2. Large wave of resignation from the Chinese Communist Party is happening
More than 35 million Chinese have quit the CCP till Apr. 2008, people are continue quitting at a rate of 44,000 to 56,000 per day in April 2008.
- China: 35 Million Chinese Quit the Communist Party
10.Videos: Tiananmen Square Massacre - June. 4, 1989
Thousands of students shot to death by tanks and soldiers on Tiananmen square in capital city Beijing in 1989
Reporters Without Borders said in it’s 2005 special report titled “Xinhua: the world’s biggest propaganda agency”, that “Xinhua remains the voice of the sole party”, “particularly during the SARS epidemic, Xinhua has for last few months been putting out news reports embarrassing to the government, but they are designed to fool the international community, since they are not published in Chinese.”
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XINXIANG, China — After years of campaigning to clean up the sludge-filled rivers and acrid air of central China’s Henan province, Tian Guirong no longer has a bed to call her own and says she fears for her life.
As world leaders huddle in Copenhagen for crunch talks on a global climate change deal, Tian’s story is an example of the huge struggle faced by some developing countries trying to fight pollution.
Her group, the Xinxiang Environmental Protection Volunteers Association, has helped close more than 100 polluting factories — plants she says were responsible for illness and death among local residents.
“I’m scared, I don’t dare sleep at a fixed place. Tonight I’ll be at my son’s, tomorrow at my daughter’s, or I stay at my association,” Tian told AFP in an interview at her office in a derelict former factory in Xinxiang city.
“We receive threatening phone calls, and volunteers have also got phone calls at home late at night,” she said, adding she thinks those who call are thugs hired by angry factory owners.
Tian first started her environmental work in 1998, recycling used batteries……. (more details from AFP)
HONG KONG— More than 100 laid-off elementary school teachers in central China petitioned the local government Tuesday over retirement pensions, members of the group said.
The teachers, who work for the education system in Dawu county of central China’s Hubei province, said they were angered over back premiums they would have to pay to be eligible to receive their pensions.
One protesting teacher surnamed Liu said the group had gathered in front of the county government’s Letter and Visit Office early Tuesday morning.
“Around 100 teachers have come, and we are petitioning over retirement pensions,” Liu said.
“The government asked us to pay 20,000 yuan (U.S. $2,928), but we’ve never had so much money in our whole life. How can we afford that?” he asked.
The teachers said that before they were laid off, their salaries were very low……. (more details)
Machine workers protest
In a separate development on Monday, around 100 laid-off workers in China’s southwestern Sichuan province also petitioned the local government over retirement pension, leading to a scuffle with police.
The workers, from the Changjiang No. 2 Hydraulic Machinery Factory in Luzhou city, had been laid off in 1990s, but had been informed that their benefits would end after the factory was recently sold to a real estate developer.
A protester who asked to remain anonymous said the workers had been forced to petition the government for assistance at the Luzhou city hall.
“Workers are now extremely anxious because the new owner will no longer take care of us. This is why we have to petition the government to pay attention to our benefits,” the worker said.
But rather than hear the concerns of the protesting workers, the Luzhou city government dispatched about 100 police officers to confront the workers, leading to a scuffle between the two groups.
The anonymous worker said the confrontation between elderly workers and young policemen left several protesters injured.
“Our workers are all in their 70s or 80s, but the police are all in their 20s and 30s, so you can imagine what happened when the two groups began to push and pull at each other,” the worker said.
“Three old workers were injured and sent to the hospital in ambulances. According to other protesters, the three remained in hospital at least through Monday night.”
Attempts to contact local officials by telephone went unanswered……. (more detailsfrom Radio Free Asia)
SHANXI– Huozhou City officials met on October 3rd to discuss results of the emergency meeting held on September 28th, where officials assembled to determine whether Linfen Fushan Church would be charged as an “evil cult.” Citing the need to preserve stability in the province, local officials had seized Linfen-Fushan Church’s Senior Pastor Wang Xiaoguang, his wife Yang Rongli, and more than ten co-leaders on September 25 for attempting to petition Beijing, and have since continued to hold them in detention. Three days after the arrests, the Fushan Government held the emergency meeting to determine whether the Linfen-Church violated Chinese laws on religion, which explicitly ban “evil cults.”
On October 3rd, the Religious Affairs Bureau of Huozhou (RAB) deemed the 50,000 member church to legitimate, but the government reported they would no longer tolerate the “gross violations and law-breaking actions” of Pastor Wang Xiaoguang and his wife Yang Rongli over the past ten years. The RAB reportedly listed these violations, but no legal record of these abuses have been issued or confirmed. According to an inside source, the officials expressed satisfaction that the ten church leaders were being held in their “rightful place” in administrative detention, and the government resolved that the situation must be fully “dealt with” in the upcoming weeks……. (more detals fromChina Aid)
Arbitrary Detention
Liaoning Petitioner Stopped at Checkpoint, Alleges Beating by Police
On September 12, petitioner Liu Chunbao (刘纯宝), from Yingkou City, Liaoning Province, was stopped by policemen at a checkpoint in Xianghe County, Hebei Province while en route to Beijing. Liu, who did not have an ID card, alleges that he was beaten by an officer before being forcibly returned to his hometown by officials from the Beijing Liasion Office of the Liaoning Provincial Government. Liu is currently being held at a retirement home in Yingkou, under the watch of 8 guards. (CHRD)[i]
Shanxi Petitioner Detained after Traveling to Letters and Visits Office in Beijing
Xiaoyi City, Shanxi Province petitioner Bi Caizhen (毕彩珍) has been detained since she was seized outside of the National Letters and Visits Office in Beijing on September 23. Bi had travelled to the capital to petition about corruption at Shanxi’s Liuwan (湾煤) Coal Mine and the murder of her husband, which she believes was carried out by criminals hired by management at the mine. Bi was forcibly returned to Shanxi, and friends and fellow have been unable to contact her to determine her present condition. (CHRD)[ii]
Hangzhou Activist Seized in Beijing, Returned to Detention in Hometown
On the evening of October 3, Hangzhou petitioner-turned-activist Zhu Yingdi (朱瑛娣) was seized by Beijing policemen at a guesthouse near Yongdingmen in the capital. By October 5, when she was able to contact her husband, she had already been forcibly returned to Hangzhou, where she is currently being detained in nearby Anji County. According to Zhu’s husband, Mr. Dai (戴), the couple’s home in Hangzhou had been guarded around the clock by five men since September 15, and beginning September 30, they were not allowed to leave their home. They managed to escape on the night of October 1, which is when Zhu travelled to Beijing. Zhu has been petitioning and assisting other petitioners since the forced demolition of her home many years ago, and has been repeatedly summoned and harassed by local officials. (CHRD)[iii] ……. (more details)
A gas explosion at a coal mine in China’s central Henan Province early on Tuesday killed 35 people. Forty-four are still missing. Another 14 workers escaped the mine blast at the time of the accident. The mine is a small, locally operated venture. China’s state run media agency Xinhua says the pit was being upgraded and the local authorities had not given permission to resume production there. Lax safety standards and strong demand for resources have made China’s mines the deadliest in the world. More than 3,000 people died in mine floods, explosions, collapses and other accidents in 2008 alone.
An unsatisfied mainland petitioner, Zhang Kunshan of Henan Province, went to the Presidential Palace in Taiwan to seek help. (The Epoch Times)
After six years of unsuccessful petitioning to different levels of Chinese authorities, Zhang Kunshan of Henan Province, recently appealed in front of the Presidential Palace in Taiwan, hoping to get attention from the media and obtain legal help from Taiwan’s lawyers.
Zhang came to Taiwan as a tourist on the 19th. Instead of traveling with his group, he went to the Presidential Palace and hung a banner on a tree on which he described how the corrupted local officials took away his house and money.
The Immigration Department found and resettled him seven days later. Guo Weiqi, an immigration officer, said Zhang was very emotional when they seized him. He threatened not to leave Taiwan unless the Taiwan government agreed to pass his letter to the top Chinese regime leaders. He finally calmed down after he got the promise from the immigration department.
Zhang accepted an interview with The Epoch Times on August 26 and presented his petition letter. He writes:” Tian Qingzhong, the secretary general of Xinxiang City, Wang Shangsheng, the Political and Legal Secretary, Ding Baodong, the deputy Mayor and the director of Public Security Bureau, and Wang Boxun, the president of the Xinxiang City Intermediate People’s Court colluded together and embezzled 60 million yuan ($9.5 million) of the relocation reimbursement.”
The local authorities forced him to relocate and took away his family property in 2003. He petitioned all the way up to the Ministry of Public Security and Ministry of Petition in Beijing. He was arrested there by the officers from his hometown and sent to an underground detention center in Beijing opened by his home province’s Complaints Bureau.
In order to stop him from appealing, the local authorities hired gangsters to threaten him, and illegally detained him up to 197 days.
He was finally able to file his case to the District Court on December 31, 2007. However, all of the lawyers in his city were told not to represent him. “I was so disappointed and had to defend myself in the court. Even though I won the case, I still got nothing for compensation,” said Zhang.
Without any other options, Zhang went to Taiwan for seeking justice. He said, “I came to Taiwan not to visit, but to look for my human rights. I hope to get the media’s help here. China has signed a mutual legal assistance agreement with Taiwan. I am asking Taiwan’s lawyers to help me to get justice in court.”
HONG KONG—Promises by local government officials offering free blood tests to children affected by pollution from smelting plants in the central Chinese province of Hunan have yet to be fulfilled, residents and officials said.
An official at the hospital near worst-hit Wugang township, where more than 1,000 children are believed to have higher-than-normal levels of lead in their blood, said the hospital had not yet been told how to deal with the large numbers of worried parents trying to book tests.
“There are several dozen patients coming for blood tests every day, but I don’t know the actual patient numbers per day,” said an employee who answered the phone at the Wugang People’s Hospital.
“Senior management has requested a survey [of lead poisoning cases], and we will know the procedure in a few days’ time,” she added.
Local officials have promised the closure of privately owned zinc and manganese smelting plants after being hit by a wave of violent clashes between police and angry parents in central Hunan and northern Shaanxi provinces in recent weeks.
Official Chinese media also reported that free blood tests would be available for children affected by the polluting factories, but residents of Wugang say the authorities have yet to deliver on their promises.
Bribery alleged
“There are only three government permission slips for free individual blood tests for the whole village,” a mother surnamed Wang from Wugang said.
“Some parents are willing to pay the cost themselves in order to have their children checked. However, local hospitals have been bribed by someone, so the parents never see the correct results,” she said.
Another Wugang villager surnamed Zhang said she had been turned down for lead tests at several hospitals in the area.
“Some said there was no electricity, some said the machines weren’t working, and some said the maintenance staff hadn’t shown up for work at the right time, and so on,” Zhang said.
Some villagers even went as far as Hengyang city, taking their children to at least five hospitals, she said.
“But none of the children has actually been tested,” she said……. (more fromThe Radio fee Asia)
HONG KONG—More than 1,300 children have been poisoned by lead from a year-old manganese factory in China’s central Hunan province, official media said, on the heels of another lead-poisoning scandal in nearby Shaanxi province.
The mass lead contamination in Wenping township, Hunan province, has led to charges that authorities have failed to adequately regulate toxins. Official media said it had opened in May last year without approval from local environmental authorities.
Sixty to 70 percent of children living near the factory showed unhealthy levels of lead in their blood, the official Xinhua news agency said.
A total of 851 children were found to have excessive lead levels in their blood, Xinhua news agency said. It said 155 children were still receiving hospital treatment, out of a total of 174 cases requiring hospitalization.
Authorities closed the factory, located near a kindergarten, primary school, and middle school, and detained two executives on suspicion of “causing severe environment pollution.”
An employee at the Wugang municipal government, contacted by telephone, said Wednesday that the manganese factory had been closed.
“The manganese mine has been shut down. Lead poison from industrial pollution is quite common in China. Our municipal leaders attached great importance to this incident and have taken many measures to deal with it,” the city employee, who asked to be identified by his surname, Huang, said.
“Wugang city has posted a notice in Hengjiang village, indicating that all residents who live within 2.5 kms of the manganese factory can go to the designated clinics to have medical exams and the government will pay for the cost. The municipal government has begun an investigation on the factory and whoever is responsible for the pollution will be held accountable,” he said.
Yang Xin, an environmental activist from Chengdu, Sichuan province, said this latest incident of lead poisoning—along with another reported last week in Shaanxi—show that China’s small- and medium-sized mining enterprises must be overhauled.
“Many small- and medium-sized mining enterprises face similar problems such as shortage of money and lack of technology,” Yang said.
“They are usually privately owned and operated and their owners seek profits only and care little about environmental protection. There is a trend that such phenomena are spreading out from China’s coastal areas to the mid-west regions.”
Some employ local residents, including children, who know little about industrial pollution. “They’re easy prey,” he said.
Protesters recently stormed the Dongling smelting works in Shaanxi, which they blamed for the lead poisoning of 851 children.
The Dongling Lead and Zinc Smelting Co. was ordered by environmental protection authorities in Fengxiang county to suspend lead and zinc production Aug. 6 following a public outcry.
Fengxiang county government has offered free blood tests for 1,016 children aged 14 and under from three villages of Changqing Township, official media reported.
In an undated photo, residents of Nanwan village in southern Guangdong province protest outside a government building against alleged corruption surrounding an eel farm built on their land. (Provided by villagers, published by Radio Free Asia)
HONG KONG— Villagers in one of the poorest regions of China have vowed they will fight a government proposal to use their farmland for a cement factory, as a deadline for agreement set by local officials passed on Wednesday.
Residents of poverty-stricken Gushi county in the central province of Henan said they had been sent a letter only last week by village-level officials proposing the sale of a plot of desperately needed farmland at below-market compensation levels.
Dongba village resident Wang Dengyou said the villagers are dependent on agriculture as a way to eke out a living.
“Our plan was not to sell this land,” said Wang, who received the government letter offering 12,500 yuan (U.S.$1,830) per mu (0.06 hectares). “If we sell it, then we won’t have anything to eat.”
“We decided that it wasn’t enough compensation,” he said. “Even if the price was a bit higher, if we sold it we would still have lost our food supply.”
The government letter also threatened the villagers with land requisition and no compensation at all if they refused the offer, residents said.
Alleged corruption
Villagers accused local officials of skimming off a high percentage of money received from the property developers for the land.
“If you think about it, the county government has received 20,000 yuan per mu, while they are only offering 12,500 yuan per mu to the villagers,” Dongba resident Yang Huaibing said.
“This is being pulled by [officials in] our village.”
Calls to the Dongba village government and nearby Wangpeng village government went unanswered during office hours Tuesday.
According to local media reports, a series of land disputes has followed county Party secretary Guo Yongchang’s 2004 pledge to bring more investment to Henan, which has some of the poorest rural communities in China, as local officials make bids to acquire land in the area.
New developments have included spacious business centers and palatial government office buildings, reports said……. (more details fromRadio Free Asia)
By Malcolm Moore, The Telegraph, UK, June 22nd, 2009 -
It was a dramatic weekend in the relatively small city of Shishou in Hubei province.
Tens of thousands of rioters torched a hotel and overturned police cars, accusing the authorities of trying to cover up the murder of a 24-year-old man as a suicide.
police cars overturned in Shishou City (from QQ)
The deceased, Tu Yuangao, was the chef of the Yong Long hotel. According to the cops, he committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the building and left a note.
However, witnesses said there was no blood on the scene and Tu’s body was already cold just after it hit the ground. His parents were surprised that he left a suicide note, since he was allegedly illiterate.
