Inside the Belly of the Beltway Beast

‘Team Tibet’ Gets Deported for Displaying Flag By Danielle Wang Epoch Times StaffAug 9, 2008 NEW YORK—Three Tibetan supporters were deported from China when they unfurled a Tibetan flag an hour before the Olympic Ceremony started. The three Tibetan supporters, Jonathan Stribling-Uss, 27, and Kalaya’an Mendoza, 29, and Cesar Pablo Maxit, 32, are Americans, with Maxit also holding Argentinean citizenship. Each displayed the Tibetan national flag and was taken away by police afterwards. It is considered a serious crime to display Tibet’s national flag in China. When Stribling-Uss, Mendoza and Maxit arrived at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport Saturday afternoon, they were greeted by friends, supporters and people of the Tibetan community. “We proudly displayed the Tibetan flag in Beijing yesterday to shine a spotlight on the Chinese government's lethal military crackdown inside Tibet and its attempt to use the Beijing Olympics to cover up its human rights abuses there,” said Mendoza ...

Reuters/bdnews24.com. Beijing A Buddhist Chinese dissident outspoken on Tibet and other sensitive topics was jailed for three-and-a-half years on Thursday, a conviction likely to become a focus of rights campaigns ahead of the Beijing Olympics. Hu Jia, 34, was found guilty of ‘inciting subversion of state power’ for criticising the ruling Communist Party, a verdict at which the United States expressed dismay. ‘In this Olympic year, we urge China to seize the opportunity to put its best face forward and take steps to improve its record on human rights and religious freedom,’ the US Embassy said in a statement. The official Xinhua news agency said Hu had made a ‘confession of crime and acceptance of punishment,’ leading the court to issue a relatively light sentence. Hu’s two lawyers said he had acknowledged ‘excesses.’ ‘In the end, I think that he came to accept that some of his statements were contrary to the law as it stands,’ said defence lawyer Li Jinsong.

For Immediate Release October 3, 2007 Contact: Pete Perry, 571-271-1313 Thelma Young, 202-234-8022 Peace and Human Rights Groups March to Burmese, Chinese and Indian Embassies on International Free Burma Day WASHINGTON, DC – Responding to a global call for Saturday, October 6th to be an international day of solidarity with the people's pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, also known as Burma, the Washington Peace Center and U.S. Campaign for Burma will march from the Burmese Embassy 23rd and S Streets, NW, to the Chinese Embassy at Kalorama Road and Connecticut Avenue, NW, and ending at the Indian Embassy on Q Street, near Dupont Circle. In response to last week's violent crackdown on Buddhist monks and civilians in Rangoon, Mandalay and other towns and cities in Burma, a popular group on the Web site Facebook has named October 6th International Day Of Support for Burma. The U.S. Campaign for Burma, a group dedicated to building broad-based support for freedom in Burma, and the W...

January 1, 2007 2006 Year In Review for Chinese Democracy Mvmt By John Kusumi From a China Support Network perspective, what happened this year? 2006 was "Tuidang, Year 2." Tuidang refers to a campaign, ever more insistent, urging all Chinese to quit from the Chinese Communist Party and related organs; and more broadly, for China on the whole to leave behind the CCP. In 2005, "Tuidang, Year 1," 7 million people quit the Communist Party. In 2006, 10 million people quit the CCP, for a total of 17 million resignation statements -- all posted at the Tuidang web site. The tires have been slashed on China's Communist Party, and it is increasingly unpopular. Those ten million resignations represent excellent news and "the air going out of the tires." Yet, a few more events happened this year, allowing us to claim 10 million and change. The type of change that we would really like to see is China's transition to a democratic, post-communist regime; through...