Promote Internet Freedom in China By Supporting GIF

By Caylan Ford, Via Washington Post, Wednesday, January 20, 2010-

Google announced last week that it is no longer willing to censor its Chinese searches and may soon be closing its offices in China, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be rolling out a new policy initiative concerning internet freedom on Thursday.

But if the State Department and internet giants really want to promote free access to the Internet worldwide, the most effective thing they could do is to support the Global Internet Freedom Consortium (GIF).

GIF is a small outlet run by a group of Chinese-American computer scientists. Over the last ten years, they have developed a suite of censorship-circumvention software that allows users to safely evade internet firewalls and surveillance. They have no offices or funding. Their scientists work day jobs and pay for their operations out of their own pockets. Yet in spite of their obvious limitation, they are responsible for approximately 90 percent of all anti-censorship internet traffic in China and Iran.

When protests erupted in Burma in 2007 and its military junta moved to violently suppress demonstrations, it was GIF software that activists used to relay images, video and information to the rest of the world. When riots erupted in Tibet in 2008, GIF’s traffic from the region rose by 300 percent. And when Iranians took to the streets to demonstrate against suspected election fraud in 2009, over 1 million Iranians per day were using GIF software to communicate with the outside world. Without GIF, there could have been no “Twitter revolution.

But GIF servers, which can currently support only 1.5 million unique users per day, nearly crashed in the aftermath of the Iranian election. With a small amount of funding or with private donations of server bandwidth, GIF could increase its capacity to support 50 million users. …… (more details)

Canadians Honored for Fight Against Organ Harvesting in China

By Erich Bachmann, Epoch Times Staff, Updated Jan. 20, 2010 -

BERN, Switzerland—“There is an all too prevalent sense that human rights violations [in China] are so massive and so far away that nothing can be done about them,” said David Matas, accepting the 2009 Human Rights Prize from the International Society for Human Rights (ISHR) in Switzerland over the weekend.

David Matas and David Kilgour were co-recipients of the prize for their “unceasing work” on investigating and raising awareness of state-sponsored organ trafficking in China, particularly from imprisoned practitioners of the Falun Gong meditation practice.

Since 2006, the two Canadian lawyers have been traveling the world meeting with government officials, medical professionals, and human rights groups about the “dismaying” results of their investigative research. Research following 52 lines of evidence led them to the conclusion that since 2000, the Chinese regime has been using healthy Falun Gong prisoners of conscience as living organ banks—many recipients being foreigners buying organs in China.

Kilgour said only Falun Gong practitioners in labor camps and prisons are systematically blood-tested and physically examined.

“This testing cannot be motivated by concerns over the health of practitioners because they are also systematically tortured,” he said……. (more details from The Epochtimes)

Google China action makes free expression the focus of doing business: IFEX

20 January 2010, IFEX -

IFEX members have applauded Google’s decision to stop censoring the Chinese version of its search engine and its new demand for unfettered Internet access. The company’s stand for greater free expression came after it found China-based hackers had gone after the Google Mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists in highly sophisticated and targeted attacks.

Google reports that only two Gmail accounts were accessed by hackers and the content of emails was not obtained. The company’s investigation found at least 20 other companies have been similarly targeted. Its research also showed that China-based hackers had regularly accessed Gmail accounts of human rights activists in China, Europe and the U.S.

In a statement released on 12 January, Google said: “We will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognise that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”

Google is calling on the Chinese government to respect the human rights of Chinese users, says Index on Censorship. “It is precisely this kind of engagement with human rights issues that all companies should incorporate into their business operations.” The past censorship agreement blocked criticism of the government and topics like democracy, human rights, the Dalai Lama, the Falun Gong spiritual movement and the Tiananmen Square massacre, says Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Google’s effort to renegotiate its business relationship with China is a critical step towards protecting human rights online, said Human Rights Watch. Google’s experience points to the increasing risks faced by foreign information technology firms in China with a government that “devotes massive financial and human resources to censor the Internet and to hunt down and punish netizens who hold views which the ruling Chinese Communist Party disagrees with.”…… (more details from IFEX)

10 Forbidden Stories of 2009 in China (8)- Media control of Obama’s visit to China

Epoch Times Staff, updated: Jan 7, 2010 – (cont’d)

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Media control of Obama’s visit to China

When President Obama went to China, his appearances, and domestic reportage on them, were carefully stage-managed by CCP propaganda officials.

