Stories from around the world

How does the Convention for the Rights of the Child affect a child’s life? What does it mean to have your rights met…or denied?

At every stage of children’s lives they have rights. In their early life, their rights to survival, to food, to an identity are very important. But when they reach school age, their right to an education becomes more and more critical. Finally, when they reach their teens, their rights to protection take on increased importance as they become more independent and engaged with the world around them.

See what it really means to a child’s life when basic rights are taken away – rights to school, to protection from violence, to survival. Here are some stories of young people around the world, told though short films.

 Anyway, Happy Birthday , My Dear Homeland–China!

Nine killed in Burmese crackdown

Protests in Burma

Nine people have been killed during Thursday’s crackdown on anti-government protesters in Burma’s main city of Rangoon, state media say.The dead included eight protesters and a Japanese man, identified as a video journalist working for APF News - with 11 demonstrators and 31 soldiers hurt.

The deaths came on the 10th day of protests, led by Buddhist monks.

World leaders have renewed calls for sanctions - and the US says it is beginning with 14 top officials.

President George W Bush has “made it clear that we will not stand by as the regime tries to silence the voices of the Burmese people through repression and intimidation,” said Adam Szubin, director of the US treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.

The world should act, under the UN, forcefully and show the door to the dictatorship. China has to be told firmly to stop propping up the Burmese military Ganapathy, Ottawa, Canada Accounts from Burma Protests in pictures Send us your comments

In other developments on Thursday:

• Burma says it will issue a visa to UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who is being urgently sent to the country
• the Association of South-East Asian Nations voices “revulsion” at the killings and urges Burma - one of its members - to exercise restraint
• UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour warns Burmese leaders that they could be prosecuted for their actions

‘Warning shots’

Apart from sporadic gunfire, the streets of Rangoon are now said to be quiet after six hours of clashes. A curfew is back in force.

Thursday’s violence followed reports of overnight raids on six monasteries.

Witnesses say soldiers smashed windows and doors and beat sleeping monks. Some escaped but hundreds were taken away in military trucks.

What next for the regime? Burma rulers cut media flow

At about midday (0530 GMT), tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets in an apparently spontaneous show of defiance, singing nationalist songs and hurling abuse at soldiers driving by in trucks.

Troops began firing warning shots when protesters tried to take their weapons from them, state television reported.

Witnesses said it was unclear whether the bullets were fired into the crowd or above heads.

Japan’s foreign ministry confirmed that a man found dead in Rangoon carrying a Japanese passport was Kenji Nagai, a video journalist who had been in Burma for Tokyo-based news agency APF News since Tuesday.

Japan would officially launch a protest with the Burmese government over Mr Nagai’s death and demand an investigation into the incident, Japanese news agency Kyodo quoted Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura as saying.

The official toll was nine dead, though this could not be confirmed.

In unrest on Wednesday state media said one person had died, though there were unconfirmed reports of several other deaths.

Taken by surprise

The scale and growing momentum of the protests appears to have taken Burma’s military rulers by surprise, says the BBC’s regional correspondent Charles Scanlon.

Key flashpoints in Rangoon Enlarge Image

By ordering combat battalions into the streets, they are aiming to intimidate the population while rounding up the leaders of the protest movement, he adds.

With fewer monks on the streets on Thursday, the military may have had fewer qualms about firing on the civilians, correspondents say, as monks are held in high esteem in Buddhist Burma.

Analysts fear a repeat of the violence in 1988, when troops opened fire on unarmed protesters, killing thousands.

The current protests were triggered by the government’s decision to double the price of fuel last month, hitting people hard in the impoverished nation.

