Keep weapons out of the wrong hands
Campaign Features
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More about our new campaign to end internet repression in China
There are people in China who need your support. In China, saying what you think, confronting authority, standing up for basic rights or just sharing information can result in imprisonment, torture or death.
Chinese army to guard torch from marauding Aussies?
Chinese authorities have suggested that their army is needed in the streets of our nation's capital during the Olympic torch run. The photo opportunity of torch-bearer Ian Thorpe flanked by armed Chinese military would certainly be a sight, blogs Sophie Peer, China Campaign Coordinator.
BBC uncensored - sort of
If you live in China and can read English, the BBC website is now unblocked. If you don't choose to, or cannot, read your news in English, the page returns an error message of ACCESS DENIED. Not exactly a model story of China reversing censorship, but perhaps a start, blogs Sophie Peer.
Yahoo! and the police witch hunt
Did Yahoo! learn nothing from the US Congressional Committee hammering it got over its handling of the case of jailed dissident Chinese journalist Shi Tao?
Man who asked for human rights before the Olympics is jailed
A Chinese activist who dared say “We don’t want the Olympics, we want human rights” has been jailed for five years. Yet more proof – did you need any? – that freedom of speech is an anomaly in China.
Breaking the Firewall, Tibet style
We saw it in Myanmar in 2007 and now Lhasa, 2008. Not just the violence and quashing of peaceful protest but the breakthroughs of modern technology. The images from mobile telephones, the blog posts, the emails and phone calls.
What is internet censorship?
Chat rooms monitored. Blogs deleted. Search results re-routed. Websites blocked. That's Internet censorship, China's 'Golden Shield Project'. The Government is watching you.
© Kraig Lieb/LonelyPlanetImags
Violence and discrimination against women
Violence and discrimination against women remains severe in China, according to our most recent reports.
© Ian Teh/PANOS
Workers’ rights
Independent trade unions are illegal in China. And the country’s official All China Federation of Trade Unions frequently fails to protect its members’ welfare.
© Cancan Chu/Getty Images
North Korean refugees
China reportedly runs a rewards system for people who turn in North Koreans illegally living within the country’s borders. It also imposes heavy fines on those found supporting North Koreans.
© Peter Parks/AFP/LJH
Migrant workers
Most of China’s internal migrant workers are treated as an urban underclass and denied their basic rights. They’re shut out of the healthcare system and state education, live in appalling and overcrowded conditions and are exploited by their employers.
© AP Photo/Liu Heung Shing
Tiananmen Square protests
The bloody crackdown on peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square is an infamous moment in China’s history.
© AP
Corporate social responsibility
All companies and businesses have a responsibility to respect human rights.
© Oded Balilty/AP Photo
Forced evictions
Many people have been forced out of their homes to make way for Olympics-related development in Beijing.
© Sven Torfinn/PANOS
© K.Dydynski/
LonelyPlanetImages
© AFP
Organ harvesting
Falun Gong groups overseas have documented more than 2,000 deaths in custody since the crackdown on their group began. They claim many of the deaths are the result of enforced organ harvesting.
© Judy Bellah/LonelyPlantImages
The Falun Gong and religious groups
China comes down hard on people who practise a religion outside the officially sanctioned channels. Members of underground Protestant house churches and unofficial Catholic churches, Muslim Uighurs from the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region and Tibetan Buddhits are detained, ill-treated and tortured.
© Keren Su/LonelyPlanetImages
The Uighur people
The Uighurs are a mainly Muslim ethnic minority, who mostly live in China’s western Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. Inside China, the world’s most populous country, people are persecuted and imprisoned for their religious beliefs. Rural migrants are deprived of their basic rights. Families are forced from their homes without compensation. And ethnic groups are suppressed and harassed.
Who is affected by internet censorship?
Internet censorship affects everyone. Environmental activists, HIV lobbyists, human rights supporters, bloggers with opinions. These people and more are all denied freedom of expression in China.
Thanks for this - a great read and so important right now. Keep it coming :)
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11 May 2012, 12:20PM