There are plenty of rumours flying around – that two other employees at the hotel had died in the same way, that the boss of the hotel is related to the mayor of Shishou, that the hotel was a centre for the local drug business and Yu was killed for threatening to expose what was going on. There’s also a rumour that three further bodies have been found at the hotel.
There are more details and photos here (EastWestNorthSouth).
It’s a strange story, and it gets stranger. A huge mob, of anywhere between a few thousand to 70,000 people, depending on which report you read, quickly gathered outside the building to protect the body. Tu’s parents refused to let his corpse be taken away, claiming that it held vital evidence of the crime, and instead placed it inside the hotel on ice.
The crowd beat back waves of policemen. On Saturday, someone lit a fire inside the hotel, possibly to destroy the body, but it was saved.
Tu’s cousin apparently then armed himself with two barrels of gasoline and threatened to blow himself up if the body was taken.
The police restored order yesterday, imposed a curfew and took the corpse to a funeral parlour. There is still a lot of anger, however, and the website of the local government has been defaced by hackers.
What’s extraordinary is the speed in which the riot blew up, and the venom directed against the local authorities. Whatever was behind Tu’s death, there’s clearly something rotten in Shishou.
After months of calm, there have recently been a spate of riots being reported in the Chinese media, or on the internet.
Is this because media restrictions have been lifted, allowing news of riots to spread, or has there been a genuine increase in social tension in the countryside?
It is impossible to tell. China no longer publishes the figures for how many riots take place each year, but most people put the figure at around 80,000 and the vast majority go totally unnoticed.
The fact that there have been a dozen riots reported in the last couple of months may not demonstrate anything out of the ordinary. There is no theme that connects the recent protests – some are about property, some are work disputes, some are because of corruption.
But then again, a huge number of migrant workers are still out of work. Their factories have not recovered from the economic crisis. In the countryside, the harvest is finished and people’s savings may be running low. Perhaps the tinderbox is drier than usual.
UPDATE: Overnight between Sunday and Monday over a thousand students rioted at Nanjing Industrial Technical School, smashing windows, television sets, their teacher’s cars and an on-campus supermarket.
A policeman was attacked, but the crowd was eventually subdued by hundreds of anti-riot police, according to blogs written by participants.
The students were enraged after being told that they would only graduate with a technical degree (the equivalent of high-school diploma) rather than the associate degree (just underneath a normal bachelor’s degree) they were promised at enrollment.
On June 16 the Badong County Court of Hubei Province issued a statement that declared Deng Yujia’s “freedom has been legally, fully restored.” Within 48 hours, that freedom had been taken away once again, although the Chinese people have been told she is free.
In a tape recording of a conversation of a blogger with Deng’s mother, the mother says Deng is now being held in a psychiatric hospital.
Deng, a waitress and pedicurist at a Badong resort, had been tried for killing a Communist Party official who was alleged to be raping her. Her act of resistance, subsequent arrest, and trial have captured the attention of people throughout China, with bloggers, former Communist Party officials, and even members of the state-run media writing in her defense. Approximately 500 supporters showed up outside her trial, even though the trial date had not been announced in advance.
The court’s decision, which claimed to give Deng her freedom, found her guilty but did not impose any punishment. The court claimed to give her leniency, in part because of her “bearing limited criminal liability,” meaning that she was mentally ill.
That assertion was never proven at trial as no witness or evidence was presented. Bloggers who have followed this case closely assert that Deng has no mental illness. Nonetheless, the claim that she is mentally ill is now the apparent pretext for detaining her.
Wu Gan, a blogger who goes by the pen name of Tufu, has supported Deng. On the 18th, Tufu got in touch with Deng’s mother, Zhang Shuhai, and told her how Internet bloggers had collected money to help her family financially and in particular wished to offer Deng a quiet place in Beijing where she might recover from her ordeal. Zhang thanked the supporters but refused to take any money.
Tufu uploaded his conversation with Zhang to his blog on June 18. Part of what Zhang says in the recording is: “She is—I am not sure where she is.
