China arrests 5,000 for internet pornography offences

China arrested more than 5,000 people in 2009 in a drive to purge the internet of pornography and other “harmful information”.

China maintains strict censorship of the internet in order to make sure that unhealthy content, including criticism of the Communist Party, does not reach a wide audience.

Telegraph | Jan 1, 2010

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai

The ministry of public security said 5,394 people had been arrested and that over 9,000 websites had been deleted for having pornographic content. The ministry did not say how many people had subsequently been put on trial.

The authorities released the figures with a warning that its policing of the internet would intensify in 2010 in order to preserve “state security”.

China maintains strict censorship of the internet in order to make sure that unhealthy content, including criticism of the Communist Party, does not reach a wide audience.

Websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are all blocked and Google has received a public warning for not censoring itself more thoroughly.

With over 350 million internet users, the government worries that any small cracks in its authority could quickly spiral out of control. In the first six months of 2009, an average of 221,000 Chinese a day started using the internet for the first time, or 153 new users a minute.

The authorities are also hoping to tackle the growing number of Chinese hackers and fraudsters who use the internet to spread viruses and steal personal information.

The government has tightened regulations for websites, forcing owners to prove their identity before being allowed to register a name.

The ministry said it would “strengthen punishment for internet operators that violate the laws and regulations” in the coming year and “severely punish operations that have serious problems with harmful information”.

“Purifying the internet environment and cracking down on internet crimes is related to long-term state security,” the ministry said.

In December, the government offered a reward of up to 10,000 yuan (£906) to people who reported websites that feature pornography.

The government attempted last year to coerce computer manufacturers into only selling computers which had a censorship program called Green Dam Youth Escort already installed. The move was eventually defeated.

Photo: Bobby Yip/Reuters

Book Review:

WHEN CHINA RULES THE WORLD: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order By Martin Jacques

NY Times | Dec 31, 2009

Waking Dragon

By JOSEPH KAHN

Historians may someday debate whether the financial crisis that began a year ago is most notable for how much damage it did to the United States, or how little it inflicted on the world’s major rising power, China. Helped by huge state intervention and buoyant optimism almost surreally undiminished by the crisis of confidence across the Pacific, China has had a very good downturn. It is closing the gap with the world’s most developed economies faster than anticipated and could overtake Japan as the world’s second-largest economy when the final figures for last year are tallied.

China’s already rapid emergence is changing many things, from diplomatic alliances in Africa to the status of the dollar as the world’s favorite currency. It may also open minds to a provocative thesis that, until a short time ago, might have been dismissed as breathless hyperbole.

Related

New order: A stimulating yet ultimately flawed portrait of a China-dominated world

In “When China Rules the World,” Martin Jacques, a columnist for The Guardian of London and a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics, argues that China will not just displace the United States as the major superpower. It will also marginalize the West in history and upend our core notions of what it means to be modern.

This bold assertion, he acknowledges, rests on the assumption that nothing will derail the political stability and economic dynamism China enjoys today. It is not clear that even the most senior leaders in Beijing share Jacques’s faith in that forecast. But the future is unknowable, and his extrapolations are, if not provable, at least plausible. The strength of his book lies in his exhaustive, incisive exploration of possibilities that many people have barely begun to contemplate about a future dominated by China.

Much of the journalism and many of the best-selling books on China treat the country’s rise as an economic phenomenon. It is presented as a developing country, albeit the biggest one, that has opened its doors to the West, allowed a Western-style market economy to flourish and exported goods to wealthy consumers abroad. Those things are true. But Jacques argues that the focus on the economic side of the story has lulled the West into a false sense of security. “The mainstream Western attitude has held that, in its fundamentals, the world will be relatively little changed by China’s rise,” he writes. Rather, he says, “the rise of China will change the world in the most profound ways.”

Unlike Britain, the United States or Germany at various times during the past 200 years, China is not emerging on the world stage as a new, powerful nation-state. It is, instead, as one Chinese writer put it, regaining “lost international status,” becoming the first ancient civilization to re-emerge and reclaim its position as a dominant power.

China was the wealthiest, most unified and most technologically advanced civilization until well into the 18th century, Jacques points out. It lost that position some 200 years ago as the industrial revolution got under way in Europe. Scholars once viewed China as having crippling social, cultural and political defects that underscored the superiority of the West. But given the speed and strength of China’s recent growth, those defects have begun to look more like anomalies. It is the West’s run of dominance, not China’s period of malaise, that could end up being the fluke, Jacques writes.

Skyscrapers and stock markets in China look like those in the West, of course. But Jacques argues that the country’s cultural core resembles ancient China far more than it does modern Europe or the United States. It is accumulating wealth much faster than it is absorbing foreign ideas. The result, he says, is that China is nearly certain to become a major power in its own mold, not the “status quo” power accepting of Western norms and institutions that many policy makers in Washington hope and expect it will be.

Joseph Kahn is a former Beijing bureau chief and now a deputy foreign editor of The Times.

Full Story

Protesters hold a picture of dissident Liu Xiaobo during a demonstration at China’s Liaison Office in Hong Kong on Friday. MSNBC

Chinese dissident gets 11 years for subversion

Western nations, rights groups decry sentence over call for political change

MSNBC | Dec 25, 2009

BEIJING – A Chinese court sentenced a prominent dissident to 11 years on Friday — the longest term ever handed down for subversion charges, according to rights groups that say it signals the government will take an increasingly hard line against activists in the year ahead.

The sentencing of Liu Xiaobo, after he called for sweeping political changes and an end to Communist Party dominance, also drew diplomatic criticism, with the United States saying it went against international norms.

Liu was the co-author of an unusually direct appeal for political liberalization in China called Charter 08. He was detained just before it was released last December. More than 300 people, including some of China’s top intellectuals, signed it.

The verdict was issued at the No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court in Beijing after a two-hour trial Wednesday in which prosecutors accused Liu of “serious” crimes.

The vaguely worded charge of inciting to subvert state power is routinely used to jail dissidents. Liu could have been sentenced to up to 15 years in prison under the charge.

A San Francisco-based human rights group, the Dui Hua Foundation, said it was the longest sentence that it knew of since the crime of inciting subversion was established in 1997.

The state-run Xinhua news agency only reported the news in English — a sign the government does not want its people to know about Liu’s case. Instead, the top Xinhua headline in Chinese declared 2009 a year of “citizens’ rights.”

U.S., European Union urge release
The United States and European Union have repeatedly urged Beijing to free Liu.

“We are deeply concerned by the sentence of 11 years in prison announced today,” Gregory May, first secretary with the U.S. Embassy, told reporters outside the courthouse. May was one of a dozen diplomats stopped by authorities from attending the trial and sentencing.

“Persecution of individuals for the peaceful expression of political views is inconsistent with internationally recognized norms of human rights,” May said.

The German government said Chancellor Angela Merkel was “dismayed” by Liu’s sentence.

“I regret it that the Chinese government, despite great progress in other areas, still massively restricts freedom of opinion and of the press,” Merkel said in a brief statement released by her office.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told reporters this week that statements from embassies calling for Liu’s release were “a gross interference of China’s internal affairs.”

“Explicit warning”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said Friday the sentence was a setback for Chinese activists.

“Cases such as that of Liu Xiaobo risk not just halting, but seriously reversing that momentum” toward increasing democratic freedoms in China, she said.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the ruling showed the government would be taking a hard line against human rights activists in the year ahead.

“This verdict is also an explicit warning from the government to China’s intellectuals, civil society activists and human rights defenders that the state will severely punish those who the government perceives as a threat to its monopoly on power,” said the group’s Asia researcher, Phelim Kine.

Another rights group, Chinese Human Rights Defenders, said the ruling shows the government is bent on thwarting any reform and is using the courts to silence its critics.

“Giving such a long sentence to one of China’s most prominent dissident intellectuals is a clear sign that the Chinese government is further hardening its stance against political dissent,” said Renee Xia, the group’s international director.

Wife says Liu plans appeal
The defendant’s wife, Liu Xia, told The Associated Press that her husband planned to appeal. “Our lawyers are going to talk to the authorities next week about the appeal,” Liu Xia said. She said her husband looked calm and asked about family and friends during a brief meeting after the sentencing.

Liu is the only person to have been arrested for organizing the Charter 08 appeal, but others who signed it have reported being harassed.

Abolishing the law on inciting to subvert state power is among the reforms advocated in Charter 08. “We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes,” the petition says.

Liu, a former Beijing Normal University professor, spent 20 months in jail for joining the 1989 student-led protests in Tiananmen Square, which ended when the government called in the military — killing hundreds, perhaps thousands.

Charter 08 demands a new constitution guaranteeing human rights, the open election of public officials, and freedom of religion and expression. Some 10,000 people have signed it in the past year, though a news blackout and Internet censorship have left most Chinese unaware that it exists.

Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, left, accompanied by Cuba’s President Raul Castro, gestures upon his arrival to Havana, Friday, Dec. 11, 2009. Chavez is on a three-day official visit to Cuba. (AP Photo/Prensa Latina, Ismael Francisco)

Associated Press | Dec 12, 2009

by Andrea Rodriguez

HAVANA – Members of a leftist bloc of nine Latin American nations said Saturday they plan to use a new currency dubbed the “sucre” for trade among themselves starting in January.

No sucres will be printed or coined, but the virtual currency will be used to manage debts between governments while reducing reliance on the U.S. dollar and on Washington in general.

Cuba already signed an agreement on Saturday to pay for a shipment of Venezuelan rice in sucres, according to Rogelio Sierra, the island’s deputy foreign minister. He declined to say what the shipment was worth.

That agreement was made even as ever cash-strapped Cuba has fallen behind on its debt to nations and multinational corporations amid the global recession.

The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade group is holding a two-day summit starting Sunday in the Cuban capital.

The group was formed by Venezuela’s self-described socialist president, Hugo Chavez, as an alternative to U.S.-backed free-trade consortiums. Member nations are Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Honduras, Ecuador, Bolivia, Antigua and Barbuda, San Vincent and the Grenadines, and Dominica.

Honduras remains part of the bloc despite a June coup that toppled leftist President Manuel Zelaya. Zelaya’s deposed foreign minister is attending the summit, but the acting government in Honduras will almost certainly not abide by any agreements made.

Chavez was greeted Friday as he arrived in Cuba by President Raul Castro. Cuba and Venezuela signed “agreements of cooperation” on 285 bilateral projects in 2010 totaling nearly US$3.2 billion, according to Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez. He provided no details on what those agreements entail, however.

On Saturday, Raul Castro said the cooperation between the countries will allow them to “alleviate the negative impact of the current world economic crisis.”

Leftist presidents Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and Evo Morales of Bolivia are expected to attend the summit.

Fresh from defending Carlos the Jackal, Hugo Chavez managed to upset Ugandans on Sunday by claiming that Idi Amin was not as brutal as everyone made him out to be.

Telegraph | Nov 26, 2009

“We thought he was a cannibal,” the Venezuelan leader said, referring to Amin, whose regime was notorious for torturing and killing suspected opponents in the 1970s. “I have doubts. … I don’t know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot.”

Mary Karoro Okurut, spokeswoman for the ruling National Resistance Movement, said Amin was not worthy of such consideration.

“Anybody who says that Amin was good has something wrong with him,” she said on Sunday. “Amin was brutal. He killed many Ugandans and made many run into exile. There is something wrong with whoever praises Amin.”

There is no exact figure for the number of people killed during Amin’s 1971-1979 regime but estimates range up to 500,000 people.

Ugandan officials did not say whether they would take any formal diplomatic action. Venezuela has no embassy in Uganda.

On Saturday Mr Chavez described Carlos the Jackal, real name Ilich Sanchez Ramirez, who is serving a life sentence in France, as a “revolutionary fighter”.

A magazine run by the Chinese government has revealed the existence of a network of secret detention centres or “black jails” in Beijing where inmates are often beaten or tortured.

The Liaowang report said that the number of people employed by local governments to abduct citizens can reach over 10,000

The victims of the jails are usually ordinary Chinese who have travelled to Beijing to lodge a complaint, or petition.

Telegraph | Nov 26, 2009

By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai

Until now, the Communist Party has strenuously denied running black jails, despite a growing number of testimonies and evidence from former inmates.

However, a report in Liaowang (Outlook), a magazine which is written for elite government officials and published by the official Xinhua news agency, laid the system bare.

The victims of the jails are usually ordinary Chinese who have travelled to Beijing to lodge a complaint, or petition, with the central government that their local officials have ignored.

Every day, hundreds of petitioners arrive in Beijing from across China, only to be hunted down by plain-clothes policemen or even private security firms sent by their home province to “retrieve” them.

Since local governments are judged on the number of grievances that arrive in Beijing, officials are often determined not to let the petitioners file their claims. The Liaowang report said that the number of people employed by local governments to abduct citizens “can reach over 10,000″.

“In Beijing, a monstruous business network has emerged to feed, house, transport, man-hunt, detain and retrieve petitioners,” said the magazine. It added that there are at least 73 black jails in the capital, often in unused homes or psychiatric wards. Private security firms demand fees of 100 yuan (Pounds9) to 200 yuan per person they abduct.

Liaowang said the system “seriously damaged the government’s image”.

Inside the black jails, all mobile phones and identification cards are confiscated, and many inmates are beaten, sexually-abused, intimidated and robbed, according to Human Rights Watch, which interviewed 38 former detainees for a report which it published just two weeks ago.

At the time, the Foreign ministry angrily rejected the accusations from the NGO. “There are no black jails in China,” said Qin Gang, a spokesman.

In the report, one 46-year-old former detainee from Jiangsu province, who spent more than a month in a black jail, said: “They are inhuman…two people dragged me by the hair and put me into the car.

My two hands were tied up and I couldn’t move. Then [after arriving back in Jiangsu] they put me inside a room where there were two women who stripped me of my clothes [and] beat my head [and] used their feet to stomp my body.” At the beginning of November, a guard at a black jail pleaded guilty to raping a 20-year-old woman from Anhui province in front of a dozen witnesses. However, the court dismissed the charges against the “guesthouse” and two provincial liaison officials, according to the official China Daily newspaper.

For some activists, the state-sanctioned articles in Liaowang signalled a possible willingness by the Communist party to confront the problem.

“They have categorically denied there are even black jails. This is the first time an official, high-level magazine acknowledges that they exist. This is fairly significant,” said Wang Songlian at Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

In this photo released by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, Kaing Guek Eav, the former chief of the Khmer Rouge’s notorious S-21 prison, now known as Tuol Sleng genocide museum, is seen in the courtroom of the U.N.-backed tribunal, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009. Also known as Duch, Kaing Guek Eav is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture, and is the first of five defendants scheduled for long-delayed trials by the tribunal. AP

As Genocide Trial Winds Down, Prosecution Accuses Prison Chief of Downplaying his Role in “Awful Reality”

AP | Nov 23, 2009

The genocide trial of a prison chief for Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge entered its final stage Monday, as closing arguments began in the historic effort to assign responsibility for the deaths of 1.7 million people three decades ago.

The defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, commanded S-21 prison which punished those accused of disloyalty to the xenophobic communist group. He oversaw the torture and execution of about 16,000 men, women and children during its 1975-79 rule.

If the U.N.-assisted tribunal rules him guilty, the former schoolteacher faces a maximum penalty of life in prison, as Cambodia has no death penalty.

One of the lawyers for the victims evoked the specter of the Nazi death camps of World War II in recalling the Khmer Rouge’s atrocities.

Pierre-Olivier Sur said the parents and grandparents of people of his generation had repeatedly said that “the death camps were over and would never happen again.”

“The death camps and the mass graves have survived,” he declared, referring to Khmer Rouge prisons and the infamous “killing fields,” where they dumped their victims. He called for the tribunal to not let crimes against humanity go unpunished.

As much as one-sixth of Cambodia’s population perished from execution, overwork, disease and malnutrition as a result of the Khmer Rouge’s radical policies — including the mass evacuation of towns and cities, and the ruthless persecution of alleged rivals.

With some of the handful of S-21 survivors and family members of the dead looking on, another of the victims’ lawyers charged that Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch (pronounced DOIK), pursued his role with zeal and had no empathy for his victims despite his expressions of remorse.

“Look at them, Duch. Look at these men and women who you wanted to smash, and whose parents and loved ones and children you smashed,” said lawyer Philippe Canonne.

