Regio Azië – Page 12 – STANDPLAATS WERELD

Chinese media in the Netherlands censored?

Published May 19, 2010

By Pál Nyiri On the website of RNW (Radio Netherlands Worldwide), Sigrid Deters writes that Chinese media in the Netherlands, except the Chinese website of the RNW itself, are “not free from censorship.” She sees avoiding the coverage of political issues such as the Dalai Lama’s visit or the riots in Xinjiang, or reporting on them one-sidedly, as evidence of censorship, although she does not explain who does the censoring and why. Editors of the Chinese papers and TV stations she interviewed denied censorship and said instead that their outlets reflected the opinions of the “community” or that it was better to stay away from controversy. An interesting exception was GogoDutch.nl (???), a popular website that has registered in China in order to avoid being blocked, and therefore, as its founder said, had to comply with Chinese regulations about content filtering.

The shift in overseas Chinese media toward a single discourse of China is a trend I have also noticed, but I am not sure if “censorship” is the right explanation for what is happening.

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Philippine elections: looking back and forward

Published May 11, 2010

Philippine elections 2010 — Photo by Juan Tan Kwon

By Kim Knibbe One day after the elections, the consensus in the media is that everything went relatively smoothly. Noynoy Aquino, the son of the two ‘icons of democracy’ Ninoy Aquino, assassinated by Marcos, and Cory Aquino, who led the revolution that ousted Marcos, is leading by a wide margin. Nevertheless, there were many voting-machine failures, and many people had to wait in line so long that they went home without voting.

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Elections in the Philippines

Published May 9, 2010

By Kim Knibbe At this moment, the day has started already in the Philippines, the day nationwide elections will take place. Filipinos must choose new members for their municipal councils, representatives on the provincial level, new senators and congressmen, and a new president. Earlier I have written about the emergence of a sudden unlikely but extremely popular candidate after the death of Cory Aquino, namely her son Noynoy Aquino, making it a lot harder for the current president, Gloria Arroyo, to find an excuse to hold on to her power. I have also written about the election violence at the local and provincial levels. Although one incident was unusually violent, this is all business as usual, no reason to call off the elections. Nevertheless, everybody is holding his or her breath, because there is one more thing that can go seriously wrong:

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Fieldwork 2010: On the Way to Jerusalem

Published April 28, 2010

Our Master student Gijs Verbossen conducted field research in the occupied territories of Palestine. He lived in a Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank, adjacent to the city of Nablus. He focused on young Palestinian refugees’ experience of Israel’s occupation. In this photo reportage Gijs gives an eye-witness account of a violent encounter between Palestinians and the Israeli army.

From Nablus buses go to all destinations within the West Bank. They do not go across the separation wall, which Israel built on Palestinian land, annexing territory within the West Bank’s borders of 1967. Public buses cannot go inside Israel, because almost no Palestinians have a permit to cross the wall. Jerusalem for them is inaccessible. Foreigners are able to cross the wall, entering Israel. I had an appointment in Jerusalem today, March 20^th. I took the bus from Nablus, passing Ramallah, to Qalandia; one of the largest checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel.

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Slumtoerisme in een Indonesische kampong

Published April 23, 2010

Door Freek Colombijn Een nieuwe vorm van toerisme is het slumtoerisme. In sommige steden is het mogelijk arme wijken in te gaan onder leiding van een lokale gids. De toerist krijgt het gevoel een authentieke ervaring rijker te worden (“echte armoede”!) en tegelijk biedt de groep het veilige gevoel waar de toerist zich aan vastklampt. Een van de grootste favela’s van Rio de Janeiro, Rocinha, is door de stad aangewezen als een toeristische attractie en trekt 3000 bezoekers per maand. In Zuid Afrika hopen townships op toeristen die de tijd tussen twee voetbalwedstrijden op het WK moeten vullen.

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Fieldwork 2010: Chechens in Moscow

Published April 16, 2010

In this part of the series, Laura finally reveals her research topic.

You have all been waiting. Now is the time. I did research among the CHECHENS!!! Or the Noxchi, which is the name they use to refer to themselves. You might have guessed it… that’s where the ‘N’ referred to in my mysterious posts. Why were they mysterious, Laura? Well…

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Pál Nyíri on Chinese migration

Published April 13, 2010

“Our” Pál Nyíri recently published a book called Mobility and cultural authority in contemporary China. Daan Beekers asked him a few questions about this new book.

Continue ReadingPál Nyíri on Chinese migration

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Rebiya Kadeer at the VU, or the anthropologist’s dilemma

Published April 1, 2010

By Pál Nyiri When I lecture on China and democracy, I show students excerpts from Carma Hinton and Geremie Barme’s 1992 film, The Gate of Heavenly Peace. In the film, one of the leaders of the Tiananmen Square student movement, referring to exaggerated stories of the 1989 massacre, asks: “Must we use lies to stand up to our lying enemy,” i.e. the Chinese Communist Party?

The same question arose in me on 30 March as I listened to Rebiya Kadeer, the “leader of the Uyghur people” according to the president of the Turkish Academic Student Association (TASA), which organised her appearance at the VU. He had asked me, as a “China scholar,” to speak at this event, which he called a “symposium”, on the situation of the Uyghur people in China.

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Ontdekkingsreiziger in Seoul

Published March 26, 2010

Door Freek Colombijn

Een mens wordt zich pas goed bewust van cultuur als zij of hij geplaatst wordt in een omgeving waar de cultuur niet vertrouwd is. Ik merkte dit zelf weer eens toen ik een paar dagen in Seoul was voor een conferentie. Ik moest op de conferentie een paper presenteren over de manier waarop Nederlanders over Indonesië geschreven hebben, van de eerste kennismaking tot heden. Mijn kennismaking met Seoul en de Zuid-Koreaanse cultuur gaf me meer begrip voor de Nederlandse ontdekkingsreizigers naar Indonesië. Een van de schepelingen die met de eerste Nederlandse vloot in 1596 Indonesië bereikten, Willem Lodewycksz, heeft er een prachtig verslag van geschreven, uitgegeven onder de titel D’Eerste Schipvaart.

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