Red Ghost Over China

Despite a huge police presence, protests continue in China’s Inner Mongolia’s provincial capital of Hohhot as ethnic Mongolians vent their anger with Party cadres over environmental problems and other issues. The unrest parallels similar incidents in Tibet in March 2008 and Xinjiang in July 2009, but the phenomenon is hardly limited to minority areas. A Tsinghua University sociologist estimated that across China there were 180,000 large-scale protests last year.

Violence is also on the rise. Last Thursday, a farmer in Jiangxi province detonated three bombs outside government buildings, killing himself and three others. Qian Mingqi left behind Internet postings saying he was angry his home had been illegally seized and demolished by the government—an all-too common complaint throughout China. He had been petitioning the government for redress since 2002.

Iceland says sorry to Falun Gong for siding with China

Governments don’t often apologize. Iceland made an exception recently though, when Foreign Minister Össur Skarphéðinsson said he was sorry for the way that Falun Gong practitioners were treated when they tried to visit the country in 2002.

At that time authorities issued a ban against practitioners of the spiritual discipline from entering the country, to coincide with the state visit of then leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Jiang Zemin.

Icelandic authorities then distributed a blacklist obtained from Chinese regime intelligence services, and carried out harassment and interrogations against Falun Gong practitioners on the island in an attempt to prevent protests.

Frustrated Chinese take justice into own hands

By Pascale Trouillaud (AFP)- BEIJING — A deadly triple bomb attack in China carried out last week by a jobless man angry over a land dispute illustrates the crushing desperation of many Chinese who feel their rights are being trampled.

Car bombs and Molotov cocktails have been used by citizens who opt for vigilante justice in the Communist-ruled country, where the justice system has created mounting frustrations that could provoke more violence.

Experts say that despite the introduction of some reforms to address charges the system is unresponsive and lacks transparency, the public perception is that those changes are woefully inadequate, and rule of law is not guaranteed.

Inner Mongolia protests prompt crackdown and censorship

(The Guardian)- A communist official tipped as a future leader of China is moving to defuse a wave of protests in Inner Mongolia by choking information, tightening campus controls and promising to reform the mining industry.

A demonstration by ethnic Mongolians on Monday in the regional capital, Hohhot, was the latest test for Hu Chunhua, whose appointment as party chief of the resource-rich region last year was widely seen as a step towards top office in 2020.

Censors have blocked information about the biggest surge of unrest that the northern region has experienced in 20 years, with witnesses and rights groups claiming to have seen rallies in at least six communities over the past week.

U.S. Chinese Democracy Leader Liu Gang Says Wife a Communist Party Spy

(Epochtimes)- A former leader of the 1989 Tiananmen student movement has accused his wife of being a spy for the Chinese Communist Party in a series of Twitter posts and online blog entries over the weekend. His wife denies the accusation.

Liu Gang lives in exile in the United States and is a member of the overseas Chinese democracy movement. He met his wife four years ago online, and in their first face-to-face meeting she proposed marriage.

Since she was young, pretty, a graduate from a top business school in the United States, and a manager in a major firm, he agreed—he later said he thought her sudden proposal to him was “the American way.” Her name is Guo Yinghua, but in his Twitter messages Liu now calls her “Officer Guo.”

Surprise! “Mao Zedong Kneeling Statue” Appears on China’s Internet

(NTD) – Recently, a blog article has been widely circulated among Chinese readers. The article shows a statue of Mao Zedong kneeling. Netizens comment thatMao Zedong going down on his knee is inevitable. Commentators point out that criticism of Mao Zedong is getting popular, yet for the heinous Mao Zedong, even “repentance” would not diminish his crimes.

In this article, entitled “Repent, Mao Zedong!” the most engaging part is a statue of Mao Zedong on his knees. In the statue, Mao Zedong kneels down with his right hand over his chest for repentance.

Protests erupt after China’s Inner Mongolian herder run over by coal truck as he tries to stop mining convoy driving across prairie land

(The Guardian)- Outside the closed gates of the Xilingol Mongolian high school, Chinese police watch warily as hundreds of students perform calisthenics in a yard from where the previous day they left to march through the streets. A short drive away, another police unit monitors a middle school that has become a source of concern. On the grasslands, patrol cars block access to a troubled community of herders and miners.

Security forces in Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China, are on high alert after the biggest wave of demonstrations in 20 years, sparked by a killing that symbolises the traumatic transition of Mongolia’s nomadic grasslands into a mining powerhouse.

Amnesty urges China to exercise restraint over Inner Mongolia protests

Chinese authorities must avoid a violent crackdown on demonstrations in the country’s Inner Mongolia region, as martial law was declared in some areas to quell a fifth day of protests, Amnesty international said today.

