By Rosanna Xia | Los Angeles Times

May 14, 2012

Melissa Chan of Walnut is the first accredited foreign correspondent to be barred from China in 14 years. She is not sure what prompted her expulsion.

After filing 400 stories from China, reporter Melissa Chan never thought she'd wind up in the headlines herself.

Chan returned to Southern California last week as the first accredited foreign correspondent to be expelled from China in 14 years, an act that sparked a flurry of news reports and expressions of solidarity from fellow journalists.

Chan, who was the sole Al Jazeera English correspondent in China, said she knew she was on shaky ground for most of this year.

She had been working on month-by-month credentials since January, when the government refused a routine visa-renewal request. Ordinarily, journalists are granted year-long credentials, but Chan is believed to be the first foreign correspondent to be given temporary papers.

Interviewed in her hometown of Walnut, Chan, 31, says she's not exactly sure what prompted her expulsion after five years of reporting in China.

In March, she wrote about a distraught mother seeking a daughter who had been forcibly sterilized and put in an illegal "black jail" for violating China's one-child policy.

"A lot of journalists have done black jail stories," she said, but hers "was probably the first" to get coverage on TV. "It's also the first time that we got a government official to respond to a question about the existence of black jails." The official denied the black jails existed, "but it was on the record, Chan said, "so that was useful for human rights groups. And that could be one reason why there's the perception that I'm a go-getter."

Interference from China's security apparatus is a fact of life for China correspondents. Chan recalled a nine-day trip in China's far west to cover a Muslim Turkic ethnic minority community, only to lose every translator she had set up because her phones were tapped and police had intimidated them prior to her arrival.

Frequently, she wrote of her dealings with authorities on Twitter.

There is a "strong possibility" that those dispatches played a role in her expulsion, she said. And after three months of short-term visas, "maybe they were angry that they put me on a tight leash and that didn't stop me," she said.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of China said the Chinese government was angered about a documentary that aired in November about the use of prisoners in forced-labor camps. Chan was not involved in that production.

"My understanding is that the Chinese government chose the temporary visas in this case to allow time for discussions with Al Jazeera" about Chan, said Peter Ford, vice president of the correspondents' club, "and when those discussions did not bear fruit, they refused to renew her visa."

Al Jazeera English declined to comment about the expulsion and instead issued a statement. "We hope China appreciates the integrity of our news coverage and our journalism.... Al Jazeera Media Network will continue to work with the Chinese authorities in order to reopen our Beijing bureau." Al Jazeera's Arabic-language component still maintains correspondents in China.

The last time China kicked out correspondents was in 1998, when a Japanese correspondent and a German reporter were expelled in separate cases in which they were accused of obtaining secret documents.

At a media conference Tuesday in Beijing, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said that Chan had violated "relevant laws," but would not say which ones. Chan, who was known to always carry a copy of her Chinese press rights, believes that she broke no laws.

Chan, who is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese, immigrated with her family to the U.S. from Hong Kong when she was 3. A U.S. citizen, she graduated from Yale University and earned a master's degree in comparative politics at the London School of Economics. Chan worked for Al Jazeera since 2007 and misses China, which she considers home. She said it was the longest period of time she had ever lived outside of Walnut. Her parents are relieved she's back.

In the wake of her expulsion, Chan has been variously praised and criticized. Some see her as a human rights activist who has exposed illegal jails and land confiscations. Others consider her an agitator.

But Chan said she doesn't consider herself the most hard-hitting reporter in China. She admires the many journalists who covered last year's pro-democracy protests in China, and those who sneaked across the border when Tibetans set themselves ablaze in resistance -- both stories she did not pursue. For all of April, she was stuck in Hong Kong, unable to report on the breaking story of blind dissident Chen Guangcheng.

For now, Chan is looking forward to a year of clean air, Whole Foods and Starbucks chai tea lattes when she attends Stanford University in the fall. She was recently accepted for a Knight Fellowship there, where she will be exploring ways for journalists to safeguard their computers from hackers.

Before her fellowship begins in September however, she'll return to Al Jazeera headquarters in Qatar and be assigned another reporting post.

"I have to face the reality, which is I'm not going back to China any time in the near future, not the way that this has played out," she said. "And I'm sure I'll be back in China someday. It's just a question of when."

Times staff writers Barbara Demick and David Pierson in Beijing contributed to this report

>> Original Report

By Radio FREE Asia

May 10, 2012

China seeks to limit Central Tibetan contacts with troubled eastern regions.

Some of the security checkpoints in Tibet.

Chinese authorities are setting up police surveillance stations and other checkpoints across Tibet to monitor the activities of ordinary citizens and travelers approaching the capital city, Lhasa, in the latest move to tighten security in the region, according to Tibetan sources.

The security measures come following protests in Tibetan-populated areas against Chinese rule and calling for the return of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, including a wave of self-immolations highlighting the plight of Tibetans.

Religious pilgrims going to Lhasa and others who are found without proper identification are stopped on the road and sent back to their places of origin, a Tibetan from the eastern region of Kham told RFA this week, saying he had just recently arrived in Lhasa.

"Pilgrims are required to carry personal identification and Chinese ration cards. Those found without them are turned back," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"I saw over 50 checkpoints during my journey," the man said, adding that new checkpoints have been established to the east of Lhasa in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) counties of Pome, Pashoe, and Nyingtri.

"Before reaching Lhasa, travelers and pilgrims are again thoroughly checked at Rito town in Maldro Gongkar county," he said. "They are asked about the reasons for their trip and about where they will be staying."

Demands for information

Even after this strict scrutiny, travelers are not allowed to stay in Lhasa for more than a month, and must register with Lhasa police on their arrival and when they depart, he said.

"They are asked to provide the address of their place of residence in Lhasa and about the people providing them accommodation, including information about those people's jobs."

"They also have to report to the police each week," he said.

Pilgrims from the eastern regions of Kham and Amdo, the scene of repeated self-immolations and other protests by Tibetans challenging Chinese rule, face particularly heavy restrictions, he said.

Meanwhile, Lhasa Tibetan Radio reported on May 5 that about 50 roadside police booths have been set up in Chamdo county in the TAR's Chamdo prefecture, with plans under way to set up other surveillance stations in 10 other counties in the prefecture.

The booths in Chamdo county are already fully staffed and functioning, the state-controlled radio service said.

Around 130 similar booths--called "dogs' dens" by local Tibetans--are already in operation in Lhasa city, a second Lhasa-area source said, also speaking on condition he not be named.

Reported by Soepa Gyaltso and Lobsang Sherab for RFA's Tibetan service. Translations by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney

>> Original Source

 By Mark McDonald

May 7, 2012

The last time this happened, the last time he was grabbed by the Chinese authorities, he was "disappeared" for 60 days. Beatings, shouts, shackles, blindfolds, no sunlight. He said he was banged on the head so severely -- typically with plastic bottles filled with water -- that his memory began to slip. He couldn't remember his Skype password or how the furniture was arranged in his bedroom back home.

So it scared his friends when Jiang Tianyong was detained last Thursday evening while trying to visit his friend Chen Guangcheng in a hospital in Beijing. Mr. Chen, the blind human rights advocate, had left the protection of the U.S. Embassy, and a major diplomatic wrangle over his future was taking place.

Mr. Jiang, a lawyer who has long supported Mr. Chen, had just been detained and was sitting in a police car when Eva Pils, an associate professor of law in Hong Kong, called his cellphone. Mr. Jiang told her about his situation -- "very tense, naturally," she said. Later, ominously, his phone went unanswered.

"He was held for nine hours and was severely beaten," Ms. Pils said in an interview Monday. "At one point he lost the hearing in one ear. He's now under house arrest. They promised he could see a doctor today. We'll see if that happens."

