China Reform Monitor: No. 1004

November 28:

The poverty rate in regions populated by ethnic minorities is 13.8 percent higher than China’s national average, according official statistics released by the State Ethnic Affairs Commission. The commission revealed that in 2011 there were 39.17 million impoverished minority people accounting for 26.5 percent of the total rural population in the eight provinces were they predominantly live – Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Tibet, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi. Poverty among non-Han was particularly acute in the latter three provinces, the official People’s Daily reports.

November 29:

After a Han Chinese man lifted a Muslim Uighur girl’s veil, 1,000 angry Uighurs protested at county office in Zhenping, Henan. When the protesters tried to enter the government offices they clashed with 1,000 riot police leaving at least 50 injured Uighurs and three damaged police cars, Radio Free Asia reports. Zhengping is known for its jade carving and many of the 3,000 Uighurs living there are from Hotan, Xinjiang, an area famous for its high-quality nephrite jade.

South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has determined that its government acted unlawfully by effectively denying the Dalai Lama a visa last year, BBC reports. The court’s verdict, which overturned the Western Cape High Court’s decision to dismiss the case, said former Home Affairs Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma had “unreasonably delayed her decision” regarding the Tibetan spiritual leader’s visa application thus forcing him to cancel plans to attend Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 80th birthday in October 2011. The government denied it had bowed to pressure from China to block the trip, but the court found that the government had “deliberately procrastinated” such as to prevent the Dali Lama’s visit. Tutu called the decision a “credit to South Africa’s judicial system” and the leader of the opposition Inkatha Freedom Party said he would “invite the Dalai Lama to come to South Africa as soon as it is convenient to him.”

December 1:

China has denied allegations that Hubei Sanjiang Space Wanshan Special Vehicle Co., a company linked to the People’s Liberation Army, exported a new ballistic missile launch vehicle to North Korea in violation of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) sanctions. According to Jose Filipe Moraes Cabral, Portugal’s UN Ambassador who chairs the council’s sanctions committee on North Korea, China reported that the vehicle in question – presumably a missile launcher perched on a trailer truck vehicle with eight wheels on each side – was “a timber truck.” The North Korean military unveiled the new armament at a military parade in April, Kyodo news reports. As a permanent member of the UNSC China did not oppose the resolutions banning exports of military equipment and related material to North Korea that were passed after the country carried out underground nuclear tests in 2006 and in 2009.

December 2:

Beijing municipal court has sentenced 10 people to jail for illegally detaining and assaulting a dozen citizens who had come from Changge, Henan to the capital to file petitions against local official abuse. The Chaoyang District Court convicted the men of “illegal imprisonment” and handed down sentences ranging from several months to a year and a half. Officers from the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau were found guilty of using police cars to round up petitioners in early May and spirit them off to a secret “black jail” on the outskirts of Beijing. “The case has positive significance because it says ‘no’ to local governments that want only to restrict people’s personal freedom in the name of stopping petitioners. The case will also serve as a warning to Beijing’s black jails,” China’s official Xinhua news agency state-run news media reports. The article was later removed from many official news outlets.

[Editor’s Note: To stop people from reaching the petition office in Beijing municipal and provincial governments pay “retrievers” to kidnap petitioners and bundle them off to cheap hotel rooms or rented basements. Some are held for weeks under dismal conditions until officials can send them back to their hometowns. Stories of beatings, rapes, and even deaths are common, The New York Times reports.]