More than 20 U.N. ambassadors have sent a letter to the human rights council in Geneva condemning China’s treatment of Uighurs and other Muslims in the Xinjiang region.U.N. diplomats from 22 mostly European nations along with Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand signed the letter. The United States has not yet signed on.The ambassadors express concern about “credible reports of arbitrary detention … as well as widespread surveillance and restrictions, particularly targeting Uighurs and other minorities in Xinjiang.”They urge China to stop detaining minorities and grant them “freedom of movement” within their communities.FILE PHOTO: An ethnic Uighur woman carries a metal rod as she walks down a main road in the city of Urumqi in China’s Xinjiang Autonomous Region, July 10, 2019.The ambassadors chose to raise their concerns in a letter instead of a resolution, which China would have undoubtedly squelched.”The joint statement is important not only for Xinjing’s population but for people around the world who depend on the U.N.’s leading rights body to hold even the most powerful countries to account,” the Geneva director of Human Rights Watch, John Fisher, said Wednesday.China denies holding Uighurs and others in what rights groups and former inmates call “concentration camps” aimed at forcibly integrating them into Chinese society and culture and suppressing their own culture and religion.China calls the camps “vocational educational centers” set up to train people for jobs and steer them away from alleged extremism and the threat of terrorism.FILE – Uighurs rest near a food stall and Beijing Olympic Games billboards in Kashgar in China’s western Xinjiang province, Aug. 6, 2008.Human Rights Watch’s U.N. director, Lou Charbonnau, told VOA he was disappointed when Secretary-General Antonio Guterres sent top counterterrorism officials to visit the camps instead of his human rights chief, Michelle Bachelet.Charbonnau said that was a confirmation of China’s claim that it is fighting terrorism instead of violating Muslim rights.”What we have here is human rights abuses and that’s why Michelle Bachelet needs to be able to go there with her team of experts on terms that she considers acceptable so that they can make a credible and independent evaluation of what’s going on,” he said.Charbonnau also said he hoped the United States, which has been very outspoken about alleged Chinese human rights violations, would “swallow its pride” and sign the letter.He said the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the U.N. Human Rights Council over the panel’s criticism of Israel was a “very shortsighted decision.”
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Demonstrations in Hong Kong are set to continue after protest leaders denounced Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s reluctance to withdraw a bill that would facilitate extradition to mainland China and her decision to not open an investigation into police conduct.  Lam, who has characterized her government’s action surrounding the bill as a “complete failure,” declared the controversial extradition bill “dead” on Tuesday, after weeks of protests gripped the nation.   Lam’s latest actions have failed to appease protestors, who seek to see the bill formally withdrawn.  “We cannot find the word dead in any of the laws in Hong Kong or in any legal proceedings in the Legislative Council,” said Bonnie Leung, the vice-convener of the Civil Human Rights Front, an organization that worked to mobilize protestors against the extradition bill.Many protestors worry that the government will attempt to pass the extradition bill at a later date.Lam has attempted to reassure critics, telling reporters at a press conference that “there is no such plan” to push through the bill in the future.Activists have also criticized Lam for not opening an independent investigation into the conduct of police officers during the protests.”How can the government tell us that we should preserve our rule of law, when [Lam] herself does not use the principle without actually speaking to them directly,” Jimmy Sham, another CHRF leader, said in a joint statement with Leung.
 
Lam said that her decision not to withdraw the bill has “nothing to do with [her] own pride or arrogance,” calling the decisions “practical”.”Give us the time and room for us to take Hong Kong out of the current impasse,” she said.Joshua Wong, another activist in Hong Kong, also called for Lam to cease prosecution for activists and investigate police conduct.”As former Chief Justice Andrew Li pointed out today, an independent inquiry is a necessary move to solve the current governance crisis,” he said.”She has to stop prosecuting activists who participated in the protests,” he later wrote. 
