REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Chinese artist Ai weighs future as activist - Austrian radio

(Reuters) - In fear for his life and abandoned by many peers during weeks of detention, dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is considering his future as a rights activist, he said in an interview with Austrian radio broadcast on Saturday.

"They can make me disappear. I have no protection, no lawyer," he said in a rare media interview conducted in connection with the opening of an exhibition of his work in Austria.

"So I have to be careful with (my actions) because I may lose my life," he added from his studio in China.

"I don't think there is any form of law (that) can protect me."

China's leading social critic has been under close watch as part of the strict terms of his release from custody in late June after 81 days.

Despite this, the artist, 54, has spoken out on his Twitter account on behalf of detained dissidents and his associates who were held at the same time as he was and have since been released.

Asked about calls by his family to take a break from activism and relax for a while, Ai said: "Frankly everybody said so -- friends, family and relatives.

"So I have to really examine and think. I have been trying to find a way to deal with the rest of the time."

Ai endured intense psychological pressure during his secretive detention and faces the threat of prison for alleged subversion, according to a source familiar with his detention.

Ai's incarceration ignited an outcry from many Western governments about China's tightening grip on dissent that started in February, when dozens of rights activists and dissidents were detained and arrested.

In the interview, Ai said there were thousands of professional artists in China but not one had piped up to ask what was happening during his detention.

"Nobody dared ask one question," he said, adding he was advising young artists to leave China because "this is crazy".

Read more at REUTERS

Ai Weiwei breaks gagging order in scathing attack on China's human rights

Dissident artist speaks out after weeks of muted criticism

By Clifford Coonan in Beijing

China's best-known dissident, the artist Ai Weiwei, delivered a calculated and outspoken attack about repression in Beijing, in an apparent rebuke to the regime that had sought to secure his silence by detaining him for nearly three months.

Mr Ai criticised the police, judiciary and the unfairness of Chinese society despite controls imposed on his release on bail in June that were designed to minimise his ability to embarrass the leadership.

In a commentary for Newsweek magazine's website, Mr Ai – best known for designing the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium in Beijing – called the capital a "city of violence" where nobody could speak out because they were denied basic human rights. He also damned the legacy of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which has been trumpeted as a victory of Communist Party organisation and source of national pride.

"None of my art represents Beijing," he wrote. "The Bird's Nest – I never think about it. After the Olympics, the common folks don't talk about it because the Olympics did not bring joy to the people." The commentary appeared to stretch the terms of his release on 22 June after 81 days in custody for alleged tax evasion. He was ordered not to use Twitter or other social media and not to give interviews to foreigners. Many human-rights activists believe the tax charges against him were trumped up to remove a long-term thorn in the side of the Communist Party.

If so the commentary – headlined "The City: Beijing" – suggests that they failed and raises the prospect that he could be returned to prison. Since his release he has started tweeting again, with some critical comments and support for dissidents.

Read more at The Independent

China's plan for secret detentions alarms rights activists

China proposes a change in its criminal code that would allow authorities to detain suspects for up to six months in a secret location. Such a measure would increase the risk of torture, a Human Rights Watch spokesman says.

By Barbara Demick, Los Angeles Times

Reporting from Beijing—

A proposed change in the Chinese criminal code that would allow authorities to detain suspects for up to six months in a secret location is a dangerous step backward for the country, activists charged Saturday.

The change would effectively enshrine what has become a common practice for silencing dissidents, many of whom have disappeared for months without formal charges being filed. Under the change, the suspects can be held without notice to their family members or lawyers.

The proposed change in the law was disclosed earlier in the week in the respected Legal Daily.

"This new amendment will legalize 'forced disappearance,'" Beijing attorney Liu Xiaoyuan tweeted Saturday. Liu was briefly detained himself around the same time as his friend and client Ai Weiwei, the dissident artist whose disappearance earlier this year made international headlines.

Under current law, a person suspected of a crime but not formally charged could be put under house arrest for six months.

Read more at The Los Angeles Times

PEASANTS - MY KINSMEN

Peasants, you are the bearers of my being.
How much hardship and labor you had endured for sake of bringing me up!
In winds and rains, you work without counting the springs and autumns
Stars and moon above thee, you never escape from the winters and summers.
The wrinkles on thy foreheads are records of the life experiences
The drops of sweating fertilizing the small patch of land below.
Thy youth is already melted into ashes
And hot blood frozen into hard bones.
You had raised a family of 100 million
But why do you still work so hard, year in and year out?
 
Peasants, you are my brothers and sisters
For sake of survival
You had come into cities and towns sacrificing thy youth and sweating.
Look
High on the construction sites are nobody else other than countryboys,
Bending over the sewing machines are nobody else other than countrygirls.
Just for sake of not getting hungary
You have to sustain hazards, bitterness, bullies and tears !
What parents would not care about their children (who wondered around the cities).
For whom had you sacrificed thy golden youth in remote lands?
My brothers, whatever in the cities do not belong to thee
My sisters, do not get sad leaving the cities you had come to like.
Because thy household registers, with the ironed word "peasants",
Had predestined thy returning to the countryside you love and hate so much
And stay there just like thy grandparents and ancestors.
You paved the wide lanes of city roads and built the piercing skyscrapers,
You brought about the prosperity of the markets and the benefits of life.
But why would you possess utterly nothing
Other than humility and hard labor?
 
Peasants, you are my kinsmen.
I don't know how to present my compatriotic red heart.
In face of cruel governance, vicious rascals, barbarity and poverty,
I have my full indignation and hatred, only.
I swear that there must be a day
All the unequalities in China will be wiped out!
How humiliated
I, as thy son,
Am in watching thy staggering steps under the pressure of hardship;
How ashamed
I, as thy brother,
Am to have allowed anyone to despise thee by calling the name of 'peasants'.
"Peasant" is not only thy final and ultimate occupation
But also the ironed mark of humiliation on thy body right after birth.
The land that you cannot disconnect with
Is afloat with the souls of thy forefathers.
How could it be transformed into the iron chains of the Devil
Tightly binding thy feet.
From then on, you never discover
That you are born a human being with inalienable rights to freedom, dignity and value!
While mankind had entered the doorframe of 21st century
And earth had been shrinking into a small village,
you, however, are still plowing the fields with the ancient tools
for providing the foods to the "villagers" of modern society.
 
I have a dream, from very early time on,
A dream that I believe would turn true someday for certainty:
A dream that peasants will be in possession of their own land.
As masters of the land, not slaves,
You operate the modern machinery
Freely plowing, planting and harvesting.
Thy occupation as peasants will become the envy of all
And the free world will be full of love and compassion.

Yang Zili (Chinese: 杨子立) (ca. 1971—), also known as Yang Zi, is a Chinese freelance journalist and webmaster, released in March, 2009 after having been imprisoned for eight years in the People's Republic of China for “subverting state authority.”^[1]

Wikipedia

Voices from the Bottom Rung of Society

Liao Yiwu

The Public Toilet Manager

Grandpa Zhou has handled human waste for almost all his life, first as an employee of the state in charge of cleaning public toilets and now as an independent toilet manager under contract with the city government of Chengdu to manage a large public toilet in the northwestern part of the city. “It’s serious business,” says Grandpa Zhou. He’s about seventy years old, but he looks pretty energetic.

I had known of Grandpa Zhou for quite some time. His toilet stands almost next door to my mother’s teahouse. But we were simply nodding acquaintances. One night I summoned up enough courage to get over my concerns about losing my social status as an intellectual and started a conversation with him.

 

GRANDPA ZHOU

 

Are you coming in to use the toilet or not? It’s already past midnight. Based on our rules I need to charge you extra. How else can I pay my taxes to the city’s Environment and Hygiene Department? But since you’re a regular client, I’ll waive the extra charge.

 

LIAO YIWU

 

I’m not here to use the toilet. I want to take you out for tea.

 

ZHOU

 

You don’t have to bother. I’m only a public toilet guard.

 

LIAO

 

Let’s go over to the teahouse, Grandpa Zhou.

 

ZHOU

 

You’re too nice. Is your mom’s teahouse still open? Actually, the more her customers drink, the better for my business. When their bladders are full they come to my place. It’s mutually beneficial.

 

LIAO

 

In this world there are rich people and poor people, aristocrats and common folks. But when it comes to the call of nature, everyone’s equal. Even the emperor has to take a shit.

 

ZHOU

 

I’ve never seen a royal family member taking a shit. If they did, they wouldn’t come to do it in this public toilet.

Hey, you’re a writer, you like to collect material for your articles. Did you know there was an attempted murder here not long ago? About two weeks ago a guy was chasing a young woman and she ran into this toilet. I tried to stop the guy at the door but couldn’t. All the female squatters were startled and began to scream. I sent my son to break it up, but the man took a knife out of his pocket. Nobody dared move. The guy seized the young woman and was about to slash her face. She went to her knees, begging for mercy.

