matteo mohorovicich

focus: human rights - internationality - freedom of expression - planet earth - aob

Telecom Italia charged with being too expensive

Finally someone did it. Anti Digital Divide Association, as president Maurizio Gotta cinfirms, has charged Telecom Italia to EU Antitrust Telecom Italia. What with? Having too expensive prices for Adsl connection and not providing a good service, expecially in the South of Italy. Now, Bruxells has 60 days to decide: to hold an inquiry into Telecom or to ask for more informations?
I remind you that in Italy Adsl connection costs much more than in other EU countries. In the meanwhile, Alice Adsl, Telecom Adsl offer, will reach since March 31 4 megabits per second speed. As we pay a lot for a more or less four times less speed-transmission broadband, maybe it's a kind concession imposed by a sense of guilt...

Post: matteomohorovicich a 23:03 | link | commenti |

Zheng Yichun, another cyberdissident in jail

Just another one to add to the list of Reporters sans frontières: journalist or, as China seems often not to make any difference, cyberdissident Zheng Yichun, aged 48. He was charged with "subverting State power" by publishing articles. Where? Obviously on the same banned newspapers (Epoch Times; here you can find the English online version) and sites (just to tell one, boxun.com), all based abroad.
 The strangest thing (or not so strange, when we speak about censorship, free information repression and imprisonment in China) is that Zheng has been imprisoned on December 3. And only on March 25 (more than three months later!) Rsf wrote about it. Of course, it's not because of their negligence. Zheng's relatives, notified of his charge only on December 31, were warned not to talk about his imprisonment with press or human rights organizations, unless they wanted reprisals. They decided to stop keeping silence after a Yingkou daily newspaper reported the arrest on February 24.

To know more about Zheng's vicissitude, read Rsf.

Post: matteomohorovicich a 22:17 | link | commenti |
china

Does Northel Networks Corporation respect human rights?

As a part of its tenth Five-Year Plan for economic development, China is building a railway to link the northern city of Gormo to the capital of Tibet, Lhasa. The project will connect for the very first time Tibet with the Chinese nationwide railway grid. According to Students For A Free Tibet, this Gormo-Lhasa (the world's highest rail service) is part of China's plan known as "Western Development Campaign" and, as the previous railways built in Mongolia and East Turkestan, is meant to speed colonization of the area. Apart from being very expensive, the project -continues Students For A Free Tibet- will cause serious environmental destruction and has no particular benefits for Tibetans. Just a few words are enough: among the 38.000 who are working to build the Gormo-Lhasa line, only 6.000 are Tibetans and most of them earn up to eleven times less than the other employees, who are mostly from China. I suggest yor reading of the whole report by the International Campaign fot Tibet. It removes any doubt.
As Jam Yang wrote on Yahoo! Group "Chinese Internet Research", Canadian firm Nortel Networks Corp. said a few weeks ago that Chinese Railways Ministry has chosen it to provide a digital wireless communications network on the Gormo-Lhasa railway. The decision followed a year-long trial of Nortel's GSM-R (Global System for Mobile Communication) for Railways technology in China at altitudes of up to 15,700 feet above sea level, as Nortel specified in a statement some days ago.
The fact is: many human rights activists are now worried Nortel could be helping China to swamp Tibetan culture, giving Chinese the possibility to realize their railway and their (hidden) goal to assimilate Tibet. Obviously, Marion MacKenzie, vice-president of corporate communications at Nortel, categorically rejected that the Canadian firm could be involved in repressing and stifling human rights and freedom of any individual.

But there's more to say. Jam Yang, in another message to "Chinese Internet Research", wrote that Nortel-China Customs deployment will support the state-owned Golden Customs initiative, a nationwide project developed to connect the information networks of the customs and foreign trade sectors.
Nortel has also supplied Golden Taxation, a national information network linking state taxation headquarters with local taxation offices at all levels. Authorities told that Nortel Solutions will protect China Customs Business Critical Information: according to them, Nortel's Optical Metro DWDM (dense wavelength division multiplexing) technology will enable "secure, reliable, real-time data storage". 
But this tecnology seems not to respect data protection: in particular, UK human rights organization (The Omega Foundation) recommended respect in using personal data and the establishment of a specific legislation to protect citizens. But I think China is not worried about.
And Nortel Networks makes its business...

Post: matteomohorovicich a 19:00 | link | commenti |
china

better Darfur or Congo?

Darfur is one of the terrible examples of how human rights can be violated without any international reaction. Don't forget anyway that Africa is very big. And things such those happened in Darfur may happen in many other places, if there's no complaint. See the case of Congo. A UN report recently described unbelievable atrocities: rape, mutilation, cannibalism and so on. Jan Egeland said that Congo's district of Ituri has replaced Sudan's Darfur region as the worst in the world. Human right violations have mushroomed all over Africa. And nobody talks about it.

To know more about Congo, read The Guardian

Post: matteomohorovicich a 12:03 | link | commenti (1) |

a risky profession, according to CPJ

In 2004, as Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says, 56 media workers have been killed. Today is March 17 and those killed in 2005 are already 6.
Since 1982, 22 journalist disappeared. They're still missing.

