China and 10 Southeast Asian countries are linking up to fight a deadly coronavirus outbreak that’s threatening tourism and trade ties.The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a negotiating bloc with members that dispute Chinese maritime sovereignty claims and worry about the pace of Chinese investment abroad, signed a healthcare resolution with China February 20. The two sides agreed to accelerate information exchanges, combat any fake virus-related news and support small businesses that are hobbled by the outbreak.China and ASEAN are “major tourist destinations” for each other with annual travel exceeding 65 million visits, the bloc said in a statement. China is also ASEAN’s largest trading partner. ASEAN is the second largest trading partner of China. “This is a good occasion to promote solidarity among countries in the region,” said Eduardo Araral, associate professor at the National University of Singapore’s public policy school. “It’s unfortunate that it would have to take a virus to bring ASEAN and China together,” he said, but “that’s a good pause for the politics as usual in the region.”The coronavirus discovered in December in the central Chinese city Wuhan is spreading world wide.China is the hardest hit, but ASEAN nations report smaller caseloads, especially in Singapore. The outbreak has led to the cancellation of thousands of flights, flattening tourism in parts of Southeast Asia that depend on foreign travel. Work stoppages in China this month also weakened Chinese manufacturing supply links in Southeast Asia.Action planForeign ministers from China and the Southeast Asian countries resolved at the February 20 meeting in Laos to step up sharing of information and best practices “in a timely manner” while pressing for common people to get accurate information rather than “fake news,” the parties said in a statement.  Any discovery in treating the disease, formally called COVID-19, should be shared, the statement adds. “If anything, I think Singapore of course with its medical advances and so on would be in a better position, but of course Singapore itself is also afflicted with the outbreak,” said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow with the Singapore Institute of International Affairs.  They further agreed to rely more on cross-border training to stop any new disease threats. Small companies hurt by business losses caused by the outbreak will get ASEAN-China help in doing internet promotions, the resolution says. People are going out less often than usual in much of Asia to avoid catching the disease but still place orders online.China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, center back, attends the Special ASEAN-China Foreign Ministers’ meeting on the Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia in Vientiane, Laos, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020.ASEAN and China will add a third formal health forum to their meeting calendar this year in view of the outbreak, the statement says.  “Hopefully there’s a practical lesson to be learned, which is that China and ASEAN can work out some solutions on communication, control, quarantine standards for the next virus erupts…whatever it is,” Araral said.Dependent but not unifiedThe ASEAN region that covers a total population of about 630 million depends on tourism from China, with countries such as Vietnam reporting steady increases in arrivals over the past few years. China exports electronics to Southeast Asia, where foreign-invested factories buy Chinese raw materials and send finished products back to the Chinese market.Malaysia, to name just one example, is keen to “restore” its tourism industry, said Oh, a Malaysian national. From January to September 2019, China was Malaysia’s third biggest source of foreign tourists with 2.41 million arrivals after Singapore and Indonesia, the New Straits Times website says.  Before the outbreak, encounters between China and ASEAN this year were expected to be tense.Vietnam is current chair of the bloc  and leaders in Hanoi particularly resent Beijing’s maritime expansion.ASEAN is pressing China for a joint code of conduct that would help prevent mishaps in the South China Sea where Beijing’s occupation of contested islets riles association members Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Those four countries have long disputed China’s maritime claims. China had resisted the code before a fresh agreement in 2017 to keep talking.In Malaysia, the Philippines and Myanmar, people worry separately whether Chinese infrastructure investment will land their countries in debt or force them to accept workers from China instead of employing locals. “I think China also wants to be seen as cooperative and they want to come out to ASEAN that they can cope and they will recover,” said Termsak Chalermpalanupap, a fellow with the ISEAS Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.Joint work with China could pull Southeast Asian countries together too, Chalermpalanupap added. Although the regional economy is suffering, he said, countries within ASEAN “have different responses” to the virus, which “makes us look not so nice.”Association member Cambodia, for example, saw its prime minister travel to Beijing February 5 to appeal for economic support. In contrast, on January 31 Singapore banned travel from China.
