Guantanamo to Palau: Uyghurs New Home

Six Uyghur men held for seven years in U.S. military custody at Guantanamo Bay have been released to the tiny Pacific island of Palau which has promised to give them a temporary home for two years.
Radio Free Asia reports the men, were detained as terror suspects but claimed to be religious refugees who had fled persecution in neighboring China.
The [...]

US Takes On Vietnam Over Internet Censorship

The United States Congress is considering a resolution calling on Vietnam to ease up restrictions on internet uses and free bloggers and cyber activists jailed for their activities.
Supporting the resolution, California Rep Loretta Sanchez told the House that it was time for Vietnam to recognize the rights of local internet users.
She sees the internet and [...]

China puts up Berlin (fire) Wall

Twenty years after the Berlin wall fell, signaling the end of communism in East Germany, China has erected an electronic wall to stop its citizens from joining the festivities electronically.
The organizers of the Berlin Wall Twitter site intended for it to be used by people wishing to post their memories of the night the wall [...]

Cambodia Crackdown?

More news now on Cambodia’s all-important, beleaguered garment industry.
Just weeks after the Labor Ministry reported more than 20,000 jobs lost over the last year as a result of the global economic slump, the authorities are vowing to crack down on workplace violations after a fourth incident of mass poisoning of workers in just over a [...]

Hard Times in Tibet

Getting news out of Tibet remains extraordinarily difficult since the March 2008 uprising that rattled Chinese authorities on the eve of last year’s Beijing Olympics. But now a number of sources are reporting that at least three people have been executed for their roles in the unrest. They would be the first people executed in [...]

June 4 Forum in Beijing

On May 10 in Beijing, 19 prominent scholars, lawyers, and activists gathered at a forum to discuss the events of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen square crackdown. The forum was the first to be held in the 20 years since China’s military crushed the student-led pro-democracy movement.
Attendees included China Social Science Academy researcher Xu Youyu, [...]

The Race for the World’s Farmland

A panel of experts speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center here today discussed how governments—scared by high global grain prices and volatile commodities markets—and investors, who see farmland as a stable investment, are increasingly acquiring farmland overseas.
Wealthy, food-importing, water-scarce countries of East Asia, for example, are buying up land in poorer countries of Africa and [...]

Anniversary Sparks Student Memories

The June 4th, 1989 failed uprising remains one of the most tabou topic in the Chinese press and message boards. As the 20th anniversary of these events gets closer, Chinese students and others want to remember – no matter what.

N. Korean Defectors Bewildered By the South

To flee North Korea and arrive in the rich, wired, consuming culture of South Korea is to feel clueless, fearful and guilty.

Teenagers are particularly bewildered. As part of the newest wave in a decade-old flow of defectors from the North, they arrive stunted from malnutrition and struggling to read.

China ‘Rightists’ Call for Redress

A group of former “rightists” from China’s prestigious Beijing University has called in an open letter to President Hu Jintao to be rehabilitated following years of political harassment under the leadership of late supreme leader Mao Zedong.
It is not the first time they try. Will they succeed this time?