You know how in many public toilets the fertilizer companies put plastic containers near the urinals to collect urine? I grabbed one of those containers and splashed its contents all over the guy. That stopped him. He was soaked. Later on someone called the police and they took both the man and the woman away.

Guess what happened the next day? I saw the man and woman walking on the street, hugging and kissing like lovers. I tried to dodge them, but they came up to me. The guy pointed his finger at my nose: “You motherfucker, how dare you pour all that pee on me?”

I didn’t reply. He continued swearing at me: “You fucker, why didn’t you mind your own damn business? Look what you did. My whole body smells like piss.”

When I heard that, I lost it. “If I hadn’t poured the urine,” I said, “you’d have killed someone!”

Then—I couldn’t believe it—the woman started to defend him. “So what if he killed me? It had nothing to do with you. You’re the stinking public toilet manager. We’ve been dating for almost three years. He’s tried to kill me more than ten times, but I’ve survived. Why call the police? We got detained yesterday and our families had to bail us out. When they saw us, they all covered their noses. Our neighbors laughed at us. Nowadays, everyone in China talks about the rule of law. We’ve been traumatized. We’re going to sue you.”

My son was incensed and got into a terrible argument with them. He grabbed a copper ladle and was ready to fight. I tried to hold him back, but that bitch jumped out in the street and screamed murder. All hell broke loose. We got quite a crowd. What pissed me off was that the guy pointed at my son in front of the crowd and said, “Did you just use that ladle to stir up the shit in the latrine? You’re a born toilet cleaner. You even use a shit ladle as a murder weapon.” So insulting! That was no shit ladle. It was for cooking. My son threw it at them. The people in the crowd thought it was covered with shit and ran away as fast as they could.

Let me tell you, there’s never been any shortage of these scoundrels in our city. They don’t have jobs, they just hang out on the street and make trouble. This jerk I was telling you about still shows up at my toilet. He always taunts me: “Since you’re not too well off I won’t seek any economic compensation for what you did to me. In return for our kindness, why don’t you allow me and my girlfriend to use the toilet free for one year?”

 

LIAO

 

He does sound like a jerk.

 

ZHOU

 

Yeah, but I’m not mad anymore. What goes around comes around. I used to go out of my way to help people, sometimes people used to make fun of me and call me The Shit Samaritan. Well, it took me half a month to go through the various bureaucratic hoops before I could obtain the contract to run this bathroom. All I’m going to do from now on is guard the toilet and collect the entrance fee. In the future, even if someone falls into the latrine, I won’t pull him out.

If I was born ten years later I would never have thought to make a living in the toilet business. When I was young you didn’t have to pay to answer the call of nature. All public bathrooms were under the supervision of the municipal Environment and Hygiene Department. Later, the department assigned each public toilet to its nearby street committee. The street committee then asked the local residents to take care of the toilets themselves. In the end, nobody was taking responsibility for their maintenance and they got dirty. When it rained the street flooded with human waste, and even cars couldn’t get through. When the sun was out the human waste dried up, and the moist stink could bring tears to your eyes. There are still a couple free toilets like that in the city, in the old residential areas. But nowadays most public bathrooms have been renovated and it’s a good business.

As you know, houses built before the 1970s didn’t have indoor plumbing. People had to rely on public bathrooms. Sometimes they had to walk quite far. At night, families had to use chamber pots. Chamber pots painted in red were popular items for bridal showers or dowries. A sturdy chamber pot could last over ten years. Every morning, in the old days, families used to dump their chamber pots into the public toilets or wait for the human waste truck. Those trucks were more punctual than public buses. While waiting for the truck people chatted and caught up with each other over the day’s gossip. It was quite harmonious.

Read more at Paris Review

Dissident Chinese Writer Flees to Germany

Liao Yiwu, one of the most persecuted writers in China, fled into self exile in Germany this week. While still in China, his writings on the plight of the country's downtrodden had earned him travel restrictions and threats from the police.

BEIJING — After being denied an exit visa 17 times, yanked off planes and trains by the police and threatened with yet more prison time, one of China’s most persecuted writers, Liao Yiwu, slipped across the border into Vietnam last week and then made his way, via Poland, to Germany, where he promptly declared himself an exile.

“I’m ecstatic, I’m finally free,” he said in a telephone interview from Berlin on Monday morning before plunging into a day of interviews and photo shoots. “I feel like I’m walking through a dream.”

