Tag Archives: Communism

Venezuela protests spread to poor areas, two more deaths amid unrest

Riot police fire tear gas during a rally against Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, Venezuela April 10, 2017. REUTERS/Christian Veron

By Alexandra Ulmer and Corina Pons

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelans in poor areas blocked streets and lit fires during scattered protests across the country on Tuesday night, and two people were killed during the growing unrest in the midst of a crippling economic crisis.

In a worrying sign for leftist President Nicolas Maduro, groups in Caracas’ traditionally pro-government hillside slums and low-income neighborhoods took to the streets, witnesses and opposition lawmakers reported.

Maduro foes were galvanized by footage of a crowd in the south-eastern Bolivar state heckling and throwing objects at the closely-protected leader during a rally on Tuesday, before state television cut off the broadcast.

In the western Lara state, two people, aged 13 and 36, were killed during unrest on Tuesday, the state prosecutor’s office said in a statement. Lara’s opposition governor Henri Falcon blamed violence on “infiltrators” and “delinquents” who roamed on motorcycles after an energy blackout.

“They go by neighborhoods and shoot people who are protesting,” said Falcon, a former member of the ruling party, urging a negotiation to end Venezuela’s political crisis.

The opposition says Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader who took office four years ago, has morphed into a dictator after a Supreme Court decision in late March to assume the functions of the opposition-led congress.

The court quickly overturned the most controversial part of its decision, but the move breathed new life into the fractured opposition movement.

Two young men had already been killed in protests during the last week, according to authorities. Many are bracing for further violence in a country that is racked by crime and has one of the world’s highest murder rates.

Witnesses said residents of a number of working-class Caracas neighborhoods blocked streets with trash or burning debris on Tuesday night, describing confused street melees and clashes with security forces. The capital appeared calm on Wednesday, although some roads were charred and littered with broken glass.

Government officials did not provide an official account of the events, and the Information Ministry did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Maduro has said that under a veneer of pacifism, a U.S.-backed right-wing opposition is encouraging violent protests in a bid to topple his government and get its hands on Venezuela’s oil wealth.

On Wednesday night, he said the heckling incident a day earlier in the city of San Felix was an opposition attempt to “ambush” him that was thwarted by his loyalists.

“They had prepared an ambush and the people neutralized it,” he said. “I want to thank the people of San Felix for their expressions of fervor, passion, love and support.”

“MADURO DICTATOR”

Maduro’s adversaries are demanding the government call delayed state elections, which polls suggest would not go well for the ruling Socialists. They also want an early presidential vote after authorities quashed a recall referendum against Maduro last year.

A ban on opposition leader Henrique Capriles from holding office for 15 years drew broad criticism as he was seen as the opposition’s best presidential hope.

But it is Venezuela’s extended economic crisis that has ordinary people fuming.

Venezuelans have been suffering food and medicine shortages for months, leading many to skip meals or go without crucial treatment. Lines of hundreds form in front of supermarkets as people jostle for hours under the hot sun hoping price-controlled rice or flour will be delivered.

The crisis has especially hurt the poor, long the base of support of Maduro and his predecessor the late Hugo Chavez.

Protesters say they have also been encouraged by stronger condemnation from American and European nations in the last two weeks.

“We cannot accept that the regime is willing to sacrifice Venezuelan lives to remain in power,” said Luis Almagro, the head of the Organization of American States, in a video posted on Wednesday, urging elections.

Another round of protests are planned for Thursday in Venezuela’s more than 300 municipalities. Opposition leaders are calling for the “mother of all marches” on April 19.

ARRESTS, LOOTING

Amid what the opposition coalition says is a crackdown on dissent, some 71 people were arrested on Tuesday, according to rights group Penal Forum.

In total, 364 people were arrested between April 4-12 during the most sustained protests since 2014, with 183 people still behind bars, the group added.

A group of young men and teenagers were arrested for throwing “sharp objects” against Maduro’s vehicle on Tuesday night, according to a report by a local National Guard division seen by Reuters. Two sources told Reuters the protesters were hurling stones.

