China's feminists undeterred by detentions

Five women who all worked as activists for various feminist causes and had organised public events to raise awareness of a host of issues, from eradicating domestic violence to the need for more women's toilets in China. Few predicted the women would ever become targets of the authorities, since their causes seemed relatively unobjectionable. That is, until last March, when the women were planning a multi-city protest to call for an end to sexual harassment on public transport. The size of their networks and their determination to speak out in public appeared to unnerve the authorities. One by one, they were detained by police.

The protests the women had planned were supposed to be peaceful; the treatment they endured in Chinese detention centres was not. For more than a month, the women were subject to continual interrogations by police. All were forced to sleep on floors, and some were denied vital medication. One woman, Wu Rongrong, was repeatedly told by police that "we'll tie you up, throw you in a cell with men, and let them gang rape you". They also threatened the future of Wu's four-year-old son.

Another woman, Li Tingting, was interrogated 49 times in 27 days. A global campaign to push for their release ensued, and there was an outpouring of relief on Twitter when the #FreetheFive group were released. Months later, the women remain under police surveillance. The group are pushing for their case to be withdrawn. Li Tingting told the BBC she believes the police want a swift conclusion too. "They probably want to retract the case now, because there's nothing to investigate," she explains. "They are also afraid of us demanding compensation. They need to close this case and return my passport to me."

More at BBC News

Uyghur Families Colonize Syrian Village

Uyghurs fighting alongside ISIS and Jabhat Al-Nusra in Syria. A Syrian village was being transformed into "a settlement for hundreds of Uyghur Turkistani families who are fleeing China,"

MEMRI-TV

Missing Romans in China

Sun Jun, who believes his fair complexion may indicate his ancestors were Roman soldiers who settled in the Hexi Corridor in Gansu province, China more than 2000 years ago.

The area’s link with Rome was first suggested by a professor of Chinese history at Oxford in the 1950s. Homer Dubs pulled together stories from the official histories, which said that Liqian was founded by soldiers captured in a war between the Chinese and the Huns in 36BC, and the legend of the missing army of Marcus Crassus, a Roman general.

In 53BC Crassus was defeated disastrously and beheaded by the Parthians, a tribe occupying what is now Iran, putting an end to Rome’s eastward expansion. But stories persisted that 145 Romans were taken captive and wandered the region for years. Prof Dubs theorised that they made their way as a mercenary troop eastwards, which was how a troop “with a fish-scale formation” came to be captured by the Chinese 17 years later.

He said the “fish-scale formation” was a reference to the Roman “tortoise”, a phalanx protected by shields on all sides and from above. Gu Jianming, who lives near Liqian, said it had come as a surprise to be told he might be descended from a European imperial army. But then the birth of his daughter was also a surprise. Gu Meina, now six, was born with a shock of blonde hair. “We shaved it off a month after she was born but it just grew back the same colour,” he said. “At school they call her ‘yellow hair’. Before we were told about the Romans, we had no idea about this. We are poor and have no family temple, so we don’t know about our ancestors.”

More at Asian History

Secrets of China - Fit in or Fail

Billie JD Porter reveals what it's really like to grow up in China, where respect for state and elders is being drilled into the next generation. If you don't fit in, you are often seen as a failure. She visits a special bootcamp where kids are sent to be 'fixed' by their parents, and she discovers that many there are gaming addicts. As she explores China's glamorous gaming world, she asks what China's obsession with gaming really says about pressure and individual freedom in the world's most populated nation.

Secrets of China

Over 20 Chinese Human Rights Lawyers & Staff Arrested, Kidnapped or Missing

The mass arrests started since lawyer Wang Yu, her husband Bao Longjun and their young son were kidnapped on July 9 (Wang Yu’s arrest, Radio Free Asia). Their son has been released, according to information on WeChat. Her colleague at Fengrui Law Firm,  Beijing lawyer Zhou Shifeng was abducted from his hotel room on July 9, after he picked up Zhang Miao, Chinese news assistant to German magazine Die Zeit since last October for her support to Hong Kong’s Umbrella Revolution.

About a dozen lawyers throughout China were summoned to police station on late July 10 for interrogation, including Lu Fangzhi, Wen Donghai, Yang Jinzhu of Hunan province, Zeng Weixu of Shangdong, Xue Rongmin of Shanghai, Fu Jianbo of Chongqing, Wang Cheng of Zhejiang province, Ji Laisong of Henan province. Lawyers Zou Lihui of Fujiang province, Jiang Yongji of Gansu province have been allowed to returned home after police interrogations. Activist Ou Biaofeng @oubiaofeng Tweeted around 2:50am quoting Yang Jinzhu who’s under interrogation at a police station in Hunan province as saying the Domestic Security officers told him lawyer Zhou Shifeng has committed “severe criminal offence”, according to a decree issued by Beijing.

