The details of the executions of thousands of people a year is a state secret – and it could be worse than Amnesty fears.You might have heard it said that China executes more people than all other countries in the world put together. Not just a handful, but thousands and thousands of people every single year. This, broadly, is true.But suppose you actually wanted to find out exactly how many people the People's Republic executes annually. Any chance of getting this information? No. Try asking the Chinese authorities, and you'll get a stern "it's a state secret" rebuff.

China is spending record amounts on "domestic security" amid fears the main threat to the country's future will come from within. Almost £50 billion will be spent combating internal threats this year, according to figures from the Ministry of Finance.The sum is now almost the same as the £51 billion that China spends on defence, and is more than its health care budget.

The number of tuberculosis (TB) patients in Tibet Autonomous Region has been rising by 5,000 each year, with infectious patients accounting for 30 percent of the total, reported China’s official Xinhuanet news service Mar 25.The report quoted Dorje Gyaltsen, director of the TAR Center for Disease Control (CDC), as saying, "Farmers and herders in Tibet account for 90 percent of the TB patients."

Chinese authorities in Jomda County, Chamdo ,have arrested 2 Tibetan monks who were accused of setting ablaze a government vehicle on the night of March 10, the 51st Tibetan national uprising day, Monlam Tharchin, a Tibetan MP said. Officials and Police from the county arrested Karma Palden, 24, and 2 others from Zigar monastery on March 11, 2010. The three were taken to the county detention centre but 2 were later released. However, another monk named Gelek, 20, was arrested and locked up with Karma Palden.

A new protest was held by a group of students in a Primary School in Driru district against the Chinese government on March 22.Slogans like “China out of Tibet” were raised by the students during the protest.
The protesters were later surrounded by Chinese security forces and their parents were held for interrogation.
The sources could not confirm further details regarding the protest due to heavy restriction placed by the Chinese authorities.

China’s move to declared mountain pastures roamed by Tibetan nomads since ancient times as national parks and to move the nomads, with their herds, to fixed settlements have nothing to do with improving the environment or the people’s livelihood. This is an eyewitness finding of Canadian documentary maker Michael Buckley who has made a documentary on China’s damming of Tibet’s rivers. “It is just a cover. They don’t want people living there.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR DEMOCRACY…
Some of you may have noticed. One reader pointed it out in a comment on Phayul.com. The title of this three-part essay was borrowed (and tweaked) from Samuel Becket’s famous play, Waiting for Godot – probably the ur script in the theatre of the absurd. A quick summary of the plot: two tramp-like characters sit under a bare tree waiting for someone named Godot to arrive. While waiting they eat, sleep, sing, play games and talk, especially about Godot, as if they knew him well, which they don’t. Godot doesn’t come. The end.

Modeled after the Soviet gulag, China’s system of forced labor camps is now more than a half-century old, but it remains as essential as ever to the modern Communist regime. That’s because the system – the laogai – is not just a large group of places where millions of men and women are confined to do forced labor and to endure other cruel punishment. More important, the laogai is a collective tool to maintain the Party/state partnership’s monopoly of power.

China's top security officials issued statements in late 2009 and early 2010 that indicate top-level support for an indefinite extension of a security crackdown ostensibly aimed at "safeguarding social stability." China's leadership launched this most recent campaign with a series of temporary security measures for hosting the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, and later justified their continuation as a necessary response to the global financial crisis and politically "sensitive" anniversaries in 2009.

Lhasa has been turned into a virtual fortress with several checkposts and armed personnel on alert twenty-four hours a day. The authorities have arrested several people since March 2 when the Chinese government launched the “Strike Hard” campaign. The usually bustling areas of the city have now become quiet and tense with Chinese security forces keeping a watchful eye on "trouble makers". Shops which usually remained open till 8PM or 9PM now get shut down by 4PM.

Around two dozen Tibetan exiles arrested while demonstrating in Nepal last week have begun a hunger strike to protest against their detention, police said Wednesday.The detainees have been in police custody since March 10 - the anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet - under a law that allows authorities to hold people for up to 90 days without charge.Kathmandu police chief Ganesh KC said 34 Tibetan protesters had been detained on March 10, but 11 had already been released."Starting from today, the Tibetans in our detention have gone on hunger strike.

Teens are detained after defying tight Chinese security measures. Dozens of Tibetan middle-school students in the far-western Gansu staged a protest against tight government controls on the second anniversary of a region-wide uprising, according to witnesses.In the Tibetan regional capital Lhasa, businesses meanwhile defied orders to open for business as usual and observed the anniversary in silence, residents there said.

61-year-old retired teacher from Shandong dies shortly after release from detention center
NEW YORK—An elderly Falun Gong practitioner, who was cited as a torture victim by prominent attorney Gao Zhisheng in an open letter to China’s leaders, died in January due to injuries incurred in custody. Ms. Liu Lihua , 61, is the second of Gao’s interviewees known to have subsequently died from abuse in custody. Gao himself has been “disappeared” by Chinese security forces since February 2009.

KATHMANDU: The police on Sunday arrested 11 Tibetan exiles including three women for staging protest and chanting anti-China slogans in the restricted zone of the Chinese Consular Section at Hattisar. DSP Pradhumna Karki, Kathmandu Operation In-charge said they had been kept in police custody and would be handed over to the Department of Immigration after an investigation. "They were arrested for their attempt to destroy friendly relationship between China and Nepal," he informed.