Ai arrest highlights China's crackdown

Ai arrest highlights China's crackdown

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is pictured on April 10, 2009, at his home in an arts district on the outskirts of Beijing.

Beijing, China (CNN) -- Week by week, China is tightening its grip on dissent.

From political activism to the internet, media to the arts, the Chinese government is silencing citizens who dare challenge its rule.

The latest victim: Ai Weiwei, 53, one of China's most prominent avant-garde artists and human rights activists. Ai was detained at the Beijing airport on April 3 on his way to Hong Kong. He has not been heard from since.

"I have no idea where he is, why he was taken away, where he is kept now," said Gao Ying, Ai's mother, in a phone interview with CNN five days after Ai's disappearance. "I am very worried about him. He is very stubborn. He won't change his attitude."

Ai, one of the country's best-known artists, helped design the iconic Bird's Nest stadium for the Beijing Olympics. Later, however, he called for a boycott of the 2008 Games because he said China was using the showcase event as propaganda.

Since then, the burly and brash artist has used art and social networking to ridicule government policies. He organized hundreds of volunteers to investigate the deaths of schoolchildren in school buildings that collapsed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Ai later published the names of the dead on his popular Twitter account to demand government accountability.

The maverick artist has also accused the Chinese government of trying to silence dissidents. "They crack down on everybody who has different opinions -- not even different opinions, just different attitudes," he told CNN last year. "Simply to have different opinions can cost (dissidents) their life; they can be put in jail, can be silenced and can disappear."

Observers say Ai's prominence as an artist and as the son of a widely respected poet gave him a measure of protection. That protection is gone. "Mr. Ai Weiwei is under investigation on suspicion of economic crimes," said foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei, answering a reporter's question at a regular press briefing. "It has nothing to do with human rights or freedom of expression."

He added, "China is a country under the rule of law ... other countries have no right to interfere."

Gao Ying, Ai's mother, dismissed the allegations as "ridiculous."

In the past several weeks, China has detained and arrested a number of lawyers, human rights activists and bloggers amid calls for anti-government protests -- a "jasmine revolution" similar to those that have swept the Middle East and toppled authoritarian regimes.

The government has blocked internet links to such phrases as "jasmine revolution" and names like "Ai Weiwei." Police have also stepped up the harassment of journalists who try to report on these disturbances.

Protests, or what the government refers to as "mass incidents," frequently occur across China every year. Many have sprung from the country's rapid industrialization and urbanization, which have triggered disputes over wages, land seizures, income disparity and pollution.

"But the Chinese authorities seem unable to respond to dissent without taking drastic, even brutal, action," noted Richard Burger, a China-watcher and blogger.

"The willingness on the part of the authorities to employ raw power and make individuals simply disappear is a very troubling aspect of this latest effort," said Joshua Rosenzweig of Dui Hua Foundation, a non-profit organization which seeks to promote human rights in China. "It seems aimed at intimidating both those who have already been taken into custody and those who might worry about being next on the list."

Chinese call this tactic "killing the chicken to scare the monkey" -- a traditional practice of persecuting "scapegoats" to nip dissent in the bud.

In some cases, intimidation seems to work. I had tried twice this week to meet up with a well-known dissident in Beijing to ask his views on the ongoing crackdown. Twice, he canceled, saying that police had dissuaded him from making contact with reporters like me.

But harsh repression, observers say, could backfire. "It only makes icons out of otherwise obscure rabble-rousers," said blogger Richard Burger, citing the persecution of AIDS activist Hu Jia, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo and now Ai Weiwei. "The pattern is simple," he said. "Go after an activist who has the eyes and ears of the media with no apparent consideration of the story inevitably becoming big global news." While Beijing may succeed in silencing the troublemaker, he explained, the resulting publicity is far worse than if they'd left him alone." All three of these examples went from being obscure outside of China into poster children of Communist repression, he added.

China's other dilemma is how to contain the spread of information. According to government figures, over 420 million people can access the internet through the use of computers and smart phones. Many of the Web users are young, highly educated, influential and affluent -- just the sort of people who might be inclined to question authority or sympathize with freedom-seeking activists.

That is why Beijing has set up the "Great Firewall," a sophisticated filtering network that blocks various Internet and social networking web sites, such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which have helped fuel the protests in the Middle East.

Beijing is gambling that, with its relatively tight grip on information, Ai and other activists at home and overseas can do little to get their message heard at home.

So far, most Chinese do not know who Ai Weiwei is.

Japan nuclear plant releases radioactive water into sea

Japan nuclear plant releases radioactive water into sea

Officials say the discharge means highly radioactive water leaking from reactor No 2 can be stored

Workers at Japan's quake-hit nuclear plant have begun dumping water with low levels of contamination into the sea to free up room to store more highly radioactive water leaking at the site.

About 11,500 tonnes of water will be released into the sea at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Water with a higher level of radioactivity leaking from the No 2 reactor can then be stored.

Efforts to tackle that leak are continuing.

The source of the leak was identified at the weekend as a 20cm (8in) crack in a concrete pit at reactor 2.

Workers are now using dye to try to trace the route of the water, after earlier efforts to plug the hole using a highly absorbent polymer failed.

'No choice'

Operator Tepco has been struggling for more than three weeks to regain control at the plant after the huge earthquake and tsunami knocked out the cooling systems.

Workers face a dilemma - they must keep feeding water into the reactors to stop them overheating, but must then deal with the accumulation of waste water.

Top government spokesman Yukio Edano said that there was no choice but to release some water.

"We are already aware that the water at the No 2 unit is highly radiated," he said.

"So as to prioritise to stop the leakage of this water into the sea... we will release the water stored in the exterior building of the unit, which also unfortunately contains radioactivity but far lower than the highly contaminated water."

The water to be released into the sea contains some 100 times the legal limit of radiation - a relatively low level, says the BBC's Roland Buerk in Tokyo.

"As it is not harmful to people's health and as it is necessary to avert an even bigger danger, we decided it was inevitable," said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (Nisa).


Stopping the leak from reactor 2 remains the priority, Mr Edano said earlier.

Tepco says it will inject the polymer again to try to block the flow of radioactive water as soon as it has identified the path of the leak.

As a temporary measure, Nisa is considering building embankments of silt near reactor No 2 to stem the leak into the ocean.

Search operations

The official death toll from the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami which struck north-east Japan on 11 March stands at 12,157, with nearly 15,500 people still unaccounted for.

More than 80% of the victims have been identified and their bodies returned to their families.

Search operations within the 20km exclusion zone around the Fukushima Daiichi power plant have been suspended because of radiation concerns.

More than 161,000 people from quake-ravaged areas are living in evacuation centres, officials say.

A three-day joint operation by Japan's Self-Defense Forces and the US military to find the missing recovered 78 bodies.


The operation, which ended on Sunday, involved about 25,000 troops, more than 60 ships and 120 aircraft.

It covered Pacific coastal areas of Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures.

2,600 to lose jobs in first round of Navy and Army cuts

2,600 to lose jobs in first round of Navy and Army cuts

Sir Stephen Dalton expects operations over Libya to last months, rather than weeks

Some 1,600 Navy personnel and 1,000 soldiers are to be laid off in the first tranche of redundancies from the Armed Forces, the government says.

Personnel, including 150 Gurkhas, will be told in September, but no one currently involved in Afghanistan or Libya will face compulsory redundancy.

Defence Minister Andrew Robathan said the move - part of £5bn defence review cuts - would help reduce the deficit.

The RAF earlier announced plans to lay off an initial 1,000 staff.

In total, 11,000 serving personnel will lose their jobs over four years.

Mr Robathan said UK military operations in Libya and Afghanistan will not be impacted "adversely" by the redundancies from the armed forces.

He told the Commons that voluntary redundancies were being sought, which could include personnel currently on operations.

The announcement comes as Air Chief Marshal Sir Stephen Dalton has warned that the RAF would need "genuine increases" in its budget to run the range of operations which ministers demand.

He told the Guardian that without more investment, the RAF would struggle to maintain levels of capabilities.


Libyan mission

Sir Stephen said his assumption was that the RAF's warplanes and surveillance aircraft would be needed over Libya for a number of months, rather than weeks.

"In general terms [we] are now planning on the basis of at least six months, and we'll see where we go from there," he said.

A poll for BBC News on Sunday suggested that two-thirds of people believed Britain's military involvement in Libya would go on for some time.

Of 2,000 people asked, 65% said the UK's involvement in Libya "will last for some time", while just 14% chose the option "will be over pretty quickly", and 20% did not know.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Sunday that the military intervention in Libya would not lead to a stalemate between pro-Gaddafi forces and rebels.

He said Col Muammar Gaddafi's regime had no future because it was isolated and could not sell any oil.

Meanwhile, Scottish police and prosecutors are due to meet Foreign Office officials on Monday to try to gain access to former Libyan foreign minister, Moussa Koussa, who arrived in the UK last week.

They want to talk to Mr Koussa about the 1988 Lockerbie bombing in which 270 people died.
 
'National security'

Sir Stephen issued a warning that the RAF would need an increase in spending from the next Comprehensive Spending Review in 2014.

Without "genuine increases", he said the RAF would find it "very difficult" to maintain its current levels of capability - with operations in Afghanistan, the Falklands and Libya.

"The key factor is that if we are to meet the requirements laid upon us, there is no question that more investment will be needed to achieve that," he said.

"What I am seeking to do is maintain core competencies and bricks on which we can then build the future."

Commenting on Sir Stephen's interview, shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy said forces' families would want to know that those "serving on crucial operations in Libya will not be sacked on their return".

"On the day the air chief marshal warns about the pressures being placed on the RAF, and when our forces are being asked to do more overseas, the country will want the Tory-led government to explain the impact of their actions," he said.

"Our forces deserve better. The government should pause, think again and reopen their rushed defence review."

Soldiers and sailors in the groups targeted for job losses will be seen by their commanding officers on Tuesday.

Under the plans, the Ministry of Defence will also lose 25,000 civilian staff.

Unveiling the strategic defence and security review in October, Prime Minister David Cameron said defence spending would fall by 8% over four years.

He said the UK would still meet Nato's target of spending 2% of GDP on defence and would continue to have the fourth largest military in the world and "punch above its weight in the world".

But he said the country had to be "more thoughtful, more strategic and more co-ordinated in the way we advance our interests and protect our national security".

In February, the Army apologised to 38 soldiers who learned they were losing their jobs by e-mail.

The men - all long-serving warrant officers and including one working in Afghanistan - were told they were victims of the defence cuts.

Syria tests internet freedom theory

Syria tests internet freedom theory

Syria, now in political upheaval, had been going through an internet revolution before protests began

(CNN) -- In the wake of Egypt's "Facebook revolution," which was fueled in part by online social networks, much has been made about the role of technology in encouraging or even creating democracy.

"If you want to liberate a society, just give them the internet," said Wael Ghonim, one of Egypt's tech-savvy revolutionaries.

Syria, the latest country in the region to announce reforms in the wake of protests, is a curious test of that theory.

The country -- squished between Iraq and Turkey -- is known as one of the world's toughest police states. But unlike in Egypt and Tunisia, the government supported the development of local technology, at least before the protests that pushed President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday to announce the resignation of most of the country's government officials.

The president has not given up power. He addressed the country on Wednesday, blaming the protests on an international conspiracy and calling the situation "a test of our unity."

There are at least three ways to read this fluid situation.

