March 10:
Guangdong Governor Zhu Xiaodan has condemned officials who limit reform and called for increased transparency and civil rights. “The ultimate goal is to have a better coordinated mechanism to balance the government’s executive authority and monitoring powers. This includes speeding up administrative transparency. The government needs to protect of the public’s right to know, expression, participation and monitoring. We must drive forward reform in order to eliminate small-circle political power, official abuse of public resources and administrative fraud,” Zhu said on the sidelines of the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing. In a panel discussion with the NPC’s Guangdong delegation, provincial party secretary Wang Yang agreed that reform is “a must for Guangdong” and called for the promotion of non-government organizations as part of this effort. Wang said the biggest obstacles are China’s laws and regulations and called on the State Council to reduce legal obstacles. “I want relevant departments to grant power to (Guangdong) to pioneer reform. If there is a legal obstacle, let’s all petition against it,” Wang said in comments carried in the South China Morning Post.
March 12:
Lang Sheng, vice director of the Commission for Legislative Affairs of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee denied that the Criminal Procedure Law’s draft amendment allows secret detention, saying “there are no secret detentions in China or any legal stipulations on it.” According to Wang Zhaoguo, another senior lawmaker, the law states that public security bureaus must inform a suspect’s family within 24 hours of their detention unless the case is “related to State security or terrorism,” or if informing the family would “impede an investigation,” the official China Daily reports.
March 13:
Al Jazeera reports that there are numerous “black jails” outside of Beijing, which it described as “cheap places rented out by the block to officials to set up as ad-hoc prisons.” In the video report an Al Jazeera journalist visits a black jail with the family of a woman who was kidnapped and detained there. In December, the government embarked on a six-month campaign to crackdown on companies that employ unlicensed security agents to help provincial government offices in Beijing detain petitioners against their will before they can alert central government authorities to local corruption and other abuses of power, The South China Morning Post reported.
March 15:
Police in Kathmandu, Nepal arrested six anti- China Tibetan protestors on March 10, the anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising against China, and 94 others on March 14, the fourth anniversary of the 2008 Chinese clampdown in Tibet. To prevent protests near the Chinese embassy police have increased surveillance and security and closed the roads leading to the area, the Hindustan Times reports. A report on the plight of Tibetan refugees in Nepal issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and presented last week at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva identified Nepal’s restrictions on Tibetan refugees’ “freedom of movement, assembly and association” and authorities use of “arbitrary arrests and other inappropriate methods.”
March 20:
This year North Korea’s Luoxian Economic Zone, positioned near its border with China and Russia, will begin inviting state-owned and private firms to invest and help develop the area, the official Zhongguo Xinwen Wang reports. The zone, which seeks to boost Sino-North Korean cooperation in infrastructure, agriculture, tourism and other industrial projects, hopes to attract automotive, textile, food and household electrical appliance manufacturers. In 2010, China and North Korea agreed to co-manage the zone and, in July 2011, Jilin Province and Luoxian agreed to complete construction before 2020. Jilin will build port, energy and transportation facilities, said Li Tie, director of the Development Office of the Tumen River Area. Luoxian is currently home to about 100 mostly small and medium-sized foreign enterprises.