China is blocking mention of Inner Mongolia on Chinese microblogs and social networking sites, as part of an effort to clamp down on protests that broke out last week in the region.
Two of the most popular microblog services operating in China no longer allow users to search for the term “Inner Mongolia.” Sina’s and Tencent’s microblogs have 140 million and 160 million users, respectively.

Social networking site Renren, nicknamed “Facebook of China”, is also preventing users from posting about “Inner Mongolia.” Renren users who have registered China’s Inner Mongolia region as their hometown also reported that their friends cannot fully view their user pages.

The censorship comes after protests erupted in the region when an ethnic Mongolian shepherd was run over by an ethnic Han truck driver, according to human rights groups. Ethnic Mongolians in the region have taken to the streets, prompting authorities to declare martial law in some of the cities.    [FULL  STORY]

Hong Kong, May 29 (CNA) More than 1,000 people took to the streets Sunday demanding the rehabilitation of the June 4 pro-democracy movement that was brutally crushed 22 years ago in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China, organizer of the march, said about 2,000 people joined the activity as the 22nd anniversary of the 1989 massacre approached. But police estimated the number at around 1,000.

The demonstrators gathered at the Victoria Park, in front of a Goddess of Liberty statue, holding a banner that read “Attempts at rehabilitating the June 4 Revolution are not yet successful and more efforts are required to build a democracy in China.”    [FULL  STORY]

Apparently there’s a new type of chain gang — a virtual one. According to The Guardian, Chinese prisoners are forced to play hours upon hours of “World of Warcraft,” farming virtual gold that the prison guards can then sell in the real world for nonvirtual cash.

Liu Dali, a former prisoner at the Jixi labor camp in northeast China, told the Guardian that he spent his days breaking rocks and digging trenches and his nights playing video games. That might sound like a decent gig to hardcore gamers who spend hours playing “World of Warcraft” and other massive multiplayer online role playing games, but it wasn’t such a pleasant experience for Dali, whose name was changed to protect his identity.

The prisoners are allegedly being forced to “gold farm” by guards.

According to Dali, 300 prisoners participated in the virtual chain gang, playing 12-hour shifts: “The computers were never turned off.” Prison guards were reportedly able to sell the virtual currency for up to 6,000 yuan a day, which is about $930 — not a bad sum.    [FULL  STORY]

A two-week old report from a Hong Kong-based watchdog group may give us more insight into the explosion that killed three people at a Foxconn assembly plant in China on Friday.

The Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM) released a 20-page report (PDF) on May 6 on working conditions in Foxconn facilities across China, including the Chengdu facility where Friday’s incident occurred. Apple is also indicted in the report, since its products are assembled in Foxconn plants.

The report alleged workers at the Chengdu facility are forced to work excessive overtime and face “alarming” occupational health and safety issues, including large amounts of airborne dust in some areas:

“Workers in the polishing department also complain that the department is full of aluminum dust. Even though they have worn gloves, their hands are still covered by dust and so (is) their face and clothes. Some workers comment that ventilation on shop floor should be improved.”

The conditions described in the report can give insight into what caused the blast in the iPad 2 assembly plant on Friday.    [FULL  STORY]

Chinese dissident Liu Xianbin was paraded into court on Friday and after two hours sentenced to ten years in prison. Liu had been convicted with the vague but perilous charge of “inciting subversion of state power,” through essays he had written advocating democracy.

The judge in the Suining court in Sichuan Province repeatedly interrupted Liu as he attempted to make a statement, his wife told various Western media outlets in China. But he managed to cry out “I’m not guilty.”

Observers see the harsh sentence as part of an overall attempt, ramped up in recent years, to extinguish the growing cohort of human rights lawyers, democracy activists, and other voices calling for civil society in China.    [FULL  STORY]

Epoch Times
By Matthew Robertson

The friends and family of Chinese college student Zhao Wei do not know exactly what happened to him between 3am and 7:20am on Jan. 23 this year, but they believe authorities murdered him. So too do Chinese netizens; a Hong Kong media research group says it’s “very possible.”

His friend last saw him alive at 3am. At 8am Zhao’s parents got a call from police telling them that their son was dead.

Zhao Wei's corpse in the morgue in funerary vestments. A coin is in his mouth with a red string protruding, part of Chinese funerary traditions. The images, taken by the parents and distributed online, have triggered enormous indignation with the authorities. (Courtesy of victim's family)

The case has begun attracting attention on the Chinese Internet, and authorities have been fast in clamping down on the news’ spread.

Similar cases of mysterious deaths of young people—often later discovered to have been murders by the authorities—have in the past resulted in mass riots.

Zhao was a fourth-year student at the Hebei University of Technology, on his way home to Inner Mongolia for the Chinese New Year.    [FULL  STORY]

The ever-growing storm of demonstrations against authoritarian rulers in the Middle East and North Africa has made the Chinese regime extremely jittery. Recently, foreign journalists were assaulted and detained. Prominent Chinese human rights lawyers and activists have also been arrested or harassed by Chinese police.

Chinese police surround a group of foreign journalists as security is ramped up, with at least 300 hundred uniformed police guarding the entrance to the Jasmine rally site, designated in an online appeal, in the Wangfujing shopping street in central Beijing on Feb 27. (AFP/Getty Images)

Hundreds of uniformed and plainclothes policemen in Beijing and Shanghai patrolled likely protest sites on Feb. 27, the second Sunday of high alert, following calls on the Internet for China’s own “Jasmine Protests.”

Foreign journalists were followed, and those with cameras were blocked from entering the Wangfujing area–Beijing’s main shopping street–located a short walk from the heavily policed Tiananmen Square.    [FULL  STORY]

An ethnic Uighur website manager who was sentenced to seven years in jail in China after a secret trial is the latest in a series of Uighur writers imprisoned for peaceful expression of cultural or political views, Amnesty International said today.

Tursunjan Hezim, a 38-year-old former history teacher, was reportedly detained shortly after the 5 July, 2009 protests in Urumqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), which turned violent after police cracked down on initially peaceful protesters.

His family was never informed of the charges against him and his whereabouts remain unknown. The government has not publicly stated the grounds for his detention.

“This trial is typical of the way the Chinese government has worked in secrecy to persecute Uighurs in China for peaceful expression of their views,” said Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific deputy director.    [FULL  STORY]

The Chinese authorities have shot themselves in the foot with their heavy-handed response to calls for a Chinese “Jasmine Revolution,” according to the revolutionaries themselves.

In an e-mail interview in English with The Epoch Times a male in his late 20s calling himself “Gracchus,” a core member of the group, said that the Western media has failed to understand the impact that calls in China for a Jasmine Revolution are having.

The announcement calling for peaceful strolls at major cities in China every Sunday afternoon, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) paranoid response, has actually helped the revolutionaries’ cause, he says.

For example, an open letter the organizers sent to China’s youth on March 5 resulted in blockades of university campuses by security forces across the country. “This unusual treatment almost certainly antagonizes the young energies and triggers their curiosity to explore the cause,” Gracchus wrote.

Gracchus calls himself and his peers “dedicated and professional revolutionaries for constitutional democracy.” They are small in number and located in China and the United States. Gracchus would not say where he was. “We don’t have a hierarchical structure; everyone is dedicated with high-level group coherency.”

Though only a few have come to the streets for fear of persecution, this does not indicate the total impact.    [FULL  STORY]