Yang Maodong held ‘on suspicion of inciting subversion of state power’ two days after death of his wife
A Chinese human rights activist and writer who was detained following repeated pleas to be allowed to visit his terminally ill wife has been formally arrested days after she died for allegedly “inciting subversion of state power”.
Yang Maodong, who goes by the pen-name Guo Feixiong, was formally arrested on Monday last week by the Guangzhou Public Security Bureau, two days after the death of his wife, Zhang Qing.
Hours after a massive volcanic eruption near Tonga, Tsunami reached Japan late Saturday and waves as high as three meters were possible, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
A 1.2 meter (about four feet) tsunami reached the remote southern island of Amami Oshima around 11:55pm (1455 GMT) Saturday before other areas along Japan’s Pacific coast observed slighter tsunami, agency added.
The eastern shores of northernmost Hokkaido Island as well as southwestern regions of Kochi and Wakayama also saw tsunami as high as 0.9 meters shortly after midnight, the agency said.
Japan National broadcaster switched to special programming and aired live footage from ports of affected regions and calling to evacuate the area. The footage showed no clear signs of abnormality.
A weather agency official told in a midnight news conference that radars had detected a tidal change higher than one meter after 11pm.
The agency didn’t immediately classify it as tsunami. However, it decided to activate the public tsunami warning systems to urge the evacuation of Amami residents.
“We don’t know at this point whether this is tsunami, but a strong tidal change has been observed, so we’re urging residents to respond,” the official told the press conference.
Watchdog’s latest report argues autocrats around the world are getting desperate as opponents form coalitions to challenge them
Increasingly repressive and violent acts against civilian protests by autocratic leaders and military regimes around the world are signs of their desperation and weakening grip on power, Human Rights Watch says in its annual assessment of human rights across the globe.
In its world report 2022, the human rights organisation said autocratic leaders faced a significant backlash in 2021, with millions of people risking their lives to take to the streets to challenge regimes’ authority and demand democracy.
The violent protests which erupted in major cities across Kazakhstan over the past week, fueled by the people’s fury over high gas prices, has grown into a monumental anti-corruption movement with the hopes of changing the country’s direction.
The Kazakh people are reportedly fed up with the country’s immense wealth, owed to large oil reserves, being held by a small number of corrupt elites.
Last Sunday, the rebellion began in western Kazakhstan, a region known for its natural resources and oil richness, against a significant surge in fuel prices. Despite the Kazakh government’s promise to lower them, the protests spread throughout the country with a broader demand for better social benefits and less governmental corruption.
The Kazakh president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, issued a statement on Wednesday night calling, without offering evidence, protesters “a band of terrorists” who had been “trained abroad” – alluding to possible foreign interference.
Tokayev declared a state of emergency in Kazakhstan and requested the intervention from Russia’s version of NATO, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), to which Kazakhstan and Russia are members. Others include Armenia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
The chairman of the CSTO, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, also blames “outside interference” for the mass protests.
Russian-led troops
As promised by the military pact between Russia and Kazakhstan, Russian-led CSTO troops have stormed into Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, and were being met by large groups of demonstrators setting fire to trucks, police cars, and barricading themselves.
Some protesters wielding firearms were caught on camera looting shops and malls and setting government buildings on fire (including Almaty’s City Hall and the president’s former office).
President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev … claimed huge crowds of protesters were “a band of terrorists” without offering evidence. Image: Wikidata
Local demonstrators also captured the Almaty airport. Flights in and out of airports in Almaty, Aktau, and Aktobe were suspended until further notice.
Much of the violence and scale of the chaos can be witnessed on social media applications such as Instagram, Facebook, and Tik Tok. However, with the government’s internet shutdown on the entire country, many current reports are unconfirmed.
Kazakh locals, such as Galym Ageleulov, who has been witnessing the events of the past few days, states that throngs of criminals had co-opted the “movement that was calling for peaceful change”.
Suddenly, the protesters morphed into groups of primarily young men posing with riot shields and helmets captured from police officers.
According to Ageleulov, these groups of men had replaced the Almaty police force and were “highly organised and managed by gang leaders”.
