At her appeal on 21 July, Chinese activist Mao Hengfeng said that she has been severely beaten at the Anhui Provincial Women’s Re-education Through Labour (RTL) facility over the past three months. She remains at high risk of further torture and other ill-treatment.  HTML version of report —–   Adobe PDF version of report

The Epoch Times
Aug 6, 2010
By Chen Yilian & Wen Hua

Liang Yijing was 22 years old when her father was first imprisoned for petitioning against local government corruption in 2005. After an expensive lawsuit and numerous illegal jailings, Liang decided to take her case to the Internet. Since then, their lives took a turn for the better, when she became among the top 10 Internet celebrities in China. Liang tells The Epoch Times about her transition from an ordinary post-80s generation girl to an anti-corruption Internet blogger.

When she was 14, Liang Yijing dropped out of school to help with her father Liang Maorong’s business in their hometown of Lingbi County in China’s eastern province of Anhui. She opened a restaurant when she was 20 and is currently the owner of a cosmetic shop in Wenzhou City in China’s southeastern province of Zhejiang.

It all started in 1992, when an enterprise founded by the Gaolou Township government in Lingbi County borrowed money a number of times from the Liang family. They borrowed a total of 240,000 yuan (approximately US$35,432), wrote a promissory note, and promised to pay it back with interest. However, after a few years of delay, the town government changed leaders and refused to pay the debt, saying that the enterprise was bankrupt.

Liang Yijing says that the amount of money that they lent was trivial to the lawsuit expenses of over one million yuan (US$147,634) they’ve spent over the past 15 years. So why did they continue with the lawsuit?

“When we asked them to pay the debt, they refused in a vile manner. We weren’t going to give in, so we sued them. As the situation intensified, my father’s business experienced financial losses and my parents divorced. However, all this is unimportant; we just want justice.”    more …

BBC News
30 July 2010

China has jailed three ethnic Uighur website owners as it clamps down on dissent a year after deadly ethnic riots in Xinjiang, say reports.

An exiled activist group, the Uyghur American Association (UAA), said the three men were sentenced to 10, five and three years respectively.

Officials have not confirmed the charges or the sentences.

In last year’s violence between Uighurs and Han Chinese, the authorities say nearly 200 people were killed.

The three men who were reportedly jaioled had founded or managed Uighur-language websites.

They were identified as Dilshat Perhat, webmaster of Diyarim; Nureli, webmaster of Salkin; and Nijat Azat, webmaster of Shabnam.

The websites, among the most popular in the Uighur language, were blocked by the Chinese authorities last year.    more …

NTDTV

The US Ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, says he’s disappointed by the eight-year sentence handed down to a U.S. geologist.

Xue Feng was convicted of attempting to obtain and traffic state secrets, a year after his trial ended.

A naturalized US citizen born in China, Xue was arrested in November 2007 after negotiating the sale of an oil industry database to his employer at the time, a Colorado-based consultancy, IHS Energy—now called IHS Inc.

According to rights group Dui Hua Foundation, the database was classified as a state secret only after it was sold. And the President of the Emerging Asia Consultancy, Adil Husain says this means Xue was tried retroactively.

“The geologist was, it appears, essentially performing his job duties and collecting information about the Chinese oil sector. And at the time that information was collected and sold to his employers. This was not considered a secret or a state secret or something that was illegal. So this was retroactively applied to the situation and the charge is, that he was tried on, was actually retroactively applied.”    more …

Epoch Times
Jul 27, 2010
By Lin Yi & Guan Shiming

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Related articles: China > Society
Engaging the press at a Hong Kong book fair, Han Han said he is inclined to turn down praise for “the higher one is extolled, the worse he is hit when he is let down.” (Pan Zaizhu/The Epoch Times)
HONG KONG—One of China’s most influential writers, Han Han, attended a press conference at a book exhibit and outreach program in Hong Kong on July 22. Nearly a thousand fans gathered to catch a glimpse of the popular cultural icon.

“Triple Doors,” Han’s debut novel, published around the same time he gave up trying to enter college, exposed issues in China’s educational system. Particularly admired by China’s “post 80’s generation,” the 27 year old had his first book published when in junior high school.

Ranked the second in the Time magazine’s 2010 list of the 100 most influential people, Han is also China’s most popular blogger and a professional race car driver.

In his speech, Han brought up the topic of literary censorship in China. “It’s not that the government authorities [directly] censor [literary works],” he said. “Those organizations will not necessarily censor [your work] — they just leave it to the publishers and harm people through the hands of others.”    more …

Pollution and land expropriation inspire villagers to demonstrate; three deaths reported

Epoch Times
By Chen Yilian
Jul 16, 2010

Villagers are seen on their way to petition the local officials. (Provided by Chinese blogger)
A local aluminum company used violence to try to suppress a protest inspired by road construction that had damaged a nearby village, pollution, and local officials’ efforts to take away the villagers’ land and give it to the company. Violence was met by violence, and three individuals employed by the company are reported to have died.

Villagers are seen on their way to petition the local officials. (Provided by Chinese blogger)

Villagers in Jingxi County of Guangxi Province in southern China initially sought through a large-scale protest on July 11 to halt the construction of a road by Guangxi Xinfah Aluminum, a major local enterprise, and to use the opportunity to complain to members of the aluminum company about its pollution.

Protesters had carried a banner reading, “Give me back my home, give me back my river.”

According to a local resident, the aluminum company has caused serious damage to the local environment that has left villagers with no drinking water or water for irrigation for a long time.
Xinfah Aluminum reacted to the protest by bringing 300 workers, who used water hoses and wooden sticks to attack the villagers. According to the villagers, several villagers were injured by the workers’ attack.

The villagers fought back by surrounding Xinfah Aluminum and attacking with rocks and homemade bombs.

According to internet postings, three Xinfah Aluminum migrant workers from Shandong Province were dead, a dozen were wounded, and some machines were damaged.    more …

Epoch Times
Jul 7, 2010
By Fang Xiao

The clash that erupted in Xinjiang on July 5 of last year (7-5 incident) is considered by some China’s worst ethnic violence in decades. The Epoch Times talked to residents in Urumqi, Kashi and Aksu over the phone a few days before the one-year anniversary, asking them for their opinion of what caused the violence in 2009.

Policy of Discrimination

People said rancor between Han and Uyghur groups has been growing due to discrimination by authorities against Uyghur citizens. One person stated that the communist regime’s policy for Uyghurs is to eradicate them.    more …

Epoch Times
By Gu Qing’er

A 16-year-old from China’s northern Liaoning Province is being prosecuted for willful assault after being caught in a tussle with a gang acting on behalf of local Communist Party officials; he stabbed one of the aggressors, who later died.

“My boy is still young. He deserves another chance,” the mother of the 16-year-old Zhao Mingyang, told The Epoch Times.

Zhao is a resident of Xiaowa Village, Fushun City, Liaoning Province. He stabbed an “interceptor” to death while on his way to petition in October 2009; his case has recently entered appeal the process. Interceptors are hired by local government officials to prevent residents from appealing to higher levels of government (calling “petitioning”) and violence is a staple in the process.

Over 900 of the 1500 residents of Xiaowa Village have signed a petition to the court for granting leniency to Zhao, who has been deemed a civil hero on Chinese websites.

The farmers of Xiaowa Village make their living by growing rice on 500 acres of land. In a bid to build a new town there, called Shenfu, the Fushun municipal government forced the farmers to relocate in 2009 with compensation of around 700 yuan (US$100) per acre.

Residents of the village reported that Zang Yuquan, the Chinese Communist Party village branch leader, and Liu Fengtong, the village committee director, embezzled a good portion of the total. Zang’s new Mercedes Benz now stands out in the village, since the average annual income per capita is far below that buying power.

Zhao’s father and another farmer, Tong Zhengang, decided to appeal and spread the news to the rest of the village over loudspeaker on October 8, 2009. Retaliation was swift.

“Liu hired more than 20 gangsters and smashed the Zhao and Tong family,” said Wang, a villager interviewed by The Epoch Times who was privy to the events. “Half of them went to Zhao’s house first. Zhao’s mother and Zhao were at home. They threatened Zhao’s mother with a knife not to petition or they’d kill Zhao’s family. The other half jumped over the wall and forced into Tong’s house. They beat up Tong and his wife and smashed his house.”    more …

Epoch Times
Jul 2, 2010
by Gu Qinger & Gu Xiaohua

Chinese villagers, unwilling to have their property forcibly demolished, have seized 22 demolition vehicles as bargaining chips. One man was seriously injured and villagers are demanding resolution.

A villager was run over by a government vehicle during a June 21 confrontation between over 300 unarmed Qiantaobu village residents and a demolition team lead by the local Communist Party chief of Weizi town, Weifang City, Shandong province. Angered by this, local residents smashed the vehicle that caused the accident and drove the government officials out of the village.

In a June 24 interview, villagers said that after the incident the township officials went into the village to try to strike a deal for the return of their vehicles. However, the majority of the villagers did not want to talk about the forced demolition issue because the injured villager was still hospitalized. At present, officials are trying to deny that the government vehicle injured the villager.    more …

BBC News
July 2, 2010

Amnesty International has challenged the official Chinese version of events in Xinjiang a year ago, when nearly 200 people were killed in ethnic clashes.

China blamed the violence in the regional capital Urumqi on the local ethnic Uighur population, saying most of the recorded dead were Han Chinese.

But the human rights group says police used unnecessary force against Uighurs, followed by mass arrests and torture.

The claim comes as thousands of CCTV cameras have been put up across Urumqi.

The cameras, which have a “riot-proof” protective shell, have been set up across the city, including at bus and railway stations, schools and shops.

Last year’s violence, China’s worst in decades, erupted on 5 July and only ended after huge numbers of troops were deployed.
Chinese special police show off their skills during a drill in Beijing (30 June 2010) China’s police have been staging drills to deal with any similar emergencies

Xinjiang, a resource-rich region that borders Central Asia, has more than eight million Uighurs.

Many are unhappy about the large influx of Han Chinese settlers, which they say has increasingly marginalised their interests and culture.

Amnesty International (AI) says it has newly gathered testimonies from Uighurs who fled China after the unrest.

They allege that demonstrators were attacked by the security forces, shot in the back or denied protection.     more …