Authorities in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou are continuing to hold human rights lawyer Yang Maodong, better known as Guo Feixiong, without criminal activists said on 3 October. He was criminally detained on 8 August on charges of “incitement to disturb public order,” after being involved in anti-censorship and anti-corruption protests. “The authorities have made one arrest after the other in recent months, and this is still going on,” said Beijing-based fellow activist and poet Wang Zang, Read the rest of this entry »
Posts Tagged ‘China’
Chinese Human Rights Defenders: “None of us is safe, and any one of us could be next”
October 4, 2013Belarus Ales Byalyatski wins Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize of Council of Europe
September 30, 2013
Imprisoned Belarus human rights defender Ales Byalyatski has been awarded the Vaclav Havel Human Rights Prize of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. Read the rest of this entry »
China Detains Activists trying to reach UN
September 19, 2013While Iran has started to free some of its political prisoners, China does the opposite by detaining two prominent rights activists who were en route to Geneva ahead of a U.N. review of Beijing’s rights record. Beijing-based activist Cao Shunli was stopped at Beijing’s airport on 14 September and questioned by state security police, the overseas-based China Human Rights Defenders [CHRD] said in an emailed statement. On the same day, Guangdong rights activist Chen Jianfang was also intercepted at Guangzhou’s International Airport.The activists, who have been incommunicado since, had been en-route to Geneva to attend a training course at the invitation of a Geneva-based rights group ahead of the U.N. Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review of China on 22 October. Chen, a farmer-turned-petitioner who has been repeatedly detained in illegal “black jails” and who served a 15-month term in labor camp in March 2010, said she was threatened with violence by airport police, who also tore up her plane ticket. Both women had been active in transparency campaigns around the U.N. review process, sending information requests, suing the foreign ministry, and staging demonstrations outside its gates in a bid to be included in China’s submission to the U.N. “In recent weeks, police in several Chinese cities have interrogated other activists and lawyers about the same training program and warned them about serious consequences,” CHRD said.
(Reported by Wei Ling for RFA’s Cantonese Service, and by Xin Yu for the Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Luisetta Mudie).
via RFA’s China Detains Activists Over UN Campaign.
Related articles
- China continues harsh line on dissent but one jailed HRD smuggles out video (thoolen.wordpress.com)
Detention of human rights defender Yang Maodong in China
August 20, 2013On 17 August 2013, it emerged that Guangzhou-based human rights defender Mr Yang Maodong, better known by his pen name Guo Feixiong, had been detained on charges of “assembling a crowd to disrupt order in a public place”. Although in detention since 8 August 2013, Yang Maodong’s family were only notified by the police of his arrest on 17 August [!]. Yang Maodong is a well known figure in China‘s rights defence movement Read the rest of this entry »
China continues harsh line on dissent but one jailed HRD smuggles out video
August 11, 2013Reuters reports that China has arrested an activist on a charge of subversion and the latest sign that the authorities are hardening their stance toward dissent. Yang Lin, 45, Read the rest of this entry »
More known about HRD Du Bin in detention in China thanks to Hu Jia
June 20, 2013
(Du Jirong, sister of human rights activist Du Bin, with sign saying “Du Bin is innocent” outside the Fengtai District Public)
The 41-year-old photographer and filmmaker Du Bin disappeared on May 31, weeks after he had released a documentary on the extreme conditions of Chinese labor camps in May, called Women Above Ghosts’ Heads. His film focused on Masanjia Women’s Labor Camp where many detainees were Read the rest of this entry »
World Environment Day cannot do without Human Rights Defenders
June 6, 2013In the Huffington Post of 6 June 2013 there is an excellent post by Jane Cohen, researcher at Human Rights Watch about the link between the protection of the environment and that of human rights defenders. The whole piece is worth reading but here is the essential message: Read the rest of this entry »
Tiananmen remembrance doesn’t stop in spite of Government’s efforts
June 5, 2013Twenty-four years after the bloodshed of Tiananmen, China’s Communist Party is exercising its traditional response to the unwelcome anniversary: detaining and silencing dissidents and blocking bereaved families who hope to observe the day with mourning from the graveyards; mobilizing extra police officers to ensure that no protests break out around Tiananmen Square; and scrubbing Chinese Internet sites of any references and images that refer to or even hint at the upheavals of 1989.
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
On 4 June the police in China blocked the gate of a cemetery housing victims of the Tiananmen crackdown on its 24th anniversary. More than a dozen security officials deployed outside the stone gate at the Wanan graveyard near the hills of western Beijing, which mothers of the victims visit each year, and told AFP journalists to leave the area. Read the rest of this entry »
China responds regarding the return of refugees to North Korea
June 3, 2013With regard to the defectors sent back from Laos via China to North Korea – on which I reported a few days ago – it is interesting to note the reaction by China which has expressed anger at the criticism by two UN High Commissioners (for human rights and refugee): “We hope that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN does not make irresponsible remarks based on unspecified news,” foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei, but also appeared to distance itself from the repatriation by saying the refugees had passed through the country with “valid documents and visas”. “In the whole process, China has not received a request by any party to assist in the repatriation of these persons“.
via China rebukes UN agency over North Korean refugees – Yahoo!7.
Forced return to North Korea: Laos and China seem not to know the concept of non-refoulement
June 2, 2013Nine North-Korean defectors, aged 15 to 23, entered Laos through China on 9 May 2013 and were caught by Laotian authorities on 16 May. They were sent back home on Tuesday 28 May via China. [Under North Korean law, defectors face a minimum of five years of hard labour and as much as life in prison or the death penalty in cases deemed particularly serious] UN Human Rights Commissioner, Navi Pillay, urged Chinese and Laotian authorities to publicly clarify the fate of the nine defectors and the conditions of their return, which apparently violated international law, UN deputy spokesperson
said. “The High Commissioner’s office is dismayed that the governments of Laos and China appear to have abrogated their non-refoulement obligations, especially given the vulnerability of that group, all of whom are reported to be orphans” The UN High Commissioner for Refugees said on Thursday in a statement that it is trying to locate the defectors and expressed concern that they did not receive a chance to have their asylum claims assessed.
Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards 