By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – A 65-year-old democracy activist, Wang Rongqing, has been sentenced to six years in jail.  He is charged of “subversion against the state,” having supported and spread the “China Democracy Party” (CDP). The sentence was handed down on Thursday by the people’s court in Hangzhou (Zhejiang), according to a Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

Wang is a veteran of pro-democracy activism.  He had helped to set up CDP in the late 1990s, and and was imprisoned on a number of occasions.  Wang continued to “participate in an active way, organizing and developing it” even after the ministry of public safety had branded CDP an “enemy organization”, according to the crimes listed in the sentence.  Before the Olympics in Beijing, Mr. Wang organized the first national meeting of the CDP and published many articles on the web, and a book entitled “The opposition party.”

The sentence of six years is one of the highest ever handed down in Zhejiang for pro-democracy activists. According to the CHRD (Chinese Human Rights Defenders), after Wang’s arrest, the police advised his family to remain quiet and to accept a public attorney for the trial.  The police told Wang’s family, in this way, Wang could have received a lesser penalty. Wang’s family followed the advice, never gave interviews, and accepted court-appointed lawyer Liu Yong.

According to Zhou Wei, a dissident who attended the trial, says that the sentence was so heavy because the government is trying to suffocate any democratic criticism after the publication of Charter 08, a call for sweeping political change in China.  Wang’s friends say that Wang is ill, and is able to move only with the use of crutches.  At the reading of the sentence and asking him whether to appeal in court, Wang shrugged his shoulders as if to say this would be useless.

For more information, please see:

AP – Chinese democracy activist sentenced to 6 years – 08 January 2009

AsiaNews – Pro-democracy activist Wang Rongqing sentenced to six years for “subversion” – 08 January 2009

BBC – Veteran Chinese activist jailed – 08 January 2009

Reuters – China court jails dissident for 6 years – 07 January 2009

By Shayne R. Burnham
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka – One of Sri Lanka’s most prominent newspaper editors, Lasantha Wickramatunga, was shot dead on Sunday.  The death of Lasantha Wickramatunga demonstrates the Sri Lankan government’s failure to investigate these murders and protect these journalists, urge several human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch and Reporters Without Borders.

“Sri Lanka prides itself as a functioning democracy. Yet media freedom, a vital pillar of democracy, has increasingly come under attack,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should not take its recent military victories as a signal that it can stifle dissent.”

Wickramatunga was editor and senior journalist of the Sunday Leader. He was shot on his way to work in Colombo by two unidentified men on motorcycles.  He was rushed to the hospital where he died shortly thereafter.

Wickramatunga was known notably for his in-depth investigations into corruption of the government.  He was often a target of threats and lawsuits for libel.

“Mr Wickramatunga’s death is a serious blow for press freedom because he was one of the few reporters in the country who could write authoritatively about the government and Tamil Tigers’ conduct of a brutal war which has claimed thousands of lives over the years but has been consistently under-reported by much of the world’s media,” said Priyath Liyanage, editor of the BBC’s Sinhala service.

Human rights organizations blame the government directly for the deaths of journalists and repression of speech.

“Sri Lanka has lost one of its more talented, courageous and iconoclastic journalists,” Reporters Without Borders said. “President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his associates and the government media are directly to blame because they incited hatred against him and allowed an outrageous level of impunity to develop as regards violence against the press. Sri Lanka’s image is badly sullied by this murder, which is an absolute scandal and must not go unpunished.”

According to Reporters Without Borders’ 2008 press freedom index, Sri Lanka was ranked 165th out of 173 countries. This was the lowest ranking of any democratic country.

For more information, please see:

BBC – Grievous Blow to Sri Lankan Media – 8 January 2009

Human Rights Watch – Sri Lanka:  Attacks Highlight Threat to Media – 8 January 2009

Reporters Without Borders – Outrage at Fatal Shooting of Newspaper in Colombo – 8 January 2009

By Shayne R. Burnham
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

TURKMENISTAN – Turkmen correspondents, Dovletmurat Yazguliev and Osman Hallyyev who report for Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), have been threatened and harassed by local intelligence officers in recent weeks.

According to RFE/RL, Yazguliez and his wife were interrogated by state authorities in a local administrative office and asked to stop working for RFE/RL last month.  If he did not quit, his family could lose their jobs or even face physical harm.

Yazguliev has worked for RFE/RL since October and despite threats and fear of imprisonment, Yazguliev still works for RFE/RL.  “I will do my utmost to continue working for democracy, for my people. I am not afraid of them,” Yazguliev told RFE/RL. “I am just concerned about the method they could use against my family members. I informed [the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] about increased surveillance of my movements a month ago; however, I haven’t heard from this organization yet.”

Hallyev, a correspondent for RFE/RL since 2006, has been under house arrest since January.  As a result of his coverage of the parliamentary elections, his phone lines have been cut and his relatives have lost their jobs.

In 2006, a similar situation occurred to Turkmen correspondent Ogulsapar Muradova who, according to Reporters Without Borders, died “from blows she received in prison while serving a six-year sentence for helping a French TV journalist to prepare a report.”

Reporters Without Borders urges the Turkmen government to protect their journalists.  “Similar situations in the past have ended tragically, so we urge President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov to intervene at once,” Reporters Without Borders said. “If this has been done at the initiative of local officials, they must be brought to order. If not, we reiterate our appeal to the president to order the Turkmen security apparatus to stop treating journalists as enemies and criminals.”

For more information, please see:

EurasiaNet – Turkmenistan:  Authorities Intimidate RFERL Correspondent – 6 January 2009

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty – RFE/RL Turkmen Correspondent Threatened – 5 January 2009

Reporters Without Borders – RFE/RL Provincial Correspondents Harassed and Threatened By Intelligence Officers – 8 January 2009

By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – According a Chinese official newspaper, the Procuratorial Daily, authorities in Xinjiang province arrested nearly 1,300 people and indicted 1,154 of them in last year.  These people were indicted of “endangering state security”. The indictment applies to alleged subversion or “splittism”, as well as to offences such as espionage, and it can carry the death penalty.  The newspaper said that is an extraordinary increase in the arrests on the particular charge compared with the number in 2007.  The number is drawing scrutiny from human rights groups.

The government statistics show that in 2007, the number of people arrested across China on suspicion of endangering state security was 742, and 619 of them were indicted.  Of those total numbers, about half were from Xinjiang, said Nicholas Bequelin, a China researcher for Human Rights Watch, citing statistics from the Xinjiang Yearbook, a government publication of regional statistics.

“If this is confirmed, this is very alarming because it reflects that the threshold of what constitutes a state security crime was considerably lowered last year, in line with the campaign,” Bequelin said.  Last year, the authorities in Xinjiang announced a campaign against political crimes and terrorism before the Beijing Olympics. Bequelin added that the antiseparatist campaign weighed heavy on Uighurs. “It’s not a yellow line that you should not cross … they have to positively demonstrate their opposition to separatism; they have to say so publicly in meetings and study sessions.”

According to Bequelin, the Chinese government maintains strict control over the practice of Islam in Xinjiang. For example, government workers are not allowed to worship at mosques, and the private teaching of the Koran and other religious material is forbidden. According to the law, these practices are not the crime of endangering state security.

For more information, please see:

International Herald Tribune – Arrests increased in Muslim region of China – 05 January 2009

Market Watch – Arrests rise in China’s Muslim region – 05 January 2009

New York Times – Arrests Increased in Chinese Region – 05 January 2009

By Ariel Lin
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – Police detained a group of parents whose children fell ill from drinking tainted milk in China.  They apparently were trying to block the parents from holding a news conference, according to one of the fathers.  The parents’ news conference was called off after police picked up one of the organizers, Zhao Lianhai, said Li Fangping, a lawyer for some of the parents. “The purpose was to prevent the parents from holding a news conference,” Li Fangping said, adding that 10 parents had planned to participate. The parents were unhappy about a compensation plan made public this week, saying the amounts were too low and the plan was formulated without any input from families.  Under the plan, families whose children died would receive $29,000, while others would receive $4,380 for serious cases of kidney stones and $290 for less severe cases.

Mr. Zhao has a 3-year-old child who fell ill after drinking tainted milk but has since recovered.  He organized other parents and created a website about the contamination.  The website was also blocked on Friday.  It was not immediately clear why.  Mr. Zhao has been released, according to Xu Zhiyong, who is part of a legal team representing 63 families with sickened children.  Mr. Zhao said police held him at Tuanhe Farm conference centre, a compound outside of Beijing where police formerly held people who were to be sent to labor camps. “There are more than 20 police watching me here, and they are not letting me go,” Mr Zhao said.  “I protest this illegal treatment,” he added.

One of the fathers says that some parents, including himself, were also taken to a labor camp on the outskirts of Beijing.  “We are under house arrest now, and the government did not give us any reasons why they kept us here,” the father told Reuters by phone.  “The government said all the medical care is free, but when it comes to the local level, things change. I have already paid more than 50,000 yuan ($7,300) for the operation and cure,” said the father, a migrant worker from Sichuan province.

Last year, at least six children have died from kidney stones and more than 290,000 been made ill from the melamine-contaminated milk produced by Sanlu, a Chinese dairy company. The incident caused massive recalls around the world.

For more information, please see:

AP – Parents of kids in China milk scandal released – 02 January 2009

Financial Times – China cracks down on milk scandal victims – 02 January 2009

New York Times – China: Father in Milk Case Is Detained – 02 January 2009

Reuters – Parents of China milk scandal victims detained – 02 January 2009