Posts Tagged ‘China’
February 16th, 2012
The Chinese government plans to
continue censoring social networking sites, the the Communist Party and State Council has said regarding China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) on Cultural Reform and Development. The outline said the Chinese government will increase regulation of domestic social networks such as RenRen and microblogging platforms, as well as cracking down on online distribution of pornography. There will also be an increased focus on protecting private information online and improving the country’s system to assess online security, according to the outline.
February 14th, 2012
Veteran
Chinese dissident Zhu Yufu has been sentenced
to seven years in prison for ”inciting subversion of state power” after he shared his poem
“It’s time” over Skype. The court in Hangzhou, eastern China, sentenced Zhu following a trial hearing on 31 January. During the hearing, prosecutors cited the poem and messages the activist had sent online. In the poem, Yufu called on Chinese citizens to defend their freedoms. The court verdict said the crime deserved “severe” punishment.
February 1st, 2012
Several Tibetan-language blogs hosted in China are reported to have
gone offline today, amid a period of
severe unrest.
AmdoTibet’s blog section has been temporarily shut down, a message on the site reads, “due to some of the blog users not publishing in accordance with the goal of this site.” Tense events of recent weeks have included a stream of self-immolations in Tibet protesting against Chinese rule, and more recently,
deadly clashes between officials and demonstrators.
January 17th, 2012
A veteran
Chinese dissident is facing
subversion charges for writing a poem urging people to defend their freedoms. Zhu Yufu was arrested last April for “inciting subversion of state power” but no trial date has yet been set. Authorities decided to prosecute the activist almost a year after the poem “It’s time” was published online.
One verse reads “It’s time, Chinese people!/the square belongs to everyone/the feet are yours/it’s time to use your feet and take to the square to make a choice.” Yufu’s lawyer said the poem was written around the “time of chaos” in the Middle East.
January 5th, 2012
A Tibetan writer has been
sentenced to four years in jail by a Chinese court in eastern Tibet. Kalsang Tsultim, also known as Gyitsang Takmik, was first arrested in July 2010 for committing what the Chinese authorities termed “political error.” He had widely circulated a Video Compact Disc (VCD) in which he urges the international community to “act swiftly on behalf of the Tibetan people” to end repression in the tense region, while calling for the return of the Dalai Lama from exile.
December 23rd, 2011
Chinese pro-democracy activist Chen Wei has been
sentence to nine years’ imprisonment for inciting subversion over four essays he wrote and published online calling for freedom of speech. He was detained in February this year amid an intense government crackdown in response to anonymous online calls for protests in China inspired by the uprisings in the Middle East. Chen has previously served time in prison for participating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square demonstrations in Beijing.
December 19th, 2011
News reports of an uprising that began several days ago in Wukan
have been blocked by the
Chinese government. Coverage
of the protests, which began following the death of a local villager Xue Jinbo, and political interference in local elections, has
not been covered by any Chinese language media. Wukan residents dispute the claim that Jinbo died from a heart attack, believing he was tortured to death. In China, the story has only been covered by the English-language edition of an official Chinese Communist Party newspaper, “Global Times”.
December 16th, 2011
Chinese
state media reported on Friday that human rights lawyer
Gao Zhisheng will be sent to prison for three years for violating his probation rules. In 2006 Gao was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for “subversion of state power”, being given five years of probation. In 2009 he was taken from a relative’s home in Shaanxi province, northern
China, resurfacing briefly in March 2010 and alleging he had been tortured. He disappeared again soon after.