First: Syria is an exception to Ghonim's theory about internet freedom, since the tools of online revolution have failed, at least to date, to bring about a fundamental change in power in the country. Some scholars say Syria has successfully used the internet to monitor would-be dissidents, keeping them from using the internet to organize.

Second: We're watching another tech-led revolution unfold. The Syrian government reportedly unblocked access to Facebook amid the turmoil in Egypt and Tunisia. Perhaps that was enough to spark recent changes.

Third: The internet has had little impact on Syrian reform. Conflicting reports suggest the internet and some mobile apps may have been blocked recently.

Coming events in Syria will challenge or support these theories.

No matter the outcome, a look at Syria's nascent tech renaissance -- bubbling long before violence in the country started making headlines -- offers a framework for understanding these current events.

Local techies hosted iPhone app development contests; they created websites, including a Syrian version of Foursquare; they went to internet cafes, which are so common "you can't walk without stumbling upon one," one blogger said; they blogged, sometimes under real names; and they used proxy servers to access Western sites and information.

About one in five Syrians is online and nearly half use mobile phones. Those tech penetration rates are only slightly lower than in Egypt.

If internet equals freedom, then these activities should lead to the end of the regime -- meaning internet technology would be something the Syrian government should fear. In reality, however, Syria's ruling party at times supported the digital tools that have spelled disaster for authoritarian regimes elsewhere.

"We're going to see dramatic changes still in the ways Syrians use the internet," one Syrian tech entrepreneur said by phone before protests broke out. "Now (people) feel more comfortable doing this; they're not doing something that is going to be frowned upon. They're not doing it under the table. They're doing it openly."

'There is change'

Many of Syria's tech entrepreneurs seem to have no political aspirations.

In interviews before the recent protests, they were quick to say they're interested in technology for technology's sake.

One Syrian app developer, referred to here as Ahmed to protect his real identity, moved back to the country after going to school in Texas. When he arrived, there weren't many "social" websites or apps to speak of, so he created one.

The reason: He wanted to know the hippest place to grab dinner or a beer with friends. He said he's not the type to dabble in politics.

Syria is becoming a good place for tech entrepreneurs, he said.

"I'm the kind of person who thinks things are getting better here," he said. "There is a change. Maybe it's not as fast as everybody hopes -- but it is happening."

Syria's 'Day of Rage'

Syrians organized a "Day of Rage" on Facebook, similar to the Facebook event that helped kick off Egypt's revolution.

Unlike in Egypt, where protests raged for 18 days and eventually toppled the 30-year regime of Hosni Mubarak, only a dozen people showed up to that first planned event, which was scheduled for February 4, according to news reports.

Those who did were arrested or dispersed.

Subsequent protests in the south of Syria have attracted more attention and clashes with security police have resulted in the deaths of 73 people, according to Human Rights Watch.

Conversely, tens of thousands of people crowded the streets of Damascus, Syria, on Tuesday in support of the government.

It was soon after that initial February 4 demonstration that the government legalized Facebook, which had been banned since 2007, according to local internet users. Members of Syria's tech elite saw this as a vote of support from the government -- a sign the government trusted people to use social media for personal reasons while keeping their digital hands out of coup-plotting.

"Facebook is like part of the culture right now, it's unbelievable. Everybody knows Facebook," one tech entrepreneur said.

People outside the country, however, who are freer to speak their minds without fear of government intimidation, were skeptical of Syria's motives.

"The message is clear: They don't want people talking," said a young Syrian blogger now living in the United States, referred to here as Salam. "Unblocking Facebook and YouTube was just a charade. They wanted to show that they had some confidence and they weren't afraid of such protests going on in Syria."

Evgeny Morozov, an internet scholar at Stanford University and author of "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom," put it this way:

"The end result is that the Syrian police will be able to monitor its opponents much better, and if they want to, they would be able to trace their locations, they would be able to arrest them and intimidate them."

It seems, despite Ghonim's claim that the internet will liberate people, technology can be used as tool for both freedom and repression.

Crack-down on dissent

Fears of arrest and intimidation have been very real inside Syria.

Shortly after Syria made Facebook legal, the government arrested and four days later released a blogger, Ahmad Hadifa, 28, who allegedly had been critical of the regime, according to the human rights group Reporters Without Borders.

Authorities in February also handed down a five-year prison sentence to Tal Al-Mallouhi, then age 19, who the group says is the world's youngest imprisoned blogger.

Reporters Without Borders puts Syria on its "Enemies of the internet" list for spying on citizens and using digital tools to crack down on dissent. According to The Atlantic, a 50-year-old "emergency law" in Syria "outlaws unofficial gatherings and abets the regular practice of beating, imprisoning, torturing, or killing political dissidents, human rights workers, and minorities."

Watching such events creates a chilling climate of self-censorship, said Salam, the Syrian-born blogger. It's difficult to press the "send" button on anything that could be considered even remotely controversial.

"You're always cautious of what you write. You're always wondering if what you write will get you in trouble," he said. "The Syrian bloggers who were writing about the recent arrests ... had to contemplate things for a few days or a week before posting."

Encouraging the internet

While it may not encourage the open expression of ideas, Syria certainly has encouraged the development of an internet infrastructure.

This is a shift from past practices.

Salam remembers the first time he got online, in 2000, when the Syrian government first decided to let the technology in.

"It's like somebody who got a new toy basically and they were so excited to figure out what they could do with it," he said.

Soon, he had started a blog -- "typos, teen angst, stuff like that" -- from his parents' home in a town in the southern part of the country.

It wasn't long before it was shut down, he said.

"Basically it feels like you were violated when you did nothing wrong," he said. "It was absurd. There was no good reason given."

At least before the recent protests, Syria's president, who has a Facebook page and is the former head of the country's computer society, appeared to see the internet boom as a continuation of Syria's history -- not a tool that would change its course.

"We are the fastest growing internet user in the Middle East," al-Assad told The Wall Street Journal in a rare interview published January 31. "And this is because of the nature of the Syrians: They are very open generally ... They want to learn."

Building a tech scene

Some Syrians have been geeks-in-training for years.

At age 3, Ahmed, the app developer, used his father's screwdriver to dismantle a radio. Then the family got a VCR -- and he took that apart, too, wanting to see how it worked. "My dad used to lock the drawer where he had all the screw drivers because he was afraid I would do something," he said.

Now he plans to keep building.

He's unsure if his social website will take off in Syria.

But, at least before the recent wave of protests, he was encouraged by how quickly Syria is taking to technology.

Where that tech adoption will lead remains an open question.

Can Syrians break the fear barrier?

Can Syrians break the fear barrier?

Anti-government protesters on the streets of Daraa, 100km south of the capital Damascus, on March 23

CNN) -- Fear has been one of the biggest hurdles for those pushing for political change in Syria.

Recent protests in Syria are unprecedented in a country that has had a state of emergency in place since 1963. A Syrian government spokesman has indicated that the emergency laws may be lifted, but no timescale has been given.

Arbitrary arrests, intimidation, torture and travel bans are widespread, according to the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Amnesty International has urged President Bashar Al-Assad, in power since taking over from his father in 2000, to lift the country's "repressive laws."

At least 37 people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces, particularly in the cities of Daraa and Latakia in the past week, according to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights.

While there are some signs that the fear barrier has begun to break down, many still feel scared to speak openly.

A 26-year-old Syrian blogger, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, said: "I disagree with protest, not because I'm with government, but because I know what the government will do and how it will deal with such thing, Daraa as an example. People know things will go bloody for sure."

He added: "Many Syrians have broken through a fear barrier in the past week, especially young people, but too many are still scared."

