the final beating, a bloodstained shirt, documents. "They avoid me," he said of the former Red Guards involved. Some are now wealthy, or in positions of influence.
How has it been, living with this sad truth for 44 years? "Two words," he said, eyes glittering. "Bitter. Struggle."
Wang Youqin was a student at the Beijing Normal University High School when Ms. Bian was killed. Inspired by reading a classified copy of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel of life in the Soviet gulag, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," she began collecting information about victims in the 1970s, after the violence subsided. She published a book listing 659 names; her "Chinese Holocaust Memorial" Web site details nearly 200 more.
The site is blocked in China. Ms. Wang, who teaches Chinese at the University of Chicago, is writing a new book with more names, from hundreds of interviews across the country.
While the Cultural Revolution is not a taboo subject per se, to this day research and writings are strictly controlled. One or two individuals have opened private museums, such as Peng Qian, in the southern city of Shantou, where he was formerly deputy mayor. The content is carefully calibrated. Ms. Wang says the government has identified only senior officials who were killed, plus a few "celebrities," while ordinary people are ignored. She finds that deeply offensive. "It should be all about the victims," she said.
The government has conceded that Mao committed "errors," but his reputation in China is still officially sacred. Wary of challenges to the man whose body lies on display in Tiananmen Square, publishers of writings about the era submit to a three-tier censorship process: at the government's General Administration of Press and Publication, the Party History Research Office and the Party Literature Research Office, according to Ding Dong, a historian.
Since the mid-1990s, "very little has been published about the Cultural Revolution, and even less of any significance," Mr. Ding recently told an audience at Sanwei Bookstore in Beijing.
As time passes, historians increasingly worry about how to preserve the truth, with people dying before they can tell their stories.
"For decades, the truth has been living in the dark, but now it's dying in the dark," Ms. Zhou said. "Then one might ask, what is truth? What is justice? What is history?"
By Radio Free Asia
19 July 2010
Residents want Beijing to investigate graft allegations around a property deal.
Thousands of people surrounded government offices near Suzhou's flagship high-tech industrial park in recent days, sparking clashes between riot police and residents angry over government appropriation of their land, residents said.
A resident of Tongan township, near the Suzhou High & New Technology Development Zone, said angry residents had surrounded the local Party chief in his office over the weekend, before the five-day protest was dispersed by riot police.
"There were a lot of people here [Saturday], and again in the middle of the night," the resident, identified by her surname, Huang, said.
"Some people also went to other places. It's because of the evictions and demolitions."
"They didn't get the [compensation] money they were supposed to get, and they all went to kick up a big stink down at the township government," she said.
"The township [Party] chief was inside the building. He didn't come out for a day and a night. He didn't get anything to eat or drink. There were a lot of riot police," said Huang, who ran away from the scene after being beaten herself.
"There was one woman who was bleeding from the head after being beaten, and was lying on the ground," she said.
"I was beaten too, and I ran away."
Calls to the Tongan township government went unanswered Sunday, while calls to the Tongan police station met with a recorded error message.
"Our local government will deal with this," an employee who answered the phone at the Suzhou municipal government said. "I expect it is still under negotiation."
Blogs carrying news
Authorities imposed a news blackout on the incident, but microblogging services and bloggers were relaying it across the Internet during the weekend, with some posts being deleted soon after appearing online.
"This evening, at around 8 p.m., the crowds captured a town bus and drove it across the main road," wrote user maminbo7712 on Twitter.
"They want to let Beijing know what is happening so they will send someone to sort it out."
A blogger identified as "Tongan Resident" said the authorities had been demolishing homes and evicting residents in large numbers ever since 2003, without undergoing any administrative procedures, and at compensation rates that were unilaterally decided by the township government.
Officials had used lies and violence to quell the protesting population, he wrote, and had hidden the fact that the project they were planning would call for more than 6,000 evictions.
All in all, residents estimated that local officials had skimmed off around 3.5 billion yuan (U.S. $516 million) in compensation funds, leaving residents out of pocket by around 30,000-40,000 yuan (U.S. $4,400-$5,900) per household, the Tongan blogger said.
By Radio Free Asia
July 18, 2010
Chinese authorities use the annual license inspection to intimidate lawyers.
Chinese authorities have refused to renew the professional licenses of several prominent rights lawyers in this year's inspection. Other rights lawyers were forced to clear extra hurdles before passing the annual inspection, which has been criticized as a mechanism to control what cases lawyers represent.
