Chinese citizens share their thoughts about Google

The French website Aujourd’hui la Chine has posted candid interviews with two Chinese citizens who joined a group of Google supporters outside of the company’s headquarters in Beijing.

The interviews are in French but we’ve translated them below. It is quite striking how openly they speak about the significance of Google’s decision and the lack of freedom of expression in China.

Woman:
Today, I brought flowers to thank Google. I support them. I thank them for having spoken the truth and for having shown the reality of censorship. There are so many sites that we don’t have access to; the web is not free and this, no company ever says publicly. All the companies that are here make compromises with the government…either to access the Chinese market or to negotiate under the table. Google has spoken the truth.

Man:
Me, I’m a fan of Google. It helps me a lot with my work and my every day life. Baidu provides mostly the Chinese version of info, but because we now live in a global village, we also need international info…which isn’t the same as Chinese info. Frankly, Baidu isn’t the best.

Woman:
Baidu isn’t useful. It cooperates with the Chinese government and I don’t want this corporation to influence my day-to-day life. There’s no point in negotiating with the government. Freedom of expression isn’t negotiable, it’s a human right.

SFT Canada’s Tsering Confronts HDI/Continental Minerals’ Executives

Footage from HDI/Continental Minerals Shareholders’ meeting in Vancouver, Canada on June 24th. Tibetans and their supporters protested at the meeting to intenisfy pressure on the company to Stop Mining Tibet.

Smurf Emancipation Day – SFT UK’s response to China’s propaganda

SFT UK’s response to China’s new propaganda holiday:

The smurfs also held a protest outside the Chinese Embassy in London on Saturday.

New Photos from Tibet: March and Protest by Monks on Losar

RFA  just posted photos of an amazing protest march and candle light vigil by monks on the first day of Losar: Mangra County, Tsolho Prefecture:  http://www.rfa.org/english/news/tibet/tibet-march-02262009163337.html

About one hundred monks from Lutsang Monastery marched approximately 1 km to the Mangra County Govt. Building, where the made several demands.

Lutsang Monastery is located in Mangra Country, a few hours from Rebong. Monks from this same monastery also took part in a protest last year on March 10, 2008:

Lutsang Monastery (Mangra County, Tsolho ” Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture “): A protest has been reported from the traditional Tibetan area of Amdo in Mangra County, Tsolho (Ch: Hainan) ‘Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture’ (”TAP”) Qinghai Province. About 137 monks from Lutsang Monastery in Mangra County, Tsolho “TAP” and 215 laypersons from the area were barred by the Mangra County People’s Armed Police (PAP) forces when they converged outside the County Assembly Hall where a government sponsored show was going on. Sensing a protest by the Tibetans, the show was forced to discontinue. Later monks and laypeople started shouting slogans “Long live Dalai Lama” and “The Dalai Lama should return to Tibet”. At the moment there is no report of Tibetans having been arrested from the area, although, the concerned authorities are known to be investigating those involved in the protest.

CNN: UK police arrest Tibet activists during Wen visit

A lot of action in the UK today….

LONDON, England (CNN) — Pro-Tibet activists jumped security barriers and scuffled with police outside the Chinese embassy in London Sunday as hundreds of demonstrators gathered to protest a visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao.

Protesters carrying Tibetan flags chanted “China Murderers,” and “China Out of Tibet,” as Wen, on a three day trip to Britain, arrived at the embassy.

China has long been criticized by the international community for its human rights record in Tibet. Tibetans are pushing for autonomy from China and greater religious freedom.

Wen was greeted at the embassy by a firecracker display in honor of the Chinese New Year before being escorted inside by security personnel.

A group of protesters attempted to jump over security blockades when Wen’s motorcade arrived at the embassy. Several were wrestled to the ground by police and arrested.

Video and the full story are here…

BBtv (Beijing): interview with pro-Tibet videobloggers in hiding.

Last week, eight American citizens were detained in Beijing for participating in pro-Tibetan sovereignty protests near the site of the 2008 Olympics, with Students for a Free Tibet. Two videobloggers who documented those protest and guerrilla art installations evaded detention, and spoke to Boing Boing TV on Friday Beijing time about why they were there, what they witnessed, and why it mattered.

Jay Dedman and Ryanne Hodson of Ryanishungry.com spoke to us over Skype from a hostel in Beijing. One of the actions they documented in photo and video was the hanging of an “LED throwies” light banner, shown below, which read “FREE TIBET.” We agreed to hold this Boing Boing tv episode until after we received word that they’d safely left the country. They have returned home, so I am posting the piece today.

