In light of the holiday season, Sampsonia Way’s international columnists share their 2013 reading recommendations. Selected by Israel Centeno, Tarik Günersel, Yaghoub Yadali, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Mesfin Negash, Hamd El-Gazzar, Bina Shah, and Tienchi Martin-Liao.
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Independent Chinese PEN Center president, Tienchi Martin-Liao, reflects on the five-year anniversary of imprisonment of dissident writer and Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, his wife’s prolonged, Kafkaesque house arrest, the calls for solidarity from Chinese human rights activists, and the power of words.
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On November 15, the Chinese Communist Party finally abolished its notorious system of labor camps called laojiao (reeducation through labor). While Chinese human rights activists welcome the news, they also called for the banning of ‘black jails and other rogue camouflaged measures of laojiao.’
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In China, according to Tienchi Martin-Liao, journalists face two major problems: censorship from officials who issue instructions on how and whether or not to report a story, and corruption in the form of “red envelopes” (bribes), which have become many journalists’ main source of income.
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On the rise and fall (for now) of the popular Butcher Shop, an innovative philanthropic e-commerce project that provides financial aid to families of political prisoners. The venture is organized by Rice-Delivery-Party, a writer/activist collective led by the author and blogger Ye Fu.
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Independent Chinese PEN Center president Tienchi Martin-Liao discusses the contrasting treatment received by imprisoned Chinese dissidents and shares the personal accounts of Nobel Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo, human rights activist and lawyer Teng Biao, and the writer and blogger Ran Yunfei.
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Independent Chinese PEN Center president Tienchi Martin-Liao discusses the importance of the Tiananmen Square Massacre twenty-four years later, why China should not wait for a savior, and her work with imprisoned writer Liu Xiaobo.
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