UPDATED at 1:02 p.m. EST on 11-18-2022. Australian economist Sean Turnell and Japanese journalist Toru Kubota arrived home Friday after an amnesty by the Myanmar junta for thousands of prisoners including four foreign nationals arrested since a military coup that has thrust the Southeast Asian nation into turmoil. Turnell, a former economic advisor to ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, landed in Melbourne early Friday. His wife, Ha Vu, released a statement saying she was “overwhelmed with joy” that her “beloved husband” was back home, Australian network ABC reported.…
Day: November 17, 2022
Thoughts on Xi Jinping’s Third Term
Advertisement Xi Jinping’s third term has begun. Xi’s own speech and the personnel announcements made to date have exhibited a strong emphasis on national security to further strengthen control over Chinese society, while persuading Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members and the Chinese people, including minority groups and the Taiwanese, to share the same “dream.” Moreover, although the unity required for this has also been a point that Xi has emphasized, personnel announcements have made it evident that this “unity” is not defined by diversity, but rather by everyone facing the…
China Covid: Anger at reports baby died due to delayed treatment
“When I heard, the news was like a bolt from the blue and I just couldn’t handle it,” Mr Li posted on Chinese social network Sina Weibo. He and his wife are currently being isolated at a Dengfeng hospital, and their daughter’s body is still in the morgue, Phoenix News reports. BBC
FBI director ‘very concerned’ by reports of secret Chinese police stations in US
The United States is deeply concerned about the Chinese government setting up unauthorised “police stations” in US cities to possibly pursue influence operations, FBI director Christopher Wray has said. “I’m very concerned about this. We are aware of the existence of these stations,” Wray told a US Senate homeland security and governmental affairs committee hearing, acknowledging the FBI’s investigative work on the issue but declining to give details. “But to me, it is outrageous to think that the Chinese police would attempt to set up shop, you know, in New…
China sentences mother of Uyghur Dutch airman to 15 years for visiting him abroad
Chinese authorities have sentenced the mother and sister-in-law of an ethnic Uyghur member of the Dutch air force to 15 years in prison on charges of supporting terrorism and revealing state secrets, Radio Free Asia has learned. The cases are another example of Beijing severely punishing members of the ethnic minority for visiting or contacting relatives abroad. Capt. Munirdin Jadikar, now a Dutch citizen, has been living in the Netherlands since 2006. His mother came to visit him in 2014 to attend his wedding, he told RFA’s Uyghur Service. In…
North Korean censors destroy more than half of soldiers’ Mother’s Day letters
North Korea’s military ordered soldiers to write letters to their mothers ahead of the country’s Mother’s Day, which was on Wednesday, but military censors destroyed more than half of them for ideological reasons, sources in the country told Radio Free Asia. To make matters worse, the censors even used the contents of some letters to identify and punish problematic soldiers, sources said. “The letters from soldiers of each unit … are opened before they arrive at the regimental postal office, and the ones that contain complaints about the difficulties of…
World of Warcraft and Other Blizzard Games Will Be Pulled From China
The fallout is unlikely to have a strong impact on the two companies’ bottom lines, said Chenyu Cui, an analyst at the research consultancy Omdia. “NetEase’s online games business has generated more revenue from mobile games,” she said. Other games, such as Naraka Bladepoint, the Westward Journey series and Justice, are its most lucrative products. The company reported that the percentage of total income in 2021 from Blizzard games was in the “low single digits.” The impact on Blizzard also appeared to be limited. Its biggest revenue generator, Diablo Immortal,…
U.S. charges Cambodian officials in monkey smuggling ring
Kry Masphal, the deputy director of the Cambodian agency responsible for protecting wildlife, was arrested on Wednesday in New York for his alleged involvement in a multimillion-dollar smuggling ring to export a species of endangered monkeys to the U.S. for use in medical research. Kry was one of eight people charged earlier this year in a sealed indictment for illegally selling long-tailed macaques, which have been protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) since 1977. Only monkeys bred in captivity are allowed to be exported and used…
Xi Jinping’s Many G-20 Summits
Advertisement After over a year and half of quiescence amid China’s tight COVID-19 restrictions, “Xi-plomacy” is back in a big way. Chinese President Xi Jinping returned to international travel in September 2022, with a trip to Kazakhstan and then Uzbekistan to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. In late October and early November, shortly after the 20th Party Congress concluded, he hosted top leaders from Vietnam, Pakistan, Tanzania, and Germany in Beijing. But China’s diplomatic outreach really kicked into overdrive with Xi’s attendance at the G-20 Summit in Bali,…
Police arrest Thai man caught smuggling four tiger cubs from Laos
Thai police said they arrested a Thai man on Tuesday caught smuggling four 2-month-old tiger cubs and attempting to sell them for U.S.$42,000. Thanad Wongsarm, 63, will be charged with trafficking endangered wildlife, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a 1 million baht (U.S.$27,000) fine. He was caught by undercover police officers who tried to buy the cubs from Thanad, who initially asked for 500,000 baht (US$14,000) each, said Torsak Sukvimol, deputy chief of Thailand’s National Police Department. The deputy chief did not clarify how…