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China’s leader said Sunday the new coronavirus epidemic is the communist country’s largest-ever public health emergency, but other nations were also increasingly under pressure from the deadly outbreak’s relentless global march.Italy and Iran began introducing the sort of containment measures previously seen only in China, which has put tens of millions of people under lockdown in Hubei province, the outbreak’s epicenter.Italy reported a third death while cases spiked and the country’s Venice carnival closed early.Tourists are wearing protective masks against coronavirus in Venice, Italy, Feb. 23, 2020. (S. Castelfranco/VOA)Iran’s confirmed death toll rose to eight, prompting travel bans from neighboring countries.The virus has so far killed more than 2,400 people, with about 80,000 infected globally, though China remains by far the worst hit.President Xi Jinping said the epidemic was the “largest public health emergency” since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949.”This is a crisis for us and it is a big test,” he said during remarks carried by state television.In a rare admission, at a meeting to coordinate the fight against the virus, Xi added that China must learn from “obvious shortcomings exposed” during its response.The World Health Organization (WHO) has praised Beijing for its handling of the epidemic, but China has been criticized at home for silencing early warnings from a whistleblower doctor who later died from the virus.South Korea said it was raising its alert to the highest level, after the number of infections nearly tripled over the weekend to 602.  Workers wearing protective gear spray disinfectant at a market in the southeastern city of Daegu, South Korea, as a preventive measure after the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak.The country now has the most infections outside of China, apart from the Diamond Princess cruise ship docked in Japan.South Korea reported three deaths on Sunday, taking the countrywide fatality toll to five. The Yonhap news agency later reported a sixth death.Around half of South Korea’s cases have been linked to the Shincheonji Church of Jesus sect in the southern city of Daegu, where thousands of members have been quarantined or asked to stay at home.Police checkpointsItaly’s cases spiked to 152 on Sunday, including three deaths.Virus panic crept onto catwalks, leading to the cancellation of some runway shows at Milan Fashion Week. Others were held behind closed doors and livestreamed.Most cases are confined to the northern town of Codogno, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) southeast of Milan.  More than 50,000 people in about a dozen northern Italian towns have been told to stay home, and police set up checkpoints to enforce a blockade.Austrian railways said traffic on a major route to Italy through the Brenner Pass would be suspended, after a train was stopped because of two suspected cases of the virus.Neighboring Slovenia asked vacationers returning from ski resorts in northern Italy to be particularly vigilant for symptoms.Italy became the first European country to report one of its nationals died from the virus on Friday.Two more fatalities came over the weekend but Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte urged people “not to give in to panic”, and asked them to follow the advice of health authorities.”The rapid increase in reported cases in Italy over the past two days is of concern,” World Health Organization spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said.Not all reported cases seem to have clear epidemiological links, such as travel history to China or contact with a confirmed case, Jasarevic added.”At this stage, we need to focus on limiting further human to human transmission.”Iran ordered the closure of schools, universities and cultural centers across 14 provinces following eight deaths — the most outside East Asia.The outbreak in the Islamic Republic surfaced Wednesday and quickly grew to 43 confirmed infections, a sudden rise that prompted regional travel restrictions.Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pachinian said his country will close its border with Iran and suspend flights.Like the Italian leader, he, too, said there is no reason to panic.But Paul Hunter, professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia, said the situation in Iran has “major implications” for the Middle East.”It is unlikely that Iran will have the resources and facilities to adequately identify cases and adequately manage them if case numbers are large,” Hunter said.Pakistan and Turkey announced the closure of land crossings with Iran while Afghanistan said it was suspending travel to the country.Japan criticizedThe outbreak in China remains concentrated in the city of Wuhan — locked down one month ago — where the virus is believed to have emanated from a live animal market in December.China’s infection rate has slowed, but flip-flopping over counting methods has sown confusion over its data.There also was growing concern over the difficulty of detecting the virus.Japan on Sunday confirmed a woman who tested negative and disembarked from the virus-stricken Diamond Princess cruise ship later tested positive.Similarly in Israel, authorities confirmed that a second Israeli citizen who returned from the ship had tested positive. They were among 11 Israelis allowed off the ship and flown home after initially testing negative.Japan has been criticized over its handling of cases aboard the vessel quarantined off Yokohama.A third passenger died Sunday, Japan’s health ministry said, without specifying if it was as a result of the virus.Four Britons who returned from the Diamond Princess on Saturday also tested positive for the COVID-19 illness, the NHS health service said.
