A prominent Chinese academic who was to speak at an academic
conference in the United States are prohibited from leaving China. Professor
Cui Wiping, a poet and professor at the Beijing Film Academy, was scheduled to
give a lecture at Harvard University and attend a conference sponsored by the
Association for Asian Studies. But the director of the school said she had been
forbidden to travel.
The New York Times reported that Cui believed he was being punished by the Chinese authorities for their comments on human rights and freedom of expression.
More recently, his activities have included the publication of social criticism in his blog, sponsored a seminar on the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and sending Twitter messages about the imprisonment of Liu Xiao, a writer who was convicted of subversion last year to demand an increase in freedoms.
The New York Times reported that Cui believed he was being punished by the Chinese authorities for their comments on human rights and freedom of expression.
More recently, his activities have included the publication of social criticism in his blog, sponsored a seminar on the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and sending Twitter messages about the imprisonment of Liu Xiao, a writer who was convicted of subversion last year to demand an increase in freedoms.
The teacher has faced problems with authorities on numerous occasions in the past. During the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the police spent several days parked outside his apartment in Beijing.
The New York Times
Iran: nuclear scientist defects to US
An Iranian nuclear scientist who has been missing since June has defected to the US in 2009 .. According to ABC News Shah ram Amery, a researcher at Male Attar University in Tehran, disappeared in Saudi Arabia while on a Muslim pilgrimage. Amery was found in the US almost 10 months later, reportedly helping the CIA in its efforts to block Iran's nuclear program.
Iran has accused the US of kidnapping Amery but Washington denied any knowledge of science and the CIA declined to comment on the reports. ABC News said the scientist had been widely questioned and had helped to confirm US intelligence assessments about the Iranian nuclear program. His defection was apparently the result of a wider operation, in which the US has been approaching Iranian scientists trying to persuade to defect.
BBC News
INDIA: Professors grid through links to rebels
A professor at the University of Delhi was arrested by police on 04 April and interrogated for over three hours for alleged links with the Maoists. Sunil Medial, assistant professor of Hindi at Deal Singh College, was arrested around 16:00 by the police from his residence where Maoist forms, reports The Telegraph. He was released after three hours of interrogation.
Medial denied being involved with Nasalizes, a group of radical left-wing communists who support the Maoist ideology. He stressed that he was a member of several rights organizations like the Democratic Front of India. Delhi Police have reportedly prepared a list of Maoist sympathizers among scholars and writers of the city.
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