China, the hidden secret of human rights violations

China, the hidden secret of human rights violations

ONE of the events to be remembered in China this year is the OLYMPICS Games which begun on August 8, 2008 and was expected to welcome many people allover the world including 20,000 accredited journalists.

This article is going to analyze the situation of China before the Olympics Games because there had been different events of human rights violation and problems.

Amnesty International has documented widespread human rights violations in China. An estimated 500,000 people are currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances.

Harassment, surveillance, house arrest, and imprisonment of human rights defenders are on the rise, and censorship of the Internet and other media has grown.

Repression of minority groups, including Tibetans, Uighurs and Mongolians, and of Falun Gong practitioners and Christians who practice their religion outside state-sanctioned churches continues.

While the recent reinstatement of Supreme People’s Court review of death penalty cases may result in lower numbers of executions, China remains the leading executioner in the world.
Christians were persecuted for practicing their religion outside state-sanctioned channels. Despite the reinstatement of Supreme People's Court review of death penalty cases, the death penalty remained shrouded in secrecy and continued to be used extensively.
Torture of detainees and prisoners remained prevalent. Millions of people had no access to justice and were forced to seek redress through an ineffective extra-legal petition system. Women and girls continued to suffer violence and discrimination. Preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing were marked by repression of human rights activists. Censorship of the internet and other media intensified.
Death penalty statistics continued to be regarded as a state secret, making it difficult to assess official claims that the reinstatement of Supreme Court review had reduced the number of executions.
Based on public reports, Amnesty International estimated that at least 470 people were executed and 1,860 people sentenced to death during 2007, although the true figures were believed to be much higher.
In June 2007, the Supreme People's Court stipulated that first-instance death penalty cases must be held in open court and that courts must move towards public trials for appeals in capital cases.
However, death penalty trials continued to be held behind closed doors, police often resorted to torture to obtain "confessions", and detainees were denied prompt and regular access to lawyers.
Death sentences and executions continued to be imposed for 68 offences, including many non-violent crimes such as corruption and drug-related offences.
People who peacefully exercised their rights such as freedom of expression and association remained at high risk of enforced disappearance, illegal and incommunicado detention or house arrest, surveillance, beatings and harassment.
An estimated 500,000 people were subjected to punitive detention without charge or trial through "re-education through labour" and other forms of administrative detention.
For an estimated 11-13 million people, the only practical channel for justice remained outside the courts in a system of petitioning to local and higher level authorities, where the vast majority of cases remained unresolved.
The Chinese authorities maintained efforts to tightly control the flow of information. They decided what topics and news stories could be published, and media outlets were sometimes required to respond within minutes to government directives.
The authorities continued to block websites and to filter internet content based on specified words and topics.
Around 30 journalists were known to be in prison and at least 50 individuals were in prison for posting their views on the internet. People were often punished simply for accessing banned websites.
Freedom of religion, expression and association of Tibetans continued to be severely restricted. The State Administration for Religious Affairs established government control over the identification and training of Tibetan Buddhist teachers throughout China.
Some 40 Tibetan children were detained by police in Gansu Province for writing pro-Tibetan independence slogans on walls.
Approximately 50,000 North Koreans were reportedly hiding in China, living under constant fear of deportation. Each month hundreds of North Koreans were believed to have been forcibly repatriated to North Korea without being given access to UNHCR offices in China. That was a real situation in China before Olympics Games kicked off.

Don't miss this big news

Don't miss this big news
By Victor Wile
DAY 3

In day 3 still things were moving well because continued doing some practical work as far as effective usage of internet is concern.

Day 3 started with the recap of day 2, the time table was as follow, in first session we covered the topic, journalistic research through internet before went for tea break. In the second session we did how to find information using internet, this was before we went for lunch. Journalistic research assignments were done during the third session.

Something that I found to useful to me is the knowledge have gained about journalistic research through internet.

During practical assignments given the facilitator we learnt a lot of things including the search of relevant information, updating our web blogs and doing research through internet.

Also the participants were taught how to search contacts of certain companies, organizations and government e.g phone numbers, email address e.t.c

This makes me believe that, with internet we can get more information and background of things or matters we want to write or air in our media houses.

I believe this knowledge will help not me only but also my colleagues at work for the benefit of our company. The knowledge also is going to change my reportage to be more detailed and researched because I now know many website to visit.

Internet Workshop for Tanzanian Journalists

Internet Workshop for Tanzanian Journalists

I was interested to join the training for journalists organized by MISA TAN because the training will enable me to widen my knowledge as far as internet is concern.

However I find this training to be very important because internet is a very useful tool to journalists.

Journalists now can be able to access different material through internet, do research, obtain information, download pictures, and communicate with other journalists through email.

Through this training I think, I will be able to use internet effectively while making my duties as a journalist.

Generally I can say the training started smoothly because we started the morning session by doing introduction of workshop and participants of whom I got chance to know some of my colleague journalists whom I have never seen before.

Yesterday was a very interesting day, because I learnt some new things about internet, its effective usage, development globally and how it has changed the world of communication.

All the topics we learnt yesterday seemed to be useful to my profession and here are the topics, How internet has changed societies and communication globally. After we finished this topic we went for tea break.

After we had tea, the second session started and we tried to look on how internet has changed societies before going for lunch break.

After lunch we learnt about journalism in the age of internet and visited some of websites that can enable the availability of information.

Day one of the workshop was successful to me because I now able to book air tickets, find books, sell and buy in the internet e.tc

However yesterday we faced some difficulties because the internet was to slow that we were not able to get the material as expected.

I expect to gain more knowledge as the workshop continues as outlined in the time table and wish MISA TAN will will continue to organize such training from time to time in order to updates journalists in internet effective usage.