Chinese dissidents fleeing abroad have long used Thailand as a route for escaping repression at home. In recent years, Thailand’s government has been cooperating more with Beijing’s effort to pursue dissidents overseas, putting them at risk. Several cases show how Chinese police are working through Thai law enforcement agencies, or even traveling to Thailand on their own, to try to find fleeing dissidents and bring them back to China. Jian Xing escaped to Thailand in 2015 after volunteering for a Chinese civil rights website and speaking out about corruption in the local government. He told VOA that before he qualified to move to New Zealand in 2019, four police officers came to his residence in Thailand and took away his belongings without a search warrant. “They told me that they could kill me in Thailand, and nobody would even know,” Xing said. Yong Hua, an exiled artist, fled Thailand in 2019 after being stalked, arrested and sent to re-education camp by Chinese authorities because he said he voiced opposition to what the Chinese government has done to its people over the years. He recalled being constantly on the run to avoid Chinese agents hired by the government. Hua told VOA that a Twitter account with no followers sent him a YouTube video on Aug. 28, saying, the “Thai Chinese Chamber of Commerce” offered a reward of $1,600 (50,000 baht) for him, accusing him of scamming money and saying they will post a “wanted notice” with his photograph on it in Bangkok and other places. “I don’t know if the so-called Chamber of Commerce is real,” Hua said. “I suspect they are the Chinese spies.” A VOA reporter called the phone number on the notice, but no one answered. Some dissidents say the situation in Thailand has become so difficult that some of them are choosing to go back to China “voluntarily” under pressure from the Thai and Chinese governments. Xing refused. “I told them if you deport me forcefully, then you will only get my corpse,” he said. Xing’s incident caused panic among Chinese refugees stranded in Thailand. Other refugees sent the video of police in Xing’s home to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to seek help. By then, Xing had already been sent to an immigration detention center waiting to be repatriated to China. Eventually, he received emergency humanitarian assistance and was resettled in New Zealand. Hua is making a documentary on the plight of Chinese refugees in Thailand waiting to relocate to third countries, which connected him with other refugees. He said many people who have fled China to Thailand, and even among those who qualify for refugee status, are living in very difficult situations. “I think they are suffering too much,” said Hua. “This suffering has two sides. The first one is economic, because you can’t work in Thailand. It’s illegal. Even if you get the refugee card, Thailand doesn’t recognize it. If your passport expired, you can get caught if you stay here. So, they are under a lot of financial pressure,” Hua told VOA. “Some people go to temples, to places that don’t charge them, because they have no money.” Hua said even worse is the second kind of suffering, the mental pressure. “I think refugees all have severe or mild depression. They are not very healthy mentally,” he said. Many refugees have been in Thailand for years waiting to be resettled, and their state of mind is very worrying. Hua said because many people are Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and activists, they are afraid of being followed by people from China. So, they are very nervous and tense. Hua has been to the U.S. Embassy and the UNHCR to seek help and share his experience. He hopes to move to the United States where he thinks he will be safe. Hua said he received a case number from the UNHCR and was told that the second interview would be held next year. But he said the U.N. officer told him there are too many cases like his. Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Category: East
East news. East is the direction toward which the Earth rotates about its axis, and therefore the general direction from which the Sun appears to rise. The practice of praying towards the East is older than Christianity, but has been adopted by this religion as the Orient was thought of as containing mankind’s original home
In Fresh Flare-Up Along India-China Border Both Sides Accuse Each Other of Firing Warning Shots
Tensions increased along the India-China border as both sides accused each other of firing warning shots at their disputed Himalayan boundary, where a military standoff is now in its fifth month. An Indian army statement denied firing shots and blamed China’s military for “provocative activities” to escalate tensions, while the Chinese foreign ministry said the action is being considered a “serious military provocation.” Both sides have a longstanding agreement to not use firearms along the border to prevent conflagrations between their troops, who often stand within meters of each other. The latest face-off occurred along the southern bank of the strategic Pangong Tso Lake, an icy, high altitude lake in Ladakh, where both sides accuse each other of breaching the defacto border known as the “line of actual control.” The flare-up comes days after the defense ministers of the two countries said they had agreed to work toward defusing tensions along their contested border. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday that Indian troops had illegally crossed the line of control and were the first to fire shots. “Indian troops blatantly fired warning shots at our border patrolling troops, who were there for consultation. Our troops were compelled to take measures to stabilize the situation,” Lijian told a news briefing in Beijing. He did not specify what the measures were. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian takes a question at the daily media briefing in Beijing on April 8, 2020.The Indian army denied any transgression into Chinese territory or resorting to any “aggressive means, including firing.” In a statement, it said that Chinese soldiers had tried to surround an Indian military post and had fired a few shots in the air, when the Indian soldiers “dissuaded” them. Saying that Indian troops had “exercised great restraint,” the Indian statement accused the Chinese side of blatantly violating agreements and carrying out “aggressive maneuvers while engagement at military, diplomatic and political level is in progress.” Calling it the first incident of firing along the border in 45 years, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao urged India to “discipline its frontline troops.” That incident took place on the south side of Pangong Tso Lake a week after the Indian army said it had deterred Chinese troops from occupying an area hilltop, which it says is Indian territory. “The Indian army thinks it has given enough way to the Chinese and they have to recover ground somewhat and what they now occupy, they will keep,” says Bharat Karnad, a security analyst at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “The Indian army is fairly serious that it will simply not budge.” The military standoff between the two countries began in May after India accused China of intruding across the line of actual control at several points in the high Himalayas. In mid-June, their worst border clash in decades led to the death of 20 Indian soldiers, dealing a serious blow to their decades-long efforts to maintain peace along their undemarcated border. Since then both sides have held talks at military and diplomatic levels with the aim of disengaging but have failed to make much headway. The highest level political contact between the two countries took place last Friday when the Indian and Chinese defense ministers met in Moscow on the sidelines of a summit. After the meeting, New Delhi said in a statement that both sides had agreed that neither side should take action that “could either complicate the situation or escalate matters in the border areas.” But the situation along their borders continues to be volatile, say analysts.
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US Expanding Restrictions on Chinese Students
U.S. officials are considering broader restrictions against Chinese students attending American schools, as part of a deepening standoff between the two countries.Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hopes that China’s government-funded “Confucius Institutes,” which have branches on American university campuses, will all be shut down by the end of the year.“I think everyone’s coming to see the risk associated with them,” Pompeo said An undergraduate student, left, shows her watercolor painting at a traditional Chinese painting class at the Confucius Institute at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., on May 2, 2018.The crackdown may also target Chinese academics who have relied on state funding for their overseas studies. On August 26, the University of North Texas (UNT) terminated an exchange program for 15 visiting Chinese researchers sponsored by the China Scholarship Council (CSC), a group backed by China’s Ministry of Education.The action marked the first time a United States university cut ties with a Chinese national scholarship fund following the increased attention on academic espionage. In an article published in the university’s newspaper, administrators said they took the action following detailed briefings from federal and local law enforcement.Each of the 15 Chinese government sponsored students received an e-mail from the UNT office of the provost and vice president for academic affairs on August 26. The e-mail stated that the school “has come to a decision to end its relationship with visiting scholars who receive funding from the Chinese Scholarship Council (also known as the Chinese Scholarship Fund).”The scholars have been informed their J-1 visas have also been terminated, leaving them with one month before they have to return to China.Flurry of new restrictionsPompeo said at a news conference last week that the State Department recently wrote to the boards of several U.S. universities to alert them to the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party. He said that these threats may include illegal funding for research, intellectual property theft, intimidation of foreign students, and opaque recruitment.On the same day, the State Department announced that the entry of senior Chinese diplomats to U.S. campuses would require approval from the State Department. Gordon Chang, lawyer and author of The Coming Collapse of China, told VOA that American officials are responding to years of academic and intellectual property theft by China, which largely went overlooked.“They come to U.S. campuses not to learn but to download databases and take information to be used by Beijing,” he said. “So this is a fundamental problem for the United States.”What is the China Scholarship Council?Established in 1996 by the Ministry of Education of China, the CSC provides scholarships for foreign students studying in China and Chinese students studying abroad. These funds are mainly derived from the government.Its official purpose is to “strengthen friendship and understanding between China and the people of the world and promote China’s socialist modernization and world peace.” Experts told VOA that the CSC tends to offer scholarships to senior researchers and postdoctoral students, as well as students studying technologies in fields that are in line with China’s development strategy. These scholars are required to return to China after their studies. Experts warned that the U.S. needs to be vigilant about this strategy.According to a report from the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Diplomacy in July, about 7% of Chinese students studying abroad, or roughly 65,000, received scholarships from the CSC each year.In addition, the report notes that the CSC prioritizes funding for “urgently needed talents serving major national strategies, important industries, key fields, major projects, cutting-edge technologies, and basic research.”The author of the report, Ryan Fedasiuk, research analyst at Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University, told VOA that the number of cooperation projects between the CSC and foreign universities has soared in the past two years.“We found that last year in 2019, the number of programs that the CSC has approved between Chinese universities and elite foreign universities had increased significantly, from about 19 in 2018 to some 120 in 2019,” Fedasiuk said.He also said that the CSC’s job is to try to persuade or in some cases, compel those students to return to China after completing their scholarship programs.“This is done through a variety of incentives,” he said. “In some cases, they simply ask them to return, and the CSC will in some cases award Chinese students who are overseas not otherwise receiving funding from the Chinese government with funds in the hopes that they will return afterward. But in some cases, they do require that applicants for scholarships list financial granters who will be held responsible for the full sum of the award that was paid plus penalties if they don’t return to China after completing their program.”Despite this pressure, however, more than 85% of Chinese doctoral students studying STEM at U.S. universities choose to stay in the U.S., according to the report.
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Nightmare Ends for Hundreds of Rohingya Refugees Stranded at Sea
UN agencies are providing medical aid and other assistance to a group of nearly 300 Rohingya refugees who have been allowed to disembark in Indonesia after being stranded at sea for more than seven months. Reports say approximately 330 Rohingya refugees embarked on their journey in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh early this year. Their odyssey finally ended early Monday after surviving a sea journey that lasted more than seven months. Most of the refugees are women and children. After landing in northern Aceh, Indonesia they told aid workers that more than 30 of the passengers had died en route. The UN refugee agency reports the refugees recounted the desperate conditions aboard their sea vessel and their anguish at not knowing when or if they would ever be rescued. In Video Testimony, Ex-Myanmar Soldiers Confess to Atrocities Against Rohingya MuslimsRecorded accounts, the first ever offered by Myanmar soldiers, match descriptions provided by dozens of witnesses to UN human rights investigatorsUNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch tells VOA the refugees are describing a traumatic ordeal. “It is really, really troubling that seven months, desperate refugees have been adrift in the sea without finding a safe port or safe land to disembark,” said Baloch. “Refugees have told UNHCR staff that they departed Bangladesh in early February this year and tried to land repeatedly in different countries without success.” He says UNHCR has not been able to verify details of the refugees’ accounts as yet and is continuing to seek further information. “UNHCR has access to the refugee arrivals and is interviewing them with assistance of interpreters as required” said Baloch. “At this stage, our main priority is the safety and health of the people, which consist of many vulnerable women and children.” UNHCR and International Organization for Migration aid workers are supporting local authorities in Aceh to assess the needs of the refugees. They are testing all arrivals for COVID-19 as required by Indonesian authorities.The agencies say they also are providing first aid, medical and trauma care, as well as shelter, water and other essential needs.
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China Launches Data Security Initiative
China’s foreign minister announced Tuesday the start of a global data security initiative, outlining principles that should be followed in areas ranging from personal information to espionage.Wang Yi announced the initiative in a video as part of conference on international cooperation. The initiative comes as the U.S. continues to put pressure on China’s largest technology companies and tries to convince countries around the world to block them. China’s initiative has eight key points including not using technology to impair other countries’ critical infrastructure or steal data and making sure service providers don’t install backdoors in their products and illegally obtain user data.Wang, speaking in Beijing, also said the initiative seeks an end to activities that “infringe upon personal information” and opposes using technology to conduct mass surveillance against other states.The initiative says companies should also respect the laws of host countries and stop coercing domestic firms to store data generated overseas in their own territory. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month unveiled the “Clean Network” program, saying it is aimed at protecting citizen privacy and sensitive information from “malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.” Many points of the initiative appear to address some of those accusations. In an apparent reference to Pompeo’s comments, Zhao said,” China has always been broad and level, open and cooperative. If all countries, especially those intentionally smearing and slandering China with wild allegations, could make such a promise like China, it will be beneficial to the mutual trust and cooperation on digital security issues among all countries.”The U.S. has accused China’s technology companies of posing national security threats by collecting user data and sending it back to Beijing. Companies, including Huawei and ByteDance, have denied those allegations.It is unclear if any other countries have signed on to China’s initiative and how it will be implemented and policed.
