riots

China loses its grip on information, riots break out

Sophie — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:39:11 +0200

Image posted on QQ.com.

The Chinese authorities momentarily lost control over public information this weekend when their desperate endeavours to cover up the rape and murder of a 15-year-old girl lead to violent riots in the south-western Guinzhou province. Web users destroyed officials' attempts to downplay the enormity of events by continuously posting images and accounts of the protests.

Online accounts say that after her body was found in the river, local residents said that Li Shufen had been raped and murdered by three relatives of Yuhua county officials. However, the three accused were released without charge after eight hours following the results of a basic autopsy which reported that she had committed suicide. When her uncle, who she lived with, complained about procedures, he was so badly beaten that he was taken to hospital. Information about the attempted cover-up soon got onto the internet and people started speaking about it on forums and chat sites such as Baidu and Tainya. Asian TV went to interview Li's uncle, a teacher, in hospital. Three hours later he died. Discussions escalated until Saturday, when a reported 10,000 people took to the streets to protest the handling of the case.

Videos and photos of the riots (below) show chaos as a local administration building burns and cars lie overturned in the road. Web users managed to keep the documents online for 24 hours by constantly re-posting comments about the events onto different sites as the censors worked to remove them. Today, however, accounts of the incidents have completely disappeared. The only information available to the public comes from official news agency Xinhua, which states: "some people who did not know about the exact context of what had happened were instigated to mob the police station and the office buildings of the county government and Communist Party committee". The authorities are appealing for rioters to turn themselves in and have so far arrested almost 200 people.

Scenes from a civil war?

Sophie — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:44:00 +0200

This amateur footage was shot in Oran on Monday. It's no civil war - these rioters are supporters of a local football club, Mouloudia, which just found out that their team will be relegated to the country's second division next season for the first time in 42 years. The chaos lasted for three days while the city's youth looted shops and vandalised public buildings and cars. Seventy police officers were injured in attempts to restrain the hooligans.

First images of the convicted Tibetans

Julien — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:05:57 +0200

Thirty Tibetans accused of taking part in the riots last month have been convicted today with sentences ranging from three years in jail to life imprisonment. One of our Observers has sent us the first images of the trial, made public by the state press agency Xinhua, just as the sentences were handed out.

According to the Chinese TV channel CCTV, the trial lasted all day and was open to the public. These photos show ten of the thirty Tibetans who were sentenced today in Lhasa. The second image is particularly interesting - a man sitting in the front row of the public benches sporting traditional Tibetan dress. Is he a pro-Beijing Tibetan? The image has been carefully chosen, perhaps to show that - just as the authorities insisted from the very beginning of the crisis - Tibetan people support the Chinese government and only a violent minority took part in the riots. We will try to find out more and update this post soon.

"It's this kind of revolt that can turn into a revolution"

Julien — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 17:40:35 +0200

Protesters tear down a picture of Mubarak. Photo by Mohamed Gaber.

What was supposed to be a workers' strike turned into violent riots in northeastern Egypt on Sunday resulting in 150 arrests, around 100 injured and at least one dead. Our Observers in the country explain why.

The chaos broke out on the day that spinning and weaving workers from the Nile Delta city of Mahalla el-Kobra threatened to strike over demands to increase the monthly minimum wage of only 115 Egyptian pounds (€15). Although the strike was called off, tensions over low pay, rapidly increasing prices and distrust of the upcoming local elections (held Tuesday) brought the city to boiling point. The riots calmed during the day on Tuesday following mass arrests, but are suspected to continue again at night.

Yahoo and MSN helping to root out Tibetan rioters

Julien — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:29:07 +0100

The 'most wanted' on Yahoo's homepage this morning

Yahoo! China pasted a "most wanted" poster across its homepage today in aid of the police's witch-hunt for 24 Tibetans accused of taking part in the recent riots. MSN China made the same move, although it didn't go as far as publishing the list on its homepage.

UPDATE 1 : We spotted these photos on MSN and Yahoo! on March 21st at 3.30pm (Beijing time). This article was published at 5pm. The photos have been removed from the portals between 8pm and 10pm.

UPDATE 2 (24.03.08 / 10.15am Paris time) : Following this report, Yahoo! sent us the following statement :"Contrary to media reports, Yahoo! Inc. is not displaying images on its web sites of individuals wanted by Chinese authorities in connection with the recent unrest in Tibet." In this statement, Yahoo! says that the parent company Yahoo Inc did not publish these images. The company does not deny that Yahoo! China has published the "wanted" posters. This is a common line of defence by Yahoo!, which tries to put the entire responsibility of its Chinese operations on its Chinese partner Alibaba. See bellow a printscreen of the Yahoo! China (cn.yahoo.com) home page on March 21st.

First pictures of Tibet killings

Julien — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:56:55 +0100

Chinese authorities have so far reported 13 dead since the beginning of the incidents while Tibetan activists say that at least one hundred people have been killed. These amateur photos, which we're the first to publish, contradict the official Chinese statement.

The photos were taken at the Kirti Monastery (in the county of Aba, Sichuan province, near Tibet) and retrieved by the Free Tibet Campaign. According to the organisation, they were taken after a demonstration of hundreds of people initiated by monks. The police are said to have used teargas, before shooting at the crowd and killing between 13 and 30 people according to eye witnesses quoted by the organisation. Please note that because there are no journalists in the area it's impossible to have this information verified.

"The kids are not to blame"

Julien — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:58:57 +0100

A protest in Belgrade of 150,000 people against the independence of Kosovo turned into a mass riot yesterday. Serbians are rallying against those who recognise the independence of Kosovo, and yesterday voiced their anger by storming the US embassy in Belgrade and vandalising others. The result: a hundred injured and one dead.

In Kenya, hate media has found a new home

Julien — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 10:05:35 +0100

The message Mashada posted on their forum page

One of Kenya's most popular discussion forums had to close its doors yesterday (31 January) because of a barrage of abusive and hate-inciting comments left by web-users. James X runs the ‘Mashada' project. He explains that the site's once relatively peaceful discourse had taken a decisively violent turn since the elections. It seems that the internet is being used to fuel ethnic loathing. Could this media become the next Radio Mille Collines?

Everyone remembers the calls for murder broadcast by Radio Mille Collines during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. You can't compare the 800,000 massacres in Rwanda with the current one thousand in Kenya. However, James tells us that a renewal of ethnic tensions is more than visible on the web, and that it started even before the elections. And threatening behaviour on the internet will only mean one thing on the ground.

Misuse of power

Julien — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:23:05 +0100

These images were shown on Kenyan television on Tuesday. The scene was filmed in Kisumu (east), a stronghold of the opposition and where three protesters have been killed in two days (more on the riots). The film is now being circulated by Kenyan bloggers, who are condemning the national security forces for misuse of power.

Video posted on Youtube on 17 January 2007 - source : KTN

Kenyan web users gang together on ‘Google Maps’

Julien — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 16:32:04 +0100

Homepage of the Ushahidi site

Text messages played an important part in the Kenya protests at the end of last month. Now, Kenyan bloggers have found a new way to circulate information about the riots, rapes and murders that tear through their country. Our Observer Daudi Were, one of the project organisers, explains to us how it works.