Of course, his escape — arranged by friends whom he declined to name — has not brought unadulterated joy. By fleeing his homeland, Mr. Liao, 52, made the difficult decision to abandon the wellspring of his work, much of it journalistic explorations of China’s downtrodden: the political outcasts, impoverished farmers, death row inmates and others who have been traumatized by famine and Communist-inspired zealotry, then cast aside during the nation’s manic embrace of material wealth and collective amnesia.

He also leaves behind his family in southwestern Sichuan Province, including his mother, his son, two siblings and a girlfriend. “I’m trying to convince myself that I won’t be away from China very long, that things will change sooner than later,” he said.

In the West, Mr. Liao is best known for “The Corpse Walker: Real-Life Stories, China from the Bottom Up,” which was banned in China soon after it was published in Taiwan in 2001. The book, a collection of interviews with people he encountered in prison and during wanderings in the southwest, tells the unadorned stories of 27 people, among them a public toilet attendant, a persecuted landlord, and the men, known as corpse walkers, whose job it is to transport the dead back to their hometowns for burial.

After it was published, his already strained relationship with the authorities worsened. He was barred from traveling to literary festivals in Germany, Australia and the United States, and was forced last spring to sign a vow to cease publishing outside China. Breaking the pledge, he was warned cryptically, would bring even greater torment.

Given the predicament of his friend Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and writer who is serving an 11-year sentence for subversion, Mr. Liao knew what might await him. The threat gained greater urgency with the impending publication in the United States of “God Is Red,” a book by Mr. Liao about Chinese Christians, and a memoir about his time in jail, “The Witness of the 4th of June.” The memoir, whose title refers to the military suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, has been delayed several times by skittish publishers in Germany and Taiwan.

Read more at The New York Times

China orders muzzled artist to pay $1.8m in taxes and fines

On bail ... Chinese avant-guard artist Ai Weiwei. Photo: Reuters

BEIJING: Chinese authorities have ordered the artist Ai Weiwei to pay more than $1.8 million in back taxes and fines, a close friend said, just days after his release on bail.

On Tuesday, Liu Xiaoyuan said the Beijing tax office had sent Ai - who came home last week after nearly three months in detention - a notice telling him to pay back 4.9 million yuan ($718,000) in taxes and another 7.3 million yuan in fines. That would amount to more than 12 million yuan.

Police have accused Ai of tax evasion and the government said he was freed because of his ''good attitude'' in admitting to the charges against him, his willingness to repay taxes and on medical grounds. He has diabetes.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/china-orders-muzzled-artist-to-pay-18m-in-taxes-and-fines-20110629-1gqvr.html#ixzz1QgPAvesO

China Allows Dissident Artist’s Wife to Visit Him

BEIJING — The dissident artist Ai Weiwei was allowed a visit from his wife on Sunday, the first time he has been seen or heard from since being detained by authorities 43 days ago and held incommunicado in a secret Beijing-area location, Mr. Ai’s attorney said on Monday.

Shiho Fukada for The New York Times

Ai Weiwei

The attorney and family friend, Liu Xiaoyuan, said he had met on Monday with Lu Qing and that she said her husband appeared to be in good physical condition. Mr. Ai also asked about the health of his mother and family, he said, but the circumstance of the supervised visit offered no chance to discuss how his captors were treating him or other details of his confinement.

News service reports stated that Mr. Ai, who suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, was receiving needed medications.

Ms. Lu said that Mr. Ai was not being held in a hospital or a jail but did not further describe his living conditions. “It appears he’s not in handcuffs, he was not wearing prison clothes and he was allowed to move freely within where he is living now,” Mr. Liu said. “So I guess it’s a form of house arrest, under supervision.”

Chinese authorities have yet to bring any charges against Mr. Ai, 53, who was seized at Beijing’s main airport on April 3 as he prepared to board a plane to Hong Kong. The government has since said that he was suspected of committing economic crimes, and tax investigators have searched his office records, Mr. Liu said.

