Newsdesk: Police open fire on Tibetans in Lhasa

KATHMANDU—–Chinese police fired on rioting Tibetan protesters in Lhasa on Friday, killing at least two people, as Tibetans torched cars and shops and anti-Chinese demonstrators surged through the streets of the regional capital, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reports.

Witnesses who spoke to RFA’’s Tibetan service reported seeing two bodies in the central Barkor area of Lhasa, while unconfirmed reports set the death toll higher.

“There was shooting and death,” another Tibetan source told RFA’’s Mandarin service, adding, “”It’s not convenient to speak on the phone”.”

“Now the local Tibetans are protesting in the Barkor area,” a third Tibetan source said, referring to a central area in Lhasa. “They ransacked Chinese shops and the police fired live ammunition into the crowd. No one is allowed to move around in Lhasa now.”

Newsdesk: Hu Jia’s trial is on Tuesday

Hu’s lawyer Li Fangping told RFA’s Cantonese service:

“They (the court) officially notified us tonight that Hu’s case will be tried next Tuesday [at the Beijing No.1 Intermediate People’s Court]. The indictment is very simple, consisting only of two sentences. The charge is ‘incitement to subvert state power’.”

China: UPDATED-Hu Jia indicted for subversion

UPDATE: from RFA’s Mandarin service [独家报道：律师拿到对胡佳“涉嫌煽动颠覆国家政权罪”起诉书]

HONG KONG—Authorities in Beijing have formally charged AIDS activist Hu Jia with “incitement to subversion” after he wrote articles online critical of China’s hosting of the Olympics, his lawyers said.

Baby Under House Arrest: Hu Qianci at four months. Courtesy of Zeng Jinyan’s blog.

China: Petitioner belief prompts pre-Olympic rush on capital

There is a saying among petitioners that if your problem cannot be solved before the Olympics, it will be even harder after the Games.

– Petitioner Liu Feiyue

The strength of this belief reminds me of the mythologies and stories told by other groups in a state of severe disempowerment, like street children. These stories are used like maps in a hostile terrain in which recognisable, ‘normal’ human meaning systems  (eg: children will be cared for; the judicial system will mostly apply the law) have completely broken down. I suppose I think this because from where I’m sitting, petitioners look equally unlikely to get what they are looking for on either side of the Olympics. The following is a digest of recent reporting on petitioners and blogger activists by RFA’s Mandarin service, translated by Chen Ping:

China: Strikes in Dongguan test new labor law

Konica Minolta Business Technologies and Sankyo Seiko Science & Technology are two neighboring factories in Shilong township, Dongguan.

Strikes began Thursday in the Sankyo plant after a pay dispute involving some 3,000 workers who complained their salaries were too low because the overtime pay they were getting didn’t comply with China’s Labor Contract Law. One worker told (in Chinese) RFA’s Cantonese service…that the factory management had responded to the strike by calling a two-day halt to production:

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.

Vietnam: Dissidents’ jail terms upheld

Vietnam, in the Western world, used to evoke a war. Now it conjures up inflation, productivity, WTO membership, and unapologetic animosity toward free expression. How do we know this? This week, a Vietnamese appeals court upheld the sentences of four men convicted of collecting complaints against the government and sharing them with Western news organizations, including Radio Free Asia (RFA).

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.

North Korean executed for making calls abroad

RFA-Korean reports that North Korea last year executed the director of one of its state-run companies last year for having made phone calls abroad without permission, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

Paris-based RSF said in its annual survey of press freedom worldwide that North Korea “is the world’s most isolated country and the security forces are responsible for keeping it that way at all costs. Pyongyang’s executions for the offense of communicating with people outside the country have shot up.

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.