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Vietnam and the U.S. have announced that cooperation on cross-border crime has led to a U.S. grand jury indictment of an American teacher accused of traveling to the Southeast Asian nation to have sex with minors.The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California alleged that the teacher, Paul Marshall Bodner, of San Francisco, California, “met Vietnamese boys as young as 11 or 12 years old and engaged in sex acts with them at a hotel located in Ho Chi Minh City when he traveled to Vietnam” in the period from July 2015 to August 2016. If convicted he faces up to 30 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, Daniel J. Kritenbrink, said the investigation was aided by close cooperation between the two nations, which normalized relations in 1995, 20 years after the Vietnam War, and have since become partners on security, trade, and cultural issues.“In this instance, strong collaboration between the Homeland Security Investigations office in Ho Chi Minh City and Vietnam’s Ministry of Public Security have brought multiple child victims one step nearer to finding closure,” said Kritenbrink on Thursday. “This arrest also underscores how the United States and Vietnam can work together effectively to combat child exploitation.”Human trafficking has become a higher priority for Vietnam since October of last year, when 39 of its citizens were found dead in a container truck in the United Kingdom, believed to have suffocated to death after being trafficked from Vietnam. Trafficking victims from the Southeast Asian nation range from workers tricked into bondage abroad, to young women sold as brides, such as to Chinese or Korean husbands.The Blue Dragon Children’s Foundation, based in Hanoi, works to help sex trafficking victims, including both those who are sold abroad as well as those forced into sex work domestically. However the new coronavirus has complicated the foundation’s efforts in recent weeks. Vietnam and China have effectively shut down their 1,200 kilometer land border. That makes it harder for traffickers to send Vietnamese to China, but it also makes it harder to rescue victims and return them home.“Blue Dragon has temporarily suspended rescue operations of human trafficking survivors from China, as the current restrictions to travel within and from China prevent our rescue team from conducting operations as usual,” the organization said in a statement. “On the legal front, Blue Dragon will use this pause to work on child sexual abuse cases and prosecutions of traffickers.”The foundation usually assists with prosecutions of traffickers and sex offenders in Vietnam.In contrast, the charges against Bodner, brought by a U.S. federal grand jury, mark a rare instance of joint investigations between Vietnam and the U.S. that lead to an indictment.The 64-year-old was charged with three counts of travel with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, as well as one count of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in a foreign place.The grand jury indictment was unsealed the day of a pre-trial hearing for Bodner on Feb. 14 but a trial date was not announced.In addition to law enforcement, Vietnam and the U.S. have also increased their cooperation in defense. Last year the U.S. conducted its first ever joint naval drills with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a bloc of 10 nations with a rotating chair that is being hosted this year by Vietnam.The U.S. also gave Vietnam’s Coast Guard six patrol boats worth $12 million in 2019, part of ongoing efforts to shore up Hanoi’s defenses in the South China Sea. Vietnam has territorial claims there that are being challenged by China, whose growing power is also pushing the U.S. and Vietnam closer together. 
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South Korea has raised its alert level for the coronavirus disease to the highest level.South Korean President Moon Jae-in urged officials to not hesitate to take “unprecedented powerful measures” to contain the outbreak.Moon made the comments as authorities reported 123 more cases Sunday, raising the total to 556 with five deaths.South Korea’s prime minister said the coronavirus in his country had entered a “more grave stage” as the new cases of the disease were reported Sunday.Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun made the remark late Saturday in a nationally televised address. He said Seoul is making all-out efforts to contain the further spread of the disease.US travel advisoryKorea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said of the 123 new cases reported Sunday, 113 were in the fourth-largest city, Daegu, and surrounding areas. South Korea now has 556 reported coronavirus cases with five deaths. South Korea is testing 6,039 other people for the virus.Also Saturday, the U.S. State Department issued travel advisories for Japan and South Korea because of the coronavirus outbreak, urging travelers to “exercise increased caution” if visiting those countries.The State Department statement said a Level 2 advisory means travelers should avoid contact with sick people and practice basic hygiene, such as washing their hands often to guard against contracting the disease.People wearing protective face masks walk on a street in Beijing, Feb. 23, 2020. South Korea and China both reported a rise in new virus cases Sunday, as the South Korean prime minister warned the outbreak was entering a “more grave stage.”China reported 648 new infections Sunday, for a total of 76,936. It said 97 more people had died, raising the death toll in the country to 2,442.Outside China, more than 1,200 people have been infected with the virus and more than a dozen have died.Beyond ChinaIn Southern California, a federal judge issued a restraining order to prevent the U.S. government from sending 50 people infected with the coronavirus to Costa Mesa, a city of about 100,000 people. A hearing will be held Monday.The death toll in Iran rose to six. Italy said two people have died, and said a cluster of coronavirus cases triggered a lock down of about a dozen towns in several northern regions of the country. Italian authorities said Saturday there are about 54 cases in the country.Samsung Electronics on Saturday confirmed a case of coronavirus at its mobile device factory in Gumi, South Korea. The plant has been shut down and is expected to remain closed until Monday morning; the floor where the infected person worked will not reopen until Tuesday, according to media reports.FILE – Director-General of the WHO Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaks during the news conference on the novel coronavirus in Geneva, Feb. 11, 2020.World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he was concerned about new cases of the virus in Iran after an Iranian traveler carried the virus to Lebanon, and another traveler spread the virus from Iran to Canada.Iranian health officials reported Sunday that six people have died from the virus, making it the highest death toll outside of China. Iran has reported 28 cases of people sickened with COVID-19.Iran said Saturday it has suspended religious pilgrimages to Iraq during the coronavirus surge.
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Tibetans in New York were celebrating Saturday after it was announced an exhibit sponsored by the Chinese Consulate was being shut down in the Queens borough of the city.Two weeks ago, Tibetan activists in New York noticed the Queens Public Library in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Queens was hosting an exhibition under the theme, “Everyday Life in Tibet,” that was sponsored by the Chinese Consulate.The Tibetans said the exhibit was Chinese government propaganda that misrepresented the situation in Tibet. According to local newspaper QNS and its website, the library responded to the activists that it would not close or suspend the exhibition.The local Tibetan activist groups, including Students for a Free Tibet, Tibetan Youth Congress, Chushi Gandrug, U.S. Tibetan Committee, and Tibetan Association launched a campaign to protest.There are nearly 15,000 Tibetans living in New York City, many of them in Queens.De Blasio weighs inNew York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday at a town hall meeting in Queens he was not aware of the exhibit, but he would address the issue immediately when a Tibetan activist raised the issue. Representatives of Students for a Free Tibet said they subsequently gathered nearly 5,000 signatures for a petition to shut down the exhibit and delivered it to the mayor.“I am exceedingly critical of the Chinese government in the way it has oppressed people and taken away human rights,” de Blasio said. “No one has suffered more than the Tibetan people. So I did not have any reason to believe that any of our library systems would present the Chinese government point of view. I would assume it to be the other way around, and that I’d be getting complaints from the Chinese government.”The Queens Public Library informed the director of Students for a Free Tibet, Dorje Tseten, Friday the “Chinese Consulate and its affiliate made the decision to discontinue the exhibit, which will be removed by tomorrow.”The library announced moving forward it would collaborate with the Tibetan community there.“They showed great interest in working with us and to support the promotion of the Tibetan cause in the future,” Tseten told VOA. “So, it is overall a great victory for Tibetan cause.”Tseten said he thinks the library had asked the Chinese Consulate to withdraw in an effort for Beijing to save face.Library closes exhibitAs the library closed the exhibit Saturday, Tibetan activists gathered outside to acknowledge what they consider a “great victory.” U.S. Congressman Tom Suozzi attended and said he had called the library and expressed his concerns after learning about it from activist Tseten.“This is a big victory because there is lot of money and bureaucracy involved, but in the end the truth prevailed,” Suozzi said.Nyima Lhamo, a former political prisoner and a niece of Tenzin Delek Rinpoche — one of the most well-known Tibetan political prisoners, who died in a Chinese prison in 2015 — praised the exhibit’s shutdown.“Today is a major victory for Tibet, but we must continue fighting to amplify and uplift the voices of those still inside Tibet,” said Lhamo, who also was among the protesters in New York.“This is a library where our children study, and thousands of Tibetans live around here,” said Ngawang Tharchin, president of the regional Tibetan Youth Congress in New York and New Jersey, talking to the crowd gathered Saturday outside the library.The response by the Tibetan community there was loud and clear.
