Chinese authorities have ordered two elderly women to spend one year in a labor camp after they applied to hold a protest during the Beijing Olympics against being forced from their homes, a relative said yesterday.
The women were still at home three days after being officially notified, but were under the observation of a neighborhood watch group, said Li Xuehui, the son of one of the women.
A rights group said the threat of prison appeared to be an intimidation tactic.
Li said no cause was given for the order to imprison his 79-year-old mother, Wu Dianyuan, and her neighbor, Wang Xiuying, 77.
“Wang Xiuying is almost blind and crippled. What sort of reeducation through labor can she serve?” Li said in a telephone interview. “But they can also be taken away at any time.”
The order followed the pair’s repeated attempts to apply for permission to hold a protest at one of three areas designated by the government as available for demonstrations during the Games, which end on Sunday.
Beijing has used the existence of the protest areas as a way to defend its promise to improve human rights in China that was crucial to its bid to win the games.
Some 77 applications were lodged to hold protests, but none went ahead, and rights groups say the zones were just a way for the Chinese government to put on an appearance of complying with international standards. A handful of people who sought a permit to demonstrate were taken away by security officials, rights groups said.
“This is part of the tough tactics used to intimidate and silence protesters,” said Nicholas Bequelin of the New York-based Human Rights Watch.
“Of course it’s of concern that China will use a system that’s clearly beyond the pale in terms of international standards, in terms of arbitrary deprivation of freedoms and liberties to do that,” he said.
Li said Wu and Wang were ordered to serve a yearlong term of reeducation through labor. The family was notified on Sunday, but officials had not acted on the order by yesterday.
The reeducation system, in place since 1957, allows police to sidestep the need for a criminal trial or a formal charge and directly send people to prison for up to four years to perform penal labor.
Critics say it is misused to detain political or religious activists, and violates suspects’ rights.
The Public Security Bureau had no immediate comment.
A spokeswoman for the Beijing reeducation through labor bureau said: “We have no records of these two names in our system.”
Protests have become common in China, where simmering resentment over layoffs, corruption, land confiscation and other issues explode into sometimes violent action.
The communist leadership remains wary about large demonstrations, fearing they could snowball into anti-government movements.
The sensitivity is more marked during the Olympics, which is meant to showcase China to the world.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
BEIJING’S ‘PAWN’: ‘We, as Chinese, should never forget our roots, history, culture,’ Want Want Holdings general manager Tsai Wang-ting said at a summit in China The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday condemned Want Want China Times Media Group (旺旺中時媒體集團) for making comments at the Cross-Strait Chinese Culture Summit that it said have damaged Taiwan’s sovereignty, adding that it would investigate if the group had colluded with China in the matter and contravened cross-strait regulations. The council issued a statement after Want Want Holdings (旺旺集團有限公司) general manager Tsai Wang-ting (蔡旺庭), the third son of the group’s founder, Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), said at the summit last week that the group originated in “Chinese Taiwan,” and has developed and prospered in “the motherland.” “We, as Chinese, should never
RSS