Local media reported lootings overnight in the working class bedroom community of Guarenas outside Caracas, as well as in parts of the capital.

State officials have tweeted images and videos of demonstrators vandalizing public property and throwing rocks at police.

Despite the spiking tensions, many in the opposition worry extended protests will not spur early or fair elections, but rather increase clashes in the already turbulent country.

Major anti-government protests in 2014 eventually floundered, though the opposition at the time did not have as clear-cut demands, poor neighborhoods largely abstained, and the economy was in better shape.

(Additional reporting by Eyanir Chinea, Brian Ellsworth, Diego Ore, Miguel Angel Sulbaran, Liamar Ramos, Maria Ramirez, Deisy Buitrago and Mircely Guanipa; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Andrew Hay and Michael Perry)

Woken up before 5 a.m. to see North Korea’s leader, five hours later

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his sister Kim Yo Jong attend an opening ceremony of a newly constructed residential complex in Ryomyong street in Pyongyang, North Korea April 13, 2017. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Sue-Lin Wong

PYONGYANG (Reuters) – It’s unusual being a foreign correspondent in North Korea, as a team from Reuters, among scores of journalists visiting the reclusive state, found out on Thursday.

Invited to Pyongyang for this week’s celebrations of the 105th birth anniversary of founder president Kim Il Sung, the journalists were herded together for hours, not allowed water and not given access to phones – to attend a street opening by North Korea’s current leader, his grandson Kim Jong Un.

The preparations began on Wednesday night when North Korean government minders rushed into the media center at our hotel just after 10 p.m., told us to stop working and pack up our laptops because “you won’t be coming back here tonight.”

Gathered in the lobby, we were told there would be a “big and important” event on Thursday. With tensions high because of the possibility that Pyongyang may conduct a nuclear or long-range missile test in defiance of U.S. warnings of retaliation, the words were striking.

Our minders refused to give details. Just bring your passports and cameras, nothing else. No phones, no laptops, no water.

“No water?” we ask.

One of our government minders, Ri Hyon Mu, shifted awkwardly.

“I am being very direct now. Please urinate and excrete before the event as there will be no water closets.”

No more details were given, except to be ready for a 6 a.m. start.

At 4.45 a.m., the phone rang. It was Ri. Our wake-up call had been pushed forward.

Soon, the hotel lobby was thronging with journalists from around the world, armed with video and photo cameras, all with blue armbands with white letters that read “journalist” in Korean.

We were piled into buses that weaved through the manicured streets of Pyongyang as the sun rose. Groups of men in grey suits and women in colorful dresses, many holding bunches of red and pink plastic flowers, were walking briskly, a sign we were headed to a mass rally of some sort.

We arrived at the People’s Palace of Culture for what turned into a two-hour security check, where our wallets and chocolate were taken away and tied up in black plastic bags.

The Reuters team boarded a bus after the security check, only for a minder to shout at us to get off – “This bus is for Americans only!”

“That’s the imperialist bus,” O Kum Sok, another minder, explained with a grin, as we got into another bus.

CLAPPING AND CHEERING

We set off again at around 7.30 a.m., passing crowds of North Koreans, some squatting, most standing. Our buses stopped just past the Chinese embassy, one of the largest foreign missions in the city.

We are at Ryomyong, a new residential street, constructed, we were told, in less than a year, lined with more than twenty buildings, each about thirty or forty-plus storeys.

Soon, tens of thousands of North Koreans had gathered in the area, some in military dress, most in traditional suits and dresses holding balloons, plastic flowers and North Korean flags. They looked curiously at us, some smiling slightly.

A brass band played as the square filled up. Then around 10 a.m. the crowd fell silent.

Suddenly, there was fervent clapping and cheering, balloons bobbing, flags flapping. Kim Jong Un and top government officials walked onto the stage to a fanfare from the brass band reserved to mark his public appearances.

It is “a very significant, great event, more powerful than the explosion of hundreds of nuclear bombs on the top of the enemies’ heads,” said North Korea’s premier Pak Pong Ju, the main speaker at the opening ceremony.

The completion of Ryomyong Street is one of the examples of “a brilliant victory based on self-reliance and self-development against maneuvers by the U.S. and vassal forces”, he said, using the state’s typical descriptions of the United States and its allies.

A translation of the speech was provided when we returned to the hotel.

Kim did not speak but clapped intermittently. After about twenty minutes of speeches, a thick, red ribbon was unfurled on stage. Kim cut the ribbon and was whisked away in a shiny black Mercedes as his sister Kim Yo Jong bowed deeply. Ryomyong Street was officially open.

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

China’s new civil code light on individual rights reforms

China's President Xi Jinping and other delegates listen as China's Premier Li Keqiang (not pictured) delivers a government work report during the opening session of the National People's Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj

By Christian Shepherd

BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s Communist leaders will this week introduce sweeping new laws that codify social responsibilities for the country’s 1.4 billion citizens while also providing some modest new protections.

The preamble of what state media is calling China’s “declaration of rights” will be announced on Wednesday and is expected to be passed by the close of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on March 15, paving the way for more detailed laws expected to be passed in 2020.

The changes are part of President Xi Jinping’s wider push to align the legal system with the country’s social and economic modernization and for some legal reformers, the code is a test of how far China will go in allowing civil liberties that might impinge upon state power.

“Civil law is the fundamental doctrine for a country’s legal system, the source of its basic essence,” Liang Ying, head of the NPC Legislative Affairs Research institute, told state media on Sunday.

“A foundational civil (law) system is an important sign of whether a country’s legal system is mature.”

Xi has made governing the nation by law a top priority of his tenure though he has drawn a line at allowing the courts to expand their power at the expense of the Communist Party’s control.

Since pledging to reform and open in 1978, China has been gradually shifting its legal system away from a socialist law towards something closer to a European-style legal system.

In 2011, China declared that “socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics” had been established, but officials themselves say China’s laws remains a work in progress.

SAMARITANS, PROPERTY RIGHTS

The preamble, which was released in draft form to the public in June last year, seeks to address some of the legal issues that have gnawed at public consciousness in recent years, such as who is responsible for China’s abandoned children and elderly, or what protections cover so-called “Good Samaritans”.

China’s incomplete legal system was heavily criticized for an incident in 2011 when multiple passersby ignored a toddler knocked to the ground in a hit-and-run.

Shocked observers said the lack of clarity on civil rights leaves helpers at risk of liability when coming to the aid of strangers.

Reformers also hope the code will resolve the issue of guardianship for “left behind” children whose parents work away from home and “empty nest” elderly folk who are similarly abandoned by their children.

One issue that lawyers say remains mostly unresolved in the draft code is that of property rights.

Most Chinese homeowners do not legally own the land on which their homes are built. Instead, they lease the rights to use the property for a limited number of years from the government, an arrangement that creates uncertainty for buyers.

“Whether farmers or city folk, businessman or scientists, an inability to guarantee your own property in the way that other nations allow will impact social stability,” said Li Shu, a lawyer at Anli Law Firm in Beijing.

But Philip Cheng, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells in Shanghai, said a provision in the current draft requiring civil activities to be carried out in a “fair” and “reasonable” manner could help with certain property disputes.

It may, for example, allow companies and individuals to be paid market rates for land that is rezoned to produce new housing in major cities or make way for industrial development, he said.

LIMITS OF PROTECTION

Many legal experts say the latest draft of general rules that form the basis of the code falls short of enshrining sweeping private rights and makes little progress in key areas including property and civil liberties.

Another issue: how far the code will go in defending the rights of individuals, known as “personality rights”, a broad term Chinese legal experts use to talk about the basic rights each individual should enjoy.

Health, reputation, image, name and freedom are included, but the term is significantly narrower and de-politicized compared to human rights, according to Chinese academics.

