Hong Kong Lennon Wall

 

Washington, DC: ‘CCP must lie in order to cover up the terrible things that they’re doing in China, in Hong Kong, and around the world. To do this, they use narrative warfare to control what people see as the truth.’

One of the few social media channels to fearlessly cover China is the popular and respected China Uncensored YouTube channel (1.95 million subscribers). To ensure editorial independence, Chris Chappell co-owns America Uncovered LLC—along with co-producers Matt Gnaizda and Shelley Zhang. Together the team not only produces China Uncensored, but three other shows as well, the longer form podacst China Unscripted, America Uncovered and Gamers Unbeaten.

In this edition of “Indo-Pacific: Behind the Headlines” we speak with Chris Chappell, the New York-based creator and host of China Uncensored about their Hong Kong Lennon Wall.

Q: What’s the idea behind the Hong Kong Lennon Wall?

A: Five years ago, the China Uncensored team was in Hong Kong, covering one of the biggest protests in human history. I will never forget watching 2 million people march through the streets of Hong Kong. They were protesting the Chinese Communist Party’s trampling of Hong Kong’s freedoms and autonomy. I felt incredibly inspired by Hongkongers’ courage.

In 2020, the CCP took advantage of the Covid pandemic to impose a National Security Law on Hong Kong that essentially made protesting illegal. They instilled fear and silenced Hong Kong’s civil society. Today, many Hong Kong activists are imprisoned or in exile.

So to make sure people remember the Hong Kong protests, we created a digital version of one of the things Hongkongers did five years ago. They put up sticky notes on walls all across the city with political statements, and called each location a “Lennon Wall”—which has its roots in the anti-communist movements in Eastern Europe in the 1980s. Making a Lennon Wall is extremely illegal in Hong Kong now, though, so we created a digital version online.

This new Lennon Wall is not just for Hongkongers. It’s for everyone, anywhere in the world. My hope is that people who feel powerless against the CCP can feel empowered to do something, even if it’s small. Thousands of people doing something small adds up to something big. Go to https://hklennonwall.com/ and post your own message on the wall. And share it with your family and friends. Our initial goal was to get over 10,000 unique posts, but we hope to get many more.

Lion Underwater City

The Tao of Kung Fu - Peace is prized above victory

tank man

Jack Ma on Donald Trump and the USA's decline

cock

25 years ago today: the courage of the tank man

one 


man 


can 


make 


a 


difference 

 
the tank man in action

raw footage

burning

 Self-Immolations in Tibet

Last Updated: October 30, 2012, 14:00 EST

Tsewang Kyab
Lhamo Tseten
Tsepo
Tenzin
Dorje Rinchen
Dhondup
Lhamo Kyab
Tamdin Dorje
Sangay Gyatso
Gudrub
Yangdang
Lobsang Damchoe
Lobsang Kelsang
Lungtok
Tashi
Chopa
Dolkar Tso
Lobsang Tsultrim
Losang Lozin
Tsewang Dorjee
Dickyi Choezom
Ngawang Norphel
Tenzin Khedup
Tamdin Thar
Rikyo
Dargye
Dorje Tseten
Choepak Kyap
Sonam
Chimey Palden
Tenpa Darjey
Lobsang Sherab
Sonam Dargye
Lobsang Tsultrim
Jamyang Palden
Gepey
Dorjee
Rinchen
Tsering Kyi
Nangdrol
Damchoe Sangpo
Lobsang Gyatso
Tenzin Choedron
Sonam Rabyang
Rinzin Dorje
Losang Jamyang
Sonam Wangyal
Tsultrim
Tennyi
Tenzin Phuntsog
Palden Choetso
Dawa Tsering
Tenzin Wangmo
Norbu Damdrul
Choepel
Kayang
Kelsang Wangchuk
Lobsang Kelsang
Lobsang Kunchok
Tsewang Norbu
Phuntsog
Tapey

Mooncake

tibet burning

savetibet

mooncake

seven years in tibet

Heinrich Harrer (6 July 1912 – 7 January 2006) was an Austrian mountaineer, sportsman, geographer, and author. He is best known for being on the four-man climbing team that made the first ascent of the North Face of the Eiger in Switzerland, and for his books Seven Years in Tibet (1952) and The White Spider (1959).

In 1948, Harrer became a salaried official of the Tibetan government, translating foreign news and acting as Court photographer. Harrer first met the 14th Dalai Lama when he was summoned to the Potala Palace and asked to make a film about iceskating, which Harrer had introduced to Tibet. Harrer built a cinema for him, with a projector run off a Jeep engine. Harrer soon became the Dalai Lama's tutor in English, geography, and some science, and Harrer was astonished at how fast his pupil absorbed the Western world's knowledge. A strong friendship developed between the two that would last the rest of their lives.

In 1952, Harrer returned to Austria where he documented his experiences in the books Seven Years in Tibet (1952) and Lost Lhasa (1953). Seven Years in Tibet was translated into 53 languages, and was a bestseller in the United States in 1954, selling three million copies. The book was the basis of two films of the same title, the first in 1956 and the second in 1997, starring Brad Pitt in the role of Harrer.

In Seven Years in Tibet, Harrer wrote:

Wherever I live, I shall feel homesick for Tibet. I often think I can still hear the cries of wild geese and cranes and the beating of their wings as they fly over Lhasa in the clear cold moonlight. My heartfelt wish is that my story may create some understanding for a people whose will to live in peace and freedom has won so little sympathy from an indifferent world. (read more) (7 years in tibet trailer)

and-a one and-a two

mooncake

LONDON — Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has said he is worried about the growing number of monks and nuns setting themselves on fire in southwest China, in an interview broadcast Saturday.

The Dalai Lama told the BBC that those setting themselves alight were courageous, but questioned how effective self-immolation was as a form of protest against Chinese rule.

"The question is how much effect" the self-immolations have, the 76-year-old asked British broadcaster.

"That's the question. There is courage -- very strong courage. But how much effect? Courage alone is no substitute. You must utilise your wisdom."

Eight Buddhist monks and two nuns have set themselves alight in ethnically Tibetan parts of Sichuan province since the self-immolation of a young monk in March at Kirti monastery sparked a government crackdown.

Activists say that at least five monks and two nuns have died and that Chinese police have at times responded by beating the burning protesters and their colleagues rather than providing assistance.

Asked whether the self-immolations could make life worse for people in Tibet, the Dalai Lama said: "Many Tibetans sacrifice their lives.

"Nobody knows how many people killed and tortured -- I mean death through torture. Nobody knows.

"But a lot of people suffer. But how much effect? The Chinese respond harder."

The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959, founded a government in exile in the northern Indian town of Dharamshala after being offered refuge there.

He remains revered in China's Tibetan areas but is vilified as a "separatist" by China's communist authorities. (AFP)

DHARAMSHALA — Expressing her support and solidarity with the Tibetan people, a prominent Chinese research scholar living in Sydney has strongly criticized the Chinese government's repressive policies on Tibet for the last six decades.

In an article, Dr Chen Hongxin, a research scholar of Chinese contemporary politics, described the recent self-immolations by Tibetans since March as a way of protest against the Chinese government's wrong policy on Tibetans and their religious belief.

“At least six Tibetans have died as a result of self-immolation, and they have called for religious freedom, the return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet and freedom in Tibet.”

Dr Chen also wrote about critical questions that people might raise, why “happy and prosperous Tibetans” are ending their lives through self-immolations. Why the Tibetan monks who respect life and practice Buddhism for millenia by renouncing ill-feelings, are now burning themselves to death one after another?

“The answers underlying these questions lies in the truth of past 60 years which will bring tears in the eyes of the international community. In fact, through successive generations, the Tibetans have not only etched their history, but also exposed the Chinese government's propaganda through peaceful protests,” she wrote.

The article contained criticism of China's draconian measures towards the Tibetan monastic community. “Despite reconstruction of Tibetan monasteries in 1980s, the authorities imposed restrictions on the admission of Tibetans into monasteries, made “patriotic education”, which involves denouncing His Holiness the Dalai Lama, a compulsory subject for monks to study.

Dr Chen further wrote about her impression of Mr Xi Jinping's visit to Lhasa this year. “During his visit to Lhasa, the future Chinese president, Xi Jinping, not only did not meet Tibetans, but did not even visit a monastery. On the contrary, he met with officials from the police, army, political and judicial authorities. This act has exposed the Chinese government's intention of brutal and repressive policy on Tibet.” (tibet.net)

(mooncake)

Human Rights Watch

The Chinese government should immediately release the artist and outspoken critic Ai Weiwei and end its arbitrary crackdown on dissent, Human Rights Watch said today.

Ai was arrested at Beijing airport on the morning of April 2, 2011, as he was about to board a flight for Hong Kong. Despite considerable domestic and international attention, the Chinese government has refused to disclose where he is detained or the reasons for his arrest.

Update (April 7): A government spokesperson admitted on April 7 that Ai was under investigation for suspected economic crimes but no legal notification has yet been issued. Incommunicado arrests are often the prelude to criminal prosecutions, Human Rights Watch said.

"The arrest of Ai Weiwei reflects a new escalation in the current and already severe crackdown," said Sophie Richardson, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. "Only sustained international pressure can help Ai Weiwei now."

On April 6, in what can be read as the first official acknowledgment of Ai's arrest, a newspaper article in the state-run Global Times announced that Ai would "pay a price" for being an activist and that "the law would not concede" to his criticisms of the government.

