3 posts tagged “reporters without borders (rsf)”
Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.
The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.
But then some of them saw TV images of protesters holding the emblem and they alerted the authorities, according to Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper.
Tibet independence
The factory owner reportedly told police the emblems had been ordered from outside China, and he did not know that they stood for an independent Tibet.
Workers who had grown suspicious checked the meaning of the flag by going online.
Thousands of flags had already been packed for shipping.
Police believe that some may already have been sent overseas, and could appear in Hong Kong during the Olympic torch relay there this week.
The authorities have now stepped up the inspection of cars heading to the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and onwards to Hong Kong.
The Olympic torch is due to tour Hong Kong on Friday. It
will then travel to a series of cities in mainland China before
reaching Beijing for the start of the Olympic Games in August.
Its progress around the world has been marked by pro-Tibet demonstrations in several cities - including Paris, London and San Francisco.
Rallies began in the main Tibetan city of Lhasa on 10 March, led by Buddhist monks.
Over the following week protests spread and became violent - particularly in Lhasa, where ethnic Chinese were targeted and shops were burnt down.
Beijing cracked down on the protesters with force, sending in hundreds of troops to regain control of the restive areas.
But it has since agreed to resume talks with representatives of the Dalai Lama.
Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will launch the first International Online Free Expression Day under UNESCO’s patronage on 12 March, when it will also organise its second “24-hour online demo against Internet censorship,” urging Internet users to come and demonstrate on its website, www.rsf.org.
A total of 63 cyber-dissidents are currently in jail worldwide for using their right to free expression on the Internet. China continues to be the world’s biggest prison for online journalists and bloggers.
To denounce government censorship of the Internet and to demand more online freedom, Reporters Without Borders is calling on Internet users to come and protest in online versions of the nine countries that are “Internet enemies” during the 24 hours from 11 a.m. on 12 March to 11 a.m. on 13 March (Paris time). Anyone with Internet access will be able to create an avatar, choose a message for their banner and take part in one of the nine cyber-demos (Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Erithrea, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam).
Reporters Without Borders will release its latest list of “Internet enemies” together with a new version of its Handbook for Cyber-Dissidents.
When the first “24 hours against Internet censorship” was held last year, some 40,000 Internet users came and clicked on an inter-active map of the world to help make the “Internet black holes” disappear. This time we can do even more to make this new protest a success and to put pressure on the governments that try to muzzle what should be space where people can express their views freely.
This operation was devised and produced by the Saatchi & Saatchi advertising agency. A campaign ad is being circulated online calling on Internet users the world over to come and take part in the 24-hour protest. All news media, websites and blogs that would like to support this major operation are invited to get in touch with Lilia Bouhdjar at +33 (0)1 4483-8456
Deep inside the tall towers of Eritrea's Ministry of Information, the battle-scarred war veteran leaned towards me across his desk.
His finger pointed towards a heavily-underlined copy of a report I had written the day before.
"Why," he said, spluttering with rage, "do you say we silence critics?"
The former rebel, now a top official in the information ministry, was angry because I refused to name two ex-freedom fighters I had quoted expressing disillusionment at life in Eritrea today.
"You will not work again, until you tell us the names of the people," he added.
Given Eritrea's grim record for jailing its critics, I declined politely to reveal the names. I was then made to surrender my work permit.
After just over a year reporting from Asmara, it was my last official story from inside Eritrea.
Bitter border war
My report looked at fears among ordinary people of a return to war with their larger neighbour Ethiopia, and their frustration over the failure to find a solution.
Eight years ago these long-term enemies signed a peace deal ending the border war which began in 1998 killing at least 70,000.
Both sides remain deadlocked following Ethiopia's refusal to remove its troops from soil ruled by an UN-appointed commission to belong to Eritrea.
Along the 620-mile desert frontier, some quarter of a million troops from these two armies eyeball each other from trenches in places a stone's throw apart.
United Nations peacekeepers patrolling between the two sides are also being forced to pull out of border zones after Eritrea blocked their fuel supplies.
So you might think that it would not be controversial to report that some Eritreans are pessimistic about the future.
It is, after all, a common complaint in a country where military police prowl the streets, religious minorities are jailed - some sealed in shipping containers for months - and where the young are drafted into national service.
Many are conscripted for decades - men until the age of 50 and women until 47 - on salaries of less than $1 a day.
Some analysts say the government is using the border stalemate to justify its iron grip.
Thousands flee the country, despite a shoot-to-kill policy across the border to Ethiopia or Sudan.
Eritrean citizens were the largest nationality to seek asylum in the UK in 2006, a trend mirrored in several other nations across Europe.
Press freedom
The leaders of this state are the same ex-rebel fighters who liberated Eritrea in 1991 after a 30-year guerrilla war against Ethiopia.
And now those ex-combatants tolerate no criticism.
All independent media was closed in 2001.
The journalists' rights group Reporters Without Borders (RSF) ranks Eritrea just below North Korea as the worst nation in the world for press freedom.
I was closely watched by security informers, my telephone was tapped and papers would mysteriously move or vanish from inside my locked apartment.
But the treatment was nothing compared to that meted out to several Eritrean journalists.
RSF says they were tortured in a desert prison.
On the wall of an interrogation room, a message had been scrawled: "If you don't like the message, kill the messenger."
Just before I left the ministry, I asked why they wanted the names of those I had spoken to.
"That is not your concern," I was told. "We will deal with them."
Leaving the ministry, high on a hill over Asmara, I paused to stare over the wide palm-lined boulevards of the elegant city that I had come to know as home.
It is a beautiful country, with a generous and courageous people, a nation capable of achieving so much.
But sadly, few here believe their lives will improve any time soon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/africa/7283293.stm
Published: 2008/03/10 08:31:26 GMT
© BBC MMVIII
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