Results tagged “protests”

Unsurprisingly, China has banned foreigners from traveling to Tibet in preparation for the 60th anniversary of the PRC. The ban, one of the traditional ways that China attempts to control security around important holidays, will be in effect from September 24 to October 8. If you've been planning a trip to Lhasa, or looking for some new knives, you're going to have to wait until the end of the holidays. Photo: Illuheaven @ flickr

In the most recent tiff over pollution, villagers in Fujian attacked police and took local officials hostage to protest a sewage treatment plant (next to a tannery and oil refinery) that they said was polluting the environment - evidenced by foul smells coming form the building. While the protests had occured over several days - ever snce the plant sent a major stench through the area on August 19 - on Monday, things boiled over. 10,000 people confronted 2,000 riot police and at least 10 people were injured with the demonstrations turned violent, according to South China Morning Post.

Here's our translation of an article we found on Global Times 《环球时报》dated July 11 entitled "Turkey in open support of Xinjiang independence terrorist elements, and stoking the flames of anger among Chinese netizens". It gives you a good idea of the standard fare in Chinese papers today on the recent Xinjiang developments:

     

Just as 56minus1 alerted us to protest banners at Huaihai Zhong Lu earlier this week, we recalled seeing the same protest, in the form of wall graffiti along Fuxing Zhong Lu near Hengshan Lu over the weekend.

While rock is currently experiencing a revival all over this country, the spirit of revolution inherent in the first generation of Chinese alternative music is noticeably absent.

A human rights protestor, described as a Western-looking man with dark hair and in his early twenties, has been detained by UK police after he threw his shoe at Prime Minister Wen Jiabao while he was delivering a speech at Cambridge University. According to The Times, the young man blew a whistle as Premier Wen was about to wrap up his speech, shouting:

“How can the university prostitute itself with this dictator? How can you listen to these lies?”

“Stand up and protest, you're not challenging him.”

"Nearly 1,000 workers staged a rare sit-in protest outside a Shanghai factory Tuesday in the latest sign of strain in China's manufacturing industry, which has been hit hard by the economic crisis."

Due to the ongoing political turmoil in Bangkok, Shanghai's municipal tourism bureau has issued an order to travel agencies here to suspend all trips to Thailand pending further notice and to help all stranded Chinese tourists return as soon as flights resume. The Chinese Embassy has confirmed that up to 1,000 Chinese tourists have been left stranded in Thailand. A dispatch by the Associated Press on how the chaos at Suvarnabhumi Airport has struck a major blow to the Thai tourism industry quotes a 44 year old Shanghai-based French executive by the name of Fred Thierry as saying his company is now thinking twice about a new investment that was planned for Thailand due to its political instability. That investment may now be shifted to China.

Taxi driver strikes have been spreading from city to city lately. China Digital Times tells us of the latest one that took place in Guangzhou:

Cabbies in Guangzhou took to the streets Monday to protest the alleged beating of a fellow cab driver by a government official yesterday evening. The cab driver was beaten by three men after a traffic accident. Related photos, video clips and blog posts were all over Chinese cyberspace. The official media also quickly put out its own version of this protest. Read these stories from Xinhua and Shanghai Daily.

Manuela Parrino, an Italian woman who has lived in Beijing for the last 41/2 years said she was "fed up with all the visiting journalists talking negatively about China." She decided to prove China's commitment to free speech during the Olympic Games by applying to protest against pollution, with her 4 year old son, in one of the designated zones. After 9 hours, over 2 days, of officials trying to dissuade her cause, and parrying almost nonsensical questions from the local police officials, Manuela's application was unsuccessful because her son was deemed "too young".

In this video Al Jazeera reports on two elderly Beijing residents who tried to organize protests against evictions in the capital. For these women, who are both in their 70s, this has had far reaching consequences.

Picture of Hua Guo Feng from Stefan Landsberger.

A small group of Tibet activists held a small demonstration at the entrance of the Chinese Ethnic Culture Park not far from the Olympic stadium yesterday around 12.30pm. According to Austin Ramzy of TIME Magazine who was there on site, the demonstration was "hardly a blockbuster". He described the protest as follows:

The first attempt at unfurling a banner on the overpass was apparently a diversionary tactic, so the other demonstrators could barricade themselves behind a row of bikes at the park's entrance. It was a pretty small affair, the sort of thing one would ignore on the streets of New York or London. But because this is Beijing during the Games the police took it pretty seriously. I will give them credit for at least giving the demonstrators a brief window to say their piece, though possibly that was because the cops were just deciding what to do. After about 10 minutes the protesters were all bundled away.

You may have heard of the three official protest areas that Beijing set aside for pre-authorized demonstrations during the period of the Olympics. According to The Australian, these "protest pens" have been of little use, since — so far — no protests have been allowed.

WSJ: Olympic protestor VS Patriotic youth

Al-Jazeera: 70 year old Beijing resident He Linyuan has taken close to 10,000 photographs of the Bird's Nest

On Monday, Beijing residents gathered at Qianmen Dajie, in Chongwen District, to demonstrate against forced evictions and the demolishing of houses in this area. Their claims, however, are dismissed by the state-owned People's Daily, which quotes an interview with Zhong Yongming, deputy chief of the Chongwen District Government: "96 percent of the residents who used to live in the old Qianmen area, featuring poor public works, serious safety problems and dilapidated housing, were pleased with the upgrading project in the area and the solutions offered to rehouse them". Taiwan News Online reports that: "Police officers did not interfere, but women who said they were members of a neighborhood committee pushed and led the protesters away from the area".