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The days unfold at a leisurely pace in Tonga, a South Pacific archipelago with no traffic lights or fast-food chains. Snuffling pigs roam dusty roads that wind through villages dotted with churches.Yet even in this far-flung island kingdom there are signs that a battle for power and influence is heating up among much larger nations – and Tonga may end up paying the price.In the capital, Nuku’alofa, government officials work in a shiny new office block – an $11 million gift from China that is rivaled in grandeur only by China’s imposing new embassy complex.Dozens of Tongan bureaucrats take all-expenses-paid training trips to Beijing each year, and China has laid out millions of dollars to bring 107 Tongan athletes and coaches to a training camp in China’s Sichuan province ahead of this month’s Pacific Games in Samoa.”The best facilities. The gym, the track, and a lot of equipment we don’t have here in Tonga,” said Tevita Fauonuku, the country’s head athletic coach. “The accommodation: lovely, beautiful. And the meals. Not only that, but China gave each and everyone some money. A per diem.”China also offered low-interest loans after pro-democracy rioters destroyed much of downtown Nuku’alofa in 2006, and analysts say those loans could prove Tonga’s undoing. The country of 106,000 people owes some $108 million to China’s Export-Import bank, equivalent to about 25% of GDP.The U.S. ambassador to Australia, Arthur Culvahouse Jr., calls China’s lending in the Pacific “payday loan diplomacy.””The money looks attractive and easy upfront, but you better read the fine print,” he said.FILE – A Chinese flag flies outside the Chinese Embassy in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, April 8, 2019.China’s ambassador to Tonga, Wang Baodong, said China was the only country willing to step up to help Tonga during its time of need.Graeme Smith, a specialist in Chinese investment in the Pacific, is not convinced China tried to trap Tonga in debt, saying its own financial mismanagement is as much to blame.Nonetheless, he said it’s worrying that the nation of 171 islands, already vulnerable to costly natural disasters, has little ability to repay.Why is China pouring money into Tonga?Teisina Fuko, a 69-year-old former parliament member, suspects China finds his country’s location useful.”I think Tonga is maybe a window to the Western side,” he said. “Because it’s easy to get here and look into New Zealand, Australia.””It’s a steppingstone,” he said.FILE – Fisherman and former politician Teisina Fuko on his fishing boat in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, April 9, 2019.For decades, the South Pacific was considered the somewhat sleepy backyard of Australia, New Zealand and the United States. Now, as China exerts increasing influence, Western allies are responding.Experts say there hasn’t been this level of geopolitical competition in the region since the U.S. and Japan were bombing each other’s occupied atolls.”We haven’t seen anything like this since World War II,” said Smith, a research fellow at Australian National University.After Cyclone Gita destroyed Tonga’s historic Parliament House last year, the government first suggested China might like to pay to rebuild it. Then Australia and New Zealand stepped in and are now considering jointly funding the project.FILE – A security guard walks outside the Tonga’s historic Parliament House destroyed last year in Cyclone Gita in Nuku’alofa, April 10, 2019.Elsewhere in the region, Australia is redeveloping a Papua New Guinea naval base while New Zealand has announced it will spend an extra $500 million on overseas aid over four years, with most of it directed at South Pacific nations.Rory Medcalf, the head of the National Security College at Australian National University, said the area could provide a security bridgehead for China’s navy, which currently must sail through the U.S.-friendly islands of Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines to get to the Pacific.Other possible explanations, Medcalf said, include the region’s fisheries, seabed minerals and other natural resources, as well as China’s ongoing effort to lure away the few remaining countries that recognize Taiwan instead of China – several of them Pacific island nations.”It’s not entirely clear what China wants in the South Pacific,” Medcalf said. “It’s just clear that China is becoming very active and making its presence felt.”China has poured about $1.5 billion in aid and low-interest loans into the South Pacific since 2011, putting it behind only Australia, according to an analysis by Australian think-tank the Lowy Institute. And that figure rises to over $6 billion when future commitments are included.China’s use of loans and aid to gain influence in developing nations worldwide is nothing new, as illustrated by Chinese-financed projects from Africa to Latin America and the Asian subcontinent.Some worry that these can become debt traps when nations can’t repay. In Sri Lanka, for example, the government was forced to hand over control of its Hambantota port as it struggles to repay loans it got from China to build the facility – a move that has given Beijing a strategic foothold within hundreds of miles of rival India.Wang said China has only benevolent intentions in Tonga and no hidden agenda. “Some people in the West are being over-sensitive and too suspicious,” he said. “No need.”It’s not just money flowing in from China. Chinese immigrants began arriving in the 1990s when Tonga started selling passports.The passports, which went for about $10,000 each, were aimed at attracting wealthy Hong Kong residents hedging their bets ahead of the former British colony’s return to China in 1997. Instead, they were snapped up by rural Chinese looking for a better life – and who now compete with native Tongans for scarce jobs.Chinese immigrants already run most of the dozens of hole-in-the-wall groceries dotting the islands, selling cheap imports like potato chips