Twitter has removed a vast network of accounts that it says is linked to the Chinese government and were pushing false information favorable to the country’s communist rulers. Beijing denied involvement Friday and said the company should instead take down accounts smearing China.
The U.S. social media company suspended 23,750 accounts that were posting pro-Beijing narratives, and another 150,000 accounts dedicated to retweeting and amplifying those messages.
 
The network was engaged “in a range of coordinated and manipulated activities” in predominantly Chinese languages, including praise for China’s response to the coronavirus pandemic and “deceptive narratives” about Hong Kong pro-democracy protests, the company said.  
The accounts also tweeted about two other topics: Taiwan and Guo Wengui, an exiled billionaire waging a campaign from New York against China’s president and party leader Xi Jinping and his administration. Most had little to no followers and failed to get much attention. The accounts were suspended under Twitter’s manipulation policies, which ban artificial amplification and suppression of information.  
Twitter and other social media services like Facebook and YouTube are blocked in China.
 
“While the Chinese Communist Party won’t allow the Chinese people to use Twitter, our analysis shows it is happy to use it to sow propaganda and disinformation internationally,” said Fergus Hanson, director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre, which worked with the company on the takedown.  China denied involvement.  
“It holds no water at all to equate China’s response to the epidemic with disinformation,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily news briefing on Friday.  
“If Twitter wants to make a difference, it should shut down those accounts that have been organized and coordinated to attack and discredit China,” she added.
Twitter also removed more than 1,000 accounts linked to a Russian media website engaging in state-backed political propaganda in Russian, and a network of 7,340 fake or compromised accounts used for “cheerleading” the ruling party in Turkey.
…

Rights groups and lawmakers are calling on Cambodian authorities to carry out a thorough and transparent investigation into the possible kidnapping of a Thai dissident in the capital, Phnom Penh, last week.Wanchalearm Satsaksit was reportedly abducted by a group of armed men outside his apartment block on the afternoon of June 4, a few days after he posted a salacious Facebook message ridiculing Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha. He had fled Thailand when summoned for questioning by the military after a 2014 coup led by then-General Prayut and was hit with an arrest warrant two years ago over his Facebook page, which he has used to scold the junta and the government that followed a tainted election in 2019.Eight other Thai dissidents in exile have gone missing in Laos and Vietnam since the coup. Two of them were later found dead in the Mekong River; their bodies had been weighted down with concrete, presumably to make them sink. None of the cases has been solved.After initially dismissing calls for a probe of Wanchalearm’s alleged abduction, Cambodian authorities said Tuesday that they would investigate.’A legal obligation’Andrea Giorgetta, Asia director for the International Federation for Human Rights, said Cambodia was duty-bound to do so as one of the few countries in the region to have signed the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.”So they do have a legal obligation under international law to investigate this case,” he said.Human Rights Watch deputy Asia director Phil Robertson said Thailand had also “dragged its feet” in asking Cambodia to follow the case.”But now that the investigation has finally started, the Cambodian government must pursue a serious, impartial and transparent investigation that leaves no stone unturned in finding out what happened to Wanchalearm. They should not rest until they find him and prosecute those responsible for the abduction,” he said.Both governments are also being urged to find Wanchalearm by Amnesty International and the Asian Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a network of past and present lawmakers from member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.”ASEAN governments that allow these types of actions to take place on their territory are effectively turning our region into an autocrats’ heaven, where the persecution of dissent knows no borders,” Malaysian lawmaker and APHR chairman Charles Santiago said in a statement.’I thought it was a car crash’Cambodian officials could not be reached for comment. The Thai government referred questions to the spokesperson for the Defense Ministry, who said he knew nothing about the case. Both governments have rejected accusations of having orchestrated Wanchalearm’s abduction.Wanchalearm’s sister, Sitanan Satsaksit, said she was on the phone with her brother from Thailand when he was nabbed.”And then there was a sound; I thought it was a car crash or something,” she recalled. “Then I heard some Cambodian voices, about four people. And all of a sudden, he was saying ‘Argh, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.'”Sitanan said the call went on like that for nearly half an hour before the line was finally cut. She found out that her brother had been bundled into a black SUV and driven away only after speaking with a Thai journalist who had gone to the apartment and spoken with the security guard, who said he witnessed the abduction but could not intervene because the men were armed. CCTV footage shows the SUV driving off.Wanchalearm had been living in Phnom Penh for a few years and focusing less on Thai politics than on a few local real estate deals Sitanan said she was also involved in. However, she said her brother’s online invectives targeting Prayut and his government picked up after he learned that Thai authorities had visited their mother in Thailand on May 13 to ask about him.She urged authorities to investigate the case “immediately and quickly.”‘They are afraid’Somyot Pruksakasemsuk, a Thai activist and past political prisoner who knows Wanchalearm, said the reported kidnapping has put other Thai dissidents living in Cambodia, thought to number around 10, on edge.”They are afraid and try to hide themselves. They cannot come out from the residence … They just keep themselves in the room,” said Somyot, who has been in touch with a few of them since Wanchalearm went missing.He had hoped that the reported abduction of three Thai activists in Vietnam just over a year ago would be the last.”Suddenly we have Wanchalearm again; that means it’s not changed,” he said. “They are going to try [to find] more and more people … the people who are critical or criticize the government.”Giorgetta said Cambodia was considered a relative safe haven for Thai dissidents in the first year or two of the junta. That changed as the new regime established regular ties with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has a long history of persecuting his own critics at home.”So we’ve seen in the past four or five years more effective cooperation in terms of tracking down dissidents on both sides of the border and in some cases even some of them being sent back or being forced to return to the country or seek refuge in third countries,” he said.With the disappearances in Laos and Vietnam and last year’s forced repatriation of a wanted activist from Malaysia, Wanchalearm’s suspected kidnapping in Cambodia suggests the shelter for Thai dissidents in the region is shrinking.”The overall analysis [is] that close neighbors and regional neighbors of Thailand have become unsafe places for asylum seekers,” Giorgetta said. 
