China holds up license renewals for rights lawyers taking on sensitive cases

China is clamping down on its embattled legal profession as many civil rights law firms struggle to renew their licenses, lawyers and rights groups say.

Many rights lawyers whose licenses are up for renewal this week say they are still waiting for approval to continue in professional practice this year.

“We have to submit to an annual inspection,” said Beijing-based public interest lawyer, Han Zhiguang.

Han said his law firm had yet to have its license, which expires on Friday, renewed.

NTD AP and Taiwan Chunghwa Telecom Renew Satellite Broadcast Contract

[Ruey-lan Chang, CEO of NTD Asia Pacific]:
“On behalf of all of NTD AP’s staff, I’d like to thank Taiwan’s main and opposition parties, and the support from various channels, in helping NTD AP secure service with the ST-2 Satellite, which has state protection.”

On Tuesday, CEO of NTD Asia Pacific Ruey-lan Chang announced the renewal of its contract with Taiwan’s Chunghwa Telecom. It was signed on Monday evening. It ensures that our partner station will continue to broadcast NTD’s programming to the region, and to parts of mainland China.

Tens of Thousands Appeal in Beijing

Swarms of slogan-shouting petitioners in Beijing are challenging the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ahead of the party’s 90th anniversary, some of them yelling: “Knock down the Chinese Communist Party!”

To clean up the streets for the 90th anniversary celebrations of the CCP’s establishment, Beijing authorities have launched another round of arrests against the continuous stream of aggrieved citizens from all around the country who come to Beijing to making appeals to higher level regime offices.

Chinese faked photograph leaves officials on street of shame

For government officials in Huili, a distinctly modest county in a rural corner of south-west China, attracting national media coverage would normally seem a dream come true. Unfortunately, their moment in the spotlight was not so welcome: mass ridicule over what may well be one of the worst-doctored photographs in internet history.

The saga began on Monday when Huili’s website published a picture showing, according to the accompanying story, three local officials inspecting a newly completed road construction project this month. The picture certainly portrayed the men, and the road, but the officials appeared to be levitating several inches above the tarmac. As photographic fakery goes it was astonishingly clumsy.

Special Report:China migrant unrest exposes generation faultline

(Reuters) – In a backstreet pool hall in southern China’s factory belt, young migrant workers gather around the tables, their eyes flitting between the worn green baize and the anti-riot police patrolling the grimy alleys.

The police search cars at roadblocks just outside in Dadun, an urban village in the city of Zengcheng, where sweatshops make so many millions of blue jeans that the city promotes itself as the “jeans capital of the world”.

“Are you a plainclothes policeman?”, one spiky haired migrant sitting on a moped outside the pool hall jokingly asks a visitor.

Can Votes Replace Bombs in China?

By Heng He -

On May 26, Qian Mingqi, a man whose house had been demolished without compensation in Fuzhou City, Jiangxi Province, set three explosions, all targeting local government buildings, according to the police report.

The last words posted on his microblog were, “I, Qian Mingqi, have suffered this injustice for 10 years. Finally, I will take action to make equality and justice happen.”

According to the official death toll, he and two others were killed. The unofficial death toll is 18.

Freed China critic Hu Jia says wants to resume activism

BEIJING — Prominent Chinese dissident Hu Jia wants to resume his activism but he is weighing up the impact on his family, according to his first reported comments since being released from prison at the weekend.

During a phone interview with Hong Kong’s Cable TV, Hu stressed the importance of “loyalty to morality, loyalty to the rights of citizens”.

“You should be loyal to your conscience,” he said in a broadcast aired late Sunday.

One of China’s leading rights activists and government critics, Hu returned to his Beijing home early on Sunday, his wife Zeng Jinyan said on Twitter, after completing a more than three-year sentence for subversion.

US opposes Sudan leader’s planned China visit

WASHINGTON — The United States on Monday signaled opposition to a visit to China by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who is accused of war crimes.

Bashir, after a reported delay, is due to visit China on Tuesday amid outrage from rights groups that Beijing would host a man wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity during Sudan’s civil war.

“We continue to oppose invitations, facilitation, support for travel by ICC indictees,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.

HRW Urges China Do Not Host War Criminal Sudanese President Al-Bashir

(New York) – The Chinese government’s invitation to Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir is an affront to victims of heinous crimes committed in Darfur, Human Rights Watch said today. Media reports indicated that al-Bashir will travel to China on June 27, 2011, at the invitation of his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao, to discuss Sudan’s relationship with China and promoting peace in Sudan.

In 2009 and 2010, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for al-Bashir on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Sudan has persistently obstructed the ICC’s efforts to ensure that the alleged perpetrators answer the charges against them for crimes in Darfur.

Hong Kong Phoenix TV’s Famous Talker Dou Wentao ‘Disappeared’ Suddenly

Dou Wentao, a program host in the Phoenix TV, recently admitted that Phoenix TV is part of the system of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

He ‘disappeared’ after making the foregoing remarks. Phoenix denied it on its own TV for 4 consecutive days, emphasizing that it is only a listed Hong Kong company. The saying was criticized as biting the bullet. What system does Phoenix TV belong to then?

In Dou Wentao’s program, when chatting with guests Xu Zidong and Liang Wendao on the counterfeit issues in China, Dou suddenly said that Phoenix TV belongs to the CCP’s system. Xu then tried to help him by asking a question, but Dou did not seem to understand but continued to affirm his comments.

Chinese Officials Beat Activist Chen Guangcheng and His Wife, Group Says

BEIJING — Details are emerging about the apparently brutal detention of one of China’s most important legal activists, the blind lawyer Chen Guangcheng.

Mr. Chen was released from jail last year after serving a 51-month sentence for disturbing public order and destroying public property — charges linked to his uncovering of forced sterilizations and abortions in the eastern Chinese city of Linyi.

But since his release, he has been under “ruanjin,” or “soft detention,” a kind of house arrest increasingly being used by the authorities to silence people who have not violated the law. The authorities once celebrated Mr. Chen, a 39-year-old self-taught lawyer, as a symbol of the country’s efforts to build a legal system, but they turned against him when he used the law to protest government abuse. Earlier this year, a video was smuggled out showing the circumstances of his detention. Reporters who tried to visit him were turned away by undercover police officers who had encircled his home.