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Don’t Ignore North Korea Human Rights, UN Says
Negotiations with North Korea have been stalled for months, but if and when they resume, the United States and South Korea should ensure the talks incorporate concerns about North Korean human rights abuses, the United Nations’ human rights office in Seoul said Tuesday. Activist groups have long complained that human rights were not discussed during the 2018-19 North Korea talks, which focused on eliminating North Korea’s nuclear weapons and improving Pyongyang’s relations with Washington and Seoul.”Human rights issues have so far not been part of this process, and the voices of the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, including women, have been absent,” said a report published Tuesday by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Seoul. The paper, presented at the South Korean government-hosted Korea Global Forum for Peace, said Seoul and Washington should “integrate human rights into the peace and denuclearization talks” and “promote a participatory and inclusive peace process” by involving escapees living outside North Korea. Escapee complaints The report was based on interviews with 63 people who recently left North Korea, mostly in 2018 and 2019. Many expressed concerns that Pyongyang’s rights abuses have been ignored.“This is a disappointment to escapees living in South Korea because, in the past, both the United States and South Korea raised North Korea’s human rights issues but, with the start of the summits, the human rights agenda has disappeared,” lamented one escapee quoted in the report. Since the start of 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has met three times with U.S. President Donald Trump and conducted three summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. North Korea eventually walked away from the talks, after the United States refused to relax sanctions and provide security guarantees. Some members of the Trump administration have raised concerns about North Korean human rights abuses. But Trump himself rarely mentions the issue.FILE – North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (L) and US President Donald Trump shake hands during a meeting on the south side of the Military Demarcation Line that divides North and South Korea.Rationale South Korea’s left-leaning government also shies away from criticizing North Korean human rights abuses. Instead, Seoul prefers to focus on expanding ties with Pyongyang, hoping that will someday lead to a unified Korea that would respect human rights. A more aggressive approach, they argue, not only prevents reunification but also could lead to hostilities. “We cannot be too competitive in discussing this human rights issue,” said Kyung-ok Do, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification. “That will…ignite resistance on the North Korean side and put us even further away from peace and the protection of human rights.”North Korea consistently ranks at or near the very bottom of most global human rights rankings, but often becomes enraged when other countries or international bodies mention its rights violations.Earlier this year, North Korea lashed out at defector activists in South Korea who often float anti-Pyongyang leaflets and other materials into North Korea. At one point, North Korea demolished its de facto embassy with the South, citing the leaflets as a pretext.South Korea crackdownSouth Korea responded by carrying out a wide-ranging crackdown on North Korea-focused rights groups, including many run by defectors. Many of the NGOs have said the crackdown risks stifling the entire North Korean human rights movement in South Korea.Officials with the U.N. Human Rights Office in Seoul have criticized Seoul’s NGO moves, saying it is important to continue highlighting the concerns of North Korean escapees. Among the urgent human rights issues to be addressed, according to the escapees mentioned in the U.N.’s latest report: discrimination based on family background, torture and ill-treatment, sexual abuse, inhumane conditions in prisons and detention facilities, and the existence of political prisons. “I strongly suggest that discussions on human rights issues take place,” said one escapee quoted in the report. “Without human rights issues discussed, no other issues can be properly addressed.”
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Australian Researchers Unveil Environmentally Friendly Plan to Power Coal Plants
Researchers in Australia say they have developed a technique to make coal-fired power plants run without coal. They say new thermal energy storage blocks can heat water, which, in turn, produces steam to power turbines using existing power station infrastructure. Researchers at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales say their thermal blocks would allow coal-fired power stations to run coal-free, delivering clean, renewable electricity. The bricks are made of graphite and metals, including zinc and aluminum, plus other undisclosed materials. The Australian team says they store energy from solar and wind farms in the form of heat, which can make steam to run electricity-generating turbines. The aim is to fit the technology to existing power stations where, instead of burning coal, the blocks would generate power without pollution. Professor of engineering at Australia’s University of Newcastle Erich Kisi says the technology would allow coal-fired stations to phase out the use of the fossil fuel. “As coal burning is reduced, storage of renewable as thermal energy is ramped up. The final thermal energy storage volume is comparable in size to the existing boiler houses, and that these massive power stations were themselves built with six or seven decade-old technology, I do not think we should baulk at the challenge of renewing their vitality with 21st century technology,” Kisi said. Engineers believe the Australian-made blocks could be used in combination with other energy storage options, such as lithium batteries and hydroelectricity, to provide reliable power. The university team says its graphite and metal invention has been proven in the laboratory. In 2019, it set up the company MGA Thermal, which aims to sell the technology. In partnership with a Swiss company, a full-scale trial of the bricks at a modified power plant is expected to start next year. Like any new technology, the blocks’ inventors concede they must be financially viable before they could be expected for wide use in commercial projects. Australia is one of the world’s worst per capita emitters of greenhouse gases. That’s in large part because of its reliance on cheap supplies of domestic coal to generate its electricity.
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Fearing Arrest, Two Australian Journalists Leave China
Two Australian journalists left China overnight Monday to Tuesday, fearing they would be arrested, their employers said Tuesday. Bill Birtles, Beijing correspondent for the ABC channel, and Michael Smith, Shanghai correspondent for the Australian Financial Review, took refuge for several days in Australia’s embassy in Beijing, before leaving China accompanied of Australian diplomats. They arrived in Sydney on Tuesday morning, according to ABC. The hasty departures come after the arrest last month for undetermined reasons of an Australian business journalist working for the Chinese state-run English-language channel CGTN, Cheng Lei. This arrest greatly strained relations between Beijing and Canberra. According to ABC, Birtles was advised last week to leave the country by the Australian Foreign Office. But shortly before his return to Australia, scheduled for last Thursday, seven Chinese police officers came to his home in the middle of the night and informed him that he was going to be questioned on a “national security matter” and that he had no right to leave the country. After this, the journalist took refuge in his embassy in Beijing. Birtles was subsequently questioned by Chinese police, in the presence of two Australian diplomats, and allowed to leave the country. Smith was also visited by police at his home the same night, according to AFR, which added pressure on the two journalists was linked to the arrest of Cheng last month. Smith took refuge in Australia’s Shanghai consulate. Relations between Australia and China have deteriorated sharply over the past two years. Canberra then decided to act against what was seen as Beijing’s growing interference in the affairs of Australia. Canberra also caused fury in Beijing a few months ago for its requests to investigate the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan. China has since taken steps to reduce Australian imports and encouraged its students and tourists to avoid Australia.
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Thailand’s Conservative Government Grapples with Royal Reckoning
Thailand’s largely decentralized protest movement and evolving internet landscape will make it tough for the country’s conservative government to mute mounting calls to rein in the country’s powerful monarchy, observers say.Human rights lawyer Anon Nampa broke a decades-long taboo by challenging the king’s powers in public at a pro-democracy protest in the capital, Bangkok, on August 3. At another protest a week later, activists unveiled a bold 10-point plan to reform the monarchy that would, among other things, bar the royal palace from expressing political opinions and repeal a defamation law that can land any critic of the king in jail for up to 15 years.Their demands have ricocheted around the country at student-led protests calling for a new constitution and an end to the government of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha, who led a successful military coup in 2014 and prevailed in an election last year widely seen as rigged. His government has staked much of its reputation on a promise to protect and preserve the monarchy, which many Thais still revere as semi-divine.Young and restlessYounger Thais are less enamored. They make up the bulk of the pro-democracy protesters and see a royal palace playing politics well beyond its constitutional constraints to maintain the status quo.Prayut had warned the protesters to steer clear of criticizing the monarchy back in June and said they “really went too far” after the August 10 rally where activists read out their 10-point reform plan.Since then authorities have arrested more than a dozen activists and charged them with a spate of offenses from sedition to incitement. Anon, the human rights lawyer, was among them.Anon Nampa, left, and Panupong Jadnok, right, two of the leaders of recent anti-government protests, are seen after being granted a bail outside the criminal court in Bangkok, Thailand, Aug. 8, 2020.But David Streckfuss, an independent scholar and author on Thai history and politics, said the arrests are unlikely to stop a movement that seems to lack a clear central leadership.”These people are representatives of a movement, not so much leaders where you can take out the top tier and everything goes quiet,” he told VOA.Now that “the genie is out of the bottle,” Streckfuss added, the government will have to decide whether to try and manage a public debate on the monarchy that has been brewing below the surface for years or to crush it.”I would say that it would require a great deal of suppression at this point to quiet what’s been on a lot of people’s mind for … more than a decade,” he said.The dilemmaThe military has tried to smother dissent before. In the wake of the 2014 coup, Prime Minister Prayut’s junta rounded up hundreds of activists, academics and journalists it saw as threats, with some success.The junta then spent the next five years preparing for the 2019 election to make Thailand at least look something like a democracy again. Streckfuss said Prayut’s rebranded regime may be reluctant to throw all that work away with more mass arrests and will at least think twice before it does. There was also the risk, he added, that a much heavier hand from authorities will backfire by drawing even more people to the protesters’ cause.If the calls for royal reform do continue to grow and spread, they could also spark violence, warned Pavin Chachavalpongpun, an associate professor at Japan’s Kyoto University who studies Thai politics.”I think the government will continue to rely on legal instruments for now. But should the students intensify their protests then there is a possibility of the use of force,” he said. “The students [will] not back down on their demand. So it is a great test of the government’s patience.”Titipol Phakdeewanich, head of the political science faculty at Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani University, said the arrests won’t stop the reform calls at the protests but may still slow them down. He said security forces recently threatened to sue one of his own students over a Facebook post about the monarchy.Others have already been sued or arrested for posting critical comments or merely sharing news about the king, Maha Vajiralongkorn.”This actually makes students quite scared of the consequence,” Titipol said.A member of Thai right-wing group “Thai Pakdee” (Loyal Thai) holds a picture of King Maha Vajiralongkorn with Queen Suthida attend a rally in support of the government and the monarchy, in Bangkok, Thailand, Aug. 30, 2020. Compared with taking to the streets, though, he still sees the internet as a relative “safe zone” where talk of reforming the monarchy has mushroomed and will prove even tougher to quell.A digital revolutionOn August 24 Facebook acceded to government demands to block access in Thailand to the “Royal Marketplace,” a Facebook account critical of the monarchy with more than one million members set up by Pavin, or face legal action under the country’s Computer Crimes Act. By the end of the month, a new account under a similar name had attracted nearly all the old members back — with access in Thailand.Over the past several months, tens of thousands of Thai have also switched from Twitter to an alternative social media platform, Minds, over reports that Twitter users posting comments criticizing the king were getting visits from police. Twitter’s new privacy policy had as well raised fears that it would be more prone to sharing data with the government.”The government cannot entirely stop this generation to think or to look for alternative sources of information,” Titipol said. “It is not that easy in the 21st century with all kinds of technologies and different platforms of social media.”The spread of encrypted messaging also makes it harder for authorities to track and block accounts selectively, “so the landscape [has] changed,” said Arthit Suriyawongkul, co-founder of the Thai Netizen Network, a digital rights advocacy group.A government could in theory block access to entire platforms, as in China, or the way Thailand itself did with Facebook for a few days after the 2014 coup. But Arthit said the social media giants have become so vital to Thai businesses, and to the government’s own propaganda, that the authorities will hesitate to pull that trigger.Blunt force, he said, “no longer works in the new setting of the internet.”
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Philippine President Pardons US Marine Convicted in Killing of Transgender Woman
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday granted an absolute pardon to a U.S. Marine convicted in the 2014 killing of a transgender woman, days after his office blocked a court order for the marine’s early release.Lance Corporal Joseph Scott Pemberton was convicted of homicide in December 2015. In October the year before, he met Jennifer Laude at a bar in Olongapo, about 150 kilometers from the capital of Manila. They went to a nearby motel, and just 30 minutes after checking in, staff found Laude dead, slumped over the toilet.Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, said that the pardon didn’t wipe out Pemberton’s conviction.“The president has erased whatever punishment that Pemberton still faced,” he said, according to The New York Times. “What was never erased in the mind of the president is the conviction of Pemberton, who is a killer.”’
Roque, a former lawyer for Laude’s family, released a harsher statement last week when a trial court ordered Pemberton’s early release.“As former Private Prosecutor for the Laude family, I deplore the short period of imprisonment meted on Pemberton who killed a Filipino under the most gruesome manner,” Roque tweeted. “Laude’s death personifies the death of Philippine sovereignty.”Statement on the early telease of Pemberton: As former Private Prosecutor for the Laude family, I deplore the short period of imprisonment meted on Pemberton who killed a Filipino under the most gruesome manner. Laude’s death personifies the death of Philippine sovereignty— Harry Roque (@attyharryroque) September 2, 2020Foreign Minister Teodoro Locsin said the president’s pardon was meant “to do justice.”
“Cutting matters short over what constitutes time served, and since where he was detained was not in the prisoner’s control—and to do justice—the President has granted an absolute pardon to Pemberton,” tweeted Locsin. Cutting matters short over what constitutes time served, and since where he was detained was not in the prisoner’s control—and to do justice—the President has granted an absolute pardon to Pemberton. Here at the Palace.— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) September 7, 2020
Lawyers for Laude’s family, alongside human rights advocates, criticized the move as an effort to curry favor with the U.S.“There is so much disrespect in the manner by which Jennifer was killed — reflective of the disrespect the U.S. has for the Philippines’ democracy and sovereignty,” said Virginia Lacsa Suarez, a lawyer for Laude’s family, according to The New York Times.Cristina Palabay, of human rights group Karapatan, told Reuters, “We view this as not only a mockery of justice but also a blatant display of servility to U.S. interest.”
For his part, Duterte defended the decision as a fair one, in a televised address Monday.
“If there is a time when you are called upon to be fair, be fair,” he said.
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Stranded Refugees Plead with Australia to Ease COVID-19 Border Closures
Campaigners are urging Australia to restart a refugee program that has left thousands of people stranded overseas. Australia closed its international borders in March because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Refugee Council of Australia has estimated that about 4,000 refugees with humanitarian visas allowing entry into Australia are currently stranded overseas. They are unable to travel because Australia’s international border was closed to foreign nationals in March to curb the spread of COVID-19. David Odeesh is an Iraqi refugee in Australia. His sister and her family were granted humanitarian visas in January and had planned to reunite with him in March. The family had escaped the Islamic State terror group in their home city of Mosul in northern Iraq and fled to Lebanon, where they remain. Odeesh says his sister is struggling to survive in a small apartment in Beirut and he is pleading with the authorities in Canberra to let the family come. “They have all the documents ready, all the approval, and, unfortunately, what happened this pandemic — COVID-19 — everything stops, the border closed. I hope [the] Australian government hear our voice and change this decision,” he said. The family has said it has applied twice for special permission from the government in Canberra to fly to Australia. The requests have been denied. Australia’s international borders are expected to stay closed until 2021. Campaigners believe refugees should, like citizens and permanent residents, be allowed into the country. The Department for Home Affairs has appeared unmoved. It has said the border restrictions “have been successful in slowing the spread of coronavirus in Australia”.