Human RIghts Lawyer Wang Yu

Renowned legal scholar and lawyer Zhang Xuezhong is suspected to have been detained. The police broke into Zhang’s home, and homes of lawyer Li Dawei in Gansu province, lawyer Guo Xiongwei in Hunan province. Police ransacked a dozen lawyers’ homes in Chongqing city, Yunnan, Hunan, Shangdong, Zhejiang, Henan provinces. According to New York-based activist Wen Yunchaos Tweet @wenyunchao, Chongqing human rights lawyer You Feizhu wrote: “There’re guests outside the door…I firmly believe I’m innocent. You need to firmly believe that, too! I love this country and the people on this land deeply. What I’ve been doing, is just trying to make this country and lives of ordinary people a bit better.”

The mass arrests and kidnapping by Chinese police followed last Wednesday’s passing of National Security Law which lawyers and scholars say gives Beijing more legitimacy to create a garrison state. “This law will legitimize the abuse of power by state and public security bureaus,” said prominent human rights lawyer Teng Biao, who was detained before.

revolution-news.com

Under the Dome

In a country where government censorship shuts down critical voices, how did former journalist Chai Jing break through to reach over 100 million people?

She brought the story home with a message any parent can relate to.

For Jing, the story started in Shanxi, a place that was famous for its vinegar. These days, Shanxi is famous for something else: It's considered one of the most polluted places in the world, a result of its massive coal mining operations. But people in China aren't as surprised to hear about the effects of pollution there anymore.

More at upworthy.com

The Truth About Leather

PETA Asia’s groundbreaking investigation into the Chinese dog-leather industry created a tidal wave of outrage earlier this year.

Now Hollywood superstar Joaquin Phoenix is using his voice to let more people know that dogs are bludgeoned and killed so their skins can be turned into leather items to be sold around the world.

Watch Joaquin’s eye-opening video:

peta.org.uk

Pollution In China Is Out Of Control

With a newly-minted elite and an economic growth rate of over 10%, the environment has taken a backseat in China, the world’s most populous country. Growing pollution has led to unusable waterways, increased incidence of birth defects, and some of the dirtiest air on earth. It’s so nasty that there’s now a word for it: “smogpocalypse”.

With that said, China is not oblivious to its ecological impacts, and according to the Harvard Business Review “is taking this challenge much more seriously than others… doing things differently, making longer-term, sustained commitments that are much larger.” In 2010, China ranked as the world’s leading investor in low-carbon energy technology, which makes sense given national political leaders’ tendency to view clean energy as a great economic opportunity.

all-that-is-interesting.com: 33 Shocking Photographs

China and the New World Order

Military tensions, cyber espionage accusations, a brewing currency war; with every passing day, the headlines paint a convincing portrait of an emerging cold war between China and the West. But is this surface level reality the whole picture, or is there a deeper level to this conflict? Is China an opponent to the New World Order global governmental system or a witting collaborator with it?

The Corbett Report

Hong Kong Protesters Fight Police Attacks With Umbrellas

Hong Kong Activists Defy Police Tear Gas As Protests Spread

Riot police advanced on Hong Kong democracy protesters in the early hours of Monday, firing volleys of tear gas that sent some fleeing as others erected barricades to block the security forces in the heart of the former British colony.

Earlier, police baton-charged a crowd blocking a key road in the government district in defiance of official warnings that the demonstrations were illegal. Several scuffles broke out between police in helmets, gas masks and riot gear, and demonstrators angered by the tear gas, last used in Hong Kong in 2005.

The unrest is the worst since China took back control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997. It poses a serious challenge to Communist Party leaders in Beijing, concerned that calls for democracy could spread to cities on the mainland and threaten their grip on power.

Thousands of protesters were still milling around the main Hong Kong government building, ignoring messages from student and pro-democracy leaders to retreat for fear that the police might fire rubber bullets. Police, in lines five deep in places, earlier used pepper spray against activists and shot tear gas into the air. The crowds fled several hundred yards (meters), scattering their umbrellas and hurling abuse at police they called "cowards."