View the original post at http://www.boingboing.net/2008/08/25/bbtv-beijing-intervi.html

CitizenReporter.org Podcast on Brian Conley & Beijing6

Bicycle Mark posts:

The following podcast features an interview with Brian’s wife, Eowyn, who explains what she knows about Brian’s situation, the group, and people who have risked their freedom and well-being in protest of the Chinese government and their disregard for basic human rights. More information can be found here. Please listen to the program and do pass on the link, otherwise all we have is the image of the mainstream press… the picture perfect images of the olympic games and China on television.

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view the original blog post here

NY Times on NYC Projection Action

Jim Dwyer of the New York Times has a fantastic article about the New York City digital projection action on the Chinese Consulate. Dwyer covers how the action was done, what made it effective, and the ensuing battle with the IOC and YouTube to keep video of the action online.

The pictures were four and five flickering stories high. And for about 25 minutes on the night before the opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Games, that video, produced by Students for a Free Tibet, looped against the wall of the consulate. The modern Olympics have always been a theater for sport, commerce and politics, tightly controlled by the International Olympic Committee and the host country. This year, there are stages everywhere….

For pure spectacle, it was hard to top the anti-Chinese video that was streamed onto the consulate wall. Giant projections have been used in other protests — in Los Angeles, for instance, critics of the Catholic hierarchy’s handling of sex-abuse allegations streamed pictures onto the cardinal’s residence. The tactic is a linear descendant of the rock and slingshot, with images catapulted into stinging view by a 5,000-lumen projector.

The article goes on to show how SFT pushed back on the removal of the YouTube video of the protest and how we were able to get the video back online.

A few hours later, Mr. Gulotta said, a friend sent him an e-mail message asking if he had taken down the video. He went to YouTube and saw that it had been removed by a “third party” — the International Olympic Committee — on the grounds that the use of the Olympic rings was a copyright infringement.

Mr. Gulotta struck back, filing an appeal to YouTube, arguing that the brief appearance of the rings amounted to “fair use” under copyright standards.

“The I.O.C. was safeguarding China’s image,” Mr. Gulotta said.

Representatives for the Olympic committee did not respond to a request for comment on Friday, but they had previously said that their request to YouTube was made automatically by a software robot that searches for unauthorized uses of the Olympic logo. (Normally, the use of the rings is limited to commercial sponsors who have paid for the right.)

In any event, the video was restored to YouTube this week. “That part of the operation got more attention than the action itself,” Ms. Nirankari said.

So far, no one has tried to prohibit such projections. Ingenious as the tactic is, it does involve hijacking someone’s property, if fleetingly. Mr. Gulotta agreed that the projections had to be used “responsibly,” but he said the Chinese government had it coming. “If any individual had done anything to the level of what the Chinese government has done in Tibet,” he said, “they would actually be inviting this onto themselves.”

This is great coverage and the sort of article that really shows how creative and innovative SFT has become in an effort to bring global attention to China’s brutal, illegal occupation of Tibet while the Olympics are going on. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention and you can be sure that SFT will keep finding new ways to bring Tibet into the international spotlight until Tibet is free.

High Tech Action @ NYC Chinese Consulate

File this digital projection action onto the Chinese consulate in New York City as one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen…

Click here to view video of the action.

The Beijing Media Story

This is my second day here in Beijing. After spending a lot of yesterday on camera, it’s a little hard to relax. So in between interviews, today I’m going to head out with the laptop and a video camera to see if I can give you an idea of what the city looks like on the eve of the opening ceremony.

But first, I wanted to tell you what I’ve seen of the media coverage so far. I’ll admit that I haven’t watched much state owned tv, as there’s only so much Olympics boosterism a person can take. Especially the music videos about the Olympics sung by Jackie Chan and Chinese pop stars – yecch. Once you start avoiding the state owned channels, though,there really isn’t much left.
Fortunately, at least in my hotel, I can still get CNN, which has been showing footage of the action at the Bird’s Nest stadium.

If possible, the print media is even worse than TV. China Daily, “the national English language newspaper,” is delivered right to my room. It’s a little like the Onion sometimes – so over the top that it SHOULD be satire, but it’s actually deadly serious. Here are a few choice headlines: “Torch overcomes all odds,” “Games provide inspiration for VW chief,” “US cyclists sorry for wearing masks,” (that one was on the front page), and my personal favorite,
“Fear of China groundless.”

By far the most interesting, though, was the Xinhua – China Daily’s page two coverage of yesterday’s action. The article accurately reports the text of the banners, even mentioning that the “free Tibet” banner as written in Chinese. The lead sentence provides a telling picture of how China views the Olympics, with the claim that activists were deported after they broke security and Olympic Games rules.”

Really? It’s against the Olympic rules for tourists to climb poles and hang banners? Somehow I doubt that, but it’s certainly true enough that the IOC has bent over backwards to accommodate China’s insistence on maintaining the right to limit freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of assembly. Thanks, IOC.