Reporters Without Borders condemns the jail sentences that were imposed on three Uyghur webmasters in a trial held behind closed doors in Urumqi on or around 20 July. The webmasters – Dilshat Perhat, Nureli and Nijat Azat – were accused of endangering state security by posting content that the Chinese government regards as politically sensitive.
Calling for their immediate release and the quashing of their convictions, Reporters Without Borders accuses China’s authorities of persecuting its Uyghur minority,
“Despite the lack of information about the trial, the government’s intention was clear, to shut down the spaces available for expression,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The three webmasters have been unjustly punished and their sentences are disproportionate. These attempts to intimidate must stop.”

Reporters Without Borders welcomes the Zhejiang provincial government’s order to the Suichang police to withdraw its warrant for the arrest of Economic Observer reporter Qiu Ziming and calls for the incomprehensible 15-year jail sentence imposed on online journalist and blogger Gheyret Niyaz in Xinjiang on 23 July to be overturned on appeal. (More information about the trial: http://en.rsf.org/china-uyghur-jour...)
“We welcome the apology that the Suichang police have given to Qiu Ziming and we call for a transparent investigation into why he was placed on a national list of wanted criminals,” Reporters Without Borders said. “We also call for the immediate release of Gheyret Niyaz, who was convicted on charges of contributing to a website that incited violence and providing foreign journalists with information about the July 2009 riots in Xinjiang.”

Reporters Without Borders said it was outraged at the harshness of a 15-year prison sentence handed down today to journalist Gheyret Niyaz by a court in Urumqi, in Xinjiang province.

He was arrested in October 2009 following ethnic unrest in Xinjiang in July 2009 and found guilty of “threatening national security” after criticising Chinese official policy towards the Uyghurs, sending news about the riots to foreign journalists and contributing to a website accused of inciting violence.

“We are utterly astonished at the outcome of this trial,” the worldwide press freedom organisation said. “Gheyret Niyaz did indeed make some criticism of Chinese policy in his region, but he is neither a criminal nor a dissident. He is seen by Uyghurs based abroad as supporting China’s administration of Xinjiang and even shares some of the Chinese government’s views of the summer 2009 unrest.

Reporters Without Borders is concerned about a new crackdown on social-networking tools, especially microblogging services. Dozens of microblog accounts went down yesterday including those of blogger Yao Yuan and lawyer Pu Zhiqiang, who was interviewed by the Associated Press. Four of the leading Chinese microblogging services, Netease, Sina, Tencent and Sohu, were yesterday displaying messages saying they were down for maintenance or had inexplicably reverted to an earlier “beta” testing phase.
“This latest censorship attempt shows that the Chinese authorities, who are obsessed with maintaining political stability, mistrust microblogging and its potential for spreading information and mobilising the public,” Reporters Without Borders said.
“Nonetheless, despite the massive resources that the regime deploys to control the Internet, it is impossible to keep track of all the flow of information on Twitter and its Chinese equivalents,” the press freedom organisation added. “Microblogging is also used by the government itself as well as by millions of Chinese who have nothing to do with dissidents.”

Reporters Without Borders condemns the detention of two young Tibetan writers who are studying in Lanzhou, in the northwestern province of Gansu. Identified as Tashi Rabten (pen-name Therang) and Druklo (pen-name Shokjang), they were arrested on 4 April, apparently because of what they have written about the situation in Tibet.

“We fear that these two young Tibetan writers will be mistreated during their first few weeks in detention,” Reporters Without Borders. “We urge the authorities in Gansu province to provide information about what is happening to them. And if their arrests are linked to their writing, we call for their release.”

Tashi Rabten and Druklo were arrested when 16 armed policemen raided their hostel at the Northwest National Minorities University, where they are students. The police searched their rooms, confiscating books in Tibetan, their mobile phones, their laptops and their course material.