China's take on "early release"

Zhang Lin, who has now somewhat gone past his promised fortnight-long stay in the slammer, has still not been released. You may recall he was locked up for threatening - because remember, in China you can get locked up for simply thinking bad things - to wax lyrical on the death of freedom-loving leader, Zhao Ziyang. His wife was promised a fortnight's detention, but let's face it, he isn't going anywhere.

The new excuse is that he is now in "criminal detention".

For those that don't know, you can be held in China for up to 37 days like this before you have to be charged with something. His wife hasn't been told what charges (if any) he faces - and it's pretty likely he'll end up taking part in what now must be his favourite past-time - breaking rocks - once the 37 day stint is over.

As for more general issues of digital freedom in China, forget it. You're just as likely to get a night-stick round the skull with your donut as opposed to a coffee, with the news that at the tail end of 2004, the Chinese Government closed down something approaching twelve-thousand cyber-cafes. It goes without saying that the ones allowed to remain open need to keep logs of everything that the happy punters log onto for police checks, and fun skull-busting sessions.

So well done, China! In addition to keeping (so far) 63 people illegally detained, you're also putting hundreds (if not thousands) back out of work and back into poverty!

Maybe if you spent less time spending millions on some of the world's most sophisticated net censorship tools, you might have some money left over for the millions of unheard voices that go unfed and starving in the streets. It's a fair bet you probably won't want me revisiting your country after all this, but then again I don't fancy a "fortnight long" trip to the cells myself.

Certainly not with this track record.