China: RFA listeners on the Tibet unrest

The following is a selection of comments from listeners who have called hotlines run by RFA’s Mandarin and Cantonese services since the Tibet unrest began. Some of the comments were made before China admitted to opening fire on anti-Chinese protests in Tibetan areas of Sichuan:

A Shanxi man called RFA Mandarin’s Listener Hotline:

“Tibetan cultural traditions have largely been destroyed. The railway enabled even more Han Chinese to go to Tibet; as a result, it has had a big impact on the environment and customs of Tibet…

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.

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.

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

Snow-battered Hunan braces for more, chaos in Guangdong

Reporting by Qiao Long and Yan Xiu in Mandarin and by Lee Yong-tim for RFA’s Cantonese service in Guangzhou.

The central Chinese province of Hunan has been pummeled by unrelenting snow and icy rains since the middle of January, shutting off the water supply and paralyzing the region’s power grid for seven days in a row.

China: Labour activist shows his injuries after attack

The video shows an interview by RFA’s Cantonese service with Huang Qingnan, a labour activist beaten and stabbed during attacks on a migrant workers’ centre in Shenzhen. He shows the reporter that his leg is permanently damaged, with a huge hole in his lower leg. He will need to walk on crutches for the rest of his life, according to an orthopaedic specialist.

Guangdong: Nine detained in Huizhou land clash

On the afternoon of Monday Jan 14, in the village of Qingtang, Gezhou township, Huicheng district, Huizhou city, Guangdong province:

Around 200 people went to the township government office to protest and call for the release of two villagers who had been detained by police.

A villager surnamed Lam was at the scene, and told RFA’s Cantonese service that the incident began when a few of the villagers had entered the government building to call for a meeting with the township chief, who was hiding in his office and wouldn’t show his face.