Three nuns have each been jailed for three year after they staged a peaceful street protest, chanting “Free Tibet” and “long live His Holiness the Dalai Lama”, on 15 June. The women, aged between 21 and 31, are part of the Gyemadrak Nunnery in Tibet and were arrested by Chinese authorites hours after the protest began. The nuns have been named as Jampa Choedon, Sheh Lhamo and Tashi Choetso.
US-based Cisco Systems Inc and Hewlett-Packard, along with a handful of other Western technology companies, are set to provide crucial network equipment for a massive CCTV surveillance project in the city of Chongqing. Known as “Peaceful Chongqing” the network of about 500,000 cameras will spread over nearly 400 square miles, it will police intersections, neighborhoods and parks. Chinese officials say the added surveillance will prevent crime but human-rights advocates fear it will be used to silence political dissidents.
Just two weeks shy of his release, imprisoned journalist Qi Chonghuai, has now been sentenced to another eight years on charges of embezzlement, extortion, and blackmail after a 9 June retrial. He was first arrested in 2007 after writing a newstory criticising a local official for beating a woman who arrived late to work.
A website allowing Chinese citizens to blow the whistle on official bribery, www.ibribery.com, has been shut down. Site creator Chen Hong copied the idea from Indian site ipaidabribe.com. Censors blocked access to Hong’s site after it received 200, 000 unique visitors in just two weeks. The 28 year old PR consultant then closed the site, fearing repercussions from the authorities. Several other bribery sites, which appeared soon after Hong’s, have also been shut down.