Prominent rights lawyer Jiang Tianyong, whose license was not renewed this year for the second time, told RFA, "Now some new conditions are appearing. It seems that ... before allowing them to pass they requested many lawyers write various guarantees--not to take on certain cases, not to receive interviews, etc."
Other rights lawyers who did not pass included Wen Haibo, Zhang Lihui, Tong Chaoping, Yang Huiwen, and Li Jinsong, according to a statement from the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group on Friday.
The inspection process, which is conducted by the local lawyers associations, examines individual lawyers' work over the past year and requires lawyers to register, pay a fee, and receive approval for renewal of their licenses. This year's inspection ended on Thursday.
When lawyers lose their licenses in the inspection, the cases they currently represent are unable to proceed.
The process, for which the deadline was postponed this year to July 15 from the original date in May, has been criticized as a mechanism for controlling individual lawyer's behavior and preventing them from taking on sensitive cases.
Jiang Tianyong had represented sensitive cases including the defense of Tibet protesters and Falun Gong members. Jiang, who has testified in the U.S. Congress on rule of law issues in China, said Chinese Justice Bureau authorities refused to even accept his application materials for the annual inspection.
Another rights lawyer, Wen Haibo, who had worked with the disappeared lawyer Gao Zhisheng, also failed the inspection for the second year in a row.
"I went to the relevant department for the inspection but they said that because I didn't pass last year, if I wanted to recover [my license] then I'd have to apply again for certification. But because I'm not from Beijing, it is difficult to reapply," he said.
Pressure on Law Firms
"Now the authorities' main methods are to go through the law firm to exert pressure," Wen said.
Jiang said, "They put a lot of requirements on law firms, even making lawyers make strict promises, and at the same time making them pay guarantee deposits. But as soon as they say they are going to do a certain case, this insurance money disappears."
One lawyer who did not want to be publicly identified told RFA that the authorities went through the law firm where he works to put pressure on him, requiring him to promise not to represent cases that the authorities consider sensitive, and only after that gave him his license.
The law firm also required him to give a 10,000 RMB deposit, to be used as punishment if he breaks his promise.
He said the move was illegal and unreasonable, but he had no choice but to accept it.
Other Obstacles
Other rights lawyers did not fail the inspection but passed only after much difficulty or after facing extra conditions for approval. Li Xiongbing, Li Heping, and Li Jinglin were only able to pass the inspection a few days before the deadline, according to the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group.
Chang Boyang, a rights lawyer from Henan, told RFA that he passed this year's review and was allowed to keep his license, but only after judicial administrative authorities stamped the words "failed" on his license.
"They said it was because I represented a Falun Gong case and didn't report it," Chang said.
Chang said there was no provision in the law requiring lawyers to report their taking on sensitive cases. "It's something they made up themselves," he said.
Chang explained that having the stamp on his license does not affect his ability to practice, but does lead to misunderstandings because others do not know this.
Chang had previously represented cases such as those of victims of a tainted milk scandal and Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen.
In May of this year, he collected a hundred lawyers' signatures on a petition against the practice of using mental illness as an excuse to illegally detain activists and put them under psychiatric care.
Tang Jitian, another prominent rights lawyer, commented on Chang's situation saying, "Strictly speaking, the Justice bureau doesn't have the right to put stamps on law licenses. But nevertheless lawyers are now under a special situation and no one dares speak out, much less resist this illegal practice."
Tang Jitian was disbarred earlier this year.
In May 2009, at the end of last year's inspection, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Justice refused to renew the licenses of over 50 lawyers. One week later, Beijing authorities closed down the Open Constitution Initiative, a legal research center.
Original reporting by Xin Yu for RFA's Mandarin service and by Ji Lisi for RFA's Cantonese service. Mandarin service director: Jennifer Chou. Cantonese service director: Shiny Li. Translated and written for the Web in English by Rachel Vandenbrink.
By VietNamNet Bridge
July 18, 2010
China's recently announced tourism development plan has been slammed as a Machiavellian ploy to claim sovereignty over Vietnam's Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagos.
"This trick is very clever, taking the name of a totally civil and peaceful activity combining culture and tourism to cover an intricate strategy that had been carefully considered," said Tran Cong Truc, former head of Vietnam's Government Border Committee.