“I am back home now, but I don’t know where she is.
“The authorities demand to treat her illness. She is out to a hospital. I am not with her now.”
The conversation with Zhang does not make clear when exactly Deng was detained in the hospital……. (more details fromThe Epochtimes)
BEIJING (AFP) — A Chinese waitress convicted of killing an official who demanded sex walked free from court Tuesday, after a nationwide Internet campaign hailed her as a heroine for standing up to government sleaze.
In a case that sparked widespread outrage, Deng Yujiao, 21, was put on trial for stabbing to death a local official in central China in May, in what she said was self-defence after he tried to force himself on her sexually.
Deng, a waitress at a hotel in the city of Badong, was initially detained on suspicion of murder after the incident, in which she said the man hit her repeatedly after she refused his advances.
She also stood accused of injuring a second official who had made unwanted sexual advances.
Deng was eventually charged with the lesser offence of intentional assault — still punishable by death, according to the China Daily — as officials caved in to the massive public pressure generated on the Internet.
Internet users fed up with government corruption, abuse of power and official impunity quickly rallied to Deng’s cause, and her case became a symbol of injustice in a society tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party.
On Tuesday, after a brief trial in Badong in Hubei province, Deng walked free despite being found guilty as charged, on the grounds of diminished responsibility, a judge at the court, who asked not to be named, told AFP.
The judge said the court had decided not to punish her as she had used excessive force in an act of self-defence, she had surrendered to the police, and the officials involved in the incident had made a “major mistake.”…… (More fromAFP)
The legal case that has grabbed the attention of ordinary people throughout China, in which on May 10 a waitress in China’s Hubei province allegedly killed a Communist official who she said was involved in a sexual assault on her, took a surprising turn last Sunday as the Chinese authorities described the killing in what might appear to be an exculpatory manner. Legal experts, though, say the charges against her remain unchanged.
The announcement, many believe, stems from the regime’s effort to appease the public during the run-up to the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4 and occurs at the same time as measures meant to silence discussion of this explosive topic.
According to a Xinhua news release of last Sunday, on May 10 the waitress Deng Yujiao at a karaoke-spa center, “was coerced by Huang Dezhi and Deng Guida to bathe with them.” When she refused, it was said, “she was violently pulled and pushed around [by the two officials] and was also verbally assaulted.”
Under such circumstances, says the news release, the waitress’s stabbing of the two officials, which killed one and injured the other, is considered by the police “excessive self-defense.”
According to bloggers, the decision is widely seen as the Chinese authority’s attempt to alleviate the widespread anger among the people, who believe that the authority is trying to cover up a rape or attempted rape by communist officials.
Another Version
The Sunday news release offers yet another official description of what happened in the incident, in addition to three different earlier versions of the story.
Earlier, the waitress reportedly was asked by the official Huang Dezhi to provide “special service” (meaning sexual service), which was then changed to “bathing service” (a young woman giving a man a bath). Last Sunday’s version says she was coerced to “bathe with them.”
Besides, the waitress, instead of being “held down [on a sofa]” or “pushed to sit [on a sofa],” as the earlier versions said, is now said to be violently pulled and pushed around while being verbally assaulted.
No rape or attempted rape is implicated in the Xinhua statement.
The news release also says that Huang Dezhi, vice-director of the Investment Office of the town Yesanguan, has been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and stripped of all his offices because he breached Party rules through accepting his client’s dinner invitation and through forcing a waitress to bathe with him.
In addition, the third official, Deng Zhongjia, who earlier had been left out of the picture by the authorities because “he did nothing illegal,” is said to have been fired from his job for the “bad influence he may have in society.”…… (more details fromThe Epoch Times)
HONG KONG – Until recently, Deng Yujiao seemed an unlikely hero. The 21-year-old pedicurist worked in obscurity at the Xiongfeng Hotel in central Hubei province’s Badong county. The hotel’s Dream City leisure center is probably a euphemism for a brothel, but she was known only as a toenail cutter there until May 10.