“You can smash insects and animals but you can’t smash human beings, because one day they will come back, one way or another, or their successors to demand a reckoning,” he said.

As he watched the proceedings, Duch showed no emotion. He is expected to give his final statement as early as Wednesday, a day after the prosecution begins its summation. He is charged with crimes against humanity, war crimes, murder and torture.

The closing arguments will conclude Friday, while a verdict and sentence are expected early next year. Under an innovative arrangement, the victims — known as the ‘civil parties’ — were represented at the trial, and their lawyers made Monday’s presentations.

In his testimony, Duch has accepted responsibility for his role in overseeing the prison and asked for forgiveness from victims’ families. He also told the court that he was ready to accept heavy punishment for his actions.

Despite that, said lawyer Karim Khan, the impression he gave at the trial is of a man trying to downplay his part in the activities at S-21 prison, which is in Phnom Penh and is now a genocide museum.

“The accused has sought to evade or minimize his role and the reality, the awful reality, that was S-21 and the regime that operated there and the fate and the suffering that befell so many civil parties,” Khan said.

Another lawyer for victims, Kong Pisey, dismissed earlier assertions by Duch that he acted out of fear of being punished by his superiors. He portrayed Duch instead as someone who put everything he had into his job.

“He was not only proud of his job and convinced of the party line to identify and eradicate the enemy without any sense of guilt,” Kong Pisey said. “Moreover, he enjoyed the power as a power-hungry man who performed more than 100 percent without any empathy for his victims.”

Duch is the only accused Khmer Rouge leader to acknowledge responsibility for his actions. Four other senior Khmer Rouge leaders are in custody awaiting trial.

He has denied personally killing or torturing the S-21 prisoners, and said he felt compelled by fear for his own life to follow the orders of senior Khmer Rouge leaders.

Francois Roux, Duch’s lawyer, described his client as “nervous and anxious” about taking the stand for one last time and refused to detail what Duch would say. But he said that his client was hopeful the judges would take into consideration the fact he has admitted his guilt and apologized to his victims.

“At this moment it’s very important to give credit to Duch for his guilty plea. Duch has recognized his responsibility,” Roux said Sunday. “He has asked forgiveness from his victims.”

The trial opened March 30. Some Cambodians have expressed frustration over how long it is taking, fearing the other aging defendants may die before they can be tried.

Cuban repression has continued under Raúl Castro, says watchdog

Fidel Castro’s brother has used new tactics to crush dissent since taking over power, according to Human Rights Watch

More than 40 cases in which individuals were jailed for “dangerousness”, including such things as handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

guardian.co.uk | Nov 18, 2009

by Rory Carroll

Cardinal Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State and one of the highest-ranking officials in the Catholic Church, heartily congratulates Raul Castro as the new hereditary Communist dictator of Cuba. Feb 26, 2009

The Cuban president, Raúl Castro, has crushed dissent and continued repression in the country since taking over from his brother Fidel, according to a Human Rights Watch report published today.

The government has extended use of an “Orwellian” law that allows the state to punish people before they commit a crime on suspicion they may do so, a tactic designed to cow actual and potential opponents, it said.

The report, New Castro, Same Cuba, paints a near-dystopian image of an island where those who step out of line risk being beaten and jailed in horrific conditions which verge on torture.
Nick Steinberg and Daniel Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch Link to this audio

Since taking over from Fidel in July 2006 Raúl has kept up repression and kept scores of political prisoners locked up, it said. “Raúl Castro’s government has used draconian laws and sham trials to incarcerate scores more who have dared to exercise their fundamental freedoms,” said the report.

The New York-based group said its report was based on a clandestine fact-finding mission in June and July that conducted dozens of in-depth interviews in seven of Cuba’s 14 provinces. It spoke to human rights activists, journalists, clerics, trade unionists and former political prisoners and their relatives.

The report was scathing about the international community’s policies towards Cuba. The decades-old US economic embargo gave Havana a pretext to crack down on dissenters as US-backed saboteurs, it said, and should be abandoned.

The EU and Canada preached human rights but failed to pressure Havana for compliance, it added. “Worse still, Latin American governments across the political spectrum have been reluctant to criticise Cuba, and in some cases have openly embraced the Castro government. [This] silence … perpetuates a climate of impunity that allows repression to continue.”

