Politiktoons No. 201: Tiananmen Square

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://politiktoons.blogspot.com and also at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

Report from the 6th World Parliamentarian's Congress in Tibet held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

MP Son Chhay with His Holiness the Dalai Lama at the 6th World Parliamentarians' Congress on Tibet which is held in Ottawa, Canada. April 28, 2012

Holywood movie star Richard Gere chaired the first cession of the convention of the 6th World Parliamentarians' Convention on Tibet which was held in Ottawa , Canada

Outside the convention building, unemployed Chinese in Canada were paid by the Chinese embassy in Ottawa to hold the protest against the international move to push for a dialogue between His Holiness Dalai Lama and Chinese government so that a solution can be found to end the suffering of the Tibetan people. This type of protest is not allowed in China but the communist Chinese enjoy freedom of expression which is allowed in the West

The convention believes that the change in Burma and in the middle east will affect the position of hardliners in China as the world is moving to recognize the right of self determination of minority groups, China will have no choice but to talk to HH Dalai Lama to find a suitable solution to the crisis.

Some speakers at the convention predicted that some serious change in china will occur and china could become a democratic nation with less than 10 years. What about Cambodia?

Son Chhay

China detains six over coup rumours, halts microblog posts

Mar 31, 2012
By Bill Smith
DPA

Beijing - Chinese authorities have detained six people for spreading rumours that fuelled speculation of a possible coup attempt, and have ordered microblogging websites to suspend their comment functions to allow a 'clean-up,' media reports said Saturday.

State media said police had detained six people and closed 16 websites accused of spreading rumours of military vehicles entering Beijing and possible political upheaval.

There has been no evidence of any unusual troop movement in Beijing since the rumours began circulating on March 19.

The rumours followed the removal on March 15 of Chongqing regional Communist Party leader Bo Xilai, who was previously tipped to win a top national post after the party's five-yearly congress in October.

Cambodian MP's Open Letter to President Hu Jintao Calls for Dialogue on Tibet

26 March 2012, Amsterdam - Mr. Son Chhay, a member of the National Assembly in Cambodia has in an open letter to President Hu Jintao (see here and here) called for negotiations to resolve the issue of Tibet as the Chinese President is scheduled to visit Cambodia from 30 March to 2 April, 2011.

In the letter dated 26 March, 2012, Mr. Chhay said: "The continuation of China's systematic repression of Tibetan people can not be ignored. Tibetans are gentle and peace loving people and they are seeking a level of autonomy to preserve their culture and their way of life. Surely it is not too much to ask. President Hu Jintao please use your authority to put an end to any further egregious human rights violations and begin to reconcile with the Tibetan Government-in-exile to settle the problem by beginning negotiations, without further delay, with His Holiness the Dalai Lama."

The letter also raising many concerns about China's policies which affect Cambodia while touching on the current situation in Tibet stated: "ln particular, recent events in Tibet have involved the self-immolation of a number of Tibetans - the last count was 30 confirmed self-immolations since February 2009. President, this is their desperate attempt to gain the world's attention over the plight of Tibet and the lack of religious freedom, some as young as 18 years old!

Mr. Chhay was one of the parliamentarians who joined the Tibetans on 2 September, 2010 to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Tibetan Democracy Day which took place at Sera Monastery in Bylakuppe, South India.

In solidarity for Free Tibet Bylakuppe, South India, September 1010 (Photo Son Chhay)

Tibetan monks in exile at Sera monastery to celebrate 50th anniversary of Tibetan Democracy Day.

Tibetan people! Waiting to return home from more than 50 years in exile (Photo-Son Chhay)

Tibetan protester dies in New Delhi

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51uNXgXlXb8

Died in hospital: A Tibetan monk reads a note written by protester Jamphel Yeshi and posted on a wall in New Delhi (Reuters: Adnan Abidi)

Exiled Tibetans and human rights activists participate in a candlelight vigil for Jamphel Yeshi (AFP: Dibyangshu Sarkar)

A Tibetan activist takes part in the Delhi protest (AFP: Manan Vatsyayana)

March 29, 2012
By Richard Lindell, wires
ABC News (Australia)

The death of a Tibetan protester who set himself on fire in the Indian capital New Delhi has given new impetus to protests over China's rule in Tibet.

Jamphel Yeshi was at a rally protesting against the visit of Chinese president Hu Jintao on Monday when he doused himself with fuel and set himself alight.

He had burns to 98 per cent of his body and was declared dead at Delhi's Ram Manohar Lohia hospital yesterday.

Photos of Mr Yeshi on fire were sent out on news wires and have been turned into posters which have been put up in New Delhi and in Dharamsala, the Himalayan hill town which is home to thousands of exiled Tibetans.

At least 29 Tibetans - often monks and nuns - have died after setting themselves on fire in protests against Chinese rule in the past year.

Deadly attack on market in China's Xinjiang: police

This file photo shows a group of security forces on patrol in northwest China's Xinjiang region, in 2011. A group of axe-wielding men attacked a market in the volatile Xinjiang region, home to the mainly Muslim Uighur minority, leaving at least 12 people dead, police and state media said

Map locating Yecheng in China's Xinjiang region where at least 12 people were killed in a riot on Tuesday

Wednesday, February 29, 2012
AFP News

A group of axe-wielding men attacked a market in the volatile Xinjiang region of northwest China, home to the mainly Muslim Uighur minority, leaving at least 12 people dead, police and state media said.

The motive behind the attack late on Tuesday was not immediately clear, although Xinjiang has suffered repeated outbreaks of ethnic unrest in recent years that the government has routinely blamed on separatists and terrorists.

Around a dozen Uighurs attacked the market in the remote town of Yecheng, killing 10 people, a police officer told AFP by telephone.

Police then shot five of the attackers dead, he said.

Politiktoons No. 187: Tibet is Closed

Cartoon by Sacrava (on the web at http://politiktoons.blogspot.com and also at http://sacrava.blogspot.com)

[Tibetan] Town Besieged After Shooting

Tharpa, whose detention for putting up anti-China posters sparked protests. (Photo courtesy of Kanyag Tsering.)

Protests spread among Tibetans challenging rule by Beijing.

2012-01-27
Radio Free Asia

"Until that goal is achieved, the Tibetan movement will not cease. You communist Chinese can arrest me"

Chinese security forces have encircled a town in a Tibetan part of the southwestern province of Sichuan after the latest in a string of killings of Tibetan protesters, as unrest continues to spread across the region, exile sources said.

"A huge contingent of Chinese police and armed soldiers have surrounded Barma township and other nearby villages and confined Tibetans to the area and are stopping them from leaving the area," Kanyag Tsering, a monk based in the northern Indian town of Dharamsala with close ties to his home region of Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba), said in a written statement.

In the statement, Tsering and his fellow monk Lobsang Yeshe said they had identified the person reportedly shot dead by Chinese police on Thursday as Ugyen, 20, son of Poethar, a local nomad.

"His family lives in Shoeda village, Barma township of Dzamthang (in Chinese, Rangtang) county in Ngaba," Lobsang Yeshe said. "He and Tharpa, who put up posters and distributed protest leaflets, were schoolmates."

Two More Uyghurs Get Life Sentences [-Does Cambodia still deserve a seat at the UNSC???]

Top row: Three of the four Uyghurs sentenced to life imprisonment, from left, Mutellip Mamut, Nurahmet Kudret and Islam Urayim. Bottom row: Ilyar Hamut (jailed for 20 years), Musa Muhamad (17 years), Helil Abdugheni (16 years) and Abduqadir Abdugheni (16 years).

More details emerge on the Uyghur asylum seekers deported to China by Cambodia.

2012-01-27
Radio Free Asia

Chinese authorities have sent another two Uyghurs to life imprisonment after Cambodia deported them to China, family members and lawyers said Friday, as more details emerged regarding 21 Uyghur asylum seekers who were forcibly sent home.

News of the sentence came a day after it was reported that two Uyghurs from the same group had been ordered to spend the rest of their life in prison in punishments meted out in secret and described as severe by rights groups.

The four and 12 others, who were ordered jail up to 20 months, faced charges of splittism, terrorism and illegal travel.

The Uyghurs from China’s volatile Xinjiang region had fled to Cambodia more than two years ago and sought asylum in the Southeast Asian state following ethnic riots involving the minority Uyghurs and majority Han Chinese in the region's capital Urumqi in July 2009.

Exile group presses China on Uighur deportees

Friday, January 27, 2012
AFP

...the UN special rapporteur on torture called the expulsion from Cambodia of the Uighurs "a blatant violation" of anti-torture rules...

BEIJING — An exile group has urged Beijing to explain the fate of 20 ethnic Uighurs who escaped to Cambodia but were deported back to China, amid reports some were sentenced to death or life in jail.

The deportees, members of the mainly Muslim minority Uighur group who have long complained of oppression in Xinjiang, fled China after ethnic rioting in the remote, northwestern region in 2009.

They applied for UN refugee status in Cambodia, but were forcibly repatriated back to China in December 2009, in a move that triggered strong international condemnation.

Cambodia's decision to deport the Uighurs was quickly followed by a 1.2-billion-dollar aid and loan package from Beijing. China has rejected accusations of a link between the two.

Two Uighurs deported from Cambodia to China get life

Fri Jan 27, 2012

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has jailed two Muslim Uighurs deported from Cambodia for life, Radio Free Asia reported on Friday, showing no sign of loosening its grip on far-western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region which holds rich deposits of oil and gas.

The sentences -- and deadly clashes this week between police in Sichuan and ethnic Tibetans -- come at a sensitive time for China for whom ensuring stability ahead of a leadership transition later this year is a top priority.

They also precede a visit to the United States by Vice President Xi Jinping, who is seen as China's leader-in-waiting and who could come under criticism for the government's handling of the unrest.

Cambodia, the recipient of increasingly large amounts of Chinese investment and trade, was sharply rebuked by human rights groups for deporting the asylum seekers.

Two days after Cambodia deported the Muslim Uighurs in December 2009, Chinese Vice President Xi visited Phnom Penh and signed 14 trade deals worth $850 million.

Deadly unrest spreads in Tibetan areas of China

Map of China locating protests reported this week in Sichuan's Tibetan-inhabited areas.

Photo shows police with arrested monks in a Tibetan area of China's Sichuan province

Wednesday, January 25, 2012
By Marianne Barriaux | AFP News

Police in China shot dead more protesters in Tibetan-inhabited areas as unrest spread, official media and an advocacy group said Wednesday, amid signs of a physical and virtual lockdown on the region.

China's Sichuan province, which has big populations of ethnic Tibetans, many of whom complain of severe repression, has been rocked by violent clashes this week -- some of the worst since huge protests against Chinese rule in 2008.

The United States on Tuesday said it was "seriously concerned" by the situation, calling on Chinese security forces to "exercise restraint" and urging authorities to allow journalists and diplomats into flashpoint areas.

Deadly Confrontation Spreads in Tibetan Region of China

January 24, 2012
By KEITH BRADSHER and RICK GLADSTONE
The New York Times

HONG KONG — Deadly showdowns between Chinese security forces and Tibetans in a restive region of western China spread to a second town on Tuesday, outside advocacy groups reported. At least two and perhaps as many as five Tibetans were killed by gunfire and many more wounded, the groups said, in what appeared to be the most violent outbreak in the region in nearly four years.

The new confrontation, in the town of Seda, known in Tibetan as Serthar, was reported by Free Tibet, a London-based organization that advocates Tibetan autonomy, and by Phayul.com, a Tibetan exile web portal. Their accounts said that Chinese security forces opened fire on a crowd of Tibetan protesters in Serthar. Free Tibet said it had confirmed two deaths and an unspecified number with “serious wounds,” and said the town was under curfew.

“This is the second consecutive day that Chinese forces have opened fire and killed unarmed Tibetan protesters,” said Stephanie Brigden, director of Free Tibet.

Missing China dissident 'held in Xinjiang'

Gao Zhisheng was arrested in February 2009 and has been held incommunicado by the authorities (AFP/File, Antony Dickson)

Sunday, January 01, 2012
AFP

SHANGHAI — Prominent Chinese dissident Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who first disappeared into police custody nearly two years ago, has been imprisoned in the far western region of Xinjiang, his brother said on Sunday.

The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have called on Beijing to release Gao, who has defended some of China's most vulnerable people including Christians and coal miners.

He was arrested in February 2009 and has been held largely incommunicado by authorities except for a brief release in March 2010.

China to face more Wukan-style protests: official [-Hun Xen will face the problems also!!!]

The residents of Wukan ended their stand-off with authorities in Guangdong last week (AFP/File, Mark Ralston)

Tuesday, December 27, 2011
AFP

BEIJING — A top Chinese official who helped defuse a rare revolt by villagers has said the country should be prepared for further protests as people grow more assertive in demanding their rights.

Zhu Mingguo compared the situation in the southern Chinese village of Wukan, where residents angered by years of illegal land grabs drove out their Communist leaders, to an apple that appears healthy but is "rotten to the core".