The most notable instance was the town hall meeting with students in Shanghai. As the White House’s centerpiece for the trip, it was supposed to be broadcast live on the largest state-owned national stations—a channel for Obama to reach the Chinese people directly.

At the last minute, however, Chinese authorities restricted it to Shanghai Television, a local station with limited reach. Commentary on major Web sites was censored and toned down.
Later in the trip an exclusive interview with Southern Weekend, an influential publication in Guangdong Province, was also intercepted by propaganda officials and half of it pulled from the print edition. The editors left a blank half-page with the cryptic message: “It’s not that everyone can become a big shot. But reading this, everyone can understand China.” (to be cont’d)

- Original report from The Epochtimes

US recalls 1.5m baby strollers manufactured in China

AFP via The Straits Times, Singapore, Jan 21, 2010 -

WASHINGTON – THE United States ordered a recall on Wednesday of 1.5 million baby strollers manufactured in China for US company Graco Children’s Products after fingertip amputations suffered by children.

The US Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the voluntary recall of the Graco’s Passage, Alano and Spree strollers and travel systems manufactured between October 2004 and February 2008.

‘Graco has received seven reports of children placing their fingers in the stroller’s canopy hinge mechanism while the canopy was being opened or closed, resulting in five fingertip amputations and two fingertip lacerations,’ it said in a statement.

‘The hinges on the stroller’s canopy pose a fingertip amputation and laceration hazard to the child when the consumer is opening or closing the canopy.’ The strollers were sold in US retail stores such as Burlington Coat Factory, Babies ‘R’ Us, Toys ‘R’ Us, Kmart, Sears, Target and Walmart.

This is the second major recall in recent months of strollers following reports of fingertip amputations and injuries.

Last November, about a million strollers, manufactured also in China for Britain’s Maclaren were recalled after there were 12 reports of fingertip amputations in the United States. — AFP

- The Straits Times

China Organ Harvesting Investigators Get Swiss Human Rights Award

NTDTV, Jan. 19, 2010-

The Swiss International Society for Human Rights awarded Canada’s former Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas their annual Human Rights prize in Bern on Saturday (January 16).

[David Matas, Human Rights Lawyer]:
“It is the voice of individuals around the world which is most likely to lead to respect for human rights.”

The award is for their investigation into allegations of organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China. Falun Gong is a traditional meditation practice that the Chinese regime has been persecuting for more than 10 years—sending hundreds of thousands to forced labor camps.

Kilgour and Matas’ investigative report is called “Bloody Harvest.” It shows 52 points of evidence suggesting the Chinese regime has been killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs to be sold to transplant patients.

They say in 2006, Chinese hospital websites advertised perfectly matched organs and extremely short waiting times for organ transplants—as fast as one to two weeks.

[Dr. Franz Immer, Director of Swiss Transplant]:
“In Europe we wait, on average, two and a half to three years for a kidney, nine to 12 months for a heart or a liver.”…… (more from NTDTV)

Argentine President Cancels China Trip

Inside Costarica, Jan. 20, 2010-

BUENOS AIRES – Skeptical of leaving the country for 10 days, Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner postponed her Asian trip on Tuesday, calling it “too long especially when the country’s Vice President does not fulfill the role that has been assigned to him.”

She went on to say that Vice President Julio Cobos cannot serve his role and be a “dissident.”

Cobos and Fernández de Kirchner have been at odds most recently over her desire to force Central Bank President Martin Redrado to step down. But the vice president urged her to “reconsider the situation” and go to China, promising that he would not sign any decrees in her absence without consent.

The January 25-28 trip would have been the first state visit to China since taking office in 2007. Her agenda was scheduled to have included meetings with Chinese President Hu Jintao, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Wu Bangguo and Premier Wen Jiabao. Numerous cooperation agreements were to have been signed.

Bilateral relations grew tense last month after an Argentine judge had requested that Interpol issue an arrest warrant for former Chinese President Jiang Zemin over treatment of Falun Gong practitioners. With concerns mounting about Argentina’s debt, neither side would discuss whether China was prepared to provide any aid or grant loans.