Read more at The New York Times

Chinese author grounded again

                       Silenced ... Liao Yiwu. Photo: AP

The Chinese government has cited ''security reasons'' for banning the dissident author and poet Liao Yiwu from travelling to Australia to attend the Sydney Writers' Festival next week. Liao joins several leading Chinese writers and artists who have been victims of a recent crackdown on people speaking out against the regime in China, including the jailed Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo and the detained artist Ai Weiwei. Liao was to be a key guest at the festival. He is a poet, musician (Chinese flute player), novelist and documentarian from Sichuan province, whose book The Corpse Walker, which documents the lives of people on the fringe of Chinese society, was published in Australia by Text Publishing last week. The Chinese government, which has called Liao's writings subversive, has also ''advised'' him not publish his work overseas. Liao was jailed in 1990 for four years for writing his epic poem Massacre, which condemned the government's bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Sydney Writers' Festival organisers told the Herald's acting literary editor, Marc McEvoy, they were deeply disappointed by the ban on Liao. This follows China's earlier decision to stop Liao from travelling to the US to take part in the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. The artistic director, Chip Rolley, said: ''Liao Yiwu … has been denied the fundamental right to express his views freely. We are astonished by the Chinese government's additional demand that he not publish his works internationally. These actions highlight the need for Australians to better understand the growing power of China, including its reach into other countries.'' Linda Jaivin, a Sydney author and Sinologist who was to discuss Liao's work with him at the festival, said: ''The crazy thing is that by denying Liao Yiwu permission to travel the Chinese government has given his work a massive publicity bonus overseas - just as few outside China knew about Liu Xiaobo before his arrest and subsequent Nobel prize, or the artist Ai Weiwei before his detention on April 3 this year. Despite numerous such examples, the Chinese government still doesn't seem to understand that they are simply creating a new cause celebre every time they do this sort of thing.'' The Chinese government allowed Liao an exit permit to attend a literary event in Germany last year, his first after 14 attempts.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/the-diary/chinese-author-grounded-again-20110509-1efsy.html#ixzz1LrhwgXgt

China 'Jasmine Revolution' Crackdown Nabs Over 20 Dissidents And Human Rights Advocates

More than 20 people have been detained and others are missing in what has been called the most severe crackdown on Chinese dissidents and activists in over a decade.

As the Guardian is reporting, at least 23 people have been detained, mostly in relation to charges of incitement to subversion or creating a disturbance following anonymous calls for a "Jasmine Revolution." In addition, three others have been formally arrested; and a dozen people are missing.

Several well-known Chinese figures, including law professor Teng Biao and human rights lawyers Tang Jitian and Jiang Tianyong, all disappeared around Feb. 16-19, Reuters reports. Another lawyer, Liu Shihui, was savagely beaten before being taken into custody, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Read more at The Huffington Post

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei to work from Berlin

Ai Weiwei,

perhaps China’s best-known artist, plans on moving to Berlin to escape growing repression in his home country, a media report said Tuesday.

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The artist, architect and activist, who helped conceive Beijing's iconic “Bird’s Nest” Olympic stadium, has been among the sharpest critics of China's regime, making him a target for authorities. Chinese police beat him so severely in 2009 that he later had emergency brain surgery during a stay in Munich to relieve a haematoma on the side of his skull.

But now preparations are underway for what daily Berliner Zeitung called a “partial move” with his team to the German capital’s Schöneweide district, where he has purchased a studio.

"I want to be in the position to do my daily work, art and exhibitions from Berlin too," Ai told the paper. "The preparations have been going on for three months, but because creating the necessary infrastructure isn’t that easy in Germany, we still need some time before we can get started."

But the 53-year-old said he did not view the move as a flight because he would still maintain a studio in Beijing. Still, his work as an online activist for young Chinese has meant increasing pressure on Ai and his employees.

Widely considered one of China’s most influential contemporary artists, Ai has compiled the names of more than 5,000 school children killed in the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008 in his own investigation of alleged building corruption.

The situation culminated in house arrest in November 2010 and his subsequent search for alternative situations, the paper said.

In January, Chinese authorities razed his newly constructed studio in Shanghai. In February they hindered the first large exhibition of his work in the country.

The decision was “not a voluntary choice,” he said. “I am simply at a loss as to how I can go on working here.”

Ai has long travelled between China and Europe for his work, and lived in New York City in the 1980s.

“Due to the current situation, I should probably increase my presence in Europe,” he said.

THE LOCAL

 

China Denies Knowledge of Missing Dissidents - Voice of America

Stephanie Ho | Beijing  March 29, 201

Photo: AP

Geng He, wife of disappeared Chinese human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng, seen on poster at rear, is interviewed before a news conference with Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 18, 2011, where he called attention to human rights issues in China on the occasion of Chinese President Hu Jintao's state visit hosted by President Barack Obama.

China denies knowledge of several cases of dissidents who have recently disappeared.   These include an ethnic Chinese-Australian man who was an outspoken critic of the Chinese government, online, and a lawyer who was the focus of a report by a United Nations human rights group. 

