The Expo 2010 Shanghai slogan “Better city — Better life” is meaningless when a government imposes so many curbs on freedom of expression, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said in a press release on Monday.
“‘City under surveillance — Lives under surveillance’ would be a better slogan for this World Expo in China,” the organization said.
Ahead of the official opening of the World Expo on Saturday, RSF has launched its own virtual pavilion named Garden of Freedoms.
The online “Garden of Freedoms” (en.rsf.org/shanghai_en.html), available in Simplified Chinese, French and English, is dedicated to freedom of expression and has a cyber-police pavilion, a Tibet pavilion and a “prisoners of conscience enclosure,” where visitors can sign petitions for their release.
“The ‘Garden of Freedoms’ will be the only place in the Shanghai World Expo where you will be able to discover the realities that the Chinese authorities go out of their way to hush up. Several dozen Shanghai human rights activists are currently under close police surveillance to prevent them from meeting the foreign journalists who will be covering the inauguration,” RSF said.
“A World Expo is meant to bring people together around such values as progress, humanism and culture,” it said. “What kind of universal values is China offering us when it jails such advocates of democracy as the intellectual Liu Xiaobo [劉曉波]? Why do the representatives of the democratic countries, including French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who will be at the inauguration, say nothing about China’s dark side?”
Two representatives of RSF — including secretary-general Jean-Francois Julliard — have been denied visas to visit Shanghai.
An official at the Chinese embassy in Paris told RSF that Beijing had instructed them to refuse the visas.
Asked by the Taipei Times if RSF expected Chinese hacker attacks on the site, Vincent Brossel, head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk, said that while they feared this was a possibility, nothing had happened since the “Garden of Freedoms” campaign was launched.
“The last hacking attack on the RSF Web site dates back to August 2008 and the site remains blocked [in China],” he said. “If an attack occurs, we hope our host will be able to assist us.”
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
RSS