Earlier today China executed a British citizen for the first time in 50 years. Akmal Shaikh, reported to suffer from "severe mental illness", was arrested in 2007 for attempting to smuggle heroin into China from Tajikistan. 

In response to the execution, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued a statement strongly condemning China's refusal to grant clemency, especially given the uncertainty surrounding Shaikh's mental health status. China responded simply, "We express strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British reaction.  We hope the British side will face this case squarely and not put new obstacles in the way of relations between Britain and China."

Furthermore, the extensive international criticism prompted China's "legal experts" to defend the execution as "legitimate" and in accordance with "China's Criminal Law".  Wang Mingliang, a professor of criminal law at Fudan University in Shanghai, even went as far as to say that Shaikh's execution had "nothing to do with human rights concerns." (Read more after the jump)

Further enraging the British government is the recent cancellation of a meeting planned for January of the new year to discuss China's human rights record.  The British Foreign Office minister Ivan Lewis even went so far as to call the Chinese ambassador down to his office to personally express his displeasure with this pair of recent decisions. 

While any further political back and forth is too late to save Mr. Shaikh, China's denial of human rights must be addressed.  China executes more people every year than all other countries combined, and in many cases the executed's organs are harvested for the Communist Party's profit. To learn more about China's death penalty and organ harvesting, click here.

More than a year after being detained, and sixth months after being charged with subversion, prominent dissident and long-time democracy activist Liu Xiaobo was finally given a trial on December 23rd. Foreign diplomats, including US embassy officials, were barred from attending Mr. Liu's two-hour trial and instead congregated outside the court to await the verdict. The Chinese government shrewdly waited until Christmas Day to announce that Liu Xiaobo would be sentenced to eleven years in the Laogai. Despite the timing of the sentencing, numerous governments and human rights activists have already condemned Mr. Liu's harsh sentence. According to the verdict, which can be seen here (in Chinese), Mr. Liu was arrested on purely political grounds, and his harsh sentence comes in response to numerous articles he has published on the Internet. Hong Kong-based journalist Willy Lam argues in this article that the regime handed down such a harsh sentence in order to instill fear in the general public, as "mass incidents" are on the rise (an estimated 100,000 demonstrations in 2009 alone) and more and more Chinese internet users are exploiting cracks in China's Great Firewall to push for freedom of speech.

Despite months and months of relentless international pressure, Chinese authorities have finally set a date for the trial of one of China's most well-known dissidents and long-time democracy advocate Liu Xiaobo. According to Mr. Liu's wife, Liu Xia, and his lawyer, Shang Baojun, Mr. Liu's trial will take place this Wednesday in Beijing. He is charged with subversion, and given the high conviction rate in China's judicial system, particularly for politically sensitive cases, Mr. Liu will almost certainly be found guilty. He faces up to fifteen years in prison due to pro-Democracy articles he has written and his involvement with Charter 08, an online petition calling on the government to respect human rights and begin a peaceful transition to a democratic system.

It seems that the authorities in Beijing are hoping to avoid international criticism by holding Mr. Liu's trial on December 23rd, when most of the west will be distracted by Christmas. But Ding Zilin, of the Tiananmen Mothers (a group that organizes the family members of those killed in the Tiananmen Massacre), is urging fellow signatories of Charter 08 to show up for Mr. Liu's trial in Beijing. They will almost certainly be denied entry into the court room, but Ms. Ding is hoping to provide some moral support to Mr. Liu and his wife by this brave act of solidarity.

Six weeks ago, Chinese Twitter micro-bloggers made a quite a splash on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall through the online Berlin Twitterwall.  It was reported by October 29 that over 1,500 Tweets had been scrawled in Chinese across the site, most drawing apt parallels between the Berlin Wall and the "Great Firewall" of China.  The remarkable twist of this story was that these Chinese commenters "scaled" that very same cyber-wall to make their thousands of protests - Twitter has long been banned in China.  

Yet Chinese Twitter users are a growing presence on the popular micro-blogging platform, as we discovered firsthand.  During our ten-day campaign  protesting the continued imprisonment of Chinese writer and dissident Liu Xiaobo, of the 395 Tweets and Followers collected by our Twitter petition, 337 were in Chinese.  (Read more after the jump)

In fact it seems that precisely because Chinese users must "scale the wall" to participate in Twitter-based communities, Twitter has become a hotbed of honest dialogue on some of China's most contentious political missteps.  Chinese Twitter communities exploded this year over the trial of Deng Yujiao, a case which sparked Chinese outrage over government corruption.  It would later make its unmistakable mark on the Berlin Twitterwall.  And it was this same audacious community led the campaign to free Liu Xiaobo these past two weeks. 

Which seems to indicate that whether Beijing likes it or not, uncensored Chinese netizens are a strong and growing force online, demanding and creating the global public forum for their grievances that they are denied by the Chinese state.  And though the request of one Twitter user - "Mr Hu Jintao, please tear down this Great Firewall," - is still a relevant battle cry, Chinese micro-bloggers are finding cracks in the Wall on their own.