d*********g
发帖数: 2906 | 1 题目叫Why Chinese turn to White House website | d*********g
发帖数: 2906 | 2 http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-air-cases-petitioning-white-house
Chinese air their cases by petitioning White House
By DIDI TANG | Associated Press – 15 hrs ago
BEIJING (AP) — The poisoning of a college student 18 years ago recently re-
emerged as a hot topic in China, but censors soon squelched the politically
sensitive online discussions over whether the culprit may have eluded
punishment because of Communist Party connections.
Chinese looking for justice found another way to keep the issue alive. They
took it to Washington.
Appealing to a White House online petition page, they soon gathered the 100,
000 signatures required for an official response, and — although there has
been no response from Washington so far — news of the request revived talk
about the case in China. Beijing police issued an explanation after weeks of
silence, and state media chimed in with editorials.
"The Chinese public went to a foreign site to vent off their frustration,
and that speaks of the loss of credibility of the Chinese government," said
Shen Dingli, professor of American studies at Fudan University.
Started in 2011 as a project in open government for the Internet age, the
Obama administration's "We the People" site is a work in progress that
already has spawned unintended consequences domestically, prompting updates
of the ground rules for a successful petition.
Though clearly intended for U.S. citizens, the guidelines on gathering
online signatories remain broad enough to hearten activists overseas who —
frustrated with their own governments — hope to raise the international
profile of their cases. The site does not ask for one's nationality, and one
only needs to be 13 or older and have a verified email address to create an
account to initiate a petition or sign one.
Malaysians have complained to the White House about election fraud in their
country, drawing more than 222,000 signatures within a week to become the
site's second-most popular issue. Other petitions ask President Barack Obama
to secure the release of two abducted Orthodox Christian archbishops in
Syria and to urge a recount of votes in Venezuela's presidential elections.
And in the past week, requests have poured in from China, where petitioning
the central government in Beijing dates back to imperial eras, but where
nowadays the tradition is usually fruitless and sometimes perilous.
Some of the petitions are serious, and some silly — as with many of the U.S
.-generated requests, which include a demand to build a "Star Wars"-style
Death Star.
The Chinese petitions have asked Washington to disclose assets held by
Chinese officials' children residing in the U.S., and have urged remembrance
of the bloody Chinese government crackdown on the 1989 student protest in
Tiananmen Square. Others have asked for adjudication on the official recipe
for Lanzhou beef noodles, and on the debate over whether the flavor of bean
curd stew — a Chinese breakfast staple — should be sweet or salty. The
petitions often are written in bad English, and some are in Chinese.
The White House says that, for now, it will give equal treatment to
petitions from overseas.
"'We the People' is just part of the administration's commitment to open
government and the code powering the application has been made available to
anyone, including other countries, who wish to set up a similar system,"
White House spokesman Matt Lehrich said.
The current threshold for White House response is when a petition gathers
100,000 signatures within 30 days — up from lower thresholds that allowed
for too many frivolous petitions.
The Malaysian petition crossed that barrier, but has drawn no response yet.
Any hopes for U.S. condemnation of the election results evaporated this week
when the U.S. State Department recognized the polling results, while
acknowledging allegations of irregularities. Still, supporters feel they
accomplished something.
The petition "spoke out the dissatisfactions to the international
communities successfully," virologist and the petition's apparent organizer,
Kuan Ping Ang, said on her Facebook page.
Shen said the White House page is one of a kind. "No other Western
democratic country has a site where the government promises to respond to a
petition with 100,000 signatures," he said.
It has rapidly become popular in China, where the tightly controlled media
and Internet put politically sensitive topics off limits. People who bring
their grievances to the central government as petitioners are routinely
harassed, beaten and sent to labor camps as troublemakers — or locked up in
what are known as "black jails" in a kind of extralegal detention.
Enthusiasm for the White House site shows the lack of avenues at home to
vent frustration, said David Zweig, professor of social science at Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology.
"There is no mechanism for the Chinese citizens to really express their
views. It's really as simple as that," Zweig said. "The citizens are looking
for any strategies to make their grievances known."
It started with the case of Zhu Ling, a woman who was paralyzed for life
from thallium poisoning during her third year at Tsinghua University in
Beijing. No one was held responsible for the crime, and the cold case
resurfaced in April in the wake of another poisoning at Fudan University.
The Chinese public demanded an investigation into one of Zhu's roommates —
who had long been considered a suspect. They questioned whether the original
investigation was squashed because of her family's political ties.
Before there was any satisfactory answer, Chinese censors began to remove
posts and shush online commentators, effectively ending the discussion. But
then someone started the petition on the White House page early this month,
and by last Monday it had garnered more than 100,000 signatures in about
three days. Since then, about a dozen more China-related petitions have
appeared.
Shi Shusi, a well-known media commentator, sees black humor in the flood of
petitions to the White House.
"For a very long time, the Chinese government has responded too slowly on
social incidents. It has exhausted its credits," Shi said. "The public
probably just need a place to vent their resentment."
Associated Press writer Sean Yoong in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and news
assistant Flora Ji in Beijing contributed to this report. | s*********4
发帖数: 130 | 3 up
题目叫Why Chinese turn to White House website
【在 d*********g 的大作中提到】
: 题目叫Why Chinese turn to White House website
| KV
发帖数: 5728 | 4 这个案子波及的范围堪称史上第一，大妈们功不可没。
re-
politically
They
100,
【在 d*********g 的大作中提到】
: http://news.yahoo.com/chinese-air-cases-petitioning-white-house
: Chinese air their cases by petitioning White House
: By DIDI TANG | Associated Press – 15 hrs ago
: BEIJING (AP) — The poisoning of a college student 18 years ago recently re-
: emerged as a hot topic in China, but censors soon squelched the politically
: sensitive online discussions over whether the culprit may have eluded
: punishment because of Communist Party connections.
: Chinese looking for justice found another way to keep the issue alive. They
: took it to Washington.
: Appealing to a White House online petition page, they soon gathered the 100,
| y**c
发帖数: 6307 | 5 是啊，wsn当初还絮叨指责大妈英文不好，但是明显还是大妈给力啊！ | s****l
发帖数: 16457 | 6 re
【在 y**c 的大作中提到】
: 是啊，wsn当初还絮叨指责大妈英文不好，但是明显还是大妈给力啊！
| t****o
发帖数: 856 | | h****a
发帖数: 3114 | 8 超赞当初付诸行动的大妈
【在 KV 的大作中提到】
: 这个案子波及的范围堪称史上第一，大妈们功不可没。
:
: re-
: politically
: They
: 100,
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