Three police beheaded claim
Further unconfirmed reports sent in by locals on the ground in Almaty have stated that these men have beheaded up to three police officers.
The Kazakh interior ministry stated that at least eight police officers and national guard troops were killed during the protests while 300 were injured and more than 3800 protesters were arrested.
Kazakh Americans have flocked to social media to spread awareness of what is going on in the influential Central Asian nation.
One source on Tik Tok powerfully declared that “the revolution has started” and that the Kazakh people are calling for President Tokayev to “step down”.
In response to the people’s demands for a sincere governmental anti-corruption, Tokayev simply sacked the country’s cabinet — and this did little to ease dissent and infuriated the protesters.
Tokayev’s request for foreign military troops to help quell the protests has only further angered the Kazakh people, who feel deeply betrayed that their government would beckon foreign military groups to gun down Kazakh protestors chanting for their country’s freedom.
The nation’s fury with their authoritarian leader is exacerbated by Tokayev’s recent statement in a televised address that “whoever does not surrender will be destroyed. I have given the order to law enforcement agencies and the army to shoot to kill without warning”.
Locals line up for bread
Almaty’s commercial banks have been ordered to shut down, forcing Kazakhs to withdraw all their cash from ATMs. Stores and markets have been forcibly closed as well, causing locals to line up for rations of bread — a heartbreaking sight that has been unseen in Kazakhstan since the country’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Almaty’s City Hall, a famous white building that once served as the Communist Party headquarters, is charred black from protestors’ flames set on it.
Kazakhstan has been long been praised as being one of the most successful post-Soviet republics. The country has by far the highest GDP per capita in the Central Asian region and plenty of oil reserves, driven mostly by its western region.
Additionally, Kazakhstan accounted for more than 50 percent of the global uranium exports in 2020.
Kazakhstan is also the second largest country for bitcoin mining. Due to the Kazakh government’s shutdown of the internet, crypto markets have seen a considerable loss.
Despite the country’s abundance of natural resources, most of Kazakhstan’s enormous wealth has not been equally spread among the populace.
Corrupt elites live in style
Since the country’s independence, corrupt elites and officials have been living in luxury while the vast majority of the Kazakh people survive on paltry salaries.
The current dire situation in Kazakhstan can be interpreted as a significant warning for neighbouring Russia. Presidential succession creates unrest in authoritarian countries.
In 2019, former president Nursultan Nazarbayev hand-picked his successor, Tokayev. While this change may have seemed refreshing on the surface, the Kazakh people are well aware of Nazarbayev’s shadow-emperor hold on the country’s political power.
An invaluable lesson must be learned from Kazakhstan’s present state: a raging sea of anger and discontent might be storming beneath a thin veil of regional stability.
A petition posted on Change.org, which 36,000+ people have signed, calls to remove foreign military troops from Kazakhstan.
Ella Kelleher is a Kazakh American at English major graduate at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, US. She is the book review editor-in-chief and a contributing staff writer for Asia Media International.
Experts have finally finds ways to extinguish a massive five-decade old fire in a giant natural gas crater, “Gateway to Hell” located in the Central Asian country, Turkmenistan.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said on state television briefing on Saturday that extinguish Darvaza gas crater in the middle of the vast Karakum desert.
Earlier in 2010, Berdymukhamedov also ordered experts to find a way to put out the flames that have been burning ever since a Soviet drilling operation went awry in 1971.
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov said that the man-made crater “negatively affects both the environment and the health of the people living nearby”.
“We are losing valuable natural resources for which we could get significant profits and use them for improving the well-being of our people,” he said in televised briefing.
Berdymukhamedov instructed officials to “find a solution to extinguish the fire”.
The crater was created during a Soviet drilling accident hit a gas cavern in 1971, causing the drilling rig to fall in and the earth to collapse beneath it.
To prevent the dangerous fumes from spreading, the Soviets decided to burn off the gas by setting it on fire.
The resulting crater 70 metres (229 feet) wide and 20 metres (65 feet) deep is a popular tourist attraction in the ex-Soviet country.
In 2018, the president officially renamed it to the “Shining of Karakum” and previous attempts to extinguish it have been unsuccessful.
As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted land
A convoy of trucks laden with huge black granite rocks trundles along the dusty pathway as a group of villagers look on grimly.
Every day more than 60 trucks take granite for export along this rugged road through Nyamakope village in the district of Mutoko, 90 miles east of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
Exclusive: sponsorship unacceptable given concern about human rights in China, says Robert Hayward
A Tory peer has vowed to lead a boycott of Coca-Cola products over the company’s sponsorship of the 2022 Beijing Olympics, saying its bid to profit from an event organised by the Chinese government was shameless.
Robert Hayward, who was a founding chairman of the world’s first gay rugby club and a former personnel manager for Coca-Cola Bottlers, said it was unacceptable for firms to help to boost the use of the Winter Games as a propaganda exercise given concerns over the treatment of 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang province.
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has confirmed his country’s officials will not attend the Beijing Winter Olympics, joining the US in a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Games and prompting accusations from Beijing of political posturing.
Morrison told reporters in Sydney it was “not surprising”, given the deterioration in the diplomatic relationship between Australia and China, that officials would not attend next year’s winter Games.
Next week, Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov receive their Nobel peace prizes. In a rare interview, Muratov says he fears the world is sliding towards fascism
The last time a journalist won a Nobel prize was 1935. The journalist who won it – Carl von Ossietzky – had revealed how Hitler was secretly rearming Germany. “And he couldn’t pick it up because he was languishing in a Nazi concentration camp,” says Maria Ressa over a video call from Manila.
Nearly a century on, Ressa is one of two journalists who will step onto the Nobel stage in Oslo next Friday. She is currently facing jail for “cyberlibel” in the Philippines while the other recipient Dmitry Muratov, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, is standing guard over one of the last independent newspapers in an increasingly dictatorial Russia.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has been named International Sport Personality Award by the Mohammad Bin Rashid Creative Sports Award on Tuesday..
The ceremony will take place on Jan 9 at Expo 2020. P.M. I.K. has been discussed his contribution to sports in cricket and in general particular.
Pakistani Nation and cricket team is waiting for their second World cup title to bring home after Imran captaincy. Being a former sports person Prime Minister could relate himself with the tough challenges. Since came in to the power, Imran is credited to have made far-reaching changes which has completely change the landscape of the country.
Imran allocated a huge budget of $639 million to improve the sporting facilities across Pakistan and to promote the new comers. He also announced scholarships for new sport beginners and promised to build a cricket ground in all villages across Pakistan.
Meanwhile, President of Qatar Olympic Committee, Sheikh Joaan Bin Hamad Al Thani, discussed the Arab Sports Personality being administrators that boost up Qatar athletics. Tokyo Olympics best performance with two gold and one bronze named to Qatar athletes.
A Filipina journalist who cut her teeth as a young reporter in the Marcos dictatorship years and now heads an investigative digital media outlet and a New Zealand journalist who was on board the bombed Rainbow Warrior environmental campaign ship are keynote speakers at an Asia-Pacific conference opening in Auckland today.
Glenda Gloria … co-founder and executive editor of Rappler. Image: Rappler
Her colleague, Maria Ressa, recently jointly won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, for championing a free press and she has been the target of multiple lawsuits in an attempt by the Duterte administration to silence the media.
Gloria will talk about current challenges facing the media in the Philippines and across the Asia Pacific region.
David Robie, founding director of the Pacific Media Centre and recently retired professor of Pacific journalism, is speaking about the media and covid-19 “disinformation and hate speech”.
Dr Robie sailed on board the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior that was bombed by French secret agents in Auckland in 1985 and he has reported on environmental issues, climate issues and independence struggles.
He has been the head of three Pacific university journalism programmes and the author of several media and politics books, including Eyes of Fire and Blood on their Banner.
‘International sharing’
Senior communications lecturer at AUT Khairiah A Rahman, principal organiser of the event, said there was much to be achieved from the conference.