Proponents of individual rights have called for a dedicated section of the code, while others worry granting too many private rights could lead to revolution.

The current scope of personality rights in the draft rules makes them “seriously imbalanced”, according to Xu Xianming, deputy chairman of the National People’s Legal Association, an advocate for more personal freedoms being included in the code.

“First, the list of rights is incomplete; second, the number of rights is insufficient; third, the civil rights system is curtailed,” Xu wrote last year in an essay for the official magazine of China’s parliament.

As China’s constitution cannot be cited in court, rights must be passed by parliament before can they be protected, Xu argued.

China’s constitution on paper promises freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of assembly among others. In practice, however, such provisions are not considered legally actionable and the party’s right to govern as it sees fit takes precedent.

Liang Huixing, a scholar at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has repeatedly warned that writing personality rights into the civil code might lead to a “color revolution” in China, referring to mass political movements in former Soviet Union states in the early 2000s.

(Reporting by Christian Shepherd; Editing by Tony Munroe and Sam Holmes)

North Korean elite turning against leader Kim: defector

North Korea leader Kim Jong Un

By James Pearson

SEOUL (Reuters) – The North Korean elite are outwardly expressing their discontent towards young leader Kim Jong Un and his government as more outside information trickles into the isolated country, North Korea’s former deputy ambassador to London said on Wednesday.

Thae Yong Ho defected to South Korea in August last year and since December 2016 has been speaking to media and appearing on variety television shows to discuss his defection to Seoul and his life as a North Korean envoy.

“When Kim Jong Un first came to power, I was hopeful that he would make reasonable and rational decisions to save North Korea from poverty, but I soon fell into despair watching him purging officials for no proper reasons,” Thae said during his first news conference with foreign media on Wednesday.

“Low-level dissent or criticism of the regime, until recently unthinkable, is becoming more frequent,” said Thae, who spoke in fluent, British-accented English.

“We have to spray gasoline on North Korea, and let the North Korean people set fire to it.”

Thae, 54, has said publicly that dissatisfaction with Kim Jong Un prompted him to flee his post. Two university-age sons living with him and his wife in London also defected with him.

North and South Korea are technically still at war because their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty. The North, which is subject to U.N. sanctions over its nuclear and missile programs, regularly threatens to destroy the South and its main ally, the United States.

Thae is the most senior official to have fled North Korea and entered public life in the South since the 1997 defection of Hwang Jang Yop, the brains behind the North’s governing ideology, “Juche”, which combines Marxism and extreme nationalism.

Today’s North Korean system had “nothing to do with true communism”, Thae said, adding that the elite, like himself, had watched with unease as countries like Cambodia, Vietnam and the former Soviet Union embraced economic and social reforms.

Thae has said that more North Korean diplomats are waiting in Europe to defect to South Korea.

North Korea still outwardly professes to maintain a Soviet-style command economy, but for years a thriving network of informal markets and person-to-person trading has become the main source of food and money for ordinary people.

Fully embracing these reforms would end Kim Jong Un’s rule, Thae said. Asked if Kim Jong Un’s brother, Kim Jong Chol, could run the country instead, Thae remained skeptical.

“Kim Jong Chol has no interest in politics. He is only interested in music,” Thae said.

“He’s only interested in Eric Clapton. If he was a normal man, I’m sure he’d be a very good professional guitarist”.

(Reporting by James Pearson; Editing by Nick Macfie)

U.S. blacklists North Korean officials over rights abuses

Kim Jong Un leader of North Korea leading a meeting

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department has added seven senior North Korean officials, including leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, to its sanctions list because of human rights abuses and censorship by the communist nation.

The department said in a statement on Wednesday that its Office of Foreign Assets Control added six men and one woman, all officials of the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea or the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, along with the Ministry of Labor and the State Planning Commission, to the Specially Designated Nationals List.

“The North Korean regime not only engages in severe human rights abuses, but it also implements rigid censorship policies and conceals its inhumane and oppressive behavior,” acting OFAC Director John Smith said in the statement, adding that the move aimed to expose the individuals responsible for the abuses.

