A new post over at Glutter tells us that Reporters without Borders is making itself heard over the arrest and imprisonment of Chinese who express their opinions on the Internet:

Reporters Without Borders today urged Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to immediately release Du Daobin, the author of many essays on human rights and democracy, who was arrested on 29 October in Yingcheng, in the central province of Hubei.

Du is one of the organisers of a campaign to draw attention to the imprisonment of the young Internet user Liu Di by urging people to shut themselves in the dark during the day to “simulate detention.”

“We regret that the Chinese authorities have turned a deaf hear to the growing number of voices speaking out in China and abroad against their policy of cracking down on cyber-dissidents,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said.

[….]

Liu is a sociology student who has been detained without being tried since 7 November 2002 for messages she posted in Internet forums. A total of 39 people are currently imprisoned in China because of their Internet activities.

As I said yesterday, it is great to see that this case is finally winning the media attention it deserves. As in the recent case of Ma Shiwen, this pressure will most likely result in the “cyber-dissidents'” freedom.

The complete text of Reporters without Borders’ statement can be found at their site. (You can click the link up in the left-hand corner for English.)

My extreme tracking icon is resisting all my attempts to open it, so I’ve been unable to measure site traffic for two days now (is that a blessing or a curse?). I’m debating switching to Site Meter and was hoping someone might have a recommendation. All input is appreciated.

Update: Problem fixed, getting an invisible tracker….

It sounds like the prosecutors’ cases are disintegrating.

China’s crackdown on free expression on the Internet hit difficulties after two high-profile cyber-dissident cases were forced into the spotlight Monday — one over lack of evidence and the other after witnesses alleged police forced them to testify.

Prosecutors bounced back to police a case implicating one of China’s youngest dissidents — a student known as “Stainless Steel Mouse” detained for posting essays calling for democracy on the Internet.

The case of Liu Di, 22, a psychology student taken into custody from her Beijing Normal University dormitory last November, was returned to police Friday due to insufficient evidence, said sources, including her family.

In the other case, an appeal trial of four Internet dissidents opened Monday to decide if they deserved up to 10 years in jail for posting their views on social issues online, relatives and a Hong Kong-based rights group said.

That case is seriously flawed because three key witnesses retracted their statements used as evidence after they were released from detention, claiming police had forced them to make the claims, said Frank Lu, director of the Hong Kong Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy.

I am thrilled that there might be a happy ending to this nightmare. It’s still too soon to tell, but simply seeing it being covered is a good sign. It’s important to remember, however, that these were two very high-profile cases, followed closely by leading human rights groups. Are there others locked up for similar crimes who weren’t lucky enough to draw international outrage? I can’t say for certain, though I have my suspicions.

When there is no place to turn for justice sometimes all you can do is riot. Some say that “several thousand people” participated:

Thousands of people in east China’s Shandong province rioted last week, storming a government building and smashing equipment after an official vehicle ran over and killed a vendor, a human rights group and residents said.

The riot — one of the largest in recent years — occurred on October 28, a day after a confrontation between officials and a man selling fresh pancakes from a roving stove-wagon in Zhoucheng city.

On October 27, the vendor, surnamed Shao, was selling the popular egg and onion pancakes when some employees from the “city management” department confiscated his wagon and loaded it onto their vehicle, sources said.

Shao — seeing his source of livelihood being carted away — blocked the vehicle’s path. He was run over as a crowd watched, the Hong Kong-based Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

The next day, several thousand people stormed the city’s communist party government offices, breaking through a police line of some 800 officers, residents and the Center said.

200 people were arrested, the police claiming, of course, that they had “ulterior motives.”

An article in the International Herald Tribune marvels, at least for a moment, at China’s success in becoming the 3rd nation to launch an astronaut into space, and then uses it to form an analogy:

At the same time, the space flight is an apt metaphor for the risks inherent in China’s economic rise. It is representative of the economy’s worst element: its top-down nature.

This is what the world’s most populous nation needs: bottom-up entrepreneurship that creates new businesses and jobs; a strong regulatory infrastructure for its equity and bond markets; aggressive education programs so that the tens of millions of workers being displaced by an opening economy can compete in the age of globalization; a plan to tackle a worsening AIDS crisis; and a greater effort to protect the environment.

