American Buddhist Net

08/07/2008

A Buddhist tattoo artist from Boulder expelled from China with three others after unfurling pro-Tibet banners from atop light poles near China's showpiece Olympic stadium said authorities questioned them for 10 hours, threatened them with jail and refused calls to the U.S. Embassy.

Rotating teams of interrogators at a makeshift police station on a gated technical college campus quizzed them about Chinese who aided activists on their mission, Phillip Bartell said in an interview today after arriving in San Francisco.

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For me, these are the really great athletes. ABN
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Cuban hurdler and US runner among signatories about to take part in games

# Jonathan Watts in Beijing and Peter Walker
# guardian.co.uk,
# Thursday August 07 2008

More than 40 athletes taking part in the Beijing Olympics have today signed an open letter addressed to China's government urging it to respect human rights and freedom of religion, particularly in Tibet.

Coming on the eve of the opening ceremony, it marks fresh embarrassment for the host nation, which also faced criticism from George Bush and renewed protests in Tiananmen Square.

Signatories to the letter include the men's 110m hurdles world record holder, Dayron Robles of Cuba, well known to Chinese fans as the main rival to their most famous track athlete, Liu Xiang, the reigning Olympic champion. Others involved included the US 400m runner DeeDee Trotter and the Croatian women's world high jump champion, Blanka Vlasic.

The letter calls on China's president, Hu Jintao, "to protect freedom of expression, freedom of religion and freedom of opinion in your country, including Tibet".

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BERLIN (AFP) — Critics of China's human rights record made sure they were not forgotten on Thursday, a day before the grand opening of the Beijing Olympics, with protest actions the world over and in China itself.

A day after cheering crowds welcomed the Olympic torch to Beijing's Tiananmen Square -- scene of a 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protesters -- activists from Canada to Kathmandu sought to get their voices heard.

Already detained once for protesting on the square, three US Christians were forcefully dragged from the site as they prayed publicly, a statement on their behalf said.

"We were in Tiananmen Square publicly praying for the people of China when police forcefully dragged us across the street," Reverend Patrick J. Mahoney, one of the three, was quoted as saying while in custody.

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By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, August 7, 2008; 11:07 AM

BEIJING, Aug. 7 -- China's intense efforts to block any protest that would mar the Olympic Games were challenged Wednesday by foreign activists equally bent on diverting attention to issues as varied as Tibetan independence, the crisis in Darfur and religious freedom.

Two American and two British protesters slipped through a smothering Olympic security net, climbed a pair of lampposts and unfurled banners demanding freedom for Tibet near the new stadium where the Beijing Games are to open Friday night. In Tiananmen Square, three American Christian activists spoke out against China's rights record and protested its population control policies. The four pro-Tibet protesters have been deported, while a second demonstration by Christian activists on Thursday was disrupted when plainclothes police removed the protesters from Tiananmen Square.

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08/07/2008
Ari LeVaux

Chinese authorities may have shut down the dog restaurants in Beijing before the start of the Olympics, but I still scored a great piece of ass in Dunhuang, a city in western China. Stir-fried with carrots and peppers, the donkey flesh tasted like beef, only leaner.

I’m writing from Central Asia, smack in the middle of the world’s largest continent, and as far from the ocean as you can get. I’ve joined a group of Beijing-based astronomers that’s come west to watch the August 1 solar eclipse, the path of which passes near the village of Yiwu in Xinjiang, China’s most remote province.

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08/07/2008

A Buddhist tattoo artist from Boulder climbed a light pole outside China's main Olympic stadium and unfurled a "Tibet Will Be Free" banner Wednesday before Chinese police whisked him and three others away.

Phillip Bartell's whereabouts could not be confirmed Wednesday evening, but Chinese state-run media reported that he and the others were not arrested.

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Thursday, August 7, 2008
By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA

KATMANDU, Nepal - About 2,000 Tibetan exiles demonstrated in Nepal's capital on Thursday, a day before the Olympics open in Beijing, demanding religious rights and an investigation into China's crackdown in their homeland.

Tibetan activists said their protest was aimed at drawing international attention to the issues and urging other nations to put pressure on China.

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Protesters unfurl flags and banners near Bird's Nest stadium

# Tania Branigan and Paul Kelso in Beijing
# guardian.co.uk,
# Wednesday August 06 2008

Four protesters including two Britons have been detained in the Chinese
capital after hanging Free Tibet banners close to the main Bird's Nest stadium.