The U.S. State Department said in a separate statement that the action coincided with the release of its second report on North Korean human rights abuses and censorship, which it called among the worst in the world.

Pyongyang “continues to commit extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrest and detention, forced labor, and torture. Many of these abuses are committed in the political prison camps, where an estimated 80,000 to 120,000 individuals are detained, including children and family members of those subject to persecution and censorship,” the State Department statement said.

Among seven individuals on the Treasury Department blacklist is Kim Yo Jong, 27, who it said is the younger sister of leader Kim Jong Un, as well as the vice director of the Workers’ Party of Korea Propaganda and Agitation Department.

Also on the list is Minister of State Security Kim Won Hong, whose agency the department said “engages in torture and inhumane treatment of detainees during interrogation and in the country’s network of political prison camps.”

(Reporting by Tim Ahmann; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Tom Brown and Steve Orlofsky)

Venezuelans revel in pots-and-pans protests after Maduro humiliation

people banging pots in Venezuela

By Alexandra Ulmer

MARACAIBO, Venezuela (Reuters) – For over a decade, Venezuelan opposition supporters would clang pots and pans on balconies of middle-class apartments to protest late leader Hugo Chavez’s self-styled “21st century socialism.”

While sometimes deafening, the protests never seemed to get under the skin of the charismatic leftist, whose supporters often countered with fireworks from shanty towns, and many in the opposition ended up deeming them futile.

But the ‘cacerolazo’, as such protests are known round South America, returned with a bang a few days ago when a pot-wielding crowd ran after Chavez’s unpopular successor Nicolas Maduro in a previously pro-government working class neighborhood of Margarita island.

Amazed and amused by the sight of the normally hyper-protected Maduro humiliated in public, opposition supporters are now flaunting their kitchenware nationwide to taunt the man they blame for a dire economic crisis that has many families skipping meals.

“Now it feels completely different because there’s no food, there’s hunger, and this thug we have as president is scared of ‘cacerolazos’!” said protester Migdalia Ortega, 59, beside a handful of women banging pots along a main avenue in Maracaibo, an oil city full of shuttered stores and littered with garbage.

“We had stopped using the pots and pans in marches but now we’re going to bring them every time,” she added, as a few hundred protesters prepared to march under the sizzling tropical sun to demand a recall referendum against Maduro.

The former bus driver and union leader has not spoken publicly about the incident in Margarita, which sparked a frenzy of jokes and cartoons. One showed him overtaking Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt to avoid pots being thrown his way.

Government officials say the grainy videos of Maduro surrounded by jeering protesters were “manipulated” by pro-opposition media and maintain he was actually cheered by supporters after inspecting state housing projects.

Still, authorities briefly rounded up more than 30 people for heckling him. A prominent journalist is in jail – and charged with money laundering – after publicizing the protest.

Recalling protests against government members at restaurants, houses and even funeral parlors, Socialist Party lawmaker Elias Jaua said pots-and-pans protests should be considered a punishable offense if they promote “intolerance.”

During Chavez’s 14-year rule, their use reached a crescendo around a failed 36-hour coup attempt in 2002 and a strike that crippled the oil industry from late that year into 2003.

‘REBELLION’

“The ‘cacerolazo’ is even more relevant today because it is a symbol of rebellion,” said artist Cecilia Leonardi, 54, who said she has cut back on meat and legumes because they are unavailable or too expensive, while banging a pot in Maracaibo.

‘Cacerolazos’ came to the fore under Chile’s late socialist President Salvador Allende in the early 1970s, when middle- and upper-class women would bang on pots to protest shortages.

They transcend political lines: ‘cacerolazos’ have taken place this year against both Argentina’s center-right president Mauricio Macri and Brazil’s now-ousted leftist leader Dilma Rousseff.

In Venezuela, ‘cacerolazos’ have been a defining symbol of anti-socialist opponents, many of whom come from the middle and upper classes. Chavez, who died from cancer in 2013, used to mock them as a “parasitic bourgeoisie” intent on getting its hands back on the OPEC country’s oil reserves.

