Wei-for the forced disappeared people

Wei*-for the forced disappeared people    Lyrics and music by Ban,  Musical instrument: Lao B, produced by A Few Sunflower Seeds

[Choices after waking up:  1. To be part of life or part of death 2. To be true or to lie 3. To be happy or to be rotten  4. To love or to be abandoned 5. To be intelligent or to be stupid  6. To smile or to be humiliated 7. To demand or to celebrate  8. To have more courage or fear  9. To take action or to be brainwashed  10. To be free or to be caged] – AI Weiwei

Please see the English translation of the lyrics below:

Scream: Nian Bin on the Death Row

According to the recently released report about death penalty by Amnesty International,  “China once again executed more people than the rest of the world put together, but due to the secrecy surrounding the use of the death penalty in the country it was not possible to obtain accurate figures on the use of capital punishment in China.”

Today, in China, besides the unkown exact number of people executed for death penalty, there is also the worst problem of innocent people who were abridged of their life or are waiting in the death row. Nian Bin is one of them who has been suffering behind the bars for almost seven years. The major evidence used to sentence him is not only obtained under torture but also does not conform with the fact.

Born in 1976, Nian Bin (in Chinese) is a Christian and a frank young man. He never quarrels with other people. However, in February 2008, he was wrongly sentenced to death penalty under the oral evidence given by himself under torture,  while there are until today a lot of unclear facts about the case.

Sending Anni back to School

ZHANG Anni ((张安妮) is a ten years old girl Anhui Province China. Anni has been abridged her right to education for more than one month due to her father’s activism in China. Anni’s dad is ZHANG Lin, a nuclear physicist graduated from Tsinghua-University, and a veteran dissident who has served three prison terms since the 1980s, totaling 13 years, for his writings calling for democracy and human rights in China. 

In March 2013, when China had its two big conferences—the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and around the two conferences period, many dissidents citizens were under strict surveillance and house arrest.  In Hefei city, Anhui Province, Anni becomes the youngest citizen that was harassed during the two conferences period this year.

Voices from Shanghai

It has been almost two weeks after dead pigs were found floating on Huangpu River in Shanghai. So far, about 9800 carcasses were retrieved from Huangpu River and another 3600 from waterways in the neighboring Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province.

While Huangpu River provides drinking water for about 1/5 Shanghai residents, the municipal government  claims that there is no problem with the drinking water in Shanghai  and the water quality of the river has not been affected. Neither are there any explanations about exactly from where they carcasses came from and why the pigs died.

Facing such a big scandal, wide criticism of the authority’s management of the issue has been a hot topic on the Internet where opposition voice is expressed in various ways: making  up stories, composing poems, and posting sarcastic pictures to ridicule the whole situation.

Legal weapon has also been taken up by Shanghai citizens.

XU Zhiyong & Equal Right to Education

On February 26,  XU Zhiyong, handed out leaflets at Beijing Metro, calling citizens to gather together at the Beijing Education Bureau on Feb 28, 2013, to campaign for the equal right to education for migrant workers’ children  in Beijing. 

According to the Chinese Constitution, all citizens have the right and duty to education.  However, in Beijing, where millions of migrant workers work, their children do not have the right to take university entrance exams in Beijing, but in places where their hukou (house registration ) are. Children who follow their parents to Beijing have to return to their villages to take the exams, and where they have less chance of going to universities since most universities locate in big cities and set higher quota to admit local students.

There has been calling for reforming the university entry system that students shall have the right to take university entrance exams at the place of their study but not where their register hukou.  In more than 30 provinces in China, hukou is not a requirement for taking university entrance exam any more. However Beijing remains unchanged.

Xu’s campaign is to call for the separation of binding the university entrance exam with the hukou system. The following is some translation from twitter following what happened with him and the campaign.  

Chinese Blind Activist Chen Guangcheng Wins Lantos Human Rights Prize

On 29 January 2013, Chen Guangcheng receives Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize at U.S. Capitol Ceremony. Tom Lantos Human Rights Prize is named after the late Congressman  Tom Lantos, the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the US Congress and a promonent advocat for human rights. The prize aims to honor and bring attention to heroes of the human rights movement.

Photocourtesy of @YaxueCao on twitter

In his award remarks, Chen emphasizes that “dictatorships are inherently in opposition to democracy and freedom” and China’s transformation depend on the people. He argues that “Human rights reform is inseparable from political reform. However, under the leadership of the party, simply speaking about human rights is no easy task; and of course, defending human rights is even more difficult. But social progress does not come from those in power…” and “the most important thing is to shift our attention from the leadership to the people. To support their activities in moving towards a society that respects human rights, the people need to feel encouraged.”

The following is his remarks for receiving the award:

A Blog: I Love Tibet

I love Tibet is a blog of an anonymous Chinese artisit lives in the UK at present. The artist, a Han Chinese, under the name of Saida El Alloumi on the blog, apoligies to Tibetans, especially to whom self-immolated,

and tells stories about Tibetans with animations, aiming to “use the creative media to challenge the myths about Tibet promoted by the Chinese authorites“, such as the following short animation “3 fish story”.