and canned meat. And Tongans worry they are now expanding into farming and construction.FILE – A shopkeeper waits for business in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, April 10, 2019.Most Tongans live a subsistence existence in a nation where the king is revered and people take Christianity so seriously that working on Sundays is, with few exceptions, banned under the constitution. The economy relies on foreign aid and cash sent home by Tongans working abroad.And the Chinese loans haven’t changed that because the money went to Chinese-run projects, Fuko said.”They brought the money, they brought the workers, they brought the building materials,” he said. “Maybe a few Tongans pulled wheelbarrows.”Wang acknowledged the criticism that Chinese immigrants run many businesses but said Tonga’s leaders recognize the contribution they make and have even called on Tongans to learn from their hard-work ethic.Tonga never benefited from the passport money, either. A former financial adviser to the government, American Jesse Bogdonoff, helped place about $26 million into speculative investments and almost all of it evaporated.A man walks past a development site for a Chinese Investment bank in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, April 10, 2019.The real threat to Tonga’s future may lie in its crippling loans from China.Debt distressIn December 2017, the International Monetary Fund increased Tonga’s debt distress rating from moderate to high risk, citing its vulnerability to natural disasters and noting that the large upcoming loan repayments to China would reduce Tonga’s foreign exchange reserves, double its debt-servicing costs, and could force the country to borrow yet more money.Repayments were due to start last year, and panic crept in.In August, Prime Minister Akilisi Pohiva called on other Pacific nations to join forces to demand debt relief, warning that China could snatch away buildings and other assets. But he reversed his position days later, saying Tonga was “exceedingly grateful” for China’s help.Within months Tonga announced it had been given a reprieve and didn’t need to start repayments for another five years.Tonga also said it was joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the trillion-dollar global investment and lending program that is a signature policy of President Xi Jinping.Tongan officials don’t seem eager to discuss the relationship with China. The prime minister withdrew from an interview with The Associated Press because of an illness, while Finance Minister Pohiva Tu’i’onetoa cancelled at the last minute due to “something urgent.” The chief secretary to the prime minister’s office, Edgar Cocker, agreed to meet but then quickly asked a reporter to leave, saying he wasn’t authorized to speak for the government.Cocker said all questions about China’s loans and aid should be directed to Chinese officials.Wang said there was no link between Tonga getting a break on its loans and joining the Belt and Road Initiative. He said Tonga had raised concerns about the loan, and China was willing to help.Tonga’s immediate financial crisis has been averted, but Fuko thinks the loans have given China the upper hand.”I don’t know how we are going to pay that back,” the former lawmaker said.An unintended consequence of Tonga’s China loans could be a reduction in foreign investment and withering of the revenues needed to pay them back.Take the Scenic Hotel. One of the few large hotels on the main island of Tongatapu, it abruptly closed its doors in March in a setback to the key tourism industry.Brendan Taylor, managing director of the New Zealand-based Scenic Hotel Group, said one problem was the new Foreign Exchange Control Act Tonga introduced last year.Designed to keep money in the country and protect its currency during financial emergencies, it was enacted as Tonga prepared to begin making the Chinese loan repayments.”The issue you have got in Tonga is that no overseas companies are keen to go in,” Taylor said. “They’ve cut out investors.”He said the hotel got a large insurance payout after it was hit by Cyclone Gita. But the new law created legal hurdles to move money out of Tonga to pay New Zealand suppliers for repairs and so the payout languished in a Tongan trust account, he said.Tonga-based lawyer Ralph Stephenson said that while the law isn’t being enforced, it’s still spooking investors.”The penalties for breaching the act are Draconian, in terms of fines that can be imposed, and also in so far as the act actually affords the courts the power to forfeit property,” he said.FILE – A pig walks outside a house in Nuku’alofa, Tonga, April 7, 2019.Wang said any suggestion that China might be engaged in a Pacific power struggle with the West or using Tonga to keep tabs or even spy on New Zealand and Australia is nonsense.”Tonga is a small country. It’s almost impossible to hide any secret,” Wang said. “For some of our Western friends, personally, I think they should be confident in their relations and influence in this region.”If China sees any strategic importance to Tonga, it was the country’s recognition that Taiwan is part of China, he said. Tonga switched from recognizing Taiwan and established formal diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1998.China’s economic success has allowed it to build new embassies around the world and too much shouldn’t be read into the size of its new embassy in Tonga, Wang said.He said that over the past 20 years, diplomatic relations between China and Tonga have widened to include infrastructure, trade, education and sports. He doesn’t see it as a case of larger countries jockeying for influence.”I don’t think so,” he said. “Just whoever is able to provide assistance for the goodness of the Tongan people.”But for Ola Koloi, who runs a tourist lodge, China’s footprint is too pervasive, influencing what she can buy since so many goods for sale come from China.She said the China loans should worry every Tongan.”I feel like I’ll be Chinese soon,” she said. 