One government-employed ‘Chavista’ in western Zulia state said she was becoming disillusioned with Maduro but still did not have faith in his opponents.

“The ‘cacerolazos’ are useless: why doesn’t the opposition give us (policy) proposals instead?” she said, asking to remain anonymous because she feared for her job at a state university.

“If they put forward a coherent proposal, even I would join them. But for now I’ll stick to the devil I know.”

Some former government supporters, however, are now joining the pots-and-pans protests.

Suffering a third year of recession and triple-digit inflation, many poor Venezuelans say they are skipping meals and forgoing protein-rich meats and beans as they often emerge empty-handed from shops despite hours in line.

“Sometimes we only eat once a day,” said Marjorie Rodriguez, an angry former Chavez supporter and mother-of-three, who described putting on a shirt and hat in the colors of the national flag earlier this week to bang pots in her poor

Ciudad Ojeda neighborhood, next to oil-rich Maracaibo Lake.

“We have to get rid of this president so that products start arriving again,” said Rodriguez, stood in a hot line under the midday sun with dozens of others hoping to buy pasta.

(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Kieran Murray)

Tens of thousands protest in Hong Kong as China tensions simmer over booksellers

Protest in China

By Venus Wu

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents marched in protest on the 19th anniversary of the financial hub’s return to Chinese rule on Friday as tensions simmer against Chinese authorities over the abductions of Hong Kong booksellers.

Some waved banners criticizing Beijing for the cross-border abductions as acts of a “totalitarian” regime, as well as calling for the release of leading dissidents, chanting for democracy and for Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying to step down.

Several hundred scuffled with police outside Government House, with police using pepper spray to keep them back. Organizers said 110,000 people took part in the march, while police put the figure at 19,300.

The July 1 protests are considered a barometer of public sentiment toward Beijing, with the former British colony due to hold citywide elections in September.

The city has been unnerved over the past year by the disappearances of five booksellers who specialized in works critical of Chinese leaders. One of the men, Lam Wing-kee, who was detained for eight months by Chinese agents and released last month, criticized Beijing for “violating Hong Kong’s rights” through illegal cross-border enforcement operations.

The tactics have raised fears of Communist Party rulers in Beijing eroding the so-called “one country, two systems” formula, granting Hong Kong a high degree of freedom and autonomy since its 1997 return from British to Chinese rule.

China has denied wrongdoing.

“This is a very grave threat to the safety of Hong Kong residents that an unknown force is spying on people,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Cyd Ho at the rally.

“The Hong Kong government has to follow up with the central government on what’s really happening behind the scenes.”

Hundreds of police were also deployed to guard China’s main representative “Liaison Office” in Hong Kong, after activists who advocate independence from China posted plans on social media for a “black mask” evening protest to besiege the skyscraper.

Scores of young people, some dressed in black T-shirts with the words “HK is not China”, were searched by police in the area and roads were blocked off with metal barricades to prevent trouble.

Lam, who had been due to lead the July 1 march that each year draws tens of thousands, pulled out, citing safety concerns after being followed by two unknown strangers, a lawmaker said.

“He feels increasingly concerned about his own personal safety,” said pro-democracy lawmaker Albert Ho.

A senior Chinese official, Wang Guangya, who heads the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office in Beijing, said the booksellers had “destroyed” the one country, two systems formula by publishing banned books in mainland China.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, however, said in a speech on Friday that “no matter what the difficulties and challenges, our confidence and determination towards one country, two systems will not waver”.

Xi added Hong Kong would continue to enjoy a high degree of autonomy and Beijing would strictly adhere to the law.

A 79-day “umbrella revolution” in late 2014 demanding Beijing allow full democracy in Hong Kong brought chaos to the streets.