Tibetan poet Woeser, called "the poet who forgot to be afraid," speaks out against the Chinese government's repression of human rights in this short clip by Al Jazeera English. According to Al Jazeera, during "crackdowns" on Tibetan dissidents in March, Woeser's Internet blogs were among the few sources of information from the sealed-off region. She is now prohibited from leaving the country; Chinese officials refuse to issue her a passport. She is not allowed to leave China to accept awards for her poetry because officials claim she is a threat to national security. In a rare and daring move, Woeser is taking the government to court. "The Chinese government has not kept its promises," the poet tells Al Jazeera. "In strict terms, it has kidnapped the Olympic Games because it's using the Olympics as a big platform to demonstrate its power."

Photo from UrbanNat

Several thousand rioters have gathered in Guizhou's Weng'an County, torched a police station, ransacked government buildings and overturned police cars, after allegations of a cover-up over a 15 year old girl's death blew up. Ming Pao reports the son of the county's vice-deputy mayor had raped and murdered the girl along with another youth and tossed her body into the Ximen River. Police only detained the suspects for five hours and released them without charge. EastSouthWestNorth says unconfirmed, conflicting reports are now swirling around the Internet but has several telling pictures which indicate a large proportion of the population was out on the streets. [Xinhua] [Reuters] [AP] [AFP] [Youtube videos 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

With the upcoming Olympics and the subsequent global attention, the government obviously wants the nation to look its best, which in China sometimes translates to quashing dissent. Two European-based human rights groups working together as the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders recently published a report declaring that the government has stepped up attempts to quiet dissidents, citing four people arrested for Olympic Games protests, including Hu Jia, who was sentenced to three and a half years in jail for criticizing the government’s human rights violations. More from the AFP article:

In a foreword to the report, writer Wei Jingsheng wrote: "In particular, last year the Chinese Government's repression has rapidly upgraded, in an effort to make sure there is no dissident voices from the people during the 2008 Olympics."

Continue reading "A pre-Olympic dissident clampdown?"

Way back in 1925, during the heyday of foreign imperialism in Shanghai, discontent was fomenting among the local populace over what were generally considered to be unfair privileges granted to foreigners and Chinese exclusion from the governing Shanghai Municipal Council. The deals the foreign powers had struck up with Manchu officials in the 19th century, suspect from the beginning, had little official legitimacy after the fall of the Qing more than ten years earlier. Tensions reached a boiling point when labor protests at a Japanese factory resulted in an assault and the death of a Chinese employee on May 15th.

You've probably been on the edge of your seat waiting for the latest Olympic torch relay news so here it is. The beleagured sacred flame is making its way through Hong Kong today at the start of its tour of China following a few, shall we say, hiccups during the international relay. Despite the rain, the torch route has been mostly been lined with supporters throughout, many hoping to catch a glimpse of the flame as it is carried by a host of Hong Kong stars, such as Andy Lau. The International Herald Tribune claims that many of these supporters have come across from the mainland (citing their use of Mandarin rather than Cantonese).

Depending on where you read your news, the nation-wide boycott of, and protests against, French supermarket chain Carrefour in China were either a well-attended show of nationalistic pride or were over-shadowed by the bargains on offer inside the stores. Angered by events surrounding the Olympic torch relay in Paris last month and by President Sarkozy declining to rule out a boycott of the games in Beijing in August, the protests had been arranged through on-line forums and text messaging.

     

Taikang Lu has developed rapidly in the last few months — expanding from the original alleyway into a sprawling collection of labyrinthine lanes populated by galleries, arty shops, and some great restaurants. However, the revitalisation of Taikang Lu hasn't been welcomed by everyone. Yesterday, on a gloriously sunny afternoon that saw large numbers of people flock to the area, some local residents decided to voice their dissent against the ongoing development.

Following up on our previous post entitled "Attack on an American volunteer by anti-Carrefour mob in Zhuzhou, Hunan," we were contacted today by James Galvin, the unnamed American volunteer mentioned in the story which has now gone on to receive coverage by the Associated Press. In his email, Galvin provided his first-hand account of the alleged incident outside a Carrefour Sunday night in Hunan Province. He feels the story has gotten blown out of proportion. He called the initial email summary of the incident submitted to Shanghaiist by one of his fellow volunteers "sensationalist," adding the colleague "had only seen me for thirty seconds. That should have been enough to see I was not 'cut up.'" Shanghaiist ran the initial post on the incident on April 22 after receiving a copy of an official email from the volunteer organization's China field director — which spoke of a "mob mentality" and "punches" being thrown — that appeared to corroborate the initial version of events we were given. We had also seen an email from a U.S. Vice-Consul in Beijing saying she had spoken with the field director and that the Embassy was "highly concerned about what happened." We felt it was newsworthy and posted the story as a word of caution to our readers in various parts of China. We updated the story after the initial tipster contacted us again saying he was worried his account was "factually inaccurate in many ways."

Al Jazeera: "Transformed from being the land of bicycles into a land of cars, China's booming economy is driving up demand at a time when car sales are slow elsewhere in the world. Al Jazeera's Tony Cheng visited the Beijing motor show which showed much promise in making China the future of the automotive industry."

READ THIS: Volunteer in China: "I was not in fact attacked by a mob"

Danwei informs us that Carrefour.com.cn is currently "undergoing a website update and maintenance", but CarrefourS.com.cn is alive and hopping with nationalist messages and other "user-generated propaganda". Crazy times.