On that night, she says she was assaulted by two government officials, one of whom slapped her repeatedly with wads of cash while insisting that she have sex with him. When the two men pushed her onto a sofa a second time, she recalls, she reached into her bag for a knife, an instrument she used in her trade, and began slashing away.
One of the officials, Deng Guida, the 44-year-old head of business promotion for the town of Yesanguan and the apparent would-be sex client, died from his wounds; his unnamed colleague, also 44, survived.
While there was little public sympathy for the dead man or his injured cohort, suddenly a previously unknown pedicurist working in a seedy hotel was being hailed by Chinese netizens as a champion of women’s rights and hero of the underclass. Women’s groups, including the semi-governmental All-China Women’s Federation, took up her cause, and even state media picked up her story, which has become a national sensation.
Until last week, that is, when the country’s censor tsar, jittery about public ire manifested in any form as the 20th anniversary of the June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown approaches, decided to pull the plug.
“Hubei’s case concerning Deng Yujiao,” a gag order from the Central Publicity Department stated, “has been under judicial investigation in accordance with the law, and news organizations should halt following up the case temporarily and call back journalists working in Hubei immediately.”
Since the department issued this edict, two journalists – Kong Pu of the Beijing Times and Wei Yi of the Nangfang People Weekly – have reportedly been beaten and detained as they attempted to interview Deng Yujiao’s grandmother, and Yesanguan has been sealed off by local authorities……. ( More details fromAsia Times Online)
By Zhang Yuwen, Voice of America, Via The Epochtimes, May 8, 2009 -
Eighteen House Church members from Henan Province in Central China were detained by local police last week when they gathered for a meeting. Sixteen of them remain in detention.
It was the first time that members of the House Church in the village had been arrested collectively. The China Aid Association (CAA) called on Chinese authorities to immediately release these detained Christians.
The CAA reported that when the Huafu Church members in Taizi Village, Xinye County, Henan Province, gathered on April 30, local police conducted a raid. Eighteen people were brought to the local police station where they were forced to pay a fine of 1,000 yuan (approximately $146.56). The arrests occurred over a week ago.
One church member, identified as Li Le, said that the authorities had not given any reason for the detentions nor had they processed the detentions yet.
Li said the local police have released only two elder members who were in poor health.. Several family members of the detained Christians asked Li to lead them to the police station so they could ask for the release of their family members.
A Voice of America reporter called the Xinye police but the police hung up immediately when they realized the call was from a reporter. The cell phone of the police leader was also turned off. A staff person at the Xinye Detention Center simply said he did not have a clear understanding of the matter.
Li reported that they are often harassed by the police and anti-riot forces when they meet together. In the past they had been arrested individually. This was the first time the church members had been arrested collectively.
Zhang Mingxuan, chairman of the Chinese House Church Alliance, said that the Chinese authorities had not loosened their suppression of House Church members after the conclusion of the Beijing Olympics.
“The education level of police in many remote areas is poor. They have been told Christians are a radical force and lawless. They don’t understand us, so they continue to suppress us. It happens frequently in Henan and Sichuan Provinces and in other places as well.” Zhang said.
CAA published a statement asking members to contact Xinye police to ask for the immediate release of the 16 Christians.
By James Reynolds, BBC News, Shanxi, central China, Apr. 23, 2009-
For the Li family, the best part of the day comes at noon.
Every day, after school, Li San San picks up his children from school, jams them all onto the back of his motorbike and drives them through the hills back home.
The kids cling onto each other and laugh as they try not to fall off.
On the main roads nearby, lines of coal trucks head off to the rest of China. The valleys are full of steelworks and heavy industry.
The Li family get back to their home, which is carved into the side of a hill.
Six-year-old Hong Wei eats his noodles and sits quietly in front of his school notebook.
He has a shy smile and hides in his sister’s lap when we try to talk to him.
Hong Wei was born with an extra thumb on his right hand. His elder sister Lixia, who’s 14, was born with a twisted left foot and walks with a heavy limp.
