Protest

Pay dispute at Shenzhen Nightclub where grizzly murders took place

Posted: 10/9/2012 3:03 pm

The Bida’ao Nightclub in Shenzhen’s Luohu District, also known as Betterole, has become the scene of a rooftop protest after failing to pay former staff, according to local media.

This summer we told you about the four women, all of whom were performers at the nightclub, who were murdered and chopped to pieces.

Shortly after that, the clubs business plunged, forcing it to close down.

On Oct. 8, two women who worked as DJs at the club stood on the rood with a red sign stating: “We need to eat! Give us our hard-earned money.” And called on authorities to intervene.

The words “return our money” were painted in big red letters over what was the front door of the nightclub. All of the laid off staff, from bar staff to performers, are owed 2-3 months salary, one of the workers told Nanfang Daily.

Police will look into the claims, but then again they’ve got murderers to catch.

Tagged: back payBida'ao NightclublayoffsLuohu DistrictProtest

Guangzhou braces for the largest anti-Japan protest yet

Posted: 09/18/2012 9:30 am

Even when relations between Japan and China are cordial, September 18 is a sensitive date. In 1931, Japan staged the Mukden Incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria, and later the rest of China, on September 18. Each year, China marks the event as another in a long line of humiliations by great powers.

The problem is, relations between Japan and China aren’t exactly cordial this year. Over the past several days, thousands of people have taken to the streets in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Dongguan, and across China to protest Japan’s claims to the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands. In one case in Shenzhen, the windows of Japanese businesses were smashed and police resorted to pepper spray and water cannons to clear the crowds. That was on Sunday, and today is the anniversary of the Mukden Incident.

Protests have already started outside the embassy in Beijing today, and Guangzhou has set up barriers in Tianhe to handle an influx of protesters. The photos below are from last night and this morning in Tianhe.

We’ll keep you updated on events throughout the day. If you happen to be Japanese or have Japanese friends, best warn them to steer clear of public gatherings in the PRD today.

Tagged: anti-japanDiaoyuDongguanGuangzhouProtestSenkakuShenzhenTianheZhuhai

Guangzhou students protest university gender quotas

Posted: 09/12/2012 1:00 pm

As Chinese students are all too familiar with, the annual national university entrance exams, known as “gaokao”, are intense. Following months of preparation, the fate of their academic futures comes down to two days of examinations. Although struggling with fierce competition from other students is difficult enough, students are now facing another obstacle that no amount of studying can overcome: university gender quotas.

A recent story published in the China Daily revealed that Chinese universities are increasingly relying on gender quotas to determine acceptance. At the Beijing Foreign Studies University for example, entry to the German language department requires an admission score of 598 for men, yet women require a substantially higher score of 639. At the prestigious Renmin University, the minimum admission score for four different language majors is currently set at 601 for men, but women require a score of 614.

This issue is not, however, unique to the north. According to a story in Radio Free Asia, the same issue is occurring in Guangzhou and, understandably, female students are none too impressed.

Guangzhou student, Ouyang Le, was denied a place at a prominent International Relations department on the basis of gender quotas, despite an exceptional score on her national exams. Rather than accept the decision, Ouyang turned to Weibo to voice her frustration. In doing so, a number of female students joined with her and staged a protest of a policy they see as nothing other than discriminatory. The women shaved their heads which, according to Ouyang, is synonymous in Cantonese with “empty-handed and impoverished”, and proceeded to read a letter addressed to the Beijing Education Ministry.

According to Ouyang, and in response, the ministry claimed that certain schools and institutes were allowed to have differing admission scores for men and women applying to “special professions” on the basis of “national interests”. The professions considered “special”, as well as the national interests in question, remain unknown.

Not everyone views the gender quotas as discriminatory. According to Yuan Zhenguo, president of the National Institute of Education Sciences, the policy “reflects the market demand” and argues that some jobs simply need men instead of women.

China has signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, which includes ensuring women’s equal access to, and equal opportunities in, education and employment. Notwithstanding, women in China obviously continue to face major barriers with regard to education and labour equality. According to Guangzhou human rights lawyer, Tang Jingling, although the law continues to evolve, further cultural change must occur: “The system itself is synonymous with power, but it can be changed through culture”, Tang said. “Only a system that concerns itself with justice will be able to erase the last traces of this culture of discrimination.”

Tagged: Discriminationdiscriminatory practicesEducationgender quotasGuangzhouministry of educationProtest

Police in Dongguan crack down on anti-Japanese protesters

Posted: 08/27/2012 11:24 am

(Photo courtesy Euronews.com)

One week after protests erupted in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and elsewhere in China over Japan’s claims to the Diaoyu Islands, protesters in Dongguan took to the streets to voice their displeasure yesterday. The key difference in this case: the riot police were brought in to disperse the crowd.

While the original protests last week seemed to have the tacit approval of authorities, this latest one in Dongguan clearly did not. The South China Morning Post reports (behind a paywall) that hundreds of protesters gathered in Dongguan yesterday and marched towards the city’s government plaza in Dongcheng District. Before they got there though, riot police arrived and began trying to break up the protest. This inevitably resulted in some scuffles, with protesters throwing objects at the police.

A 25-year-old man who was visiting Dongguan with a friend from a town outside the city was severely beaten by police, said the 17-year-old friend.

“We were just curious to see what was happening and suddenly we were rounded up by police carrying shields and long black batons,” she said, sobbing. Her green top was stained with her friend’s blood.

The distraught girl was looking for a doctor and lost track of her friend in the chaos.

“A policeman, without warning, hit my friend’s head with his baton. He was covered in blood. But they still beat him even though he was already bleeding,” she said. “The next thing I knew I was pushed away by police. I can’t find my friend and I can’t find a doctor. I don’t know what to do.”

One shop owner in Dongguan said messages began circulating earlier in the week calling for a protest to take place on Sunday, however the idea was scrapped when 20,000 people signed up. He said organizers shut it down because they were worried it would be out of control.

You can watch footage of the protest here.

Tagged: Anti-JapaneseDiaoyuDongchengDongguanProtestRiotSenkaku

Exclusive interview with Nigerian protester, more details on what went down

Posted: 06/20/2012 1:44 pm

Racial tensions are boiling over in Guangzhou following yesterday’s protest in Sanyuanli. The Nanfang was the first to report that a crowd of Nigerians and other Africans blocked traffic in Guangzhou to protest the death of a Nigerian man under suspicious circumstances.

Since our initial report, more details have come to light. It appears to have started when a Nigerian man was asked to pay an additional fare to a moped driver after reaching his destination. The Global Times reports this:

“The dispute between the foreign man and the driver surnamed Sun over the fare happened at around 1 pm Monday on Guangyuan Road West in the city’s Yuexiu district,” Guangzhou police said on its official Weibo Tuesday.

“They were taken to the police station for investigation, but the foreigner suddenly fell into a coma at around 5 pm and died after receiving medical treatment at the station,” said the police, adding that an initial medical report shows no obvious bodily injuries.

At 3 pm Tuesday, the foreigners gathered at the Kuangquan police station, where the Nigerian man had died, blocking the streets to traffic.

Naturally, we’re hearing a slightly different version of events.

According to Matouvu, a 26-year old Nigerian who lives in the Sanyuanli area, the initial altercation between the moped driver and Nigerian man was in the wee hours of yesterday (June 19) morning. She said when she arrived at her office around 8 o’clock yesterday morning, police cars remained around the area where the altercation had taken place. ”I called to find out what was going on, and they said one man had died from a beating,” she said.

According to what Matouvu has heard, which we cannot verify, the Chinese moped driver asked the Nigerian man to pay RMB5, which the man claimed not to have. It’s not clear if the RMB5 was part of the originally-agreed fare, or an additional charge. Regardless, when the Nigerian man refused to pay, the Chinese moped driver notified his friends to help pressure the Nigerian man. At some point, the altercation escalated, and many believe he was eventually beaten to death.

Matouvu said news of the man’s death spread quickly, and by the afternoon many in the Nigerian community wanted the police to do something about it. That’s when crowds began to gather outside of the police station. ”I got there around 11,” Matouvu said. “There were maybe 50 Nigerians and five police cars. At that time, everything was normal.”

“Chaos started at about 1pm,” she continued. ”Nigerians were in the middle of the road. No cars were allowed to pass. Everything came to a standstill,” she said. She also noted shops along Gongyuan West Road closed down.

The crowds swelled shortly thereafter, and that’s when things deteriorated. ”Chinese people were very big; they had huge sticks,” she said. ”At first it was peaceful, police were trying to make peace. I don’t know what exactly started the fighting. I could see bottles breaking and being thrown.”

She doesn’t know if anyone was severely hurt in the melee, but said word is circulating in the Nigerian community that two police officers were badly injured.

There are rumours that the Nigerian ambassador is en route to Guangzhou to quell some of the anger, and another demonstration could be planned for later.

“I don’t feel safe,” Moutava said. “It’s the responsibility of the Chinese to protect foreigners, right? What’s the point of being here if we can’t be safe?”

Judging by the online reaction to yesterday’s protest, things may be getting worse. Several Chinese netizens have lashed out at the African community in Guangzhou, with several calling on them to be sent home.

The Nanfang translated a few of the comments circulating on Sina Weibo:

Letour: The Guangzhou Public Security Bureau should implement a measure, drive out all illegal foreigners.

Chongqing taxi booking: Chinese and foreigners are equal, and it’s the same when they’re dead. Deal with this normally.

Qingqing Ruwu: Whichever country you’re in, you need to respect the local laws and customs, since an illegal immigrant used public transport without paying and got into a fight, a government institution should intervene, otherwise this kind of thing will become commonplace, and it will be too late to do anything about it. I don’t want to be surrounded by these kinds of people.

Wenting 1588: Our African brothers are poor, but they must respect the law.

Tungu yihao: Police comrades, pay attention to the threat of AIDS. I have never felt such antipathy to foreigners as now.

Shawu zhixing: Send all of these laowai to jail for a few days.

Jxnclai: Let’s send all black illegal immigrants home immediately.

Suiyuan Pisces: Black people are too arrogant.

Liu Laoweng: Guangzhou is going to follow in Europe’s footsteps and get overrun by black people.

Xiaosanzoutianya: I can confirm the cause of death. He was so black, he had clearly been burned to death by the sun.

Xiaosanzoutianya: (earlier) Black trash, get the hell out of China.

Cai Ruzhang: I often see black people out and about, not fully clothed, and sometimes even pissing on the street! I don’t understand, why does Guangzhou welcome black people in such a way? They bring to this city 100 vices and not a single virtue, anybody paying attention can see this. Are you really suggesting deporting illegal black people is not a good idea? I would rather be surrounded by Pakistanis, Koreans and Japanese than blacks.

We’ve posted a selection of photos that circulated on Weibo below (courtesy of ChinaSMACK) as well as a video of the protest.

Links and Sources:

Africans block traffic in Guangzhou after foreigner dies in police custody (The Nanfang)
Nigerian’s death sparks demo (Global Times)
Protest following foreigner’s sudden death in police custody (ChinaSMACK)

Tagged: AfricanDeathGuangzhouNigeriaNigerianPoliceProtest

[Updated] Africans block traffic in Guangzhou after foreigner dies in police custody

Posted: 06/19/2012 7:36 pm

The Chinese interwebs have lit up this evening over a large-scale protest this afternoon in Guangzhou’s sketchy Sanyuanli District.

It’s very much a “he said, she said” situation at the moment, so we’re trying to piece together what happened. This much we do know: an African man died while in police custody in Guangzhou yesterday, and foreigners took to the streets to protest today.

According to statements on Sina Weibo, a foreign passenger got into an altercation with an electric bike driver over his fare yesterday. He was apparently badly beaten by a group of Chinese people before he died later. However, others say that the man was being extremely disorderly.

It’s hard to know exactly what happened, but the truth probably lies somewhere in between. For its part, the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau published a statement on its website this evening saying a man was apprehended by police yesterday. That man “passed out” and was unable to be resuscitated despite the efforts of its rescue team.

Whatever happened, many in the African community in Guangzhou are upset about it. Crowds gathered around Gongyuan West Road this afternoon to protest, disrupting traffic near the Sanyuanli Police Station. The police called it a protest, but witnesses say the protesters had gone as far as setting fire to a police car.

The Guangzhou Police has called on all foreignerers in China to obey Chinese law, don’t harm the public interest or disturb the social order of Chinese society.

We’ll update if we find out more.

Thanks to @MissXQ for the tip!

Update (11:03am June 20):

We now have a (wobbly) video of yesterday’s protest to share. You can click it below.

There is also a full update in a new story posted here.

Tagged: AfricanAltercationGuangzhouProtestSanyuanli

Bear torture company targeted by animal rights activists in Shenzhen

Posted: 03/1/2012 8:57 am

After China bear-bile producer Gui Zhen Tang recently sparked a storm of public criticism following media reports of the means used by the company to extract bile from bears, and then won approval to list on the Shenzhen stock exchange, the company’s Shenzhen branch on Bao’an Rd. in Luohu district was targeted by animal rights activists this past weekend, reports Southern Metropolis Daily.

