Reports have emerged about the arrest of three young Tibetans after they used instant messages to distribute recordings and photographs of the Dalai Lama. The arrests of Gyaltsen, Nymia Wangchuk, and Yeshe Namkha are the latest in the clampdown against Tibetans using the Internet to send information abroad. Several bloggers have also been arrested in recent weeks.
I was going to write the definitive article about web censorship and the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, but then I noticed Rebecca MacKinnon already had.
Read it here
Human rights advocates in China indicated that Zhuang Lu, the office assistant at the prominent human rights law centre Gongmeng may not have been released, as was previously stated. Ms Zhuang made a short phone call to her mother on 26 August in order to tell her that she was awaiting trial and forbidden from leaving Beijing. Read more here
Chinese authorities have released legal activist Xu Zhiyong and two other activists. Xu Zhiyong, founder of the Beijing-based Open Constitution Initiative, was unexpectedly freed on bail, along with co-worker Zhuang Lu, after more than three weeks in prison on charges of tax evasion. In a separate case, Ilham Tohti, an economics professor who had written about economic discrimination against the Uighur minority, was released after about six weeks in custody. Read more here