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.

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

Burma loses national treasures to smugglers

BURMESE: Antiques Smuggling (03/23/07)

 

Announcer: An antique dealer, based in Myawaddy, said that lately antiques from Pagan, Nyaung Oo, Pintaya, Myauk Oo, Mandalay, and Amarapura are the majority of those smuggled to the border. That antique dealer said that, even though people say there are many antique smugglers in Burma, the number of dealers specializing in smuggling antiques from the pagodas is really small. An antique dealer based in Myawaddy said there is a gang that specializes in smuggling antiques from ancient pagodas. We’ve learned that the gang leader is a famous antique dealer based in Myawaddy.

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 :-