Reporters asked about two specific cases at Tuesday’s Foreign Ministry briefing.

One involved Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun, who disappeared in China a few days ago.  The other case is that of Gao Zhisheng, a human rights lawyer who disappeared into police custody, nearly a year ago.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu says she has not heard of Yang Hengjun.   She also says she does not know about Gao Zhisheng’s specific case, but notes a report issued by the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention calling for Gao’s release.

Read more at  VOA

Stars in support of Liu Xiaobo

China creates peace prize to rival Nobel

Nobel Challenge: Struggle For Human Rights in China Must Be Broad & Sustained

On International Human Rights Day, and exactly two years after Liu Xiabo, published Charter '08, a 3000 word road map for Chinese democratic reform signed by thousands, the humanitarian and former literature professor sits in a Chinese prison for his efforts to advance liberty, while his family and supporters have been detained, arrested and prevented from communicating with the outside world. Half a world away from the northern China prison where Xiabo is confined, rests an empty chair in Oslo, Norway's City Hall with Xiabo's picture on it, a medal and the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. The only other instance in the Nobel Peace Prize's 100 year existence where neither an awardee or his representative was prevented from receiving the award was in 1936 when Carl von Ossietzky was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp for his dissent against the Reich.

Xiabo has been intermittently imprisoned and sent to labor camps since 1989 for his involvement in pro democracy efforts and leniency pleas for incarcerated libertarians. His co-authored Charter '08 paper promotes 19 primary reforms including an end to single party rule, the formation of an independent judiciary, representative democracy, freedom of speech, constitutional guarantees of liberty, the release of political prisoners and a cessation of political indoctrination in schools.

China the world's most populous nation with 1.3 billion residents in an area roughly the size of the United States is a military and economic powerhouse that is increasingly America's main rival on the world stage. As Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Thorbjorn Jagland stated, "China's new status entails increased responsibility. China must be prepared for criticism, and regard it as a positive, as an opportunity for improvement." One of the biggest challenges to the world and China itself is that despite the nation's advances, basic human rights, including political and religious exercise is shackled under the weight of a large Communist, often unyielding, one party state. China has threatened economic and diplomatic sanctions against those who recognized this year's peace prize honoree and has tried to strip mention of the award within its borders by among other things blocking CNN and the BBC, while also vigorously attacking those presenting it. In addition to intense police intervention against family and supporters, China has attempted to attack the award itself. Over a dozen diplomatic representatives failed to make a showing at the Peace Prize presentation according to the New York Times: China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iraq , Iran, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Egypt, Sudan, Cuba, the Palestinian Authority and Morocco.

Read more at Huffington Post

Wikileaks reveals US closely watching Chinese role in Africa

 The latest confidential cable released from Wikileaks revealed that the US is closely watching China’s actions in Africa.

 A senior US official in a cable from Lagos, the Nigerian capital, said China’s actions were malicious and harmful.

 The officials also mentioned, however, that the US did not consider China an intelligence, military or security threat.

 Wikileaks is thought to have released over 1,000 of its claimed 251,000 confidential files.

 One analyst described the recent cable as giving an intriguing insight into the rivalry between the US and China in Africa.

 The cable was sent by Johnnie Carson, US Assistant Secretary for African Affairs. He had been attending talks with oil companies in Lagos.

 In the cable Carson described China’s position in Africa as purely for its own sake, not to help the African nations.

 Another reason he stated for China’s presence in Africa was to win votes in the UN from African countries.

 In a similar leaked cable concerns were voiced about China’s military and intelligence support to the Kenyan government.

 A Chinese firm is claimed to have gained a contract to supply intelligence equipment to Kenya through bribes.

China’s influence in Kenya is thought to be rapidly expanding. This has come through numerous collaborations on infrastructure. Partnerships with Kenya’s National Security and Intelligence Service are also thought to be responsible for this.

 A Wikileaks spokesperson has said the site intends to release all the confidential documents it possesses.

 The whistle-blowers publications have been strongly criticized by global officials. The releases have been seen as an attack on global security and relationships.

Discount Voucher

 

Sri Lanka to boycott Nobel ceremony amid Chinese pressure

Amid intense Chinese pressure, Sri Lanka on Thursday decided not attend Friday's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo for jailed Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo. "As of now, our position is not to attend the ceremony," Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters. "We are not the only

country that took up that position, there are lots of countries that are not attending the event," he said.

The Minister was responding to questions whether Sri Lanka will attend the Nobel peace prize award ceremony.

Though Rambukwella did not say why Sri Lanka decided to stay away, sources said Colombo was keen to ensure not to hurt the sentiments of China.

China had called for a global boycott of Friday's event and renewed its call today.

China is Sri Lanka's top lender and was a key supplier of small arms during the island's armed conflict with Tamil Tigers rebels that ended in May 2009.

Liu, a writer and academic who has advocated human rights and political reform in China for more than two decades, was jailed in December 2009 for 11 years on subversion charges.

Earlier, External Affairs Ministry spokesman Bandula Jayasekara said that "the government would not accept Norway's invitation to attend the ceremony".

Eighteen other countries including Russia, Cuba, Iraq and Iran have already decided to boycott the event. However, India has decided to attend the event.

The Hindustan Times

The dissident who came to stay at Bondi

There he littered the kitchen table with his prodigious writing, neat Chinese characters filling a growing mound of paper.

Conversation was possible through the interpretation of my wife Mei, the daughter of a veteran of the Long March that took Mao Zedong to power.

I can picture Liu now, speaking in sharply phrased Mandarin in a manner that carried gravitas, strength and conviction. When he spoke to Chinese audiences, people listened intently.

The attractions of the beach held little interest, even less so after he discovered the power of the rip along the rocks at the northern end of the beach and had to be helped from the water.

It was obvious that thinking was his preferred recreation. Thinking, talking, arguing, reading and writing. Activities for which the Chinese government has imprisoned him for 11 years

Read more at The Australian

Exile Tibetans’ call for the release of Liu Xiaobo and Tibetan heroes

Dharamshala: On the International Human Rights Day and the 21st anniversary of the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, people across the globe rejoice the conferring of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. While the Chinese government has labeled the award “an obscenity”, Tibetans in exile stand in solidarity with Liu Xiaobo and praise his democratic ideals.

Awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese intellectual, activist and supporter of the Tibetan people for his struggle for fundamental human rights in China is highly commendable. But on 10th December, when the world witnesses the award ceremony in Oslo, Liu will be not there to accept the award as he will still be behind bars serving his 11 years sentence.

“The strong stand taken by the Nobel Committee in presenting this year’s Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo has not only undermined the totalitarian Chinese Regime, but has also given enormous hope to people who are oppressed around the world,” said Kirti Dolkar Lhamo, President of Tibetan Women’s Association. “Recognizing Liu Xiaobo as a non-violent advocate and pursuer of democracy gives hope to the Tibetan people whose long-standing struggle for freedom and justice continues.”

Liu Xiaobo, a strong advocate of the Tibetan people, has authored many articles commenting on the occupation of Tibet including “The Crisis in Tibet is the Failure of Materialist Dictatorship” and “Twelve Suggestions for dealing with the Tibetan Situation”(2), which was written in response to the 2008 uprisings in Tibet.

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Graywolf will publish poems by Chinese Nobel winner

Graywolf Press to publish poems by Nobel Peace Prize-winning Chinese poet Liu Xiaobo

Liu Xiaobo, November 2007.

Associated Press - Ap

Graywolf Press of Minneapolis will publish the first collection of poems in English by Liu Xiaobo, the Chinese dissident poet who is the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

Xiaobo (whose full name is pronounced Leeyu Show-Boe) is imprisoned in China and will not be present to accept the prize when it is awarded in Oslo on Friday.

"June Fourth Elegies" is an intense collection, its translator, Jeffrey Yang, said Wednesday. It is divided into 20 sections, each relating to the June 4, 1989, massacre at Tiananmen Square.

"The way the book is structured, the poems were written kind of at the same time every year, when Tiananmen happened," Yang said. "Each one is a kind of recollection of a certain aspect of June 4. They're very elegiac. The original title of the book in Chinese is literally something like 'Remembering Six Four.'"

Read more at Star Tribune

Video: China Milk Activist Mystery

Questions continue to surround the case of consumer rights activist Zhao Lianhai after his lawyers were handed a note saying their client was “unable” to meet them.

Zhao was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison earlier this month for “disturbing social order,” after he set up a website for parents of children sickened in 2008’s tainted milk scandal.

Video courtesy of Reuters.

Interestingly, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency today quotes China’s Justice Minister as saying the government is working on plans to improve lawyer access to clients in police custody.

See also: China’s Spoiled Milk Protest

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At the Nobel ceremony, Liu Xiaobo's empty chair will speak volumes

There is every expectation that when this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is celebrated in Oslo on Dec. 10, the star of the ceremony will not be any of its powerful guests, but rather one conspicuously empty chair.

