2021-03-24
A harsh National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in mid-2020 brought with it the feared Chinese Communist Party tradition of jailing political prisoners. With more than 200 of the once-freewheeling city's pro-democracy figures in some form of custody, a local media outlet offered basic how-to advice on writing to Hong Kong inmates, including guidance on finding prisoners of conscience and a warning not to include glitter, gifts or "contents which mention illegal activities." Not long ago, Hong Kong's pro-democracy community ran annual Christmas card writing campaigns to cheer up imprisoned Chinese dissidents and human rights lawyers.
2021-03-23
Top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi used his allotted two-minute opening remarks in China’s first meeting with the Biden administration to deliver a 16-minute diatribe against the United States. Yang's outburst in Anchorage, Alaska marked his spot as leader of China's new breed of pugnacious diplomats who call themselves "Wolf Warriors." Analysts say Yang's words were directed not at Secretary of State Antony Blinken, but at the wolfpack's true alpha male: top leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, where state media lapped up the bravado.
2021-03-18
China's worst sandstorm in a decade swathed Beijing in a thick, orange haze, with peak particulate readings going beyond the scale of the instruments made to measure them. The March 15 blast of yellow sand from the Gobi Desert prompted social media users to mock air pollution czar Liu Bingjiang, who three weeks earlier had claimed a clean-air campaign called "Operation Blue Sky" had exceeded its goals, and that "the battle to keep our skies blue has been won."
2021-03-01
Vietnam has announced its candidacy to join the U.N. Human Rights Council for the 2023-2025 term, sparking scorn and disbelief from rights defenders. Rights lawyers said Vietnam, a rigidly authoritarian one-party Communist state that jails even mild critics, is arguably the most repressive country in the 10-member ASEAN bloc that Hanoi aims to represent at the U.N. body in Geneva.
2021-02-24
Kunchok Jinpa, a Tibetan tour guide beloved for his cultural activism and trusted for timely, accurate reports about events in his region, died aged 51 on Feb. 6, three months after he was hospitalized with paralysis and a brain hemorrhage as a result of torture in prison. He had vanished in custody after being detained on Nov. 8, 2013, leading to a near total shutdown of news from Driru, where Tibetans had resisted a Chinese mining project on a sacred mountain and a campaign to force residents to fly red Communist Party flags on their houses.
2021-02-19
The U.S. Department of Justice charged three North Korean military intelligence operatives with attempting the cybertheft of $1.3 billion from banks and cryptocurrency companies around the world, hacking into computers to steal data and money for the Kim Jong Un regime.
2021-02-17
Chinese Ambassador Chen Hai has dismissed as "completely nonsense" rumors in Myanmar that China was flying in technicians and equipment to help the military junta tighten internet censorship and suppress growing protests against the Feb. 1 coup. "These aircraft are normal cargo flights between China and Myanmar," he said. "They carry seafood and other exports from Myanmar to China.”
2021-02-17
Prime Minister Hun Sen has moved Cambodia ever closer to China politically amid estrangement from the West over his increasingly autocratic 35-year rule. Many Cambodians, however, see hypocrisy in the strongman's frequent public praise of China as a trusted friend and his reluctance to be the first to get the Chinese vaccine for coronavirus that arrived in Cambodia early this month. They note that he favors Singapore's doctors and hospitals over those of China.
2021-02-12
In Laos, where rampant deforestation has reduced natural forest cover from 70% in the 1950s to below 40% now, auditors found 127 government employees among 1,110 people involved in illegal logging since it was banned in 2016.
2021-02-08
Protesters in Myanmar are banging pots and pans to show resistance to the Feb. 1 military takeover. The noisy gesture of defiance that has been seen from Latin America to Iceland in recent years signifies driving out demons or evil spirits in the culture of Myanmar, which has been under army rule for nearly 50 of its 72 years since independence.