(Additional reporting by Lindsy Long, Sharon Shi and Hera Poon in Hong Kong and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by James Pomfret; Editing by Nick Macfie)

China’s one-time ‘democracy’ village protests for fourth straight day

Protest in Wukan

By James Pomfret

WUKAN, China (Reuters) – The Chinese fishing village of Wukan staged a fourth straight day of protests on Wednesday against what residents say was the unlawful arrest of the village chief, a rare show of grassroots defiance against authorities in Communist China.

Wukan, in the southern province of Guangdong, made international headlines in 2011 as a symbol of grassroots democracy after an uprising against corrupt local authorities and illegal land grabs that resulted in rare concessions being granted by provincial Communist Party leaders.

Under a blazing sun, the village of 15,000 once again united to march for the release of Lin Zuluan, the popular and democratically elected village chief who was arrested in a surprise midnight raid over the weekend.

Lin was shown on state television on Tuesday confessing to accepting bribes, but many villagers profess his innocence, saying he’d been forced into making a confession.

Sources close to the Lin family said his grandson was detained by police soon after Lin’s arrest and interrogated for 12 hours.

The grandson was released soon after Lin’s confession went public, they said.

Despite repeated warnings by authorities to the villagers not to stir up trouble, more than a thousand again marched in a loud procession, waving red China flags and chanting for justice.

“The villagers of Wukan don’t believe Lin Zuluan took bribes,” read a hand-written white banner held up by a group of several children at the vanguard of the procession.

They also held up banners making a broader appeal to national leaders in Beijing to “save Wukan”.

“We want the central government to come and investigate,” said Wei Yonghan, an elderly villager joining the march.

“We won’t give up. We’ll keep marching every day till they listen to us.”

Wukan’s defiance in 2011 took place during the administration of former president Hu Jintao. It remains unclear whether security forces will take a stronger line under President Xi Jinping who has cracked down on rights activists across China since taking office.

Over the past few days, however, authorities seem to have tightened their grip. Some reporters were warned by authorities in nearby Shanwei of “inciting, planning and directing the protests,” according to reports carried in Chinese state media.

Foreign media outlets including Reuters were urged to leave the village immediately.

A villager who was taken into detention by police and interrogated said authorities were aggressively going after potential ringleaders of the protests to quash any escalation of unrest.

“They questioned me for hours and wanted to know everything, who was organizing things,” the villager, who declined to be identified, said. “They told me to open my Wechat (messaging app) … and spent hours looking through my messages.”

While there didn’t appear to be a mass deployment of riot police for the protests on Wednesday, at least three drones could be seen hovering in the sky tracking the demonstration.

Villagers also occasionally chased off individuals in the crowds they believed to be plain-clothes officers.

The village is about a four-hour drive east of Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, where months of pro-democracy protests brought chaos to the streets in late 2014.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

Christian Radio Station To Bring Hope To Communist Nation

For years in the country of Albania, the communist government once exerted such control over the publications and broadcasting that you could not buy a dictionary with God in it.

Now, the country is undergoing a revolution of hope as a Christian radio station is airing programming in the Albanian’s native language aimed at bringing the good news to the lost.

Radio 7 has been broadcasting Christian material to the country since 2002 but had been hampered by the fact their programs were translations of North American programs that were aimed at believers in the United States and Canada.

The head of Radio 7 contacted an American ministry called The Tide which works to create locally produced Gospel shows around the world.  The group helped launch radio ministries in countries such as Nigeria, Nepal and India.  They knew they could bring the kind of help to Radio 7 that would impact Albania.

“Like all of our programming, The Tide Albanian-language program, which also reaches into neighboring Kosovo, is produced on-site, using indigenous speakers who tell people about Jesus in the language they were born to speak,” said The Tide Director Don Shenk. “But our ministry in Albania also goes beyond airtime, and our ministry leaders invest into the lives of those to whom they minister, visiting with them, giving them radios so they can listen to the program, praying with them and encouraging them in their faith.”

The ministry of Radio 7 and The Tide has produced noticeable results in just a few short months with letters from those who said they were atheists or Muslims who have now accepted Christ as Lord.

Albania’s population today is less than one percent Christian.