New photocopy rules introduced in Tibet
People in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa will have to register their names if they want to make photocopies.
City shopkeepers say the authorities are particularly concerned about material printed in Tibetan.
This appears to be an attempt to prevent ordinary people from printing political pamphlets and other documents.
It suggests the security forces still have a tight grip on the city, two years after serious riots.
Individuals wanting to photocopy documents will have to show their ID cards and have the information recorded.
Companies will have to register their names and addresses, the number of copies they want and provide the name of the manager in charge of the work.
The police say they will carry out checks and punish any shop that does not abide by the new regulation.
Nope, no ethnic oppression here... move along.
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Also apparently covered by the new rules: typing. Computers haven’t reached most Chinese and many people are not able to type. When they need something typed to send as an email or print out, one option is to go to copyshops, where “typing specialists” assist them.
Under the planned new rules, those who bring documents to be typed by somebody else in these shops will have to provide their real name and ID number and to explain the reason why they are doing this.
An employee of the Yongkang Photocopying and Printing Shop in Lhasa told the Associated Press that he had yet to receive any notice on registering customers, but said the shop already declines to serve some people based on what they are printing.
“If any material is written in characters we don’t know, like Tibetan, then we don’t print them,” said the man who would give only his surname, Luo. “There’s no official notice on that, but we just want to be safe.”
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