Tag Archives: repression
Tibetan Farmer Is Eighth Protester To Self-Immolate This Month
NPR
Oct. 22, 2012
By Sophia Jones
The Tibetan Labrang Monastery in Gansu, northwestern China, is normally a place of tranquility. Now, it is also known for tragedy. Early this morning, a Tibetan farmer known as Dhondup headed to Labrang to perform the Buddhist ritual of walking around the monastery in prayer. Near the prayer hall inside the gold-roofed monastery, Dhondup lit himself ablaze in protest of Chinese rule in Tibet. This is the second self-immolation in Tibet in two days, continuing a disturbing trend among Tibetan protesters.
A picture (note: it is graphic; you may not wish to view it) uploaded by the U.K.-based human rights organization Free Tibet shows what is said to be Dhondup’s body engulfed in flames against a backdrop of white brick and blue sky. According to witnesses, Buddhist monks surrounded his charred remains so that Chinese authorities could not confiscate the body.
Stephanie Brigde, director of the organization, said in a written statement that Dhondup is now the eighth Tibetan protester to self-immolate this month. The group claims that nearly 60 Tibetans — mostly monks and nuns — have turned to suicide by fire in Tibet and bordering Chinese provinces since spring of last year. Few survived and many of their whereabouts are unknown, but activists point fingers at the Chinese government.
“China must recognize that Tibetan demands for freedom cannot be stamped out by brute force,” Brigde wrote following Dhondup’s death, adding that China “must enter into meaningful dialogue with Tibetan representatives, supported by the international community.”
Turkey has jailed more journalists than Iran, Eritrea or China: watchdog
Reuters
Oct. 22, 2012
By Daren Butler
ISTANBUL — Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government has waged one of the world’s biggest crackdowns on press freedom in recent years, jailing more journalists than Iran, China or Eritrea, a leading media watchdog said on Monday.
The damning report from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) added to a chorus of criticism from the European Union and rights groups of the EU-candidate country’s mass detention of reporters, most of whom are kept in detention while their cases are dealt with.
Around two-thirds were journalists writing about the largely Kurdish southeast, where the government is fighting a separatist rebellion.
The U.S.-based watchdog criticised Erdogan’s public disparagement of journalists, the use of pressure tactics to encourage self-censorship, and the launching of thousands of criminal cases against reporters on charges such as “denigrating Turkishness”.
Pussy Riot band members sent to remote prison camps
Guardian
Oct. 22, 2012
By Miriam Elder
Two members of the anti-Kremlin punk band Pussy Riot have been sent to remote prison camps to serve their sentences, the group has said.
Maria Alyokhina, 24, will serve the rest of her two-year term at a women’s prison camp in Perm, a Siberian region notorious for hosting some of the Soviet Union’s harshest camps. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, has been sent to Mordovia, a region that also hosts a high number of prisons.
“These are the harshest camps of all the possible choices,” the band said via its Twitter account on Monday.
Bahraini court confirms jail terms for medics who aided protesters
RT
Oct. 1, 2012
Bahrain’s top court confirmed the jail sentences of nine doctors for their role in last year’s pro-democracy protests, state news agency BNA reported. The medics will be imprisoned for up to five years.
On Monday, Attorney General Abdul-Rahman al-Sayed said the country’s Court of Cassation rejected all of the defendants’ appeals and upheld the verdicts, BNA said.
The nine medics were among the twenty individuals tried by a Bahraini military tribunal in September 2011. The tribunal charged the doctors with felonies for their role in the February protests, which included treating antigovernment activists wounded by security forces and reporting those injuries to foreign media. Some of the medics also participated in the protests.
FBI raids homes of Occupy protesters in Oregon and Washington
WSWS
Aug. 13, 2012
By Tom Carter
Over the last month, heavily armed “domestic terrorism” units of the FBI used battering rams and stun grenades to conduct early-morning raids on the homes of political protesters in Seattle and Olympia, Washington and Portland, Oregon. On July 25, three homes were raided in Portland alone and, since July 10, as many as six homes have been raided.
These raids are only the latest in an emerging pattern of similar raids conducted by the Obama administration in order to terrorize, suppress and chill political dissent, in flagrant violation of the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.
“The warrants are sealed,” FBI spokeswoman Beth Anne Steele told the Oregonian newspaper, “and I anticipate they will remain sealed.” Steele described the raids as part of an “ongoing violent crime” investigation, which is related to the recent Occupy May Day protests, during which a number of minor acts of vandalism allegedly took place.
