Slashdot Mirror
Blogging Sweeps China
An anonymous reader writes "Dissident astro-physicist, Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at UC Berkeley, interviews Isaac Mao, founder of CNBlog for New Scientist. Asked what is his strategy to expand blogging under China's censorship regime, Mao's response is typically Taoist: 'What is our strategy? We do not have a strategy. But the information flow in the blogosphere has its own Way. The Way is our strategy: personal, fast, connected and networked.'"
You say: China allows its dissidents a full voice.
http://www.asianews.it/view.php?l=en&art=1964
Tiananmen dissident tortured to the point of becoming psychotic. He splattered paint on Mao Zedong's portrait.
Beijing (AsiaNews/SCMP) - An imprisoned Chinese dissident has become psychotic as a result of the torture inflicted upon him, one of the man's friend told Free Asia after fleeing China.
Yu Dongyue is a former newspaper editor who was arrested during the Tiananmen protests and sentenced to life for "counter-revolutionary propaganda": he had defaced Mao's portrait by splattering it with paint.
In 2001 Lu Decheng, another dissident, who was jailed for years but released early, saw Yu in Hunan No1 Prison. "He was almost unrecognisable," Mr Lu said who recently escaped the mainland in a perilous three-month journey. "He had a totally dull look in his eyes, and he kept repeating words over and over again as if he were chanting a mantra. He didn't recognise anyone."
"There was a big scar on the right side of his head. I asked his mother if Yu had ever received a head injury, but she said he never had."
Mr Lu said that another inmate at the prison told him that Yu had been tied to a power pole and left in the sun for several days.
"After that, they locked him in solitary confinement for two years and that's when he got like that," Mr Lu stressed. "He has been tortured to the point of psychosis."
Officials at the Hunan No1 Prison were not available for comment.
Yu Dongyue, Lu Decheng and Yu Zhijian were school friends from Hunan province and had been active in the pro-democracy movement before travelling to Beijing in May 1989 to join thousands of demonstrators on Tiananmen Square.
As a result of his involvement, Mr Lu said, his house was demolished, his wife threatened to the point that the authorities forced her to divorce him, and his minibus confiscated, depriving him of the means to earn a living.
Phone tapping, mail interception and surveillance became a regular part of his life, he added.
Speaking from an undisclosed location, he said he fled so that he could tell Yu's story. He did not reveal any details about his escape.
I think you're getting it mixed up
Komintang = Taiwan
Communists (if you can still call them that) = China = Gong Zharn Dong (rough translation)
Once the citizen's life in Iraq becomes relatively stable, and they are able to find jobs, and they can get their kids back in school again, I'm sure there will be some people who will blog. But right now, the place is a veritable hellhole, and we're not going to be seeing anything on the web anytime soon.
BTW There was a film directly from the populous, Voices of Iraq. Apparently pretty graphic and biased, it is still a good documentary of what Iraq is like right now.
How about just Googling 'Iraqi blogs'? Too general for you? Try 'Healing Iraq', 'Iraq the Model', 'Riverbend', 'Salam Pax'.
No, I'm not giving you the URLs. Do at least a little work. Sheesh. These people have been blogging for over a year and a half - Salam Pax was blogging when Saddam was still in power. Sorry if I come across as caustic, but your question and the response by the ACs above show that people haven't made the merest attempt to find out for themselves. Anyone who really cared could find Iraqi blogs over a year ago.
Of course, you're right, a simple google search will uncover many of them.