The blogger works mostly in Algeria, but is returning home to Syria this week. He said he would be clearing his laptop hard-drive and emptying his email account before arriving.

He said: "Recently I passed the red line a little bit on my blog. I started blogging on real social issues and the Syrian ministries. All people who know me ask me to stop writing because they love me and want me to be safe. I do feel threatened."

He estimated there was a 40% chance he would be arrested or detained for questioning when he returned to Syria this week.

The blogger said he noticed when he wrote on political issues, Syrians were too afraid to respond to his blog.

"Now it's very dangerous and a lot of people stop contacting me," he said. "They are afraid to put 'like' on Facebook. I know they are reading what I wrote because I see statistics."

A British journalist living and working in Damascus, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said fear levels were still high.

"There's a sense of tension as to whether there will be more bloodshed. People are still scared because we have all seen the response has been pretty brutal," he said.

"However, people are feeling a bit bolder. I wouldn't be surprised to see people talking a bit more openly about politics."

The journalist cut short his phone call with CNN because he was in a café and nervous of speaking in a public place. He said working as a journalist in Syria was difficult.

"Journalists are being clamped down on. Many have been arrested and others are stopped from going to certain places. We have to remain low-key about what we are doing," he said.

"Generally, Syrian journalists practice self-censorship to avoid getting into trouble. Foreign journalists risk being thrown out of the country. I write without bylines."

The British journalist added that he believed there would be some change.

"The protests have definitely got the government worried. We have already seen the recognition of problems from the government. This government is not used to being questioned, so even though the protests have not been on the same scale as elsewhere they are enough to cause change."

Ribal Al-Assad, director of the London-based Organization for Democracy and Freedom in Syria, agrees that the fact that Syrians have taken to the streets in protest could create real change.

Al-Assad, a cousin of the Syrian president who has lived in exile since the age of nine, said: "I'm confident that things will change because the genie can't be put back in the bottle. We can't let this pass. Everybody in Syria has a satellite dish and they follow the news. They see how other people live around the world and they want to live better too.

"We will not accept any less than what our brothers in Egypt and Tunisia have. People are starving and they see the corruption of those around them."

Berlusconi: Migrants to leave Lampedusa in 48 hours

Berlusconi: Migrants to leave Lampedusa in 48 hours

Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi has promised that the island of Lampedusa will soon be free of migrants.

Mr Berlusconi had earlier described the immigrants as "poor wretches"

Thousands of people have arrived on the island south of Sicily since January, travelling from Tunisia and Libya.

Officials say sanitary conditions have become "desperate" and islanders have staged protests at the town hall.

On a visit to the island, Mr Berlusconi announced to a crowd that in "48 to 60 hours Lampedusa will be inhabited only by Lampedusans".

About 20,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean since the upheavals in North Africa and the Middle East began in January.

Emergency

Some 6,000 migrants - more than the total population of the island - are now living there in makeshift camps.

There were no new arrivals on Tuesday night, Italian media reported, the first night with no new immigrants for some time.

On Wednesday morning, five ships arrived, sent by the Italian government to Lampedusa to take migrants to camps on the mainland. One of the ships was the naval vessel San Marco and the rest were civilian ferries, reports said. Another boat was expected later.

Mr Berlusconi's plane arrived on the island shortly after 1300 local time.

After meeting the regional governor and mayor of Lampedusa, he addressed a crowd of islanders outside the town hall, promising a series of measures including tax breaks and welfare benefits.

He also said there would be a plan to relaunch Lampedusa's tourist industry, which has been badly hit by the influx from North Africa.

The previous evening, he had described the immigrants arriving on Lampedusa as "poor wretches" fleeing a world without freedom and democracy.

Repatriation

Although most of the immigrants on the island are expected to be transferred to Sicily or camps on mainland Italy, negotiations are said to be under way to repatriate a number of people to Tunisia.

