A week after the China-Google fracas, Human Rights Watch is accusing industry behemoth Microsoft of downplaying China’s cyber-censorship.
Recent public statements by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and founder/chairman Bill Gates appear to contradict the company’s official statement of opposition to such censorship and minimize or even support online censorship in China, it said. Continue reading »
Getting news out of Tibet remains extraordinarily difficult since the March 2008 uprising that rattled Chinese authorities on the eve of last year’s Beijing Olympics. But now a number of sources are reporting that at least three people have been executed for their roles in the unrest. They would be the first people executed in Tibet in connection with the uprising.
This latest news came from Tibetan exile groups and local sources, and the Chinese authorities so far haven’t said a word. One of the men executed was identified as Lobsang Gyaltsen, age 22 or 23, from Lhasa’s Lubuk township. He was reportedly allowed a last visit from his mother where he asked her to make sure his son was received an education.
A spokesman for an exile group identified the other two people executed as a young woman and a Tibetan youth from Amdo Aba in Sichuan province.
Another source said,“I got information from Lhasa that three Tibetans who were involved in the 2008 protests were executed on Oct. 20, in Lhasa, around 11 a.m.. The Chinese authorities execute Tibetans in secrecy and never reveal details.”
Rioting rocked Lhasa in March last year and spread to Tibetan-dominated regions of western China, causing official embarrassment ahead of the August 2008 Beijing Olympics. Officials say 21 people—including three Tibetan protesters—died in the violence.
Last Thursday, the U.S. Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) released a report saying at least 670 Tibetans have been jailed in 2009 for activities that include peaceful protest or leaking information abroad. It qualified the number saying it was “a figure certain to be incomplete”
The report says the crackdown concentrated on Tibetan communities, monasteries, nunneries, schools, and workplaces. It noted “security measures intensified in some Tibetan areas” during the 2009 anniversaries of the protests.
By the end of April 2009, TAR courts had sentenced 84 Tibetans to punishments ranging from fixed jail terms to life, as well as to death or death with a two-year reprieve, in connection with the 2008 riots, the CECC report said.
It also detailed a widespread “patriotic education” campaign that requires monks and nuns to pass examinations on political texts, agree that Tibet is historically a part of China, and denounce the Dalai Lama.
“The government has in the past year used institutional, educational, legal and propaganda channels to pressure Tibetan Buddhists to modify their religious views and aspirations.”
Amnesty International says it has documented “a pattern of unfair trials, including a failure on the part of the Chinese authorities to distinguish between individuals engaged in peaceful protests and those perpetrating criminal acts.
Tibetans say the official media never report on executions in Tibet—but they do cover capital punishment and criminal trials in the case of ethnic Uyghurs, who had their own violent run-ins with the authorities earlier this year
Who hasn’t heard of Tibet? And who outside of Asia can even pronounce “Uyghur”?
Millions of Uyghurs (pronounced “WEE-ger”) live in China’s northwesternmost province, Xinjiang. They, like the Tibetans, are a religious as well as an ethnic minority; they have chafed under Beijing’s heavy-handed rule for the last six decades; and Chinese authorities have faced persistent accusations of repression and abuse against them. But the latest news is that Chinese authorities have closed a Web site aimed at promoting understanding between Han Chinese and ethnic Uyghurs following allegations that the site was linked to foreign “extremists,” the site’s owner said. Continue reading »
From RFA Mandarin service reporter Ding Xiao in Hong Kong. Translated by Chen Ping.
After the Tibet riots, the communications of Tibetans living in China are under surveillance, and they don’t dare to express their views for fear of retribution for the authorities, as talking to foreign media might get them punished. However, a Tibetan youth who lives in the Mgo Log (in Chinese, Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, in the northwestern province of Qinghai, told us some of his thoughts on the recent unrest:
Tibetan: Recently the tensions have been subsided pretty much, and we can cross into neighboring province. For example, we can travel to Aba Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan Province with an ID of any kind. However, soldiers are currently going around temples, several in a group, always.
RFA: Any reduction of security forces?