Dr David Robie … retired professor of Pacific journalism and now editor of Asia Pacific Report. Image: AUT
“We will be looking at international sharing, networking, future collaborative projects, and research publications in journals and books,” Rahman said.
The ACMC received more than 60 paper submissions and approved 44 peer-reviewed abstracts for the biannual conference which was established in the Philippines and began in 2008.
Six international ACMC conferences have been hosted by universities in Penang, Malaysia; Bangkok, Thailand; Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Hong Kong; Philippines; Taiwan; and now at AUT in Auckland.
“We had several pre-conference talks which yielded as many as 94 participants. In real — not virtual — ACMC conferences, we welcome 130 to 160 attendees from 22 countries,” Rahman said.
The ACMC2021 conference at AUT.
The opening addresses will be made by Professor Felix Tan, associate dean research and acting dean of AUT’s Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies, and professor Azman Azwan Azmawa of Malaysia, president of the ACMC.
Among papers to be presented are topics such Media, Gender, and Intersectionality in the Pandemic Times; Lockdown Love: Computer-mediated Romantic Intimacies among Select Gay Filipino Couples; The Articulation of Papuan Women Ethnic Identity on Facebook; AUT’s Cindy Wang on Anyone can be a Vlogger: Sri Lankan Moviegoers in Covid-19 Pandemic Era.
Critical thinking
AUT’s Rahman and associate professor Petra Theuissen will jointly present a paper titled Concept Maps as Foundations for Critical Thinking in Public Relations Study.
Other papers to be presented include The Weibo Discussion about Taiwanese Legislation of Same-Sex Marriage presented by Massey University’s Fei Xiao.
Also, Rahman will present a timely paper after the New Zealand’s 2019 mosque massacre titled Shifting Dynamics in Popular Culture on Islamophobia Media Narratives.
Among the conference moderators is Jim Marbrook, a filmmaker and an AUT senior lecturer in screen production who in 2020 was co-producer of the documentary Loimata, The Sweetest Tears that won the 2021 FIFO grand jury prize in Tahiti. He will moderate a “media in quarantine” session.
Other moderators include associate professor Camille Nakhid, chair of the Pacific Media Centre which has been in hiatus for a year, Dr Theuissen and Deepti Bhargava, who will moderate a “crisis in communication challenges” session.
The conference begins this afternoon and ends on Saturday.
Chinese authorities must answer serious concerns about the tennis star Peng Shuai’s welfare, the Australian government has said.
The intervention comes as human rights activists and an independent senator step up calls for Australia to join a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics over broader allegations of rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
Analysis: Olympic committee is accused of engaging in a ‘publicity stunt’ by taking part in video call
As human rights organisations and the world’s media questioned the whereabouts of the Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai, the International Olympic Committee opted for a “quiet diplomacy” approach, arguing that was the most effective way to deal with such a case.
“Experience shows that quiet diplomacy offers the best opportunity to find a solution for questions of such nature. This explains why the IOC will not comment any further at this stage,” the Lausanne-based organisation said in an emailed statement on Thursday about the case of Peng, who disappeared from public view after she made an accusation of sexual assault against a former senior Chinese official.
Sara Duterte will stand alongside son of former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 2022 elections in move that has alarmed rights activists
The Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s daughter has registered her candidacy for vice-president in next year’s elections and was chosen as the running mate of Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the son of the late Filipino dictator, in an alliance that has alarmed human rights activists.
Sara Duterte backed out this week from her reelection bid as mayor of Davao City in the south, then took the place of a largely unknown vice-presidential candidate of her political party, Lakas CMD, in a move that allowed her to seek the second-highest post even after a deadline lapsed for candidates in the 9 May elections.
Uyghur representatives file third attempt to have international criminal court investigate China
Chinese officials are operating in foreign countries to get Uyghurs deported back to China by creating visa problems and coercing them into becoming informants, evidence given to the international criminal court alleges.
The submission by Uyghur representatives is the third attempt to have the ICC investigate Chinese authorities for alleged crimes against humanity and genocide, including the use of forced deportations of Uyghurs back to China.
