Trying to Stir Up a Popular Protest in China, From a Bedroom in Manhattan

Two months after calls shot across the Web for a Tunisian- and Egyptian-style “Jasmine Revolution” in China, he is among the few online dissidents still trying to promote a popular protest movement inside the country. The effort has failed to provoke any major street demonstrations, but it has led to a fierce crackdown by the authorities.

Yet despite the widespread arrests of activists, including the well-known artist Ai Weiwei, many of those who began the grass-roots push for change remain active. They guard their anonymity closely, especially inside China, where they communicate using Gmail and Skype and broadcast messages to supporters beyond the country’s so-called Great Firewall of censorship.

“Our group is expanding,” said the uptown blogger, who studied the classics and graduated from Columbia University. He asked to be called Gaius Gracchus, in honor of the ancient Roman reformer, but also uses the pseudonym Hua Ge, or “Flower Brother,” online.

He spoke confidently of the power of his group of 25 young Internet-savvy activists inside and outside of China — in Paris, Seoul, Hong Kong, Australia and Taiwan — to influence China’s top leaders. With a partner in China, he was among the first to publish the times and places for protesters to gather, and he remains one of the strongest voices calling for a revolution modeled on those in the Middle East, online activists said.

“The Jasmine Revolution is like a flag,” he said. “It’s out there to be taken up by whoever wants it.”

That is the hope of the dissidents, and it appears to be a concern of the Chinese authorities. For both, the thousands of isolated protests each year over an array of issues — including environmental grievances, land seizures and corruption — have the potential to become a national movement.

“The government seems to fear how easy it is to make the small protests meaningful,” said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director.

But that online bravado has not succeeded in rallying disparate interest groups under a single banner for political change. In two recent large-scale protests — the truck drivers who protested rising prices by blocking a dockyard in Shanghai, and the Nanjing residents who delayed the destruction of the city’s iconic French plane trees — the organizers neither sought to connect their efforts to a Jasmine movement nor displayed any indication that they were even aware of it.

Some activists question the value of such efforts, saying that the calls for widespread protests have accomplished little except to provoke the government into arresting dozens of activists since February.

“It’s an admirable attempt at free expression, but we have not seen any sudden change come of it,” said Pu Zhiqiang, a leading human rights lawyer and advocate of democratic reform in China. “Instead, we’ve mainly seen the Chinese Communist Party frighten itself over it. So it’s hard to see the significance of it in the short term.”

The very first call for a Jasmine movement was broadcast from a Twitter account using the name mimisecret0, which was quickly overwhelmed by suspect messages and subsequently shut down, dissidents overseas said. The call was taken up by Boxun, a Chinese-language site run out of North Carolina, before that site too suffered a massive cyberattack in late February. Those attacks continue to cripple the site, said its editor, who is known by the pseudonyms Wei Shi or Watson Meng.

After the Boxun site was attacked, the New York blogger who calls himself Gaius Gracchus connected with activists in China to publish molihuaxingdong.blogspot.com, or Jasmine Movement, a simple blog on Google’s blogger platform, to keep the momentum going online. His role was first reported by The Associated Press.

The blog has registered more than 600,000 visitors, more than half of them from within China, and his group’s e-mail list includes more than 3,000 names.

Sitting at a spare black desk in his girlfriend’s Morningside Heights apartment, where he lives, Gracchus said that his group protects itself against malicious viruses by using Linux-based operating systems and by opening e-mail attachments using iPads, both of which are less susceptible to them. To secure his communications, he employs a Google application that sends a unique code, which changes every minute, to his mobile phone so he can log into his e-mail.

Such commercially available security precautions are not the stuff of cloak-and-dagger cyberwarfare, and Gracchus readily admits putting his faith in Google. “If Google falls, we would worry about our safety, but we believe that Google has better engineers than the Chinese government,” he said.

Despite his work, the revolution remains notional. No protesters have gathered in Chinese streets under the banner of the Jasmine movement since late February. Only the police heed the calls for protest each Sunday, blanketing areas in Beijing, Shanghai and other cities in an attempt to snuff out coordinated gatherings.

Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Seoul.

 

Burkina Faso Police Join in Popular Unrest

 

DAKAR, Senegal — Police officers in Burkina Faso joined a growing wave of popular unrest on Thursday, firing their weapons in the air and shooting tear gas as discontent over high prices, low wages and the 24-year-rule of President Blaise Compaoré spread in the landlocked West African nation.

Officers poured into the streets in the central district of the capital, Ouagadougou, on Thursday morning, according to a local journalist, Paul Miki Rouamba, who witnessed the scene. He said they had fired off shots around the central police station and roared through the capital on motorcycles to express their discontent over low salaries and some of the force’s commanders.

The police in other cities of the impoverished, Colorado-size nation of 16 million also fired into the air in a show of anger at economic conditions, according to news organizations in Burkina Faso, including in the country’s second largest city, Bobo-Dioulasso. The day before, merchants in the city of Koudougou burned down several buildings associated with the local government to protest a crackdown on unpaid rent in the municipal market.

The police are the latest group to exhibit frustration in Burkina Faso, joining students, soldiers and merchants in the tightly controlled, one-party state run by Mr. Compaoré ever since a coup d’état that saw the demise of his former army comrade, in the late 1980s.

Mr. Compaoré was re-elected with over 80 percent of the vote last fall, amid opposition complaints of an unfair election, and his rule has mostly gone unchallenged in a country where 80 percent of the population relies on subsistence agriculture and three quarters are illiterate. That dynamic, analysts suggest — low educational levels in one of the world’s poorest countries — makes a North African-style revolt against a long-ruling autocrat unlikely.

But with the political crisis this year in a neighboring state, Ivory Coast, on which Burkina Faso is economically dependent — thousands migrate there for work, and most goods pass through the port in Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s main city — the country’s economy has suffered and social discontent has mushroomed.

In February, students demonstrated after the death of a colleague in police custody, and five were killed. In April, soldiers rioted in the capital, looting businesses, hotels and the homes of government officials because they were unhappy over the prosecution of army comrades. Mr. Compaoré, a former army captain, dissolved his government and named the former editor of the state newspaper as prime minister. He did not, though, name any opposition figures to the new cabinet, and the unrest has continued.

Analysts say there is no obvious link between the various protesting groups in the country except general discontent. “They seem to be somewhat separate strands,” said one Western expert on the country, who asked not to be named so as not to jeopardize his current position. Everybody is angry at high prices, the expert said, “and almost nobody has confidence in the government. If the military stuff isn’t settled, everything else is up for grabs.”

The opposition has called for a large-scale demonstration in the capital on Saturday.

 

For Passover, Quinoa Is Popular, but Kosher?

Little questions, though, sometimes arise that can stump even the experts. Like, what to do about the quinoa situation?

Quinoa (pronounced ki-NO-uh or KEEN-wah) is a grainlike South American crop newly popular among health-conscious North Americans. In the last decade, observant Jews have welcomed it with something like the thrill of seeing a new face at the Passover table after several thousand years of conversation with matzo and potatoes.

Tasty, gluten-free, protein-rich — and, by many accounts, kosher for Seders lacking in carbohydrate variety — it has become a staple of Passover cookbooks. Gourmet magazine hailed it in 2008 as the new “belle of the Passover ball.”

If only life were so simple.

As with most matters under the purview of Jewish law — from how to turn on the lights during the Sabbath, to what kind of cough syrup is certified kosher — a debate has emerged among rabbinical experts about quinoa’s bona fides as a kosher alternative to leavened-grain products like bread. And this has led to confusion and concern in many Passover kitchens around the country on the eve of the holiday, which begins on Monday evening.

“I went to hear two rabbis discussing the quinoa situation at my synagogue last week,” said Arlene J. Mathes-Scharf, a food scientist in Sharon, Mass., who specializes in kosher food and operates a popular consumer Web site, Kashrut.com. (Kashrut is the Hebrew word for kosher dietary law.)

“They had basically the same information, but they came to opposite conclusions,” Ms. Mathes-Scharf said. “Typical.”

Her hot line has received hundreds of “anxious inquiries” on the topic, Ms. Mathes-Scharf said.

At Pomegranate, a large kosher grocery in the heavily Orthodox Midwood section of Brooklyn, customers had more questions than guidance.

“They’re asking me 20 times a day, ‘What is the ruling?’?” Gabe Boxer, the store’s general manager, said last week.

“Look, we have ‘certified kosher for Passover’ quinoa — that’s what it says on the label,” he said, picking up a package and reading the fine print. “So it’s certified, as far as I know.”

There are two camps on quinoa: rabbis who say it is fine, and those who regard it as suspect. But both agree that its suitability for Passover depends on how the crop is harvested and shipped.

A definitive answer is not likely to be reached until a rabbi can be dispatched to a remote mountain region of Bolivia to inspect certain quinoa operations, said Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, director of the kosher supervision service of the Chicago Rabbinical Council. The council is one of several kashrut certification groups involved in the quinoa debate, which was brewing for years before it broke into the open in February with conflicting opinions issued by various rabbinical experts, he said.

“We’d like to get someone up there to inspect the operations, but it’s a four-day trek into the wilderness,” Rabbi Fishbane said. “Until we can get someone there, we’re going to have to make the best decisions we can with the information we have.”

Quinoa was unknown in the Middle East at the time of the Bible’s account of the Jews’ escape from Egypt, when their hurried flight left them no time to wait for their bread to rise. And since it was not part of their diet, it is not on the list of leavened grains forbidden to be eaten during Passover. For that reason, one of the nation’s leading kashrut certification companies, Star-K of Baltimore, issued an opinion in 1997 that quinoa was kosher for Passover. At the time, the crop was grown mainly in Bolivia and was just beginning to gain popularity in the United States.

Increasing demand here for quinoa — which can be boiled or otherwise prepared in a variety of ricelike dishes — has driven up the price, persuading many farmers who grew wheat, corn or barley in Bolivia and Peru to plant quinoa as well, said Rabbi Menachem Genack, director of the kosher department of the New York-based Orthodox Union, the world’s largest kashrut certification agency.

And there is the potential rub, Rabbi Genack explained. Some inspectors have found traces of wheat, and other grains susceptible to leavening in the cooking process, mixed in with quinoa shipped by some farmers, he said.

“They may be using the same equipment or bags to harvest a field of quinoa, and a field of something else,” he said. “Things easily get mixed up.”

The Orthodox Union has not certified quinoa kosher for Passover, leaving the decision to consumers and their rabbis. “We recommend that you inspect any product carefully before using it,” the rabbi said.

Under Jewish law, violating Passover dietary law is a serious offense, referred to by the Hebrew word “karet,” which means to be cut off from one’s soul.

Rabbi Fishbane of the Chicago Rabbinical Council voiced the more quinoa-friendly opinion, posted late last month on the council’s Web site. It says quinoa is proper for Passover if imported from Bolivia by companies that handle the crop exclusively. (The Web site suggests certain brands.) Rabbi Fishbane also recommends that consumers inspect quinoa for foreign matter.

Jesse Blonder, director of the Center for Kosher Culinary Arts in Brooklyn, which advertises itself as the only professional kosher cooking school outside Israel, said he found the popularity of quinoa at Passover interesting from a psychological viewpoint.

“When you’re eating this stuff, you know, it tastes different from everything you’ve always had for Passover — different enough that you feel, like, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it,” Mr. Blonder said. “For some people, that makes it taste better.”