Tibetan: No, it is still the same. Probably they will withdraw after September. We inevitably feel oppressed as troops are everywhere and we cannot go out easily.
RFA: Do you Tibetans discuss the current situation?
Tibetan: Normally we don’t talk about it. There was never any freedom of speech in China in the first place. Continue reading »
I thought that this [the uprising] was the right thing to do. I participated in the protests and was among the protesters in the area of Ramoche monastery for about two hours. I knew that the protests were expressions of Tibetan despair over Chinese oppression in our own country. The actual suppression and crackdown by Chinese forces began on the night of March 14. At roughly 8 p.m., Tibetans in the Lhasa area heard that Chinese forces were coming. Many left and went to their homes, while others continued their protests. That very night I saw many Tibetans being taken away and Chinese armed police firing on Tibetans.
Within a short period, about 200 Tibetans were detained. In the midst of the commotion, it was hard to tell who was alive or dead and who was taken away. I saw some Chinese with head injuries. Continue reading »
From RFA’s Cantonese service. Here is the script of a voice-over I wrote explaining what is going on in the video. I will post the English version if/when it appears on YouTube; until then…
One by one, people file quietly into the home of Zhao Ziyang, the late former Communist Party leader who fell from grace in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Zhao’s family have set up a memorial shrine inside the traditional courtyard house, to mark the Chinese grave-sweeping festival of Qing Ming. Continue reading »
Tibetan exiles and a witness in China’s southwestern Sichuan province report further protests in the troubled Kardze region, saying four to five people were seriously injured when police fired on a crowd of up to 1,000 people. Now locals are saying that Chinese paramilitary police are being billeted in area hotels with plans to stay until after the Olympic Games in August.
A Tibetan witness in Daofu (Dawu), in Kardze (in Chinese, Ganzi), told RFA’s Tibetan service April 5 that a protest was under way, with 15 people injured, five of them seriously. The five who were gravely wounded were all initially taken into custody, the witness said.
“The monks called the head of Daofu county and warned that if those detained weren’t released, all the monks would continue protesting even if it meant they would be killed. So the county chief released those who were injured and detained. There were about 15 Tibetans who were injured and five are in serious condition,” the witness said. “Please tell the world what we are doing here and that the Chinese are waging a violent crackdown,” the witness said. The call was lost, and the line was dead when a reporter tried to ring back. Continue reading »
Qiao Long reports today (translation by Chen Ping):
Police of Xinjiang’s Yining City recently conducted two raids in Alamutuya Village of Yengiyer Township, and found locations where the Uyghurs were allegedly hiding their guns. Seven people were detained.
An employee at the Village Committee in Alamutuya: The detained people belong to the fifth production brigade.
RFA: How many people were detained?
Villager: One from each family.
RFA: Han Chinese or Uyghur?
Villager: Uyghur. Continue reading »
Authorities in Beijing have sentenced AIDS activist Hu Jia to three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment for “incitement to subversion” after he wrote articles online critical of China’s hosting of the Olympics. The sentence was handed down Thursday by the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court.
We cannot accept this verdict, because the peaceful words Hu expressed are irrelevant to state power. Therefore, the 3 1/2-year prison sentence is inappropriate.
– Hu’s lawyer, Li Fangping, speaking to Mandarin reporter Ding Xiao Continue reading »
Several hundred ethnic Uyghurs have staged protests in China’s remote and restive Xinjiang region following the death in custody of a prominent Uyghur businessman and philanthropist. Witnesses report protests at two locations in Khotan prefecture—in Khotan city March 23-24 and Qaraqash county March 23, RFA’s Uyghur service reports. Several hundred protesters were taken into custody, numerous sources said, and security remains tight.
Numerous sources said the demonstrations followed the death in custody of a wealthy Uyghur jade trader and philanthropist, Mutallip Hajim, 38. Police returned his body to relatives March 3 after two months in custody, saying he had died in hospital of heart trouble. According to an authoritative source, police instructed the family to bury him immediately and inform no one of his death. Continue reading »