…

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s agreement to give a U.S. military pact its second chance despite distaste for Washington shows his relations with China are chafing after four years, analysts believe.Duterte’s foreign secretary announced June 3 that the Philippines would extend a Visiting Forces Agreement with the United States at least until late 2020. The government said in February it would end the 21-year-old pact that lets American troops freely access the Philippines for joint exercises. Washington sees the Southeast Asian archipelago as a strategic spot in case of any conflict in East Asia.Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin told a news conference last week that “heightened superpower tensions” in Asia motivated his government to retain the agreement.Role of South China SeaChina, which has Asia’s biggest military and a maritime sovereignty dispute with the Philippines, grew as a threat in the first half of the year, scholars in the region say. Beijing let a fishing fleet sail near a Philippine-occupied South China Sea islet, sent a survey vessel to a part of the same sea claimed by Malaysia and prompted the U.S. Navy to carry out four “freedom of navigation operations.”“All contributed to the perception that it’s not a good time to be letting down the guard, so to speak,” said Jay Batongbacal, international maritime affairs professor at University of the Philippines.China claims about 90 percent of the sea, overlapping parts of a Philippine exclusive economic zone. The U.S. government, a former Philippine colonizer, says the South China Sea should stay open internationally. Manila and Washington also abide by a mutual defense treaty. More than 100 Chinese vessels had surrounded Philippine-held islets last year. In 2012 navy ships from the two countries got locked in a standoff over fishery-rich Scarborough Shoal.Duterte surprised world leaders and his own citizens in 2016 by laying aside the maritime sovereignty dispute to pursue a new friendship with China. China reciprocated with pledges of billions of dollars in aid and investment, including 150,000 COVID-19 testing kits and 70,000 N95 facemasks offered last month.The Philippine president has railed against U.S. influence in his country. He resented U.S. criticism of the deadly Philippine anti-drug campaign under ex-president Barack Obama and the revocation in January of a U.S. visa for former Philippine police chief Ronald Dela Rosa. Dela Rosa, now a senator, was key to the drug campaign marked by extrajudicial killings.But Duterte trusts the U.S. military over China’s armed forces, said Alexander Huang, strategic studies professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. Ordinary Filipinos as well as senior military personnel prefer the United States to China as an ally.“To the very basic Philippine interest, they will not give the People’s Liberation Army access to their facilities,” Huang said. “And the United States would not allow that.”COVID-19 a factorIn the event of a conflict, Philippine troops would need backup especially now as they help the national police handle COVID-19, Batongbacal said. U.S. troops could enter the Philippines only with special permission if the visiting forces agreement ended.The Philippines may have extended the agreement as a negotiating tool, said Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor of politics and international studies at International Christian University in Tokyo.Duterte may ask visiting U.S. troops to offer more training or bring certain assets, he said. Former U.S. Cold War foe China may step in with more help too as a counterweight, he said.“Maybe this reversal is just a way of trying to get a few more concessions out of the United States, or maybe they really are worried about China,” said Derek Grossman, senior defense analyst with the RAND Corp. research institution in the United States. 
…

North Korea vowed to continue strengthening its military and said relations with the United States have fallen into “despair,” in a statement issued to mark the two-year anniversary of the Singapore summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump.The statement comes as the isolated communist country ramps up tensions with the United States and South Korea. This week, the North announced it would cut all communications channels with the South and issued a veiled threat to interfere in the November U.S. presidential election.In a commentary published Friday in the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Son Gwon said hope for peace on the Korean peninsula “has faded away into a dark nightmare” and that the situation is “daily taking a turn for the worse.”“The question is whether there will be a need to keep holding hands shaken in Singapore, as we see that there is nothing of factual improvement to be made in the DPRK-U.S. relations simply by maintaining personal relations between our Supreme Leadership and the U.S. President,” Ri said. The official name of North Korea is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).At their Singapore summit in June 2018, Trump and Kim signed a brief statement agreeing to “work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.” The two sides never agreed on what that phrase meant or how to begin implementing it, even after two follow-up meetings between Trump and Kim.Stalled talksDespite the stalled talks, Trump has at times portrayed his North Korea diplomacy as a foreign policy win, noting his relationship with Kim remains strong and that Pyongyang has not recently conducted any nuclear or long-range missile tests.North Korea has often bristled at those comments. In his statement Friday, North Korea’s foreign minister accused Trump of focusing only on scoring domestic political points.“In retrospect, all the practices of the present U.S. administration so far are nothing but accumulating its political achievements,” Ri said. “Never again will we provide the U.S. chief executive with another package to be used for achievements without receiving any returns.”The nuclear talks stalled since Trump and Kim failed to reach a deal at their February summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, last year. North Korea wanted the U.S. to relax sanctions in exchange for the partial dismantlement of its nuclear facilities; Trump wanted Kim to agree to give up his entire nuclear program. Working-level talks resumed in October and ended unsuccessfully without making any progress toward denuclearization.A State Department official told VOA’s Korean Service on Thursday that the United States remains committed to engaging North Korea “in meaningful negotiations so that North Koreans can realize a brighter future.”“That offer remains on the table. We are willing to take a flexible approach to reach a balanced agreement on all of the Singapore summit commitments,” the official said.Nuclear program continuesThough North Korea has refrained from nuclear tests, it continues developing nuclear weapons. According to some estimates, North Korea now has enough material for about 40 nuclear bombs.Since the middle of last year, North Korea has also tested multiple new weapons systems, including short-range ballistic missiles that pose a major threat to U.S. allies in the region.In comments at the beginning of the year, Kim said the world would soon witness a “new strategic weapon.”Foreign Minister Ri did not make any specific threat in his comments Friday but noted that the “secure strategic goal of the DPRK is to build up more reliable force to cope with the long-term military threats from the U.S.”Inter-Korean tensionsNorth Korea has also been generating a diplomatic crisis with South Korea.This week, North Korea announced it would halt all communications channels with the South, which it referred to as its “enemy.”As an apparent pretext for its decision, North Korea cited recent activities by South Korean activists who occasionally float anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the North.After the State Department said it was “disappointed” in that decision, North Korea said the U.S. should “keep its mouth shut” if it wanted to hold a “successful” presidential election in November.
…

South Korean Health officials are warning action must be taken to prevent a second wave of COVID-19 in that country after a resurgence of infections in the Seoul region. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday reported 45 new cases. Most new cases have been in the Seoul metropolitan area, where health authorities have struggled to trace transmissions. At a news briefing Wednesday, CDC Director Jung Eun-kyeong said the recent consistent chain of transmissions is spreading in Seoul, and if they cannot cut them off, they cannot rule out a massive outbreak. She noted the transmission chains started popping up after the country began easing restrictions. Government officials are resisting calls to reimpose stronger social distancing measures out of concern they’ll hurt a fragile economy. But the CDC is warning that transmissions are getting harder to track because the virus is spreading quickly and unpredictably as people increase their activities and practice less social distancing.  Health Ministry senior official Yoon Tae-ho says the only way to stop the chain of coronavirus breakouts in the capital area is adherence to prevention and distancing rules. The health officials pleaded with the public to return to wearing masks, strictly follow social distancing rules and avoid large gatherings and other public activity. 
