Three Tibetans Detained for Refusing to Fly the Chinese Communist Flag at Home

Chinese authorities in Tibet have detained three villagers for refusing to fly the Chinese national flag from their homes, as local officials continue to press a campaign forcing displays of loyalty to the ruling Chinese Communist Party.

China’s Southern Province Yunnan Suspends Sentencing to Labor Camps

China’s Yunnan Province will no longer hand out sentences to forced labor camps, according to a state media report. The announcement is the latest specific policy curtailing the use of the controversial and often abused institutions, after the new leadership said it would halt or reform the work camp system.

Meng Sutie, head of Yunnan’s Political and Legislative Affairs Committee (PLAC), which controls all security services in the province, announced at a provincial PLAC meeting on Feb. 5 that Yunnan would immediately stop sending people to reeducation through labor camps on grounds such as “threatening national security,” “causing unrest through petitioning,” and “smearing the image of officials,” Communist Party mouthpiece Xinhua reported on Feb. 6.

Police hound Chinese blogger who exposed 10 officials’ sex scandal

BEIJING – After a late-night stand-off with police at the door of his home Sunday night, Chinese investigative blogger Zhu Rufeng spent all of Monday in an even longer stand-off with authorities at a Beijing police station.

Two months earlier, Zhu had released a graphic sex tape exposing a scandal in which officials in the city of Chongqing were filmed having sex with young women hired by a property developer to extort favorable contracts from the city. Eleven officials were fired.

10 Chinese Officials Fired in Sex Tape Scandal in Chongqing City

Ten Chinese officials were fired from their posts in connection with a sex tape extortion scandal in the southwestern city of Chongqing, while police broke up a criminal ring that was behind the incidents, according to state-run media.

The ten officials allegedly appeared in the one or more of the videos, which were used by the ring to blackmail them into handing out profitable building contracts.

One official in Chongqing, Lei Zhengfu, a portly man whose face appeared in screenshots that have appeared across the Internet, lost his job following the emergence of the scandal last November.

Bo Xilai Fired- Wang Lijun scandal and political struggle in China

Bo Xilai is Party chief of Chongqing no longer, according to the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily. The public destruction of Bo’s career—coming on the heels of a press conference held by Premier Wen Jiabao where Bo was publicly rebuked—is a dramatic climax to a political power struggle that first burst into the open last month when Bo’s lieutenant sought refuge at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu. The dissident news website Boxun reported Wang accused Bo of plotting a coup to overthrow the next presumptive head of the CCP.

A People’s Daily notice indicated that Bo’s forced retirement was first announced by Wen who, responding to a question from a Reuters journalist, said, “The current Chongqing City Committee and government needs to self-reflect, and earnestly learn lessons from the Wang Lijun incident.”

U.S. House Probes Chinese Police Chief Wang Lijun’s Defection

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is investigating whether the U.S. government mishandled a request for asylum from a senior Chinese Communist Party official who was turned away from a U.S. consulate after spending a night at the diplomatic post in southern China.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, disclosed the staff investigation in a letter sent Friday to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The probe followed a report in the Washington Free Beacon that the attempted defection of Chongqing Deputy Mayor Wang Lijun, a senior crime investigator, was mishandled last week, resulting in the loss of a potential inside source on China’s secretive communist leadership circle.

Chongqing police chief Wang Lijun stepped down from office, exposing Bo Xilai’ corruption in the process

Prior to 18th Session of Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Wang Lijun, police chief and vice mayor of Chongqing City, known as“anti-gangland hero”was suddenly exempted from the important position of police chief in Public Security Bureau.

Overseas news disclosed that an investigation has been started on Wang Lijun, due to his corruption and abuse of torture. The outside world analyzed and pointed out that Wang Lijun, an important underling of the Party Secretary of Chongqing City – Bo Xilai – stepped down from his office.

This indicated that Bo Xilai’s official career could not be maintained.Wang Lijun himself is in a precarious situation.

Video purports to show Tibetan nun self-immolating

BEIJING (AFP) — Dramatic video footage that purportedly captures the moment a Tibetan Buddhist nun burned herself to death in southwest China has emerged after it was smuggled out and given to a campaign group.

