Striking workers demanding better wages have shut down four Japanese-owned Honda Motors assembly plants in southern China. The dispute comes as Honda sales recorded a 30 percent jump in sales in China in four months of this year, to 219,514 vehicles.Company officials say they hope to resolve the dispute as soon as possible."Strikes are not illegal nor are they completely legal. There's no right to strike in the Chinese constitution," said Jeffery Crothall, who is with the China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong. "That was removed from the constitution in 1982 but it's not illegal to strike.

On April 30, Feng Yongji, a Christian petitioner from Xinjiang was illegally intercepted by the Shanghai Domestic Protection Security Squad on her way to Shanghai during the opening ceremony of Expo 2010.The guards handed her over to the police of Shihezi (her hometown).As the Shihezi police "escorted" her home, four or five officers beat Feng so severely that she passed out. Feng Yongji is now being illegally detained at the Shihezi Police Detention Center. Her current condition is growing worse, and she is in dire need of medical attention.

New accounts detailing the detention of ethnic Uyghurs in northwest China in the wake of deadly unrest shows how authorities have targeted members of the mostly Muslim minority, keeping them in custody without access to family and often without indicating when they might be tried or freed.The detentions, near Ghulja [in Chinese, Yining] in China’s northwestern Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), involved several members of three Uyghur families on charges of separatism and religious extremism.

A Tibetan writer who was briefly arrested in March last year has been arrested again on Monday.Dokru Tsultrim was detained from Gomang monastery in Ngaba County.His friend Kalsang Tsultrim, native of Bazong was arrested last Thursday Officials of the Public Security Bureau arrived at the monastery and demanded to see Tsultrim's laptop computer, and searched his room, Dokru Choedak, Dokru Tsultrim's relative living in exile here, told the Voice of Tibet radio service. He refused to show his laptop but the PSB officials allegedly found some other documents from his room.

Canadian documentary maker Michael Buckley’s undercover bid to investigate the Tibet-China railway line was sidetracked when he discovered Tibet’s river systems were being strangled by large scale dam construction.“I have been back and forth to Tibet a number of times and I never noticed the dams were there—but they are hidden, they are down gorges that you cannot see from the road,” Buckley told press after the screening his documentary film “Meltdown in Tibet,” in Bangkok.

The number of coal mine deaths in China has risen for the first time since 2002.There were 592 fatalities related to coal mine accidents in the first three months of this year, compared with 509 in the first quarter last year, the China Daily reported today.The sharp rise in the number of fatalities can be partly explained by the low demand for coal at the height of the global economic crisis early last year, but also because of the widespread renovation and construction of new mines to meet higher demand this year.

Students and teachers at a high school near the Tibetan city of Shigatse have been told to delete certain popular Tibetan-language songs from their cell phones after they were designated "unhealthy" by local education officials, according to its Web site.The school announced recently that owing to the "increasing complexity of separatism," a list of 27 popular Tibetan-language tracks had been banned, whether in audio or video disk format, or as digital media files on people's cell phones.

The authorities in Tibet’s capital Lhasa have announced strict new rules for the use of services to reproduce printed or written material in order to prevent what they call “illegal activities”.The rule was announced at a meeting of the management of the city's reprography sector held on May 10, reported China’s official China Daily newspaper May 19, citing Lhasa Evening News.The report did not say what those “illegal activities” might be.

China has jailed scores of Tibetan writers, artists, singers, and educators for asserting Tibetan national identity and civil rights in the two years since widespread protests swept the region, an overseas advocacy group says in a new report.“Despite knowing very well the risks, [Tibetans] still dare to publish their own opinions, to exchange opinions among themselves, about the situation in Tibet.

Four monks of Wara Monastery in Thangpu Township, Jomda County (Ch: Jiangda xian) in Chamdo Prefecture, “Tibet Autonomous Region” (‘TAR’) were arrested last Saturday (15 May) under suspicion of leading and instigating protest at the county headquarters in Spring 2008 and two other official monks of the same monastery were arrested on Sunday for their failure to ‘educate’ the monks under ‘Patriotic education’ campaign, according to confirmed information received by the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).
 

Chinese Police in Amdo Labrang Saturday opened fire on Tibetans who were protesting against a cement factory which they accuse of polluting the local environment and obstructing religious sentiments of the local Tibetans.Fifteen people were taken to hospital with injuries sustained from gunshots and police beatings.No deaths, however, have been reported so far.Local Tibetans from 7 villages in Madang Township, Xiahe County (Labrang) in the traditional Tibetan province of Amdo have signed a petition expressing their disappointment over the pollution caused by ‘Amdo Cement Factory’.

A new report by the ITUC on core labour standards in People’s Republic of China, published to coincide with the World Trade Organisation’s (WTO) review of its trade policies, has found that further measures are needed to comply with the commitments China accepted when it joined the WTO.China has ratified only four of the eight core ILO labour Conventions.The report notes that Chinese trade unions have to be affiliated to the ACFTU, and any effort to establish independent unions is repressed.

A Tibetan female teacher Lhamo Kyab from Nagchu Prefecture have been sentenced for 15 years of prison in January for alleged suspect in involvement in political movements.Lhamo Kyab, a retired teacher from the Nagchu primary school was caught by the secret service from a new nomadic region in Shagchu kha of Driru county, Nagchu Prefecture,in the mid of the year 2008. She was taken from a private school one night suddenly by covering a black cloth over her head from the nomadic region where she was teaching voluntarily.

Tibetan villagers in the Tibetan Autonomous Region have renewed protests against mining operations on mountains they consider sacred, despite a strong presence by armed Chinese police.The three mines targeted for protests are located at Tsongshen, Choeten, and Deshoe in Markham county in the TAR.