- InsideCostarica.com

Speech: Responsible Engagement With China (3)- Gao Zhisheng

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D., German-American Institute, Heidelberg, Germany, 11 January 2010 -

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Gao Zhisheng

The regime uses a range of force to suppress voices that advocate dignity for all and the rule of law in China. One is Gao Zhisheng, 47, a Nobel Peace Prize-nominated lawyer in the tradition of Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. His family was so poor that they lived in a cave in rural China and he could not attend university. Despite this, he managed to pass the bar exams and in 2001 was named one of the country’s top ten lawyers by China’s ministry of Justice. Party agents nonetheless released their full wrath, when he, a Christian, opted to defend Falun Gong practitioners.

It began with removing his permit to practise law, an attempt on his life, having police harass his wife and teenage daughter and son and denying the family any income. It intensified when Gao responded in the nonviolent tradition of Gandhi by launching nationwide hunger strikes calling for equal dignity for all Chinese nationals. In his most recent article, Gao wrote about several weeks of excruciating torture in prison. The rest of the family has fled China and are now refugees in the United States. Gao himself has since disappeared again, presumably rearrested for speaking out again, and is now being “held incommunicado at an unknown location”, according to Amnesty International.

His brother recently went to Beijing from rural China and could learn nothing about his whereabouts or condition. His wife and children are increasingly worried about him. (to be cont’d)

-From David Kilgour website: http://www.david-kilgour.com/

Google e-mail accounts of foreign reporters hacked in China, sources endangered

Reporters Without Borders, Jan 18, 2009 -

Reporters Without Borders is deeply disturbed and outraged by cyber-attacks on the Google E-mail accounts of several Beijing-based foreign journalists. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC) sent its members a note today alerting them that at least two foreign news bureaux in Beijing have been the target of attacks by hackers.

The warning follows Google’s revelation that the Gmail accounts of several dozen Chinese human rights activists were the target of sophisticated attacks in December.

“The hackers who targeted foreign journalists based in Beijing were probably trying to get contact details and information about the human rights activists who talk to the international press,” Reporters Without Borders said. “Compromising these reporters’ communication methods endangers and intimidates their sources and constitutes a serious violation of their privacy, their professional work and their freedom to provide news and information.”

The press freedom organisation added: “We firmly condemn these attacks and we call on the ministry of industry and information technology to provide an explanation.”

A Beijing-based journalist whose account was hacked told Reporters Without Borders told Reporters Without Borders that his emails were being forwarded to another, unknown account. “I have the feeling that my privacy has been violated,” he told Reporters Without Borders on condition of anonymity. “And so many people have been put in danger by these leaks, it’s terrible.”…… (more details from Reporters Without Borders)

Riot Police and Strikers Clash at South China Manufacturing Plant

By Gu Xiaohua and Gu Qing’er, Epoch Times Staff, Jan 18, 2010 -

Protesters hold a banner that reads: "Evil Factory! Return My Annual Bonus." (The Epoch Times)

Thousands of striking workers clashed with over 300 riot policemen at a manufacturing company in Jiangsu Province on Jan. 15. Workers were striking over hazardous working conditions and news that their annual bonuses would not be paid.

Lianjian Technology Co. Ltd. in the city of Suzhou manufactures liquid crystal displays for cell phones. Around 7:00 a.m. on Jan. 15, 800 of the company’s 13,000 workers protested at the gate, holding banners that read “Evil Factory!” and “Return My Annual Bonus.”

On Jan. 15 thousands of workers of Lianjian Technology Co. Ltd. in Suzhou City of Jiangsu Province went on strike. (th Epochtimes)

Company leaders came out, threatening workers that no bonuses would be paid if they continued to protest. The workers responded with increased anger, and more people joined the protest.

Company leaders then called for riot police to suppress the uprising. Mr. Liu (alias) a company staff member, told The Epoch Times reporter: “Hundreds of policemen with batons and shields blocked the roads. They dispersed the crowd and beat people without even asking who they were.”

He characterized the police actions as “vicious,” and said that, at one point, he saw seven or eight of them beating one person. He was also aware of seven or eight workers who were injured.