Post: matteomohorovicich a 11:30 | link | commenti |

Card. Ruini and his serious interference

 In Italy we'll have a referendum between April 15 and June 15: the date has still to be defined. And, as in Italy referendums are only abrogative, we'll vote to abrogate (or not) four points of a very controversial law, the n. 40 of 19/2/2004, about "medically assisted procreation". The points deal with research on embryo (prohibited by the law), limits in embryo-transplantation (no more than three), embryo rights (equalized to those of a person) and heterologous fecundation (prohibited). As it already happened in 1974 (with the referendum about divorce) and in 1981 (with the referendum about abortion) the country is divided in two. The very serious thing is that some catholic authorities, and expecially card. Camillo Ruini, president of Cei (Italian Episcopal Conference), asked catholic people not to vote. Ruini did it last monday during the Permanent Council of Cei and did it again yesterday during his monthly meeting with Roman priests. This is an intolerable interference of a religious power in politics' matters. Italy has been a lay country since 1984, after changes to 1929 Lateran Treaty. Some catholics often seem to forget.

Post: matteomohorovicich a 23:48 | link | commenti (1) |

Madrid one year after

Today, at 7:37 a.m., the bells of the 650 churches in Madrid began to toll in memory of the 192 victims of the terrorist attack last year. My girlfriend, who is now in Madrid, told me about people's reactions. Nobody wanted to speak, nobody (policemen, too) pretended to know anything about when she asked them where and when commemorations should have taken place. Just silence. It's strange. It's like they wanted to forget and not to remember. But it's understandable, too.

Post: matteomohorovicich a 22:53 | link | commenti |

Chinese cyberdissidents: how many and who are they?

Webmaster at boxun.com (a Chinese site banned by authorities because of his "subversive" contents) prefers not to reveal his name. He answered the questions I mailed him about internet censorship and surveillance in China. At reading what he wrote, I felt something of a surprise and bewilderment, expecially in two passages. Here you are my questions and his answers below:

- 63 cyberdissident, according to Reporter sans frontières, are still in jail in China for posting articles or searching for news related to forbidden topics. Your opinion?
  Should be much more than that number, difficult to confirm the exact number. Many writers disappeared and can not be confirmed as they used Pen name. Those writers are not activists, they are people with thoughts, even not necessarily anti-government.

- Can you make me some relevant examples of banned sites? I know some: cicus.org or, for example, your site boxun.com (about human rights) or dajiyuan.com (about Falun Gong spiritual movement).
 Too many sites banned: cnn.com, newyorktimes.com, all news sites outside China are banned (say, if not 100%, 99% news sites). boxun.com should be on the top list - we are not for human rights, we report everything, just independent, we report all things.


Journalist Fons Tuinstra, instead, a foreign correspondent, media trainer, new media advisor and internet entrepreneur in Shanghai, founder and partner of the largest email-service/website on business in China (www.cbiz.cn), at the same first question gives his personal view of cyberdissidents' phenomenon:

 It all depends of course on how you define cyberdissidents. I do not know RSF's definition, nor do I have the list of 63 people and the
reasons why they have been arrested. Most of the arrest that have taken place, with very few exception, were more the old-style dissidents that would use any mean, including the internet, to let the rest of the world know about their thoughts. I see very little of that among the - say - post 1989 generation, who dominates the internet currently. Material life has improved greatly over the past twenty years and the old-style dissidents have very little following among today's youngsters. The internet is still a rather new tool in China, although it has 100 million users and 700,000 webloggers, that is only a very small part of China's population. People are currently discovering what they can or want to do, without getting into trouble. The incidents I know of people who go into trouble are limited, and in most case close to harmless. The internet is giving people an increased freedom that is unprecedented in China. Nobody know at this stage, how that exactly is going to develop.

Post: matteomohorovicich a 22:20 | link | commenti |
china

Somalia: tsunami's first side effects

UNEP's report on tsunami's environmental effects revealed a particularly dramatic situation in Somalia. Somalia, as UNEP says, "is one of the many least developed countries that reportedly received countless shipments of illegal and toxic nuclear waste dumped along the coastline": uranium radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury, industrial, hospital, chemical, leather treatment and other toxic waste. For years, big industrialized countries felt free to pollute, helped by four factors. First of all, political instability due to Somalia's civil war: since 1991, there was no government to safeguard the coasts. Secondly, avilability of dumping sites. Then low public awareness. And, least but not last, low costs of the operation: $2,50 per tonne to dump hazardous waste in Africa instead of $250 per tonne in Europa.
The fact is that tsunami has stirred up hazardous waste deposits around the coasts, expecially in northern Somalia, and caused serious environmental and health problems. That is to say, groundwater, soil and fish contamination and health problems caused by the winds blowing into the coastline villages, such as respiratory infections, dry heavy coughing and mouth bleeding, abdominal haemorrhages, unusual skin chemical reactions, sudden deaths after inhaling toxic materials. Business are business, someone could say...

Post: matteomohorovicich a 22:32 | link | commenti |

how to grow food in the desert: Gordon Sato, Eritrea and mangrove trees

Cell biologist Gordon Sato, 76 years old, lives in LA, but is always travelling around the world. His latest challenge, after contributing in the Eighties to invent a drug slowing the spread of colon cancer (Erbitux), is to grow food in the desert of Eritrea, where he's working now with his équipe and has planted almost a million mangrove trees. The technique is very simple: after being punched for three times, bags of fertilizer are buried near mangrove seedlings. Over the next three years, fertilizer will leak out slowly and nourish the soil, so that plants can grow up.
Sato's elementary and genial growing system could solve a lot of problems for those who suffer hunger in Africa and all around the world. As a matter of fact, in Eritrea goats eat leaves and seeds of the mangrove trees, so that they can provide people with milk and help them to survive.
So far, even if he turned out to be a wizard at raising money, most part of Sato's initial (and following, too) funding came out of his own bank account. Will he ever get any substantial help from western politics and governments to improve his achievements? Or will Africa and its pressing needs will fall into oblivion again?

To know more, read Pagan Kennedy on The Boston Globe Magazine

Post: matteomohorovicich a 21:10 | link | commenti |