Most of the arrivals since January have sailed from Tunisia, but in recent days boats have come from Libya as well.

he BBC's Duncan Kennedy, in Rome, says that Italy, as the former colonial power in Libya, does not want to provoke the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, into sending thousands more migrants fleeing.

Early on in the crisis, Col Gaddafi threatened to do just that, if the EU backed military action.

Migrants who can prove they are refugees from a conflict are eligible for asylum in the EU under human rights conventions.

The European Commission says EU member states must address the surge in migration produced by the unrest in North Africa.

Some 20,000 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean since the upheavals began

Workers endure austere conditions in averting nuclear disaster

Workers endure austere conditions in averting nuclear disaster

Austere conditions for Fukushima workers

Tokyo (CNN) -- They sleep anywhere they can find open space -- in conference rooms, corridors, even stairwells. They have one blanket, no pillows and a leaded mat intended to keep radiation at bay.

They eat only two meals each day -- a carefully rationed breakfast of 30 crackers and vegetable juice and for dinner, a ready-to-eat meal or something out of a can.They clean themselves with wet wipes, since the supply of fresh water is short.

These are the grueling living conditions for the workers inside Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. They've been hailed as heroes risking their lives by braving high levels of radiation as they work to avert a nuclear meltdown.

But until now, the outside world has known little about the workers' routine.

Tuesday, safety inspector Kazuma Yokota, who spent five days at the plant last week, spoke with CNN about the plight of the 400 workers staying in a building within 1 kilometer (.6 of a mile) of Reactor No. 1. Japanese officials ordered mandatory evacuations for everyone else within 20 (12.4 miles) kilometers of the plant.

The workers look tired, Yokota said. They are furiously connecting electrical cables, repairing instrument panels and pumping radioactive water out.

They work with the burden of their own personal tragedies always weighing heavily.

"My parents were washed away by the tsunami, and I still don't know where they are," one worker wrote in an e-mail that was verified as authentic by a spokesman for the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which runs the Fukushima plant.

"Crying is useless," said another e-mail. "If we're in hell now, all we can do is crawl up towards heaven."

But they are doing it all with the kind of determination required in a task with such high stakes. There's no room for plummeting morale and the workers are not showing any signs of spirits flagging, Yokota said.

However upbeat the workers are, there's no denying the conditions are beyond difficult.

"On the ground at the nuclear power plant, the workers are working under very dangerous and very hard conditions, and I feel a great deal of respect for them," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters Tuesday.

The workers spend three days on site and go off for one. They start their work day at 8 a.m. and go for 12 long hours.

Gary Was, a nuclear engineering expert at the University of Michigan, told CNN Tuesday that contaminated seawater brings potential danger "and they need to take all precautions."

Particulates that land on the skin or are ingested "can be a constant source of radiation into the future," Was said. "You need to be very careful not to ingest any of that."

Was said officials need to remove and store contaminated water.

Last week, three men who were laying electrical cable in the turbine building of the No. 3 reactor stepped in tainted water, exposing themselves to high levels of radiation. Tokyo Electric apologized and said their exposure might have been avoided with better communication.

Radiation alarms went off while the three men were working, but they continued with their mission for 40 to 50 minutes after assuming it was a false alarm. They were hospitalized after it was determined they had been exposed to 173 to 181 millisieverts of radiation -- two of them with direct exposure on their skin. They were later released.

By comparison, a person in an industrialized country is naturally exposed to 3 millisieverts per year, though Japan's Health Ministry has said that those working directly to avert the nuclear crisis could be exposed to as much as 250 millisieverts before they must leave the site.

The incident also prompted further criticism of Tokyo Electric and how well it is safeguarding the workers.

Yokota said the power company hoped to improve living conditions for the workers by moving them to another facility. Edano said officials also hope to find replacements in order to relieve the workers at the plant.

Until then, they will continue as the faceless heroes in Japan's tragedy, the nation's only hope of thwarting further disaster.