Pretty lame.

China will censor the Internet used by foreign media during the Olympics, an organising committee official confirmed Wednesday, reversing a pledge to offer complete media freedom at the games.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Uncategorized, Censorship, Human Rights, Sports at 11:24 am

Will the West actually boycott the games? That’s very unlikely. But China’s crackdown on Tibet is causing real concern as it exposes the truth about the totalitarian regime.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Censorship, Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Military, Tibet at 5:26 pm

After this execution, China has a long way to go on the huma rights front:

Chinese officials have secretly executed a demonstrator who took part in a massive protest in 2004 against a hydro-electric dam in the south-western province of Sichuan, lawyers and family members said yesterday.

In a grim postscript to the summer of rural unrest that overtook China two years ago, Chen Tao was executed for “deliberately killing” a riot policeman during the demonstration, when 100,000 farmers staged a sit-in against the building of the 186-metre-high Pubugou dam on the Dadu river in Hanyuan county. The dam was set to flood thousands of people out of their homes and there were complaints that compensation was inadequate.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Censorship, Domestic Politics, Human Rights at 4:19 pm

Life in prison - that the sentence for a 28-year-old operator of porn sites in China.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Censorship, Culture, Domestic Politics, Human Rights at 5:13 pm

This story makes it clear that China is still a dictatorship that does not respect human rights.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Censorship, Domestic Politics, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, U.S. Relations at 3:39 pm

Amnesty International is keeping the pressure on the Chinese government to improve human rights leading up to the 2008 Olympics:

With 687 days to go before the start of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese government needs to work quickly if it is to fulfil its promise to the International Olympic Committee to improve human rights ahead of the 2008 Games.

In its latest assessment of the Chinese government’s performance in four benchmark areas of human rights ahead of the Olympics, Amnesty International found that its overall record remained poor. There has been some progress in reforming the death penalty system, but in other crucial areas the government’s human rights record has deteriorated.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Human Rights, Sports at 1:53 pm

Chinese border guards reportedly opened fire on approximately 70 people trying to cross from China into Nepal.

Posted by Gerardo Orlando as Human Rights, Tibet at 1:51 pm