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China Releases Cyber Dissident
Ridgelift writes "Reuters UK has the story on the release of three 'cyber dissidents' just one week before a trip by visit by Premier Wen Jiabao to the United States. One of the dissidents, 23-year-old Liu Di, aka the 'Stainless Steel Mouse,' had been detained since November 2002. She wrote political satire about the ruling Communist Party and posted messages in Internet chatrooms calling for the release of online dissidents. She was never formally charged, but kept at Qincheng Prison for over a year."
How is it that some people get cool nicknames, like "the Stainless Steel Mouse" and "Iceman" and "Dozer." The best I could ever manage was Lunchbox...
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!
This seems pretty high-profile and has piqued my interest; anyone have a link (ideally translated) to the "Political Satire" that was good enough to land this young woman in prison for a year?
RD
Never formally charged! That's outrageous! When will those Chicoms desist from such tyrannical and autocratic practices and embrace democracy, a proper Bill of Rights and the rule of law like we have here in the good ol' US of A.
"Mitnick was held without bail for over two years before sentencing: he has said that he set some kind of United States record by being held for four and a half years without a bail hearing, while also held in solitary confinement for eight months 'in order to prevent a possible nuclear strike being initiated by me from a prison payphone'."
Kevin_Mitnick
So Qincheng is the Chinese word for Guantanamo, then? Good to know.
Money for nothing, pix for free
...if not for the fact that it's probably just a PR move. It seems like every time the U.S. has something to do with China, human rights becomes the issue of the day. By releasing a couple of dissidents, China can say "Look, we respect human rights." It rings very hollow.
Before we get all high and mighty, and conclude that we in the United States are so much better, superior, or luckier, remember about the prisoners the US is holding RIGHT NOW in Guantanamo Bay.
These prisoners of the US Government were held for a year or more.
Let's clean up our own act before we get all high and mighty about the Chinese, heh?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
As the article and summary both mention, the release comes a week before the Premiere's visit to the US. An article in Der Spiegel claims, however, that the release was primarily motivated by the visit of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
An AP version of the story mentions Schroeders visit (which the Reuters story linked to by the summary does not), but does not go as far as claiming as Der Spiegel does that "[the release] is a gift for Schroeder" (my translation). That particular quote is attributed to Frank Lu of the Information Center for Democracy and Human Rights, a Hong Kong-based watchdog group that is a primary source for both the AP and Spiegel articles.
You can't think of a better way to govern that many people than an authoritarian regime with no elections that proclaims itself to be the "People's Government" and has imprisoned and murdered tens of millions of people for disagreeing?
Not a very deep thinker are you? The US and EU combined are about half the population of China. Do you mean to say that if our populations were simply to double, our best option would be to abandon democracy, rule of law, elections, free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc., and demonstrate that anyone who disagreed would end up dead? That's really the best you can come up with?
You sound like a product of Chinese (re)education.
Of course, you could argue that we can do it because we don't have to have one government controlling all of those people. We have several governments, each covering only a portion of those people, each subject to independent replacement every election day.
Of course China doesn't have to do it all with one government either. The Tibetans, Uighurs, Taiwanese, Hong Kongese...would love to take some of the "burden" off those poor overworked murderers in Beijing. But Beijing is just like you. They can't think of a better way for them to keep governing than by doing what they're doing, either.
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
- the US
- is never right about anything it does,
- Europe calls it a "crime against humanity" when the US executes 71 people in 2002
- groups like our faithful slashdot posters and Amnesty International constantly bitch and whine about how evil the US is, and
- basically ALL the problems of the world are America's fault
and,- China (in recent times)
- builds the great firewall of China,
- suppresses free speech,
- executes 1,000+ people in 2002 (over 14x the US total)
- conquers countries and actually FORMALLY integrates them into China,
- moves people in forced migrations, and
- commits various other human right abuses,
and the our "right-thinking left-wing friends" never say shit about it?I realize anti-Americanism is popular, but ...
I notice people are willing to fight for freedom for the Iraqis, for the Chinese, for every country imagineable but in the USA we want a police state to protect ourselves from the terrorists? I'm confused, someone please explain this to me. We pass the patriot act, and make it possible to toss anyone in prison who even resembles a terrorist with no trial, nothing. I'd be worried about the USA.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
Why are so many Americans in prison, under third world medical conditions? The war on drugs, primarily, but also idiotic minimum sentencing laws. Where China executes people as a "deterrence", the US lock them up for decades for the same reason, while still retaining a provably flawed capital punishment system. And, by the way, according to Amnesty International:
There are many other very serious social issues in the US (insufficient health care, police brutality, religious fundamentalism, sexual hysteria ..), and just waving the finger at China and shouting "Woo, we're so great" is not going to cut it. The US needs to get serious about cleaning up at home before trying to impose itself as the world police elsewhere. Getting rid of your idiot president would be a good start.
or even Guantanamo Bay... last week in Miami there were hundreds of people locked up for protesting at the anti-FTAA demonstrations, many still there struggling for bail money.
When people came to protest at the jail, the police simply proceeded to arrest the protestors again to get them out of the way.
If you want an example of a "police state" just look at the USA right now, you don't need to look as far as China.
more arrests and jail info at
http://www.ftaaimc.org/ and http://www.stopftaa.org
it has been clear in all education on "rules of war" in the Swedish army for the last 20 years at least that there are "combatants" and "illegal combatants" or "bandits". And I have served in the army, so I know.
I, too, served in the Swedish army, and you are both right and wrong...
There exists a distinction between combatants and "bandits". But bandits (or illegal combatants) are criminals, and treated as such.
They are not stuck in a legal limbo, that is what Ashcroft invented.
Simply put, they are either combatants and criminals, there are rules for dealing with both.
Ashcroft just doesn't feel like following the rules, so he makes up an exception...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."