“Maintaining stability” in China

“Everything we do is to make people’s lives happier, more dignified, so that society is more just and more harmonious.” - Premier Wen JiabaoBy Hui GuThe word harmony is the key word now in China under the Chinese leader Hu Jintao's signature ideology of the Scientific Development Concept. It seems that the Chinese government will pay more attention to social and civil life development to resolve the imbalance of whole society. Since tian’an men square event 1989, Chinese leadership has been extremely sensitive about maintaining stability, so the ideology of harmony is the result of this anxiety. It has been six years since 2006 when the slogan “harmony society” first came out, then how Chinese society goes so far, does it keep stability as a harmony society. Stability maintenance budget...

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When Business Overruled Human Rights

Text and Photography by Liselott Lindström  The exact amount is unknown. But thousands, if not millions of people are yearly forced to leave their homes to make way for multinational corporations who bought their land to grow crops for export.  Since the food crisis in 2008, the need for land has increased enormously. International law makes it easy to grab land in Africa – and very difficult for the evicted people to get justice.  Two big yellow eyes look up at me when I enter the small mud hut. Malitini Sheni rises from his chair with great agony and limps over to the door to greet me. Two of his children are chasing each other in the yard; the third, youngest one is chasing a hen, imitating its clucking. The small ones...

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The story of the Erased - people who die twice

European Union and Human Rights by Karmen Resman, written in May 2012 It was the summer of 1991. Katarina Stojanović was 20 years old and was just finishing the first year of her bachelor studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She was taking driver’s lessons for a few weeks already and her 10‐year‐old brother couldn’t wait for his sister to finally get a license and take him to the seaside. Katarina was madly in love with her boyfriend and they just started planning a trip with their friends. It was going to be a wonderful summer. But then her country became independent and everything changed. In a few months Katarina lost her home, family and friends. And her identity. She was erased. Photo by www.siol.net What happened in Slovenia 20...

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Two men`s dreams of future energy Atom turned to nightmare of Fukushima

Text and Photography by Kiyomi OboA former president of Fukushima, Eisaku Satou, told to a journalist about Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident that “It is like a nightmare”. During his administration, he got a fax from the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency at the ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in 2002 that TEPCO (Tokyo Electronic Power Company) was deceiving inspection records to hide troubles and cracks of nuclear reactors for many years. More shockingly, Nuclear and Industry Safety Agency got the information from a whistle-blower in 2000, meaning the governmental watchdog hided the information for two years. It was because the Agency gave the whistleblowing to TEPCO, and TEPCO told the agency “it is not true”. Then nothing happened...

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Dance Music in the Era of Copyright Controversy

By Angus Thomas Paterson Life after the Digital Disruption Matt Thomas, better known to the dance music community for the past decade as King Unique, is getting stuck into a normal day’s work that is as far removed from the flights, hotels and nightclubs of a touring DJ’s lifestyle that you can get. He’s in what he describes as the “remote location” of a “dilapidated old coal mining village out in Wales”, which happens to be where his studio is located. Thomas says part of the appeal of coming out here to lay down his tracks is that he can make as much noise as he wants, and nobody complains. Surprisingly though, even though all the wider industry seems to be talking about is how you can’t make a living solely as a producer anymore, Thomas is finding himself more and more in this small Welsh...

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