Is China, fearing a copycat phenomenon as popular uprisings sweep the Arab world, beginning a crackdown on advocates for human rights and religious freedom? China Aid reports that on Feb. 23 police in Yangdang, Hubei Province, raided a Christian legal center. They fired tear gas, assaulted those present and smashed the center’s equipment. And reports from China Human Rights Defender indicate that the whereabouts of several Chinese activists—last seen being hauled off by police in February—remains unknown. Accor-ding to Human Rights in China, anonymous “netizens” in mainland China, inspired by the “Flower Revolutions” in Tunisia and Egypt, broke through official Internet censorship to call for a “Jasmine Revolution” in 13 different cities. In response, H.R.I.C. reports, Chinese authorities “launched a concerted, large-scale crackdown on rights defense activists around the country, subjecting them to interrogation, house arrest and detention, with a severity rarely seen in the past few years.”
Beijing Clampdown?
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
Around the affluent world, new hostility, resentment and anxiety has been directed at immigrant populations that are emerging as preferred scapegoats for all manner of political and socio-economic shortcomings.
“Each day is becoming more difficult, but we do not surrender,” Father Igor Boyko, 48, the rector of the Greek Catholic seminary in Lviv, told Gerard O’Connell. “To surrender means we are finished.”
Many have questioned how so many Latinos could support a candidate like DonaldTrump, who promised restrictive immigration policies. “And the answer is that, of course, Latinos are complicated people.”
Catholic voters were a crucial part of Donald J. Trump’s re-election as president. But did misogyny and a resistance to women in power cause Catholic voters to disregard the common good?