12,700 refugees were resettled in Australia in 2018. The majority were from Iraq, with others escaping Myanmar, Syria and Afghanistan. The government has said Australia has one of the world’s “most generous” resettlement programs and has given sanctuary to almost 900,000 refugees since the end of the World War II. However, its detention of asylum seekers who try to reach Australia by sea in offshore camps in the South Pacific has drawn repeated international condemnation. In response, Canberra has insisted the policies were a deterrent, and have prevented migrants risking their lives crossing treacherous waters in unseaworthy vessels.
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Typhoon Haishen Lashes S. Korea, Takes Aim at N. Korea
A powerful typhoon was barreling up the already soaked Korean Peninsula Monday, toppling trees, causing small landslides and knocking out power to thousands of South Koreans before taking aim at flood-prone North Korea. Around 17,000 South Korean homes lost electricity and at least 48 structures were destroyed across the country, as Typhoon Haishen – meaning “sea god” in Chinese – made landfall in the southeastern city of Ulsan and moved northward up the east coast. Television broadcasts showed flooded streets and overflowing rivers in the southern tip of South Korea. Local broadcaster KBS reported small landslides near apartment buildings on Geoje Island off the southeast coast. South Korean officials have not reported any deaths. However, at least four people were missing, and dozens were injured after the storm swept through southern Japan, according to local media. Around 300,000 Japanese homes were without power as of Monday afternoon. Later Monday, Haishen is expected to pummel North Korea, which is still recovering from another major typhoon last week. The storm is set to make landfall in the northeastern port city of Chongjin, North Korea’s third largest city.A couple take photos along a sea wall of the waves brought by Typhoon Haishen in the eastern port city of Sokcho on September 7, 2020.Ahead of the typhoon, North Korean state television broadcast live reports showing waves striking the shore in Tongchon County, which borders South Korea. Residents there who live near the shore have been evacuated, state TV said. Haishen is much bigger than Typhoon Maysak, which battered North Korea last week. According to North Korean state media, Maysak destroyed more than 1,000 dwellings and caused dozens of casualties. The Korean Peninsula usually sees just one typhoon per year but has been hit by three in the past two weeks. The situation has been made worse by a historically wet monsoon season, which ended last month. At one point this summer, South Korea saw 49 consecutive days of rain. The storms are especially dire for North Korea, which is vulnerable to flooding. The country lacks adequate infrastructure and suffers from widespread deforestation, resulting in part from people cutting down trees for fuel or firewood or to clear land for farming. Media in North Korea – a tightly controlled, quasi-Stalinist state – are not usually transparent about natural disasters or other calamities. State television usually only broadcasts prepackaged reports during a set schedule. But during recent storms, North Korean state TV has been more flexible, sometimes even airing live reports during the overnight hours. On Sunday, state media reported that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited an area recently hit by Typhoon Maysak and fired a top local official there. The storms are an added stress for impoverished North Korea, which is already dealing with a sagging economy because of the coronavirus pandemic and international sanctions over its nuclear program.
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Second Typhoon in Less Than a Week Hits S. Korea
Typhoon Haishen made landfall on the South Korean coast Monday, a day after battering southern Japan. Forecasters at the Korea Meteorological Administration say Haishen reached the southern city of Ulsan with maximum sustained winds of 126 kilometers an hour. The storm has already affected the nearby port city of Busan, cutting off power to thousands of homes, forcing authorities to evacuate nearly 1,000 residents and grounding as many as 300 passenger flights to and from the region. The weather agency says Haishen is expected to weaken to a tropical storm within the next 24 hours. Haishen, which means “sea god” in Chinese, left nearly 500,000 households without power on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu Sunday. Nearly 2 million people were ordered to evacuate several southern Japanese islands as the typhoon bashed the region. At least 32 people were injured on Kyushu. Haishen is the second typhoon to hit southern Japan and the Korean Peninsula in less than a week. Typhoon Maysak flooded homes and vehicles and knocked down trees and traffic lights after making landfall in Busan last Thursday, leaving at least two people dead. Maysak was also blamed for the sinking of a cattle ship, which capsized and sank in the East China sea Wednesday. At least two of the 43 crewmen on board were rescued. The ship was also carrying nearly 6,000 cattle, bound for China.
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New Parliament Tests Singapore’s Appetite for Opposition Politics
The latest session of Singapore’s Parliament opened in August with something it’s never seen before: the newly created role of Leader of the Opposition. Pritam Singh, of the Workers’ Party, took the position following an election that political analysts say signaled dissatisfaction with a system long dominated by a single party. The July general election gave the Workers’ Party four more seats for a total of 10 in Parliament, compared to 83 for the ruling People’s Action Party. The Progress Singapore Party took two seats. While Singapore has an open society, it has been run by a single party since independence from Britain. Voters have expressed a desire for political pluralism before, but political analysts say there are signs that this time may be different. Dennis Tan, Singh’s fellow party member in Parliament, last week said voters “embraced the need for a diversity of viewpoints,” in addition to the views of the People’s Action Party, which has largely ruled since 1965. “I hope the ruling party can start to accept that,” Tan said.People’s Action Party Secretary-General and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, right, verifies his identity with a polling official at the Alexandra Primary School polling center in Singapore, July 10, 2020.A record high of 11 parties participated in July’s general election. The PAP won 61% of the vote, near its all-time low of 60% support in the 2011 election. After this most recent election, Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister of Singapore and the secretary general of the PAP, acknowledged the public’s apparent desire for more “opposition presence in Parliament.” Heading into the new term, Lee told his fellow party members to brace for vigorous debate. “With more opposition MPs in the new parliament, and a leader of the opposition formally designated, we must expect sharper questioning and debate in Parliament,” he wrote in a letter to them. Political analyst Joshua Kurlantzick said the election suggests a “viable” opposition may form in the Southeast Asian nation. “In the longer term, the stage may be set for more contested politics,” Kurlantzick wrote in an analysis for the Council on Foreign Relations, where he is a senior fellow for Southeast Asia. He predicted that weaknesses in the ruling party could create openings for other parties. “Besides the PAP’s struggle to control COVID-19, which (might) be a shorter-term issue, the persistently high cost of living, the hard-hit Singaporean white-collar workforce, the challenges with Singapore’s existing housing model, and other deeply entrenched socioeconomic problems will continue to challenge the PAP government,” he said. Kenneth Paul Tan, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said the Singapore election results demonstrate a wish for more debate. “I do think that they signal interests and concerns that many voters consider to be insufficiently audible in policymaking debates,” he told VOA. “Also, the results signal broad dissatisfaction with the structural advantages and unfair tactics that the ruling party uses to secure its electoral dominance.” The Progress Singapore Party said it would use its role as an opposition party to bring new ideas to the table. “Over the course of the next few years, we look forward to more information and resources provided to the opposition for it to function as an effective voice and idea generator,” said Leong Mun Wai, one of two politicians who took up a seat in Parliament this session representing the Progress Singapore Party.