Under the plan, Vietnam's Truong Sa (Spratly) and Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelagos will be incorporated in an oceanic multi-purpose complex under the management of the province of Hainan. Also, Hoang Sa-bound tourism by air and sea lanes will be promoted and registration for right to use uninhabited islands encouraged.
However, Truc said the archipelagos offer little or no conditions for tourism and China was using it as a ruse to illegally claim sovereignty over the areas.
"We can see that Hoang Sa and Truong Sa do not have favorable conditions for tourism at present. The two archipelagos are far from inland areas. Hoang Sa is 220 kilometers from Vietnam's inshore island of Ly Son and 260 kilometers from China's Hainan Island."
"The islands are small, with the biggest one in Hoang Sa having an area of around 1.5 square kilometers and in Truong Sa, around 0.5 square kilometers. Most of the land is submerged under sea level.... These areas promise little tourism profit, not mentioning the fact that they are under territorial dispute, extremely sensitive and unsuitable for tourism," he said.
Truc said that under the tourism plan, international tourists visiting the archipelagos have to ask for permission from Chinese authorities. "It's a way to claim their sovereignty over the area," he said.
Method to the madness
Professor Carlyle A. Thayer at the Australian Defense Force Academy's University of New South Wales explained China's actual purpose behind the tourism plan at length.
"China is not developing tourism for tourism's sake but is trying to assert sovereignty over the features in the [East] Sea.
"By developing tourism China is trying to lay the foundations to claim features as islands. In this case Chinese domestic law would regulate the behavior of foreigners using the Exclusive Economic Zone. Second, China is trying to demonstrate that it has sovereignty over the 'islands' because it administers them on the basis of continuous occupation," he told Thanh Nien Weekly via email.
"There are two aspects of international law that are important to understand. The first is that a feature (rocks, sand banks, reefs etc.) in the [East] Sea may be considered an 'island' if it is completely surrounded by water, uninhabited, and has an economic function. Under the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea an island can generate its own Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 200 nautical miles. A state has the right to use resources in the EEZ and regulate the behavior of other states."
"The second point is that in cases of a territorial dispute at sea, international law favors the state that can demonstrate continuous occupation or administration."
Le Van Thinh, former deputy head of Vietnam's Government Border Committee, said China's plan threatened other countries as well as the safety of international sea transport and it has violated the Declaration of Conducts, further complicating situations on the East Sea.
Step by step
Truc said China tourism plan was actually a step in a series of actions that aims to claim its sovereignty over Hoang Sa and Truong Sa that it had partially taken from Vietnam by military force.
"China has taken a series of illegal actions [hidden] in a common plan on East Sea being conducted cleverly, including establishing an administrative agency in Hainan Province to manage Vietnam's Hoang Sa and Truong Sa, issuing an annual fishing ban, sending fishing patrol ships to East Sea and detaining Vietnamese fishermen and fining them," he said.
Truc said China had also taken advantage of "international channels" in its strategy, including requesting the World Meteorological Organization to recognize a Chinese meteorological station replacing a Vietnamese one in Hoang Sa in 1975; submitting a report to the 26th International Geological Congress in Paris in 1980 stating that Hoang Sa and Truong Sa as extended parts of Chinese continent shelf; and presenting a map illegally depicting its sovereignty over most of the East Sea at a Asia Pacific Aviation Summit in 1983.
"Vietnam has officially opposed all these acts by China," he said. "All islands in the archipelagos occupied by China are through military forces, and that is illegal in international law.
VIETNAM URGED MORE ACTION OVER EAST SEA
Tran Cong Truc, former head of Vietnam's Government Border Committee, said Vietnam has never changed its stand on resolving East Sea disputes, seeking negotiation based on international laws, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, as well as the 2002 Declaration of Conduct (DOC) in a bid to maintain peace and stability on East Seas and in the region.
However, he said, Vietnam should make relevant information more widely known about the purpose of China's plan and warn international tourists against unwittingly joining an apparently benign activity like tourism that is a violation of Vietnam's sovereignty.
Professor Carlyle A. Thayer of the Australian Defense Force Academy also advised more action by Vietnam as he slammed China's so-called tourism plan.
"China is acting unilaterally and its actions violate the spirit and letter of the DOC of Parties in the [East] Sea. China's actions definitely complicate matters because they make it more difficult for sovereignty disputes to be adjudicated by an international court. China is taking pre-emptive action.