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During weeks holed up in her grandmother’s apartment with 10 relatives and eating a restricted diet, Chinese teenager Li Yuxuan says tempers have frayed.Li and her family are among the millions of people across China’s Hubei province, epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, who are subject to official orders to stay at home amid attempts to contain the spread of the disease.Officials and volunteers have sealed off buildings, erected barricades and stepped up surveillance to ensure compliance with the ban on movement, measures that are taking a toll on many in the community.“Every day there’s fighting. Every day we sigh. Every day I’m scolded,” Li, 19, told Reuters by WeChat from the apartment in Ezhou, a city near the provincial capital of Wuhan.Provided food is pictured at quarantine location upon arrival from Wuhan in the town of Novi Sanzhary, Ukraine, Feb. 20, 2020.Monotonous dietLi said the family had eaten the same combination of white rice, cabbage and peanuts for three weeks, since gathering to celebrate the Lunar New Year last month, stinting on portions because of limits on the numbers of people from each household allowed out to shop.Cities and villages across China have taken measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has infected more than 76,000 people in the country, killing 2,345, but the protocols in Hubei are the most extreme.The province, which is home to 60 million people, announced a “sealed management” policy a week ago that effectively prevents residents from leaving their homes, further isolating a population that has been living under a transport lockdown since late January.“We bought vegetables today, but I don’t know when we will go out again,” Li said by WeChat Friday, adding the family could now only buy food at the gate of their compound.Officials have promised to ensure sufficient food and medicine for residents and have also warned against hoarding or price-gouging.“Sealed management will continue so that no one will go outside, but they must still be able to buy their daily necessities,” Wuhan’s newly appointed Communist Party chief, Wang Zhonglin, said last Sunday.FILE – Workers in protective suits are seen at a checkpoint for registration and body temperature measurement, at an entrance to a residential compound in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, Feb. 13, 2020.Community enforcementHubei’s sealed management policy depends heavily on residential committees, a network of volunteers who carry out government and Communist Party orders at the grassroots level in coordination with private employees of residential compounds.One day last week, before her compound in Jingzhou city was completely sealed, 31-year-old Vicky Yi said she was stopped at the gate by a volunteer when she tried to go out for groceries.FILE – Construction workers building a temporary hospital receive meat and vegetables delivered by Wuhan resident Chen Hui and another volunteer in Ezhou, Hubei province, China, Feb. 11, 2020.Minutes later, an elderly woman walked past and out of the compound. Yi argued with the volunteer to let her out. He eventually yielded.“These people in the compound, when they get even a little bit of power, they will use all their energy to try to get in your way,” she said.“It’s like the Stanford prison experiment,” she added, referring to the 1971 psychology experiment to investigate perceptions of power that assigned a group of the university’s students to be either prisoners or guards.The Jingzhou government could not be reached by Reuters for comment.Online videos have shown police and volunteers using force to penalize residents for even gathering in groups. In one that went viral, and which caught the attention of the official People’s Daily, volunteers flipped over a table where a family was playing mah-jong, and hit one of the players.“There are some things, no matter how pressing the epidemic is, that should not be done,” the People’s Daily noted on social media of the incident, and the Xiaogang city government issued an apology.Public health concernsNon-residents are also caught in the Hubei net, with many who were in the province to visit relatives over Lunar New Year now stuck far from their homes and livelihoods.“The rent, the water bill, the electricity bill, I still have to pay them,” said 28-year-old Cao Dezhao, who owns a small IT business in Jinan, in eastern Shandong province, but is stuck in Wuhan after he came to visit his in-laws. “I could be bankrupt at the end of this epidemic.”Experts say that essential needs, including monitoring of mental health, should be ensured for people under quarantine or containment measures.“You have to address the basic rights and well-being of people: Can they get their food and water? What is their mental health status?” said Rebecca Katz, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University.Hundreds of official 24-hour telephone hotlines for psychological support have been launched since the beginning of the outbreak, but many are overwhelmed.Wuhan, the Hubei city hardest hit in the epidemic, says it will ensure food and other necessities through group orders as supermarkets stopped selling to individuals. Some communities have arranged for vendors to come to their compound gates.Hubei has said drugs and other necessities must be delivered to residents.But Song Chunlin, whose daughter has psoriasis, a painful chronic skin condition, said she has been unable to receive delivery of the medication her daughter needs in the village where her parents live in Yichang, in western Hubei, while she herself has not been able to receive her allergy medication.The Yichang government did not respond to an emailed request for comment.“I’m really in a difficult situation,” Song told Reuters.
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