Nervous Chinese Authorities Crack Down on Sale of Jasmine Flowers

Maria Mosolova/Getty Images(BEIJING) -- It's an icon of Chinese heritage, the subject of many traditional poems and songs, the central ingredient of the country’s favorite tea. But with fear of revolution blossoming in China, authorities are cracking hard down on jasmine...as in, the actual flower.

At the Sunhe Beidong Flower Market in Beijing, florist Liu Wei told ABC News that the police had visited vendors in March, asking them not to sell jasmine to people in bulk. She said that the police ordered them to tell anyone who wanted to buy a large quantity of the flower that it was out of stock and to ask for their name and contact information so as to contact the buyer when it was in stock.

Since that meeting jasmine prices have tumbled 40 percent on last year, at least in part because of the ban. Other vendors at the market confirmed what Liu said about the meeting.

It has been three months since anonymous calls for a jasmine revolution in China first appeared online. Though few protesters turned up at the called-for demonstrations, Chinese authorities cracked down hard, nervous in the wake of pro-democracy revolutions across the Middle East.

Since February, more than 40 activists and dissidents have disappeared or have been put under house arrest. So-called "house churches," churches that are not state-sanctioned, have been raided and their members detained. And foreign journalists have been harassed, with stringent rules limiting the scope of their reporting.

Even video of President Hu Jintao singing the classic Chinese folk song "mo li hua," an ode to the jasmine flower, during a visit to Kenya has been taken off the internet.

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Libya Declares Immediate Ceasefire Following UN Vote

ABC News(TRIPOLI, Libya) -- Libya’s foreign minister declared a ceasefire on Friday, just hours after the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution that authorized the international community to take "all necessary measures" short of sending in ground troops, to protect civilians in Libya.

The UN’s vote on Thursday came just as Col. Moammar Gadhafi said his forces were planning a major offensive on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

The council voted 10-0 with five abstentions, including Russia and China.

With attacks likely imminent, Gadhafi warned rebels Thursday, "We will find you."

"We are coming tonight," he said. "There won't be any mercy."

The resolution also authorized the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya as a way to protect the opposition fighters and civilians from Gadhafi's jets.

Following the vote, Col. Gadhafi’s son, Saif Gadhafi, spoke to ABC News, calling the resolution "unfair because, as you know, from the beginning we told to everybody there were no air strikes against civilians, no bombing of civilian districts or demonstrations.  And thousands of those reports showed they were false."

“You are not helping to the people if you are going to bomb Libya, to kill Libyans," Gadhafi told ABC’s Christiane Amanpour.

“We have to be very careful.  This is a trick,” said Ali Sulaiman Aujali, the former Libyan ambassador to the U.S. who has sided with anti-Gadhafi forces, at a press conference Friday.  “[Col. Gadhafi] will commend the resolution, but in the same time, he’s invading Misratah, he’s killing the people, he’s moving his arms from to strategic points.  You have to be very careful.”

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio

Libya: The American Who Died for the Revolution

Moammar Gadhafi. Ernesto Ruscio/Getty ImagesREPORTER’S NOTEBOOK
By NICHOLAS SCHIFRIN, ABC News

(TOBRUK, Libya) -- Muhannad Bensadik didn't have to be here. He could have been at home, in Virginia. He could have been going to school, leading his scout team and living with his mother and his four siblings, all younger and all but one born in the United States.

But Bensadik, 21, decided to stay in Libya -- where he had recently moved -- as the revolution exploded throughout this country and millions of people who've lived under fear and tyranny for 42 years suddenly tasted freedom.

He protested the regime on Feb. 16 and braved walls of bullets during the initial crackdown. He lived to celebrate the expulsion of Col. Moammar Gadhafi's government in eastern Libya. And, then, as Gadhafi's troops advanced, he grabbed a gun and joined the fight.

"Dad, we're not cowards," he told his father, Libya-born Osama Bensadik. "I can go to the States and can have everything. But how about the kids here? They don't have the opportunity to do that.

"Libya is as much my country as the United States is. And we'd like to make sure that this revolution goes through. If everyone leaves, who's going to lead the revolution?"

Muhannad Bensadik died Saturday for that revolution, apparently shot to death by Gadhafi's troops in the tiny town of Bishir.

His body still lies on the frontline of this war, about 7,000 miles from his birthplace of Eden, N.C., and his father is trying to retrieve it. He doesn't know if it will be safe enough to reach Bishir, and he doesn't know how far he'll get. But he says he has to try.

"The sad part about this story is that my son had the opportunity not to come to Benghazi," Bensadik said today in Benghazi, the opposition stronghold, where he flew after the revolution began because he knew his son would want to fight.

He didn't want his son to fight alone.

"The American revolutionary Patrick Henry, he said, 'Give me my freedom or give me my death,'" Bensadik said, crying over the phone. "And that's how my son lived."

Life under Gadhafi, Bensadik said, was "inhuman," and the whole family opposed him. Muhannad Bensadik's younger brother, Yusuf, is still in Benghazi, working with the struggling opposition government.

It's a fight that Osama will continue, even as he tries to send his son's body back to his wife in Virginia.

"I'm going to go back to the battlefield as soon as I can. I will not allow my son's blood to go in vain," he says. "Two people going together; one dies, then the other one picks up. That's how the revolution keeps going. There's no U-turn now."

Like almost everyone here, Bensadik has a direct request for the United States: institute a no-fly zone and give the opposition a fighting chance.

"If there's no no-fly zone," he warns, "then Gadhafi won't distinguish between people, won't spare hospitals or anyone. He said he will go house by house, and we all know he will. It will be a massacre."

And so the father will continue to fight as his son did, bravely, and knowing the risks.

"Gadhafi will never return. His rule will never happen again. I promise you myself. Even," he says, pausing, "if I have to die like my son."

Copyright 2011 ABC News Radio