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Campaign: Blogging for Land Rights in China
Written by Zola on May 21, 2008 – 3:26 am -Chinese Translator’s note: I have submitted the following blog post on behalf of Digiactive.org’s China correspondent, Zola Zhou. The Chinese text from Zola’s original post is displayed in the image below the translation. Additions to the original text are marked in brackets.
After the Reform and Opening policy began to dramatically alter China’s economy at the end of the 1970s and early 1980s, the country has undergone an almost unfathomable transformation. One of the most striking areas of change has been in real estate development. Old neighborhoods have been razed to make way for office towers and seemingly endless rows of high rise apartment buildings.
Many of China’s booming middle class citizens, who still remain in the minority on a national scale, have eagerly taken residence in 21st century China’s urban comfort. This onslaught of development has also caused hardship for countless families and individuals that have been left behind or pushed aside to make way for “progress.”
Knocking down a house in Sipingfang, to the left, officials are beating up a young girl and child (red circle).
Description: In the town of Sipingfang, in China’s Hunan Province, residents have found Zhou Shu Guang [the author], who has helped them establish a website to preserve their rights: www.sifangping.com. Moreover, Zhou provided two days of in-home instruction to teach them how to use the blog process to publish articles that introduce their circumstances. Residents of Sifangping hope that this website can become a bargaining chip in negotiations with the government to acquire reasonable compensation rates.
Digital activism tool: Blog
How These Tools Are Being Used: Given that domestic Chinese media never provides coverage on issues of residence demolitions and relocation, citizens affected by these activities frequently have no way to appeal to higher authorities in a court setting to acquire reasonable compensation [for land appropriated by the government]. Therefore, they are left with no other choice but to publish their stories online. They hope that this website will be viewed by more people, and that they can become model resisters against forced relocation. This web site has an international domain name and the mainframe is located in America, thus the Chinese government is unable to delete it.
Outcome: [No word yet on whether the blog is helping the residents of Sipingfang gain better compensation for appropriated land.]
Tags: blog, china, digital activism, forced relocation, Hunan Province, land ownership, property rights
Posted in Asia, Blogs, Campaigns | No Comments »
Tactic: using MSN Chat logo to show China pride
Written by Mary on May 5, 2008 – 2:19 pm -
Description: Users of MSN chat in China are adding a red heart to their MSN names (see image left) to demonstrate their support for China and the Olympics.
Organizer: Unknown but has official support from Microsoft. Appeal asking “Chinese people worldwide to use the red heart to express their love for China and to support Beijing’s Olympic Games” appeared on the Chinese MSN homepage.
Purpose of Action: Many Chinese feel under attack from France and CNN because the West “supports” Tibetan independence and is “anti-China” and “anti-Olympics.”
Organizing tools used: instant messaging (MSN chat)
Outcome: 7,000,000 people have added the little red heart to their MSN names over the past week.
Ease of Replication: Adding a logo to your MSN chat is very easy. GChat also allows using to add their own image/logo.
Tags: china, cnn, france, Instant Messaging, microsoft, msn, olympics, tibet
Posted in Asia, Instant Messaging, Tactics | No Comments »
Tactic: Temporary Posting to Avoid Censorship
Written by Mary on April 8, 2008 – 8:23 pm -IMPORTANT NOTE: The security situation is each country is unique. Please consider the specific security environment in your own country when deciding whether to use the advice in this section.
Threat: Bloggers who publish content critical of the government risk having their blogs blocked by the government if they live in a country with limited freedom of expression.
Way to Protect Yourself: To make it more difficult for the censors to find sensitive content on your blog, only post the content for a few hours and then take it down. This temporary posting gives the censor a smaller window of time to find this content on your site and thus makes it less likely that you will be blocked, while also giving readers enough time to copy and paste the information from your blog onto bulletin board systems and chat rooms for wider discussion.