…

North Korea is urging the United States to “keep its mouth shut” about worsening inter-Korean relations, saying such silence will be beneficial if the U.S. wants to hold a successful presidential election in November.  The statement published Thursday in the state-run Korean Central News Agency was issued by a relatively low-level official in North Korea’s foreign ministry. But the comment is still notable, since it appears to be a threat to influence or interfere in the U.S. vote. North Korea has been unilaterally ramping up tensions with South Korea. This week, it said it will cut off all lines of official communication with the South. The U.S. State Department said it was “disappointed” in Pyongyang’s decision.  For North Korea, that comment amounted to interference in its internal affairs, according to Kwon Jong Gun, who heads the North Korean foreign ministry’s North America department.  “It would be good to keep your mouth shut,” Kwon added. “This will not only be in the United States’ interest, it will also be beneficial for a successful presidential election right in front of your nose.”  Before now, North Korea has not explicitly threatened to interfere in the U.S. election, set for November 3. But Pyongyang has signaled bigger provocations are ahead.  In January, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the world would soon witness a “new strategic weapon.” But since then, the North has only continued to periodically test less provocative, short-range weapons.  Trump, who has portrayed his outreach to Kim as a major foreign policy victory, has at times directly linked North Korea with his 2020 re-election chances, despite little if any evidence suggesting it will be a major issue for U.S. voters. “(Kim) knows I have an election coming up. I don’t think he wants to interfere with that, but we’ll have to see,” Trump said in early December.  Empty threat?  It’s not clear how seriously North Korea’s latest comments should be taken. The North Korean foreign ministry is not seen as influential in the country’s decision-making process. And, it has a history of issuing threats that were not carried out.FILE – In this undated file photo provided by the North Korean government on April 12, 2020, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects an air defense unit in western area, North Korea.In December, North Korea’s vice foreign minister, Ri Thae Song, threatened an ominous “Christmas gift” if the U.S. didn’t make greater concessions in stalled nuclear talks. The U.S. did not give any ground, and the North didn’t engage in any major provocations.  Inter-Korean tension North Korea’s latest threat to the U.S. comes as it also generates a diplomatic crisis with South Korea.  This week, North Korea announced it would halt all communications channels with the South, which it referred to as its “enemy.”  As an apparent pretext for its decision, North Korea cited recent activities by South Korean activists who occasionally float anti-Pyongyang leaflets into the North.  Kim Yo Jong, the increasingly powerful sister of Kim Jong Un, called the activists, many of whom are North Korean defectors, “human scum.” North Korean state media have shown pictures of anti-defector rallies in North Korea.  It isn’t clear why North Korea chose this moment to express outrage about the launches, which have occurred for years.  Nonetheless, the move to cut off inter-Korean communication lines was a blow to the South Korean government, which desperately wants to improve ties with the North.  South Korea has aggressively but unsuccessfully attempted to placate North Korea’s concern about the leaflets.  The South Korean government has said it will legislate a ban on the launches. Local police have blocked groups from conducting launches on at least two occasions this month. On Wednesday, the Unification Ministry announced it will file a legal complaint against two groups that distribute the leaflets.  Rights groups and conservative activists have accused South Korean President Moon Jae-in of sacrificing democratic ideals, and letting North Korea dictate South Korean policy, in order to improve ties with the North.  Moon, who has two years left of a five-year presidential term, is making a final push to improve inter-Korean relations. But it is not clear how far he can go, since most inter-Korean projects are barred by international sanctions on North Korea’s nuclear program.  U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks have been stalled since February of last year, when Trump and Kim failed to reach an agreement at a summit in Hanoi, Vietnam. 
…

The death of George Floyd and the subsequent anti-racism protests sweeping the U.S. are being latched onto by African and ethnic minorities elsewhere — from Iraq to Britain, from Canada to Australia — to boost awareness of their own struggles to overcome endemic racial prejudice.The death of Floyd, an African American man who died in police custody after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, has prompted large “Black Lives Matter” protests in dozens of countries around the world, many of them ignoring coronavirus social distancing rules.Some rights activists say Floyd’s death might one day be compared in terms of its wider impact to the 2010 self-immolation of Tunisian Mohamed Bouazizi, a street-hawker who doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire to protest the confiscation of his goods by police.FILE – Then-Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki places flowers Dec.17, 2012, at the tombstone of Mohamed Bouazizi, 26, who set himself alight on Dec. 17, 2010.His death was a catalyst for the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests and rebellions that hit much of the Arab world in the early 2010s.Both cases unleashed “tremendous popular energy,” according to Juan Cole, a historian at the University of Michigan. In Tunisia’s case, “a small drama unfolded that would change the world, and certainly would change Tunisia,” he wrote in a recent commentary.Speaking Tuesday at Floyd’s funeral in Houston, his brother, Rodney, sought to comfort mourners, saying “everybody is going to remember him around the world. He is going to change the world.”Boost for own campaignsAnd as the impact of Floyd’s death in Minneapolis cascades around the world, rights activists and ethnic minority campaigners say they’re drawing inspiration from the mostly peaceful protests in the U.S., which are breathing new life into their own demands for racial justice.In many cases protesters outside America have been focusing their ire as much on police brutality or racial discrimination in their own countries as on Floyd’s death, warning their own leaders not to see racial prejudice as exclusively an American problem and inviting them to look at their own records of minority deaths in custody.In Australia, thousands marched last week in solidarity with their counterparts in the U.S., but highlighted mostly the deaths of indigenous people in police custody in Australian police stations and prisons — by one count, 434 have died since 1991, including a 40-year-old Aboriginal man in a prison outside Perth in western Australia as the marches kicked off.FILE – Protesters march in Sydney, June 6, 2020, to support U.S. protests over the death of George Floyd. Thousands of demonstrators in state capitals honored Floyd and protested the deaths of indigenous Australians in custody.Many of Australia’s protesters chanted, “Justice today, for David Dungay,” a 26-year-old Aboriginal man who, like Floyd, said, “I can’t breathe,” as he died in 2015 while being restrained by prison guards. Some banners at a rally in Australia read: “Same story, different soil.” Aboriginal people remain the most incarcerated in the world by percentage of population — while making up just 3 percent of the nation’s population, they account for 30 percent of those currently held in Australia’s prisons.One demonstrator in Sydney, Leon Saunders, 77, told the BBC: “The raw deal Aborigines have been getting in this country for my lifetime and many lifetimes before — that is just not right. We can look at America and say what terrible things are happening over there, but right here on our home soil, there are just as bad things happening and they need to be improved.”Mexico, IraqIn Mexico City, demonstrators demanded justice for a construction worker, Giovanni Lopez, who was allegedly beaten to death in police custody last month. In Iraq, activists hope to raise awareness about the rights of more than 400,000 African Iraqis and are trying to trigger a public debate about their lack of political representation in government. Many African Iraqis can trace their origins to the Abbasid caliphate after the year 750 when thousands were transported from East Africa as slaves.In the British port city of Bristol, the statue of a 17th-century slave trader was toppled and dumped in the harbor. Britain has also had its share of black men dying in police custody — 13 since 2010. The names of those 13 were written on many placards held up at rallies in London.Following protests in Britain — there were more than 200 last week attended by an estimated 137,500 people — Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday acknowledged the “cold reality” that black and other ethnic minority groups face discrimination in education, employment and criminal law.Speaking on Britain’s Sky News, Marcia Rigg — whose brother, Sean Rigg, died after being arrested in 2008 — said, “I welcome the protests, but where have the protesters been all these years in the U.K.? They’ve never supported us enough, and I would like that support again from the U.K.  … We need to clean up our own backyard.”An independent review in 2017 of deaths and serious incidents in police custody found that where use of force or restraint was applied by British police, black and minority individuals were twice as likely to die as their white counterparts.A statue of Belgium’s King Leopold II is smeared with red paint and graffiti in Brussels, June 10, 2020. In the wake of George Floyd’s death King Leopold II is now increasingly seen as a stain on the nation.In Belgium as in Britain and elsewhere in Europe, the Floyd protests have forced a racist past to be confronted, prompting demands for continuing racial prejudice to be tackled. Statues memorializing colonial figures have been targeted in Belgium, including one of King Leopold II.Primrose Ntumba, an assistant in the parliament in Brussels, told broadcasters that Floyd’s death had given momentum to efforts to get the country to acknowledge Belgium’s colonial history. “We have a lot of history that a lot of people don’t know about and it really impacts people of color and particularly black people in Belgium,” she said.“A lot of the white majority citizens in Belgium do not understand why black people are so angry, because they have never been taught about it,” Ntumba said.She and other rights activists said events in the U.S. serve as a mirror that can be turned around for an examination of racial prejudice in their countries.Western foesThe governments of some — especially U.S. and Western foes — have used the Floyd’s death to claim their own race relations are more equitable. State-controlled media in China, Iran and Russia have all given extensive coverage to the U.S. and Western protests, focusing on the small-scale violence that unfolded in a handful of U.S. cities and some European towns, notably London and Hamburg, but largely overlooking the overwhelming peacefulness of most demonstrations, say observers.And leaders in Moscow, Tehran and Beijing have seized on the tumult as an opportunity to accuse the U.S. and West of operating under double standards. Chinese officials have been comparing the U.S. unrest to the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong, where Beijing is poised to limit political freedoms.The U.S. envoy to the United Nations, Kelly Craft, has rejected the accusations of hypocrisy. She said Friday: “There’s no moral equivalence between our free society, which works through tough problems like racism, and other societies, which do not allow anything to be discussed because they are authoritative regimes.” She cited the forcible detention in “re-education camps” of more than a million Uighurs in western China.
…

The protests that left much of the world in a haze of tear gas last year were slowed by a pandemic – until the death of George Floyd sparked a global uprising against police brutality and racial inequality. From Hong Kong to Khartoum, Baghdad to Beirut, Gaza to Paris and Caracas to Santiago, people took to the streets in 2019 for the pursuits of freedom, sovereignty or simply a life less shackled by hardship while few prospered. It seemed as if the streets were agitated everywhere but the United States. Now, after the death of Floyd, a black man in Minneapolis who died in police custody when a white officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes, protests rage around the globe. Police or military brutality and racism are universal dynamics that are experienced in many societies. The very nature of a protest suggests a fervent desire for change, the need to right a perceived historic injustice. It’s a means to an end. But to what end? Depending on the government the activists are demanding change from, the results can be varied. Demonstrations were held last week in solidarity with American protesters, but Floyd’s death also had resonance and reverberations far beyond U.S. shores because of those lives lost closer to home in similar circumstances. As the coronavirus crisis eased in China, protesters in Hong Kong, the semi-autonomous territory, began to emerge again. And Beijing moved swiftly to quash the movement that caused unrest for months last year, enacting a national security law that would effectively end the existence of one country, two systems. A democratic government that is amenable to the changes may enact legislation, or a change of leadership can be forced at the ballot box. An authoritarian regime, however, does not often bend. Protesting against dictatorship can be a life-or-death struggle which may even require activists to make a deal with the country’s military. Confronting tyranny can also backfire, the result a more dictatorial leader or a ruinous civil war. Here’s a look at some of the key protests of recent decades and what they achieved or failed. American Civil Rights The protests that erupted across a scarred U.S. landscape last week had the unusual characteristic of being largely leaderless and are still evolving, though the Black Lives Matter movement was focal. During the critical era of the 1950s and ’60s, Martin Luther King Jr., who led the 250,000 strong March on Washington in 1963, and Malcolm X were colossal 20th century figures, representing two different tracks: mass non-violent protest and getting favorable outcomes “by any means necessary.” The Civil Rights Acts, initiated by the Kennedy administration, and Voting Rights Act were passed by the Johnson administration, which was sympathetic to tackling endemic racism in the nation. These were key inflection points. But social injustice and the Vietnam War continued to dominate the American decade and beyond, reaching a crescendo of civil unrest in 1968 which has been echoed in 2020.FILE – In this Aug. 28, 1963 file photo, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. acknowledges the crowd at the Lincoln Memorial for his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington.Democrats in Congress are proposing an overhaul of police procedures and accountability, but like so much in Washington this has been snagged by partisanship. Key Democrats, including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, are also distancing themselves from liberal calls to “defund the police” as President Donald Trump and his Republican allies blast the proposal. The iron curtain falls Revolution was in the air in Eastern Europe in 1989, powered by a flowering of civil resistance to overthrow Communist rule. One-by-one, countries fell in a reverse-domino effect — Washington had always been concerned about the dominoes falling in the Soviet Union’s favor. The final Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, laid the groundwork for this tectonic shift. The Berlin Wall fell and one-party rule was swept aside in East Germany, Poland and other states once cast as being behind the Iron Curtain, mostly bloodlessly — the exception being in Romania where the tyranny of Nicolae Ceausescu and his family was ended by a firing squad on Christmas Day. This period also included a “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia, which was the historical antidote to the Prague Spring, a period of liberalization in embracing “communism with a human face” that was ruthlessly crushed by more than half a million Soviet-led Warsaw Pact troops in 1968. The Arab Spring and the current redux It was two decades before the world witnessed another wave of protests consume an entire region. This one was the first to be captured on a new digital platform, social media. After decades of dictatorship and kleptocracy, the Arab World became intoxicated by the heady mix of possibility and immediacy. And rulers did fall: in Egypt, Yemen, Libya and Tunisia in 2011. But only the latter transitioned to a democratic next chapter. Egypt now lives under even more authoritarian rule, where all dissent is extinguished, and thousands languish in prison. Yemen and Libya have been torn to shreds by conflict and humanitarian catastrophe. Syria exploded quickly from an uprising against the Assad dynasty to ruinous civil war which still continues with more than half million dead and millions displaced. In neighboring Lebanon and in Iraq, civil protests erupted last October against ruling elites. Lebanon is suffering a confluence of crises as it lurches on the cusp of national bankruptcy. In Iraq, too, where protesters had been killed in scores, the health care system is not equipped to deal with COVID-19 and the loss of oil revenue is hitting hard. Protests seem likely to reignite in both places. The spirit of 2019 and 2020 Sudan captured much of what civil disobedience and protest can achieve — as well its painful cost with many killed and systemic rapes — as the fragile transition to a new era continues. The protest movement succeeded in ousting a longtime military strongman who faces genocide and war crimes charges. President Omar al-Bashir was toppled in April 2019, forcing the creation of a joint civilian-military ruling “sovereign council.” But the civilians are struggling to assert authority in the face of the military’s power. Hong Kong’s protests, which began one year ago this week, seemed to embody all the facets of democratic aspiration: But the clear intent of President of Xi Jinping and the overwhelming might of China’s People’s Liberation Army makes it ever more likely that the territory will be under Beijing rule much sooner than 2047 as agreed upon. The landmark 1997 agreement in which the British colony was formally handed over to China, had stipulated things would remain unchanged for 50 years. 
…

New Zealanders gathered at restaurants and cafes Tuesday to celebrate the official end of their long coronavirus quarantine period. After more than two months of restrictions that brought everyday life to a standstill, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern lowered the four-tiered lockdown system first imposed in March to its lowest tier, scrapping all virus-related restrictions on public gatherings, including sports and weddings, while keeping New Zealand’s borders closed to international travel. New Zealand has had a total of 1,504 confirmed coronavirus infections with 22 deaths out of 5 million citizens, according to the Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 dashboard. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus. Despite the return of normal life within its borders, Antarctica New Zealand, the government agency responsible for carrying out environmental research on the continent, said Tuesday it will cut back research visits to its Antarctica base to prevent spreading COVID-19 outside the country.   FILE – UK National Health Service employee Anni Adams looks at new NHS app to trace contacts with people potentially infected with the coronavirus disease being tested on Isle of Wight, Britain, May 5, 2020.Separately, a FILE – A view of medical personnel working in Mt. Sinai Hospital Morningside during the coronavirus pandemic on May 18, 2020 in New York City.According to the latest figures from U.S.-based Johns Hopkins, the number of COVID-19 infections worldwide now stands at 7,142,462 confirmed cases, with 407,009 deaths. The United States is the leader in both categories, with total infections at 1,961,187 and more than 111,000 confirmed deaths.   Following the U.S. with the most coronavirus infections is Brazil, with 707,412 confirmed cases. The South American country’s 37,134 deaths are the world’s third-highest after the U.S. and Britain, which now stands at 40,680.  The government of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has come under fire for allegedly manipulating the country’s official coronavirus data.FILE – A patient with symptoms related to COVID-19 is brought to a field hospital by workers in full protective gear in Leblon, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, June 4, 2020.The firestorm began last Friday after the health ministry took down a website that published the number of deaths and infections and replaced it with a site that only published the latest casualties for the last 24 hours.    The controversy deepened after the ministry released two different sets of data. The ministry issued a statement the next day saying the discrepancy was due to incorrect data supplied by local authorities.      Critics say the allegedly manipulated data is part of Bolsonaro’s dismissal of the pandemic as nothing more than “a little flu” and his disdain of quarantines and social distancing guidelines because of its impact on the Brazilian economy.       
…

Planes jetting between Singapore and China next week will be carrying some of the first passengers of the two nations’ “Covid-19 travel “bubble.” Before then flights linked to China were starting to become a political matter, as the nation took issue with places from the United States to Vietnam for canceling travel in the wake of the virus emergency.A new world of travelPassengers have to be sponsored by a government agency or a company and were able to start applying for the “fast lane” for essential travel on Monday, according to Singapore’s trade and foreign ministries. Approval means residents can travel between China and Singapore without a quarantine if they test negative for the virus and follow other rules.  Flights had become yet another global flashpoint of the Covid-19 chaos, particularly in the already tense relations between the world’s two biggest economies. The U.S. was like most nations that had suspended flights from China to curb the virus, but tensions escalated this month when both sides moved to restrict airlines from the other nation. Both sides have since eased up on the planned restrictions.Signs of economic lifeThe joint decision by China and Singapore to allow some travel also eases up on virus-related limits. “It will be a long while before life returns to near normal, but we are beginning to see some light,” the Singapore Minister of Transport Khaw Boon Wan said of the plan to increase flights, via a Facebook post. “However, recreational travel will have to take a back seat for now.”The limited flights are mostly meant for business and official travel. With the coronavirus spreading around the world from the start of the year, international travel has plummeted to near oblivion. However some nations that were able to curb the spread have struck agreements with their neighbors to form a “bubble” of limited travel without a quarantine, because of the lower risk of each other’s citizens passing on the virus. Denmark and Norway have done that, for instance, as have Australia and New Zealand. Singapore, along with South Korea and Canada, are working with the latter two nations on opening up to further travel as well.China heavily involvedThe fast lane will allow for essential travel between Singapore and six cities in China: Shanghai, Guangdong, Tianjin, Chongqing, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. That could help facilitate business for companies such as LabMed, which produces personal and protective medical equipment in China and sends it to Singapore to be distributed to the rest of the world. The company has contracted out to GEODIS to handle logistics, a sector that has become more complicated with Covid-19.“During the current pandemic, we are even more intimately involved in the business of local customers who partner with us,” Rene Bach-Larsen, the managing director for the Southeast Asian subregion at GEODIS, said. “As an essential service, we continue to fast track their growth, using for instance, specially arranged weekly scheduled flights to many destinations.”Help for the economyWhile some Singaporeans question whether the fast lane is a safe public health decision, the increased business travel is expected to aid the economic recovery in China and Singapore. China’s gross domestic product contracted 6.8% in the first quarter of the year because of Covid-19, marking the first contraction in about three decades. Singapore forecast GDP would contract between 4% and 7% in 2020, the worst the economy will have seen in more than half a century.To take advantage of the travel bubble, passengers have to apply to their respective governments and, if approved, pay for and pass the coronavirus test twice – before departure and after landing. They will then be allowed to travel on an approved  itinerary but will not have to quarantine for two weeks, as is common in other nations.  
 
…

A South Korean Court has rejected an arrest warrant for the heir to the legendary Samsung Group conglomerate in connection with a controversial merger.   Prosecutors have accused Lee Jae-yong, the vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, of stock manipulation and illegal trading involving the 2015 merger of two Samsung affiliates, Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries, of which Lee is the largest shareholder.  He allegedly sought to inflate the value of Cheil Industries and lower the value of Samsung C&T to give him a bigger stake in the merged company, a move that would give him increasing control of South Korea’s largest conglomerate and smooth the transition from his ailing father, Lee Kun-hee, who suffered a heart attack in 2014.    But the Seoul Central District Court ruled Tuesday that while prosecutors had amassed enough evidence against Lee in their investigation, there was not enough to justify detaining him.   The 51-year-old Lee arrived at the courthouse Monday for the hearing, which lasted nine hours, and awaited the decision at a detention center.      Samsung released a statement last week denying the allegations against Lee, who prosecutors have also accused of inflating the value of Samsung Biologics, a subsidiary of Cheil Industries.    Lee is also awaiting a retrial on his original 2017 conviction for bribing a confidante of then-President Park Geun-hye in return for Park’s support for the 2015 merger, a scandal that forced Park out of office and eventually landed her in prison. Lee served a year in prison before an appeals court suspended his sentence, but South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s decision last year.   
…

North Korea said Tuesday it will cut off all communication channels with South Korea as it escalates its pressure on the South for failing to stop activists from floating anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border. The North Korean warning came as relations between the two Koreas have been strained amid a prolonged deadlock in broader nuclear diplomacy between Pyongyang and Washington. Some experts say North Korea may be deliberately creating tensions to bolster internal unity or launch bigger provocation in the face of persistent U.S.-led sanctions.  The North’s Korean Central News Agency said Tuesday that all cross-border communication lines will be cut off at Tuesday noon. It said it will be “the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things.” “The South Korean authorities connived at the hostile acts against (North Korea) by the riff-raff, while trying to dodge heavy responsibility with nasty excuses,” it said. “They should be forced to pay dearly for this.” Since last week, North Korea has increasingly expressed its anger over the leafleting by threatening to permanently shut down a liaison office with South Korea and a jointly run factory park, as well as nullify a 2018 inter-Korean tension-reduction agreement. North Korean citizens have also staged a series of mass anti-Seoul public rallies, something the North typically organizes in times of tensions with the outside world. N. Korea Warns S. Korea to Stop Defectors from Scattering Anti-North LeafletsNorth says it may cancel recent bilateral military agreement if activity persists North Korea has in recent months suspended virtually all cooperation with South Korea as its nuclear negotiations with the United States remains stalemated since the breakdown of a summit between its leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in early 2019. A main sticking point in the U.S.-North Korea diplomacy is a U.S. refusal to lift much of crippling international sanctions on North Korea in return for limited denuclearization steps.  North Korea has slammed South Korea for failing to break away from Washington and for not restoring massive joint economic projects held up by U.S.-led sanctions. Inter-Korean relations flourished in 2018, when Kim entered talks on the future of his nuclear weapons. South Korea had no immediate response to the North Korean announcement. But it has recently said it would push for new legal steps to ban activists from launching leaflets in an attempt to save faltering ties with North Korea. But the North has countered the South Korean response lacks sincerity.  The leafleting has been a long-running source of tensions between the two Koreas. In recent years, North Korean defectors and conservative activists have floated huge balloons carrying leaflets criticizing Kim Jong Un over his nuclear ambitions and abysmal human rights record. The North, which bristles at any outside attempt to undermine the Kim leadership, has often made a furious response to the South Korean government for failing to stop them . In 2014, North Korean troops opened fire at propaganda balloons flying toward their territory, triggering an exchange of fire that caused no known causalities. South Korea has typically let activists launch such balloons, citing their rights to exercise freedom of speech, but it sometimes sent police officers to stop them from floating leaflets in times of tensions with North Korea. 
…