The government's detention of Ai Weiwei appears to have been carefully planned. On the day he was arrested, Beijing public security officers raided his art studio in the suburbs of Beijing and took eight members of his staff, his wife Lu Qing, and a lawyer friend of Ai's, Liu Xiaoyuan, in for questioning; they were all released later that day. The police seized computers, hard-drives, and other items. State media were instructed not to report on the case, and all references to Ai Weiwei's arrest were censored on internet and popular micro-blogging services such as Weibo, a Twitter clone.

Under Chinese law, the police can hold an individual for up to three days before deciding whether to release him or apply to the prosecutors for an arrest warrant. But invariably the police manipulate exception clauses that allow for up to seven days' and, in limited circumstances, up to 30 days' detention. Police also routinely prevent lawyers from meeting their clients in detention despite legal provisions guaranteeing such access.

Ai's lawyer, the prominent Beijing lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, has so far been unable to see his client, or even to get formal notification of his arrest. Approval of arrest by the prosecutors, a matter of routine in most cases, usually guarantees later indictment, conviction, and punishment, which typically includes a prison sentence. The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, was detained for a year before he was sentenced in December 2009 to an 11-year term of imprisonment for a series of articles published overseas.

"The Chinese authorities appear to be laying the ground for Ai Weiwei's formal arrest," said Richardson. "This is an ominous sign because there are no fair trials of government critics in China."

Since mid-February, the Chinese government has arrested, detained, disappeared, put under house arrest, summoned for interrogation, or threatened with arrest over two hundred people for dissent or peaceful social activism. Six of the country's most prominent human rights lawyers - Teng Biao, Tang Jitian, Jiang Tianyong, Liu Shihui, Tang Jingling, and Li Tiantian - have been "disappeared" by the police and remain at serious risk of torture and ill-treatment.

Four prominent activists, Ran Yunfei, Cheng Wei, Ding Mao, and Li Shuangde, have been formally arrested on state security charges. On March 25, the veteran dissident Liu Xianbin was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for "incitement to subvert state power." The government has also significantly increased its censorship of internet, forced several liberal newspaper editors to step down, and imposed new restrictions on foreign media reporting in Beijing.

The arrest of Ai, one of the most celebrated Chinese artists, who is currently exhibiting at Tate Modern in London, has prompted a reaction from several foreign governments, with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle calling on China for an "urgent explanation" of his fate. British Foreign Secretary William Hague has called on the government to "urgently clarify Ai's situation and well being." The European Union delegation in Beijing, members of the European Parliament, and the Australian government have also expressed concern. US State Department spokesperson Mark Toner said on April 4 that the government was "deeply concerned."

"Ai Weiwei is a test case for the international community," said Richardson. "The past few years have shown that appeasement and ‘quiet diplomacy' do nothing to dissuade Beijing from cracking down even harder on dissent." (Human Rights Watch)

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (born 1957) is a Chinese artist, activist, and philosopher, who is also active in architecture, curating, photography, film, and social and cultural criticism.

Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. Besides showing his art he has been investigating in the corruption and cover-ups under the power of the government.

He was particularly focused at exposing an alleged corruption scandal in the construction of Sichuan schools that collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He intensively uses the internet to communicate with people all over China, especially the young generation. (read more)

China's Peace Prize

OSLO — Imprisoned and incommunicado in China, the Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, his absence marked at the prize ceremony here by an empty chair.

For the first time since the 1935 prize, when the laureate, Carl von Ossietzky, languished in a concentration camp and Hitler forbade any sympathizers to attend the ceremony, no relative or representative of the winner was present to accept the award or the $1.5 million check it comes with. Nor was Mr. Liu able to provide a speech, even in absentia.

Guests at the ceremony in Oslo’s City Hall listened instead to a recitation of his defiant yet gentle statement to a Chinese court before his incarceration last year. “I have no enemies and no hatred,” Mr. Liu said in “I Have No Enemies: My Final Statement to the Court,” read aloud by the Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann. “Hatred can rot away at a person’s intelligence and conscience.”

Through his wife, Liu Xia, Mr. Liu sent word that he wanted to dedicate the award to the “lost souls” massacred in 1989 in Tiananmen Square.

Mr. Liu, 54, a professor, poet, essayist and campaigner for human rights, has been an irritant to the Chinese authorities since helping resolve confrontations between the police and students in Tiananmen Square. Mr. Liu was detained in December 2008, after co-writing the Charter 08 call for human rights and reform, and is currently serving an 11-year sentence for the crime of “incitement to the overthrow of the state power and socialist system and the people’s democratic dictatorship.”

He was named this year’s laureate because of his heroic and nonviolent struggles on behalf of democracy and human rights, said Thorbjorn Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, adding that China needed to learn that with economic power came social and political responsibility.

