The so-called National Organisation for Marriage (NOM), an anti-gay activist group based in the United States, has declared war on Starbucks for supporting a gay marriage bill in its home state of Washington. When support for its "Dump Starbucks" campaign proved to be all too disappointing, the group decided to expand the boycott to countries that it thought would support its anti-gay message -- namely Muslim countries such as Indonesia, Turkey and those in the Middle East, and China. more ›

Land rights lawyer Ni Yulan (倪玉兰), who has now been permanently disabled due to police torture, has been sentenced to jail by a court in Beijing along with her husband Dong Jiqin (董继勤). more ›

Astrophysicist and activist Fang Lizhi (方励之), one of the figureheads of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy protests, passed away Friday in Tucson, Arizona at the age of 76, after 22 years of life in exile. more ›

Prince Claus Award laureate Tsering Woeser writes in Foreign Policy about the silence of the Han Chinese people and the double standards of Chinese human rights activists on Tibetan self-immolations. She asks, how many Tibetans have to burn themselves before the Chinese care?: more ›

Ten parents of Chinese homosexuals have written to China's top legislative organ and political advisory organ to call for a legislation to stop discrimination against gays. In an open letter to the NPC and the national CPPCC, the parents say there are around 60 million gays in China, going by the ratio of 3 to 5 gays among every 100 people. more ›

It's that time of the year when delegates from all corners of the People's Republic gather in Beijing for the "Two Sessions" (ie., the National People's Congress and Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference) to debate discuss important national issues and rubber-stamp pass new legislation. more ›

Click the "CC" button to see English captions. more ›

Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin has slammed US ambassador to China Gary Locke for the remarks he made in an interview with Charlie Rose on China's recent human rights record. more ›

In a seminal speech to mark Human Rights Day which commemorates the 1948 signing of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged leaders of the world to “be on the right side of history” and to recognise that "gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights". It's a moving, impassioned speech which totally earned her the standing ovation at the end, and it's worth 30 minutes of your time. Read the full transcript of the speech here. more ›

Xinhua today trumpets a series of changes to the national code of conduct for prison inmates made by the Ministry of Justice in order to "show respect for the human rights of prison inmates". Among the changes: an end to the practise of forcing inmates to squat with both hands behind their heads, a lift on the ban on dyed hair (particularly among female inmates) and the use of execution by lethal injection to replace the firing squad (we'll still kill you but in a more humane fashion). more ›

Early April this year, in the middle of a performance at Q Bar, a newly opened gay bar south of the Bund, police from the Huangpu district burst in, turned the lights on, and took about 70 bar employees and patrons (save the foreigners) with them to the Xiaodongmen police station. more ›

"Beijing tells foreigners that they can understand the city, that we have the same sort of buildings: the Bird’s Nest, the CCTV tower. Officials who wear a suit and tie like you say we are the same and we can do business. But they deny us basic rights. You will see migrants’ schools closed. You will see hospitals where they give patients stitches—and when they find the patients don’t have any money, they pull the stitches out. It’s a city of violence." more ›

Chinese dissident and activist Hu Jia (胡佳), who was rumored to be in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize several years ago, will be released on June 26th according to a tweet posted by Hu's wife, Zeng Jinyan. Imprisoned since April of 2008, Hu was active in the Chinese democracy movement, and also worked with environmental and HIV/AIDS issues. Hu was also the director of the June Fourth Heritage & Culture Association. [via Twitter] more ›

While most of the party-goers detained in the raid of Q Bar, a new gay bar on the Bund, have already been released, the story has only just begun. more ›

On Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly voted 93 for, 55 against with 27 abstaining to reinsert 'sexual orientation' into a resolution condemning extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions. It was removed in November in a move led by African and Islamic countries, but brought back for another vote following the United States' insistence. more ›

This week, the 54-country Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the United Nations (UN) voted to grant "consultative status" to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC). The resolution was approved with 23 in favor, 13 against, 13 abstentions and 5 absences -- China voted "no" along with countries like Bangladesh, Comoros, Namibia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Zambia. While China's "nay" vote may not come as a surprise, it does seem to fly against the CCP's official party line of the three no's -- no support, no prohibition, and no promotion ("不支持，不反对，不提倡") when it comes to gay issues. If they really wanted to be consistent with this policy, why didn't they choose to abstain, we wonder? more ›

Earlier this month, while all eyes were on what was to be China's first ever Mr Gay China pageant, we totally overlooked a trip made by Germany's openly gay Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. This was Westerwelle's first trip to Asia in his new role since he led the pro-business Free Democratic Party to its best election result ever late last year. What made this trip newsworthy, in our opinion, was that the world's only openly gay foreign minister was bringing his partner, Michael Mronz (a marketing executive working in the private sector) along on an official visit to Asia. This is unheard of. more ›

At around 7AM local time, Google updated their official blog with an entry titled "A new approach to China." It states that around mid December, Google discovered a "highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure" coming from within China. And this, they asserted, was the last straw for their operations here. more ›

On the heels of nine executions last month, five more have been sentenced to death by the Intermediate People's Court of Urumqi for crimes committed during the July riots. They were found guilty of killing a police officer and kicking bystanders to death. Two others were sentenced to life in prison; the names of all accused indicate that they are ethnically Uyghur. Rebiya Kadeer, leader of the exiled World Uyghur Congress (and all around Uyghur-rights activist) further iterated her earlier criticisms of the Xinjiang trials in an e-mail statement, claiming that the government has "brazenly ignored all standards of due process." more ›

Nine people were executed yesterday for their involvement in the Xinjiang riots earlier this summer. Among the nine, two were ethnically Han, and the other seven were of Uighur descent. The exiled World Uighur Congress denounced the executions as unfair and unjust, claiming that the government had denied the prisoners a final visit from their families. In addition, twenty more people were indicted in relation to eighteen deaths during the riots. more ›

Today's post by Andrew Sullivan on his blog over at the Atlantic discusses the specter of racism within China, and the implications it could have on both the social and economic future of the country. As the ratio of retirees to workers is set to double within the next fifteen years, questions surrounding the economic sustenance will begin to necessitate an influx of emigrants to keep the economy growing. more ›

We've caught ourselves thinking about the difficulties of being disabled in China on many occasions: a significant amount of city spaces and public transport are simply handicapped-unfriendly. Besides the occasional beggar, you rarely see disabled people in public, which is probably thanks to the many social factors constraining handicapped people. But at a very basic level, it's more troubling to think of the difficulties a set of stairs are for someone incapable of using them and the effect it would have on both their ability to travel and their quality of life. more ›

Beijing News reports a weird measure taken in a company in southern China. According to aujourdhuilachine.com, a company that makes loudspeakers has demanded that its employees keep quiet during work hours — otherwise they'll be asked to wear a protection mask for 3 days! The company explained the decision (taken in May) that they want to preserve the production's quality standards:

"If our employees talk, they are bound to splutter and it will do harm to the equipment parts."

From Boxun.com (you need a proxy) we discovered that there was a maglev-related protest on January 6th. It first started around 11am, around the Xinzhuang/Minhang area, and was dispersed, only to form again sometime around 3pm, this time in the busy Xujiahui CBD. It managed to, in some form, last until 11pm. Protesters carried signs saying "out for a walk" (散步), while other chanted slogans about protecting their homes. The proposed maglev was to link the city's two airports as well as Shanghai to Hangzhou. However, recent protests brought public attention to the health effects of the maglev, leading, according to some, to the recent government decision to reroute the maglev so as to minimize the noise, radiation, and collateral damage. These proposed changes are part of the reason why the price estimates of the maglev have increased from 200 million per km to about 500 million per kilometer. more ›