InfoAnda - China bans poet from traveling to US conference

Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case
Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They

Taiwan denies boycotting Australian film festival
Thursday, August 6, 2009

AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e

Merkel's support dips, regional ally resigns International
Thursday, September 3, 2009

By Sarah Marsh and Noah Barkin

BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German

Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who

Asian markets mixed after Wall Street rally
Wednesday, March 18, 2009

By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an

China sets new record investment in Japan bonds | 6 July 2010
Bond baddie brings burlesque film to Cannes | | 13 May 2010
Apple plans 40-50 store openings in 2010 | Technology | | 13 November 2009

Pakistani c.bank sells 2 bln rupees of T-bills | 30 December 2008

Forum Views () Forum Replies ()

Read more with google mobile : China bans poet from traveling to US conference

Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Australia China India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam China bans poet from traveling to US conference By CHARLES HUTZLER,Associated Press Writer - Friday, March 26 Send IM Story Print BEIJING – A pixie-ish literature professor is the latest person to run afoul of China's government, denied permission to travel to a prominent academic conference in the United States this week. Cui Weiping had her Chinese passport, U.S. visa and airplane ticket to Philadelphia in hand when, she said, officials at the Beijing Film Academy where she works called her in Sunday and told her to cancel the trip. Though they gave reasons for the denial _ she has classes to teach, her conference panel was not related to her academic discipline _ those were excuses, she said. The unstated reason, she said: last year's commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen democracy movement and her recent outraged Twitter posts at the jailing of a peaceful political activist. "Really, they want to punish me," Cui said Thursday sitting in an artsy coffee shop in the university district. "They're afraid, one, of what I might say abroad," she said, "and two, they want to pressure me." In the uproar over Google's tussle with Chinese Internet censorship, Cui's case is a reminder that the authoritarian government often resorts to more blunt ways to restrict the flow of ideas. Cui is hardly a firebrand. Small, bookish and 54, she prefers her literary and film criticism, her translations of the works of people like Czech dissident-turned-president Vaclav Havel, rather than political campaigning. Nor is she the only person to see her freedom of movement curtailed. Travel bans have a rich tradition in China. The emperors prohibited ordinary Chinese off-and-on from leaving for several centuries. More recently, writer and outspoken government critic Liao Yiwu was taken off a plane in the southwestern city of Chengdu last month on his way to Germany for Europe's largest literary festival; it was the 13th time he was blocked. Ai Xiaoming, a feminist literary critic who has made pointed documentaries on AIDS and one village's attempts to oust corrupt officials, found out she was under a five-year ban when she went to renew her passport in December and couldn't. A police official looked up her name in a database and told her "you've been prohibited from going abroad," she said. "To use a Chinese phrase, it's very shady. They won't notify you directly, and only when you try to do something do you find you're being punished," said Ai, a professor in the southern city of Guangzhou. "There's no way to seek redress. No process. It's a punishment outside the law." Cui too has been told not to travel to the U.S. twice before, once in 2006 for a conference on the radical Maoist Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and last year for an event organized by a Chinese emigre who produced a documentary on the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. "Those times, they were concerned about the event's organizer or the event itself. This time was different," Cui said. Her hosts were to be the Association for Asian Studies, a prestigious academic grouping based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with 7,000 members worldwide, for its annual conference, which opens Thursday and runs through the weekend. The association gave Cui a grant to cover her airfare and the conference's registration fee. From Philadelphia, Cui was to have traveled to Harvard University in Boston and other schools for lectures. Telephone calls to the Beijing Film Academy and the department of core curriculum where she teaches rang unanswered Thursday afternoon. Six China scholars based in the U.S. and Canada have sent a letter to the association's president and circulated it