Polio Outbreak in Burma

BURMESE: Polio Outbreak, Part 2 (05/09/07)

Reporter: Khin May Zaw

Length: 3:08 minutes
Announcer: We contacted the WHO office based in Rangoon and interviewed them on the detection of polio in Maung Daw Township in Rakhine State. First, when we asked if it was happening only in Rakhine State and how it was discovered, Dr. Nihal Sighn, the medical officer from the WHO, answered as follows:

We’re jamming: North Korea blocks incoming radio transmissions

On May 13, 2007, Free North Korea Radio(Kor) posted a message on its website asking the North Korean authorities to stop jamming their broadcast. You can read a little background on them here.

The Research Institute for Northeast Asian Broadcasting, a short-wave monitoring group based in South Korea, has recently found out that the North Korean authorities have been conducting intensive jamming of Free North Korea Radio’s short-wave evening program.

A ghost in China’s propaganda machine

UPDATE: I translated this after it was suggested on the Chinese Content Wiki by Mo Ming. It is visible via Google in at least a couple of different locations: here and here. RFA Unplugged has translated it for interest only, and RFA has no way to verify whether it is an accurate report of a real meeting, or, as the government loves to say, a fabrication. It is offered in the spirit of a look what is being talked about in Chinese cyberspace. You can read previous RFA stories in English involving the propaganda department here and here:

Interview: Uyghur Wirewalker Adil Hoshur

May 3 – The world record for high-wire walking is broken by a Chinese contestant at the world’s first high-wire walking competition across the Han river in Seoul. Eighteen contestants tread carefully on a thirty millimetre thick iron wire stretching one kilometre across the Han River in the South Korean capital. Participants braved strong wind and low-flying birds assisted only by a seven metre long rod. South Korean contestant Kwon Won-Tae broke the world record first after he walked across the wire in 17 minutes and six seconds. The South Korean’s record was short lived however as Chinese contestant, Abusataer Wujiabuduia, sped across the wire in a record 11 minutes and 22 seconds.

South Korea: N.Korean defectors in poor mental, physical health

Researching our English Web story on the mental and physical health problems that persist among North Koreans even after they have resettled in the South, I was sent an article in The Lancet [Correlation Between Traumatic Events and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Among North Korean Defectors
in South Korea WooTaek Jeon, ChangHyung Hong, ChangHo Lee, Dong Kee Kim, Mooyoung Han, and SungKil Min], the abstract of which follows:

Newsdesk: North Korea Orders Children Home

RFA REPORTING FROM BANGKOK: CHILDREN OF NORTH.KOREAN DIPLOMATS AND BUSINESS OFFICIALS IN THAILAND CONFIRMED TO HAVE BEEN SENT BACK TO NORTH KOREA BY THE END OF APRIL 2007

(Dong-June Lee, May 9, 2007)

Following the official order to repatriate the children of all North Korean officials overseas, including trade and business representatives, by the end of April, all children between ages 5 and 9 and over 14 residing in Thailand with their parents were confirmed to have been returned to North Korea by the given deadline.

North Korean diplomats and trade officials have confirmed that their children had safely arrived in North Korea by the end of April. They will now all have to learn how to put up with being separated from their own flesh and blood.

Perry Link speaks about the state of censorship in China

On May 1st, the Freedom House and the Broadcasting Board of Governors (the US entity that oversees Radio Free Asia) held a half-day session on “21st century threats to media freedom.” Perry Link, professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, spoke about China’s state of censorship and how it has evolved over the last 30 years…

Professor Link said that while the CCP still holds ultimate power on what goes into the media, the ways it goes about it have changed to become far more insidious. As a result lots of young people in China know nothing about the Tiananmen massacre or Tibet and host of other issues deemed forbidden topics.

Listen to Professor Link’s statement (10 minutes.)

Related links:

Poems for June 4th. 

Interview with the former editor of Baixing magazine, whose hard-hitting reporting earned him and his staff the wrath of the powerful Central Propaganda Department.

Leaked document? A ghost in China’s propaganda machine

Publishing crackdown begins July 1

A hotshot civil rights laywer from the north tells it like it is… Mo Shaoping on YouTube

Interview: Former Baixing editor Huang Liangtian

This news report, based on an interview with Huang Liangtian, was broadcast Thursday on RFA’s Mandarin service:

Baixing, whose title translates roughly as “Ordinary People”, a popular monthly magazine which has already made a name for itself for exposing corruption among local officials in the countryside, has undergone a radical shift in editorial policy into a lifestyle publication which cherry-picks the best writing from the Web.

Effectively, this means it will no longer employ in-house staff to originate its own articles.

Mayday! Mayday! Thoughts on history, colonialism and activism

Plastichk writes about the last day of the Star Ferry pier in Hong Kong (in Chinese). Below, Chow Yun Fat (with whom I feel a great affinity, having lived on Lamma Island for many years) signs a petition to save it. For me, there is a definite connection to May 1

Interview with Mia Farrow on China, Darfur and the Olympics

Here are some extracts from a much longer interview aired by RFA’s Mandarin service (ZH) on April 25. The interviewer is Shen Hua. You can hear the audio in English here for the next seven days:

Q: How did you make the connection between being an actress and getting involved in the political problems of Darfur?

MF: You know I don’t consider it politics so much as an extension of my own humanity and my role within the humanitarian community. I mean you know I’m a UNICEF goodwill ambassador, and some people know I have 14 children. Most of my children – 10 of them – are not related to me by blood but by something much more important and stronger – by our deep love and commitment to one another. So by extension we regard the entire human family as one, and our place within the human family as one of responsibility.