"If Vietnam takes no action, this is viewed in international law as evidence that Vietnam has abandoned its sovereignty claim. Vietnam must protest each and every time China takes a unilateral action to advance its sovereignty claims," Thayer stressed.
He warned further: "Chinese unilateral assertiveness and Vietnamese diplomatic protests are a game Vietnam cannot win. China will step by step assert control - continuous occupation - and put itself in a strong position under international law.
"Vietnam must get its fellow ASEAN states to agree on a common stand and raise the matter in their discussions with China... In short, Vietnam must use diplomatic means to convince the international community that Chinese unilateral actions are in violation of an agreement already reached and undermine regional security.
"China [states that it] stands for a harmonious world and win-win solutions, and Vietnamese diplomacy must be aimed at getting China to match words with deeds."
By Marianne Barriaux - AFP Agence France Presse | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
14 July 2010
Wan Yanhai, China's top AIDS activist, said he suffered years of harassment from authorities which eventually came to a head earlier this year when he fled to the United States with his family.
He is just one of the nation's AIDS campaigners who face ongoing pressure -- a situation that is hampering China's efforts to improve HIV prevention and control, activists and experts say.
"The situation for AIDS activists is really not hopeful," said Lan Yujiao, one of the staff members of Wan's organisation Aizhixing who remains in Beijing to continue his work.
"And I don't think this situation will change any time soon," she told AFP.
China says that at least 740,000 people are living with HIV, but campaigners say the actual figure could be far higher.
The head of UNAIDS, Michel Sidibe, warned last year that 50 million people in the country were at risk of contracting the AIDS virus, mainly through unprotected sex or the sharing of needles.
Faced with this problem, the government has started talking more openly about HIV prevention and control in China, where people with AIDS still encounter huge discrimination in employment, education and healthcare.
In 2007, China allowed the first TV ad campaign promoting the use of condoms and last year, the health ministry and the United Nations launched an ad against HIV discrimination featuring basketball star Yao Ming.
This April, China announced it had lifted a longstanding ban on HIV-positive foreigners entering the country, in a move applauded by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the World Health Organisation.
But the hassling of some independent campaigners and organisations -- a theme likely to be discussed at the six-day International AIDS conference opening in Vienna on Sunday -- has nevertheless continued.
Like Wan, high-profile AIDS activist Gao Yaojie left China for the United States last year due to ongoing pressure. AIDS campaigner Hu Jia was sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2008 on subversion charges.
Wan told AFP in May that he fled China because he feared for his safety.
He said he had been under constant pressure from police, tax authorities and other government departments until his departure. In the past, he had been detained several times or placed under police surveillance for his activities.
"Look at Mrs Gao and Mr Wan... who threw themselves into AIDS prevention work very early on. They faced huge pressure -- they were monitored, harassed, and they had no alternative but to leave China," said Lan.
Following Wan's departure, Aizhixing continues to face obstacles.
According to its website, police threatened the group's temporary leader in June and told him he could be arrested at any moment if he continued his involvement in the organisation.
Last week, Aizhixing was due to screen a documentary on a student living with HIV but the show was postponed after police interviewed staff, citing a need to "maintain stability" as a reason for the questioning, Lan said.
Joe Amon, head of the health and human rights division of Human Rights Watch, says civil society groups are crucial for HIV prevention work among high-risk people such as drug users or sex workers who distrust the government.
"By preventing NGOs and activists from having a voice, the government is essentially cutting off those most at risk from information and services critical to both prevention and treatment," he said.
By Edward Wong | The New York Times
July 08, 2010
Wu Yuren, an artist who helped lead an unusually bold public protest last winter over a land dispute, has been languishing in a Beijing jail for almost six weeks after having been beaten by police officers, his wife said on Thursday.
Mr. Wu's wife, Karen Patterson, a Canadian citizen, said in a telephone interview that the police were accusing her husband of assaulting an officer when he visited the police station on May 31. Ms. Patterson said she learned this only through their lawyer because the police had so far not formally told her that Mr. Wu had been arrested. She decided to publicly discuss the arrest in recent days, she said, because of what she called her frustration with China's opaque legal system.
"You don't realize how arcane this system is until you have to deal with it," Ms. Patterson said. "It's a nightmare."
