Torch song for Tibet: Everest protesters detained

I got up this morning to find this interview in my Inbox from RFA’s Tibetan service, with Kristen Westby, a Students From a Free Tibet protester at the Everest base camp. Other news media already had the story, but we did a news release because our interview with the protester is strong, and the story is so important to our language regions, touching as it does on major issues of human rights, Chinese rule in Tibet and Xinjiang, and also China’s aspirations to bring the torch relay for the 2008 Olympics through Taiwan. I will be working on a related topic later today: the campaign by Mia Farrow and Stephen Spielberg to put pressure on China to use its diplomatic clout to help out in Darfur by calling the 2008 Games the “Genocide Olympics”:

 

“I will speak to you in English. And we are sitting here in a Chinese prison. We are sitting here and authorities are pointing at me thinking what to do about that I am on the phone. They don’t seem to be worried much about it. We are sitting here and given little bit of food and cigarettes and we are sitting down waiting to see what happens next.”

Interviews: Mass abortions in Guangxi

Where: Baise city, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region
When: Tuesday April 17, 2007
What: Mass abortions reported

UPDATE: More interviews from RFA’s Mandarin service:

“They gave her the injection at 11 a.m. the previous day and she had the abortion at about 6 p.m. the following day. When the baby was born we could see it was a little boy. I don’t know the name of the medication they used but it’s something that kills the child slowly.” –Baise city house church pastor James Liang Yage

Newsdesk: More land protests in Guangdong and Sichuan

This is a brief summary from RFA’s Cantonese service, and I have linked to the original stories in Chinese/Cantonese:

Chengdu roadblock:

Several hundred villagers in Chengdu, Sichuan province protested against the government land grabbing by blocking the traffic for two days. One villager was detained but later released under villagers’ pressure. (Interviews with a villager and activist Huang Qi)

Guangzhou sit-in

About a dozen residents who lost their houses during demolition set up tents to live at the construction site in Guangzhou. The tents were later removed also. 4 residents were hurt during the conflict. (Interviews with reporter Mr. Du from Guangzhou daily, city government and county government)

Mo Shaoping on the ‘harmonious society’

This clip was uploaded to YouTube by Duowei News, which appears to be an overseas Chinese-run news Web site[ZH]. Here is an English translation of the comments by Mo Shaoping, a Chinese lawyer well-known for defending political prisoners and representing clients in high-profile civil rights cases, like Gao Zhisheng’s. All the way through, he makes reference to the Shanwei protests, which ended in a violent crackdown on Dec. 6, 2005. This of course dovetails with recent coverage of “nail houses” in Chongqing and Guangxi, and with former top aide Bao Tong’s commentaries on the passing of the Property Law of the People’s Republic of China(PDF) at the March National People’s Congress:

Picture story: Prostrating Tibetan monk halfway to Dharamsala

A Tibetan Buddhist monk from the Amdo-speaking region of China’s Sichuan province is just over half way through his journey to Dharamsala, seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile and the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.

Tibetan lamas, too, worry about young people these days

Here are some extracts of interviews with top Tibetan religious leaders carried out by the Tibetan service recently, translated and introduced by Karma Dorjee. It appears to show a common theme among the more venerable members of society in any culture; that young people are a cause for concern:

Karma writes: Taking the opportunity afforded by the assembly of several Tibetan Buddhist leaders in Dharamsala for offerings in supplication of a long life for His Holiness the Dalai Lama, RFA asked for interviews with several of them so they could share their wisdom with Tibetans inside Tibet who are reportedly involved in excessive consumption of tobacco and alcohol, and overindulgence in gambling :-

Hu Jia’s trip to Hong Kong

Here is the direct transcript of an interview with Hu Jia broadcast recently by the Cantonese service. You can read more about Hu in English here. He did in fact return to China on March 31:

Mandarin: Interview with Hu Jia (03/22/07)

Reporter: Christie

Christie (C): During an interview with our station’s Cantonese Service on Thursday, (March 22, 2007), Hu Jia stated that after over 200 days of house arrest, he was both mentally and physically exhausted. His wife Zeng Jinyan worried that he would not be able to endure if the situation continued, so she conceived the idea of sending him abroad to recuperate. They chose Hong Kong as their first leg. He was surprised that he did not meet with any obstruction when applying for the pass to Hong Kong.

Forced, unpaid labor for Uyghurs in China’s almond groves

I must admit, when I first heard about the almond groves of Yarkand, it sounded highly romantic. I imagined half-buried tombs of ancient kings, oasis towns with bearded scholars of the Quran teaching young boys outside intricately patterned mosques…so much for my highly Orientalist fantasy epitomised by this collection of old photos in the Library of Congress…

…but the reality is anything but romantic. Around 10,000 Uyghurs are working to expand production in those groves now, and farmers and official/quasi-official sources have admitted to RFA’s Uyghur service that their labor is both compulsory and unpaid.

Darwaz: The Uyghur art of wire-walking

Before I wrote this story for RFA’s English Web pages I had no idea that such a thing as Darwaz (see linguistic notes below) existed. OK, it wouldn’t have surprised me to discover that Uyghurs wirewalked, but I wouldn’t have understood it as a specifically Uyghur art, bound up with centuries of ethnic identity, and, some say, with opposition to incursions from Han China. The video clip above isn’t, I don’t think, of Adil Hoshur himself, the “King of the Sky” and the Uyghur prince of wirewalking. The clip below should give you an idea of just how popular and widespread this feat is in the Uyghur homelands; a five-year-old girl wirewalks blindfolded in Kashgar. Here, too, is a recent interview with Adil Hoshur by RFA’s Uyghur service, detailing plans to wire-walk across the Straits of Messina in Italy…

(On the etymology of Darwaz. It is a Uyghur word, the ‘dar’ part meaning a line you hitch up your horse/camel/donkey with, and the ‘waz’ part meaning ‘that which’. Check it out in the triangular Uyghur/English/Chinese online dictionary with Arabic script (cool tool!) available here. Initially I thought it was similar in meaning to Darwaz airport in Afghanistan, which I imagine is closer to the Arabic root dal-alif-ra meaning house, home or country/homeland, with Darwaz meaning gateway or portal. The meaning gets shrunk further in India, just meaning ‘door’. I have no idea why it in modern Uyghur it means a piece of rope to yoke or hang people with, but the coincidence of different meanings is interesting if you like word association.)

Newsdesk: Doing the Nail House Rock in Guangxi

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UPDATED Tuesday April 3. The Chongqing nail house has been demolished. RFA’s Mandarin service has the details (ZH).

The story so far… Many bloggers around the region have been covering the “nail house” phenomenon which has been sweeping through Chinese cyberspace, and which the official media are now forbidden to cover, although bloggers are filling the gap. Essentially, nail houses are property holders who refuse to sell out to developers. Former top Communist Party aide Bao Tong has also been busy penning his opinion of the new Property Law passed by China’s parliament in mid-March:

This is from RFA’s Mandarin service; you can read and listen to the full report in Chinese. It is also available in Cantonese:

Where: Sanhekou village, Beihai City, Guangxi Province

When: Tuesdsay 3/27 and Wednesday 3/28

What: Up to 1,000 people, including anti-riot police, demolition crew in hard hats, and uniformed personnel in military fatigues, forcibly demolished the village and beat villagers who refused to move; several people were injured; local media are prohibited from reporting the clashes; the local public security bureau has ordered websites to delete photos of and postings about the clashes.