“The Chinese authorities must respect freedom of expression and assembly for protesters. Given the heavy handed repression of similar protests in other regions, like Xinjiang and Tibet, there are real grounds for concern about the situation in Inner Mongolia,” said Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Asia Pacific deputy director.

In a rare show of defiance, hundreds of ethnic Mongolians from the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (IMAR) marched to a local government building in Shuluun Huh Banner county on Friday, calling on Chinese authorities to respect the rights and traditional way of life of Mongolian herders, including access to grazing land.

Bombings in China rattle officials’ nerves

Reporting from Beijing (LA Times)— A farmer who said his house had been demolished set off three bombs at government buildings in the eastern Chinese city of Fuzhou on Thursday, killing himself and one other person and putting nerves on edge at a time when authorities are increasingly anxious about social unrest.

The bomber was identified as Qian Mingqi, an unemployed 52-year-old. The other person killed was not immediately identified. Six people were injured.

Bombings of this magnitude are relatively rare in China. Officials’ nervousness was evident from a ham-handed attempt to keep the incident out of the news. Angry reporters in Fuzhou complained that police confiscated their notebooks and cellphones and deleted photographs from cameras. An early report posted on the official New China News Agency site that described the attack as retaliation against local government was later removed.

As world hesitates, China stands firm on dissent crackdown

BEIJING(AFP) — The international community’s mixed response to China’s crackdown on dissent — ranging from public criticism to total silence — has handed Beijing leeway to maintain its hard line, experts say.

Since Chinese authorities, apparently spooked by the pro-democracy uprisings sweeping the Middle East, began detaining lawyers, artists and other activists in February, a parade of Western leaders have met with Beijing’s top brass.

Some have slammed China over the clampdown — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this month called it a “fool’s errand”.

China Human Rights Briefing May 18-25, 2011

Highlights

10-Year Sentence for “Inciting Subversion” Issued to Lü Jiaping: CHRD has learned that 70-year-old dissident and military scholar Lü Jiaping (吕加平) was handed a severe 10-year sentence on May 13 after being convicted of “inciting subversion of state power” by the Beijing Intermediate People’s Court. Lü’s family was barred from attending the trial and also unable to hire counsel to defend him. The harsh sentence is believed to be related to Lü’s writings about former Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江泽民).

CHRD Report on Internet Censorship Documents Escalating Struggle Between Government, Netizens: On May 20, CHRD released a report on the current state of internet restrictions in China and the methods being used by netizens to circumvent this encroachment on their rights. The report examines major online incidents from the past two years, discusses methods the government has used to tighten control over the internet, anti-censorship strategy among netizens, and give practical advice to netizens to circumvent censorship. For the full text of this report, in Chinese, please click here.

China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work

As a prisoner at the Jixi labour camp, Liu Dali would slog through tough days breaking rocks and digging trenches in the open cast coalmines of north-east China. By night, he would slay demons, battle goblins and cast spells.

Liu says he was one of scores of prisoners forced to play online games to build up credits that prison guards would then trade for real money. The 54-year-old, a former prison guard who was jailed for three years in 2004 for “illegally petitioning” the central government about corruption in his hometown, reckons the operation was even more lucrative than the physical labour that prisoners were also forced to do.

“Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour,” Liu told the Guardian. “There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn’t see any of the money. The computers were never turned off.”

Week 7: China arrests 25 more Christians

BEIJING (BP)–They came hoping to sing hymns, read Scripture and worship together, but 25 members of Shouwang Church in Beijing were arrested May 22 during the seventh consecutive week that the congregation has bucked the Chinese government and refused to stop meeting.

Few other details of the latest round of arrests were available, but ChinaAid — which monitors religious freedom in China — reported that 18 of the church members had been freed by the end of the day.

In one possible sign that the confrontation is not nearing an end, the last two weeks have seen an increase in the number of church members attending the illegal service. After 13 members were arrested in the fifth week, 20 were arrested last week, and now 25.

Exiled Tibetans Claim CCP Detained 300 Monks in Sichuan

Tibetan exiles said on Monday (May 23) that, according to their sources, CCP security forces detained about 300 monks from the Kirti monastery in the Aba prefecture of Sichuan province. They say the roundup was part of the Chinese Communist Party’s crackdown after a Tibetan Buddhist monk lit himself on fire in protest.

Two exiled monks and a Tibetan writer say their sources told them the monks were detained and taken away in covered military trucks on April 21. Supporters had gathered around the monastery, but police beat them and drove them away with dogs.

The head of the Kirti monastery, Kirti Rinpoche lives in exile in Dharamsala, India. He said his sources told him the conditions at the monastery have become “suffocating” due to intense pressure from the CCP.

Suit Claims Cisco Helped China Pursue Falun Gong

SAN FRANCISCO — Cisco, the maker of Internet routing gear, customized its technology to help China track members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, according to a federal lawsuit filed last week by members of the movement.

The lawsuit, which relies on internal sales materials, also said that Cisco had tried to market its equipment to the Chinese government by using inflammatory language that stemmed from the Maoist Cultural Revolution.

The suit was filed Thursday in Federal District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose by the Human Rights Law Foundation on behalf of members of Falun Gong. It contends that Cisco helped design the controversial “Golden Shield” firewall that is used to censor the Internet and track opponents of the Chinese government. The lawsuit names several Cisco executives, including the chairman and chief executive, John T. Chambers.

N. Korean leader Kim Jong-Il ‘heads to southern China’

SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il headed on Saturday to southern China on day two of a trip which experts said was aimed at showing he was still in charge of the impoverished and starving communist state.

Kim inspected a car factory in the northeastern city of Changchun before heading southwest, news reports said.

Previous trips by Kim Jong-Il to China have been shrouded in secrecy, with state-controlled media in both countries reporting them only after they end.

New Yorkers Sue China and Its Biggest Search Engine Firm Baidu Over Internet Censorship

Eight New York residents are suing China and its biggest search engine company, accusing Baidu of conspiring with the government to censor pro-democracy content.

The lawsuit claims violations of the US constitution, and according to the plaintiffs’ lawyer, is the first of its type. In an unorthodox move, it names not only a company but also the Chinese government as defendants.

The lawsuit was filed on Wednesday, more than a year after Google declared it would no longer censor search results in China, and rerouted internet users to its Hong Kong website.

China’s ‘great firewall’ creator pelted with shoes

Chinese police are seeking a man who said he threw eggs and shoes at the architect of China’s “great firewall”, the world’s most sophisticated and extensive online censorship system.

The claims were cheered by many internet users, in a reflection of growing anger among them about increasingly stringent controls. Admirers showered the anonymous young man with flippant promises of everything from Nike trainers to replace his lost footwear, to iPads, sex and jobs.

The office of Fang Binxing – who is known as the father of the great firewall – denied the attack had happened, while Wuhan University in Hubei province, where the incident reportedly happened, told the Guardian it was not aware of it. No photographs have surfaced of the event.

Shoe attack on China web censorship creator Fang Binxing sparks online buzz

SHANGHAI (AFP) — Internet users in China are hailing a student who claims to have thrown a shoe at the architect of the country’s so-called “Great Firewall” of Internet controls during a university appearance.

Police in central China on Friday refused to comment on the alleged attack on Fang Binxing at Wuhan University by a student who identified himself online only as “hanunyi”.

But the student has been hailed by web users — posts that were later deleted by authorities under the very system that Fang designed to snuff out information or comment that the government considers a threat to its authority.

Government-backed Confucius Institute Unwelcome at University, Says Canadian Professor

Faculty at the University of Manitoba are concerned their school could become the latest host for a Confucius Institute, a non-profit Chinese language and culture institution funded with the helping hand of the Chinese regime.

Canada is already host to several Confucius Institutes, including one at University of Waterloo where one instructor rallied her students to work together and fight Canadian media’s coverage of the paramilitary effort to crush Tibetan unrest just months before the Beijing Olympic Games.

Prof. Cameron Morrill, president of the U of M Faculty Association, says the union is strongly opposed to having a CI on campus, a sentiment echoed by Asian studies Prof. Terry Russell in the following Q & A.

China Unlikely to Ease Crackdown on Shouwang House Church

Mission Network News,  China (MNN) ―  Making waves on NPR, CNN, BBC and the New York Times, the story of one persecuted house church has struck international chords.

The Shouwang Church in Beijing has been in a battle of rights with China for years, but the struggle has only just come into focus for most. The 1,000-member church was ousted from its building when their landlord was pressured by officials to evict them. For the six weeks following, Shouwang members have been meeting publicly outside.

Legislators Seek to Protect Independent TV Broadcasts to China

WASHINGTON—Lawmakers in the United States, Hong Kong, and Taiwan believe the Chinese Communist regime is responsible for a move that would potentially bar New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television from broadcasting to mainland China. They are asking the government of Taiwan to act to protect press freedom.

In a letter to Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, U.S. Congressman Dana Rohrabacher wrote, “The democratic government of Taiwan should be encouraging the spread of ideas favoring freedom and traditional values across the strait.”

West worries about N. Korea sanctions ‘loopholes’, in China

UNITED NATIONS — Western nations on Tuesday raised concerns about “loopholes” in North Korea nuclear sanctions in the first UN Security Council talks on a report which said the North was sharing missile technology with Iran.

China has objected to the report, which implies that the banned dealings are being carried out through China. But it has asked for more time to decide whether to formally block publication, diplomats said.