A former schoolteacher who became a trained and certified lawyer -- unlike Mr. Chen who has no formal legal training -- Mr. Jiang has had his legal license indefinitely suspended for his impertinence in confronting the government and defending, among others, Falun Gong members and a dissident Tibetan monk.

Mr. Jiang and Mr. Chen's involvement in a loose network of human rights advocates and unlicensed quasi-lawyers known in China as "barefoot lawyers" was described in an article in 2005 by Jerome A. Cohen, a New York University law professor who remains a trusted adviser to Mr. Chen.

Mr. Jiang was among several colleagues, accomplices and like-minded activists who were picked up in the days following Mr. Chen's daring and now-celebrated escape from house arrest last month. Beijing and Washington have apparently reached an agreement that will allow Mr. Chen and his family to travel to the United States so he can pursue legal studies.

"It was a huge boost to everybody's morale that Chen Guangcheng could escape" from house arrest, said Ms. Pils, who also serves as director of the Center for Rights and Justice at the Chinese University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Law. "We were very happy simply to know that he was safe."

When the revolutions of the Arab Spring were taking shape a year ago, a group of friends and lawyers gathered in Beijing to discuss the plight of Mr. Chen and his family, who were then under detention in their stone farmhouse in rural Shandong Province.

Their meeting was held on Feb. 16, 2011, and within days the authorities began a crackdown against the circle of activists. The Chinese authorities, apparently worried about a possible spillover effect of the unrest in the Middle East, began rounding up dissidents, writers and especially human rights lawyers, "disappearing" them for weeks or months at a time.

"It is clear that the crackdown has reached unprecedented levels -- the threshold that warrants detention by the police has been dramatically lowered," Nicholas Bequelin, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, said at the time, quoted in a story in the South China Morning Post.

"Now we have entered the most serious wave of political repression."

When it became clear that Mr. Jiang was among those who had been disappeared after the Feb. 16 meeting, the State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said on March 8 that the United States was "increasingly concerned by the apparent extralegal detention and enforced disappearance of some of China's most well-known laywers and activists."

In interviews with the Voice of America, the Morning Post and other media outlets, Mr. Jiang described his incarceration, which included the water-bottle beatings:

I spent the entire detention period in one room, except that they moved me twice. I did not know where I was because when they moved me they covered my head. Day in and day out, I was under a blinding white light in that room. I do not know how I spent the spring; I didn't see a single ray of sunshine.

They clearly told me, 'Don't expect to go through any legal procedures or go to a detention center, let alone have any illusions of going to court. Forget those dreams.' That's exactly what they said to me. They told me that they could keep me in this state for a month, six months, a year, or even longer.

Meanwhile, in the wake of Mr. Chen's dramatic escapade, Ms. Pils does not expect a rush of Chinese lawyers and dissidents to be suddenly seeking refuge in Western embassies and consulates, following the lead of Mr. Chen whose fame, after all, preceded him.

And for any dissident or activist to leave China for good, she said, was "a hugely difficult decision, even for those who have been badly tortured."

>> Original Source

FEW people understand the predicament of Chen Guangcheng, the blind human rights activist who sought and then gave up American protection in Beijing, as well as I do. No matter what he has decided, whether to stay in China or to leave, he has made both the right choice and the wrong choice. I faced a similarly difficult situation.

In March 1979, I was arrested and spent more than 14 years in solitary confinement for promoting freedom and democracy, and denouncing Deng Xiaoping's attempts to create a new type of dictatorship in China.

In September 1993, one week before the International Olympic Committee voted on Beijing's (ultimately unsuccessful) bid for the 2000 Summer Olympics, the Chinese government released me, six months ahead of schedule. This also coincided with President Bill Clinton's efforts to persuade Congress to delink human rights and trade by making China's most-favored-nation trade status permanent. With Congress deadlocked on the issues, Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher set up a meeting with me in Beijing to seek my views.

