The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday sent a letter to Chinese President Hu Jintao (
According to human-rights activists in China, Lou Yongzhong (羅永忠) was taken from his apartment in the northeastern city of Changchun on June 13 by the Jilin Provincial National Security Department.
Department officials told Lou his arrest was for "endangering the national security" of China, before taking him to Changchun's No. 3 Detention Center where has been held since, activists said.
Lou's computer, printer and copies of his writings were also confiscated
Officially, the Jilin security department has denied it is holding Luo.
In the letter to Hu, executive director of the CPJ Ann Cooper reminded the president of his government's pledge to guarantee freedom of expression as enshrined in China's constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which China is a signatory
Cooper urged Hu to give this "urgent matter" his full attention and called for the "immediate and unconditional release" of Lou.
Lou, a handicapped Chinese citizen living in Changchun and the owner of a small grocery store, has published more than 150 articles online.
Many are political commentaries, with topics ranging from the plight of disabled people in China and the need for constitutional reform to ensure greater human-rights protection.
Human-rights groups believe it was a selection of articles criticizing former Chinese president Jiang Zemin's (江澤民) "Three Representatives" theory that brought Lou to the attention of the authorities.
Over the past few years, the Chinese government has come down heavily on Internet content it regards as subversive.
Cooper said that Lou is the latest casualty in an ongoing campaign against online speech.
In her letter to Hu she wrote that the CPJ will closely monitor the writer's situation.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching