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Reporters roughed up near China activist's home

Manila appeals as China to execute drug mules
Manila (AFP) Feb 16, 2011 - Philippine President Benigno Aquino launched a last-ditch appeal Wednesday for China to show clemency to three Filipino drug couriers who face execution next week. Aquino said he had tried in vain to contact China's leader over the case, and said he would send Vice President Jejomar Binay to Beijing to convey his personal request to spare the two women and a man. The trio -- who would be the first Philippine nationals executed in China -- were convicted separately of smuggling heroin into China in 2008, the foreign department said.

"I am trying to set up a phone conversation with President Hu Jintao again to make an appeal for the commutation" of the death sentences, Aquino told reporters. He said Filipino diplomats had been trying to patch him through to Hu since Friday. "As of now, they (Beijing) have not signified willingness to accept the phone call. "But we think our request is very, very reasonable. It is time for them to demonstrate their pronounced statements of improved closer bilateral ties. This will be a test (of that)," Aquino said. The condemned 42-year-old Filipino man and 32-year-old woman were both convicted in December 2008 while the third, a 38-year-old woman, was sentenced in May 2008.

The first two are scheduled to be executed on Monday in the southern city of Xiamen and the 38-year-old woman in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, on Tuesday, officials said. However, the Chinese embassy in Manila showed no sign of its government relenting. "The death sentence on the three Filipino drug traffickers is the final verdict by the Chinese judicial authorities in accordance with law," it said in a statement Wednesday. "As criminals (facing the) death penalty, their legitimate rights and interests have been protected in accordance with law." The embassy would help relatives who may want to visit the three in prison before their execution, the statement said, adding that it hoped the case would not affect diplomatic ties.

Aquino said many Chinese drug traffickers had been arrested in the Philippines but could not face execution because the mainly Roman Catholic nation had abolished capital punishment. "We'd like to see reciprocity, hopefully," he said. The scheduled executions come after ties chilled over the deaths of eight Hong Kong Chinese in a bungled bus hostage rescue in Manila late last year. Officials in Hong Kong were disappointed by Aquino's subsequent decision to slap minor criminal charges against several police officials involved in the fiasco.
by Staff Writers
Beijing (AFP) Feb 16, 2011
Foreign reporters were roughed up while trying to visit blind Chinese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng this week by aggressive mobs apparently working for authorities, journalists said Wednesday.

Chen, a self-taught lawyer who gained world attention by exposing abuses in the "one-child" population control policy, has been under house arrest in east China since completing a jail term of more than four years in September.

"We were roughly pushed away from Chen's home" by about a dozen men, said Brice Pedroletti, a journalist with French newspaper Le Monde.

Stephane Lagarde, a journalist with Radio France Internationale, said thugs at Chen's village in Shandong province also seized the memory card of his digital recorder and his China reporter credentials.

One man threatened to hit him with a brick.

"These peasants from the area are recruited for this type of purpose and repelled us very forcefully," he said, adding that he was not beaten.

CNN aired a graphic clip showing a man in combat fatigues shoving its reporter away and then hurling rocks at the retreating TV crew.

The New York Times confirmed two of its staff were involved in an incident this week but declined to give further details.

"Our reporter and the photographer are safe and physically fine," said the spokeswoman, Danielle Rhoades Ha.

The incidents prompted a warning Wednesday from the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China to its members.

It said in a statement that "groups of violent, plainclothes thugs" had also damaged the vehicles of some media organisations and that police failed to come to their aid on at least one occasion.

"Since being told about the incidents, the police appear to have done nothing to rectify the situation or rein in these groups of thugs," it said.

A local police official, who gave only her surname, Gao, denied any organised operation to repel the press when contacted by AFP, saying: "Journalists are free to go and interview him (Chen)."

However, Chen's village of Dongshigu has been under virtual lockdown since his release last year, guarded by a round-the-clock team of police and plainclothes enforcers.

Diplomatic sources told AFP on Wednesday that representatives from the European Union, Switzerland and Canada had tried to visit Chen late last year but were rebuffed.

Chen last week released a daring, self-made video that he smuggled from his home. In the clip he rails against his "illegal" house arrest and the "hooligan methods" of local authorities.

After the video was made, both Chen and his wife Yuan Weijing were beaten by police, human rights activists have said.

A number of Chen's Chinese supporters who have attempted to reach him this week have also been severely beaten, US-based rights group ChinaAid said.

Chen gained fame -- and angered authorities -- by exposing widespread late-term abortions and forced sterilisations under China's "one child" policy.

He was arrested in 2006 and later convicted of "willfully harming public property" and "gathering masses to disturb traffic order" after a public rally by supporters.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton singled out Chen's case during a January speech in which she called on China's government to stop mistreating its domestic critics.



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SINO DAILY
China orders pro-party reporting: rights groups
Beijing (AFP) Jan 21, 2011
China's Communist Party has issued directives to the nation's media for 2011 ordering them to downplay controversial issues and ensure reporting casts the party in a favourable light, rights groups say. The 10-point list of orders was issued earlier this month by propaganda chief Li Changchun, according to a report on Boxun.com, an overseas-based website focussing on China human rights issue ... read more







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