A man with learning disabilities who is facing the death penalty in Singapore for smuggling a small amount of heroin has had his appeal adjourned and been given an indefinite stay of execution after testing positive for Covid.
Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a Malaysian man arrested in April 2009 when he was 21 for attempting to smuggle 43 grams of heroin into Singapore, has been on death row since 2010. His execution had been scheduled for Wednesday.
Counter-meeting attendees urge leaders not to let China off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation
Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.
Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.
Authorities using predictive policing and human surveillance on Muslims in Xinjiang, thinktank says
Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report.
The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions.
Letter from 137 lawmakers urges fund to drop stakes in firms accused of human rights violations or linked to Chinese state
A cross-party group of more than 137 parliamentarians, including 117 MPs, have called on parliament’s pension fund to disinvest from Chinese companies accused of complicity in gross human rights violations or institutions linked to the Chinese state.
The signatories include Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, and former Conservative cabinet ministers Liam Fox, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Tebbit. Others include the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, Layla Moran, and shadow foreign affairs minister Stephen Kinnock. The Conservative MP David Amess was also a signatory, one of his last political acts before his death on Friday.
Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents
Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.
“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.
An international peace webinar drew speakers and an audience from across the world who condemned the new Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) alliance. Jim McIlroy reports.
Biden administration announces plan after meeting between US national security adviser and China’s top diplomat
The US president, Joe Biden, and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, are planning to meet by video link before the end of the year, a senior US official said on Wednesday.
There is an “agreement in principle” for the “virtual bilateral”, the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Protesters parading an effigy of Rodrigo Duterte in Manila call for policies that prioritise people and planet
A monstrous effigy of Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was paraded through the country’s capital Manila on Friday as protesters joined a worldwide youth climate action.
About a hundred young people wearing masks gathered in one of several socially distanced demonstrations around the country in support of the global climate strike by the international Fridays for Future movement.
Case is ‘major blow’ in country with weak workers’ rights and puts trade deals in question, says Human Rights Watch
One of Thailand’s most prominent union leaders is facing three years in prison for his role in organising a railway safety campaign, in a case described as the biggest attack on organised labour in the country in decades.
Rights advocates say the case involving Sawit Kaewvarn, president of the State Railway Union of Thailand, will have a chilling effect on unions and threatens to further weaken workers’ rights in the country.
4Mins Read Green Queen Media publishes “APAC Alternative Protein Industry Report – APAC Acceleration”, the 2nd edition of its award-winning Asia Alternative Protein Industry Report 2021.
Campaigner for human rights in Indonesia from soon after independence and for freedom in regions it controlled
Carmel Budiardjo, who has died aged 96, campaigned for human rights and justice in Indonesia, and contributed significantly to the cause of freedom and self-determination in regions it controlled – East Timor (now Timor-Leste), Aceh and West Papua.
In the 1950s Carmel, a Londoner, and her Indonesian husband, Suwondo Budiardjo (known as Bud), began working in Indonesia, helping to build a new independent nation after the long period of Dutch colonial rule. Carmel was an economics researcher for the foreign ministry and Bud was deputy minister at the sea communications department.
Exclusive: Emily Thornberry appeals to Sajid Javid to tackle issue of forced labour in Chinese province
Labour has written to the health secretary, Sajid Javid, urging him to ensure a new £5bn contract for NHS protective equipment including gowns and masks is not awarded to companies implicated in forced labour in China’s Xinjiang region.
Following up earlier concerns about medical gloves for the NHS being produced in Malaysia, where there have been consistent reports of forced labour in factories, Emily Thornberry called for an urgent response.
Despite the risks, Anchana Heemmina wants justice for victims of the Malay Muslims’ decades-old insurgency – and for herself
Much of Anchana Heemmina’s work involves listening to stories of immeasurable pain, all part of her campaign to stop the cycle of violence that has long haunted Thailand’s troubled southern provinces.
Her work striving for human rights and to prevent torture by state authorities has put Heemmina’s life in danger.
I was scared that the comments would get so bad that they would encourage people to kill me
