UPDATED AT 010:34 A.M. ET ON 11-17-2022 Myanmar’s junta says it is releasing four foreigners from prison, including a former British ambassador and an Australian economist, as part of a major amnesty to mark a national holiday on Thursday. Among the 5,774 prisoners to be released are Australian Sean Turnell, a former economic advisor to ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi; Vicky Bowman, a former U.K. ambassador to Myanmar; Japanese documentary filmmaker Toru Kubota; and Burmese-American national Kyaw Htay Oo. All four will be deported after their release, according…
Day: November 16, 2022
What Videos Show About the Extremes of China’s ‘Zero Covid’ Policy
It has been weeks since Gao Mingjun, a 24-year-old resident of the central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, saw her mother. As coronavirus cases began spreading in Zhengzhou last month, Ms. Gao’s mother, who works and lives at the city’s Foxconn industrial park — home to the world’s biggest iPhone assembly plant — told her daughter that she was barred from leaving the compound. Then, one night, Ms. Gao’s mother was ordered into a quarantine center about four miles away. She and dozens of other groggy workers were made to wait…
Xi angrily rebukes Trudeau over ‘leaks’ to media about Canada-China relations
Xi Jinping has angrily rebuked Justin Trudeau after Canadian officials shared details of a previous meeting, highlighting the frosty relationship between the two leaders. In a clip recorded by the media pool at the G20 summit in Indonesia, a visibly frustrated Xi pulls the Canadian prime minister aside and says it was “not appropriate” for details about a previous conversation between the two leaders to have been shared with media, suggesting Trudeau lacked “sincerity” in his approach. “Everything we discuss has been leaked to the paper, that’s not appropriate,” Xi…
Nearly 1.7 million new refugees of conflict in Myanmar since coup
Nearly 1.7 million people have been displaced by conflict in Myanmar since last year’s military coup, bringing the total number of refugees who have fled fighting in the country to more than 3 million and putting a heavy strain on aid resources in the Southeast Asian nation. The Institute for Strategy and Policy, an independent research group, said in a report earlier this month that as of Nov. 2, at least 1,650,661 people had been forced to escape conflict in regions that include Sagaing, Magway, Bago, Chin and Kayah in…
Xi Scolds Trudeau Over Private Conversation Gone Public
“Unfortunately we’re seeing that countries, state actors from around the world, whether it’s China or others, are continuing to play aggressive games with our institutions, with our democracies,” Mr. Trudeau said, after news reports that Chinese authorities had meddled in Canadian elections by secretly funding 11 candidates in the 2019 federal election. In the absence of a formal meeting with Mr. Xi, Mr. Trudeau engaged him in a brief, unscheduled conversation at a reception on Tuesday. Canadian media later reported, citing the Canadian prime minister’s office, that Mr. Trudeau had…
IT security researchers find 2 new surveillance tools that target Uyghur mobile apps
China has been hacking into Uyghur-language mobile apps and infecting users’ devices to further monitor the persecuted predominantly-Muslim group in its northwestern Xinjiang region and in other countries, according to a new report. Researchers at the Threat Lab at California-based computer and network security company Lookout have uncovered two new surveillance tools they call BadBazaar and MOONSHINE targeting Uyghurs in China and abroad. The two tools can be used to track activities considered indicative of religious extremism or separatism by authorities if Uyghurs use virtual private networks, or VPNs, communicate…
UK Sees Varied Domestic Threats, Mainly From Iran, Russia and China
The scale of those expulsions, together with the rollout of Western economic sanctions designed to isolate Russia, had proved a surprisingly potent test for Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, he added. Well before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Britain was especially sensitive to the activities of Russian agents, and its pushback against Moscow’s spy networks intensified after the nerve agent poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian agent, and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury, England, in 2018. Since that episode prompted Britain to expel 23 Russian diplomats on espionage grounds,…
After 5-year ban, Cambodian opposition politicians can rejoin the political fray
In 2017, Cambodia’s Supreme Court disbanded the main opposition party at the behest of Prime Minister Hun Sen and imposed a five-year ban on 118 of its members from entering politics, effectively squelching any political opposition to the strongman who has ruled the country for 37 years. On Wednesday, that ban expired, allowing the former members of the Cambodian National Rescue Party, or CNRP, to re-enter politics ahead of general elections scheduled for July. While nearly half of the CNRP politicians have been convicted of crimes such as incitement and…
Shrinking role of China’s public intellectuals will hold back country’s rise
Bao Tong, aide to the late reform-minded former Communist Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang, holds a photo of Zhao as he speaks at his home in Beijing on April 23, 2014. Bao, a leading voice for political reform in the Communist Party who was purged after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, died on November 9 at age 90. Photo: AP South China Morning Post
Don’t Overlook Xi Jinping’s Meeting With Senegal’s President
Advertisement Chinese President Xi Jinping held 11 formal sit-downs with foreign leaders on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. Most famously, he had his first face-to-face meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden. But one meeting was largely overshadowed during the diplomatic flurry: Xi’s summit with Senegal’s President Macky Sall, who was invited to the G-20 summit as a guest in his capacity as the current chair of the African Union (AU). Sall’s presence in Bali gave Xi a chance to make up for lost time. Senegal hosted…