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Typhoon Haishen Lashes Southern Japan
Japan ordered 1.8 million people to evacuate as a powerful typhoon bashed the southern part of the country Sunday.Typhoon Haishen brought strong winds and rain to remote southern islands of Japan Sunday and appeared to be weakening slightly as it approached the island of Kyushu, but authorities still warned the storm could bring record levels of rainfall and result in landslides.
Cattle Ship with Crew of 43 Sinks Off JapanSearch on for missing from Philippines, New Zealand and Australia after one rescued during typhoonTens of thousands of homes have already lost power, Reuters reported.”This typhoon is headed toward and may potentially make landfall in Kyushu, bringing record rains, winds, waves and high tides,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a meeting with cabinet ministers earlier in the day.”I am asking that people exercise the utmost caution.”The typhoon could move onward to the Korean peninsula, Japan’s meteorological agency said Sunday. The news comes as North Korea still grapples with the effects of Typhoon Maysak last week.
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Lockdown Extended as Australia’s Second-Biggest City Battles Second COVID-19 Wave
A strict coronavirus lockdown in the Australian city of Melbourne is being extended by two weeks. The Victoria state capital has been at the center of a second wave of infections. Authorities have said the restrictions will be eased in the months ahead if rates of new infections continue to fall.Melbourne is living through Australia’s toughest coronavirus lockdown. It was reimposed in July and is being extended because the number of new COVID-19 cases has not dropped enough. The lockdown will stay in place until the end of the month.Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews warned that without these strict measures the state risks a “third wave” of infections.He said a cautious approach is the only way forward.“We cannot run out of lockdown,” he said. “We have to take steady and safe steps to find that COVID-normal and make sure that in opening up, we can stay open.”There will be some minor easing of regulations in Melbourne, a city of 5 million.A nighttime curfew will start an hour later, playgrounds will reopen, and more outdoor exercise will be allowed. Bigger changes will only come in the months ahead if the number of new daily COVID-19 cases continues to fall. Officials say if they drop to below five by October 26, the curfew would be ended.Outside Melbourne, the rest of Victoria state will have restrictions eased slightly more quickly.Dozens of people were arrested Saturday at anti-lockdown protests in Australia’s major cities. The demonstrations were driven largely by fringe groups promoting virus-related conspiracy theories.Their actions have been described by the authorities as “selfish.” The Victoria government says obeying the restrictions is “the only option” to ultimately bringing the lockdown to an end.Victoria is at the center of Australia’s coronavirus crisis, accounting for three-quarters of total infections and 90% of all fatalities.The pandemic, and the closure of many businesses during lockdowns across the country, has sent the Australian economy into recession for the first time since 1991. Unemployment is rising, and the authorities are warning that the recovery could take years.Australia has recorded about 26,000 COVID-19 cases, and more than 750 deaths.
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Xinhua: Reusable Experimental Spacecraft Has Returned Successfully to Earth
An experimental, reusable Chinese spacecraft returned to its designated landing site Sunday after two days in orbit, China’s official Xinhua news agency reported.The agency described the flight as successful, adding that it “marked the country’s important breakthrough in reusable spacecraft research” that could offer low-cost round trips to space for peaceful purposes.Chinese state media have not yet published images or video footage of the launch or landing of the spacecraft. They have not provided details on the technologies tested, either.Chinese social media and some commentators have compared the craft to the U.S. Air Force X-37B, an autonomous, Boeing spaceplane that can stay in orbit for long periods of time before returning to Earth on its own.The Chinese spacecraft was launched into orbit Friday from the northwestern Jiuquan Satellite Center with a Long March 2F, the type of rocket that has been used to put crewed and uncrewed Shenzhou spacecraft into orbit.
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N. Korea’s Kim Orders Thousands to Help Typhoon Recovery
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered 12,000 elite members of his ruling party based in Pyongyang to help with recovery efforts in two rural provinces lashed by a powerful typhoon, state media reported Sunday.Typhoon Maysak brought days of heavy downpours to the country’s east coast earlier this week even as the North was still reeling from earlier flooding and typhoon damage, and another storm is forecast to barrel through the peninsula by Tuesday.Natural disasters tend to have a greater impact in the North due to its creaking infrastructure, and the country is vulnerable to flooding as many mountains and hills have long been deforested.More than 1,000 homes were destroyed by Maysak and public buildings and farmland were inundated with floodwater across North and South Hamgyong provinces, the official KCNA news agency reported.Kim inspected the damage on Saturday and held a policy meeting on disaster relief efforts, KCNA said.He also dismissed the chairman of the South Hamgyong provincial party committee, the report added.Photos carried by Sunday’s official Rodong Sinmun newspaper showed Kim standing in front of destroyed homes and toppled trees as he discussed the situation with officials.In a two-page handwritten open letter to members of the ruling Workers’ Party in Pyongyang, Kim said around 12,000 members from the capital will be sent to the two provinces to help with the recovery ahead of a key holiday next month.North Korea will mark the 75th anniversary of the foundation of the party on October 10.”We cannot let a lot of people in South Hamgyong Province and North Hamgyong Province who newly suffered damage spend the holiday homeless,” Kim was quoted as saying in the letter, which was carried by the Rodong Sinmun.The damage was an “urgent situation which needs to be tackled without even a moment’s delay”, he added.The report did not say how many were injured, missing or dead.In 2016 at least 138 North Koreans died after torrential rain triggered major floods, the United Nations said at the time.In the summer of 2012 more than 160 people were killed by a massive rainstorm.
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No Sign of End to Far East Anti-Kremlin Rallies After Nearly Two Months
Weekly rallies against the Kremlin in Russia’s Far East showed no sign of ending after nearly two months, with around 10,000 people taking to the streets on Saturday in one of the longest-lasting movements of provincial discontent of the Putin era.Though mainly focused on a provincial political crisis in the Khabarovsk region more than 6,000 km (3,700 miles) east of Moscow, demonstrations have also seen support for suspected poison victim Alexei Navalny and opposition protests in Belarus.Residents of Khabarovsk started holding weekly rallies after the July 9 detention of Sergei Furgal, the region’s popular governor, on murder charges he denies. His supporters say the detention is politically motivated.The Khabarovsk demonstrations are one of the longest sustained expressions of discontent with the Kremlin, outside Moscow, during President Vladimir Putin’s 21 years in power.One protester on Sunday carried a placard accusing Putin of “coming to Furgal with handcuffs, to Navalny with poison.” Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner, is being treated in Germany for what medics there say was poisoning with a nerve agent in Russia. Moscow says it has seen no evidence he was poisoned.Some of the protesters in Khabarovsk carried the red-and-white flag that protesters in Belarus are using to signal their opposition to Moscow-backed leader Alexander Lukashenko.
