RFA Unplugged

Archive for May, 2007

Propaganda Train or Friendship Train?

-A Few Remarks on the Historic Inter-Korean Rail Run- Last May 17, a North Korean train crossed the DMZ into South Korea for the first time in decades. The train’s shrieking brakes suggested that the carriages and diesel locomotive suffered from old age, but a great paint job aimed to cover it all up. Although [...]

Newsdesk: Family planning protests continue, officials try to make quiet amends

The Guangxi family planning unrest continues in Rong county. If you want the original Chinese, you can catch the latest from RFA’s Cantonese service and Mandarin service. There is plenty of background in English, from this blog, from the RFA Web site, and from ESWN. Here is a summarized version of a recent Cantonese report:

A year and a half for threatening to commit suicide

On April 27th, a couple living in Hexi village, Qingdao city of Shandong Province, climbed on the roof of their home where from they were being evicted and threatened to set themselves on fire. The home was quickly surrounded by demolition crews and enforcement staff. In the end, the couple was arrested and they were [...]

Newsdesk: Eight hours to close down a Web site

China’s Internet police took between five and eight hours to track down the new location of Reporters Without Borders’ Chinese language Web site and block it. www.rsf-chinese.org was first launched on May 3 but access within China was quickly denied. So RSF moved it to a new portal three weeks later, only to see it [...]

Burma: Account of spirit festival nat pwe

By Erik Davies on Techgnosis: The crowded central footpath through Taungbyon was flanked by food stalls, tea shops, and globalist collages of t-shirts and cheap jeans. A labyrinth of smaller paths radiated from this main artery, and beckoned us with clanging gongs, drum beats, and otherworldly folk-pop squealings—the sonic signs that the nats were in [...]

Newsdesk: China's publishing crackdown to begin July 1

China is planning to bring in new regulations aimed at tightening up its magazine and periodicals market as part of a general tidy-up by the General Administration of Press and Publishing (GAPP) ahead of the 2008 Olympics. This is related to the leaked but unconfirmed document we blogged about earlier this month, in that it [...]

Interviews: Peasant authors Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao

Husband-and-wife team Chen Guidi and Wu Chuntao made a big splash a couple of years ago with their book, The Situation of China’s Peasants, shocking the well-heeled urban bourgeousie with their tales of extreme hardship and official abuse suffered by the farming communities of Anhui province. Their hard work won them awards, literary nominations, online [...]

Is the Internet a force for democracy?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhGcM_E_05E] At an Oxford Union Debate on 18 May, the motion ‘This House believes that the Internet is the greatest force for democratization in the World’ was defeated. Watch Web casts of the debate, or check out Rebecca MacKinnon’s blog – Rebecca specialises in just this line of enquiry.

The Story of Qu Chao: Disabled Goldfish Farmer

What follows is the story of Qu Chao, a goldfish farmer in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, and his attempt to lodge a complaint via the courts and through complaints procedures in Beijing, against local officials who, he says, sabotaged his business and deprived his family of their livelihood. The resourceful Qu is one [...]

Polio Outbreak in Burma

BURMESE: Polio Outbreak, Part 2 (05/09/07) Reporter: Khin May Zaw Length: 3:08 minutes Announcer: We contacted the WHO office based in Rangoon and interviewed them on the detection of polio in Maung Daw Township in Rakhine State. First, when we asked if it was happening only in Rakhine State and how it was discovered, Dr. [...]