The video, which AFP cannot independently verify, was posted online by Students for a Free Tibet and shows a figure being engulfed in flames in the middle of a street before collapsing to the ground.

The group says the figure is Palden Choetso, a 35-year-old Buddhist nun who self-immolated on November 3 in a Tibetan-inhabited town in Sichuan province.

The Tibetans shown in the footage had “risked everything” to smuggle it out of China, said Tenzin Jigdal, programme director of Students for a Free Tibet, which has offices in New York and Dharamshala, the Indian town that is home to the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama.

Dalai Lama accuses China of ‘cultural genocide’

The Dalai Lama has blamed the Chinese government’s policy of “cultural genocide” in his native Tibet for a wave of self-immolations that has struck restive Tibetan areas of western China this year.

At least 11 Tibetans, all of them Buddhist nuns, monks or former monks, have set themselves on fire since March to protest against Chinese rule and religious repression, according to human rights and exile groups.

The Chinese government has blamed the Dalai Lama for encouraging the self-immolations and says he and his “clique” are engaged in “disguised terrorism” and “pursuing separatism by harming people”.

At a press conference in Tokyo on Monday, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader said Beijing’s hardline policy towards any hint of dissent among Tibetans was the real cause of the demonstrations.

11th Tibetan Buddhist Self-Immolates in Southwestern China

China says a Tibetan nun has died after setting herself on fire in southwestern China. It was the 11th such self-immolation protest this year involving Buddhist monks and nuns in the restive region.

Palden Chetso, 35, died Thursday in Sichuan province. A witness told VOA’s Tibetan service he found the nun drenched in gasoline on a local roadway moments before she set herself ablaze. She said she was prepared to sacrifice for greater freedoms and the return of the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Eight Buddhist monks and two nuns have self-immolated since a young protesting monk died after setting himself on fire in March at the flashpoint Kirti monastery. That death sparked months of protests by monks and nuns and triggered a major Chinese crackdown on area monasteries that included the arrests and disappearances of hundreds of monks.

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.

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.

Anti-Mao Voices from the Grassroots in China

The recent wave of Party-song-singing in Chongqing left an impression of a return of Culture Revolution, and it seems to last. Meanwhile, the national critique on Mao Zedong is spreading and becoming sharp.

82-year-old Beijing renowned scholar Mao Yushi published a 5000-word “Return Mao』s True Face” on Apr. 26 on Caing.com, itemizing Mao』s sins such as chasing power and indulging prostitutes. Yushi said Mao would sooner or later face justice.

Besieged Tibetan Monks ‘Tortured’ by Chinese Authorities

Chinese authorities in southwestern Sichuan province have detained and tortured Tibetan monks amid a siege of a major monastery there, according to exile sources.

Tensions have been running high at the besieged monastery of Kirti in Sichuan’s Ngaba prefecture, which is home to some 2,500 Tibetan monks who say they are now running out of food.

The siege of the monastery was sparked by the death of a monk last month in a self-immolation protest against Beijing’s rule. A number of detentions, beatings, and attacks on unarmed local people with trained police dogs have been reported since.

At least 11 Tibetans detained for supporting dead monk

At least 11 ethnic Tibetans have been detained following the death of a monk who set himself on fire in protest against government policies. They are at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.

On 16 March, a 20-year-old Tibetan monk called Phuntsok set fire to himself at a market in Ngaba County (in Chinese: Aba), Sichuan province, in protest against repressive government policies in Tibet Autonomous Region and other Tibetan populated areas in China. He died in hospital early in the morning of 17 March.

Chinese Police Surround a Tibetan Monastery in Sichuan

Chinese police are continuing to surround a Tibetan monastery in Sichuan province, after local residents tried to stop them from arresting the monks.

The standoff began earlier this week, when hundreds of people living in Sichuan’s Aba region converged on the Kirti monastery. They tried to stop police from taking away the monks for reeducation.  As many as 2,500 monks are believed to be inside the locked-down monastery.

