Leading Chinese human rights lawyer Xu Zhiyong has been released from his three-week detainment on charges of “tax evasion”. Zhiyong’s arrest was viewed as part of a wider crackdown on Chinese activists in the run-up to the 60th anniversary of Communist rule. Xu Zhiyong’s colleague Zhuang Lu and Uighur Internet activist Ilham Tohti were also released.
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Leading Chinese Human Rights lawyer Xhu Zhihong has been formally arrested and faces up to seven years imprisonment on a charge of tax evasion. Zhihong is co-founder of Gongmeng (Open Constitution Initiative) which has taken on some of the most sensitive and high-profile cases in the past few years. His arrest comes amid a recent crackdown on humanitarian lawyers in the run up to the 60th Anniversary of Communist rule in October. Read more here
The U.S. government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet. The “feed over email” (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors. Read more here
China has scaled back its plans to install controversial net filtering software, “Green Dam Youth Escort” on its citizens’ computers. The government has now said that citizens can choose whether they use the program, although installations on public computers will still go ahead. Read more here