Nobel organizers and supporters have all but given up hope that close family of Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Peace Prize laureate, will be allowed to leave China to attend the ceremony. And though there is no playbook for such a scenario, there is wide agreement that the best course is to celebrate as usual, but not to hand out the prize itself.

In theory, there is no explicit rule preventing the Nobel committee from having someone other than Mr. Liu or his immediate family accept the Nobel medal and diploma on his behalf – for instance, one of the members of International PEN, an association of writers dedicated to free expression that was instrumental in getting Mr. Liu nominated. But Nobel officials never seriously considered that possibility.

“This was not a difficult decision,” said Geir Lundestad, director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute. “We feel that we have to be absolutely certain that we hand over the medal, the diploma and certainly the cheque [for nearly $1.5-million], to the proper person.”

Read more at The Globe and Mail

 

 

China's monitoring of activists surges post-Nobel

BEIJING (AP) — Dissident writer Yu Jie and his wife are prisoners in their apartment. Blocked by security agents outside their building, the couple have been living on deliveries of takeout food and groceries for nearly a month and voraciously reading books to stave off boredom.

The Yu family and scores of other activists are targets of one of the most extensive campaigns of surveillance, house arrest and other harassment by Chinese police against dissidents in years. The clampdown was brought on by the government's fury over the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo.

"We can't even take one step out of the apartment," Yu said in an e-mail Thursday from his home, where he and wife Liu Min have been held since Oct. 18. "Today we called the vegetable market for a delivery of food, and the guards actually came to our door to check every single item that was delivered."

"And no one is allowed to come to my place," Yu said. "Even a neighbor who tried to share some birthday cake was stopped by them."

In the sweep, police picked up democracy advocate Liu Shasha from her home before dawn Oct. 15 and drove her to her hometown 600 miles (965 kilometers) away. Constitutional scholar Zhang Zuhua, also under house arrest, said he was let out for lunch but had to dine with security agents. Human rights lawyers such as Pu Zhiqiang reported being followed by plainclothes officers.

The breadth of the police action underscores the authoritarian government's anxieties that the Nobel prize could unleash demands for political change.

Read more at Google Hosted News

In China, the Crackdown on Activists Continues

Ai Weiwei attends an opera premiere in Germany in October 2009

AP Photo/Focke Strangmann

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei was released Sunday evening from two days of house arrest in Beijing intended to block him from attending a party at his studio in Shanghai. The party, which went on without the host, was to mark the structure's impending demolition. Shanghai authorities, who had invited Ai to build a studio on farmland in the city's Jiading district, told the artist that the building had been deemed illegal and needed to be removed.

In recent years Ai has been one of China's most visible artists. He was one of the designers of the Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing, the centerpiece of the 2008 Olympics. Last month he completed an installation of 100 million porcelain sunflower seeds at the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern gallery in London.(Read 'The China Paradox' by Ai Weiwei.)

He has also become one of the Chinese government's most vocal critics. Ai believes the demolition order was in retaliation for a pair of documentaries he produced that riled the Shanghai government. One was about a man who killed six Shanghai police officers in 2008, and the other about a Shanghai activist who lived in the Tokyo airport while he wasn't allowed to return home. "They were very embarrassed," Ai says. "They pictured me as trouble for them even though they invited me before the Olympics to build my own studio."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2030021,00.html#ixzz14i5kEFmH

China artist Ai Weiwei supporters gather for party at condemned studio

Ai Weiwei refuses to cancel party despite being under house arrest 650 miles in Beijing

Supporters of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei hold a party at his art studio to protest against its demolition. Photograph: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Hundreds of supporters of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei gathered for a party at his condemned studio in Shanghai today, as he remained under house arrest 650 miles away in Beijing.

Police told him on Friday that he would not be able to leave his home until midnight tonight, after he refused to cancel the event.

Ai, who created Tate Modern's "sunflower seeds" installation and whose activism has frequently angered Chinese authorities, told the Guardian: "Many had been warned by local police not to come, but they still made the effort and enjoyed music and wine and crabs. It is really amazing.

"Hopefully [the police] will learn from this that they cannot just use this old way to deal with new conditions. I think with the internet you don't need to be there to communicate so well. I have spent all day talking to people there."

He added: "I never encouraged them to go because I didn't want them to get hurt. But they felt that was their responsibility. It was very touching to see such solidarity.

Read more at Guardian