among other academics, urging the group to issue a protest in hopes that the Chinese authorities would "reverse such blatant infringement of academic freedom." "Ms. Cui is an esteemed colleague and world-renowned specialist in her area of expertise," said the letter. "Our loss is large. Quite obviously, silence will only encourage the perpetrators." The authors have yet to receive a response from the association president, Boston University anthropologist Robert Hefner, said one drafter, Jian Guo of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Cui said she also did not receive a reply from Hefner to an e-mail sent Monday. The association did not immediately respond to a telephone query, nor did its president to an e-mail sent Thursday by The Associated Press. In recent years, the association has tried to broaden its membership to include more academics from China. Critics have said that the outreach has made the association reluctant to challenge Chinese institutions. Foreign scholars also have been blacklisted from entering China for being too critical or engaging in research at odds with government views. For Cui, the predicament is another marker in her slow evolution into activism. Disturbed by the military's quelling of the Tiananmen movement in 1989, she only began speaking out about repression in recent years. A recurring theme of her research: retrieving for public memory tragic events governments and societies try to suppress. She said the academic world has begun to feel narrower, hemmed in by government pressure to conform. "On the surface, we're supposed to be academics, and we're not supposed to cross that line," Cui said. "There are people like me who are concerned with free speech. Rural issues, property prices are not my concern. But free speech is something that directly touches me. It's sensitive but I cannot avoid it." Last May, when Beijing authorities were on guard to quash any remembrances of the 1989 movement, Cui gave a speech to a small gathering of like-minded liberals on the duty to speak out. She posted "Are we intending to continue this silence?" on her blog and as censors excised it, others kept reposting it. Plainclothes police in unmarked cars stayed outside her apartment for three days around the anniversary in June, she said. She has been invited in "to drink tea" _ a euphemism for chats with the police. What really outraged the authorities this time, she said, were the interviews she did with 100 Chinese, intellectuals mostly, after author-dissident Liu Xiaobo drew a heavy 11-year sentence for subversion in December; he had organized a petition calling for constitutional reform. She tweeted the interviews. While many of those she talked to did not agree with Liu, most criticized the government for continuing to make free speech a crime. School officials suggested that the anger reached the top of the government. "They told me that the interviews on Liu Xiaobo were a 'great destructive force,'" she said. Recommend Send IM Story Print Related Articles Myanmar rulers urged to free political prisoners AFP - Friday, March 26 China bans poet from traveling to US conference AP - Friday, March 26 Prince Charles visits Afghanistan AP - Friday, March 26 Japan to propose moving half key US base off Okinawa: report AFP - Friday, March 26 China, Afghanistan vow to fight terrorism, drugs AFP - Friday, March 26 News Search Top Stories Fed not yet ready to wind-down crisis aid EU, US see breakthrough in 'open skies' talks UN body rejects trade protection for marine species Pentagon eases rules on gay ban in US military Dubai World gets $9.5 bln injection for debt plan More Top Stories » ADVERTISEMENT Most Popular Most Viewed Most Recommended Dubai World gets $9.5 bln injection for debt plan Sharks, elephants to reappear on CITES agenda 'Rare' fossil of new dinosaur species found in US Africa's gorillas face bleak future: report Climate catastrophe ushered in the dinosaurs:study More Most Viewed » 'Rare' fossil of new dinosaur species found in US 'Britain's Fritzl' raped daughters for over 25yrs Researchers back cancer-fighting properties of papaya Hollywood stars help prevent suicide after Twitter alert Prince Philip in strip club gaffe More Most Recommended » Elsewhere on Yahoo! Financial news on Yahoo! Finance Stars and latest movies Best travel destinations More on Yahoo! News Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Subscribe to our news feeds Top StoriesMy Yahoo!RSS » More news feeds | What are news feeds? Also on Yahoo Answers Groups Mail Messenger Mobile Travel Finance Movies Sports Games » All Yahoo! Services Site Highlights Singapore Full Coverage Most Popular Asia Entertainment Photos World Cup 2010 Copyright © 2010 Yahoo! Southeast Asia Pte. Ltd. (Co. Reg. No. 199700735D). All Rights Reserved. Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | Community | Intellectual Property Rights Policy | Help