“One woman was hit with a baton and lost consciousness, but they still dragged her away. We were so angry at seeing that, we threw stones at the police,” Liu said.

Injured riot police were quickly dispatched to a hospital. Workers, several of whom were severely injured, were left unattended and eventually taken to hospitals by their fellow workers.

The crowd dispersed around noon, and the company closed for the afternoon. Workers are debating whether to resume work or not. They have asked company authorities to release workers who were arrested.

Clinton fundraiser could cause cracks in Obama’s China policy

By William C. Triplett II, Via The Washington Times-

Last year, convicted businessman James Riady donated $20,000 to Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative. At about the same time, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department granted him a multi-entry U.S. visa, something that seems to have been prohibited by the terms of his early 2001 plea agreement with the Department of Justice. Riady used the 2009 visa to travel widely around the United States, apparently without supervision by or even notice to Justice.

Shaking the Riady tree in the late 1990s produced an amazing number of agents of the Chinese government – more that 20 people who would eventually plead guilty to illegal campaign contributions to Bill Clinton and Al Gore and serious violations of American national security. In 1999, the New York Times won a Pulitzer Prize for disclosing “the corporate sale of American technology to China, with U.S. government approval despite national security risks.”

One would think that given the pounding the Clintons took a decade ago for their odious connections to the Chinese government – especially their ties to Chinese military intelligence revealed by this newspaper and others – that would make them shy away from anything that would bring those issues to the attention of a new generation of voters. However the Riady $20,000 Clinton contribution and visa events seem to part of a larger pattern suggesting that the Clintons are ready to return to Beijing connections, no matter the possible risk to the Obama administration.

First, last February, Secretary of State Clinton gave a speech setting out the priorities of United States policy towards the People’s Republic of China (PRC). To the surprise of many, she listed human rights issues at the bottom – not quite seventh in a field of six but that was the impression. Given the never-elected Chinese Communist Party’s constant legitimacy struggles with the Chinese people, that must have led to broad smiles in Beijing. On Christmas Day, Beijing responded to Mrs. Clinton’s signal by sentencing China’s leading pro-democracy advocate to the Chinese gulag for many years.

Second, although Sen. Barack Obama seemed to be a strong supporter of Tibet, President Obama has not been. This goes far beyond his decision not to meet with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, as other presidents have done. Looking around for the source of that advice, the Washington rumor mill points the finger at Mrs. Clinton’s State Department.

Third, Mrs. Clinton has turned on the formidable Clinton fundraising machine to raise more than $50 million for the U.S. pavilion at the Shanghai Expo next summer. Mr. Obama’s Chicago team could have raised this amount of money without breaking a sweat. Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, a close Obama adviser, was previously secretary of commerce and having him lead the fundraising would have been seen positively by the American business community. Considering other issues that the Obama administration has with American business, the president wouldn’t want to pass up this opportunity. But the Clintons pre-empted him to the point of leaking their fundraising to the New York Times for a Page 1 story on Sunday.

Fourth, there is the legal, political and social rehabilitation of James Riady.

It is possible, though doubtful, that these four events are separate acts of coincidence. What is definite is that they amount to subtle acts of separation by the Clintons from Mr. Obama and his closest advisers at the White House. For example, the White House, not the State Department, is engaged in trade conflicts with China, but the Clintons become the friend of U.S.-China trade through the publicity over the Shanghai pavilion.

As another example, neither U.S. business nor the bulk of China-watching academics could be considered advocates of human rights or democracy in China. By taking their position, the Clintons gain support from them. The big loser is President Obama, who is already under fire for not supporting the pro-democracy movement in Iran.

The Clintons’ rehabilitation of James Riady is something of a mystery. Although the former president raises a lot of money for his Global Initiative, there is no way Riady’s $20,000 would not have been red-flagged for his personal attention. Since the contribution was the entrance fee for Riady to attend the Initiative’s annual dinner, the Clintons had to have known that Riady was heading to the United States. Riady’s prohibition from entering the U.S. was one of those last acts of the Clinton administration that outraged Republicans. The Clintons’ motivation for helping him out can only be speculation.

Of all the Clinton machinations regarding Beijing, the most dangerous to Mr. Obama is the Riady visa. As far as is known, Mr. Obama was not touched by the Clinton-era fundraising scandals. But through the Riady doorway passes an entire “Star Wars” cantina scene of criminals and spies. His people had better close that doorway immediately and order Riady’s visa cancelled.

William C. Triplett, II is the co-author of “Year of the Rat” (Regnery, 2000).

- The Washington Times, Jan 08, 2010

Shen Yun Chinese Show Is ‘beautiful for the soul,’ Praised Canadian Musician

By Cindy Chan, Epoch Times Staff, updatd Jan.16, 2010-

MONTREAL— Shen Yun Performing Arts’ opening show at Place des Arts was the first time Hélène Bernard has seen a performance of classical Chinese dance.

The professional musician, who is from a family of professional musicians, was thoroughly charmed.

“It’s very fine. Having live music is perfect,” she said. “The music is truly a perfect harmony with the dance. It’s also a music that is pleasant to listen to.”

Ms. Bernard added that “the choreography is perfect—the discipline, the colours, the costumes—it’s perfect. It’s truly beautiful for the eyes; it’s also beautiful for the soul. I am very happy to be here this evening.”…… (more details from THe Epochtimes)

Hackers from China pose a growing threat to U.S. firms

By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times, January 15, 2010 -

The scale and sophistication of the cyber attacks on Google Inc. and other large U.S. corporations by hackers in China is raising national security concerns that the Asian superpower is escalating its industrial espionage efforts on the Internet.

While the U.S. focus has been primarily on protecting military and state secrets from cyber spying, a new battle is being waged in which corporate computers and the valuable intellectual property they hold have become as much a target of foreign governments as those run by the Pentagon and the CIA.

“This is a watershed moment in the cyber war,” James Mulvenon, director of the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis at Defense Group Inc., a national-security firm, said Thursday. “Before, the Chinese were going after defense targets to modernize the country’s military machine. But these intrusions strike at the heart of the American innovation community.”

The attacks on Google and several dozen other companies have alarmed government officials and lawmakers who warned that the U.S. may already be losing the battle to protect the nation’s besieged cyber infrastructure.

“The recent cyber intrusion that Google attributes to China is troubling and the U.S. government is looking into it,” White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said Thursday……. (more details from Los Angeles Times)

Speech: Responsible Engagement With China (2)- Forced Labour Camps

Hon. David Kilgour, J.D., German-American Institute, Heidelberg, Germany, 11 January 2010 -

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Forced Labour Camps

David Matas and I visited about a dozen countries to interview Falun Gong practitioners sent to forced labour camps, who managed later to leave the camps and the country itself. They told us of working in appalling conditions for up to sixteen hours daily with no pay, little food, being cramped together on the floor for sleeping, and being tortured. They made export products, ranging from clothing to chopsticks to Christmas decorations from all indications often as subcontractors to multinational companies.

One of a myriad of victims of the camps is Crystal Chen, who eventually escaped China and is now a refugee abroad. She spent three years in a camp and was medically tested about seven times, including two blood examinations. She stresses today that Falun Gong practitioners, while understandably unsympathetic towards the Party, seek no role in Chinese politics- “only to stop the persecution which has continued for more than ten years… I love China, I’m proud of thousands of years of Chinese civilization and proud of being Chinese…I look forward to the renaissance of genuine Chinese values and dignity, including truthfulness, compassion and tolerance.”

The camps were created in the Mao era and allow the Party to send anyone to them for up to four years without any form of hearing or appeal. One estimate of their number across China as of 2005 was 340, having a capacity of about 300,000 inmates. In 2007, a US government report estimated that at least half of the inmates in the camps were Falun Gong. It is the combination of totalitarian governance and ‘anything is permitted’ or ‘carnivore’ economics that allows such inhuman practices to persist. (to be cont’d)

-From David Kilgour website: http://www.david-kilgour.com/

10 Forbidden Stories of 2009 in China (7)- Activists flee and testify to human rights violations

Epoch Times Staff, updated: Jan 7, 2010 – (cont’d)

Qiu Mingwei, former editor of the Peoples Daily online internet forum. (Xu Xia/Epoch Times)

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A number of activists flee China and testify to human rights violations

A number of dissidents fled China during the course of 2009, wresting freedom for themselves and embarrassing the Chinese authorities in the process.

