December 10th marks International Human Rights Day, At a time when the Chinese government cares more about its international image than ever before, we need to spread the message that China is a human rights failure.
With only nine months to go to the Beijing Olympics 2008 China is winning a gold medal for human rights abuses. Promised improvements in freedom of speech and in the governments respect for human rights have turned into crackdowns in Tibet, greater controls on journalists, forced evictions, imprisonment of AIDS & Democracy activists, continued persecution of religious practitioners.
December 10th is World Human Rights Day and given China's failure to improve its human rights record, it is time for mass protests outside of UK Chinese Embassies and Consulates. All opponents of China's government should come, as this protest is not being run specifically by any one campaigning group. The Chinese government hopes to use the Beijing Olympics Ceremony to gain international recognition that it is a superpower, and hopes to use it to divert criticism for it's lack of democracy, human rights and concern for the environment. Let us unite against the human rights abuses worldwide.
Date: Monday December 10th 2007
Time: 6-8PM
Place: Outside Chinese Embassy, 49-51 Portland Place London W1B 1JL
There are also protests taking place in Manchester at 9AM at:
Denison House,71 Denison Road, Rusholme, Manchester M14 5RX
For those who cannot make a protest, please phone/fax your local embassy throughout the day, and inquire about the health of prisoners of conscience such as Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the eleventh Panchen Lama, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Mao Hengfeng and all of those languishing in Chinese prisons. Alternatively, politely request that China stop abusing human rights, and wish them a happy international Human Rights Day!
Phone Numbers:
London:020-72994049 Manchester: 0161-2489304 Edinburgh: 0131-3379896
Fax Numbers:
London: 020-76362981 Manchester: 0161-2572672 Edinburgh: 0131-3371790
December 10th is World Human Rights Day and given China's failure to improve its human rights record, it is time for mass protests outside of UK Chinese Embassies and Consulates. All opponents of China's government should come, as this protest is not being run specifically by any one campaigning group. The Chinese government hopes to use the Beijing Olympics Ceremony to gain international recognition that it is a superpower, and hopes to use it to divert criticism for it's lack of democracy, human rights and concern for the environment. Let us unite against the human rights abuses worldwide.
Date: Monday December 10th 2007
Time: 6-8PM
Place: Outside Chinese Embassy, 49-51 Portland Place London W1B 1JL
There are also protests taking place in Manchester at 9AM at:
Denison House,71 Denison Road, Rusholme, Manchester M14 5RX
For those who cannot make a protest, please phone/fax your local embassy throughout the day, and inquire about the health of prisoners of conscience such as Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the eleventh Panchen Lama, Tenzin Delek Rinpoche, Mao Hengfeng and all of those languishing in Chinese prisons. Alternatively, politely request that China stop abusing human rights, and wish them a happy international Human Rights Day!
Phone Numbers:
London:020-72994049 Manchester: 0161-2489304 Edinburgh: 0131-3379896
Fax Numbers:
London: 020-76362981 Manchester: 0161-2572672 Edinburgh: 0131-3371790
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Microsoft has dirty hands here
07.12.2007 16:45
In December 2005 Microsoft cooperated with Chinese authorities to shut down the controversial blog of Zhao Jing (Michael Anti), a Beijing-based researcher for the New York Times,and an active critic of censorship in China.
The blog, which was hosted on servers located in the United States, was removed and was therefore censored not only in China but globally. Reacting to criticism, Microsoft claims to have implemented a new set of standards to ensure that they will only remove blogs when they receive formal legal notice from the Chinese government and that access will only be denied to users in China.
Microsoft’s search engine MSN China filters the results of searches for politically sensitive terms, displaying a message in Chinese which states ‘Certain content was removed from the results of this search’. Searches undertaken in June 2006 by AI produced this message for the words ‘Falun Gong’, ‘Tibet Independence’ and ‘June 4’ (the date of the Tiananmen Square massacre).
Furthermore, Microsoft has admitted that it responds to directions from the Chinese government by restricting users of MSN Spaces from using certain terms in their account name, space name, space sub-title or in photo captions. At the same time the company asserts that MSN Spaces do not filter blog content in any way. Amnesty International considers this claim to be at odds with the facts.
When Microsoft launched MSN Spaces in China in June 2005, attempts to create blogs with words including ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ and ‘freedom of expression’ were blocked, producing the following error message (in Chinese): ‘You must enter a title for your space. The title must not contain prohibited language, such as profanity. Please type a different title.’ Tests by AI carried out in June 2006 demonstrated continued blocking of certain terms including ‘Tiananmen incident’ in the title of blogs.
As a result of such actions, Microsoft users in China are denied the ability to access the full range of information available internationally on human rights topics, including via websites and web pages of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations.
Mike