When the Chinese government got wind of it, they immediately detained me. The illegal practice, which has recently been written into Chinese law, is called "residence under surveillance." An official, who claimed to represent President Jiang Zemin, came to negotiate with me. He had a simple request: I should not meet with the secretary of state, and if I agreed there was no need to make a public statement about my decision.

"We understand you very well and we never propose anything that you cannot accept," the official said. "As long as you agree to cancel your meeting with the Americans, we'll satisfy whatever requests you make."

Their offer, even though accompanied by veiled threats, sounded very attractive. "We will not arrest any of your people," the official promised, referring to other democratic activists. "Besides, we are going to release another batch of dissidents soon. We'll allow you to establish an independent workers' union as well as an organization to protect Chinese artists. We will not stop you from providing humanitarian assistance to your friends."

It was a tough choice. I leaned toward accepting the conditions, because many of my friends were suffering in jail and others were about to enter jail. In addition, workers and artists needed to organize themselves and protect their own interests. However, I was keenly aware that saying yes to the government would also mean that the impact of international pressure would be diluted. Without such pressure, the Chinese government would step up its repression and I would eventually lose my own freedom.

The next day, I learned over the phone that two of my friends had been released. The news helped me decide. I reluctantly agreed to the offer, taking comfort in the fact that my action had at least benefited some of my friends. As for international pressure, I chose to believe that the Americans would stick with their values and not abandon their Chinese friends.

Therefore, I declined Mr. Christopher's invitation with the flimsy excuse that I was indisposed and needed treatment at a place outside Beijing. To be fair, the Chinese government did release some dissidents, and no new arrests were made until 1995. Wang Dan, a leader of the 1989 student pro-democracy movement, was allowed to move freely following his release. But we had miscalculated the depth of American commitment. After Mr. Christopher left, President Clinton, in a reversal of his campaign promises, agreed to renew China's trade benefits and delink them from human rights policy. As Chinese-American trade relations warmed, the crackdown resumed and I was detained once again.

The next May, Mr. Wang and several dissident friends were also arrested and locked up with me in the name of "residence under surveillance." A friend in the police force warned me, "The two sides have reconciled their differences," referring to China and America. "You need to figure out how to handle the new situation."

In December 1995, after a hasty trial, I was sentenced to another 14 years in prison for "attempts to subvert the government."

Mr. Clinton did keep some of his promises. He managed to bring me to the United States, in 1997, and Mr. Wang, in 1998. He intended to show that the granting of trade benefits and the removal of post-Tiananmen sanctions did not mean the United States would be indifferent to the human rights issues in China.

From my experience, one can see how the Communist Party operates -- why it makes promises and what its so-called guarantees mean. It is obvious that Mr. Chen did not understand the emptiness of these promises, which explains why he initially accepted the government's pledges and left the United States Embassy in Beijing, where he had fled after escaping house arrest in his village, for treatment at a hospital. (On Friday, a tentative agreement that would allow Mr. Chen to travel to the United States as a student was announced.)

In my time, the Communist Party kept its promise for as long as one year because human rights were directly linked with trade. Now that such international pressure does not exist, the party no longer feels the need to keep its word. The Chinese leadership does not fear the United States government; it only fears the loss of its power.

Human rights have been overpowered by economic interests; the cause is as hopeless as that of the big United States trade deficit with China. With the loss of any viable economic means to pressure and penalize the Chinese Communist Party, one has to ask: On what basis does America believe that the Chinese government will keep the promises it makes?

By Ashley Hayes | CNN International

May 01, 2012

When Ji Yeqing awakened, she was already in the recovery room.

Chinese authorities had dragged her out of her home and down four flights of stairs, she said, restraining and beating her husband as he tried to come to her aid.

They whisked her into a clinic, held her down on a bed and forced her to undergo an abortion.

Her offense? Becoming pregnant with a second child, in violation of China's one-child policy.

"After the abortion, I felt empty, as if something was scooped out of me," Ji told a congressional panel in September. "My husband and I had been so excited for our new baby. Now suddenly all that hope and joy and excitement disappeared. ... I was very depressed and despondent. For a long time, whenever I thought about my lost child, I would cry."

As she lay unconscious, she said, an IUD to prevent future pregnancies was inserted.

The issue of forced abortions -- and in some cases, forced sterilizations -- in China has seized the spotlight in recent days with news of escaped activist Chen Guangcheng.

Chen, a blind, self-taught lawyer, rose to fame in the late 1990s because of his advocacy for what he calls victims of abusive practices, such as forced abortions, by Chinese family planning officials. He investigated forced abortions and sterilizations in eastern China -- a practice China denies -- and helped organize a class-action lawsuit on behalf of victims, for which he served four years in prison.

A fellow activist, Hu Jia, said Chen has taken refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

"Chen may be safe for the moment, but the women for whom he risked everything are not," said Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women's Rights Without Frontiers, a California-based organization that describes itself as a "broad-based, international coalition that opposes forced abortion and sexual slavery in China."

"Forced abortion is not a choice," Littlejohn said. "It is official government rape."

On a January 2011 visit to the United States, Chinese President Hu Jintao reportedly denied that China was forcing women to submit to abortions. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Florida, who gave Hu a list of human rights concerns, said that Hu insisted a forced-abortion policy did not exist, according to media reports.

China's population is the largest on earth, with more than 1.34 billion people. Since its implementation in 1979, the one-child policy has prevented more than 400 million births in China, according to China's National Population and Family Planning Commission.

About 13 million abortions are performed nationwide each year, the commission has said -- about 35,000 a day. It is unknown how many of those are coerced.

But the one-child policy has been blamed for abuses. In some cases, advocates say, fetuses identified as female are aborted, or midwives strangle a female infant with the umbilical cord during delivery, identifying the baby as "stillborn," according to All Girls Allowed, a nonprofit group that aims to end female "gendercide," educate abandoned girls, rescue trafficked children and defend women's reproductive rights.

Other females are abandoned, left to die or raised as orphans.

Chinese traditionally prefer boys over girls because they are seen as better able to provide for the family and carry on the family bloodline. As a result, the practice of aborting female fetuses or abandoning infant girls continues, particularly in rural areas.

In November, according to state-run news agency Xinhua, Premier Wen Jiabao, in a speech to the National Working Conference on Women and Children, "urged banning illegal fetus gender identification and illegal abortion."

"The social status of the female population indicates the level of social progress (of a nation), while children are the future and hope of a nationality and a nation," Wen said.

Last summer, Xinhua reported that "millions of Chinese men of marrying age may be living as frustrated bachelors by 2020" because of the gender imbalance. In 2010, China's sex ratio at birth was 118 boys for every 100 girls, the news agency said.

China kicked off a national campaign "to significantly curb non-medical sex determinations and sex-selective abortions to balance the gender ratio," Xinhua said. Also during the campaign, "efforts will be made to raise awareness of gender equality, to severely punish those involved in cases of non-medical sex determinations and sex-selective abortions, and to strengthen monitoring."

Liu Qian, vice minister of the Ministry of Health, said that doctors violating the ban would be stripped of their licenses or penalized, and involved medical institutions would also be punished, according to Xinhua.

The one-child policy could contribute to China's high rate of female suicide, according to All Girls Allowed.

China is the only country in the world where the female suicide rate is higher than that of men -- some 500 women a day, the group said, citing statistics from the World Health Organization and the U.S. State Department.

In its 2009 Human Rights Report, the State Department noted that "many observers believed that violence against women and girls, discrimination in education and employment, the traditional preference for male children, birth-limitation policies, and other societal factors contributed to the high female suicide rate. Women in rural areas, where the suicide rate for women was three to four times higher than for men, were especially vulnerable."