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The United States said Tuesday that its arms sale to Taiwan is aimed at promoting “peace and stability” in the Asia Pacific region and Washington is not changing its “One China” policy.China has demanded the U.S. to cancel the sale after the State Department approved a request by Taiwan to purchase an estimated $2.2 billion worth of military equipment.The deal, announced Monday by the Defense Department’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, includes 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, 250 Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles and over 1,500 anti-tank missiles. The agency said the package would not alter the basic military balance in the region.“Our interest in Taiwan, especially as it relates to these military sales, is to promote peace and stability across the [Taiwan] Strait, across the region,”  said State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus during a briefing.Ortagus added, “There is no change, of course, in our long-standing One China policy,” which is based on three U.S.-China Joint Communiques and the Taiwan Relations Act.A State Department official told VOA the approved sale is consistent with U.S. law and policy.”This proposed sale serves U.S. national, economic, and security interests by supporting the recipient’s continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability,” the official said.In Taipei, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen expressed appreciation for the deal, saying the defensive weapons provided by the U.S. will boost Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities and deter potential military threats.In a tweet on Tuesday, Tsai said Taiwan will continue to invest in national defense, defend democracy while promoting regional peace and stability.Pleased that the #US government has approved another arms sale package, boosting #Taiwan’s self-defense capabilities. We’ll continue to speed up investment in national defense, & partner with like-minded countries to defend democracy while promoting regional peace and stability. pic.twitter.com/dw4Rw58hYb— 蔡英文 Tsai Ing-wen (@iingwen) July 9, 2019The potential deal has angered China, Taiwan’s bitter cross-Strait rival. Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang called on the U.S. Tuesday to “immediately cancel” the deal, saying it “seriously violates the one-China principle …grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs and undermines China’s sovereignty and security interests.”Geng also said China has already filed formal complaints with the U.S. through diplomatic channels.The two sides split after the 1949 civil war when Chaing Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces were driven off the mainland by Mao Zedong’s Communists and sought refuge on Taiwan. But Beijing considers the self-ruled island part of its territory and has vowed to take control of it, by force if necessary.The U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China in 1979, but U.S. presidents are bound by law to supply it with arms and come to its defense.The agreement also comes amid the Trump administration’s ongoing trade dispute with Beijing, with the two nations exchanging back-and-forth tariffs on each other’s goods since last year.
The U.S. announcement of the possible military sales to Taiwan was welcomed by the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council, an organization dedicated to developing the trade and business relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan.Council President Rupert Hammond-Chambers said, “These tanks and missiles will provide the Taiwan army with a modern capability to deter and complicate the operational planning of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) forces that coerce and threaten Taiwan.”Relations between Beijing and Taipei have been strained since President Tsai Ing-wen, the leader of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, took office in 2016 and refused to accept the concept of China and Taiwan joined together as “one China.”Beijing has since mounted an aggressive posture toward Taipei, such as carrying out military exercises in the Taiwan Strait, blocking Taipei’s participation in international organizations, and persuading several nations to switch diplomatic relations from Taiwan to China.
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