More at The World Post

China attacks Japan for 'barbarous' past

China's president has sharply criticised Japan's history of military aggression in China and South Korea, during a speech in Seoul that came days after Tokyo changed its pacifist constitution. "In the first half of the 20th century, Japanese militarists carried out barbarous wars of aggression against China and Korea, swallowing Korea and occupying half of the Chinese mainland," Xi Jinping said on Friday at Seoul National University.

China and the Korean peninsula were occupied by Japan in the early 20th century.Xi's speech came on the second and last day of his state trip to South Korea, which had been flagged as a snub to ally North Korea because of his decision to visit Seoul before Pyongyang. But the key issue of North Korea's nuclear weapons was mentioned in a passing reference to the need for a "denuclearised Korean peninsula".

Japan announced this week that its military had the right to go into battle in defence of allies, a major shift in the nation's pacifist constitution. China, Japan, North Korea and its southern enemy are locked in a series of political and territorial disputes. Relations between Seoul and Tokyo are at a low ebb, with governments mired in disputes related to Japan's 1910-45 rule over the peninsula. China is also embroiled in a territorial row with Japan over areas of the East China Sea.

Al Jazeera English

Police Arrest 511 After Big Democracy Rally In Hong Kong

Hong Kong police have arrested more than 500 people holding a sit-in a day after tens of thousands in the former British colony joined a massive march to push for democracy. Anger at mainland China has never been greater after Beijing warned recently it holds the ultimate authority over the freewheeling capitalist enclave. That's despite a mini-constitution that gives the city a high degree of autonomy until 2047.

Police said 511 people were arrested Wednesday for unlawful assembly and preventing police from carrying out their duties. They were holding an overnight sit-in after the rally. Police said 98,600 people joined Tuesday's rally at its peak, while organizers said 510,000 turned out, the highest estimates in a decade. Hong Kong University researchers put the number at between 154,000 and 172,000.

The World Post

Anti-corruption activists on trial in China

A Chinese anti-corruption campaigner has gone on trial in Beijing, according to his lawyer, joining two others who appeared in court this week as China's government cracks down on activists.

Zhao Changqing, 45, faces a possible five-year prison sentence for supporting activists who unveiled banners in Beijing calling for government officials to disclose their assets - despite not being present, Zhang Peihong, his lawyer, said on Thursday. Zhao is associated with the New Citizens Movement, a loose-knit network of campaigners against corruption, among other issues. China jailed a founder of the movement in January, and more than 10 other members have been tried.

Zhao pleaded not guilty to a charge of "gathering a crowd to disrupt public order" for his alleged involvement in three small-scale protests in Beijing, which saw activists unfurl banners, Zhang said. "[Zhao] didn't disturb public order in any way, he didn't even appear on the scene of the protests, because he was worried about his family," he said, adding that the hearing lasted around three hours.

Fellow anti-corruption activists Ding Jiaxi and Li Wei were also put on trial this week over the protests. China's ruling Communist Party is in the midst of a highly-publicised anti-corruption campaign, which President Xi Jinping has pledged will target both high-ranking "tigers" and low-level "flies" in the face of public anger over the issue.

More on Al Jazeera English

Chinese teenager exposed as Egypt’s temple graffiti vandal

The parents of a Chinese teenager who scratched his name into a 3,500-year-old Egyptian artwork have apologised for his actions after internet users tracked down the boy to name and shame him. The 15-year-old, from Nanjing, was identified after a photo of his graffiti – which said “Ding Jinhao was here” in Mandarin – at the Temple of Luxor was posted online on Friday.

A microblogger named Shen, who visited the temple on the banks of the River Nile three weeks ago, cited the graffiti as an example of shameful behaviour by Chinese tourists abroad. The posting attracted a torrent of replies, including suggestions that the perpetrator be tracked down.

Investigators used the internet (known in China as “the human flesh search engine”) to trace Ding Jinhao and released his age, his school and other personal details. Hackers even compromised his former primary school’s website, forcing visitors to click on a sign parodying Ding’s graffiti before they could enter the site, the Global Times newspaper reported.

