Anti-development protest in China last week: at least 20 people gunned down by authorities, total news blackout.
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403 Forbidden: You don’t have permission to speak freely in this country |
… the police violently suppressed a demonstration against the construction of a power plant in China… the stories told by villagers… insisted that 20 or more people had been killed by automatic weapons fire and that at least 40 were still missing…In the wake of the biggest use of armed force against civilians since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, Chinese officials have used a variety of techniques – from barring reports in most newspapers outside the immediate region to banning place names and other keywords associated with the event from major Internet search engines, like Google – to prevent news of the deaths from spreading… an overwhelming majority of the Chinese public still knows nothing of the event…
… Fang Sanwen, the news director of Netease.com, one of China’s three major Internet portals and news providers [said], “I can’t speak. I hope you can understand.” Li Shanyou, editor in chief of Sohu.com, another of the leading portals, said: “… It’s not very convenient to comment on this…” “I started searching with Baidu, and Baidu went out of service at once. I could open their site, but couldn’t do any searches.”
“I don’t dare to talk,” another blogger wrote. “There are sensitive words everywhere…” [Link]
Anti-development protest in India a few years ago: nobody killed, lots of celebrity distractivism all over TV.
A group of activists led by best-selling Indian author Arundhati Roy is on its way back to Delhi at the end of a six-day rally to protest against a controversial dam project [Narmada Dam]… The group [was] made up of some 500 activists, artists and celebrities… [Link]
Collaboration by American tech companies in Chinese repression…
The most overlooked aspect of China’s Internet filtering is the role that US-based multinationals play in supplying or colluding with the CCP’s efforts. Microsoft and Yahoo! both restrict their Chinese customers’ use of certain phrases such as “democracy” or “freedom”, and Google censors its search content. In doing so, they hope to gain an early share in the potentially huge Chinese market. The server hardware firm Cisco Systems has sold a large quantity of technology to the Chinese government… [Link]The world’s largest software company, Microsoft, is not allowing the Chinese version of its new Web portal to use words deemed politically sensitive by China’s Communist Party… If a user tries to post a message that includes words such as “democracy,” “freedom,” or “human rights,” an automatic message pops up warning the person not to use prohibited language. [Link]
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p>… sounds familiar:
Five Holocaust survivors filed a lawsuit against IBM… alleging the U.S. parent of the giant business machine company assisted Nazi Germany “in the commission of crimes against humanity” before and during World War II. The suit alleges that IBM sold, maintained and controlled the punch card machines that were used by the German government between 1933 and 1945. [Link]
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p>Net result:
… foreign direct investment [in China]… poured in at a rate more than 10 times higher than into India [in 2004]. [Link]
Where have I seen this before?
The US continues to allow the Saudis to suppress human rights and lock up political activists, with barely a whisper of criticism… it is we who are funding the export of Wahhabi intolerance. [Link]
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p>A possible preview of future blowback:
The Chinese government is directing a crushing campaign of religious repression against China’s Muslim Uighurs in the name of anti-separatism and counter-terrorism, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights in China said in a new report today. [Link]The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) is one of the more extreme groups founded by Uighurs, the Turkic-speaking ethnic majority in Xinjiang, seeking an independent state called East Turkestan… U.S. officials are said to have gathered information about Uighur militants linked to al-Qaeda from a handful of Uighurs captured in Afghanistan and now detained at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. [Link]
‘Free markets lead to free societies.’ Short-sighted investing leads to something else.
That photo gives me goosebumps everytime I see it.
What is that man holding. Is that a shopping bag? Was he on his way back from the grocery store? Maybe there’s dried fish and a daikon in it. Or may be he’s heading back from work and there’s some files from his job with the animal husbandry wing of the agriculture department. A regular guy.
And then he snapped.
striking a positive note for corporate accountability towards the environment, some local CEO’s banded together to pressure the government to sign Kyoto.
Dhaavak, dude, that was a great comment. You should have kept that for Friday’s 55-flash 🙂
For all you know, urban people in China might actually support the Govt on this, given that most urban people are usually pro-development and tend to see rural protests as pesky irrelevant obstacles. I admit to being guilty of this sometimes in the Indian context (pro-Narmada dam in the interests of greater good of the country).
(pro-Narmada dam in the interests of greater good of the country
I think technophobic has just helped me understand my intuitive sense of when state vs. federal works.
The feds should have say over things like civil rights and human rights. No segregated schools or rape-victim-punishing tribal councils.
The locals should have say over geography and physical infrastructure, and especially environmental concerns. No urban cities selfishly destroying river valleys. Send the water back to Hetch-hetchy!! Save Mono Lake!
😀
A quote on environmental protests in China: “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has watched the “color revolutions” in Georgia (rose), the Ukraine (orange), Azerbaijan (rose/orange), and elsewhere with great trepidation. But if such an event were to happen here it is unlikely to come in the warm hues favored in the former Soviet bloc, and it would certainly not be red like the revolution of 50 years ago. No, the revolution the CCP is increasingly worried about is green.
from tpmcafe, courtesy of the Lurking Mutineers at Snarkmarket.
Manish is a right wing fundoo. Soudi Arabia is the best place to live on earth for people from all races and religions. 🙂 BTW here is another interesting story which highlights another US ally’s fight against terror. http://ia.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/14pak1.htm
This isn’t entirely true, especially b/c when the dam is built it will either flood out entire peasant farming villages, or it will force them to relocate to areas where they’ll probably die from starvation because their land isn’t arable. [Link] Just b/c people aren’t being killed at the protest doesn’t mean they’re not losing out otherwise.
He was holding two bags. Indeed, maybe they were just his shopping. For me, it’s one of the twentieth century’s most iconic and powerful images. Watching the short video almost moves me to tears. Maybe it’s my over-zealous student activist ideals (as the protest was student-led) or maybe it’s the knowledge that the unknown man was arrested by the Public Security Bureau immediately and was probably murdered soon after or maybe I’m just a big girl. Irrespective, I can’t begin to imagine the bravery that took.
Read more about the tank man here.
Is anyone aware of the alternatives provided by NBA (Narmada bachao andonal) activists?
Because people in cities and remote villages do need water to survive and thus need good irrigation systems.
Uh, does narmada mean something other than “male-female” in Hindi or whichever language the name comes from?
Does ‘narmada’ mean something other than ‘male-female’ in whichever language the name comes from?
…In persian it’s the name given to hijras and other transgenders.
I think you might be confusing “Narmada” to “Namard” or Na-Mard as in hijra.
The name ‘Narmada’ actually has Hindu mythological roots, and is a holy site for Shiva devotees. I think it means delightful whore or something vaguely like that, used as a term of endearment by Shiva. Read about it in Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra. Great novel. The reason a lot of developed countries don’t build dams now are stagnation and backflooding problems. Hence they dump all tehir obsolete technnology and ideas on the developing countries. Canal systems for irrigation are much better ways to divert water. There’s a documentary on how Indian villagers survived without dams before the British through indigenous methods of cultivation. South Africa, i believe, uses that system of threads tied on their crops so the water from the scanty rain drips on them, not wasting it. Sometimes I really feel that indigenous methods of preserving land are best. Western civilization holdss a sujective idea of development. We dont have to follow their path. History has amply shown us the mistakes they’ve made. We need to innovate and not wait for them to tell us what to do. Basically have the balls to stand up and say no.
Aranyi,
obviously, what you said is your opinion, speculation or small scale success stories. I was more interested in hard data. Morever, your claims that we should oppose it because it is from the “west” is not the right approach.
As far as I know, the reasons you ahve given are not of major concern in the NBA movement anyway – it is more of a people’s movement.
I would also like to see a study/data done on a big industrial/residential/agricultural area where people have used alternative-to-dam methods – and are still growing.
Terence Chang wrote a novel based on this picture about this unknown man: Sons of Heaven, with website of the same name.