woeser

Prominent Tibetan blogger Woeser has been detained by the Chinese police, according to the Times (via Status of Chinese People).

Woeser, a prominent poet who lives in Beijing, had returned to Llasa, the Tibetan capital, and was visiting her mother when police presented her with a warrant. The warrant stipulated she had been photographing allegedly sensitive military installations.

After interrogating her for eight hours, she was returned to her mother’s home, where she had been staying with her husband. They left soon after that to return to Beijing. They had originally planned on a month-long visit.

Woeser’s poetry was originally approved by the Chinese government. In 2003, her prose book “Notes on Tibet” was banned and she has been unable to get officially published in China or Tibet since. With a Chinese father and a Tibetan mother, she writes mostly in Chinese. After the March riots Chinese hackers vandalized her blog.

She is not the first Tibetan blogger to be harassed by the Chinese police. Jamyang Kyi was arrested in April. There has been no news on her since then. Update: According to Clothilde at RSF, she was released about a month after being arrested.

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Update:

Jill Tan, Asia Representative from Apple Inc. informs us that iTunes in China is now working. 

*****************************************************

As athletes downloaded the album “Songs for Tibet” from the iTunes store, in support of the Tibet cause,(the music is also good BTW), China retaliated by blocking the iTunes store in China, anybody who wanted to access the store got a error message.

The Apple Support forums were inundated by complaints by iTunes accounts holders in
China and here is a response one of them got from Apple support. 

My name is Bryan and I understand that you have not been able to connect to the iTunes store for the last couple days and that you are concerned that it would be an issue withChina blocking the iTunes store. I’m sorry to hear that and I’m happy to assist you with this today.

ITunes is not being blocked in China from our end, but access to the iTunes Store IS restricted in some areas inChina. This would also explain why it’s happening to your friends there as well.

I would advise that you contact your ISP about this matter. Please also note though that accessing the US iTunes Store outside of the geographic region of the United States is not supported, and that attempting to access it while inChina is at your own risk.The iTunes Store Sales and Service Policies are available for you to review:

Terms of Sale
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/sales.html
Terms of Service
http://www.apple.com/legal/itunes/us/service.html
Thank you for being a valued iTunes Store customer. I hope that you have found the above information helpful and that you have a great day!Kind Regards,

Bryan
iTunes Store Customer Support  

Funny thing is that, according to China.org, the official government information site it is the Chinese citizens who are offended by the songs of Tibet album and they are the ones who want iTunes shut down,

A music album advocating “Tibetan independence” recently available for paid download on iTunes has ignited strong indignation among Chinese netizens.

According to Chinanews.com, the angry netizens are rallying together to denounce Apple in offering “Songs for Tibet” for purchase. They have also expressed a wish to ban the album’s singers and producers, most notably Sting, John Mayer and Dave Matthews, from entering China.

Many people have made remarks on online forums to express their anger, even those who have been fans of the artists in the past.

Some say they will boycott all Apple products from now on, including the popular iPhone, which is not available in China since negotiations among Apple, China Mobile and China Unicom broke down

This is completely opposite of what is happening at the apple support forums it seems to be a case of the Chinese authorities are continuing with their habit of blocking sites.

*******************

We are trying to get word from Apple and will update you once we receive it.

h/t to informationweek

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Jamyang Kyi
Jamyang Kyi, by RFA

Update: According to Clothilde at RSF, she was released about a month after being arrested.

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According to Radio Free Europe, Jamyang Kyi, Tibetan writer, performer and blogger, has been arrested by the Chinese.

Plainclothes state security officers escorted Jamyang Kyi, who has travelled widely and performed and lectured in the United States, from her office at state-owned Qinghai TV on April 1, an authoritative source told RFA‚Äôs Tibetan service. “She never returned,” a source in Siling [in Chinese, Xining] said. “People were speculating that she was detained in a guesthouse for interrogation.”

Another authoritative source in Beijing said she had been formally arrested by the Xining Public Security Bureau, although the charges against her were unknown. In China, a formal arrest almost always precedes a conviction. “Security people went to Jamyang Kyi’s house to search her computer, her mailing list, and contact numbers and took all these away,” another source in Xining said.

As Homer once asked Marge, “Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong?”

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Update: Lewis wrote us.

Im in Beijing and Youtube.com is unblocked but veoh.com is blocked. Please check this.

Can anyone else confirm?

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Your website is blocked also but i am using a proxy to get it but it doesnt
work with videos.CNET reports that China has unblocked YouTube. They also ask, did Google have a direct hand in the blocking?

Last Friday, YouTube was accessible but anything related to what we called T%%% to avoid filters would return a message to the effect of, “This content is not available in your country.” Though it would be relatively easy for Chinese filters to replicate this result, this may indicate some effort on YouTube/Google’s part. Mama reports that YouTube soon went completely dark, until just now.

Another glitch that emerged, which may suggest some sort of Google involvement, is that when Mama was sending Gmail messages, anything containing the non-redacted T%%%, or even its first three letters, would return an error message she’d never seen, saying that there was an error while sending…The YouTube messages are still vexing. Was YouTube cooperating or was this a very smart error message? To have a Google property that’s not Google China itself cooperating with Chinese censorship would be unprecedented, to my knowledge.

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Here’s a playlist for protests outside of Tibet proper, in the provinces of Gansu and Sichuan. Unfortunately, I could not make the embed code work, so you’ll have to click through.

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Update: Our playlist has been referenced and linked to by both the New York Times and Canada’s National Post.

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I’ve created a Committee to Protect Bloggers YouTube account and within that have created a Tibet Protests playlist. I’ve aggregated first-person videos from the protests as well as international news coverage. Please let me know if I’ve missed any substantive ones. I’ll also try to put together playlists for things as they go on, like the Sichuan crackdowns.

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The Associated Press reports that today the Chinese government has blocked the video-sharing service YouTube. The block was in response to the posting of dozens of videos showing footage of the Tibet riots. Like last year’s Burmese riots, these have also been led by monks and have resulted in over 80 deaths so far.

This block comes after an attempt to severely curtail all video sharing sites open to Chinese in advance of the upcoming Olympic Games.

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