The demonstration underlined the clash between competing views of the Olympics in Beijing, as thousands of euphoric spectators cheered the arrival of the torch in Tiananmen Square while foreign activists launched a series of small protests around the city.

Given the massive security operation in the capital and the carefully organised audience, no one expected demonstrations in or around the square during the relay.

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If you're in Beijing for the Olympics kick starting this weekend, don't be spilling any beans (state secrets or otherwise) in your cab back to the hotel, because you're being listened to. As the WSJ is reporting, on your taxi's dash is a microphone that can be activated remotely, at any time and without the driver's knowledge, for a live listen into any one of Beijing's estimated 70,000 cabs. And then, if the folks on the other end don't like what they hear, they can take things even further.

The GPS-equipped devices also allow for remote disabling by "cutting off the oil or electric supply," effectively shutting down the engine and keeping it from being restarted.

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Wednesday, Aug. 06, 2008 By SEAN GREGORY/BEIJING

...As the clock ticks down to the August 8 opening ceremonies in Beijing, China doesn't seem to be getting the best eleventh-hour PR advice. Now's the time when swimmers and runners could distract the world from the nation's much-criticized human rights record, and when athletic competition could supersede geopolitical tension for a few short weeks. Instead, in the weeks leading up to the Games Chinese organizers decided to censor websites about Tibet, Falun Gong, and other politically sensitive groups to the foreign media, causing the predictable outcry from international press and human right groups. (Officials have since backed down and opened up the sites). Now comes word that China has banned Cheek to enter the country on the eve of the Games, revoking the visa of an American athletic hero who donated his $40,000 in medal winnings from the 2006 Olympics to Darfurian refugees in Chad.

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Wednesday, August 6, 2008

BANGKOK (AFP) - As China celebrates the start of the Olympics on Friday with much fanfare, activists in neighbouring Myanmar will silently mourn the bloody end of an uprising that crushed their dreams of democracy 20 years ago.

In August 1988, cities and villages across the country then known as Burma were bursting with optimism.

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CHRIS BUCKLEY AND BEN BLANCHARD

BEIJING — Four foreign protesters were held after unfurling Tibet independence banners in Beijing on Wednesday, and three Americans tested Olympic security measures by using central Tiananmen Square to decry abortions.

Two American and two British citizens displayed Tibetan flags and banners declaring “One World, One Dream: Free Tibet” and “Tibet will be free,” the group Students for a Free Tibet said in an e-mail. One of the banners also said “Free Tibet” in Chinese.

The four breached the general Chinese ban on protests, especially over restive Tibet, by scaling power poles near the heavily guarded Bird's Nest Stadium, where the Olympics open on Friday, Xinhua news agency reported. The protest also came as the Games torch began passing through Beijing under tight security.

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A reporter and photographer from two Japanese news organisations were detained and beaten by Chinese police as they were covering yesterday's terrorist attack on a police station in Xinjiang province, the organisations said.

Uighur separatists killed 16 police when they attacked a police station using a truck, home-made explosives and knives.

The two organisations said Masami Kawakita, a 38-year-old photographer from the Chunichi Shimbun newspaper's Tokyo headquarters, and Shinji Katsuta, a 37-year old reporter from Nippon Television Network's China General Bureau, both suffered light injuries.

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BEIJING: For their high-security Beijing Olympics, Chinese police have their bomb detectors and metal detectors. They could do with an absurdity detector, too.

Take the example of blacklisted author Yu Jie. Because the games are in town, police are keeping him under close watch at his Beijing home, 24/7, with plainclothes officers stationed outside in three rotating shifts. Yu says that only by police car, under escort, is he allowed to leave the gated middle-class community where he and his wife are raising their 4-month-old boy, Justin, who was born in the United States.

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August 5, 2008

Go'o Shrine in Kyoto on the western side of the Imperial Palace is dedicated to all things pig.

The shrine enshrines Wake no Kinomaru (733–799), an adviser to the Heian Period Emperor Kammu (737–806), and the courtier's sister Hiromushi.

Instead of the usual komainu (mythical lion-like beasts) standing guard outside the shrine, a pair of wild boar do the job instead.

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The Tibetan Youth Congress, known for spearheading high-profile rallies such as last year’s storming of the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, has unleashed its latest salvo at Beijing: a slow and very public death.

“All our campaigns have been non-violent so far,” said Tsewang Rigzin, the president of the Tibetan Youth Congress. “That’s what we’re doing now.”

But this is the first time Tibetan demonstrators are declining water as well as food. Without medical intervention, they are unlikely to live beyond this week.

