Accusing the government of inaction in the face of the new threat – which entails potentially disastrous consequences for the whole world – groups of concerned Japanese citizens are now calling on the U.N. to intervene, in order to assess the state of affairs and devise a safety plan.

While the situation is still far from being under control at reactor 1, which along with reactor 3 suffered a meltdown after the tsunami, Mitsuhei Murata, professor emeritus at Tokaigakuen University, believes that there is reason to fear for what may happen at reactor 4.

Inside the reactor a huge mass of caesium –10 times that of the Chernobyl disaster – is lying exposed to the elements. Should any leak occur, a fire may break out, triggering a radioactive fallout which could affect large areas of northern and western Honshu, Japan’s main island, threatening with a deadly cloud districts as far away as those included in the Tokyo-Yokohama-Kawasaki conurbation, home to over a quarter of the country’s population.

The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) – the largest nuclear utility in the world and owner of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi plant – has assured that the structure around reactor 4 has been reinforced and that there is no risk of damage, even if a strong quake strikes the area.

Many Japanese, though, find it hard to trust the company because of the lies with which its management, with the government’s compliance, tried to cover up the extent of damage caused by the tsunami at the Daiichi plant and most of the problems that have emerged since then.

The latest lie, as some Japanese media repeatedly pointed out, was concocted last March, almost a year after the tsunami struck, when TEPCO’s executives, along with prime minister Yoshihiko Noda , announced that reactor 1 had been brought to a state of cold shutdown. Scientists back then loudly voiced their disbelief and insisted that it was nonsense to speak of a cold shut down in relation to the melted core of a nuclear reactor, which to this day has to be constantly doused with tons of water to keep its temperature down and avoid fires or explosions.

Proven lies aside, a large part of the Japanese population does not trust TEPCO’s management or the central government, because no independent body has yet been able to pry open the security wall built around the Daiichi plant. Using the excuse of possible radioactive contamination, TEPCO’s management has thus far kept away anyone wishing to carry out an inspection.
TEPCO has also been very secretive about the actual levels of radiation in the close vicinity of the Daiichi plant. Because of this, the amount of radioactivity in that area is estimated through calculations based on radioactivity in the rest of the country. Tens of thousands of Japanese living in northern and western Honshu go about their daily routines carrying a Geiger counter, to constantly check radioactivity fluctuations.

At the same time, Japanese authorities have been content to follow TEPCO’s lead, refraining from carrying out its own official surveys. Nor have they fulfilled the promise made over a year ago to set up an independent regulatory agency with the power to look into nuclear industries’ activities.

And yet, recently the government acquired a majority stake in the company to save it from financial disaster and revive its cash flow drained by compensations given to some of the tens of thousands of people who had to leave their homes in the Fukushima area and some of the districts around it.

Like a mantra, TEPCO’s executives keep repeating that the worst is over, but aerial pictures show that nothing has been done to cover reactor 4, the roof of which was blown off by an explosion following last year’s powerful earthquake and tsunami. Inside the reactor 1,535 spent fuel rods lie exposed to wind and rain. Measurements taken around the Fukushima area indicate extremely high levels of radioactivity, and many worry about the effects of rising temperatures now that summer is approaching.

Speaking at an Upper House Budget Committee hearing in March, Murata stated that “should an accident occur at reactor 4, it could be the start of the ultimate catastrophe for the world.” Excerpts of Murata’s testimony were only recently made public. Murata’s concerns are shared by many Japanese scientists and international experts.

In an interview with the weekly magazine Shukan Asahi, Arnie Gundersen, a U.S. nuclear engineer who visited Japan in February, said the nuclear fuel pool at the reactor 4 is equivalent to several reactor cores and holds an amount of radioactivity equal to that released in the atmosphere by all past nuclear experiments combined. Gundersen also said that reactor 4 appears to be tilted and that, should an explosion take place, it would have the power to “physically split” the Japanese archipelago.

Even taking into account the most optimistic scenario, Murata fears that “should the storage pool collapse and the 1,535 fuel rods begin burning in the atmosphere, an endless amount of radiation will be emitted. Of course, that would mean that Tokyo would become unliveable.” What’s worse, Murata points out, “just 50 meters from the No. 4 reactor is the common pool for the No. 1 to No. 6 reactors. The common pool holds 6,375 spent nuclear fuel rods. If a fire should occur at the No. 4 reactor pool, the common pool would also not stand a chance.”

Taking heed of the experts’ warnings, Japanese anti-nuclear groups and grassroots movements are now calling for international intervention and 72 organizations have subscribed to an initiative launched by the anti-nuclear group Avaaz (they are much more than an anti-nuke group: they run protest signature campaigns against all kinds of topics. Maybe “the world-wide action campaign group Avaaz…”), which has begun collecting signatures in Japan and throughout the world, asking U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to get involved and exert pressure on the Japanese government to allow, at least, an independent inspection.

The AVAAZ.org petition can be found here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/un_for_fukushima_daiichi/?cl=1807687655&v=14311

From that moment on, every single bit of information sent from any pc, telephone, bank teller, automobile GPS gadget or Internet server, every speck of digital data bouncing back and forth from satellites or running through underground and undersea cables, every message transmitted along national and international communications networks, through blogs and social media, will be intercepted, stored, analysed and, possibly, deciphered by scores of computer and language wizards managing the biggest array of some of the fastest processors available on earth, the core of a planetary wiretapping and eavesdropping network run by the US National Security Agency.

News about something peculiar going on around Bluffdale, situated in the heart of Mormon country, has been popping up in blogs of concerned netizens for some time now, but only a few weeks ago the real, worrying scope of the project was exposed by a story published in Wired magazine under the byline of James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA – From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America.

The NSA, awash with money poured into it through the Department of Defence (DoD) after the 9/11 attacks, Bamford purports, “has become the largest, most covert and potentially intrusive intelligence agency ever.” And the 100,000 square foot computer cluster being set up at the Utah Data Center (UDC) under construction next to Bluffdale –nestled between the Wasatch Range and the Oquirrh Mountains– will be the throbbing hub of its planetary spying system. Officially, the venue, developed on the grounds of the National Guard training site in Camp Williams, is meant as a surveillance centre dedicated to counteracting computer hackers’ attacks or detecting threats from terrorist organizations.