There was no immediate response from the Cuban government. In the past it has accused Human Rights Watch of being a pro-US mercenary group.

When an intestinal illness forced Fidel to step aside there were cautious hopes for greater openness and tolerance after almost half a century of communist one-party rule. Raúl, a veteran defence minister, did not promise such change but did call for honest debate about the island’s severe economic problems.

In fact, according to the report, he tightened repression with greater use of a provision in the criminal code which allows people to be convicted for “dangerousness”, defined as behaviour which contradicts socialist norms.

“The most Orwellian of Cuba’s laws, it captures the essence of the Cuban government’s repressive mindset, which views anyone who acts out of step with the government as a potential threat and thus worthy of punishment,” the report said. It documented more than 40 cases in which individuals were jailed for “dangerousness”, including such things as handing out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, staging rallies, writing articles critical of the government, and trying to organise independent unions.

The report suspected there were many more cases. “We found that failing to attend pro-government rallies, not belonging to official party organisations, and being unemployed are all considered signs of ‘antisocial’ behaviour, and may lead to ‘official warnings’ and even incarceration in Raúl Castro’s Cuba.”

Jails were overcrowded, unhygienic and unhealthy, leading to extensive malnutrition and illness, the report said, and political prisoners were routinely subjected to extended solitary confinement, beatings, restrictions of visits and the denial of medical care. “Taken together, these forms of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment may rise to the level of torture.”

Fear permeated the lives of dissidents. “Some stop voicing their opinions and abandon their activities altogether; others continue to exercise their rights, but live in constant dread of being punished.”

Human Rights Watch acknowledged advances in education and healthcare for the general population but lamented that they were not matched by respect for civil and political rights.

Most ordinary Cubans tend to complain more about food shortages and making ends meet with monthly wages of £20. Students and academics in Havana recently told the Guardian there was more open debate than before but also frustration that economic reforms had stalled.

One European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the mood had lightened despite the repression. “As Fidel’s power wanes, people are less scared. There is a perception you can speak more freely. But we haven’t seen the turnaround we had hoped for.”

Brian Latell, an analyst at the Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies, said that apart from an apparent suspension of the death sentence, human rights had not improved. “Raúl’s imperatives for remaining in power are no different from what Fidel’s always were. That is to say, no organised or potentially threatening opposition of any kind is tolerated. And there is virtually no disagreement about that within the top ruling circle of gerontocrats surrounding the Castro brothers.”
Washington-Havana relations: A slight thaw, but chill remains

In the last year the US has taken incremental steps toward easing the decades-long embargo against Cuba, lifting restrictions on family travel and holding talks aimed at restarting a direct postal service.

The improvement is due in part to President Barack Obama’s desire to engage with US adversaries. In addition, America’s prime anti-Castro force – the ageing Cuban exile population in Florida – has seen a steady decline in its power and been replaced by a new generation of Cuban-Americans that lack strident anti-Castro animosity.

Meanwhile, the deterioration of the Cuban economy following the collapse of the Soviet Union has led the regime to rethink relations with the US, 90 miles to the north.

US-Cuba hostilities peaked with the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961, when US-backed Cuban-exile fighters sought to overthrow the Castro regime. In July 1963 the US enacted a comprehensive set of sanctions that largely remain in effect today, including strict embargoes on trade and financial transactions.

Although Obama has eased some restrictions, he has pledged to maintain the embargo to keep pressure on Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother and successor.

In September a US diplomat made a six-day trip to the island, meeting top officials and opposition figures, the highest-level visit in years.

In June, in a move symbolic of the thaw, the US shut off an electronic billboard outside the office looking after its interests in Havana. It had irked the Castro government with pro-Democracy news and messages. The Cuban government had taken down anti-US billboards surrounding the building earlier in the year.

Government supporters surround Reinaldo Escobar, background, the husband of Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, in Havana, Friday, Nov. 20, 2009. Escobar was punched, slapped and shouted down by a pro-government mob in downtown Havana. (AP Photo/Javier Galeano)

AP | Nov 20, 2009

By WILL WEISSERT

HAVANA — The husband of an acclaimed dissident Cuban blogger was punched and shouted down by a pro-government mob Friday after he challenged the presumed state agents who earlier roughed up his wife to a street corner debate.

