We would like to hear from anyone who has visited China or other countries in the region and used the internet.
Can you tell us of any problems you had accessing sites, email or ID theft. Please let us know if you managed to access websites you did not think you would be able to. And please let us know of any tips you have for other travelers to region about internet usage.
It is almost impossible to use the internet without leaving a trail behind you. And for many netizens in Asia, particularly China and Vietnam, that can lead to trouble with the authorities.
Even in countries without formal restrictions to online sources there are other dangers associated with indiscriminate internet surfing – indentity theft, spam and invasion of privacy are just a few.
But there are some simple steps that can be taken to ensure that users remain, if not totally anonymous, at least harder to find.
The Link newspaper provides a useful guide that even the least tech savy among us will find helpful. It is reproduced below.
A screen grab from the CCTV documentary "The July 5 Riot from Start to Finish" shows Gulmire Imin in prison attire.
Earlier this year, Uyghur activist and former Chinese Government official, Gulmire Imin, was sentenced to life in prison by a Chinese court for “separatist” offenses.
The charges were in connection with the July 2009 uprising in the city of Urumqi which was sparked by ethnic violence against Uyghurs in another part of China. Imin’s husband Behtiyar Omer, 33, a former lawyer had left China six months before the July troubles.
Now living in Norway he tells RFA about his life as an exile, how he discovered his wife’s fate, his belief in her innocence, and his feelings of guilt and his hope for the future.
Omer had not heard from his wife for three months when news of her came from an unlikely source. He said he was watching a CCTV documentary on the uprising and there on the screen was his wife “wearing a prison uniform. I never imagined seeing her like this.”
A journalism support group has set up an “anti-censorship shelter” in Paris, to give online refuge for journalists, bloggers and dissidents whose work is being threatened by censorship or cyber attack.
Reporters Sans Frontières says the shelter – billed as the first ever – will use state-of-the-art censorship-circumvention and encryption software, and connect to the digital security firm XeroBank through a high-speed anonymity network.
The following are headlines and below that area a fuller summary of stories broadcast by Radio Free Asia’s language services during the past week. These stories have been translated into English. Click on a link for the full version.
The following are headlines and below that area a fuller summary of stories broadcast by Radio Free Asia’s language services during the past week. These stories have been translated into English. Click on a link for the full version.
New policies introduced to manage China’s northwest Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region will not do enough to improve stability in the region, according to exiled Uyghur leader Rebiya Kadeer.
The policies, put forward by China’s Central Government at the first work conference on Xinjiang held in Beijing last month, promise to focus on bringing “prosperity” and “development” to the region.
They include new regulations on taxation that will supposedly return 5 percent of profits derived by companies from the extraction of natural resources in Xinjiang back to the region.
But Kadeer sees not a change in the underlying principles of Beijing’s policy toward Xinjiang, but “only a change in its shape or appearance.”
“If the nature of the policy does not change, slight modifications will not bring any stability in the region in the short term, let alone the long.”
Kadeer called the new tax on natural gas and petroleum “a progressive step,” but pointed out that the Beijing had not clearly laid out plans for how the tax would be used in the region.
“This step, while in the right direction, is still not where it needs to be because paying a 5 percent tax to the regional and local governments does not mean that Uyghurs will benefit from it. As has happened before, the benefits will likely flow to Han authorities and Han Chinese [migrants to the region],” she said.
Chinese President Hu Jintao said during the work conference that the policies were being introduced to benefit “local population.”
But in the past, efforts to improve the infrastructure of Xinjiang has largely led to improved roads and facilities used by the extractive industries and Han majority migrants that set up businesses and communities that dilute Uyghur cultural heritage, she said.
“There is no official mechanism or specific regulation guaranteeing that Uyghurs will benefit from the 5 percent tax contribution,” Kadeer said.
“The regional and local governments are not elected democratically according to the will of the local Uyghur people. They are not mentally or ethically prepared to serve the Uyghurs, so this empty promise would not provide a profit for Uyghurs.”
She added that the recent appointment of Zhang Chunxian as party secretary to the region would not effectively solve ethnic unrest between Han and Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
“He was appointed, not elected. Regardless of his personality or capability as a leader, I believe that an appointed leader can not solve the ethnic problems,” she said.
“Compared to Wang Lequan’s declaration of ‘hit as soon as they raise their heads, destroy them while they are still a sprout’ and ‘the struggle against spilitism is a struggle of life or death,’ Zhang looks much more ‘liberal.’ But his first announcement for the region was an intent to ‘crackdown on enemy forces.’”
“Which version is the true Zhang Chunxian, we will see in the future.”
Kadeer called on Beijing to end the execution of and release all Uyghur protesters involved in last year’s July 5 ethnic unrest in the Xinjiang capital Urumqi, which left 200 mostly Han Chinese dead.
She also called for a start to talks with the “true representatives” of Uyghurs in Xinjiang and those abroad in exile on how to resolve ethnic unrest in the region.
The following are headlines and below that area a fuller summary of stories broadcast by Radio Free Asia’s language services during the past week. These stories have been translated into English. Click on a link for the full version.
Asserting Tibentan identity has landed dozens of writers, artists, educators, and even singers in Chinese jails over the past two years according to a new report.
Tashi Dhondup, shown in an undated photo, was sent to prison in March after recording songs protesting Chinese rule over Tibetans. Photo: local resident
At the same time China, in what seems a pyrhic victory for anti-censorship campaigners, has restored Internet access to the Xinjiang region, home of the ethnic Uyghur minority.
The crackdown in Tibet follows widespread protests which swept the region two years ago
“Despite knowing very well the risks, [Tibetans] still dare to publish their own opinions, to exchange opinions among themselves, about the situation in Tibet. And this has been criminalized to an extraordinary extent by the Chinese authorities,” Ben Carrdus, senior researcher for the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet (ICT), said in an interview with RFA.
“We’re seeing people sentenced to 15 years to life imprisonment for their ideas.”
Meanwhile China’s restoration of most Internet services to the troubled region of Xinjiang, 10 months after deadly ethnic rioting, was a political decision with no real impact on continuing controls on the Muslim ethnic minority Uyghurs, analysts said.
Official media announced Friday the full restoration of Internet services, which had been subject to a full and then partial lockdown since ethnic rioting was sparked last July by a Uyghur demonstration in the regional capital, Urumqi.
“It has been 302 days in all. We netizens in Xinjiang were isolated from the world,” wrote user Jiayi on the Sina microblogging service. “Today, I want to stand here and say, ‘We’re back!’”
The following are headlines and below that area a fuller summary of stories broadcast by Radio Free Asia’s language services during the past week. These stories have been translated into English. Click on a link for the full version.