No official US government source has yet confirmed Bamford’s revelations. But nor has anyone refuted his story. That the $2 billion, one million square foot UDC site is no average military defence venue seems to be attested by the sophisticated, $10 million antiterrorism shield system surrounding it. This includes a fence designed to block a 15,000 pound vehicle going 50 miles per hour, laser barriers, a tight-knit CCTV system and a visitor control centre equipped with a vehicle inspection unit and a biometric identification system.

The site will be self-sufficient thanks to a 65 megawatts substation, costing an estimated $40 million per year, and capable of delivering enough electricity to supply a medium sized town. Two oil tanks will store enough fuel to keep the mammoth compound generators running at full capacity for at least three days, three huge reservoirs will guarantee that almost seven million litres of water per day can be pumped into the structure’s offices and housings serviced by a fully autonomous sewage system and a gargantuan air conditioning unit meant to keep work spaces and servers cool.

These servers, according to former NSA representatives quoted by Bamford, have a practically limitless storing capacity. The UDC will be like a titanic black box designed to capture, track and scrutinize emails, phone calls, Internet browsers’ searches and credit card operations. It will also be designed to crack, at least potentially, any encrypted data zipping through wire and wireless communication networks, including private messages like those used for Blackberry or Skype-type systems, file sharing data exchanges between peers or foreign governments’ and international agencies’ secret communications.

The servers are to be mastered by a state of the art Cray XT5 supercomputer, nicknamed Jaguar, capable of running 2.33 petaflops. (Flop stands for floating operations per second and a petaflop equals 1015 flops.) Only Japan’s K Computer with 10.51 petaflops and China’s Tianhe 1A computer with 2.57 petaflops are currently more powerful. But the UDC Jaguar is at the core of an unequalled network of similarly powerful computers and the wizards of Cray Inc., under a $250 million contract with the NSA, are already working to develop a machine capable of breaking the exaflop barrier (an exaflop equals 1018 flops) before 2020. Possibly, some experts believe, by 2018.

According to William Binney, a former NSA crypto-mathematician, the UDC is much more than what its plain name seems to stand for, and its scope will go well beyond its formally declared national defence undertaking. Once connected to the rest of the expanded US cyber surveillance apparatus, and with its capacity to intercept and store any amounts of data, it will turn everyone using any digital equipment into an NSA target. Binney, who worked almost 40 years for the NSA, believes that once the UDC is up and running as the core structure of a cyber intelligence program codenamed Stellar Wind, the USA will be only an inch away “from a turnkey totalitarian state.”

Stellar Wind is meant to optimize the efficiency of the so-called worldwide Global Information Grid run by the Pentagon and capable of handling several yottabytes of data. A yottabyte equals 1024 bytes and it is the largest magnitude mathematicians have thus far been able to handle, even in their most abstract calculations. To get an idea of the capacity of the grid, consider that by 2015, according to estimates made by the computer company Cisco, worldwide Internet data traffic will reach an amount ranging between 900 and 1.000 exabytes (an exabyte equals 1018 bytes) per year.

Binney says he resigned in 2001 from the post of chief of the NSA Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center because he disagreed with the agency’s policy. The disagreement was about the objectives of the project.

The NSA bosses and those of the DoD, Binney says, could and should have been happy with setting up a system aimed at eavesdropping on foreign concerns, but instead they chose to organize their spying super gear so that they would also be able to wiretap and eavesdrop on all American citizens, in blatant violation of national laws–even those approved by the US Congress after 9/11 and despite the intense debate about privacy which has characterized the American political scene in the last decade. After the 9/11 attacks, members of the George W. Bush administration were plainly critical of restrictions on surveillance imposed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was passed in 1978 after Congressional hearings revealed widespread abuse on the part of government agencies.

Sections of the Patriot Act expanded the law’s extent to cover terrorism suspects as well as suspected agents of foreign countries. But after 11 September 2001 President Bush ordered a wider ranging agenda of surveillance, bestowing new, wider powers on the NSA and bypassing altogether the FISA clauses to allow for warrantless wiretaps. When The New York Times exposed some of the White House’s moves in this direction in 2005, administration officials simply argued that working within FISA would have impaired surveillance efficiency.

During the presidential campaign in 2008, Congress overhauled the FISA to formally legalize certain aspects of the new surveillance program and to align federal agencies’ operations with what the Bush administration had been secretly pursuing. As a senator, back then, Barack Obama voted in favour of the new Congress bill and since Obama’s election to presidency the White House administration has been relying heavily on such surveillance apparatus in its fight against terrorism. At the same time, it has also been working to upgrade the rules for wiretapping, including more incentives and penalties to compel telecom carriers and Internet service companies to cooperate with government agencies, while revising hi-tech related clauses to bring them in line with new technological challenges, especially increasingly sophisticated encryption methods used by Internet service companies and foreign governments to protect the data passing through their servers.

If Binney is concerned about the violation of privacy to which his fellow Americans would be subjected once the UDC computer system kicks in, any citizen of any other country should be just as worried. The shadow cast over the US population at large, after all, will be only part of the blanket surveillance and spying machine to be integrated into the Global Information Grid scheme, which aims at fencing off any possible security threat by treating as a potential threat any inhabitant of the planet with access to a computer, tablet, phone, smart bank card or GPS device.

At the end of 2001, when the new cyber surveillance and wiretapping system was introduced, Binney points out, the NSA was recording an average 320 million phone calls per day in the USA alone, and at least another eight million calls in the rest of the world. Since then, all recordings are being stored and classified with a software developed by Narus, a company which now belongs to the Boeing group and is said to be managed by way of remote control devices from the NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, in Maryland.

Once somebody’s name, for whatever reason, gets into the Narus system, all calls and other forms of digital communications related to that person, messages sent via social networks or chat conversations included, will automatically be routed to the NSA’s recorders. This can, of course, also be done through the compliance of telecommunications companies such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. Over 11 years, Binney estimates, the NSA must have tapped into something like “between 15 to 20 trillion” phone communications in the USA alone.

Once the data are recorded, they are conveyed to a data mining system, organized around the NSA computerized premises in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where the agency’s Multiprogram Research Facility is located. The system is designed in a way that can automatically generate chartered graphs related to every single individual tapped, by tracking emails, SMS’s, bank ATM withdrawals, Internet browsing movements, credit or debit card purchases or even just searches through GPS devices. Adrianne J. Kinne, a former voice interceptor for the NSA, says that after 9/11 “all rules” about privacy protection “were thrown out of the window” and experts like her were asked to intrude even into “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Things do not seem to have changed since Obama took office.