]]> http://shua.randolphblogs.net/2007/09/27/i-am-going-to-wear-red-t-shirt-to-support-people-in-burma/feed/ http://shua.randolphblogs.net/2007/09/20/my-hometown-where-i-come-from-in-china/ http://shua.randolphblogs.net/2007/09/20/my-hometown-where-i-come-from-in-china/#comments Fri, 21 Sep 2007 05:21:32 +0000 shua http://shua.randolphblogs.net/2007/09/20/my-hometown-where-i-come-from-in-china/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw1Qo-_oA7c

This is a youtube link of a video called A Song of Huaian. Take a look at my beautiful hometown, where I was born and raised, well though not where my family right now live in. The background song is really traditional, and smoothing and soft. I love the melody. Hope you like it too.

Following is an article about China’s religion freedom. Take a look and hear China’s voice.

China blasts US accusation on religious freedom
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2006-09-19 09:52

China on Monday denounced the U.S. accusation on China’s religion policy and freedom, saying the “groundless” criticism, in violation of international norms, was “interference in China’s internal affairs.”

“China is strongly dissatisfied and resolutely opposed to the U.S. accusation on the country in its religious freedom report,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said in a statement.

Qin’s comments came in the wake of the U.S. State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report 2006, which was released last Friday.

The annual report was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that “the Chinese government’s respect for freedom of religion and freedom of conscience remained poor.”

“That’s a groundless criticism on China’s religion policy and situation of religious freedom,” Qin said.

“It violated the basic norms guiding international relations and interfered with China’s internal affairs,” the spokesman said.

It is an undisputable fact that the Chinese government protects the citizens’ freedom of religious belief in accordance with laws, and Chinese people of all ethnic groups enjoy full freedom of religious belief according to laws, Qin stressed.

He demanded the U.S. side “face squarely” its own problems including religious freedom violations and stop interfering with China’s domestic affairs.

China has more than 100 million religious adherents, more than 100,000 venues for religious activities, and about 300,000 clergy members, according to official statistics.

Normal religious ceremonies or rituals conducted by ministers and all other normal religious activities — carried out either in venues for religious activities or homes of religious adherents in accordance with religious tradition — are taken care of by believers themselves and protected by law.

 I know it’s not easy for anyone going through this transition period. It took Hong Kong 10 years to get accustomed. How long will it take our Randolph (I insist not using Randolph-Macon) women and staff to get used to? Nobody knows. But I know conflicts are never solutions to problems. I am living on a floor called Peace and Diplomacy. What I am supposed to focus on is the whole world. Yet as a part of our world, if even our college is not peaceful how we expect peace in a more broad area? 

I went to high school and have seen some school drama going on. But things happening here at Randolph do exceed my expectation. There is nothing new about upper-class students bullying the lower-class. But this time it is different. Maybe since our college planned to go co-ed the class year of 2007-2008 has been doomed to be hard. Just like people are not willing to leave their hometown to settle in a new place, nobody likes change. We are afraid of losing things that mean so much to us during the change. And the truth is we do lose important things, which makes us more scared and hopeless. That is also why at the beginning all we see is negative facts and we might be so sure that there will be no happy endings. Let me tell you something interesting.  (To Be Continued)

I didn’t realize the importance of my nationality until I went on board and departed from  Shanghai. When I sat next to an American boy on plane and ate a hamburger the flight attendent handed me, I, for the first time, sensed the feeling of leaving. Being away from home to travel in another city might be called leaving; but leaving your homeland to live in a completely different cultural environment is more than homesickness. It’s a chanllege as well as an opportunity, which enables me to reconsider who I am, a question I never felt difficult to answer to.  Some friends advised before I took off that the key to adapting to a new place is to consider it home away from home. Sure the significance of a sense of belonging cannot be underestimated. But it’s not an one-way road. You might feel you belong to someone or somewhere. But only when someone or somewhere accepts you and permits you to get involved will  your sense of belonging  make some sense.

There is such a long way to go to let a different society to admit an alien as one of them, to respect and perceive their difference. And the first step, for me, probably for a lot of new comers to this huge land, is to find our own place. We have to know who we are first. Then we are eligible to be recognized and be understood and then we are capable to let others accept us.

 Who am I? To be honest, I am stil trying to figure it out.