What is Beijing offering? Vanity projects, and a fast- growing number of them. Aside from the ambitious, headline-grabbing space program, Beijing has been busy building the world’s biggest dam, its tallest building, its longest bridge, its highest railway (to Tibet), its biggest stadium for the 2008 Olympics and, yes, its fastest-growing economy.

The writer, a Bloomberg reporter, cleverly points out how time and again such high-flying successes are pre-cursors to disaster, and spells out why this is a particularly strong possiblity in the case of China, where the banking system on which so much lies is rotting from the inside out:

Just as Beijing hopes to grow out of its bad-loan mess, it hopes rockets and space capsules will lift spirits and deflect attention from problems involving human rights issues, financial-system transparency, free speech and dodgy labor laws.

The biggest risk to China’s outlook could lie in the “Skyscraper Curse,” or the uncanny correlation between world’s tallest-building projects – or other vanity ones – and financial crises.

Be it Kuala Lumpur in the late 1990’s, Chicago in 1974 or New York in 1930, the erection of the next architectural monstrosity has been a bizarrely accurate economic indicator. Having claim to the world’s biggest or first this, that or the other thing, is as much about ambition as it is about excess.

Periods of over-investment and financial speculation, fueled by excessive monetary expansion, tend to drive developers, investors and politicians to architectural and scientific one-upmanship. Call it towering hubris, something Beijing seems to have in abundance.

China has been to space, and it is getting the headlines it wanted. But Beijing had better begin expending the same amount of time and resources shoring up its high-flying economy.

I am becoming increasingly convinced that we are witnessing a great big bubble in the making. It may only be half-filled with air at the moment, and it may take years before it bursts. But burst it will, and I hope I’m no where near China when that painful day arrives.

An irreverent opinion piece in the Telegraph, oozing sardonic wit, draws comparisons between a recent wedding and the direction China is taking:

Many congratulations to Hu Haiqing, the daughter of China’s president, Hu Jintao, who has married Mao Daolin, one of the country’s richest internet tycoons.

It is a highly symbolic match. President Hu has repeatedly emphasised the virtues of a “modest and prudent” life, and is steeped in Communist lore – he was Jiang Zemin’s heir apparent for a decade before his appointment as China’s leader a year ago. But, behind all the rhetoric, he has been presiding over a great economic leap: China is going the way of his daughter, embracing capitalism with some passion and at a feverish pace.

After noting the highly celebrated milestones the “new China” has achieved — a man in space, soaring economy, the 2008 Olympics, it suddenly brings us back down to earth and its tone changes markedly:

Economic freedom usually brings, in its wake, social and cultural freedoms. China is not following the model. Tibet is still repressed, Taiwan remains under threat and human rights abuses are legion: 14 years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, thousands are imprisoned and tortured for exercising their rights to freedom of expression.

There are no signs of the repression letting up. Here’s hoping that the marriage of Hu Haiqing and Mao Daolin, both educated at American universities, might herald the arrival of a new generation with an enlightened approach not only to money, but also to free speech.

Yes, here’s hoping. We’ll see….

Of all the depressing stories coming out of China regarding arrests of innocent citizens, whistleblowers and those who simply tried to express their grievances, the story of the young men sentenced to 8- and 10-year sentences for creating an on-line discussion group on China’s social problems struck me as one of the most very tragic.

It is a good sign that they are at least being allowed to appeal their stiff sentences, but it doesn’t make up for the fact that they should never have been arrested, let alone sentenced to up to a decade in prison. Here’s where it stands:

BEIJING, : A court opened the appeal trial of four Internet dissidents to decide if they deserve up to 10 years in jail for posting their views on social issues online, relatives and a Hong Kong-based rights group said.

Xu Wei, Yang Zili, Zhang Honghai, and Jin Haike, are scheduled to appear at a Beijing Higher People’s Court five months after they were sentenced for subverting state power, the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy said.

“The appeals hearing began at 9 am (0100 GMT). The court won’t let us in, but the lawyers have entered,” Yang’s wife Lu Kun told AFP.

The defendants are appealing on the basis that three key witnesses whose testimonies against them in the original trial have since retracted their statements, according to the center. Their original statements had been made while they were in detention.

Yang’s wife Lu said the three witnesses — friends of the four — were not allowed to enter the courtroom even though they were prepared to testify in the defendants’ defense.