Among them was Qiu Mingwei , deputy director of the People’s Forum, the public Internet forum of the People’s Daily, the CCP’s official mouthpiece. Qiu had participated in a July 1 march for democracy and human rights in Hong Kong. When he returned to China he was accused of “possessing secret state documents, and speaking to outside sources without permission.”

Rather than defend himself he chose to make a break for it, and fled to Hong Kong on July 30. Escapees in 2009 also include the wife and children of Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who published an account of 50 days of tortured and whose current whereabouts are unknown after being seized by the regime. (to be cont’d)

- Original report from The Epochtimes

Did the China security forces kill Gao Zhisheng?

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing, The Independent (UK), Saturday, 16 January 2010 -

Fears that one of China’s top human rights lawyers may have died under torture in detention were growing yesterday after a policeman who knew about the details of Gao Zhisheng’s arrest said he “went missing” in September last year.

The policeman’s claim fuelled speculation that has been circulating for many months that Mr Gao may have been “disappeared” by security forces because of his work defending members of the banned Falun Gong organisation, as well as underground Christian church organisations.

Mr Gao is an active member of the Christian community in the capital and has represented human rights defenders and people suffering persecution for their political or religious beliefs, including members of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. Mr Gao is a prominent member of the weiquan, or rights defence, movement, which counts lawyers, activists, intellectuals and ordinary citizens among its number. They try to bring civil rights issues in China into the broader debate about economic reform, and they have done much to improve the lot of ordinary Chinese workers. However, when they have criticised the party, the authorities come down hard.

The US-based rights group, Christian Aid, said that Mr Gao’s brother, Gao Zhiyi, had spoken to a policeman who said that Mr Gao might have disappeared. This is the first time a Chinese official has acknowledged that Mr Gao is no longer in Chinese custody, raising fears that he may be dead.

A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Mr Gao disappeared on 4 February last year. He was seen being dragged away by Chinese officials with a black hood over his head. His wife and children have since fled to the US, where ChinaAid reports that his daughter has been hospitalised because of the stress caused by her father’s disappearance.

A number of human rights groups confirmed that Mr Gao went missing “while out on a walk” on 25 September last year, citing police sources.

Mr Gao is the author of one of the most powerful documents to emerge from the Chinese dissident community when he smuggled out a letter describing his treatment by secret police in September 2007.

His torturers described his torment as a 12-course meal, and after each bout they said which course he had just experienced. It is a truly shocking document.

He was accused of being too pro-American, a charge often levelled at dissenters during the Cultural Revolution in 1968.

“Shouldn’t we help you have a better lesson?” Mr Gao quotes one torturer as saying. “You wrote that letter to American Congress. Look at you, you traitor. What could you be given by your American lord? The American Congress counts for nothing. This is China. It is the Communist Party’s territory.”

Mr Gao was beaten until he could not stop shaking, then stripped and shocked with a cattle prod, on the face, body and genitals. He says he was beaten until his eyes become swollen shut, that his guards urinated on him and forced him to admit to affairs, details of which were then passed onto his wife.

- The Independent

Lawyer goes missing after being detained by China authorities

Jonathan Watts in Beijing, guardian.co.uk, Friday 15 January 2010-

Fears are growing for the Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng after his brother said police admitted he “went missing” in September, seven months after being taken into detention.

The firebrand critic of the Communist party has been repeatedly detained by public security agents and has testified that he was tortured and threatened with death. Gao disappeared from his hometown in Shaanxi province on 4 February last year. His family told reporters and human rights groups at the time that he was whisked away by local police and security agents from Beijing.

Since then, his whereabouts have been a mystery, but this week his brother told Associated Press that he had received new and disturbing information from one of the policemen who took Gao away.

Gao Zhyi said the policeman told him that Gao Zhisheng “lost his way and went missing” on 25 September.

The authorities refuse to comment on the case. The ministry of justice asked for faxed questions but did not reply to them. Similar requests for information from Beijing’s Public Security Bureau have been met with silence.

