China: Milk campaigner drops appeal plan

23 Nov 10 | Index Index, minipost, News and features

Zhao Lianhai, the father of one of about 300,000 children  poisoned by tainted milk in 2008, has dropped his plans to appeal according to his lawyers. Last week, he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for organising support groups and a campaign for compensation. The lawyers claim they have been told their services are no longer required. Today, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that Lianhai may be released on medical parole, but failed to mention when this may happen.

China: Liu Xiaobo will only accept an unconditional release

22 Nov 10 | Index Index, minipost

The lawyer of imprisoned Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo has said his client will accept nothing other than an unconditional release. His statement follows recent reports that the authorities offered to release him into exile in exchange for a confession. Shang Baojun said he was unclear whether a specific offer had been made to the dissident, who is serving 11 years for incitement to subvert state power. Last week, it was revealed that Liu’s family are being prevented from collecting the Nobel Prize in Oslo on his behalf.

Chinese activist sentenced to year in labour camp for Twitter joke

21 Nov 10 | News and features

Wangyi09’s twitter feed stops abruptly at 7:45AM on October 28. According to human rights groups, the Chinese rights activist, whose real name is Cheng Jianping, was detained later that day for a satirical tweet she had posted on October 17 which mocked anti-Japanese protesters by urging them to destroy the Japanese pavilion at the Shanghai Expo. Her husband-to-be, Hua Chunhui, also a rights activist, said the day she was grabbed by police was to have been their wedding day.

Hua had posted the original tweet which read: “”Anti-Japanese demonstrations, smashing Japanese products, that was all done years ago by Guo Quan [an activist and expert on the Nanjing Massacre]. It’s no new trick. If you really wanted to kick it up a notch, you’d immediately fly to Shanghai to smash the Japanese Expo pavilion.” Cheng re-tweeted it, adding the comment: “Angry youth! Charge!”

According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), who spoke to Chen Lei, a deputy chief of police in Xinxiang town, Henan province, Cheng was sentenced to a year of re-education through labour (RTL) on 15 November for “disturbing social order.” Cheng’s age is unclear. Some reports cite her as 46, others as in her twenties. The BBC reports that she is now being held in Shibali River women’s labour camp in Zhengzhou city in Henan.

Two days later, Amnesty came out with a statement calling for her release. “Sentencing someone to a year in a labour camp, without trial, for simply repeating another person’s clearly satirical observation on Twitter demonstrates the level of China’s repression of online expression,” said Sam Zarifi, the organization’s Asia-Pacific director.

Amnesty adds that the police may have been watching Cheng because she had been working as an online activist for several years, including showing support for imprisoned dissident and this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo. Cheng’s twitter account shows her as following the Dalai Lama’s and Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei’s twitter feeds among others.