As he promised earlier on his blog, Reinaldo Escobar went to the intersection of Havana’s 23rd and G avenues for the proposed discussion. On Thursday, Escobar’s wife posted President Barack Obama’s responses to her written questions on Cuba-U.S. relations on her “Generacion Y” blog.

Escobar was waiting with at least two companions when he got into an argument with another man. What appeared to a prearranged group of government supporters then moved in, screaming obscenities. They hit him and slapped him in the head and pulled his hair and shirt, but never knocked him down.

Soon, Escobar and the others were surrounded by men thought to be state security agents who protected them as they walked about two blocks. All around, Cubans pushed and screamed “Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!” and “Get out worm!” slang for Cuban-American exiles.

At one point, a band organized as part of a nearby street festival joined the mob, marching through flower beds on the median of a boulevard. The music added an odd soundtrack to a tense situation.

After about 10 minutes, Escobar and the others were placed in unmarked cars and driven away.

Ahead of Escobar’s arrival Friday, Cuba’s Young Communists Union organized a street book fair on the same corner, blocking off traffic.

It was unclear if the security agents who came Friday where the same ones who presumably assaulted his wife, Yoani Sanchez, two weeks earlier. After the incident, Escobar challenged the alleged assailants to a verbal duel.

Sanchez answered the phone at the couple’s apartment moments after Friday’s bedlam, but hung up without confirming where her husband was taken. Pro-government “acts of repudiation” against dissidents happen a few times a year. Usually, state security gives opposition activists a ride home after a few minutes to keep things from getting too violent.

“This street is Fidel’s!” the mob shouted. They eventually chanted the name of the current president, Raul Castro, who replaced Fidel in February of 2008.

A government press agent came to the aid of an Associated Press Television cameraman after a member of the mob shoved him from behind and grabbed his camera. The culprit later apologized, then was led away by another group of men.

For about 10 minutes after Escobar was gone, the crowd continued to chant “Fidel! Fidel!” for international news cameras. Then it dispersed quietly.

On Nov. 6, Sanchez was walking to a nonviolence march when two men in plainclothes forced her into an unmarked sedan, pulled her hair and kicked her. The incident occurred at the same street corner where Escobar was hit and slapped Friday, and Sanchez says state security agents were involved.

The confrontation was so violent, Sanchez said she thought the men might kill her, but instead they dropped her off near her apartment.

She vowed on her blog to keep writing caustic, often witty criticism of the struggles of daily life on an island where there is no freedom of speech or assembly — and people endure shortages of even basic food.

On Thursday, she posted the U.S. president’s answers to her written questions but, like nearly all sites critical of the Cuban government, access is blocked on the island.

In the posted responses, Obama said he isn’t interested in “talking for the sake of talking” with Raul Castro and indicated he won’t visit the island until the communist government changes its ways.

Escobar has his own blog, which is also blocked on the island.

Cuba tolerates no official opposition to its single-party communist system and dismisses nearly everyone who criticizes its government publicly as paid mercenaries of Washington.

Earlier this year, Time magazine named Sanchez — whose blog gets about 1 million hits a month — one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Twice this year, she has been denied permission to leave Cuba to collect international journalism prizes.

“Abort it! Kill it! Terminate it! You cannot give birth to him or her!” is just one example of the several banners in the streets of China

BP | Nov 16, 2009

by Cindy Ortiz

WASHINGTON (BP)–Congress heard testimony Nov. 10 regarding China’s one-child policy, which employs widespread forced abortions and sterilization as population control methods, ahead of President Obama’s trip to the communist nation.

Witnesses before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission noted that pregnancies in China must be authorized by the government. The hearing occurred two days before Obama left for Asia Nov. 12 to meet with Chinese officials.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of China’s one-child policy, which was implemented to curb the birth rate of the world’s most populous country. It limits women to one child, although exceptions are made, especially in some rural areas for couples whose first child is a girl. The policy has been enforced somewhat differently recently, the commission was told.

A measure codifying the policy, the Law of Population and Family Planning of the People’s Republic of China, went into effect in 2002. The family planning officials “illegally” enforce the law through forced abortions and sterilizations, lawyer Jiang Tianyong said at the hearing. Jiang has been persecuted for defending human rights activists.

In its 2009 report issued in October, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China said, “‘Termination of pregnancy’ is explicitly required if a pregnancy does not conform with provincial population planning regulations in Anhui, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Hubei, Hunan, Jilin, Liaoning and Ningxia provinces.”

All couples are required to apply for a birth permit before a pregnancy. If a couple has an unauthorized pregnancy, it must be terminated. After having the limited number of children — one in most areas — a spouse must be sterilized. Refusal results in forced sterilization. If the couple has more than one child, the woman will be forced to have an abortion, Harry Wu, director of Laogai Research Foundation, said at the hearing.

Families that abide by the law and get abortions receive a “One Child Parent Glory” certificate, something the government is using to “beautify” the policy, Annie Jing Zhang of Women’s Rights in China told the commission.

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a letter to Obama Nov. 10 regarding his trip to China. “The letter makes the point that you cannot engage in China … without having very serious and candid dialogue about protection of human rights,” USCIRF Chairman Leonard Leo said at a news conference before the hearing.

Rep. Chris Smith, R.-N.J., who chaired the commission hearing, said, “I believe the Chinese government would respond to the president if he were to take the lead in speaking up in defense of human rights in China.”

Jiang appealed to Obama to speak to Chinese officials about reinstating his law license, which was revoked along with those of other attorneys earlier this year for defending human rights cases.

Smith criticized the Obama administration for its restoration of federal money for a United Nations agency that supports China’s coercive family planning policy.

“It is outrageous that the Obama administration lavishly funds — to the tune of $50 million — organizations, including the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), that partner with China’s National Population Planning Commission,” Smith said.

The Chinese leadership, however, thinks the policy is a great accomplishment, because China’s fertility level (1.7 live births per woman) is lower than replacement level, said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute. Exclusive of immigration, 2.1 births per woman is the fertility level that ensures a non-declining population.

China’s low birth rate means an age and gender crisis loom within the next two decades.

According to the most recent Chinese population survey, there are 120 males for every 100 females, Eberstadt testified. An ordinary human population ratio would consist of 105 males to 100 females, meaning — by Chinese government estimates — that by the year 2020 there will be 24 million more men than women. The result will be dim marriage prospects, contributing even more to the lack of child births.

The dearth of children also means China eventually will lose its comparative labor advantage to competing countries such as India and Bangladesh. Population projections show that by 2030, India will become the world’s most populous country, with 1.53 billion citizens compared to China’s 1.45 billion. On top of that, China’s shrinking working-age population will have to shoulder an increasing workload (financial and otherwise) of caring for a massively elderly population.

Chinese demographers also predict that in 2025 there will be a generation of only children in China, Eberstadt said. These children will have no siblings, aunts, uncles or cousins.

“It’s as if we’re all going to be privileged to watch a sort of science-fiction movie that will be playing out on our watch. We have never seen anything like this before,” said Eberstadt.

At the age of 35, Feng Junhua was in her ninth month of pregnancy when she was forced to have an abortion by family planning officials in June in Guan county of Shandong province. The injection that aborted the child caused hemorrhaging and killed Feng, according to the CECC report.

“We believe this is the worst women’s rights violation in the history of the world. Forced abortion … is a crime against humanity,” Smith said.

Families or women who refuse to have an abortion are charged a hefty fine or get their homes destroyed by the government.

“They went to their home, took their valuables, their beds … their tractors, their TV, their clothing. Those that don’t have anything left, [they] took … their children,” Jing Zhang of Women’s Rights in China said at the hearing. “The same method that was used in [the 1989] Tiananmen Square massacre now is being repeated in various, different villages.”

More than 500 Chinese women commit suicide every day, according to worldhealthcare.org, Smith said. The suicide rate for women is three times higher than that of men.

“I don’t think that this suicide rate is unconnected to the forced abortion in China,” Reggie Littlejohn, an expert on the policy for Human Rights Without Frontiers, said at the news conference before the hearing.

“Abort it! Kill it! Terminate it! You cannot give birth to him or her!” is just one example of the several banners in the streets of China that the Family Planning Commission uses to promote the policy, Wu said in his written testimony.