Human rights groups said they were alarmed and called on foreign governments and journalists to press for an explanation of how Gao went missing during his captivity……. (more details from The Guardian)

Premier Classical Chinese Dance and Music Production to Open at Montreal’s Most Prestigious Theatre

By Olivier Chartrand and Cindy Chan, Epoch Times Staff, Updated Jan. 15, 2010-

MONTREAL, Québec—Shen Yun Performing Arts is all set to return to Montreal Friday night to begin its run at Place des Arts (PDA) in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, the largest and most prestigious of the five performance halls at the cultural complex in the heart of the city.

Currently more than 90 percent of some 12,000 tickets have been sold to the premier classical Chinese dance and music production, which will play from Jan. 15 to 17.

“The demand is really very keen to see the show, and we hope to be able to continually increase the number of tickets over the coming years,” said Jin Chengzhi, one of the local organizers of the show……. (more details from The Epochtimes)

Did missile test spark China UFO reports?

By James Oberg, NBC News space analyst, Special to MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2010-

In an ironic encore, yet another secret military missile test has sparked widespread UFO reports from surprised ground witnesses.

On Dec. 9, a Russian Bulava missile was launched from a submarine within sight of northern Norway, resulting in a spectacular spiral display and a spate of UFO sightings.

This week’s UFO reports apparently were sparked by a Chinese missile that was fired to intercept another missile in flight, for the first time in the nation’s history.

Witnesses in China’s inland provinces of Xinjiang and Gansu weren’t as well equipped with cameras as last month’s Norwegian witnesses were, so the only images reaching the West merely show fuzzy-colored clouds and streaks. The military secrecy surrounding China’s missile test is so tight that Beijing officials seem to be at a loss as to how to respond to the reports……. (more details from MSNBC)

One-child policy & Sex-specific abortions Condemns 24M Bachelors to Life Without a Wife

Jane Macartney in Beijing, The Times, UK, January 12, 2010 -

China’s “one couple, one child” family planning policy could leave more than 24 million men unable to find a bride by the end of the decade, a report says.

The country’s leading think-tank describes the gender imbalance among newborns as the most serious demographic problem facing China. The surplus of bachelors — known as “bare branches” — in the rural areas has been described by senior officials as a problem that could lead to a surge in crime and social instability, the ruling Communist Party’s greatest fear.

The report makes no bones about how the one-child policy — introduced to curb population growth and still in place in most circumstances — has led to a preference for boys. “Sex-specific abortions remained extremely commonplace, especially in rural areas,” the report, published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said.

Officials acknowledged that the introduction of ultrasound scans in the 1980s resulted in a surge of abortions of female foetuses after parents tried to ensure that their only child was a boy who could carry on the family line. That tradition is important in a society where reverence of ancestors continues to underpin the social structure and where farmers want sons. “The problem is more serious in rural areas due to the lack of a social security system,” the report said. “Ageing farmers have to rely on their offspring.” …… (more details from The Times)

China Authorities Behind Google Attack, Researcher Claims

By Gregg Keizer, Computer World, January 15, 2010 -

Computerworld -  The malware used to hack Google is so sophisticated that researchers brought in by the company to investigate believe the attack code was designed and launched with support from Chinese authorities.

According to Carlos Carrillo, a principal consultant for Mandiant, a Washington D.C.-based security incident response and forensics firm, the attack against Google last month was “definitely one of the most sophisticated attacks I’ve seen in the last few years.”

Mandiant was called in by Google to look into the attack, and Carrillo was the project manager for the Google investigation. During an interview Friday, he frequently chose his words carefully, saying that there was much he couldn’t discuss because the work was ongoing.

“The malware was unique,” Carrillo said. “It had unique characteristics … it was … let’s just say it was unique.”

Other researchers who have examined the malware have also come away impressed. Thursday, Dmitri Alperovitch, vice president of threat research at McAfee, called the attack code “very sophisticated” and added, “We’ve never seen anything this good in the commercial space. In [attacks on] government, yes, but not commercial.”

But what does that kind of expertise mean?

Carrillo is convinced that, given the sophistication of the code, it was produced with support from Chinese authorities. “This wasn’t on the level of Metasploit,” Carrillo said, referring to the open-source penetration testing framework whose exploits are often used by hackers to craft malware. “This wasn’t something that a 16-year-old came up in his spare time.”

When asked if the code quality pointed toward Chinese state support, Carrillo answered, “I would say so.” He declined to elaborate.

Mandiant was called in to investigate the attack on Google “early in the process,” said Carrillo, who refused to get more specific. McAfee’s Alperovitch said that time stamps in the malware’s command-and-control log files indicated the attacks began in mid-December and ended Jan. 4, when the hackers’ servers were shut down.

In the announcement Tuesday that its corporate network had been hacked and intellectual property stolen, Google said the attacks had been discovered in mid-December. Google also said the attacker tried to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, a move that — along with increasing censorship of the Web by China’s government — has prompted it to reevaluate its business in the country.

Carrillo also provided additional information to the still-sketchy framework of the attack, saying that the exploit of a vulnerability in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was not the only vector used by the hackers. That seemed to back up Microsoft’s assertion that the IE bug wasn’t the sole cause of the break-ins…… (more details from Computerworld)

Chinese Human Rights Activists Claim Their Google Emails Were Hacked

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai, The Telegraph (UK), 15 Jan 2010 -

The activists, who include one of China’s foremost artists and a Tibetan student in the United States, came forward after Google announced it had suffered a “highly sophisticated” cyber attack in December, whose goal was to gain access to its email service, Gmail.

Google has since said it is preparing to quit its Chinese business and Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of State, has demanded an explanation from China for the attempted hacking.

Ai Weiwei, who is best known in the West for having helped design the Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in Beijing, said that two of his Google email accounts had been hacked by “unknown visitors” who read and copied his emails.

Mr Ai, who is also a vociferous activist, said he had no proof that the Chinese government had been behind the hacking attempt.

China Propaganda Uncensored

By ILARIA MARIA SALA,Wall Street Journal, Jan. 14, 2010-

Beijing

‘Propaganda has always been vital for the Chinese Communist Party. Mao Zedong understood its power very clearly, and since the beginning he made sure that it was taken very, very seriously by all. But in propaganda . . . everything is fake, of course. A lot like in advertisements, and today China has both—advertisements and propaganda!” says Chinese artist Zhang Dali, speaking excitedly in his vast studio on the outskirts of this city. Despite his earlier qualms that the topic might be too sensitive to handle, his show “A Second History,” which juxtaposes historical political photos before and after the intervention of the censors, has just opened at the SZ Art Center, at 798, an arts hub in northern Beijing that has taken over the grounds of a former military factory. It is a project that has kept Mr. Zhang—famous for having brought graffiti art to China and for threading the fine line between social and overtly political art—busy for more than five years. He has spent countless hours combing libraries and photographic archives around the country, searching for published propaganda pictures and the original negatives and prints from which they were produced.

The range of doctored photos he has collected is astounding: leaders airbrushed in and out of history as their political glory waxed and waned, peasants on whose chests shiny Mao badges are penciled in, a photogenic sheep that makes an appearance on various occasions when the leaders are required to look pastoral. In pictures of political rallies, out-of-favor slogans on banners are substituted with the latest ones; a formerly half-visible slogan held high by the rallying crowd now says: “American imperialism is the ugliest enemy of world peace.” Revolutionary heroes pose against evergreen backgrounds after naked winter branches have been cut out, and peasants’ homes have the walls decorated with Mao portraits.

On occasion the same photo or some of its elements are utilized more than once, following the political trends of the times. One such picture shows Mao at Yan’an—the Communist “revolutionary base” during the civil war—walking alone on a dirt road. In the background is the barren landscape of Central China, with a few peasants toiling or clapping at Mao’s passage, and a tall, slim pagoda sitting atop a low mountain, framing the scene. A few years later, the same photo was amended to show Mao alone in the dry surroundings, a lone hero with the weight of the revolution on his shoulders. Then, in the late ’70s, the picture was given one more lease on life as a landscape shot: “Even Mao has been erased, to show only what Yan’an [now a favorite site for 'red tourism'] looked like originally,” says Mr. Zhang with a chuckle……. (more detals from Wall Street Journal)