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North Korea May Be Preparing Launch of Submarine Missile, Experts Say
Satellite imagery of a North Korean shipyard on Friday shows activity suggestive of preparations for a test of a medium-range submarine-launched ballistic missile, a U.S. think tank reported Friday.The Center for Strategic and International Studies said the images it published on its website of North Korea’s Sinpo shipyard showed several vessels within a secure boat basin, one of which resembled vessels previously used to tow a submersible test stand barge out to sea.It said the activity was “suggestive, but not conclusive, of preparations for an upcoming test of a Pukguksong-3 submarine launched ballistic missile from the submersible test stand barge.”North Korea said last October it had successfully test-fired a Pukguksong-3, a new submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), from the sea as part of efforts to contain external threats and bolster self-defense.That launch was seen by analysts as the most provocative by North Korea since it entered dialog with the United States over its nuclear weapons and missile programs in 2018.North Korea has suspended long-range missile and nuclear tests since 2017, but efforts led by U.S. President Donald Trump to persuade it to give up its nuclear and missile programs have achieved little.There was no immediate comment from the State Department or the Pentagon on the CSIS report.At a news conference earlier Friday, Trump hailed his relationship with North Korea, saying that when he was elected people had predicted he would be at war with the country within a week.”In the meantime, we’ve gotten along with them. We didn’t get to war,” he said.Trump has held up the absence of intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests by North Korea since 2017 as a success from his diplomacy and has sought to play down numerous shorter-range tests in the period.”North Korea already tested a PKS-3 SLBM last October. And it didn’t cross Trump’s red line then and is unlikely to this time. Trump won’t care,” Vipin Narang, a non-proliferation expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote on Twitter.South Korea’s military said the Pukguksong-3 tested last year flew 450 kilometers and reached an altitude of 910 kilometers and would have had a range of about 1,300 kilometers on a standard trajectory.News of the activity at Sinpo comes amid signs that North Korea may be preparing for a major military parade in October, which some analysts believe could be used to show off new missiles as the country has done at such events in the past.
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Foreign Cyber Attackers Continue to Menace Australia
Australian businesses and government departments continue to be targeted by cyberattacks by a “sophisticated state-based actor,” according to senior officials in Canberra. They have insisted the threat is intensifying and could interfere in Australia’s economy and political systems.Australian Defense Minister Linda Reynolds on Thursday warned that cyberattacks were blurring the lines between war and peace. She has said malicious activity targeting Australia had increased in recent months.Her comments came as Australia’s first annual cyber threat report, compiled by intelligence officials, was released. The Australian Cyber Security Center said it received almost 60,000 reports of cyber-crime in the past year — or one every 10 minutes.The spectrum of offenses is broad. At one end the report says, there are opportunistic cybercriminals after companies’ and individuals’ money. At the other end “are sophisticated and very well-resourced state-based actors who are seeking to interfere” in Australia’s affairs.Reynolds said the threat is getting worse.“Cyber-enabled activities have the potential to drive disinformation, and also directly support interference in our economy, interference in our political system, and also in what we see as critical infrastructure, but more widely across many businesses and organizations in our economy,” she said.Canberra won’t reveal who is behind the cyberattacks, but intelligence sources are blaming China for the intrusions.In June, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the country had suffered a large-scale cyberattack across “all levels of government, industry, political organizations, education [and] health.”Officials have said that in the intervening period the attacks have continued.This week, Rachel Noble, the head of the Australian Signals Directorat, a government intelligence agency, gave a rare speech. She warned it was becoming “near impossible” for agencies to successfully fight crime and espionage.Civil liberties groups have said expanding the powers of Australia’s spy agencies would undermine privacy and could lead to an abuse of authority.
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String of High-Level Foreign Visits Boosts Diplomatic Visibility for an Isolated Taiwan
A flurry of high-level visits from foreign officials and legislators has pushed Taiwan’s international visibility to a new peak, despite chronic opposition from China, analysts in Taipei say, and the boost has raised people’s confidence that their normally isolated island is getting international respect.Scholars caution, though, that the run of encounters will not give Taiwan additional, formal diplomatic recognition nor earn it a seat in international bodies.A 90-member parliamentary delegation from the Czech Republic is visiting Taiwan this week through Friday. Delegation head and Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil met Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen and told legislators in Taipei that he was “Taiwanese.”Last month, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar became Washington’s highest-ranking official visitor to Taiwan since the 1970s. A Japanese legislative group led by former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori came just after Azar’s trip.International visibilityVisits such as these have special meaning in Taiwan because China urges its more than 170 diplomatic allies worldwide to avoid relations with the island. China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, subject to eventual unification despite widespread opposition among Taiwanese. The two sides have been separately ruled since the Chinese civil war of the 1940s, when Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists lost to the Communists and rebased their government in Taiwan.“Certainly, Taiwan’s international visibility has been raised and we have received a lot of empathy if not solid support coming from Washington, but also from European capitals, and I don’t think it will turn into a war [with China] across the Taiwan Strait as a result,” said Lin Chong-pin, a retired strategic studies professor in Taiwan. “So, it adds to the sense that Taiwan is a sovereign country.”The recent visitors lauded Taiwan’s containment of COVID-19, with cases now at a cumulative 489. Taiwan throttled the outbreak early in the year through border closures, contact tracing and checks on flights from the disease origin in China.Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Thursday called results of the Czech delegation’s trip “fruitful” and said relations would become more “diverse and comprehensive.”Overseas attention to Taiwan has stoked confidence among ordinary Taiwanese, who are used to Chinese officials urging that foreign officials avoid Taiwan – and getting their way because of China’s global economic clout. Taiwan has added to the diplomatic momentum over the past two months by announcing the reopening of a representative office in Guam and plans for a new one in France.China has raised questions in parts of the world this year over perceptions it fumbled the world’s first COVID-19 outbreak and that its maritime expansion violates international law. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned that the Czech delegation leader would pay a “heavy price” for his Taiwan trip.“In addition to the Czech Republic, I think many countries in the world that were once economically dependent on China are now rethinking their relationship with China, and China is gradually not favored,” said Bernie Huang, 31, a Taipei high school teacher.“The disfavor of China in the world is beneficial for Taiwan to maintain foreign relations,” Huang said, reflecting the view of many citizens.“The Taiwanese government should definitely seize this promising opportunity,” he said.’Makes me proud’Officials in Taiwan will get a boost in trust from citizens via the foreign visits, said Huang Kwei-bo, vice dean of the international affairs college at National Chengchi University in Taipei.“Taiwanese people will think, look, people have come from the U.S., the Czech Republic and Japan, so I think it helps Taiwanese people’s confidence in the government of Tsai Ing-wen,” he said.Ruby Liu, 30, who works for a magazine publisher in Taipei, said the number of foreign visitors interested in learning about Taiwan’s disease prevention “makes me proud.”“In the past, Taiwan is isolated by the world,” Liu, 30, said.“We should grasp the opportunities to evaluate our international status,” she added.The recent visits, however, signal no “substantive” change in Taiwan’s foreign relations, Huang Kwei-bo said.Taiwan, for example, still has just 15 formal diplomatic allies, mostly small, impoverished countries in the Americas and South Pacific. Japan, the Czech Republic and the United States all formally recognize China.Recognition for Taiwan’s COVID-19 control by the World Health Organization cannot get Taiwan into the WHO itself, said Chao Chien-min, dean of social sciences at Chinese Culture University in Taipei. China blocks Taiwan’s annual bids to participate.“This year Taiwan has been one of the best countries in terms of disease prevention. It could be called a model student,” Chao said. “All countries including the WHO have approved of what Taiwan’s doing but Taiwan has no way of participating in the WHO.”Brisker arms sales to Taiwan may emerge from stronger Taipei-Washington relations, Chao said, but improvements in that two-way relationship will stop there. Japanese officials are trying to strengthen their own ties with China despite the parliamentary delegation’s visit, he added. Taiwan, he said, needs better relations with China to bolster its diplomacy worldwide.Tsai’s government rejects Beijing’s dialogue condition that both sides identify as part of China. The two sides have not talked formally since Tsai took office in 2016.
