The father of a three-year-old boy who died from carbon monoxide poisoning in north-west China said strict Covid-19 policies “indirectly killed” his son by causing delays obtaining treatment. The boy’s death on Tuesday sparked outrage on social media and is the latest incident to trigger blowback against China’s strict zero-Covid policy. “I personally think that he was indirectly killed,” the boy’s father, Tuo Shilei, told Reuters by phone from the city of Lanzhou, which has been under lockdown for several weeks. Tuo noticed that his son, Wenxuan, was unwell after…
Day: November 2, 2022
Vietnam should be ‘consistent with Universal Declaration of Human Rights,’ NGOs say
On the eve of the 26th annual Vietnam-U.S. Human Rights Dialogue, four non-governmental organizations called on the Vietnamese government to make efforts to earn its place on the UN Human Rights Council to which it was recently elected. The petition was signed by the Vietnam Human Rights Network, Defend the Defenders, the Vietnam Democracy Federation and Vietnam Democracy Radio. It was sent to Erin Barclay, senior bureau official for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the U.S Department of State, who is taking part in the two-day…
Can the US live in Xi Jinping’s world?
By the time of his second term, China had begun firmly nailing the Jell-O to the wall, imprisoning lawyers, muzzling dissent, snuffing out Hong Kong’s freedoms and building camps for the mass incarceration of more than a million Uyghurs in its far western region of Xinjiang. BBC
Cambodia’s modern slavery nightmare: the human trafficking crisis overlooked by authorities
At 3.28am on 29 June 2021, Xu Mingjian crept out of a dorm room inside a gated compound in Sihanoukville, Cambodia, and made his way to the second floor, where his friend, another victim of trafficking, was waiting. The two had hatched a desperate plan to escape the modern slavery nightmare they’d been in since Xu was sold to an online scam company in the same building three months earlier, believing a well-paid data entry job awaited him. They jumped from the balcony onto the first floor of the building…
Amid Much Controversy, German Chancellor Visits China
Advertisement When Germany’s present coalition government took shape in late 2021, its Coalition Agreement contained the makings of a new, much more critical approach to China. Until then, Germany’s China policy basically was about deepening and broadening the economic ties between the two countries; everything else, such as concerns about human rights violations and the repression of critical voices in China, or Beijing’s increasingly assertive posture in East Asia, was window-dressing. This now was to change. The Agreement supported continued cooperation with China, but only “wherever possible” and only “on…
Authorities in Xinjiang collect bodies of Uyghurs who died during COVID lockdown
Authorities in Xinjiang collected the bodies of Uyghur residents in the northeastern city of Ghulja who died during a strict coronavirus lockdown but did not inform the families of the deceased about whether they handled their remains according to Islamic burial rituals, Uyghurs with knowledge of the situation and local officials said. Ghulja, known as Yining in Chinese, has been under lockdown since early August due to outbreaks of the COVID-19 virus, in some cases leading to deaths from starvation or lack of access to medicine in the city of…
North Korea unleashes barrage of missiles amid speculation about a 7th nuclear test
UPDATED at 2:17 p.m. EDT on 11-03-2022 North Korea unleashed nearly 30 missiles over two days, ratcheting up tensions on the Korean peninsula amid growing speculation that Pyongyang may conduct its seventh nuclear test in the near future. After launching 23 missiles on Wednesday – including one that crossed a disputed maritime border for the first time – North Korea fired six more on Thursday, including a long-range inter-continental ballistic missile, the South Korean military said. The ICBM, believed to be a Hwasong-17, seems to have failed after second stage…
The Chinese Diplomats to Watch After the 20th Party Congress
Advertisement On October 22, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) announced the list of new senior officials elected to the Central Committee at the 20th Party Congress, five of whom were diplomats: State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Director of the International Liaison Department Liu Jianchao, deputy director of the National Security Commission office Liu Haixing, party secretary of the Foreign Ministry Qi Yu and Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang. Given that either four or five diplomats have been elected to the Central Committee in the past 30…
Supply fears as China lockdown hits world’s largest iPhone factory
Chinese authorities have announced a seven-day coronavirus lockdown in the area around the world’s largest iPhone factory, stoking concern that production will be severely curtailed ahead of the Christmas period. Foxconn’s plant in Zhengzhou, which employs about 200,000 people, produces the majority of Apple’s new phones, including the new iPhone 14. It has been rocked by discontent over stringent measures to curb the spread of Covid-19, with workers fleeing the site over the weekend after complaining about their treatment and provisions via social media. Nearby cities have drawn up plans…
Taiwan’s Pingpu Peoples One Step Closer to Recognition
Advertisement A ruling by the Constitutional Court on October 28 proved a win for the unrecognized Siraya people, one of the “Pingpu” or “Plains Indigenous” peoples currently not recognized as Indigenous by the Taiwanese government. The ruling specifies that legal changes to allow for recognition of the Siraya and other Indigenous groups will need to be made in the next three years. The implications of the ruling could be wide-ranging, seeing as close to 1 million may qualify as Pingpu according to some estimates. This means around 4 percent of…