Religion: July 2009 Archives

By Brian Womack - Bloomberg.com
21 July 2009

The Chinese government restricted access to more social-networking sites in the past few days, escalating a clampdown that started about six months ago, said Xia Qiang, director of the Berkeley China Internet Project.

The sites that are inaccessible or aren't working properly include Fanfou, Digu, Zuosa and Jiwai, said Qiang, who is an adjunct professor at the University of California at Berkeley in California. Those sites work like Twitter, allowing users to post information quickly before editors can review their submissions, Qiang said.

"It turns out one of the very interesting functions of those sites is the news and opinions is getting circulated very quickly," Qiang said. That makes it much harder for authorities to keep control, he said.

Internet users in China had difficulty logging on to Facebook and other social-networking sites earlier this month following ethnic clashes in western China that left more than 150 people dead. Access to Google Inc.'s YouTube, a video- sharing site, and the Twitter messaging service also has been limited.

When accessed from San Francisco, the Digu and Zuosa Web sites said they were closed for maintenance today, according to postings on their home pages. Fanfou wasn't available as of 11 a.m. San Francisco time. The Web site of Jiwai appeared to be working.

Bing, Twitter

Twitter and Microsoft Corp.'s new Bing.com search engine were inaccessible in Beijing in June, around the time of the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Facebook, the most visited social-networking site, continues to receive reports of users having problems accessing the site in China, Debbie Frost, a spokeswoman for Palo Alto, California-based Facebook, said today.

>> Original report

By Sally Sara | ABC - Australian Broadcasting Corporation
July 03, 2009

The Chinese Government has reacted angrily to an Australian parliamentary delegation's visit to meet Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in India.

It is the first time a group of Australian MPs and senators has travelled to meet the Tibetan spiritual leader in the Indian hill town of Dharamsala.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra says the visit constitutes interference in China's internal affairs.

The Dalai Lama says Tibet has been given a death sentence by the Chinese Government.

"No freedom of speech, no freedom of press. Their own people put in dark. It is, I think, immoral," he said.

The Dalai Lama spent more than an hour meeting with members of the first Australian parliamentary delegation to visit him in Dharamsala.

He thanked the all party group of MPs and senators for their support.

"Usually I describe our supporters not like pro-Tibetan, but rather pro-justice," he said.

Labor MP Michael Danby says several members of the delegation are hoping to travel to Tibet later in the year during an official visit to China.

"If the Parliament asks the Chinese Government to allow this group to go, I don't see why they shouldn't be," he said.

"They would be breaking their word and I'm sure the Chinese Government wouldn't like to be seen to be doing that."

The delegation expressed its support for the Dalai Lama's middle way approach of autonomy rather than independence for Tibet.

The Chinese Embassy in Canberra has condemned the Australian visit, saying it constitutes interference in China's internal affairs.

Fifty years after the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, more activists are continuing to arrive in Dharamsala.

The Australian delegation visited a new arrivals centre and met one man who says he was shot by Chinese forces during a protest in March last year.

He told the delegation he thought he was going to die because he was bleeding so heavily.

On Monday, the Dalai Lama will celebrate his 74th birthday and he remains hopeful of returning home.

"Even some of my friends, Tibetan, are now 90 years old. Some, even [though] they [are] also still waiting, one day [will] go back," he said.

"So then I compare them who [are] already in [their] 90s. So I am a bit younger."

>> Original source