Like many people in Shanxi, this family is too poor to go to the doctors. The parents don’t know why their children were born with defects. They’re simply left to guess.
“The air isn’t good around here,” says Li San San. “When it’s bad, it’s difficult to breathe, it looks gloomy and smoggy out there.”
The province of Shanxi is one of the most polluted places in the world.
The rate of birth defects in this region is six times higher than the national average.
In January, the director of family planning in Shanxi, An Huanxiao, told the China Daily newspaper that the province’s high rate of birth defects was related to environmental pollution. …… (more details from BBC News)
Reuters, Jan 6, 2009 -
GENEVA, Jan 6 (Reuters) – China’s health ministry has confirmed that a 19-year-old woman died of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Beijing, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday.
China recorded three bird flu cases last year, all fatal. The bird flu virus is constantly mutating, and experts fear it could change into a form that is easily transmitted from person to person and kill millions of people worldwide.
At present, H5N1 remains mainly a bird virus, but WHO data released in mid-December showed 247 people had died from it out of 391 cases since the virus resurfaced in Asia in 2003.
“We received confirmation of the case from the Chinese health ministry. A 19-year-old woman died on Monday in Beijing of H5N1,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva. He had no further information………. (Reuters)
Human rights activists speak out against a new regulation in China’s Shanxi province that they say targets the rights of petitioners.
HONG KONG— New legislation against petitioning which blocks residents of Taiyuan, in China’s Shanxi province, from seeking justice in Beijing is without legal basis, according to leading human rights activists in the country.
The legislation is in conflict with existing law, Yao Lifa, a rights advocate from China’s central Hubei province, said.
“The ‘Regulation on Petitions’ issued by China’s State Council clearly states that petitioners may voice their grievances to higher-level government offices,” Yao said.
“Sending local police to detain petitioners in Beijing is simply a way to avoid resolution of the problem.”
The legal wing of the city Communist Party committee in Taiyuan, capital of northern China’s Shanxi province, announced the new measures against petitioners earlier this week, according to the official Taiyuan Daily.
Law enforcement officers “will punish various illegal petitioning activities in accordance with the law” in locations that include Tiananmen Square, Zhongnanhai—the Party leadership compound—foreign embassies, and government representative offices, the news agency reported.
Petitioners from Taiyuan are also banned from central government leaders’ residences and from provincial and municipal government offices that don’t handle petitions. They are also prohibited from organizing demonstrations in Beijing.
Sichuan-based rights activist Liu Zhengyou said all local authorities, including those in Taiyuan, have attempted to thwart petitioning in Beijing by sending local police to round up petitioners.
“Petitioners who are caught will be put in illegal prisons, in detention, placed under house arrest, or locked in mental hospitals. But to do this violates China’s law,” Liu said.
Petitioners punished
China maintains a “Letter and Visit Office” at various levels of the government to deal with petitions.
But Liu Zhengyou said local officials are often responsible for the problems petitioners seek to address. And after petitioners voice their grievances, it is the petitioners who are punished, rather than the officials who wronged them.
Analysts with the China Information Center rights group predict another wave of petitioning across the country next March during the People’s Congress national convention.
China’s current system of dealing with petitions is ineffective because it relies on the moral values of its many officials, Yao said.
“China has a huge army of petitioners. The government has spent so much money on stopping them, but they are still disappointed and hopeless. I call upon the Chinese government to end its system of ‘rule of person’ and to switch to one of ‘rule by law.’”
Liu Zhengyou said the current system goes beyond inefficiency and specifically targets petitioners.
“In our country there is no mechanism to rectify errors committed by officials. If you go to petition in Beijing, the person who receives you has a connection with the police from the place where you are from, and works with them to persecute you,” Liu said.
“The new Taiyuan regulation is an open campaign against petitioners, and has recently appeared in Sichuan and many other places,” he said.
“The space for petitioners is becoming even narrower and more dangerous. This is an illegal crackdown.”
- Radio Free Asia: Taiyuan Bans Petitioners from Beijing