The Tibetan Youth Congress vows that for every striker that dies, another will take his place. The six demonstrators, said Konchok Yagphel, who speaks for the group, represent the six million Tibetans in the world still struggling for an independent homeland.

And they do not intend to let any police officer come between them and that goal.

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...Kashmiris thus find themselves not simply sandwiched between India and Pakistan, but they are caught in what I would call a web of the interplay of complex and dubious historical forces. Such being our historical experience, J&K’s deepening crisis cannot be resolved overnight. Nor can it be merely explained in terms of one factor, as for example, Hindu-Muslim divide on the basis of religion, the problematic nature of ethnic diversities or a territorial conflict between India and Pakistan. We need to understand dispassionately the nature of our crisis which, in my opinion, is essentially related to our historical and civilisational identity as a nation.

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By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: August 5, 2008

BEIJING — Two men armed with knives and grenades ambushed a military police unit in Kashgar in China’s majority Muslim far northwest on Monday, killing 16 border patrol officers and wounding 16 others before being subdued and arrested, according to Chinese state media.

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August 4, 2008
By CHOE SANG-HUN

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Sunday escalated a standoff over the shooting death of a South Korean woman visiting a tourist resort in the North. It threatened to expel South Koreans on the resort’s staff, a move that would effectively shut down a showcase of reconciliation between the two Koreas, as modest as it has been.

South Korea said in reply that it would continue to bar South Korean tourists from the resort, a principal source of foreign exchange for North Korea, until the North accepted a joint investigation of the killing of the woman, Park Wang-ja.

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Hundreds of Kashmiri Hindus backed by political parties clashed with police in the Capital on Saturday while holding a rally to pledge support to activists in Jammu protesting the killings of two people and revocation of the land transfer to the Amarnath Shrine Board.

Around 3,000 people of all age groups gathered at Jantar Mantar in the heart of the Capital and proceeded towards Parliament House, but were stopped by police officials near the Parliament Street police station.

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Army called out in Kashmir religious protests

India-Pakistan clashes bring fear to Kashmir villages

Sat, Aug. 02, 2008

YANGON, Myanmar -- A famous Myanmar comedian and three other activists who helped deliver relief supplies to cyclone victims could be imprisoned for two years on charges of causing public unrest, his lawyer said Saturday.

Comedian Zarganar and the others appeared in court inside Insein prison on Wednesday, according to Aung Thein, their attorney. They included a sports writer identified as Zaw Thet Htwe and Thant Zin Aung.

Aung Thein said he has not met his clients and was unable to confirm the charges. But he believes they will be accused of breaking a law that makes it illegal for "anyone to circulate a statement or rumor with intent to cause alarm to the public."

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Fri Aug 1, 1:16 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A US federal court sentenced a Chinese woman to 18 months in prison on Friday for her role in an espionage case involving a former Pentagon employee who handed secret military documents to a Chinese spy, her attorney said.

Yu Xin Kang had pleaded guilty in May to aiding an undeclared foreign government agent by serving as an intermediary between ex-Pentagon analyst Gregg William Bergersen and Taiwan-born businessman Tai Shen Kuo, who worked for the Chinese government.

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By Jim Coggins

...The Beijing hosting committee has chosen to bypass the usual method and provide the required religious services through Chinese nationals, particularly the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM). The TSPM was established shortly after the Communist takeover of China in 1949. It was intended to bring all Protestant and evangelical groups in China together into one body free from any ties to foreign religious bodies. As the only legally recognized Protestant body in China, it is tightly controlled by the Communist Party. It is not allowed to teach children or discuss issues such as the Second Coming or abortion.

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Fri Aug 1, 2008
By Chor Sokunthea

PREAH VIHEAR, Cambodia (Reuters) - The wife of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen led Buddhist monks and soldiers in prayers at a 900-year-old Hindu border temple on Friday amid a three-week military stand-off with Thailand.

With Thai troops and artillery dug in only meters away, Bun Rany thanked the soldiers, mostly battle-hardened ex-Khmer Rouge guerrillas, for resisting what Cambodia says is Thai encroachment on a disputed patch of land next to the ruins.

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Mary-Anne Toy

HELEN is a graduate of one of Beijing’s most prestigious universities and speaks fluent English and French. She lives in poverty in a run-down apartment block in a Chinese city that shall remain nameless.

Neighbouring flats are occupied by mistresses of married Chinese businessmen.

Helen, not her real name, lives a secret life too; one that is far more dangerous and far less acceptable to China’s Communist leaders than being kept as a mistress.

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