Tag: Demonstrations, Protests and Riots

Lobga Rangzen, the Tibetan Activist Who Set Himself on Fire in Manhattan

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It was 91 degrees in Manhattan and even hotter on the pavement, but the Tibetans gathered as planned outside the Chinese Consulate. Amid the waving flags and synchronized chants, one of the protesters, Ngawang Tashi, looked for his friend Lobga Rangzen. Lobga Rangzen was a stalwart of events like this. His friends joked that he was happier at protests than on his birthday. At protests, he felt most useful to the cause of Tibetan independence from China — a cause to which he was so devoted, he had even put…

Tibetan Man Dies After Self-Immolation Protest in New York

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A Tibetan activist lit himself on fire and outside of the United Nations headquarters in New York on Thursday to protest China’s control over his homeland, declaring in a video before his self-immolation that Beijing’s policies were “destroying the Tibetan people.” He later died. Friends of the activist identified him as Lobsang Palden, known as Lobga Rangzen, a 52-year-old resident of Queens. Originally from eastern Tibet, Lobga Rangzen had been an advocate of Tibetan independence for more than a decade. The police said that around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday they…

A Puppy-Abuse Case in China, Caught on Video, Prompts Rare Public Protest

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In the video, a man stands on a balcony at night hitting a puppy as it lets out sharp shrieks. He gruffly carries the dog back inside by its neck. The scene in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing was captured by a neighbor and posted on social media this month. The video prompted concerned residents to go to the man’s apartment, where they confronted him and rescued three abused puppies, according to videos posted on social media. Within days, hundreds of people had gathered outside his apartment, in a…

What to Know About Hong Kong’s Article 23 Legislation

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Hong Kong passed national security legislation on Tuesday, giving officials in the Chinese territory more power to curb dissent, 21 years after mass protests forced the government to backtrack on a plan to introduce such laws. The legislation targets political offenses like treason and insurrection with penalties as harsh as life imprisonment and expands the scope of what can be considered criminal behavior. Local officials have said it will close gaps in a security law that China’s government imposed on the territory in 2020 after months of huge antigovernment protests.…

China Has Thousands of Navalnys, Hidden From the Public

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After watching “Navalny,” the documentary about the Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, a Chinese businesswoman messaged me, “Ren Zhiqiang is China’s Navalny.” She was talking about the retired real estate tycoon who was sentenced to 18 years in prison for criticizing China’s leader, Xi Jinping. After Mr. Navalny’s tragic death this month, a young dissident living in Berlin posted on X, “Teacher Li is closest to the Chinese version of Navalny.” He was referring to the rebel influencer known as Teacher Li, who used social media to share information…

Émigrés Are Creating an Alternative China, One Bookstore at a Time

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On a rainy Saturday afternoon in central Tokyo, 50 or so Chinese people packed into a gray, nondescript office that doubles as a bookstore. They came for a seminar about Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist poet and revolutionary who was beheaded more than a century ago for conspiring to overthrow the Qing dynasty. Like them, Ms. Qiu had lived as an immigrant in Japan. The lecture’s title, “Rebuilding China in Tokyo,” said as much about the aspirations of the people in the room as it did about Ms. Qiu’s life.…

Shih Ming-teh, Defiant Activist for a Democratic Taiwan, Dies at 83

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Shih Ming-teh, a lifelong campaigner for democracy in Taiwan who spent over two decades in prison for his cause and later started a protest movement against a president from his former party, died on Jan. 15, his 83rd birthday, in Taipei, the island’s capital. The cause was complications of an operation to remove a liver tumor, said his wife, Chia-chiun Chen Shih. Mr. Shih helped lead a pro-democracy protest in 1979 that was brutally broken up by the police and that is now viewed as a turning point in Taiwan’s…

Taiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese

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At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait. “We came of age as activists around the same time. Now they’re running as legislators while my peers and I are in exile,” said Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia last year over security concerns. Cuicui…

Hong Kong Activist Flees to Britain, Citing Police Pressure

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A political activist in Hong Kong previously imprisoned under its sweeping national security law said he had fled to Britain and would apply for asylum there, becoming the second high-profile dissident this month to announce going into exile from the territory. The activist, Tony Chung, revealed on Thursday that he had arrived in Britain, and, in several social media posts, said that he had decided to leave Hong Kong after enduring oppressive restrictions, pressure to act as informant and severe stress after his release from prison in June. Mr. Chung,…

Jiang Ping, the ‘Conscience of China’s Legal World,’ Dies at 92

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Jiang Ping, a legal scholar who helped lay the foundation for China’s civil code, and whose experiences with political persecution shaped his relentless advocacy for individual rights in the face of state power, died on Dec. 19 in Beijing. He was 92. His death, in a hospital, was confirmed by the China University of Political Science and Law, where he had served as president and was a longtime professor. Often called “the conscience of China’s legal world,” Mr. Jiang established himself in the 1980s as a highly regarded teacher and…