China: “Help us, journalists!”

From RFA’s Mandarin service (in Chinese): In recent days around 1,200 petitioners have penned an open letter to China’s parliament calling for greater recognition of the rights violations they say they suffered at the hands of officials.

Several hundred petitioners marched towards Gongyi East overpass Thursday hoping to meet with foreign journalists, but the group was intercepted and broken up by police. Some were detained and taken to the unofficial detention center at Majialou to await forcible removal to their hometowns.

Tibet: Life in Lhasa under Chinese rule

“Before the Chinese came, the Tibetans had freedom,” Tubten Khetsun said recently, at an event marking the publication of his new book Memories of Life in Lhasa Under Chinese Rule. “Rich or poor, the most important thing is that they were free to live their lives, to do their everyday tasks. Before the Chinese came, the Tibetans had their own personal religious freedom available to them.”

China: Well-heeled Beijing residents battle incinerator

Here is a full English translation of a recent edition of RFA Mandarin’s Investigative Report (in Chinese):

The residents were not given any direct response to their voiced concerns.  Ask them to give us the report on environment protection, and they refuse on grounds that it is internal information and involves technology secrets.  What secrets?  Why don’t they let us, the people, know about this matter?  Which is more important – human lives or machines?  It’s inconceivable!  We don’t even allow the most basic right-to-know, then how can this government talk about all its policies for the good of the people?  There is no trust to speak of.  We people aren’t even allowed to know about things that directly affect our daily lives.

Mr. Niu, a Beijing resident campaigning against the Liulitun incinerator project

China: Clashes with the chengguan in two cities

RFA/Mandarin — Monday, Feb. 25, 2008. From Hong Kong-based reporter Qiao Long:

Last week in southern China’s Nanning city, a vegetable peddler was beaten up by urban management officers, triggering confrontation between angry bystanders and the officers for about two hours.

According to China’s Nanguo Zaobao newspaper, on the afternoon of Feb. 23, urban management officers, also known as the chengguan, from the Liangqing District confiscated the vegetables belonging to a peddler. The thing happened at the Qianjin Road in the Dashatian area. The middle-aged peddler then picked up a brick to hit the officers’ car. The officers jumped out of the car, trying to pull the peddler into their car. In the process, a witness said, four or five urban management officers beat up the peddler with sugar cane, or kicked him. Angry bystanders encircled the two cars of the officers, blocking their exit.

South China Villagers Slam Pollution From Rare Earth Mine

Guangdong. We all love Guangdong. The shopping. The tourism. The factories. The people. The Guangzhou zoo. The…rare-earth minerals? This week, we learn through RFA’s Cantonese service, Guangdong villagers are fighting an illegal rare-earth mine in their neighborhood which they say has poisoned the local water supply and wiped out their fish-farm stock and rice crops.

Uyghurs: On the trail of the Urumqi shooting story

Xinhua news agency tells us that there was a shootout with Uyghur ‘terrorists’ in the regional capital, Urumqi, in which two ‘terrorists’ were killed. (Image: The Opposite End of China)

Chinese police kill two terorists, arrest 15 others

URUMQI, Feb. 18 (Xinhua) — Chinese police destroyed a terrorist gang last month in Urumqi, capital of northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, killing two persons and arresting 15 others, local sources said on Monday.

China: Wenzhou land activists sentenced

From RFA’s Mandarin service (in Chinese):

The Dongtou County People’s Court, near the eastern coastal city of Wenzhou (marked by the beige section on the map of Zhejiang province), handed down sentences of one year and 18 months to two land activists for “assembly to cause trouble” and “obstruction of traffic”.

Zhuang Pengyou was sentenced to one year, while fellow villager Zhuang Gongxiu got 18 months. Around 70 villagers were present in the courtroom and protested noisily as the sentences were handed down.

China: Troubled times at Bingtuan 106

Bingtuan 106, is in the middle of the long blue area to the south of the Tarim Basin on this map of the bingtuan. Otherwise known as the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, the bingtuan was set up in 1954 to secure China’s borders, and continuing access to the abundant natural resources in the area. Administratively, it is a law pretty much unto itself, answering only to Beijing, and having very little truck with regional officials who administer the civilian areas, which are home to millions of ethnic minority, Muslim, Uyghurs.

In this report by RFA’s Mandarin service (Chinese), retired bingtuan worker and petitioner Liu Xingyuan says 106 Bingtuan leader Luo Yucheng misdirected funds he said were to build a new highway. Liu, 80, has been writing letters of complaint since 1998, and has received threats and harassment from local authorities following a directive from China’s cabinet, the State Council, to sort out the issue as quickly as possible.

China: Nation counts the cost of snows

What happens when you are stuck in a train that is airproof and designed to be air-conditioned with hundreds of other passengers for 30 hours in the middle of a frozen waste at a small junction? You are in a carriage packed with people standing like sardines, squashed up on the seats, squatting on the floor, sitting on any firm protruding surface, lying in the luggage racks. You were very lucky to get on the train at all. Or so you thought until it came to a complete standstill. There are too many people to move easily in any direction. Sometimes you have been standing on one leg for hours because there isn’t room to put the other foot down. You can hear and feel and smell far more of your fellow passengers than you would ever wish to. You have no food or water, and even if you have water you daren’t drink it because then you’d have to fight your way through the press to the toilets, and you dread to think what they are like anyway. People are starting to grow crazy.

China: Blogging for the people stranded by snowstorms

According to Feng37 on Twitter, blogger Beifeng (in Chinese) has spent a lot of time down at the Guangzhou railway station, taking food and supplies to the people stranded by snows. Guangzhou-based John also writes on Global Voices:

Crisis looms large across the south part of the country with the 2008 China Snowstorm showing no signs of letting up. Trains are trapped [zh] on tracks, cars stuck on highways, flights have been delayed and canceled up and down the east coast and at least one woman has been trampled to death [zh] beneath the hundreds of thousands of stranded travelers