Hoping to find more sensitive and sensible ears on matters related to privacy violation practices, Binney says, he and J. Kirk Wiebe, another senior NSA analyst, tried to approach the new administration proposing a system which would strictly subject each and every wiretapping activity to the approval of the Department of Justice. To no avail.

Of all recorded data, the UDC experts seem to be most interested in the ones protected by encryption programs. Most of these are written using the so-called Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), an algorithm so well structured, that even the smartest hackers can crack it only with a good deal of luck. The AES is reckoned to be so secure, that the NSA itself uses it for internal top secret communications.

The AES comes in three formats: 128 bits, 192 bits and 256 bits. Even in its simpler 128-bit format, computer experts agree, attempting to crack an encryption by trying all the possible combinations one after another –i.e 340 by 1036– would take several billion years, even with the fastest computers available today.

The AES is only one of several encryption standards available for public use worldwide, and the other standards are by no means easier to crack. There are symmetric and asymmetric standards. The AES belongs to the symmetric type, which comes off as more agile than the asymmetric type. In reality, the mind boggling difficulty of trying to crack an encryption seems enough to discourage any one from even thinking of success. But there is an exception: the NSA.

From the very dawn of the computer era in the early 1950’s, the NSA has been officially in charge of the US Government encryption systems and oversees any procedure related to the adoption of encryption systems for public use. The implementation of AES in any device that might have access to systems and/or information deemed sensitive in terms of national security, must be reviewed and certified by the NSA before it can go public. Computers running on Microsoft programmes use AES, as do Apple computers , although they seem to have more limitations.

The encryption systems made available for public use usually end up being retouched and optimized versions of the original algorithms filed for approval. And in many instances the NSA has been accused by computer experts of inserting (apparently innocuous) modifications, which are thought to represent backdoors designed to allow the agency to get into the system in order to find the keys necessary to decipher what is supposed to be protected by encryption.

Aside from keeping a close eye on how most encryption systems are implemented, the NSA Information Assurance Directorate is leading the DoD’s Cryptographic Modernization Program, with the aim to transform and modernize all forms of security related to information transmission and reception. The program has three phases: replacement of all devices considered to be at risk (i.e. to elude the NSA capability to tap into them); integration of NSA approved modular programmable/embedded crypto solutions into new digital devices with data transmission and reception features; alignment of all requirements needed for encryption systems with the standards of the Global Information Grid, which is an emanation of the DoD.

Despite being in the position of monitoring most of what goes on in the world of encryption, with the exception of some systems used internally by other governments, the NSA needs increasingly sophisticated processors and computer networks lest it lose its advantage. To be on the safe side , the agency has adopted a policy of simply combing all communications networks to collect and store as much data as possible, convinced that whatever encrypted message can’t be cracked today will surely be cracked some day in the future.

When assigned the post of Director of National Intelligence in early 2009, Dennis Cutler Blair, a former navy admiral, realized that such a system posed a threat to the privacy and security of American citizens and openly disagreed with its implementation. He also believed that the country did not need a domestic intelligence apparatus separate from the FBI and also tried to convince the government to end some special interrogation schemes against suspected terrorists used by US intelligence agencies, especially after 9/11. Blair didn’t last long in his job and was fired by Obama in May 2010. In Washington it is said that Blair was very competent but ended up being fired for his critical positions.

Once operational, Bamford says, the UDC “will become in effect the NSA’s cloud” to which all other NSA main venues, both in the USA and abroad, are connected. It seems safe to assume that, aside from being the most powerful computer cluster system in the world, the UDC digital surveillance site will run with the best possible software developed for public use or software especially developed by US government experts, like the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet, the Internet of the American military and the State Department, the same one used also by Bradley Manning to record the secret data later divulged by the whistle blower site Wikileaks in 2010), the NSANet (the network used by the NSA for communications among the agency’s top operatives) and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), which employs several hundred language specialists trained to interpret and translate the content of communications from almost every country on Earth intercepted on the Internet.

But can such a vast amount of stored data really help to detect every possible enemy’s plan or terrorist threat? Does it not sound like trying to find a needle in a hay stack? After all, at the time of the 9/11 attacks, the US intelligence computers were full of data related to suspicious movements by suspected terrorists, but no one had put together the many dots to find a clear picture of what was about to happen. Having said that, it is also true that today’s computers can run very sophisticated linguistics based programs, which do allow to put together in a consistent picture elements which would otherwise elude the average human eye.

Given the amount of hardware, software and superskilled human brainpower employed, it also seems safe to assume that the UDC will actually serve the purpose Bramford says it is designed to serve, giving birth to the first tangible incarnation of Big Brother. But then again, nobody today can tell exactly what the operative focus of the centre will be, what additional, special software its experts may use, what strategy the centre will implement to carry out its mission, or who will be in charge of running the whole thing. And yet, this should come as no surprise: by definition Big Brother is an elusive entity, shrouded in secrecy and no one can pinpoint where its heart or mind is, even when its body is under everybody’s eyes.

“Her (Suu Kyi’s) image suggests that there is space for women,” Ma Thida, a surgeon who is also a director of the ‘Myanmar Independent’ weekly newspaper published from Yangon (also Rangoon), tells IPS. “She is a great example for all Burmese women.”

Ma Thida was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment in 1993 on charges of “endangering public peace, having contact with illegal organisations and distributing unlawful literature.” She was released after five years in the notorious Insein prison.

“Today, the overall situation seems better compared to two or three years ago, but it’s far from ideal,” says Ma Thida, one of thousands of women who have contributed to bringing about changes towards democracy in Burma.

According to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, an independent non-profit founded by former political prisoners living in exile and based out of the border town of Mae Sot in Thailand, there are 18 females among the 473 political prisoners in Myanmar.

On paper, women suffer no discrimination with restrictions on civil liberties applying equally to all, regardless of gender.

Myanmar has ratified the international convention on elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (CEDAW), but the 2008 constitution does not quite conform to it.

For example, in appointing or assigning duties to civil services personnel the constitution prescribes that there be no discrimination “based on race, birth, religion, and sex”, but it also says that “nothing shall prevent appointment of men to the positions that are suitable for men only.”

“At the moment we cannot still talk or discuss freely about gender discrimination or gender equality,” says a female rights activist who prefers not to be named because of her involvement in the campaign against the construction of the Myitsone dam on the Irrawaddy River.