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Inner Mongolians Boycott Classes to Protest Chinese Language Policy
Tuesday marked the first day of school in China’s northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, but a boycott of classes left many classrooms and playgrounds empty. Hundreds of ethnic Mongolian students, parents and teachers are protesting a new bilingual education policy they say will endanger Mongolian language and culture.The policy, announced before the start of the fall semester, requires schools to use national textbooks in Mandarin starting in the first grade of primary schools and in middle schools, replacing the current Mongolian textbooks. The Mandarin instruction is expected to expand to politics and morality courses and history classes over the next two years.Over the past few days, protests by Mongolian students, parents, teachers and ordinary herders have taken place in many cities in Inner Mongolia, all opposing the “bilingual teaching” policy implemented by the Inner Mongolia Education Department.Videos provided by the South Mongolia Human Rights Information Center show hundreds of middle school students in school uniforms chanting, “Defend Mongolian culture and language,” while some of them, with the help of parents and citizens, are seen breaking through a closed gate and leaving school.Many others are not choosing to make public demonstrations against the policy, fearing possible violent retaliation by Chinese authorities. Dagula, a mother of an elementary student, told VOA she was keeping her child at home.’Just stay at home'”Now everyone is saying, ‘Don’t march on the streets or anything, just stay at home. As long as you don’t send your kids to school, everything will be fine,’ ” she said.Like other parents of Mongolian students, Dagula worries that if Mandarin replaces Mongolian in classrooms, it may lead to the disappearance of their language.The Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region government’s interpretation of the policy published on August 31 says “the textbooks reflect the will of the Party and the State” and “inherit the advanced achievements of Chinese excellent culture and human civilization.” The moves are being promoted as a major reform initiative that has popular support.Mongolians protest at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ulaanbaatar against China’s plan to introduce Mandarin-only classes at schools in the neighboring Chinese province of Inner Mongolia, Aug. 31, 2020.Yilalatu, another parent, disagrees. He told VOA that the younger generations are already heavily influenced by Mandarin culture and the new policy will further marginalize Mongolian language and culture, which will cause the younger generations to lose their Mongolian identity.”I’m worried that if children learn Mandarin from first grade, they will forget their mother tongue,” he said. “This has happened. The father and mother are Mongolian, the child who learned Mandarin since primary school has become Han and doesn’t know anything [in Mongolian]. He can’t read or speak Mongolian, even doesn’t know how to say eating or drinking in Mongolian.”He said teachers, students and parents in Mongolian schools are simply asking the authorities to withdraw their new policies, resume their previous practices and start Mandarin classes in the third grade of primary school. They argue that starting later won’t affect their Mandarin skills. He explained that was what his own child did. Now a college graduate, his child’s Mandarin is better than Mongolian.Dagula said she agrees, noting that parents can accept teaching solely in Mongolian in primary school and switching to Mandarin in middle school. She said that when she was in middle school, she was one of the best students at Mandarin. She said she thought that mastering Mandarin would be of great help to her children’s future development, but that the descendants of the Mongolian people must first learn their own language and culture.Deadline for home-schoolersChinese authorities appear to be planning consequences for parents who are not sending their children to school.According to sources who asked not to be named to avoid retribution, Mongolians who work for the government or who are Communist Party members were given a deadline of Thursday to send their children back to school. Otherwise, they have been told, they could lose their jobs or be expelled from the party. The government also threatened to take away social benefits of those who disobey.Dagula said she had received phone calls from her boss at work asking her to set an example by taking her child to school.In the face of rising protests, the government also is proposing new security measures.During a tour in the region this week, China’s Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi ordered the police to “severely clamp down on domestic and foreign forces that carry out infiltration and sabotage” and to promote “the fight against separatism” in the ethnic minority region.Police deployedEyewitnesses report seeing armed police deployed on standby in protest locations. Videos circulating on the internet show hundreds of heavily armed riot police guarding Xinhua Square, the largest square in Hohhot, the capital of Inner Mongolia, and some of the protesters being taken away by police.According to the South China Morning Post, authorities are using a facial recognition system to identify and then arrest the protesters.Chinese authorities are also controlling the channels of expression of public opinion. The WeChat accounts of groups that expressed opposition to the new policy have been blockedBut Dagula said Mongolians were willing to pay the price to protect their language.”In order to protect the Mongolian language, everyone will pay the price, and we will certainly pay the price,” she said. “There must be a solution. That’s what I’m looking forward to right now.”Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Hong Kong Media Magnate Jimmy Lai Found Not Guilty in 2017 Case
A Hong Kong court Thursday found the media tycoon Jimmy Lai not guilty of criminal intimidation, closing one of several cases pending against the outspoken critic of Beijing.The acquittal pertains to a 2017 case against Lai, who allegedly used foul language against a reporter from the pro-Beijing newspaper Oriental Daily — a rival media outlet to Lai’s Apple Daily. Police did not press charges against Lai until February of this year.Media mogul Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, founder of Apple Daily, arrives at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts, in Hong Kong, Sept. 3, 2020.Prosecutors say Lai’s use of language, which was caught on video, amounted to intimidation against the reporter, who was granted anonymity by the court. Lai pleaded not guilty.The magistrate, May Chung, said that Lai seemed to have temporarily lost his temper, rather than made a calculated attempt to instill fear in the journalist.The ruling comes after multiple arrests of Lai, who has several charges pending against him relating to the mass pro-democracy movement last year. The 71-year-old faces a number of accusations of organizing or inciting people to protest illegally.In a separate incident, Lai was arrested again last month for suspected collusion with foreign forces under the national security laws imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing, in part due to his visit to the United States last year. The Apple Daily newsroom was raided by hundreds of police officers early last month.The visit to Washington, when the media mogul met with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, resulted in Beijing’s labeling Lai as a “traitor.”
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