Arcadia Foundation

China’s leading dissident, Liu Xiaobo, yesterday lost his appeal against his conviction and 11-year sentence for inciting subversion.

Outside the court, US and European diplomats called for the immediate release of the 54-year-old Liu, a writer and one-time professor who was first detained in December 2008 after co-authoring a manifesto calling for political reform in China.

US ambassador Jon Huntsman said in a statement after the ruling that Washington was “disappointed” and lamented what he called the “persecution” of citizens expressing their political views.

Liu had been jailed before over the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy protests.

Last month, four retired Communist Party officials signed an open letter to the government calling for a review of Liu’s case. They suggested his conviction violated some of the principles for which they had fought.

“His harsh sentence is a stark reminder to the Chinese people and the world that there is still no freedom of expression or independent judiciary in China,” says Roseann Rife, a Hong Kong-based researcher for Amnesty International.

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Philippine politicians launched their campaigns today in a wide-open race for the presidency, with poverty, corruption and unemployment the top issues for the impoverished Southeast Asian archipelago.

The latest opinion poll shows two opposition lawmakers are neck-and-neck in the presidential polls, but analysts say it is too early to establish a clear trend in the race. It is in the spirit of curbing such corruption and indeed amidst the dynamic atmosphere that upcoming elections bring in the region that the current administration sought to punish those who hindered the democratic process the last time around. Authorities today in the Philippines have filed murder charges against the former governor of southern Maguindanao province, Andal Ampatuan Sr. and 196 others in connection with last year’s election-related massacre there.

Considered the worst politically motivated violence in recent Philippine history, the November 23 attack targeted and killed the wife and sister of political candidate Ismael “Toto” Mangudadatu, who had sent them to file paperwork allowing him to run for governor of Maguindanao. Thirty journalists were also among the 57 people killed in the attack.

Andal’s son and namesake, who is a mayor in the province, was charged with murder earlier.

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Corruption runs rampant in China. Though millions of Chinese citizens have little to no access to the internet, government dealings with the various forms of mafia go without saying. It is in this climate that the beginning of perhaps the most intriguing chapter in China’s most sweeping crackdown on corruption in recent history takes place. The trial of the most senior official implicated in an intricate web of mafia-style gangs that terrorized the central city of Chongqing has indeed begun.

Wen Qiang, the former director of the Chongqing Justice Bureau is accused of colluding with the municipality’s mafia dons, protecting a system of organized crime, money laundering and taking up to $2.63 million in bribes. He has also been charged with raping a female college student on several occasions and luring women into prostitution.

So far, local authorities have detained almost 1,200 people in the sweep, and prosecuted 12 high-ranking officials, including Wen, according to China’s state-run media.

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China and America’s on-again, off-again dialogue on human rights faces postponement yet again amid discord between the two powers over internet censorship.

Talks were meant to take place last year, but a date was never set.

The two countries agreed in November, during Barack Obama’s visit to China, that they would resume discussions by the end of February at the latest. Following Mr. Obama’s departure from China came a slew of show trials for former tiananmen square protestors, easy convictions which were never truly brought up from the west.

“We are still continuing to work with the Chinese to schedule,” said a state department official. “Human rights dialogue is a priority for the US.”

Although critics complain the dialogue has achieved little, advocates say it is an opportunity to raise important issues and individual cases of concern directly.

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As a reader, I’ve learnt that 20 million citizens reside in China’s western Xinjiang region. I can almost rest assured that as a blogger, I’m missing out on reaching that same 20 million, and not just because of the clear and present language barrier.

Those 20 million citizens are ‘internet refugees’; have been without uncensored links to the outside world since the government blocked nearly all online access, including text messages and international phone calls after ethnic riots in July.

China’s strategy is a winning one -to kill the voice of the people, you simply shut off the microphone, and turn down the speakers. They have done so in the largest and longest blackout in the world, observers say.

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Today, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle urged China to show more respect for human rights but said differences of opinion on this issue should not hinder trade ties between the world’s two biggest exporters.

This is a bold step for Germany, one which clearly differentiates it from that of the United States, Britain or Canada. Although stressing the importance of trade policies, a must when dealing with an up and coming superpower, Westerwelle, on his first trip to China since taking office last October, said he had addressed Germany’s concerns about China’s position on freedom of opinion, human rights and the protection of minorities in a meeting with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi.

“The German government’s engagement for human rights and civil rights is not abstract but very concrete,” he said. “Tibet and the protection of cultural minorities were also topics we discussed, and over which we had differences of opinion.”

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Google’s dramatic threat to close its business in China unless the authorities allow it to provide uncensored search results throws into stark relief the limits to globalization.

The dream of  google spearheading the initiative to unify the World Wide Web by flattening the Earth into a single cyberspace has been shattered by that governments’ determination to control the information their citizens see.

The search engine and e-mail behemoth yesterday stated that  it had uncovered “a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China” aimed at accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

The level of censorship is of course no surprise. Whilst in Beijing, our Public Relations Director personally found it difficult to access certain news websites, sometimes at such a delay he could “swear someone was picking up the metaphorical reciever along the way to check” on him.

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ChinaDigitalTimes.net has published a report from Human Rights Watch on drug rehabilitation center abuse in China. According to the report that largely focuses on Yunnan, forced unpaid labor, degrading treatment, and a lack of basic medical care were among some of the abuses found.

One example is Fu Lixin, emotionally exhausted from caring for her sick mother, needed a little pick-me-up. A friend offered her a “special cigarette” — one laced with methamphetamine — and Ms. Fu happily inhaled.

The next day, three policemen showed up at her door.

“They asked me to urinate in a cup,” she said. “My friend had been arrested and turned me in. It was a drug test. I failed on the spot.”

Although she said it was her first time smoking methamphetamine, Ms. Fu, 41, was promptly sent to one of China’s compulsory drug rehabilitation centers. The minimum stay is two years, and life is an unremitting gantlet of physical abuse and forced labor without any drug treatment, according to former inmates and substance abuse professionals.

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North Korean officials stated last Tuesday they had detained a U.S. citizen who entered its territory, apparently confirming a report that an American activist crossed into the state to raise awareness about Pyongyang’s human rights abuses.   Robert Park, 28, walked over the frozen Tumen river from China and into the North last Friday, other activists said.

The Korean-American later told Reuters ahead of the crossing that it was his duty as a Christian to make the journey and that he was carrying a letter calling on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il to step down.

Park had an exclusive interview with Reuters last week before starting on his journey. The following are excerpts from the conversation. He requested that the comments be held until he was in North Korea. Read Full Paper

Iran, the Obama administration now claims, will not be in a position to reach further than the Southeast of Europe with missiles for the foreseeable future. Iran’s missiles are not thought to have a range greater than 2000 km. But that is far from the reality.

Author Dr. Hans Ruehle, former Director of the Planning Staff in the German Ministry of Defense has written a thought-provoking piece entitled, “Russia is playing a double game on Iran“, which both the United Against Nuclear Iran organization and the Arcadia Foundation have published, as seen below:

Immediately after Barack Obama’s announcement on the new threat assessment, retired Russian Major General Dworkin declared that Iran will soon have missiles with a range of about 5500 km. Read Full Paper