The controversial hydroelectric project, developed jointly by Myanmar’s power ministry, the privately-owned Asia World Company of Burma and China Power Investment Corporation, was suspended by Myanmar authorities last year, following protests.

“That controversial decision to suspend construction, which was welcomed by environment groups, was the result of protests held mostly by women,” the activist said.

“When Burmese official media reported the decision to suspend construction the women seemed to have disappeared because they were asked to sit on the ground while the cameras focused on government officials,” she said. “The presence of women in our society is extensive but we are still invisible.”

The same paradox extends through Myanmar’s political life in which women have been struggling behind the lines for years and are happy to take a back seat when it comes to leadership roles.

“Sometimes it’s not so easy to raise these kinds of issues even within women’s groups as the majority of women think that their role is within the family and that their role in society cannot change,” says Mon Mon Myat, a writer and women’s rights activist.

“In a male-dominated, Theravada Buddhist society there are many cultural barriers that limit women’s behaviour and functioning,” Mon Mon Myat told IPS.

“Female journalists, for example, cannot take pictures or videos of the audience from above positions, because they are not allowed to go up to vantage positions because as women they cannot stay above men or Buddhist monks,” explained Mon Mon Myat.

That cultural barrier contrasts sharply with the images of Suu Kyi waving or talking to people from a balcony at her house or at a party office.

Suu Kyi, according to Mon Mon Myat, is an exception because she is the daughter of Gen. Aung San, a venerated national hero closely associated with Myanmar’s independence movement.

In fact, Suu Kyi takes care to prefix her father’s name to hers, although the custom in Myanmar is for women to use their own given names through life without taking on the name of father or husband.

“Though she is a woman, Suu Kyi is a symbol of peace and democracy in our country. That is why, we can see big crowds of monks and men strongly showing their support for her,” Mon Mon Myat said.

“The outlook of the country has to change if this country is going to be democratic, but for that there has to be more freedom in the media first,” says ‘Vic’, a 24-year-old writer who goes by that pen name.

Women activists and journalists who dared oppose the junta paid a heavy price with many of them systematically tortured, raped or killed by troops fighting a long war against ethnic militias in the Shan, Kachin and Karen states,

In 2002, the Shan Women’s Action Network denounced the systematic use of rape by the Burmese military in a report where some found the courage to speak out about their own experiences.

“It is still not possible to talk freely about rape cases committed by Burmese soldiers on ethnic women in remote areas,” said Mon Mon Myat.

In many cases, she said, women do not think of rape as gender discrimination but as a problem “of fate in a society that frowns on the weaker sex wearing inappropriate dress or going to inappropriate places.”

“In Myanmar, families may prefer to be silent about a rape, making it difficult for the victim to seek justice in the courts,” said Mon Mon Myat.

Women, inside and outside Myanmar, have been able to network through the Women’s League of Burma, an organisation of women drawn from 13 different ethnic groups that is “working for the advancement of the status of women towards a peaceful and just society.”

“Changing mindsets, especially among mid-level administrators and ordinary people is essential,” says Grace Swe Zin Htaik, a former actress who devotes herself to campaigning for health and gender issues. “It will take a long time before we achieve gender equality in Burma,” she told IPS.

Though poorly represented in legislative bodies and government positions, women like Mon Mon Myat draw hope for the future from the fact that females slightly outnumber males in Myanmar’s population, presently estimated at 55 million.

There is also the memory of better times before British colonial rule (1824–1948) when Myanmar followed a matriarchal system and women held rights to own property and hold high office.

by Roberto Tofani. Published by IPS News

Americas
Reporters trying to expose abuses of power, human rights violations and corruption are frequent targets of attacks and harassment across Latin America and the Caribbean.

From Mexico to Colombia, Cuba, Honduras and Venezuela the authorities or criminal gangs have targeted journalists who report on human rights issues, abuses of power and corruption.

Mexico is one of the most dangerous places in the Americas with media workers in the north of the country particularly at risk.

On 28 April, the body of journalist Regina Martinez was found at her home in Veracruz. Regina was a reporter with political magazine Proceso and, for over three decades, had reported on issues of insecurity, drug trafikinch and corruption. Local authorities said they were going to investigate the killing.

Meanwhile the Mexican Senate approved a new law to protect journalists and human rights activists who receive threats.

But Mexico was not the only country where media workers faced incredible danger when doing their jobs.

Dina Meza, a Honduran journalist and human rights activist, received a series of threats of sexual violence against her in early 2012. On 6 April, she was walking in her neighbourhood with her children when she noticed two men taking photos of them.

Africa
Africa is home to some of the most dangerous locations for journalists. In countries, such as , Ethiopia and Gambia, newspapers, websites and TV and radio stations are closely watched by security agents ready to clamp down on dissent.

In Rwanda and Ethiopia, journalists are prosecuted and have been sentenced to long prison terms for criticizing government policies, reporting on calls for peaceful protest or alleging corruption among senior officials.

Authorities in Sudan are coming up with creative ways to tackle independent journalists – including by misusing laws to prevent reporting and fining those who are critical of them.

In Gambia and Somalia, the situation for journalists is so dangerous that many go into exile, in fear for their lives. Others face arrest preventing independent reporting in the country. Since 2007, at least 27 journalists have been killed in Somalia; three of them were killed in targeted attacks in the capital Mogadishu in the past six months.

Ali Ahmed Abdi, a journalist for a news website and Radio Galkayo was shot dead by three gunmen on 4 March in the town of Galkayo in central Somalia. On 5 April, Mahad Salad Adan, journalist for Radio Shabelle, was shot dead by three attackers in the town of Beletweyne near the border with Ethiopia. No one has ever been brought to justice for such killings.

Asia-Pacific
Pakistan is one of the most dangerous countries for journalists in the world – with at least 15 killed in 2011 alone.

This year, on 17 January, Mukarram Aatif, a reporter with Dunya TV and Deewa radio, was shot dead by members of the Pakistan Taleban while performing his evening prayers in the town of Shabqada, about 30 kilometres from Peshawar, capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

A Taleban spokesperson later said the group had warned Aatif “a number of times to stop anti-Taleban reporting, but he didn’t do so. He finally met his fate”.

Just as in China, journalists and bloggers in Sri Lanka also operate in a climate of fear knowing that emails and phone calls are likely to be under surveillance.

In most countries, the authorities have failed to investigate properly abuses against journalists. In the Philippines, for example, at least 12 journalists were killed by unidentified men since the start of the Aquino administration in 2010 and no one has yet been brought to justice.