Most of the animal rights defenders wore black bear-shaped masks, handing out photos of ‘bile bears’ to passersby outside Gui Zhen Tang’s office. Their cause, widely supported by the public, is to stop the bile-extraction-through-torture, a practice they say also damages the reputation of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

One of protesters, dressed up as black bear, portrayed the whole process of how bile is extracted from live bears: crawling on the ground while green ribbons—as a symbol of bear bile, were continuously “extracted” from his “gall bladder” by others involved.

Many local Chinese medicine doctors also reject the use of bear bile as an anti-inflammatory drug or to treat gall stones and liver ailments, saying “other ingredients can be used to completely replace [bear bile].”

The newspaper also reports that a heckler soon appeared and tried to refute the animal rights activists, but his voice was quickly drowned out.

See more photos from the protest here.

Tagged: Animal RightsBear BileProtestTCM

Vietnam war vets protest in Guangzhou

Posted: 02/24/2012 10:16 am

In early 1979, China invaded Vietnam, sending in several hundred thousand troops, many of whom were from Guangdong province. China withdrew its forces after a month of fighting.

Veterans from that war have protested many times over the years since with calls for greater support from the government. Last Friday, to mark the 33rd anniversary of the beginning of the invasion, several hundred of these veterans from Guangdong and surrounding provinces, now having reached retirement age, gathered in Guangzhou’s Martyrs’ Park to demand higher pensions.

Aside from the photos below, posted to Twitter by one Guangzhou-based rights lawyer who attended the protest, not much additional information seems to have been posted online, making this more of a ‘see the photos but say nothing’ (看图不说话) kind of story of an unreported sensitive “mass incident”.

Tagged: ProtestVeterans

Young Guangzhou women take back the toilet

Posted: 02/23/2012 11:54 am

The rights and needs of women are once again set to regain some attention as Women’s Day approaches.

Last Sunday morning in Guangzhou, February 19, several female college students launched “Occupy the Men’s Room”, an act of performance art which involved queuing outside the men’s side of a public restroom near Yuexiu Park in an attempt to draw people’s attention to the imbalance in number of toilet cubicles between men and women.

The movement calls upon the government to provide women with more cubicles in public toilets.

Gathered around, the students, all in their early twenties, held placards reading “Care For Women, Starting from Toilets” and asked approaching men to consider waiting a few extra minutes while women finished up on the men’s side.

The organizer of the toilet takeover is Li, a college student in Xi’an who hails from Beijing. Interviewed by Southern Metropolis Daily, Li explained that it’s commonplace to see women in a long queue outside public toilets and often no one outside the entrance to the men’s room. The idea for “Occupy the Men’s Room” came about after she found many young women in Guangzhou who shared the same grievance.

According to Zheng Churan, one of the volunteers and a senior university student in Guangzhou, choosing a location and rounding up volunteers took only a week.

She says public washrooms for men often have the same number or more of squat holes than a women’s room will have of urinal drains. Moreover, due to biological differences, it takes women longer than men to wrap up and exit, further aggravating the inequality.

The volunteers also distributed flyers writing “A letter to Male Fellows” to explain difficulties that women have using toilets and the purpose of their movement.

In a letter distributed by participants to men passing by, the women called upon the government to draft a law to increase the ratio between men and women’s toilet spaces to at least 1:2.

Interestingly, they also appeal for unisex toilets in public spaces such as shopping malls, hospitals, parks and train stations.

After an hour of occupation, most men who stuck waiting outside the toilet showed their understanding and support.

Two days later, Guangzhou’s chengguan announced that
future public washroom facilities built in the city will maintain a 1:1.5 ratio of toilets in men’s and women’s rooms.

Li said she will continue to this work of performance art in other cities, and the next stop is Beijing.

Tagged: FeminismProtestStudents

Crowds gather in Huaqiangbei, gang fighting?

Posted: 03/24/2011 5:25 pm

Sina Weibo was all atwitter around 5pm on Thursday regarding what appeared to be a major scuffle in the Huaqiangbei area of Shenzhen. More than 500 people posted comments to Weibo, but nobody seems to know what was going on.

All we know is there was a large crowd on the scene, as well as several police officers. We hope to post more information as we find out, so check back later.

UPDATE (21:17):

Details are still scarce, but we are at least getting some second hand information. First, all references to the event can no longer be found on Sina Weibo, including the photo we’ve included in this post.

@mic tweeted us (@thenanfang) to let us know that it was a gang related confrontation with the police. He said: “Seems to be a gang fighting, hundreds of tenants of Zhuowang Building against with police, for some unknown reasons”

As always, if you know anything let us know and we can pass it on.