Wednesday, December 30, 2009

China shows no tolerance for dissidence

BEIJING, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- China may have deservedly earned all the international accolades for its dazzling economic achievements, but two recent developments show its Communist regime is nowhere near winning similar praise for tolerating political dissidence or challenge to its authority in any form.
In the first instance, China, going against pleas and urgings from around the world, handed an 11-year prison sentence to Liu Xiaobo, the country's widely respected ardent supporter of democracy and freedom of speech.
In an equally disturbing move, China convinced Cambodia to deport 20 Uighurs who had fled to that country for political asylum to escape the crackdown on their fellow Turkic-speaking minority members by Chinese authorities for the ethnic riots last July in the far northwest Xinjiang-Uighur region.

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