"In this area, there were a lot of problems that were not found out in time, and once violence erupted, the aftermath was serious," the state-run Guangzhou Daily quoted Zhu as telling a meeting on social stability.

"It is like an apple rotten to the core, on the outside the skin is red, but once broke open the mess can't be cleaned up."

Two years later, Uyghur deportees’ status a mystery

Thursday, 22 December 2011
Bridget Di Certo
The Phnom Penh Post

TWO years after Cambodia sent 20 Uyghurs seeking refugee status back to China against their will, grave concerns about their whereabouts remain, rights groups said this week.

On December 19, 2009, the asylum-seeking Uyghurs, which included a woman and two children, were deported without any investigation into their refugee status. Chinese authorities have still not disclosed their whereabouts or legal statuses, according to the World Uyghur Forum.

“The past 10 years have proven that Uyghurs fleeing suppression and discrimination in East Turkestan are at extreme risk of being deported back to China, where they face enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, torture and execution,” the Forum said in an anniversary statement.

China villagers in revolt demand dead man's body

In this photo taken on Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011, villagers hold placards chanting slogans as they march around their village during a protest in Wukan village, in China's Guangdong province. A man from a southern Chinese fishing village whose death in police custody helped spark a rare revolt was given a hero's farewell Friday as thousands of tearful residents mourned what they called his sacrifice for them. (AP Photo)

December 17, 2011
By Gillian Wong
Associated Press

BEIJING—Thousands of residents of a southern Chinese village staging a rare revolt are calling on authorities to return the body of a local representative whose death in police custody helped sparked the rebellion.

The villagers, who have driven local authorities from the area, gathered at a square outside a local temple Saturday to shout slogans calling for the return of farmland they say has been sold to developers without their consent and to urge the central government to intervene, said resident Qin Zhuan, a woman contacted by phone.

"We have been wronged," the villagers chanted, according to Qin. "Long live the central government! Strike down corrupt officials."

Mayor vows crackdown on China village protesters

Residents of Wukan, a fishing village in the southern province of Guangdong, rally to demand the government take action over illegal land grabs and the death in custody of a local leader on December

December 16, 2011

"We must have no fear and we must stand up for our rights. I am not afraid."

WUKAN, China (AFP) - Authorities in southern China have vowed to crack down on the instigators of a rare revolt against local Communist leaders by villagers who say corrupt officials stole their land.

Wukan, a village in the wealthy southern province of Guangdong with about 13,000 inhabitants, has been under police blockade for more than a week after local leaders fled under pressure from furious residents.

Anger at authorities boiled over on Sunday when Xue Jinbo, a villager held on charges of instigating September riots that saw a police station attacked, died in police custody. Villagers say they believe he was beaten to death.

Wukan has been the scene of repeated and at times violent protests over land seizures, a hugely contentious issue in China, where authorities are accused of colluding with developers in lucrative real estate deals.

Thousands rally in China land grab village

Wukan has been the scene of repeated protests in recent months (AFP, Peter Parks)

Thursday, December 15, 2011
AFP

WUKAN, China — Thousands of residents of a Chinese village under police blockade rallied on Thursday to demand the government take action over illegal land grabs and the death in custody of a local leader.

The people of Wukan -- a fishing village in the wealthy southern province of Guangdong with about 13,000 inhabitants -- accuse corrupt local officials of stealing communal land without compensating them.

Wukan has been the scene of repeated and at times violent protests over land seizures, a hugely contentious issue in China, where authorities are accused of colluding with developers in lucrative real estate deals.

Village Revolts Over Inequities of Chinese Life [-Revolution against the commie officials? A warning to Hun Xen and his commie CPP]

Residents protested against local authorities in Wukan on Wednesday. (Agence France-Presse — Getty Images)

In September, a villager said the police bruised her at a rally. (Reuters)

December 14, 2011
By ANDREW JACOBS
The New York Times

BEIJING — A long-running dispute between farmers and local officials in southern China exploded into open rebellion this week after villagers chased away government leaders, set up roadblocks and began arming themselves with homemade weapons, residents said.

The conflict in Wukan, a coastal settlement of 20,000 people near the country’s industrial heartland in Guangdong Province, escalated Monday after residents learned that one of the representatives they had selected to negotiate with the local Communist Party had died in police custody. The authorities say a heart attack killed the 42-year-old man, but relatives say his body bore signs of torture.

Residents set up blockades to keep out the police and prevent more arrests. Some residents said armed riot police officers were blocking shipments of food and water into the village in an attempt to suppress the uprising.