“We can to a certain degree say that China with its 1.3 billion people is carrying mankind’s fate on its shoulders,” Mr. Jagland said in a speech at the ceremony. “If the country proves capable of developing a social market economy with full civil rights, this will have a huge favorable impact on the world.”

He added, “Many will ask whether China’s weakness — for all the strength the country is currently showing — is not manifested in the need to imprison a man for 11 years merely for expressing his opinions on how his country should be governed.”

Mr. Jagland, a former prime minister, became chairman of the Nobel committee last year and seems unafraid to use the position to make strong political statements. Last year’s selection of President Obama as the peace laureate was interpreted by many as a thinly veiled rebuke to the politics of former President George W. Bush, and this year’s award has had broad political implications.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Jagland said that on several occasions this fall, he and the Norwegian foreign minister were specifically warned by top Chinese officials not to give the award to Mr. Liu. But even though the committee disregarded their threats, Mr. Jagland said, its choice should not be interpreted as an insult to China.

Rather, Mr. Jagland said, its reasoning should be seen as similar to that of 1964, when the prize went to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was defying the authorities to fight for civil rights in America. The prize helped nudge the United States to change, Mr. Jagland said, and he hoped that it would have the same effect on China. (read more)

blind-ness

Liu Xia, the wife of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, is under house arrest amid rising anger in Beijing over the dissident's prize. The wife of the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo fears the Chinese government will prevent her from collecting the peace prize on her husband's behalf amid rising anger in Beijing at the announcement.

In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Liu Xia said police officers had surrounded her home and warned her that she could not leave without a minder.

"They have told me not to go out, not to visit friends. If I want to see my parents or buy food, I can only go in their car," she said. "I don't even talk to my neighbours because I don't want to get them into trouble."

During a prison visit on Sunday, Liu Xiaobo asked her to collect the prize at the ceremony in Oslo, Norway, on 10 December. But she was doubtful she would get as far as the airport.

"I can't even get out of my home, how could I go out of the country?"

The Nobel prize committee said they hoped one of the couple would attend the ceremony, but it would go ahead without the winner as it did for Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and former Polish president Lech Walesa.

The Chinese government today maintained its attack on the Nobel decision and its supporters. "If some people try to change China's political system in this way, and try to stop the Chinese people from moving forward, that is obviously making a mistake," the foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told the Associated Press. "This is not only disrespect for China's judicial system, but also puts a big question mark on their true intentions." (guardian.co.uk)

Why is China afraid of the Dalai Lama?

President Obama met Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalia Lama for more than an hour today in the Map Room of the White House, a move signaling Obama's solidarity with Tibet's quest for human rights and his willingness to irritate the communist Chinese government.

Following the meeting, the Dalai Lama told reporters he spoke to Obama about human rights and promoting religious harmony. The Dalai Lama says he has admired America since his childhood as a champion of "democracy, freedom and human value." He also praised Obama for "always showing his genuine concern" for Tibet.

Obama made no public remarks at the meeting. White House reporters were not permitted to photograph the president and the 74-year-old exiled Buddhist monk. The White House released a photo of the meeting later today.

The Dalai Lama, who, like Obama, has won a Nobel Peace Prize, left China for India in 1959 and has built a global following for Tibetan human rights. He leads a government in exile in Dharamsala, India.

Every U.S. president dating back to George Herbert Walker Bush has met the Dalai Lama.

Almost a year ago, the Dalai Lama accused China of turning Tibet into "Hell on earth." His holiness advocates autonomy for Tibet. Some younger Tibetans have been prodding the Dalai Lama to press for independence. China, which rules the rugged Tibetan region with stern military might, rejects autonomy and independence.

In a statement released by the White House, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama "stated his strong support for the preservation of Tibet’s unique religious, cultural and linguistic identity and the protection of human rights for Tibetans in the People’s Republic of China."

Gibbs said Obama also praised the Dalai Lama's "commitment to nonviolence and his pursuit of dialogue with the Chinese government. " Obama has prodded both sides in the struggle to re-open dialogue. Talks between envoys for China and Tibet resumed in January, something Gibbs said Obama "was pleased to hear about."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has denounced the meeting.

"China resolutely opposes the visit by the Dalai Lama to the United States, and resolutely opposes U.S. leaders having contact with the Dalai Lama," foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

Obama told Chinese leaders last fall he intended to meet with the Dalai Lama. Obama did not see his holiness during an extensive trip to the US in September of 2009, a move interpreted as an attempt to curry favor with Chinese leaders.

Gibbs said today Obama and the Dalai Lama "agreed on the importance of a positive and cooperative relationship between the United States and China.”

Before speaking to reporters briefly outside the White House, the Dalai Lama used his hand to imprint the image of a tiger in a snow bank outside the Briefing Room. The Chinese New Year, the year of the tiger, began Feb. 14. (fox news)