Other News on Friday, 26 March 2010
Israel mulls gestures to Palestinians after U.S. trip
Iraq election very close, results due Friday
Germany, France line up Greek-IMF aid deal
YouTube suffers outage
Sarkozy's bitterest enemy launches rival party
Pakistani jets kill nearly 50 in tribal region |
France, Germany strike deal to aid Greece
S.Korea lawmaker challenges election limits on Twitter use
U.N. peacekeeping boss orders probe of Darfur ambush |
UN rights body narrowly passes Islamophobia resolution
Fed not yet ready to wind-down crisis aid
U.N.'s Ban frustrated and disappointed over Myanmar |
EU's Ashton lays out plans for new diplomatic service
EU, US see breakthrough in 'open skies' talks
Parliament groups reject EU diplomatic corps plan |
Merkel insists on IMF rescue ahead of EU summit
Taiwan Semiconductor invests in energy-saving technology
Carla prefers Sarkozy not to run again
UN body rejects trade protection for marine species
Bruni not keen on second term for France's Sarkozy |
Pentagon eases rules on gay ban in US military
Pakistan arrests suspects in British boy kidnapping
IBM develops anti-spam software for Chinese mobile operator
Dubai World gets $9.5 bln injection for debt plan
Key U.S. lawmaker backs FCC's spectrum plan
I'm no hacker, says man who cracked Obama's Twitter
Global pace of deforestation slows: FAO
British parties imitate Obama in e-election
Sweden ranked world's most networked economy
LG aims at 25 percent of global 3D TV market
Netanyahu back home with US-Israeli spat unresolved
Obama launches sales blitz for health reform
Bin Laden warns US not to kill 9/11 mastermind
Economy trumps ecology at UN wildlife meet
LG aims at 25 percent of global 3D TV market |
Fidel says he has nothing against Obama
Myanmar rulers urged to free political prisoners
Key lawmaker backs FCC's spectrum plan |
China bans poet from traveling to US conference
Prince Charles visits Afghanistan
Japan to propose moving half key US base off Okinawa: report
U.S. lead in nanotech eroding, report finds |
China, Afghanistan vow to fight terrorism, drugs
Hacker gets 20 years for U.S. payment card theft |
UN council deplores 'systematic' rights abuses in NKorea
U.N. slams rights abuses in North Korea
Indonesian court upholds anti-pornography law
Pakistan: Airstrikes kill 61 suspected militants
Three weeks to save iconic Hollywood sign: trust
Toyota accelerator lawsuits go to US court
India's Bharti nears deal with Zain on Africa assets
Indonesia seeks $90 bln for infrastructure
It's all over for "The Hills"
Denmark's 'Little Mermaid' heads to China
Lost Booker Prize shortlist announced
Former China magazine editor launches new media business
Indonesian zoo welcomes birth of 25 Komodo dragons
Westerners follow Thai brides to live in hard-up northeast
Pakistan's forex reserves ease to $14.81 bln
S.Lanka minister regrets Akon's cancelled concert
Indonesia closes private radio station
TIMELINE-Taiwan's interest rate changes since 2001
Taiwan govt blasted for backing mainland director's opera
Japan to end cargo-only flights in October
Cubans forget their worries in baseball rapture
PetroChina profit slides 9.7% in 2009
Taiwan cbank says loose policy over, H2 rate rise seen
Indonesian court protects culture from porn law
China's ICBC says 4Q profits jumps 58 percent
Bolivia eradicates coca crops amid local grumblings
Progress, frustration as Liberia rebuilds from scratch
Sarah Palin to star in television series on Alaska |
A Minute With: Holly Hunter on angels and Saving Grace |
Miley, less smiley, grows up and into film career |
Simon Cowell to get international Emmy award |
It's all over for The Hills |
American Idol narrows to top 10, Paige Miles out |
Harry Potter park to open in June in Orlando |
Netanyahu aide sees accord with U.S. on Jerusalem |
EU's economic 'government' lost in translation
Myanmar junta prepares for final salute |
Pakistan troops kill 24 militants after attack |
Key lawmaker backs FCC's spectrum plan
Hacker gets 20 years for U.S. payment card theft
China VP due in Sweden as Volvo takeover nears
Bag With $100,000 Falls Off Armored Truck, Only $13,000 Returned
Hacker Sentenced To 20 Years For Data Theft
US Congress passes 'fixes' to landmark health law
Wall Street Journal to charge 17.99 dollars a month on iPad
Chatham County (N.C.) Courthouse Engulfed In Flames
U.S. Congress approves final healthcare changes
U.S. firms' security concerns grow in Mexico: poll |
Loan Modifications Up From Last Year, But Re-Defaults Are Too
US newspaper ad revenue down 27% in 2009: NAA
Pentagon makes it harder to expel gays in military
Malaysia's Anwar sodomy trial postponed until May |
Fed not yet ready to wind-down crisis aid
U.S. lead in nanotech eroding, report finds
Mexico arrests 'King of Heroin'
EU, U.S. aid groups to pledge about $2.7 billion for Haiti |
Replica of U.S. slave ship sails into Havana |
U.S. Students Only Average In Reading, Nation's Fourth Graders Show No Improvement Over 2007
Aussies on 4th track gold, Hoy saves Brits' blushes
Defense Department Modifies Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy on Discharging Gays
Global Weather-Celsius
U.S. Markets Finish Mixed As Early Rally Loses Steam
Weather forecast for the Asia-Pacific region
N.Korea vows nuclear attacks to defend its regime
Chaotic Philippine election season in full swing
Endangered French cheeses cry out for help
S. Korean anti-Pyongyang leaflets go digital
'Missing' portrait of Aussie outlaw posts record price
Fox Affiliate Sources Say Conan O’Brien Deal Not Definite
Harry Potter park adds new characters
Rihanna's Rude Boy remains atop Hot 100 |
Bikini-clad wife puts Roddick in the shade |
Pakistan: 5 soldiers, 21 alleged militants killed
5 Pakistani soldiers, 21 militants killed in NW
The Times of London to charge for website
Russia bans Hitler's 'Mein Kampf'
Israel could use tactical nukes on Iran-think-tank
Britain's Times, Sunday Times to charge for websites
News Corp to charge for UK Times online from June
VW to raise 4.2 bln euros at 65 euros per share
U.N. tells Iran to end Eutelsat satellite jamming
North Chile hit by 6.2 quake, no damage reported |
Beware online knights in shining armor, US Army warns
Japan PM admits mistakes, asks voters for patience |
South Korean ship sinking, North attack suspected: report |
Iraq vote results near, Maliki backers urge recount |
Iraq awaits full election results amid tight race
Hamas says it attacked Israeli troops entering Gaza |
Scandal-plagued Catholic order apologizes to victims |
U.N. rights forum condemns Myanmar, extends probe |
Pirates attack Turkish ship off Nigeria, 3 injured |
Rio China trial defendant says treated fairly
New Zealand reaffirms Fiji sanctions
US-TECH Summary
Sentence upheld in China liquor bribery case
Japan PM admits mistakes, asks voters for patience
Fire at Indian army arsenal triggers explosions
Japan finalizing US base relocation proposal
Indonesian provinces plan to ignore anti-porn law
No change in policy on Jerusalem: Israel PM
News Corp to charge for UK Times online from June |
Hamilton quickest in Australian GP practice
Angry Cambodian mob kills motorcycle thieves
NKorea threatens 'nuclear strikes' on SKorea, US
Pakistani rupee eases vs dollar; stocks edge higher
Toyota stopping output in UK, France for 9 days
HK bank workers held in Lehman investments case
Toyota to halt UK, France production for 12 days
S.Korea refiners likely to raise ESPO imports -trade
Nissan, Renault, Daimler eye cross-shareholding: reports
Seoul shares end up on shipping firms, Korea Life
Electric car design to err on conservative side
Ridley Scott's 'Robin Hood' to open Cannes festival
FACTBOX-South Korea's five biggest IPOs
Noel Gallagher rolls back the years at solo gig
Abba may reform for one-off show
China could resume flexible exchange rate: adviser
Museum exposes Elvis, "the threat" to American morals
Indian wine lovers offer tasty target to vineyards
'Heroes' actress visits Japan dolphin hunt town
Could Abba be ready for a one-off reunion? |
Film composer Paul Dunlap dies at 90
Dragon poised to slay box-office competition |
Greece at new risk of being pushed off euro
Bodies of missing Tenn. mom, Jo Ann Bain, and daughter found
Female Breasts Are Bigger Than Ever
AMD Trinity Accelerated Processing Units Now in Volume Production
The Avengers (2012 film), made the second biggest opening- and single-day gross of all-time
AMD to Start Production of piledriver
Ivy Bridge Quad-Core, Four-Thread Desktop CPUs
Islamists Protest Lady Gaga's Concert in Indonesia
Japan Successfully Broadcasts an 8K Signal Over the Air
ECB boosts loans to 1 trillion Euro to stop credit crunch
Egypt : Mohammed Morsi won with 52 percent
What do you call 100,000 Frenchmen with their hands up
AMD Launches AMD Embedded R-Series APU Platform
Fed Should not Ignore Emerging Market Crisis
Fed casts shadow over India, emerging markets
Why are Chinese tourists so rude? A few insights

USD EUR - 1 year graph	VPN on MacOSX	BlogMeter 1.01