The Environment and Climate Change
New System Bolsters Grazing Bans
The following text was retrieved from Xinhua reprinted on the China News Net Web site on February 11, 2011.
On August 19, 2010, public security officers from Beijing and Weinan municipality, Shaanxi province, detained Xie Chaoping, an author and journalist with Circumference, a magazine under the Procuratorate Daily according to a September 10 Beijing News article reprinted in Phoenix Net and a September 13 Democracy and Law Times article reprinted in Phoenix Net. Xie's wife said the PSB officials told her they suspected Xie of engaging in "illegal business activities," a crime under Article 225 of China's Criminal Law.
Authorities in Yixing city, Jiangsu province, released environmental activist Wu Lihong from the Dingshan Prison on April 12, 2010, after Wu completed a three-year sentence for alleged fraud and extortion, according to an April 12 Radio Free Asia (RFA) article (in Chinese). Prior to his detention, Wu had spent years documenting pollution in the Lake Tai area in Jiangsu province. After his release, Wu repeated allegations that he was forced to confess to the crimes, and alleged that prison officials had subjected him to abuse during his detention and imprisonment from 2007 to 2010, according to a May 11 Agence France-Presse (AFP) article and a May 11 RFA article (in Chinese).
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At this CECC Roundtable, a panel of experts examined the challenge of government transparency in environmental protection and climate change in China. China has established a comprehensive regulatory framework for environmental protection, adopted open government information measures, and developed systems to measure and report pollution and energy data.
On February 9, 2010, the Chengdu Intermediate People's Court in Sichuan province sentenced writer and environmental activist Tan Zuoren to five years in prison, and the day before upheld the three-year sentence of fellow activist Huang Qi, according to a February 8 Chinese Human Rights Defenders article and a February 9 Associated Press article (via New York Times). Both had criticized the government for not doing enough to investigate the causes of school collapses in the May 2008 Sichuan earthquake or to address the demands of grieving parents.
The following text was retrieved from the Ministry of Environmental Protection Web site on February 20, 2013.
The following text was retrieved from the National People's Congress Web site on February 19, 2013.
One of several recent cases in China of lead poisoning in children that occurred in Fengxiang county, Shaanxi province garnered national and international attention after citizens protested in August 2009. During the incident, parents of affected children first utilized institutionalized channels to seek remedies for their children's environmental health problems, but then resorted to street protests. The case highlights ongoing lax compliance with environmental laws and policies, government accountability gaps, and insufficient protection for citizen's environmental rights, including rights of access to environmental information in China.
On July 9, 2009, The RTL Management Committee in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu province, ordered Sun Xiaodi, a Gansu environmental activist who reportedly exposed pollution problems and illegal activities at a mine in Diebu County, Gansu to serve two years of reeducation through labor (RTL) for "illegally providing state secrets overseas" and "rumor mongering," according to a July 17, 2009, Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) news release. Authorities in Gannan also ordered Sun's daughter, Sun Haiyan (also known as Sun Dunbai) to serve 18 months of RTL for the same activities according to CHRD. The RTL committee asserted that Sun "stole" information about the No. 792 Uranium Mine in Diebu County, according to a copy of the RTL decision available in a July 16, 2009, Human Rights in China article.