May 4, 2005
UCSC alum nominated for free speach award
SANTA CRUZ — China doesn’t want you to know about Yan Sham-Shackleton.
She’s the 30-something graduate of UC Santa Cruz whose blog has been
nominated by Reporters Without Borders for a free speech award.
Yan’s blog, at www.glutter.org, touches on the democratic movement in Hong Kong, human rights violations in China and Taiwan independence.
Last year, when China cut off access to typepad, which hosts her blog,
she organized a protest in which more than 100 Web sites around the
world turned their borders black in solidarity.
Yan, as she calls herself, is a global citizen who has spent her life
"merging boundaries." She’s traveled to Guatemala, Honduras, Vietnam,
Laos, Australia, China, Italy, England, Ireland, Sri Lanka, India and
New York.
Born in Hong Kong, she grew up speaking Cantonese in a family with many
aunts and uncles. Then she was enrolled in school where everyone spoke
English, and her mother, who had divorced, married a white New
Zealander.
She fell in love with Los Angeles when she came to visit her father and
after returning to New Zealand, decided to complete her university
education in California.
She earned a degree in anthropology in 1997 from
Kresge College. One of her favorite memories is the 1996 show presented
by the Women’s Ensemble Theatre. Yan, who served as director, writer
and filmmaker, described it in her blog as "60 Grrls together doing
performance art."
In 1999, she
discovered censorship firsthand. While working as a producer for the
Chinese Internet, she was in the position of filtering out phrases such
as "06/04/89," "student protests" and "Tiananmen massacre."
She quit.
Now she’s concentrating on writing and media production.
The name of her blog, glutter, is how she sees Hong Kong — a mixture of gutter and glitter.
Reporters Without Borders, an international organization, was founded
18 years ago to fight censorship. Members observed World Press Freedom
Day on Tuesday.
More than a third of the people in the world live in countries where
there is no freedom of the press, according to the organization, and
last year, a record 52 journalists were killed on the job.
This year, 60 blogs have been nominated for their efforts to keep people informed.
Yan’s is only blog nominated from Hong Kong, but she faces considerable
competition in the Asia category. The nine other nominees write about
Nepal, Singapore, Malaysia and North Korea, to name a few.
The most active category is Iran, which has 19 nominations.
Winners in all six categories are chosen based on an Internet vote, which closes June 1. Results will be announced June 15.
http://www.globenet.org/rsf/voteblog.php?lang=en
Contact Jondi Gumz at
jgumz@santacruzsentinel.com.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 
congratulations. santa cruz paper doesn’t make it to the other side of the hill, or i woudl have seen it.
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