Online journalists and activists were also targets of abuse in various countries across Asia during 2011. [China two sentences here – DJG to approve]

With 513 million internet users in China, the authorities have sought tightly to control what people can read and say online.

Bloggers who write about issues that the government deems sensitive are routinely monitored, questioned and harassed by the security forces and have, in some cases, gone missing.

However, China’s online activists are adept at coming up with new and creative ways to avoid government controls. In a popular campaign for blind activist Cheng Guangcheng, supporters have posted online pictures of themselves wearing dark glasses, or put dark glasses on their social media profile pictures.

Europe
2012 saw autocratic regimes across the former Soviet Union strengthen their grip on power, choking dissent, muzzling criticism and clamping down on protest. It was not a good year for freedom of expression.

In Belarus, the clampdown that followed the presidential elections at the end of 2011 continued through 2012, with several prominent opposition activists and leaders of non-governmental organizations put behind bars.

In Azerbaijan, a fresh wave of protest inspired by the Arab Spring sparked a clampdown – anti-government protests were banned and 14 organisers sentenced to long terms in prison. Throughout the year journalists and activists faced harassment and detention on trumped up charges for exposing abuses.

Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan continued to silence independent voices – closed countries keeping criticism under wraps.

In Russia the picture was mixed. Allegations of widespread vote rigging in the parliamentary elections sparked the largest protests seen since 1991. While these protests were allowed and passed off peacefully, smaller protests were routinely broken up and participants arrested.

Middle East
While the space for media expression was transformed in some countries which saw uprisings in 2011, like Tunisia and Libya, legal and other restrictions on media freedoms continued to be pervasive in the region. In Iran, the authorities maintained extensive restrictions on the use of the internet and deployed a newly established Cyber Police throughout the country. In Saudi Arabia, new penalties were introduced for publishing material deemed offensive or contradictory to Shari’a rulings.

Attacks on journalists and bloggers have been rife in the region over the past year. Journalists have been killed or exposed to arbitrary detention, torture or harassment during the ongoing unrest in Syria, the 2011 conflict in Libya and the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen and Bahrain. Abuses have continued since the uprisings ended. Journalists and bloggers in Egypt who have criticized the military authorities have been interrogated and detained, while media workers in Tunisia have faced charges for disrupting public order or morality.

Journalists and writers have also been arbitrarily detained or harassed elsewhere in the region, such as Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, often after expressing views critical of the authorities.

The Newseum opened at its present location at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in 2008 and is funded by the Freedom Forum, a non-partisan foundation dedicated to free press and free speech. Its goal is to offer visitors an experience “that blends five centuries of news history with up-to-the-second technology” and to show how and why the news is made.

The New media gallery is a reflection on the role social media (Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumlr, Google, YouTube, etc.) have acquired in a short span within the universe of news reporting. For better or for worse, over the past 10 years social media and its allied concept of citizen journalism have revolutionized the news–a sort of Reformation which has taken away from professionals the monopoly of reporting and analysing local and international events.

This with a twist: if the task of traditional journalism was to “cover” the news as it happened, social media and participatory (or also democratic, guerrilla and street) journalism can, and occasionally do, “make” the news–witness the claim that twitters and bloggers were instrumental in organizing and shaping the Arab revolutions which are changing the face of the Middle East.

Visitors to the Newseum can now get a taste of how all this happens: from picking news stories from hundreds of sources (and having to ask oneself which is trustworthy and which is not, and why), to creating a page (what is newsworthy? what has priority?), to disseminating the product through various possibilities offered by the newest technologies.

The motive is blatantly political, Russian dissidents claim, commenting on the decision made last week by a Moscow court to prolong the detention of three members of the band, known for its ‘guerrilla performances’ staged with colourful balaclavas, miniskirts and leggings. The three were arrested in early March for organizing a singing protest against Putin in a cathedral.

The ruling was met with new protests. In front of the courthouse over 200 social activists, artists and supporters of the rock group gathered, handing out coloured balloons to bystanders and chanting “Freedom, Freedom.” Scuffles broke out and police arrested over 30 people.

Maria Alyokhina, Yakaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova have been charged with hooliganism for the performance staged by five members of the band on 21 February in front of the main altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

On that day, a couple of weeks before the general election which ended with a controversial victory for Putin, five members of Pussy Riot burst into the cathedral to stage a punk prayer, singing “Holy Mary get rid of Putin.”

The three accused women have admitted to being members of the band, but they deny having taken part in the act at the cathedral.

The performance offended Russian Orthodox believers and stirred animosity throughout Russia, igniting a debate on church-state relations and turning Pussy Riot into a symbol of dissent, not only against what many believe to be undemocratic policies of the Kremlin, but also against the Russian Orthodox Church, perceived as too compliant towards the government.

Formally , church and state are separate under Russia’s constitution but, after the end of Communist rule, the church was granted an implicit moral authority over society at large. And recently, church representatives have called for tighter controls on TV programming and for the banning of supposedly morally corrupting books such as Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.

Pussy Riot в храме христа спасителя from Profile Russia on Vimeo.

Commenting on Putin’s election to a third term as president, the church Patriarch, Kirill, said it was a “miracle of God.”

Kirill also said that that Alyokhina, Samutsevich and Tolokonnikova deserved to be prosecuted for their “blasphemous” performance. He added that the Pussy Riot performance in the cathedral –which was recorded on video and went viral on the Internet– was an act of desecration and he invited believers to unite in prayer this Sunday “in defence of the faith.”

An aid to the patriarch defined Pussy Riot’s performance in the cathedral as a “crime worse than murder.”

Thousands of believers have nonetheless signed a petition urging the church to forgive the band.

The arrest of the three women, who are in their twenties and have young children, has also been at the centre of an international campaign in their favour.
Last week, American, punk rock star Kathleen Hanna posted a video on the Internet inviting artists, intellectuals and human rights activists from all countries to show their solidarity by calling a day of worldwide protests.

Supporters of the group stress that Pussy Riot is not a defined entity but an amorphous ensemble with a dozen core members and occasional affiliates who share the same passion for rock music and political, anti-establishment activism.
The recent Tagansky court ruling orders the accused to stay in jail until 24 June. No date has been set yet for their trial. If found guilty, the three women face up to seven years in prison.

Amnesty International has called on the Russian government to free Alyokhina, Sumetsevich and Tolokonnikova, defining them as “prisoners of conscience.”
“Pussy Riot is really very much like Mikhail Khodorkovsky,” Mark Feygin, who serves on the group’s legal team, told Bloomberg Businessweek. Like the former Yukos chief, imprisoned for defying the Kremlin, Pussy Riot was inherently destabilizing, Feygin insisted, defining the punk rock group “a very powerful political symbol.”

“This is a political case,” Samutsevich told journalists in the packed courtroom. “It is clear that Russia has now decided to crack down on all opposition activists,” she said before the ruling.

Alyokhina agreed that the Pussy Riot case is politically motivated. She complained of not having yet been allowed to contact her family, not even her young son, and stated that her case should remind Russians of the so called “show trials” under Josef Stalin in the late 1930s against anti-communist dissidents. “If for criticising the authorities I can’t even hear the voice of my own child, welcome to 1937,” she said.

After complaining about not receiving any medical care in jail, despite her chronic headaches, Tolokonnikova told reporters that she is now reading First Circle, a novel by Alexander Solzhenitsyn about the Soviet gulag system.

Tolokonnikova is also a member of a dissident art group called “War.” In 2008, with members of this group, she participated in a “fertility rite,” which entailed some nudity and had been organised by philosophy students at Moscow State University as a protest against newly-elected President Dmitry Medvedev, who chose Putin as his prime minister.

International commentators have often pointed out that back then, Putin, who after two terms in office was ineligible to run again for the presidency, used Medvedev’s election to allow him to keep running the country from behind the scenes as prime minister and then return to the Kremlin by winning this year’s presidential polls. Dissidents and international observers believe these were rigged.

You may have lost track, but the legion of marketing trackers prowling the Internet and social media certainly have not. Commercial cyber scouts and analysts are in high demand these days and businesses from all over the world pay them hefty fees for checking every move you make with your computer or smartphone and mingle in your social online world in order to tailor their wares and service to your interests.

The presence of infomercial professionals in the folds of the World Wide Web has become pervasive, media experts argue, changing the original, socializing nature of microblogs into the most powerful marketing tools of today’s global economy. While new Internet-based marketing concerns are being created every day, by now every marketing firm runs a unit specializing in social media consulting and networking.

According to a recent survey by the American firm Thomas Industrial Network, all major businesses and seven out of ten (68%) small and midsize companies have established their presence in one or more social network. And there is every reason to believe, as the report highlights, that “companies that hesitate to embrace social media, believing that competitors are not using these platforms, are in danger of losing business opportunities.”

Among big companies and conglomerates running microblogs or pages on social media, Thomas’ analysts say, the most active seem to be financial entities, insurers or annuity providers: 92% of them engage in social, online networking.

Over 3,000 of the manufacturers and distributors surveyed by Thomas have stated that they routinely use social networks like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube or more specialized industry forums and blogs, not only to market products and services, but also to maintain a direct communication channel with consumers, through which they pick up leads on consumption trends, answer questions, conduct research and expand their business activities. At the same time, over half of the buyers (56%) working for these companies now routinely recommend that all suppliers establish a social media presence if they want to do business with them.

The survey, according to Susan Orr, Thomas’ senior director, shows that “the industrial sector is awakening to the fact that social media isn’t just a passing consumer fancy, but an essential part of any branding and marketing program.” Adding that “savvy suppliers also understand that the most effective social media programs need constant care and feeding. To influence prospective buyers, suppliers need to continually update their social media content, and to be actively engaging in and initiating conversations” through microblogs.

Of course this is a highly specialized, although not necessarily time consuming, activity. At any rate it is not something that just any employee or manager can do. For many industrial suppliers, dedicating the proper resources and having the in-house expertise to manage social media is a challenge. Hence the new consulting initiatives sprouting like mushrooms across the five continents.

Some of the data emerging from Thomas’ survey are corroborated by figures published last month in a report on ‘Social Media Leaders’ by Corporate Insight, another leading American marketing and consulting concern, which elaborates on the widespread use of social networking among banks, brokerages, credit card issuers, insurance companies and mutual fund firms. The data is based on parameters such as ‘audience,’ ‘content’ and ‘level of engagement.’

Corporate Insight’s senior analyst, Alan Maginn, believes that engagement is the key element. After all, this is what social networking is about. It “is truly what sets social media apart from more traditional business-to-consumer communications,” and defines any company’s “social value” by gauging the effectiveness of the way they interact with consumers and/or other businesses.

So, for instance, when evaluating a firm’s Facebook page, Facebook ‘shares’ are deemed more important than ‘comments,’ while comments are valued more than ‘likes.’

And yet the likes are often the first step of any analytical work. Likes do make up the bulk of what most of the messages going through social media networks are about. Even when people do not express an explicit like or dislike for a new car, a movie or a new fashion accessory, most messages carry information about what people do in their free time or need for their work. Which is to say, their interests. And this is the first lead on consumers’ orientations, the most valuable cue for marketing professionals.

By engaging in social networks, web analysts insist, companies enter the private –albeit only virtually so– sphere of consumers, enhancing their efforts to build a link with each individual, through a relationship which appears to be more direct and partakes of the friendly overall contours characterizing microblogs. A kind of relationship, which is believed to favour trust and loyalty with brands.

This, say experts of the consulting firm Social Media Examiner, actually builds a network of what has been termed ‘brand advocates.’

From the afore-mentioned Corporate Insight’s report we learn that Facebook, LikedIn and Twitter are the most common channels through which companies run their recruitment activities; but while Twitter is also increasingly used as a customer service channel, Facebook tends to be used more and more often as a trading tool. Pinterest, a relatively recent social network geared on an extremely agile photo publishing and sharing system, is also used to the same end, and it currently seems to be the fastest growing social media network. Some analysts believe that the picture-sharing formula is particularly tailored to stimulate social media aficionados.

Witness to the effectiveness of the picture posting and sharing approach is Facebook’s strategy. In the past few months, the biggest social online network of the world has enhanced the agility of its pages for photo-sharing while expanding its presence in the social media world at the beginning of April by taking over the photo-sharing network Instagram.

Some companies though, analysts stress, engage in more than one social media, while others work mainly through a particular one. Accordingly, commercial cyber-consulting firms offer services based on monitoring different networks or on meticulously scrutinising this or that network.

Either way, the payoff seems to be assured. A recent Social Media Examiner’s survey indicates that 85% of companies engaging in social media networking can attest to an increase in their business turnover thanks to this activity, even though 74% of the interviewed companies dedicate to social media marketing only an average of six hours per week.

The relevance of the phenomenon is such that some cyber marketing firms routinely publish a ranking of the companies most actively involved in social media networking to expand their commercial pursuits or their corporate image.
One of the most clicked rankings by marketing professionals seems to be The Week’s Top Twenty list, elaborated on the basis of the Social Business Index of the Dachis Group and published by the website of the news magazine, The Atlantic Wire. Dachis is one of the leading social business and brand engagement firms in North America.

Of course, just keeping a marketing division employee twitting with consumers is not enough to bring a company’s marketing strategy into the Internet era. In order to make sense of such work, companies must invest in search engine optimization. Which means, once again, hiring the services of social media consulting and marketing wizards. Search engine optimization entails a thorough understanding of how Internet search engines work and of the ways people normally use these engines. A good search engine optimization will allow a company to be listed at the top of the page when a computer user is looking for information on the web, and it is crucial when setting up a company’s website and all its web pages.

Understanding the algorithms upon which search engines operate is not enough though. A good optimization must take into account the leads gathered through the monitoring of social media so they can be reflected on corporate web sites.
These leads must in turn be coupled with the analysis of the data collected by way of so-called cookies. These can be defined as tracking files, which get loaded onto a computer every time a user visits a website.

The computer on which this article is being written and the pc, tablet or smartphone used to read it, gather incoming cookies with every keyboard click while a user is online. An active Internet user can gather hundreds of cookies every day. Almost every opened web page will send the web surfer a discreet number of cookies. Some coming from the company web site itself, others coming from search engine operators and some more from the advertisers who publish their commercial posts on the visited page.

The number of cookies is higher when computer security settings are low. But there is not much a user can do to limit the influx of cookies. Setting up maximum security levels may certainly keep at bay most cookies, but refusing to accept all cookies practically impairs a smooth navigation.

Through cookies, industrial companies, search engine specialists and advertisers can track each and every step taken by an online computer user. Some cookies monitor which sites are visited, some track the clicked adverts, others store and report back to interested analysts on preferences and favourites of each user on different sites. Thanks to all these data, companies can build a profile of all users visiting their website, then keeping tabs on where they surf, what articles they read, what pictures they look at and what ads attract their attention. In some cases they even track what users do once they get to a particular site.

Only few cookies may contain data enabling corporate concerns to identify the individual computer or smartphone user. Nevertheless, through cookies web operators and experts can amass huge amounts of information on individual tastes and likings. Which begs serious questions with regards to privacy.

So serious in fact, that, in response to pressures from civil groups, legislators in many countries are studying the matter and some are already taking action, setting down the first rules on how a company can make use of cookies for commercial or even just statistical purposes. While many governments and regulating authorities are still looking into the issue –among them the European Union– the UK has already taken a clear line of action.

As of 26 May every website operating in Great Britain will be required to notify computer users and net surfers through a popup that they are being tracked with cookies, asking at the same time permission to do so. Companies sending out cookies, that is, will have to justify why they need information on those who connect to their websites and what will be done with the data collected. Sites that refuse to comply may face fines of up to £500,000.

By bringing in a new degree of privacy in online surfing, the new rules will certainly put to test the professional skills of commercial cyber scouts. But these specialists will most likely depend more on the information gathered through microblog networks, amplifying once again the marketing potential of social media.

But now many of the country’s biggest media companies, which own dozens of newspapers and TV news operations, are flexing their muscle in Washington in a fight against a government initiative to increase transparency of political spending.

The corporate owners or sister companies of some of the biggest names in journalism — NBC News, ABC News, Fox News, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Politico, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and dozens of local TV news outlets — are lobbying against a Federal Communications Commission measure that would require broadcasters to post political ad data on the Internet.

As we have recently detailed, political ad data is public by law but not easy to get because it is kept only in paper files at each station. The FCC has proposed fixing that by requiring broadcasters to post online the details of political ad purchases, including the identity of the buyer and the price.

(ProPublica has been inviting readers and other journalists to send in the files to be posted as part of our Free the Files project.)

Over the past few months, several major media companies have dispatched top executives or outside lobbyists to the FCC to oppose the proposed rule or to push a watered-down version, disclosure filings show. (The FCC will vote on the issue April 27.)

Among them are:

• News Corp., which owns The Wall Street Journal and Fox News;
• Walt Disney, which owns ABC News and ESPN;
• NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast and includes NBC News;
• Allbritton, which owns several TV stations and Politico;
• Gannett Broadcasting, a division of Gannett, which owns USA Today:
• Post-Newsweek Stations, the broadcast division of The Washington Post Co.;
• Belo Cos., which owns 20 TV stations;
• Cox Media Group, which owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Austin American-Statesman and other newspapers and TV stations;
• Dispatch Broadcast Group, which owns Ohio and Indiana TV stations;
• Barrington Broadcasting Group, which owns several TV stations around the country;
• The E.W. Scripps Co., which owns TV stations and newspapers, including The Commercial Appeal in Memphis, Tenn.;
• Hearst Television Inc., which owns 29 stations;
• Raycom Media, which owns TV stations;
• Schurz Communications, which owns newspapers and TV stations nationwide.

(ProPublica has published stories in partnership with many of these news organizations, and has an agreement with NBC’s owned and operated TV stations for pre-publication access to our news apps and a contribution by NBC to ProPublica.)

In a speech this week at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski excoriated the broadcasters as working “against transparency and against journalism.”

The industry’s opposition to the transparency proposal has sometimes been heated. In filings submitted to the FCC in January and March, Allbritton Senior Vice President Jerald Fritz raised the specter of “’Soviet-style standardization” of ad sales if political ad files are required to be put online in a single format.

In a February meeting with the FCC, Walt Disney executives complained about the “logistics and burden” of putting the political ad information online.

That month, executives from Disney, NBC and News Corp. argued in a meeting with FCC officials that posting the political ad data would allow “competitors in the market and commercial advertisers [to] anonymously glean highly sensitive pricing data.”

Television stations must by law offer political candidates the lowest rates on ads. Broadcasters have argued that making this information available online — and not just at stations — would hurt their ability to negotiate with other advertisers.

Advocates for the online disclosure rule have countered that the political ad information is already public by law and the measure would simply make the existing disclosure rules relevant for the Internet age. Advocates have also pointed out that keeping paper files in electronic form should actually be more efficient for stations.

