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Reuters blog archive
from FaithWorld:
China says everything normal at restive Tibetan temple
(A Tibetan in Nepal on a 24-hour hunger strike in Kathmandu April 18, 2011, to express solidarity with victims of a Chinese crackdown last month/Navesh Chitrakar)
China has said everything was "normal" at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery after the Dalai Lama urged restraint in a stand-off between security forces and Tibetans at the temple in southwest China. "According to what we understand, over the past few days the life and Buddhist activities of the monks at the Kirti monastery are all normal. Social order there is also normal. Material supplies in the temple are totally sufficient," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told a regular news briefing.
"The Kirti temple's administration and local police a long time ago set up a police-temple joint patrol team. The aim was to prevent people of uncertain identity from entering the temple. Relations between the police and the temple have always been harmonious," Hong added on Tuesday without elaborating.
Hundreds of ethnic Tibetans had gathered at the Kirti monastery in Aba in Sichuan province last week trying to stop authorities moving out monks for government-mandated "re-education," according to exiled Tibetans and activists. That prompted police to lock down the monastery with as many as 2,500 monks inside.
from The Great Debate UK:
Who benefits from a file-sharing crackdown?
- Andrew Robinson is the leader of the Pirate Party UK. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Draconian penalties for file sharing were threatened by the government on Tuesday. In addition to the previously announced 50,000 pound maximum penalty for "IP offences" we are now told that whole families are to be disconnected from the net if just one member is accused of sharing files.
from Global News Journal:
Is Malaysia’s net clampdown at odds with knowledge economy?
The opposition wants to cut the sale of alcohol in a state that it rules and now the government wants to restrict Internet access . 
Malaysia is a multicultural country of 27 million people in Southeast Asia. It has a majority Muslim population that of course is not allowed to drink by religion. Yet clearly some do as shown by the sentencing to caning for a young woman handed down recently
from Global News Journal:
Web crackdown spreads
-- David L. Stern covers the former Soviet Union and the Black Sea region for GlobalPost, where this article originally ran. --
With less than six months until it takes over the chairmanship of one of Europe’s flagship human rights organizations, Kazakhstan has thumbed its nose to Western governments and introduced a draconian Internet law.
from Changing China:
Tightening screws on Tiananmen
Security on Beijing's Tiananmen Square is always tight.
But I knew that today it was going to be particularly so when, upon emerging from the subway station, I was faced with three police vans and literally hundreds of security personnel, all on guard against any kind of disturbance ahead of the 20th anniversary of 1989's bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing.
Nervously I made my way to one of the square's entrances, wondering if I would even be allowed to enter.
I put my bag on the X-ray machine, was briefly frisked by police with metal detectors, and cleared to go on my way.
The square was full of tourists, as usual. What was different was the hordes of uniformed police, military police and plainclothes security every few metres.
The plainclothes officers were painfully obvious, shuffling awkwardly in T-shirts and tracksuit bottoms, their crew cut hairstyles and poorly hidden walkie-talkies distinguishing them from ordinary visitors. They were also all carrying the same brand of bottled water.
Everytime I tried talking to someone, a police officer or one of the guards began hovering behind me. Finally I was able to chat with a trinket seller, who, talking in a low voice, complained
that the security was ruining her business.
"June 4 is tomorrow," she said simply.
At that point one of the crew-cut men marched over and told the lady to stop talking to me.
By this stage. I had had enough and began heading back towards the subway station, passing on my way a foreign television crew. A policeman was telling them in no uncertain terms that they could not film in the square.
I felt lucky that nobody had stopped me. I'm sure the police knew I was there though, and why I had gone.
Photo caption: Chinese security personnel try to stop pictures from being taken as they check the documents of the photographer at Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 3, 2009. Chinese security forces blanketed Tiananmen Square on Wednesday ahead of the 20th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause
