Zhao Changqing (趙常青), one of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing, has been awarded a human rights award for his constant and unyielding efforts to promote China’s democratization.
Exiled former student activist Wang Dan (王丹) announced on Facebook on Tuesday that Zhao, one of those who endorsed the Charter 08 manifesto published in 2008, has been named a recipient of this year’s Human Rights Award for Chinese Youth.
One of the authors of Charter 08 is Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波), winner of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
Wang said he made the announcement on behalf of all members of the election committee for the award, which he and 88 other exiled Chinese dissidents founded in 2001 to encourage young Chinese to help continue efforts to promote democracy, freedom and human rights in China based on ideas advocated in the 1989 movement.
Wang said Zhao was chosen for the award because he had never given up his ideals or abandoned his duty as a citizen to the nation and society.
Zhao is pushing for China’s democratization, Wang said.
Born in 1969, Zhao has been active in pro-democracy and human rights campaigns since he was a student leader during the 1989 Tiananmen protests, for which he was imprisoned for six months.
He was later jailed for five years for pro-democracy activities in 2002 on charges of “inciting subversion of state power.”
Last year, Zhao was arrested again for promoting a civil movement. He currently remains in detention awaiting trial.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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
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