Hu Jia - Sakharov Prize 2008

Chinese human rights defender, Hu Jia, was awarded the European Parliament’s 2008 Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought today during a special ceremony in Strasbourg.
 
He couldn’t receive the prize in person of course, because Chinese authorities put him in jail for three-and-a-half years last April for demanding more human rights [...]

As we’ve seen during the Olympic Games, Chinese authorities are applying what they believe is a proven method to counter dissent: Pre-emptive detention of potential ‘trouble-makers’ ahead of an event.
 
The media couldn’t find many human rights defenders in Beijing last August because most of them had either been detained, arrested, expelled from Beijing or [...]

The International Olympic Committee released Friday a three-page ‘fact sheet’ praising the “indisputable success” of the Beijing Olympics that brought change to China is areas such as press freedom, the environment and public health.
 
The IOC’s timing couldn’t be more cynical. It issued this praise “fact sheet” on the same day Chinese authorities executed Wo Weihan, [...]

The past twenty-four hours have been busy for Chinese authorities! They prevented Green MEP Helga Trüpel from visiting cyberdissident Zeng Jinyan (video), currently under house arrest. Her husband, environment and AIDS actitivist Hu Jia is in prison. Authorities also prevented blogger Shuguang Zhou (aka Zuola) from travelling to Germany to participate in Deutsche Welle’s international [...]

Green Member of the European Parliament, Helga Trüpel, was prevented from visiting Zeng Jinyan, the wife of imprisoned Chinese dissident and European Parliament Sakharov Prize winner Hu Jia. Zeng Jinyan, a co-nominee with Hu Jia for last year’s Sakharov Prize, is herself under house arrest with their baby daughter.
 
Mrs Trüpel, who is visiting Beijing as [...]

What more can you do to a housing rights activist when you’ve already beaten her, threatened her, cut off her water and electricity, forced her out of her house and imprisoned her? Chinese authorities found the answer: You can actually destroy her house while she’s in prison!
 
Ni Yulan has been in police custody for [...]

The Greens write to Nicolas Sarkozy in the hope that Hu Jia and his wife Zeng Jinyan will be able to receive the Sakharov Prize in person
 
Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Co-President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament and Sylvain Garel, Co-President of the Greens in the Council of Paris have written to Nicolas Sarkozy.
 
They ask [...]

Internet giants such as Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google have agreed to sign up to a new set of guidelines that aim to limit the information they should share with authorities.
 
The Global Network Initiative guidelines were drawn up by Internet companies and several human rights groups, investors and academics. They should act as a framework [...]

The European Parliament has decided today that the 2008 Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought will be given to Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia, on behalf of the silenced voices of China and Tibet. The award ceremony will take place on 17 December during the Plenary session in Strasbourg.
Biography of Hu Jia:
Hu Jia is [...]

China has announced that Olympics-related reporting rules for foreign journalists were to be extended, although they still do not apply to Chinese journalists.
 
Introduced on 1 January 2008 as part of China’s Olympic commitments towards more freedom for foreign journalists, these rules mean that reporters only need consent from the interviewee as opposed to government [...]