Sometimes the consequences are even more severe. In October 2011, a woman who was six months pregnant died during a forced abortion in eastern China, according to Women's Rights Without Frontiers.

Last month, a woman in the same region was forced to undergo an abortion while nine months pregnant, the organization reported. The baby was born alive, but then was drowned in a bucket, according to the organization. A photo of the infant's body floating in the bucket was circulated on Weibo, the Chinese version of Twitter, sparking widespread outrage.

Chinese officials are prohibited under law from "infringing on the rights and interests of citizens when promoting compliance with population planning policies," according to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, created by Congress to monitor human rights and the rule of law in China. However, the commission in its most recent annual report noted "reports of official campaigns, as well as numerous individual cases in which officials used violent methods to coerce citizens to undergo sterilizations or abortions or pay heavy fines for having 'out-of-plan' children," meaning a family's second child.

In one example from October 2010, the commission said, a woman in southeastern China who was eight months pregnant with her second child was kidnapped and detained for 40 hours. She was forcibly injected with a substance that caused the fetus to abort. Her husband reportedly was not permitted to see her during this time, the commission said.

"Nothing in human history compares to the magnitude of China's 33-year assault on women and children," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey and chairman of the commission, during the September hearing at which Ji Yeqing testified.

"Today in China, rather than being given maternal care, pregnant women without birth-allowed permits are hunted down and forcibly aborted. ... For over three decades, brothers and sisters have been illegal; a mother has absolutely no right to protect her unborn baby from state-sponsored violence."

"Out of plan" children whose parents do not pay fines may go without household registration, or hukou, which presents obstacles to social benefits including subsidized health care and public education, All Girls Allowed said, citing the commission's 2010 report.

A woman's family members, including her husband, parents, in-laws or siblings, may also be targeted for violations of the policy, according to Women's Rights Without Borders, which published a 2005 report compiled from Chen's notes into cases he was investigating before his arrest. The report alleges arrest, torture, beatings and fines of family members for the violations of relatives. It also documents a case where a woman suffered health problems after being forced to undergo a tubal ligation despite her high blood pressure.

Ji told lawmakers her first forced abortion was in 2003, after officials said she and her husband would be fined $31,000 for their second child and fired from their jobs. Her second came in 2006, despite the fact she and her husband at that time were willing to pay the fine and lose their jobs.

She continues to suffer consequences from the abortions. Her husband divorced her, she said, because she could not give him a son (the couple already had a daughter). After she remarried and moved to the United States in 2010, she said, she visited a clinic to have her IUD removed and undergo an exam. "The doctor told me that I had cervical erosion, likely due to the poor medical conditions of my forced abortions," she said.

Liu Ping told a similar story to Congress last year. She said after giving birth to her son, she was required to undergo five abortions between 1983 and 1990. During the last procedure, an IUD was inserted.

"When I learned of the procedure, I protested that I had a kidney disease and could not keep the IUD, but they completely ignored me," she said. "The doctor just gave the bill to my husband and told him to pay." Her husband was later arrested, she said, and she was given a "serious administrative warning" at her job and fined six months' pay.

Liu had to report to the factory clinic each month for an exam to make sure she had not removed the IUD on her own or become pregnant again, she said.

In 1997, she missed a monthly pregnancy check because she was caring for her terminally ill mother, she testified.

"Agents from the Family Planning Commission waited at my home to drag me to the exam," she said. "When they pushed me to the ground, I fell and hurt my neck vertebrae. My spirit completely collapsed after this one. I attempted suicide, but was stopped by my family from jumping."

Liu was able to move to the United States and she and her husband reconciled after a divorce.

"I feel happiness and joyful," she told lawmakers. "But I know in my homeland, China, there are millions of women who are suffering as I did. Each day thousands of young lives are being destroyed. I beg everyone to save them."

CNN's Jaime FlorCruz contributed to this report.

 >> Original Report