Ms. Patterson said she and friends of Mr. Wu, 39, believe that he had been arrested because of his recent activism, including his leadership of a group of artists from an artists' district known as 008 in resisting the encroachment of a real estate developer. In February, those artists joined forces with artists from another Beijing neighborhood to march down Chang'an Jie, a wide ceremonial avenue that runs past the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. Chinese leaders are especially sensitive to protests in that area, and police officers stopped the protesters after they had walked about 500 yards.
The police detained Mr. Wu briefly in March. After he was released, he and the other artists successfully negotiated for compensation for the seizure of their studio space by the developer. Mr. Wu and some other artists then moved their studios to 798, Beijing's largest arts district.
The land grab dispute had attracted lots of attention in the news media, in part because Ai Weiwei, a well-connected artist who is a vocal critic of the Communist Party, had joined the street protest and sent out Twitter feeds about it. Some of the artists in the protest, including Mr. Wu and Mr. Ai, had taken part in other kinds of activism, including signing Charter 08, a liberal manifesto calling for democratic changes that was signed by thousands of Chinese. Liu Xiaobo, an author of the manifesto, was sentenced to 11 years in prison last December.
Mr. Wu's latest fracas with the police began on May 31, when Mr. Wu went with a friend, Yang Licai, to the Jiuxianqiao police station to discuss a dispute with a landlord at 798, Ms. Patterson said. The police argued with the two men and took away their cellphones, which then led to more insults, Ms. Patterson said, citing an account by Mr. Yang.
The two men were interrogated separately, and Mr. Wu was beaten by about five policemen, Ms. Patterson said. He has been held since then and was not allowed to see his lawyer until this week, she added. For reasons that remain unclear, Mr. Yang was released after 10 days.
A person answering the phone at the police station declined to comment and said senior officers were not available to talk.
Ms. Patterson and the couple's 5-year-old daughter, Hannah, have not been allowed to see Mr. Wu. Ms. Patterson said she expected that Mr. Wu would be formally charged within a few months.
On Tuesday, she went to collect his personal belongings from the police station. His shirt, pants and shoes were in a plastic bag, she said, along with a letter he had written to the police telling them to call his wife.
Ms. Patterson said Mr. Ai, the prominent artist, had been lobbying on Mr. Wu's behalf, but she had little hope that his case would be dropped.
"The police haven't explained anything to me," she said. "Trying to ask for accountability is very difficult."
By RADIO FREE ASIA
4th of July 2010
A Tibetan environmentalist is sentenced on charges of "splittism" a week after his brother's trial.
Award-winning Tibetan environmentalist Rinchen Samdrup, 44, was sentenced on Saturday to five years in prison on charges of "inciting to split the nation."
The Chamdo Intermediate People's Court found Samdrup guilty of "splittism" based on evidence that an article about the Dalai Lama had been posted on Samdrup's Web site.
Samdrup pleaded not guilty and said during the trial that someone else had posted the article.
"The court recessed for 20 minutes and the verbal verdict of five years imprisonment was given, which seems to have been decided long before the hearing in court," Samdrup's eldest daughter Dorjee Sangmo said.
Rinchen Samdrup's sentence comes just over one week after his brother, Karma Samdrup, was sentenced to the maximum penalty of 15 years for grave robbery, on charges that had been originally dropped in 1998. Karma Samdrup was also involved in environmental activism.
Rinchen Samdrup had been running an environmental NGO in Gonjo county in the eastern part of the Tibet Autonomous Region, near Sichuan province.
The organization's work involves reforestation, publishing a magazine, and mobilizing local people to report poaching. The group had earned international awards including grants from Ford Motors and the Jet Li One Foundation.
Samdrup was detained in August 2009 after he had accused local officials in Gonjo county of hunting endangered animals.
"Our father had to face this situation because of some local government officials of Chamdo prefecture," his daughter said.
"We the four family members were allowed to be inside the courtroom, but we were not allowed to meet him. We were not allowed to meet him since his detention in August last year. Our father was looking very weak. He was not allowed to sleep well and had been repeatedly interrogated," she said.
His lawyer, Xia Jun, said the he had not been able to meet with Samdrup since his first court session in January.
"This case is unique and I tried my best to present my defense and prove his innocence. I am disappointed by this court decision. It is difficult to say anything more under this situation," he said.
Rinchen Samdrup has 10 days to appeal the sentence, and his daughter said that he will be applying to a higher court in Lhasa. She said that the conviction document would be given to the lawyer within five days.