They could soon face food shortages because they depend on offerings from locals.

China Charges Well-Known Internet Writer Ran Yunfei with Subversion

(VOA News) China has charged well-known pro-democracy writer and editor Ran Yunfei with subversion for his alleged role in calling for popular uprisings in China similar to those gripping the Middle East and North Africa.

Ran’s wife told VOA’s Mandarin service she received a copy of the formal charging documents Monday, and says they were dated last Friday. She said she will move quickly to hire a lawyer to defend her spouse, and expects formal court proceedings within two months.

Chinese Activist Sentenced to Ten Years for Inciting Subversion; Essays Cited as Evidence

In a trial lasting less than two hours and marked with procedural irregularities, a Sichuan court sentenced Liu Xianbin (刘贤斌), a signer of Charter 08 and long-time advocate of democratic reform in China, to ten years in prison and two years and four months of deprivation of political rights.

Liu’s wife, Chen Mingxian (陈明先), who attended the trial and saw her husband for the first time since he was detained in June 2010, said, “The judge interrupted Liu many times and did not give him a chance to read his prepared statement. The judge also kept cutting off Liu’s lawyer when was presenting the defense statement.”  She added that after the verdict was announced, Liu declared: “I’m innocent. I protest!”

House church in Southwest China raided and Leader arrested

At 5 p.m. local time, March 10, Ms. Liao Zhongxiu, leader of a house church in Qu County, Sichuan Province, was arrested on so called “suspicion of utilizing a cult organization in undermining the implementation of the state law and regulations.” She is currently detained at Qu County Detention Center.

At about 3:30 p.m. local time, September 26, 2010, Youqing Church in Qu County, Dazhou, Sichuan Province was raided by the local Public Security Bureau (PSB). The police officers smashed the items of the church, confiscated books, took people to the local police station and then forced their families to pay money to bail them out. At 5 p.m., September 29, some Christians of the church went to the PSB station to negotiate in the hope of retrieving the confiscated items in accordance with law. It ended up with five of the believers were arrested on the spot and were detained for 15 days.

Tight Security in Tibet as the anniversary of region-wide unrest approaches

Chinese authorities in the Tibetan capital Lhasa have stepped up security ahead of a sensitive political anniversary, residents said.

An employee who answered the phone at a guesthouse with a mostly Tibetan clientele said police were now carrying out spot-checks on rooms in the middle of the night in case anyone had booked a room without registering with the police-monitored hotels database.

“There are a lot more checks being carried out at night now,” the employee said.

Three Tibetan Monks Flee China After Arrest Warrant Issued

NTD TV, Dec. 2010 –

On November 15th, 2010 these three Tibetan monks arrived in Dharamsala, India after escaping from China. They had feared for their lives after holding a protest against Chinese communist rule.

Their names are Lobsang Norbu, Khedup Gyatso, and Kunga Rinchen. They’re from a Tibetan region of Sichuan province called Kardze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

This man translated for the monks.

Mentally Disabled Forced into Slave Labor at Party-Backed ‘Rescue’ Center in China

By Sophia Fang & Gisela Sommer, Epoch Times Staff, Dec. 24, 2010 –

Local Communist Party officials in Sichuan Province are behind an institution that kidnaps mentally handicapped and homeless people and forces them into slave labor, according to an investigative journalist from Hong Kong.

The inmates were hired out as laborers as far away as Xinjiang Province. To turn them into “good workers” they were beaten and shocked with electric batons and kept in subhuman living conditions, reports say.

Three Tibetan Writers Tried as ‘Splittists’

Radio Free Asia, Nov. 5, 2010-

Three Tibetan writers detained earlier this year by Chinese authorities have been tried on charges of “inciting activities to split the nation,” according to sources in the region.

“The three writers—Jangtse Donkho, Buddha, and Kalsang Jinpa—were tried on Oct. 28 by the Aba [in Tibetan, Ngaba] Intermediate People’s Court,” in China’s southwestern Sichuan province, said Kanyak Tsering, a Tibetan living in India and citing contacts in Tibet.