Allbritton, NBC and Walt Disney did not respond to requests for comment on the FCC chairman’s charge that they have positioned themselves “against transparency and against journalism.” News Corp. declined to comment.

Some media companies have also pushed a watered-down proposal to post only some of the public political ad data, and to put it up on individual station websites instead of a central FCC website.

Washington lawyers representing the other companies fighting the rule — Barrington Broadcasting, Belo, Cox, Dispatch, E.W. Scripps, Gannett, Hearst, Meredith Broadcasting, Post-Newsweek Stations, Raycom Media and Schurz Communications — lobbied FCC officials in February, March and again this week.

The group suggested that instead of putting the full, itemized political ad data online, stations would post aggregate data once a week.

“What we were saying is, if you want the public to be informed about what’s being bought at what price, maybe there’s a simpler way to do it,” Mary Jo Manning, an attorney representing the group, told ProPublica. “Transparency is giving people information that is useful.”

But when the FCC pressed the group for details on its plan, the stations said they opposed posting even the aggregate data in a single format prescribed by the FCC. They also opposed posting the data on a central FCC website, saying they wanted to post the limited data only on the stations’ own websites. If enacted, both of those stances would make it more difficult to get and analyze the data.

Since there is a one-week sunshine period ahead of FCC votes, today is the last day that interested parties will be able to lobby the commission before its public meeting April 27. 

This story was originally published by the independent, non-profit newsroom ProPublica.

BEIJING – Beijing’s rumor mill went into overdrive last week to an extent it hasn’t been seen since the aftermath of the first large Falungong demonstration on April 25, 1999 – a sign that something serious was happening or happened in the obscure and labyrinthine machinations of Zhongnanhai, China’s Kremlin.

There were rumors of a coup d’etat, the army’s insubordination against the Chinese Communist Party, a plot to replace heir apparent Xi Jinping with Bo Xilai, and even that Bo, deposed on March 15 from his post as party chief of Chongqing, had been trying to flee to America following the line of his former aide, Chonqing vice mayor Wang Lijun, who sought (and failed to obtain) political asylum at the US consulate in Chengdu in early February.

There were conflicting stories that a new Gang of Four, centered on Bo and security chief Zhou Yongkang, had been arrested or was about to be and so on and so forth. The old game of information and disinformation along different party lines was at work. The only sure thing was that there was or at least had been a split over what to do about Bo – and that the top leadership has been silent in this crucial moment.

So just reading the tea leaves of the official statements could produce some interesting stories or fiction. At a press conference Bo held on March 10, during the plenary session of the the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, he looked smug and defiant, a posture in apparent contradiction with his removal a week later. A version said that Bo may not have had all the permits to meet the journalists, and the self-assured image he projected went beyond the party line he was expected to toe.

It may have been that conference which sealed Bo’s fate. He was not resigned to losing his job and sought ways to get out of his predicament, something that instead may have hastened his deposition.

Moreover, two days earlier, on March 8, Bo received Zhou Yongkang’s public support. During the NPC session, Zhou visited the delegation of Chongqing, showing his support for the city at a time when the local government was under formal investigation for the Wang Lijun case. The Beijing buzz wondered if that visit was fully approved according to the strict discipline of the party.

The objective elements of this story have lent credence to conspiracy theories linking Bo, Zhou, and a number of other politburo members who are whispered to be against the present and future presidents, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping.

Indeed, this seems to be the fictionalized version of something that went on behind the scenes. If Bo indeed attended the press conference without being fully authorized, this could be considered an act of insubordination according to the strict party discipline and an action that breaks the unity of the party – which is what Zhao Ziyang was faulted with in 1989. Only this time, party discipline might work for the reformers, as this is the line that apparently is emerging in Beijing now.

In this frenzied atmosphere, any small detail takes on a life of its own. He Guoqiang, head of the Party Disciplinary Commission, speaks of the different weather in Beijing and Chongqing on March 3 [1]. Then it must be a warning to Bo. A commentary published on March 20 in the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), called on all party members to “oppose and eliminate” indiscipline [2]. Then it means there have been rumblings within the army, which must be brought back in line. These deductions could well be correct, but in the current charged environment, they grow in importance.

In the past hours even the death of an Englishman in Chongqing has contributed to the confusion. Neil Heywood, a businessman allegedly linked to Bo, died under mysterious circumstances last year in Chongqing. Was Wang Lijun investigating his death and using it against Bo? Nobody knows, but the UK has officially requested Beijing to investigate the matter.

Besides the confusion and cloudiness, something is becoming clear.

The US is fully cooperating with Beijing. In fact, no leaks in the case are coming from America, despite the fact that Washington sits on the dossier Wang Lijun took with him to the Chengdu consulate. It may include documents and his statements, material that whether true or false, if thrown into the present fire, could inflame the political uproar in Beijing. One wonders if in return for this silence, Washington is being informed of behind-the-scenes developments.

Zhou made an official public appearance on the TV news on March 24, therefore quashing tales of his removal.

In fact, there is clear indication that the ongoing purge has at least paused. President Hu Jintao went abroad. The official English-language newspaper, China Daily, reported on March 21 that Hu would be in South Korea, India, and Cambodia, returning to Beijing on April 2. He met with US President Barack Obama in Seoul on Monday. The two are in the South Korean capital this week for the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit.

In 2009, when violent clashes between Uighurs and Han erupted in Urumqi (capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region), Hu, just arrived in Rome for an official visit, cut short his stay and immediately flew back home.

The Chongqing crisis, as it involves the party’s top leadership, is certainly more serious than the one in Urumqi, and it is unlikely Hu would leave Beijing if there were still some accounts to settle. Moreover, in this period, Hu’s absence means that the Standing Committee of the Politburo is not expected to convene for any very important meetings. Therefore, the situation seems under control. The crisis is gone, so far.

What is unclear is if all of the decisions about the power structure for the upcoming 18th Party Congress have been made, then we are to wait until the party congress in October for the resolution of Bo’s case, or if some news will become official in the coming months. The present rumor mill proves that silence or oblique signals from Beijing will not quash the gossip, which will conversely grow in the next few days.

Notes
1. See here.
2. See here.

Francesco Sisci is a columnist for the Italian daily Il Sole 24 Ore and can be reached at fsisci@gmail.com

(Copyright 2012 Francesco Sisci)  Previously published on Asia Times online

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