From The Independent

Government corruption: Made in China - By prison labor

It's easy to produce cheap goods when you don't have to pay your workers anything. (Brasscheck tv)

Dumbass

Song by Ai Weiwei

Translation:

Dumbass (Explicit Lyrics)
When you're ready to strike, he mumbles about non-violence.
When you pinch his ear, he says it's no cure for diarrhea.
You say you're a mother-fucker, he claims he's invincible.
You say you're a mother-fucker, he claims he's invincible.
Fuck forgiveness, tolerance be damned, to hell with manners, the low-life's invincible.
Fuck forgiveness, tolerance be damned, to hell with manners, the low-life's invincible.
Oh dumbass, oh such dumbass! Oh dumbass, oh such dumbass!
Oh dumbass, oh such dumbass! Oh dumbass, oh such dumbass!
Lalalalala, lalalalala Lalalalala, lalalalala
Lalalalala, lalalalala Lalalalala, lalalalala
Stand on the frontline like a dumbass, in a country that puts out like a hooker.
The field's full of fuckers, dumbasses are everywhere.
The field's full of fuckers, dumbasses are everywhere.
Fuck forgiveness, tolerance be damned, to hell with manners, the low-life's invincible.
You say you're a mother-fucker, he claims he's invincible.
You say you're a mother-fucker, he claims he's invincible.
The field is full of fuckers, dumbasses are everywhere.
The field's full of fuckers, dumbasses are everywhere.

China's anti-prostitution policies 'lead to increase in abuse of sex workers'

China's high-profile crackdowns on prostitution have made sex workers more vulnerable to abuse by police and clients while failing to curb the trade, a new report says.

Women described being assaulted by police and other security officials until they admitted to being sex workers, leading to them being fined or detained for up to two years without trial. One told Human Rights Watch: "I was beaten until I turned black and blue, because I wouldn't admit to prostitution." Another told the group: "They attached us to trees, threw freezing cold water on us, and then proceeded to beat us."

The Guardian

China's barbaric one-child policy

Ma Jian in The Guardian:

A man with a motorbike agreed to take me to meet a family who had been persecuted the previous year. "They live in a remote valley, far from the nearest village, so the local officials are unlikely to see us," he said as I climbed on behind him. He drove me through dark green hills, past brick shacks painted with half-defaced slogans, one of which read: "After the first child: insert an IUD; after the second: sterilise; after the third: kill, kill kill!" When we arrived at the house, Ah-Li was laying out shrivelled, salted vegetables to dry in the sun. She had to care for four children and her husband's elderly parents, and looked much older than her 30 years. When I asked her about the forced abortion she suffered, she flinched. "It crippled me," she said. "I couldn't stand up straight for weeks afterwards. I had to spend hundreds of yuan on painkillers."

"I heard you worked in a factory in the south for a few years, so you must have had some savings. Did the family-planning squad take the lot?" I looked down at her spindly neck and the duck droppings scattered over her concrete yard. The warm air smelled of singed feathers. I could hear shouting coming from the four children and the television inside her small house.

"Yes, the gods are always against me!" she sighed. "I tried to travel to the county town to lodge a complaint, but the police turned me back. If you write about my story on the internet, don't mention my surname." She rose to her feet and brushed the dung from her trousers. "I paid thousand-yuan fines for my second, third and fourth daughters, but the squad told me that those didn't count, and I'd have to pay another 10,000 yuan for each of them."

"Was the aborted baby a girl or a boy?" I asked, feeling uncomfortable questioning a stranger about such matters."I don't know," she answered. "When the squad turned up, I was cradling my youngest. The officers tore her from my arms, kicked me in the belly and forced me into the minibus. In the clinic, they gave me a shot in the arm. When I woke up two days later, the baby in my belly was gone. I didn't realise until a month afterwards that they'd sterilised me as well. Every woman in this county has been sterilised – apart from the ones who managed to escape. Now look what I've become: a useless, withered wreck." From behind her dark fringe she eyed me with a look of distrust and despair.

Whole story on The Guardian – Wikipedia

Burma confirms phosphorus used in crackdown on mine protesters

An official report has confirmed that police in Burma used smoke bombs that contained phosphorus during a crackdown on anti-mine protesters last year that left 108 people with burns. The report also recommended the controversial Chinese-backed project continue.

The report by an investigation commission appointed by President Thein Sein and chaired by the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was released on Monday, more than three months after the incident at the Letpadaung copper mine in north-western Burma. It was the biggest use of force against protesters in Burma since Thein Sein's reformist government took office in March 2011.

Protesters say the joint-venture between China's Wanbao mining company and a Burma military conglomerate causes environmental, social and health problems. They want it halted and are demanding punishment for those who hurt peaceful protesters. The findings are likely to disappoint opponents of the project and could reignite demonstrations.

Authorities had said they used water cannon, teargas and smoke grenades to break up the 11-day occupation of the mine last November, but protesters said burns were caused by incendiary devices. They described "fire balls" being shot at them during the night-time raid on their encampment. A separate, independent report released last month by a lawyers' network and an international human rights group said police dispersed the protesters by using white phosphorous, an incendiary agent generally used in war to create smoke screens.

The Guardian