The center’s director Frank Lu said the case was seriously flawed. “They can’t prove these four people are guilty. There are no new witnesses,” Frank Lu said.

Xu, a former journalist, and Jin, a young intellectual, were sentenced to 10 years in jail, while the two others received eight-year sentences.

The four were arrested in March 2001 after they established the “New Youth Association,” an intellectual study group that discussed China’s growing social problems, including rural issues and widening inequality.

I know of so many outrages, but this stands out for its sheer senselessness, its blatant unfairness and undisguised cruelty. I know, it’s an unfair world. But there are limits to how far unfairness can go. In this instance, that limit has clearly been crossed, and then some.

An article on the downing of a US helicopter that resulted in the deaths of 15 US soldiers includes a telling observation:

The region, just south of the Euphrates town of Fallujah, has emerged as a center of resentment over the U.S. occupation, and most residents gathered near the crash site celebrated the helicopter’s downing as a victory. By noon, soldiers forced onlookers to evacuate the site.

“Why are the Americans here? They’re just showing off their muscles,” said Habib Ali, 36, a truck driver. “Force creates force.”

Others from the nearby village of Albu Ali Harat gathered around. “This is an expression of our opinion,” he said, “of Muslims, of all people.”

“This is my land, and they came as strangers,” said Jassim Mohammed, 22. “They should be afraid.”

Nafia Fahed Hamoud, 32, a builder who lives near the crash site, praised the person who fired the missile as “an honest man who does not like to be occupied by foreigners.”

What happened to greeting US soldiers with flowers and gifts? This is scary, because it means the atrocities are likely to continue, fueled by popular support. I’d be less nervous if the only ones against us were a shadowy foreign jihad, terrorists who seeped into Iraq to harrass us. When you have a large amount of the populace behind them, you have the ground paved for another Viet Cong.

The link is via Calpundit, who comments:

I wish we had a better clue about just how widespread this kind of sentiment is. Unfortunately, given the Pollyanna PR campaign underway by the administration, it’s impossible to take anything they say at face value. So in the end, even though we’re told that American reporters are practically rooting for failure, it looks like their reports are all we have.

And so far they’ve been pretty accurate. Certainly more so than visiting congressmen and dance troupes returning from their carefully scripted tourist trips, that’s for sure.

If yesterday everyone in Malaysia was stepping over one another to say “Goodbye!” to the beloved Dr. Mahathir, today they are doing the same thing — sort of.

Once again, the newspapers weigh a ton and are packed with supplements, just like yesterday. Once again, local businesses are jamming the papers with page after page of paid advertisements. Only today, they are not saying goodbye to Mahathir, but are instead welcoming the new PM.

The New Straits Times, in its upper right-hand corner, has a big bold headline, “We have faith in you!” And that’s basically what all the ads say. Again, the smiling pictures of the new benevolent yet powerful ruler, the maudlin greetings from the sycophants and the sugary tributes, as though God had touched down in KL. The media are so drunk with praise, that I almost wonder whether the government itself controls the press here. No; couldn’t be….

I tried to imagine a Western newspaper running such a headline (“We have faith in you!”) upon the election of a Western leader. Of course, that’s a futile exercise, as the cultures are so different; here it is absolutely the norm. In the US, once a leader is elected the press sees its function as tearing him down, or at least scrutinizing him mercilessly, looking for any flaw or screw-up.

I go back to Singapore tomorrow morning. This has been quite an adventure. I like Malaysia; it has an earthiness and unpredictability that Singapore lacks. The flight here is about 25 minutes, so KL may be my place to hang out on those weekends when I want to escape Singapore’s at-times stifling monotony.

Kevin has a very funny account of my current attempts to deal with an insulting commenter who calls himself George and who expresses himself with a unique eloquence.

The gist of George’s “argument” is that Kevin and I should move out of Asia because we are critical of it.

This is kind of simplistic, don’t ya think? After all, I criticize Bush and his cohorts as much as I criticize the CCP. Being critical of a country’s leadership doesn’t mean one does not love that country. It could, in fact, mean just the opposite. (After all, why bother criticizing the CCP if I didn’t care about China?) Conrad is always criticizing Tung and there doesn’t seem to be much love lost between Adam and the Chinese government, either, yet I think both are enjoying in their their respective host countries.

Meanwhile, I’ll let George’s posts remain. They say much more about him than about Kevin or me.