Relatives Targeted
"We don't know whether this is a personal grudge by leading officials against this family or an attack on Tibetan environmentalists or a combination [of those]," Robbie Barnett, the director of modern Tibetan studies at the Weatherhead East Asian Studies Institute of Columbia University, said.
"Last year when I went to Beijing to appeal for my father, I was detained for ten days," Rinchen Samdrup's daughter said.
Rinchen Samdrup's brother Karma Samdrup was detained in January after he had visited Rinchen in detention.
Their youngest brother, Chime Namgyal, 38, was detained in August alongside Rinchen Samdrup for helping him with his NGO work. Since then he has been serving a 21-month sentence of re-education through labor for harming national security.
In addition to the three brothers, two of the brothers' cousins have also been targeted, according to Barnett.
Their cousin Sonam Choephel, was sentenced to one and a half years of re-education through labor after organizing a group to petition in Beijing on Rinchen Samdrup's behalf, he said.
Another cousin, Rinchen Dorje, a monk who had worked with Karma Samdrup as his interpreter, was reported to have been detained by authorities in March, and his family says he is currently missing, according to Barnett.
Several artists and intellectuals have been detained or have disappeared in recent months in what activists say amounts to the broadest suppression of Tibetan culture and expression in years.
Tensions have frequently risen in Tibetan areas of China since deadly rioting broke out following days of peaceful protests by Tibetans in their capital, Lhasa, in March 2008.
"I think we can see very clearly that in the last two years Chinese security forces in Tibetan areas have significantly shifted their targets from monks, lower-middle class activists, nuns, etc., to intellectuals seen as cultural figures. And this is because those people were involved and were mobilized by the Chinese reaction to the protests of March 2008, Barnett said.
"And this [Rinchen Samdrup's] case fits in with that general pattern."
Original reporting by Dolkar for RFA's Tibetan service. Translated from the Tibetan by Karma Dorjee. Tibetan service director: Jigme Ngapo. Written for the Web in English by Rachel Vandenbrink. Additional reporting by newswires.
By Charles Hutzler - Associated Press | via UNCENSORED Yahoo! News
July 05, 2010
An American geologist held and tortured by China's state security agents was sentenced to eight years in prison Monday for gathering data on the Chinese oil industry in a case that highlights the government's use of vague secrets laws to restrict business information.
In pronouncing Xue Feng guilty of spying and collecting state secrets, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court said his actions "endangered our country's national security."
Its verdict said Xue received documents on geological conditions of onshore oil wells and a data base that gave the coordinates of more than 30,000 oil and gas wells belonging to China National Petroleum Corporation and listed subsidiary PetroChina Ltd. That information, it said, was sold to IHS Energy, the U.S. consultancy Xue worked for and now known as IHS Inc.
The sentence of eight years is close to the recommended legal limit of 10 for all but extremely serious violations. Though Xue, now 45 and known as a meticulous, driven researcher, showed no emotion when the court announced the verdict, it stunned his lawyer and his sister, his only family member allowed in the courtroom.
"I can't describe how I feel. It's definitely unacceptable," Xue's wife, Nan Kang, said by telephone, sobbing, from their home in a Houston, Texas, suburb where she lives with their two children.
U.S. Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman attended the hearing to display Washington's interest in the case. He left without commenting and the U.S. Embassy issued a statement calling for Xue's immediate release and deportation to the United States.
Xue's sentence punctuates a case that has dragged on for more than two-and-a-half years and is likely to alarm foreign businesses unsure when normal business activities elsewhere might conflict with China's vague state security laws.
Chinese officials have wide authority to classify information as state secrets. Draft regulations released by the government in April said business secrets of major state companies qualify as state secrets.
"This is a very harsh sentence," said John Kamm, an American human rights campaigner whom the State Department turned to for help last year to lobby for Xue's release. "It's a huge disappointment and will send very real shivers up the spines of businesses that do business in China."
Agents from China's internal security agency detained Xue in November 2007 and tortured him, stubbing lit cigarettes into his arms in the early days of his detention. His case first became public when The Associated Press reported on it last November.
Search
The purpose of the website is to publish articles by journalists about a variety of topics concerning the People’s Republic of China. All journalists and the publications that publish their writings are clearly identified. All copyrights belong exclusively to the identified sources of these articles. | Powered by
Information + More