How Activists Are Using This Technique: When news of the Tibet protests broke, Bei Feng, editor of one of “China’s ten most influential” web portals, only posted information about the protests on his blog for a few hours, which gave his readers enough time to copy the information onto other sites but prevented his blog from being blocked. This is a strategy that “he commonly uses for sensitive issues, posting a story about it on his blog and then taking it off after only a few hours to avoid being shut down by censors.” (source: openDemocracy)
Tags: censorship, china, tibet
Posted in Asia, Blogs, Tactics | 1 Comment »
Tactics: Tibetans Get the News Out Despite Media Censorship
Written by Mary on March 16, 2008 – 5:31 am -Description: Last week hundreds of Tibetan monks took to the streets in and near the Tibetan capital of Lhasa to protest Chinese rule. Although the heavily censored Chinese media refused to cover the story, both Tibetans and foreign tourists used the Internet to get the news out. According to the Vancouver Sun, “Amateur cellphone photos and video clips showing what were described as confrontations between police and Tibetans protesting Chinese rule poured onto websites big and small, including those for major news media, Tibetan rights groups and tourist blogs.”
Organizer: unclear
Purpose of Action: To protest Chinese rule of Tibet.
Organizing Tools: e-mail, digital photos, mainstream media sites that accept user-generated content (like BBC), web sites of sympathetic NGOs, travel blogs of tourists, cell phone video uploaded to YouTube.com,
Outcome: Bringing global attention to protests that the Chinese government would prefer to silence.
Ease of Replication: Unless the government shuts down the Internet, as occurred during the recent protests in Burma, using individual e-mail accounts, cell phones, and blogs to distribute information and images is an effective way to get around domestic media censorship.
cell phone image of protests published on the site of a Tibetan rights NGO based in India
Tags: blogging, china, citizenjournalism, mobilephones, NGOs, tibet, travelblogs, vancouversun, youtube
Posted in Asia, Blogs, Digital Images, Tactics | 2 Comments »
Tool: SMS
Written by Mary on January 30, 2008 – 11:17 pm -Tool Description: SMS (short message service) is the technical name for text messaging - notes sent between mobile phone users. Think of it as e-mail for mobile phones.
Activist Application: There are so many activist applications for SMS that we’ve put most of them after the jump. Here they are in brief: organize a protest in minutes, evade censorship by using SMS for communication that you cannot speak or e-mail (only true is some countries), election monitoring, activist security (”If I don’t text you every 2 hours, it means something is wrong), citizen journalism, and more to come….
Ease of Use: Easy. All mobile phones now have SMS built in. Just choose a phone number to send the message to, type the message, and press send. Pricing varies by country and carrier.
thousands of phones, thousands of uses for activists
Tags: Alaa, censorship, china, Egypt, elections, Iran, philippines, SMS, twitter
Posted in Asia, Mid-East & N. Africa, Mobile Phones, Tools | No Comments »
Campaign: Shanghai’s Middle Class vs. the Maglev
Written by Mary on January 27, 2008 – 11:59 pm -Description of Campaign: Citizens of Shanghai are organizing to prevent the cities maglev train from being extended into their residential neighborhood.
Digital Activism Tools: digital photographs, digital video, blogs, community bulletin boards
How These Tools are Being Used: Digital photos and video are taken at protests, then unploaded onto blogs and community message boards to increase awareness of the protests, which are referred to using the euphemism “strolls.”
source: Washington Post
Tags: blogs, china, messageboards, photos, shanghai, video
Posted in Asia, Campaigns | No Comments »
Tactic: Internet Makes Urban Planning Public in China
Written by Mary on January 15, 2008 – 1:27 am -In Shanghai, a local citizen movement against the construction of a new train track all began when the plans to extend the track into the neighborhood were unofficially posted on the Internet. Owners of apartments near the projected track held demonstrations this week involving several hundred people. Read the full article here.
Tags: asia, china, local
Posted in Asia, Tactics | No Comments »