"A pregnant woman in south China was detained, beaten and forced to have an abortion just a month before her due date because the baby would have violated the country's one-child limit, her husband said Thursday.

Construction worker Luo Yanquan said his wife was taken kicking and screaming from their home by more than a dozen people on Oct. 10 and detained in a clinic for three days by family planning officials, then taken to a hospital and injected with a drug that killed her baby.

Family planning officials told the couple they weren't allowed to have the child because they already have a 9-year-old daughter, Luo said.

For the last 30 years, China has limited most urban couples to just one child in a bid to curb population growth and conserve its limited resources. China has the world's largest population, with more than 1.3 billion people. Couples that flout the rules face hefty fines, seizure of their property and loss of their jobs.

The case is an extreme example of the coercive measures Chinese officials sometimes use to comply with the strict family planning regulations. Though illegal, police and judicial authorities often look the other way when forced abortion cases are reported and the heavily censored state media shy away from such news.

But in recent years, victims have begun to speak out about their ordeals with the help of the Internet and text messaging. Aiding them are social campaigners and lawyers who have documented cases of forced late-term abortions. Similar abuses have been reported in Hebei and Shandong provinces and in the Guangxi region. "

"'Strike-2010' Sino-Thai joint anti-terrorism drill came to an end in Guilin, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Oct. 19. In this joint drill, which focused on urban anti-terrorism for the first time, both parties conducted an in-depth exchange with each other on how to deal with urban terrorist activities so as to lay a solid foundation for urban anti-terrorism cooperation between the two countries in the future.

"Urban terrorist activities are a public hazard to international community!" said Tao Guang, head of the Chinese Guidance Team of this joint drill. Nowadays, cities have become “hotspot” sites for terrorists to produce terrorist activities. They endeavor to produce various types of terrorist attacks in important cities, so as to reach their political, economic and other purposes.

As pointed out by Tao Guang, urban terrorist attacks are usually launched during important events, such as during the Munich Olympics Games in 1972 when a terrorist organization hijacked and killed 9 Israeli athletes. "

Imprisoned Chinese democracy campaigner Liu Xiaobo on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize — an award that drew furious condemnation from the authoritarian government and calls from world leaders including President Barack Obama for Liu's quick release.

Chinese state media blacked out the news and Chinese government censors blocked Nobel Prize reports, which highlighted Liu's calls for peaceful political change, from Internet websites. China declared the decision would harm its relations with Norway and promptly summoned Oslo's ambassador to Beijing to make a formal protest.

...The Nobel committee praised Liu's pacifist approach, ignoring threats by Chinese diplomats even before the announcement that such a decision would result in strained ties with Norway. Liu has been an ardent advocate of peaceful, gradual political change.

The Nobel committee cited Liu's participation in the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing in 1989 and the Charter 08 document he recently co-authored, which called for greater freedom in China and an end to the Communist Party's political dominance.

Two related themes, however, thread their way through all the novels of Mr. Vargas Llosa, who won the Nobel literature prize Thursday. These themes are a fascination with the human craving for freedom (be it political, social or creative) and the liberation conferred by art and imagination. Indeed, storytelling itself remains a central concern in the author’s work, in both his taste for willfully complicated narratives and his philosophical preoccupation with the ways in which subjectivity acts as a distorting prism for our apprehension of the world.

Location of Guangdon province. Image via Wikipedia

Doctors in southern China are working around the clock to fulfil a government goal to sterilise — by force if necessary — almost 10,000 men and women who have violated birth control policies. Family planning authorities are so determined to stop couples from producing more children than the regulations allow that they are detaining the relatives of those who resist.

About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.

The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.

...In Puning county couples with illegal children and their relatives who apply for permits to build a house are rejected. Illegal children are refused residency registration, a penalty that denies them access to healthcare and education.

Authorities have discovered, however, that those methods have less success than rounding up relatives.

One official said that an investigation would be launched to establish whether authorities in Puning had exceeded their remit.

...The county is under criticism from Guangdong authorities, who want to slow a population growth that is reflecting badly on the entire province. One reason for Puning’s large population is that families in the mainly rural region often have up to three or four children.

Many of those with extra children have left to find factory jobs along the more developed coast, taking advantage of being away from local government surveillance to give birth outside the quotas.

Rules in Puning, as throughout rural China, allow farmers to have a second child if the first is a daughter. After that couples must stop. By the morning of April 12 Puning officials said that they had achieved, in a mere five days, about half of their sterilisation goal after their “education” persuaded people to comply.

Image via Wikipedia

China has supplanted the US as Brazil's biggest trading partner, a boom repeated across the region. Once almost invisible in Latin America, China has seen its trade here rise from $10bn a year in 2000 to well over $100bn today. Latin officials are rolling out the red carpet to Chinese delegations and hopping on planes not only to Beijing but also Guangzhou, Nanking and Shanghai.
Unlike the Russians, who grab attention by sending warships to visit anti-US leaders, such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez, but struggle to deliver economic deals, the Chinese are all business. They are importing soy from Argentina, copper from Chile, iron ore from Brazil and zinc from Peru, and export clothes, cars and electronic equipment across the region.
The trade helped Latin America to weather the global economic crisis, but there is concern about a "neo-colonial" pattern in which the region's commodities are sucked abroad while industry loses out to cheap imports aided by China's undervalued currency. When Argentina accused China of dumping goods, Beijing bared its teeth and banned Argentine soya oil, citing safety concerns.

President Hugo Chavez has announced an agreement with China that would have the Asian economic giant devote $20 billion to financing long-term development projects in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan president says the financing would go toward industrial and infrastructure projects, among other development plans.
He spoke Saturday during a televised appearance attended by China's natural resources minister.
Chavez is providing few other details about the investments. 

Image via Wikipedia

According to the rights organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF), present at the Re:publica digital media conference in Berlin, about 120 bloggers and online reporters are currently in jail because of their work.

More than half of them are imprisoned in China, one of the countries most criticized for its rigid online censorship. Last month, RSF welcomed Google's decision to stop censoring its Chinese language search engine and to move its operations to Hong Kong.

"Companies who obey the demands of oppressive regimes are accomplices to censorship," said Lucie Morillon, the head of Reporters Without Borders' new media desk. "They are helping to silence basically those people who want to express dissident views. They are helping regimes to stay in place."

Lucie Morillon, head of the New Media desk at Reporters Without Borders talks about internet censorship at Re:publica conference Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Reporters Without Borders' Lucie Morillon, says many companies help state censorsMorillon hopes that other major international players follow Google's lead, especially Yahoo, which has a history of collaborating with the Chinese authorities. In 2005 it handed over information that resulted in the imprisonment of a Chinese activist for 10 years.

In recent weeks more allegations against Yahoo have surfaced. Morillon said the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China reported "13 cases of foreign reporters whose accounts have been hacked."

...In 2009, more than 60 countries experienced some form of internet censorship, according to Reporters without Borders. In March, RSF published a list of 12 so-called "enemies of the Internet," which are countries that seriously violate their citizens' free speech online.

Apart from China and Iran, the list also includes Saudi Arabia, Burma, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Cuba and Egypt, who use a range of measures from Internet filtering and blocking Web sites, to imprisoning bloggers and journalists.

With 70 million people writing over 700,000 blogs, Iran has a strong Internet presence. Twenty-seven-year-old Farnaz Seifi, was one of the first Iranian women to start her own blog seven years ago. She worked for many years as a women's rights activist and journalist in reformist newspapers, which were shut down. Seifi now lives in the Netherlands.

"Iranian cyber army" hacked Twitter last year

Seifi has noticed the Iranian government's increasingly sophisticated range of strategies to suppress freedom of speech, including using blogs.

"Three years ago suddenly we had this huge wave of Muslim bloggers, very religious ones, very loyal to the Islamic Republic. And they are working for spreading the propaganda of the Islamic Republic regime," she said. "So it shows that the government of Iran thought, 'If we want to control them, we need to be active in what we are doing as well and spreading our own propaganda'."

Notice the list, don't you? Islamic theocracies or communist/socialist dictatorships.I miss North Korea, but for the rest, not really surprising at all!!

Shen Peilan, a seasoned campaigner against government corruption, has not been seen since she was seized on March 24, the same day officials from the Bureau of Letters and Petitions raided her home twice. On their first attempt, they were deterred by police who were summoned by Shen's family. However, officials succeeded in abducting her in a later raid after the police had gone.
Shen was still recovering from an earlier abduction on March 7, when she was held without a warrant and interrogated by officers from the same bureau for nine days. When church friends reported her missing, lawyers and activists managed to track her down at a hotel in Songjiang and police intervened to free her. Shen had been travelling to Beijing to protest against her house being demolished by local officials earlier this year. Chinese local government officials do not have the power to make arrests unless sanctioned by a higher authority. (Sources: ChinaAid, Release International).

Sonia's family fears the Muslim man, Ali Raza, will force her to convert to Islam and marry him. Sonia's brother, Johnson Parvaiz, stated, "Ali Raza came to our home and told Sonia that I had asked for her, and she went out of the house with him. They had parked a vehicle outside and left, and afterwards we never heard from her." After two days, Johnson was able to reach his sister on her cell phone but she told him not to call her, that she was very happy and that they should not try to find her. "It was obvious from her voice that she had been forced to say that," Johnson said. Police have delayed registering a case on behalf of Sonia's family because, in what appears to be an attempt to delay police action, Ali's family has filed a complaint that he was abducted by the same accomplices who allegedly helped him kidnap Sonia. (Source: Compass Direct)

Alimujiang was sentenced in October 2009 to 15 years' imprisonment for "providing state secrets to overseas organizations" (click here for more information).
One of his lawyers, Li Dunyong, believes Alimujiang's Muslim background is a large issue in the case. Another of his lawyers, Li Baiguang, reported, "We are fairly sure that there are a lot of factors which are totally outside the law that have influenced the investigation of this case. This is very clear from the procedures that were followed within the courts and from the final decision." (Source: Radio Free Asia) Here is an interview with his wife among others about his situation.

In November 2009, the two were conditionally released from the notorious Evin Prison (click here for more information). Although they have been receiving medical treatment for the past five months, they remain weak and suffer from various illnesses. Yet, despite their frailties, they were determined to be faithful to the Lord and speak the truth in court whatever the consequence or personal cost. At last report, the outcome of their hearing was unknown. (Source: Elam Ministries).

URUMQI, China (Reuters) - At least 140 people have been killed in rioting in China's northwestern Xinjiang region, with the government blaming exiled separatists for the traditionally Muslim area's worst case of unrest in years.
Hundreds of people have been arrested, the official Xinhua news agency said, after protestors from the Uighur minority took to the streets of the regional capital on Sunday, burning and smashing vehicles and shops, and clashing with anti-riot police.

Tensions between Uighurs and the majority Han Chinese are never far from the surface in Xinjiang, a sprawling region rich in minerals and oil that borders eight Central Asian nations. Many Uighurs (pronounced WEE-gers) yearn for independence and some militants have waged a sporadic, violent separatist campaign.
Uighurs make up the largest ethnic group in Xinjiang, but not in the capital of Urumqi, which has attracted large numbers of Han Chinese migrants. The city of 2.3 million is now overwhelmingly Chinese — a source of frustration for native Uighurs who say they are being squeezed out.
Kakharman Khozamberdi — leader of a Uighur political movement in Kazakhstan, where the Uighur minority has its largest presence outside China — said machine gun fire was heard all night long. One witness told Khozamberdi 10 bodies were seen near a bazaar, including those of women and children.
In Geneva, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged China and any country with violent protests to use extreme care. He urged all government to "protect the life and safety of civilians."

Xinhua quoted Liu Yaohua, a senior police official in Xinjiang, as saying that rioters had burned 261 vehicles, including 190 buses and two police cars, several of which were still ablaze as of Monday morning. Mr. Liu said the death toll of 140 "would still be climbing."

The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.
(...)
At least 1,000 rioters took to the streets, throwing stones at the police and setting vehicles on fire. Plumes of smoke billowed into the sky, while police officers used fire hoses and batons to beat back rioters and detained Uighurs who appeared to be leading the protest, witnesses said.
The Associated Press reported Monday that protests had also spread to a second city, Kashgar, citing eyewitness accounts.

Mr Bashir was indicted over alleged atrocities in Darfur in March.
But on Friday an AU meeting in Libya agreed a resolution saying they would not co-operate in his arrest.
In a statement, the AU pointed out that its request to the UN Security Council to delay Mr Bashir's indictment had been ignored.
Mr Ocampo told the BBC that the AU decision was no victory for Sudan or Mr Bashir. "No-one is saying he's innocent," he said.