News on the Tibet's Monday Demonstration

[Unregistered]

Monday, March 31, 2008

12:30 p.m. -- (CHINA-TIBET/RIGHTS) EVENT -- The International Campaign for Tibet holds a rally to protest China's recent actions against the Tibetan people and to "implore the Bush administration to send a strong message to China by not attending the opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing." Following the rally, participants will march up Connecticut Avenue to the Chinese Embassy. Participants include Namkha Tenzin, president of the Capital Area Tibetan Association; John Achkerly, president of the International Campaign for Tibet; T. Kumar of Amnesty International; Kathryn Porter, president of the Leadership Council for Human Rights.

Location: Lafayette Park, across from the White House

Contact: 202-265-3000

[Unregistered]

The Great Firewall of China
Tibet is nothing new—China has a long history of repression
Macleans.ca staff | Mar 28, 2008 | 3:30 pm EST

http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20080328_153033_4120


There’s a certain kind of news story out of China that never fails to make headlines in the West: government censors attempting to water down a Western film or book with seemingly little cause. For example, Reuters reported last month that the Chinese General Administration for Press and Publications had published new content guidelines that effectively banned horror films, restricting the appearance of "wronged spirits and violent ghosts, monsters, demons, and other inhuman portrayals, strange and supernatural storytelling." When the Rolling Stones announced plans to perform in Shanghai in 2003, the Chinese Ministry of Culture gained attention worldwide with their decree that the band would be forbidden from performing four of the more suggestive songs in their catalogue: “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” “Brown Sugar,” “Honky Tonk Women” and “Beast of Burden.” And Chinese censors were in the news for ruling that before it could be screened in the country, the 2006 film Mission: Impossible 3 had to be edited to remove scenes shot in Shanghai that might be “harmful” to the city’s image—like one that showed laundry hanging from balconies to dry.

These stories may be somewhat amusing to many in the West, but they can obscure the fact that the Chinese government remains a serious, heavy-handed and brutal force in the lives of its citizens—a fact that’s been thrown into sharp relief once again by reports out of Tibet. And from the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s through the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, censoring the consumption of western cultural products is far from the only way—or the most intrusive way—that China restricts its people. Among the most prominent forms of repression: