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rightsinexile · 4 years ago

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News on Countries of Origin

Global

Trump administration alters, downplays human rights abuses in US State Department reports

Africa

Hundreds of thousands of displaced families affected by floods in the Sahel countries

ALGERIA: Algerian authorities expel thousands of migrants, asylum seekers to Niger

BURKINA FASO:

Jihadist attacks in northern Burkina Faso leave more than a dozen civilians dead

UNHCR condemns the killing of 25 internally displaced people in Burkina Faso

CAMEROON:

UN experts call for end to detention, intimidation of peaceful protesters in Cameroon

Gunmen kill at least six children in attack on Cameroon school

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO:

Thousands flee armed group attacks in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo

Protesters demand justice over unprosecuted rapes and murders in eastern DRC

EGYPT:

Rare protests met with unlawful force and mass arrests by Egyptian security forces

Egyptian security forces subject LGBT people to detention, ill-treatment and torture

KENYA:

The untold horror story of being transgender in Kenya

Kenyan efforts to end FGM suffor blow with victims paraden in “open defiance”

LIBYA:

Shocking cycle of violence for migrants departing Libya to seek safety in Europe

153 vulnerable asylum seekers evacuated from Libya to Niger by plane

Libyan militia hold at least 60 migrants hostage: MSF

Senior Libyan coastguard commander arrested for alleged human trafficking

MOZAMBIQUE: Escalating conflict in Cabo Delgado province forces over 300.000 to flee

NIGERIA:

Police brutality is just the tip of the iceberg for protesters in Nigeria

Authorities repeatedly fail to tackle impunity of notorious SARS police unit

“Just stop killing us”: Young Nigerians rise up against brutal police force

At least 11 killed in Islamist attack on a security convoy in Nigeria

SOUTH AFRICA: South African environmental activist shot dead in her home

SUDAN: Revealed: chaining, beastings and torture inside Sudan’s Islamic schools

ZIMBABWE: Journalist Hopewell speaks out about brutal Zimbabwe prison conditions

Americas

HONDURAS:

Honduran migrant caravan heads towards US to escape pandemic induced poverty

Human rights defender from Guapinol community murdered amidst state violence as extractive projects are implemented and legalized in protected territory

VENEZUELA:

New round of protests shakes Venezuela as discontent intensifies over failure of public services

Amid pandemic, Venezuelans leave the country in search of work

Asia

AZERBAIJAN:

Fleeing Azerbaijanis haunted by shelling in Nagorno-Karabakh mountains

Karabakh fighting turns local residents into “vagabond” refugees

BANGLADESH: Protesting Rohingya refugees beaten as authorities prepare relocation to island Bhasan Char

CHINA:

China confirms the jailing of family members of Netherlands-based Uyghur activist

Chinese leader Xi Jinping disregards systematic human rights abuses in Xinjiang

China “anti-gang” campaign is used to crack down on Tibetan community groups

Chinese authorities open hundreds of so-called security centers in Lhasa, increasing surveillance and facilitating stronger centralized control

Uyghur tell Australian parliamentary inquiry of “intimidation and harassment” by the Chinese government

INDIA:

Indian authorities blame critics after rape and murder in Uttar Pradesh state

Amnesty International forced to halt work as Indian government targets human rights groups

Indian TV channel silenced after it covered alleged corruption in Karnataka state

A life under lockdown through the eyes of Kashmir’s cartoonists

MYANMAR: Rakhine conflict escalates as villages burn and civilians are killed and injured

NEPAL: New laws in Nepal increase punishment for perpetrators of acid attacks

Europe

BELARUS: Lukashenko escalates crackdown in likely response to increased risk of Russian intervention

HUNGARY: Children’s book becomes symbol of resistance in Hungary’s fight over LGBT rights

MENA

AFGHANISTAN: Civilians caught in fighting between Afghan government forces, Taliban in Helmand province; tens of thousands flee their homes

IRAQ:

Regional authorities shut down media offices unlawfully in Kurdish region in Iraq after covering protests, airing broadcasts critical of the ruling party

“The militias are not allowing us back”: Sunnis languish in camps years after recapture of Mosul

PALESTINE: Israel’s systematic repression of Palestinians continues during pandemic: HRW

SYRIA: Dutch government seeks to hold Syria accountable for gross human rights violations

TURKEY: Politicians, activists detained as the Turkish government uses 2014 protests pretext for political crackdown

YEMEN: No clean hands as impunity continues unabated in Yemen, where there is no safe place to escape the ravages of war

#asylum #asylum seeker #refugee #COI #country conditions

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savinghongkong · 5 years ago

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China expels three WSJ reporters to deflect from its coronavirus woes

President Xi Jinping says China deserves to be treated as a great power, but on Wednesday his country expelled three Wall Street Journal reporters over a headline. Yes, a headline. Or at least that was the official justification. The truth is that Beijing’s rulers are punishing our reporters so they can change the subject from the Chinese public’s anger about the government’s management of the coronavirus scourge. “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia” was the headline over Walter Russell Mead’s Feb. 3 column in the Journal. Mr. Mead, a fellow at the Hudson Institute, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for us. He did not write the headline. Anyone who reads the piece can see it describes the problems in Chinese governance exposed by the response to the coronavirus outbreak. Beijing has since sacked Wuhan province officials, proving Mr. Mead’s point. *** As for that headline, we have heard from thoughtful people that to Chinese ears the “sick man” reference echoes in insensitive fashion the West’s exploitation of China in the mid-19th century during the opium wars. Others say it refers to Japan’s 20th-century invasion of China. We take the point, and we were happy to run letters to the editor criticizing the headline. Credit to the source

#china #antichinazi #wuhan pneumonia #chinese coronavirus #insane

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mideastsoccer · 5 years ago

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A bird’s eye view of Asia: A continental landscape of minorities in peril

By James M. Dorsey

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Patreon, Podbean and Castbox.

Many in Asia look at the Middle East with a mixture of expectation of stable energy supplies, hope for economic opportunity and concern about a potential fallout of the region’s multiple violent conflicts that are often cloaked in ethnic, religious and sectarian terms.

Yet, a host of Asian nations led by men and women, who redefine identity as concepts of exclusionary civilization, ethnicity, and religious primacy rather than inclusive pluralism and multiculturalism, risk sowing the seeds of radicalization rooted in the despair of population groups that are increasingly persecuted, disenfranchised and marginalized.

Leaders like China’s Xi Jingping, India’s Narendra Modi, and Myanmar’s Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi, alongside nationalist and supremacist religious figures ignore the fact that crisis in the Middle East is rooted in autocratic and authoritarian survival strategies that rely on debilitating manipulation of national identity on the basis of sectarianism, ethnicity and faith-based nationalism.

A bird’s eye view of Asia produces a picture of a continental landscape strewn with minorities on the defensive whose positioning as full-fledged members of society with equal rights and opportunities is either being eroded or severely curtailed.

It also highlights a pattern of responses by governments and regional associations that opt for a focus on pre-emptive security, kicking the can down the road and/or silent acquiescence rather than addressing a wound head-on that can only fester, making cures ever more difficult.

To be sure, multiple Asian states, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India have at various times opened their doors to refugees.

Similarly, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) disaster management unit has focused on facilitating and streamlining repatriation of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

But a leaked report by the unit, AHA Centre, in advance of last June’s ASEAN summit was criticized for evading a discussion on creating an environment in which Rohingya would be willing to return.

The criticism went to the core of the problem: Civilizationalist policies, including cultural genocide, isolating communities from the outside world, and discrimination will at best produce simmering anger, frustration and despair and at worst mass migration, militancy and/or political violence.

A Uyghur member of the Communist Party for 30 years who did not practice his religion, Ainiwa Niyazi, would seem to be the picture-perfect model of a Chinese citizen hailing from the north-western province of Xinjiang.

Yet, Mr Niyazi was targeted in April of last year for re-education, one of at least a million Turkic Muslims interned in detention facilities where they are forced to internalize Xi Jinping thought and repudiate religious norms and practices in what constitutes the most frontal assault on a faith in recent history.

If past efforts, including an attempt to turn Kurds into Turks by banning use of Kurdish as a language that sparked a still ongoing low level insurgency, is anything to go by, China’s ability to achieve a similar goal with greater brutality is questionable.

“Most Uyghur young men my age are psychologically damaged. When I was in elementary school surrounded by other Uyghurs, I was very outgoing and active. Now I feel like I have been broken… Quality of life is now about feeling safe,” said Alim, a young Uyghur, describing to Adam Hunerven, a writer who focuses on the Uyghurs, arrests of his friends and people trekking south to evade the repression in Xinjiang cities.

Travelling in the region in 2014, an era in which China was cracking down on Uyghurs but that predated the institutionalization of the re-education camps, Mr. Hunerven saw that “the trauma people experienced in the rural Uyghur homeland was acute. It followed them into the city, hung over their heads and affected the comportment of their bodies. It made people tentative, looking over their shoulders, keeping their heads down. It made them tremble and cry.”

There is little reason to assume that anything has since changed for the better. On the contrary, not only has the crackdown intensified, fear and uncertainty has spread to those lucky enough to live beyond the borders of China. Increasingly, they risk being targeted by the long arm of the Chinese state that has pressured their host countries to repatriate them.

Born and raised in a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, Rahima Akter, one of the few women to get an education among the hundreds of thousands who fled what the United Nations described as ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, saw her dreams and potential as a role model smashed when she was this month expelled from university after recounting her story publicly.

Ms. Akter gained admission to Cox’s Bazar International University (CBIU) on the strength of graduating from a Bangladeshi high school, a feat she could only achieve by sneaking past the camp's checkpoints, hiding her Rohingya identity, speaking only Bengali, dressing like a Bangladeshi, and bribing Bangladeshi public school officials for a placement.

Ms Akter was determined to escape the dire warnings of UNICEF, the United Nations’ children agency, that Rohingya refugee children risked becoming “a lost generation.”

Ms. Akter’s case is not an isolated incident but part of a refugee policy in an environment of mounting anti-refugee sentiment that threatens to deprive Rohingya refugees who refuse to return to Myanmar unless they are guaranteed full citizenship of any prospects.

In a move that is likely to deepen a widespread sense of abandonment and despair, Bangladeshi authorities, citing security reasons, this month ordered the shutting down of mobile services and a halt to the sale of SIM cards in Rohingya refugee camps and restricted Internet access. The measures significantly add to the isolation of a population that is barred from travelling outside the camps.

Not without reason, Bangladeshi foreign minister Abul Kalam Abdul Momen, has blamed the international community for not putting enough pressure on Myanmar to take the Rohingyas back.

The UN “should go to Myanmar, especially to Rakhine state, to create conditions that could help these refugees to go back to their country. The UN is not doing the job that we expect them to do,” Mr. Abdul Momen said.

The harsh measures are unlikely to quell increased violence in the camps and continuous attempts by refugees to flee in search of better pastures.

Suspected Rohingya gunmen last month killed a youth wing official of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League party. Two refugees were killed in a subsequent shootout with police.

The plight of the Uyghurs and the Rohingya repeats itself in countries like India with its stepped up number of mob killings that particularly target Muslims, threatened stripping of citizenship of close to two million people in the state of Assam, and unilateral cancellation of self-rule in Kashmir.

Shiite Muslims bear the brunt of violent sectarian attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Malaysia, Shiites, who are a miniscule minority, face continued religious discrimination.

The Islamic Religious Department in Selangor, Malaysia’s richest state, this week issued a sermon that amounts to a mandatory guideline for sermons in mosques warning against “the spread of Shia deviant teachings in this nation… The Muslim ummah (community of the faithful) must become the eyes and the ears for the religious authorities when stumbling upon activities that are suspicious, disguising under the pretext of Islam,” the sermon said.

Malaysia, one state where discriminatory policies are unlikely to spark turmoil and political violence, may be the exception that confirms the rule.

Ethnic and religious supremacism in major Asian states threatens to create breeding grounds for violence and extremism. The absence of effective attempts to lessen victims’ suffering by ensuring that they can rebuild their lives and safeguard their identities in a safe and secure environment, allows wounds to fester.

Permitting Ms. Akter, the Rohingya university student, to pursue her dream, would have been a low-cost, low risk way of offering Rohingya youth an alternative prospect and at the very least a reason to look for constructive ways of reversing what is a future with little hope.

Bangladeshi efforts to cut off opportunities in the hope that Rohingya will opt for repatriation have so far backfired. And repatriation under circumstances that do not safeguard their rights is little else than kicking the can down the road.

Said human rights advocate Ewelina U. Ochab: “It is easy to turn a blind eye when the atrocities do not happen under our nose. However, we cannot forget that religious persecution anywhere in the world is a security threat to everyone, everywhere.”

Dr. James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, an adjunct senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture

#ASIA #refugees #China (PRC)#china #xinjiang #Xi Jinping #Myanmar #rohingya #india #Muslims #Kashmir #modi #Narendra Modi #malaysia #shiia #islam

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opedguy · 3 years ago

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Blinken Bluffs on Taiwan

LOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Nov. 10, 2021.--Secretary of State Antony Blinken, 58, told a New York Times forum today that the U.S. would take “unspecified action” in the event of a Mainland China attack on Taiwan. Since Former President Jimmy Carter signed the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, the U.S. committed to supplying Taiwan with defensive and offensive weapons needed to fend off a Chinese attack. President Joe Biden, 78, created a big stir when he said Oct. 22 that the U.S. would come to the defense of Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. Taiwan has enjoyed independence from Mainland China since the 1949 Maoist Revolution, when Chiang Kai-Shek led a band of anti-communist counter-revolutionaries to the Island of Formosa with U.S. help. Since fleeing Communist China, Chinese nationalists in the Republic of China relied heavily on the U.S. to keep Beijing from seizing the island territory.

Blinken’s statement today offers nothing new the U.S. policy of strategic ambiguity, not saying exactly what the U.S. would do in the event of a Chinese military invasion. Chinese President Xi Jinping has stated unequivocally that he considers Taiwan a part of Communist China, the same as Hong Kong. U.S. and its allies consider Taiwan a different ball of wax, primarily because the Republic of China has been independent of Beijing since 1949. China only started recently to assert sovereignty over Hong Kong, since the British Crown Colony lost its lease on the territory July 1, 1997. China has flexed its muscles on a rebellious pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, leading to tensions between Beijing and Washington. China has certainly cracked down on Hong over the last two years, leaving not much remaining of any pro-democracy opposition. Taiwan’s island geography keeps it independent.

Blinken was asked today what the U.S. would do in the event of a Mainland incursion into Taipei. Blinken told the New York Times forum that the U.S. would take “unspecified action,” continuing the long policy of strategic ambiguity. “At the same time, I think it’s fair to say that we’re not alone in this determination to make sure that we preserve peace and stability in that part of the world,” Blinken said, still not saying what the U.S. would do in the way of an action. Unspecified action today is taken as collective economic sanctions, certainly not joining military coalition to expel Beijing from Taiwan. “There are many countries, both in the region and beyond, that would se any unilateral action to use force to disrupt the status quo as a significant threat to peace and security, and they too would take action in the event that that happens,” Blinken said, clearly referring to economic sanctions.

Blinken’s statements come at a time of tense relations with Beijing. Since Biden accused Beijing of genocide against Muslim Uyghurs in Western China, U.S.-Chinese relations headed south. Sending Blinken and 44-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to Anchorage for a summit with China March 18, it didn’t take long for the meeting to deteriorate into name-calling. Since, Xi has shunned Biden, refusing to accept U.S. accusations about committing genocide in Xinjiang Province. When Xi didn’t show up at Glasgow’s COP26 Climate Summit, Biden openly criticized Beijing for not taking it seriously. Today’s announcement by Climate Czar John Kerry that Beijing and Washington would work together to reduce methane gas emissions showed the first positive sign in U.S.-Chinese relations. Beijing has been escalating threats on Taiwan, flying bombing missions over the Taiwan Strait. U.S.-Chinese relations are at such a low point over the deadly novel coronavirus that there’s little the U.S. can do to placate Beijing.

Biden told his 52-year-old Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to determine the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic. Beijing can’t keep its story straight, insisting the virus was made in America and exported by the U.S. military to Wuhan, China. No one on the world stage believes for a second that the U.S. created the deadly novel coronavirus. Most believe now that the virus was engineered in a Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] lab, with joint efforts between China, the U.S. and foreign scientists. So when it comes putting U.S.-China diplomacy back on track, there’s little the U.S. can do other stop blaming Beijing. Today’s best evidence on the origin of the deadly virus points to WIV Chief Virology Shi Zhengli’s bioweaopns lab, not the U.S.

Finding some common ground with Beijing on climate change, especially methane gas disposal, was a good first step by Kerry, maybe opening up some future doors. But like so many other points of conflict, China continues to resist international norms in the South China Sea, bullying its neighbors in the Pacific Rim. When Biden announced a nuclear submarine deal with Australia Sept. 16, it infuriated Beijing. So whatever common ground Kerry found on climate change, it’s small potatoes compared to other issues, including Blinken’s remarks today on Taiwan. Blinken announced that Biden would hold a virtual summit with Xi, sometime as early as next week. Xi wants Biden to back off on blaming China for the deadly novel coronavirus. Beyond that, China doesn’t want to hear more about the U.S. defending Hong Kong or Taiwan, both sore points with Beijing.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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newstfionline · 3 years ago

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Thursday, September 23, 2021

Racism, climate and divisions top UN agenda as leaders meet (AP) Racism, the climate crisis and the world’s worsening divisions will take center stage at the United Nations on Wednesday. China’s President Xi Jinping warned that “the world has entered a period of new turbulence and transformation.” Finland’s President Sauli Niinistö said: “We are indeed at a critical juncture.” And Costa Rica’s President Carlos Alvarado Quesada declared: “The future is raising its voice at us: Less military weaponry, more investment in peace!” Speaker after speaker at Tuesday’s opening of the nearly week-long meeting decried the inequalities and deep divisions that have prevented united global action to end the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed nearly 4.6 million lives and is still raging, and the failure to sufficiently tackle the climate crisis threatening the planet. Perhaps the harshest assessment of the current global crisis came from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who opened his state of the world address sounding an “alarm” that “the world must wake up.” “Our world has never been more threatened or more divided,” he said. “We face the greatest cascade of crises in our lifetimes.” “We are on the edge of an abyss—and moving in the wrong direction,” the secretary-general warned.

Shutdowns and Showdowns (1440) Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are gearing up for a pair of legislative showdowns over the next week and a half, set in motion by two decisions over the past two days. The first focuses on government funding and the debt ceiling. If Congress does not provide funding for fiscal year 2022 by midnight Sept. 30, the federal government will face a shutdown. Similarly, the Treasury Department has said Congress must raise the debt ceiling by mid-October to avoid default. House Democrats passed yesterday a bill pairing short-term funding through Dec. 3 with a debt ceiling increase—a move requiring the support of at least 10 Republican senators. Separately, House Democrats said they planned to bring a $1.2T bipartisan infrastructure deal up for a vote, separate from a $3.5T social spending budget bill. The move pits moderates against progressives, with the latter previously saying they would only support the infrastructure deal if a vote on the budget bill came at the same time. It’s unclear how many House Republicans will support the $1.2T bill.

Haiti Deportations (Foreign Policy) The United States will continue deportation flights to Haiti today as it seeks to repatriate nearly 15,000 migrants who have crossed into U.S. territory in recent days. Videos of federal authorities mistreating the mostly Haitian migrants at a camp in Del Rio, Texas—a town on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border—has led to fierce criticism from Democratic lawmakers and adds to a warning from the head of the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR that the deportations may violate international law. The move could also be seen as hypocritical; just over 7 weeks ago, on Aug. 3, the Biden administration extended protected status to Haitian migrants in the United States, in light of what the Department of Homeland Security called a “deteriorating political crisis, violence, and a staggering increase in human rights abuses” in their home country. The legal authority under which Biden has carried out the expulsion has also been called into question. Title 42, a Trump-era authorization implemented at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic to expel asylum seekers immediately on the grounds that they could spread disease, has been maintained by the Biden administration. Last week, a federal judge blocked the Biden administration from enforcing the policy, a decision that is now being appealed by the U.S. government. Amid a surge of migrants crossing into the United States this year, Title 42 has been applied regularly; figures from U.S. customs authorities show roughly 700,000 expulsions took place under the Biden administration to date, nearly twice the amount that took place under President Donald Trump.

Lithuania says throw away Chinese phones due to censorship concerns (Reuters) Lithuania’s Defense Ministry recommended that consumers avoid buying Chinese mobile phones and advised people to throw away the ones they have now after a government report found the devices had built-in censorship capabilities. Flagship phones sold in Europe by China’s smartphone giant Xiaomi have a built-in ability to detect and censor terms such as “Free Tibet”, “Long live Taiwan independence” or “democracy movement”, Lithuania’s state-run cybersecurity body said on Tuesday. The capability in Xiaomi’s Mi 10T 5G phone software had been turned off for the “European Union region”, but can be turned on remotely at any time, the Defence Ministry’s National Cyber Security Centre said in the report.

Toxic gas, new rivers of molten lava endanger Spanish island (AP) As a new volcanic vent blew open and unstoppable rivers of molten rock flowed toward the sea, authorities on a Spanish island warned Tuesday that more dangers lie ahead for residents, including earthquakes, lava flows, toxic gases, volcanic ash and acid rain. Several small earthquakes shook the island of La Palma in the Atlantic Ocean off northwest Africa on Tuesday, keeping nerves on edge after a volcanic eruption on Sunday. The rivers of lava, up to six meters (nearly 20 feet) high, rolled down hillsides, burning and crushing everything in their path, as they gradually closed in on the island’s more densely populated coast. Canary Islands government chief Ángel Víctor Torres said “when (the lava) reaches the sea, it will be a critical moment.” The meeting of the lava, whose temperature exceeds 1,000 degrees Celsius (more than 1,800 F), with a body of water could cause explosions and produce clouds of toxic gas. A change in the wind direction blew the ashes from the volcano across a vast area on the western side of the island, with the black particles blanketing everything. Volcanic ash is an irritant for the eyes and lungs. The volcano has also been spewing out between 8,000 and 10,500 tons of sulfur dioxide—which also affects the lungs—every day, the Volcanology Institute said.

Germany’s diversity shows as immigrants run for parliament (AP) Ana-Maria Trasnea was 13 when she emigrated from Romania because her single, working mother believed she would have a better future in Germany. Now 27, she is running for a seat in parliament. “It was hard in Germany in the beginning,” Trasnea said in an interview with The Associated Press. “But I was ambitious and realized that this was an opportunity for me, so I decided to do whatever I can to get respect and integrate.” Trasnea, who is running for the center-left Social Democrats in Sunday’s election, is one of hundreds of candidates with immigrant roots who are seeking a seat in Germany’s lower house of parliament, or Bundestag. While the number in office still doesn’t reflect their overall percentage of the population, the country’s growing ethnic diversity is increasingly visible in politics. There are about 21.3 million people with migrant backgrounds in Germany, or about 26% of the population of 83 million.

Europe’s defense (Foreign Policy) EU leaders will discuss plans for a more coordinated defense posture in an upcoming summit in October, European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic told reporters on Tuesday. “I think that after Kabul, after AUKUS, this was, I would say the natural conclusion, that we need to focus more on the strategic autonomy,” Sefcovic said, referring to the recent trilateral defense pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Kremlin’s party gets 324 of 450 seats in Russian parliament (AP) Russia’s ruling party will get 324 of the 450 seats in the next national parliament, election authorities announced Tuesday. The number is less than the pro-Kremlin party, United Russia, won in the previous election but still an overwhelming majority. Retaining the party’s dominance in the State Duma was widely seen as crucial for the Kremlin ahead of Russia’s presidential election in 2024. President Vladimir Putin’s current term expires that year, and he is expected either to seek reelection or to choose another strategy to stay in power. A parliament the Kremlin can control could be key to both scenarios, analysts and Kremlin critics say. Most opposition politicians were excluded from the parliamentary election that concluded Sunday, which was tainted by numerous reports of violations and voter fraud.

Queued (WSJ) As of Sunday, there were 73 ships waiting to unload cargo at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, a brutal logjam just as holiday cargo hits U.S. shores. There are few options around it, given that last year the ports handled 8.8 million containers, more than double the runner-up port of New York and New Jersey which handled 3.9 million. Oakland and Seattle aren’t big enough to handle the hundreds of thousands of boxes handled in L.A. and Long Beach every week, and while some shippers had been heading to East Coast ports for a while, word about that hack got around rather quickly, and so it’s getting just as bad on the Atlantic, with 20 ships queued at Savannah.

Wednesday’s autumnal equinox (Washington Post) Summer often seems to last deep into September these days. However, the autumnal equinox—which arrives Wednesday at 3:21 p.m. Eastern time—is a reminder from Mother Nature that fall is finally on our doorstep. We are now seeing just over 12 hours of daylight, having reached the halfway point between our longest and shortest days of the year. The autumnal (or fall) equinox, which usually falls on Sept. 22 or 23, is technically not a day-long astronomical event. It’s a brief moment in time when the sun appears directly over the Earth’s equator before crossing into the Southern Hemisphere. Like the spring equinox in March, the fall equinox is one of only two days each year when most of the Earth experiences about 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness. Day and night are nearly equal because we are at a point in our orbit when neither hemisphere is tilted away from or toward the sun. In the Northern Hemisphere, the autumnal equinox means we are entering the dark season and inching closer toward winter.

#headlines #news

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grahamperryondisputeresolution · 4 years ago

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COVID AND DEMOCRACY PART 4

https://grahamperryonchina.com/?p=2092 COVID AND DEMOCRACY PART 4 - VACCINATION, INDIA, AND RACE HATE IN THE USA MAY 2021 This is the last in a series of four articles on the topic of Covid and Democracy. Democracy is often used by the US/UK and other countries as the point of significant difference relied upon by the West to undermine and belittle China. The West’s thinking is along with the following; The West is democratic; it has one man, one vote; tyranny has been overcome; the people are in control; they are free to elect their governments; democracy has trumped autocracy. In these articles, I have argued that democracy is about freedom. Still, it is also about governance and the government’s credibility, and when Covid-19 challenged all governments the world over, why did the US/UK perform so badly and, relatively speaking, China perform so well? And in support of my argument, I looked at the death count in the three countries. In the US/UK, with a combined population of 400m, why was the death count as high as 730,000 and in China, with a population of 1.41bn, why was the death count as low as 10,000? One person questioned my personal sense of morality in comparing the figures for loss of life. But democracy is about the ability of governments to look after the safety, health and well-being of their people and by that standard, the US/UK failed, and China succeeded. As China is battered for its reliance on the leadership of the Communist Party and its alleged totalitarian apparatus, which, the critics say, denies freedom to Chinese citizens and condemns them to servitude, hardship and oppression, it is worth asking the question which population was better looked after by its government? One government, after initial hesitancy, took decisive action, imposed a lockdown, closed the streets and the parks and the airports whilst two other governments were indecisive, gave contradictory messages and were, ultimately, casual with the lives of their two peoples. Individuals, CEO’s, heads of schools, parents, hospitals, plants and all organisations are in one way or another put to the test. The question is asked – Can they rise to the occasion and provide leadership when danger threatens? It is for these reasons that reviewing the figures for loss of life is a very correct and relevant format to use in assessing leaders’ abilities to lead. Xi Jinping rose to the occasion. Johnson and Trump fell short. So how do we assess the role of vaccinations in the pandemic? In one sense, Johnson had a big achievement. He was able to secure the jabs and make them available in an organised manner to the UK people. Trump was slower, but Biden has made vaccination the main policy and has provided increased protection to US citizens. And, of course, looking after your constituents is an achievement. It is part of the test of the Government to protect its people, and providing vaccination is evidence that the people have been protected – even if the same government was very slow in imposing lockdown as late as March 2020, causing unnecessary deaths. But UK vaccinations have gone to UK citizens, and US vaccinations have overwhelmingly gone to US citizens. China, with a population of 1.4bn, has pursued a quite different path. First, it attacked the pandemic – relentlessly and aggressively. Contrary to the casual approach of Trump and Johnson, Xi Jinping closed down cities, airports, trains and shops. Citizens were instructed, not asked, to remain indoors on pain of arrest. Two large hospitals were built from scratch with 8 days. The pandemic was beaten back. Strong and decisive action protected the people of China, and deaths have been restricted to less than 10,000 people. Second China, instead of setting about the vaccination of all its people, decided on a dual policy. Vaccinations were necessary for China, and vaccinations were necessary overseas. The numbers tell a story about governance and democracy. 7 May 2021 was a significant date – the WHO added Sinopharm’s vaccine to its emergency use list for the Covid-19 pandemic – the first from a developing country. Sage experts conducted on-site inspections at the production facility in China before approving worldwide distribution. The FT recently reported that Chinese jabs were dominating vaccination campaigns in Latin America. China has shipped more than half of the 143.5m doses of vaccines delivered to the region’s 10 most highly populated countries. China – 75.8m doses; AstraZeneca + Pfizer – 59m doses and Russia 8.7m. The Turkish Health Minister, Mr F Koca, said Turkey prefers China’s “inactivated vaccines” to the technology of Pfizer/Moderna because the latter “require difficult and costly cold-chain handling compared with China’s inactivated vaccines”. The UAE and Bahrein have officially registered the Sinopharm vaccine, and inoculations have already started for residents in Abu Dhabi. Morocco has ordered 10m doses, and Jordan is carrying out Sinopharm clinical trials. Clare Wenham, Assistant Professor of Global Health Policy, said,” We see increased Chinese dominance as a health power”. This reflects Xi Jinping’s Win-Win philosophy – a recognition, like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), that the World prospers if progress is shared. The West will misrepresent China’s policy because the West is challenged by China. Why doesn’t China use all its vaccine for its 1.4bn people? Because of China-controlled Covid-19 by decisive action in February/March 2020. US/UK deaths – 730,000. China deaths – less than 10,000. The numbers matter. They tell a story. Whereas the US and the UK, with one eye on electoral popularity, are gobbling up every jab available without supplying to the rest of the world, China has maintained tight control over Covid-19 at home while distributing considerable doses to the world at large. They also tell another story. China has been represented as a mass manufacturer of soft consumer goods as Western companies piled into China from 2000 onwards – sweaters, trainers, deckchairs, trinkets, fireworks. Now Made in China will be remembered for life-saving vaccinations and drugs. Beijing’s strategic pivot away from low-tech manufacturing to quality construction projects, highways, new ports, and now vaccinations will change how developing countries view China. The West will say that China seeks political leverage and power in political circles. Actually, No. China’s achievement will be the reputational gain – a country fully aware of the vital need to help and assist the world’s countries in achieving mutual prosperity. This is not hegemony but a realisation that the long-term gain to the world community is to facilitate well-being, growth and progress. Past world powers have all been hegemonists and imperialists. The significance of China will be that “Win-Win” prevails over “All-For-Me”. China will not exploit weaker countries for their own benefit. This will only become apparent when historians come to write the history of the current century. But significant world changes are taking place now that will grow in importance as the Century progresses, as the US settles in at #2 economic power. China champions a new attitude to world development. China and India are often thrown together in comparison. Both have large populations – 1.4bn/1.3bn – both are non-White countries – both became independent at the same time, China in 1949 and India in 1947 – and both countries expelled the British. It was not an accident of history that the British took the opium seeds from the hills of India and converted them into the drug that created addicts the length and breadth of China. The similarities disappear when it comes to the Pandemic as we view the distressing Indian TV footage of families carrying their dead ones to crematorium only to be turned away at the gates; the individual Indians pleading for help with oxygen, hospital beds, and medical treatment. The loss of life is considerable, and on 27 April, India recorded 3,876 deaths according to the Health Ministry – statistics likely to be very under-expressed as they will not include deaths at home or full burial numbers. India is grappling with the world’s worst Covid-19 epidemic as cases on 27 April rose by 329,942. Hospitals are full. Supplies are short, and human misery is on every street corner. On 20 May, India reported 276,110 cases over the last 24 hours and 3,874 deaths, bringing the country total to 25.77 million infections and 287,122 fatalities. Chinese people are not better than Indian people. There is no racial argument here at all. But Chinese authoritarianism is better than Indian democracy when it comes to governance and the protection of the public. Having “One Man, One Vote” counts for nothing if the government cannot organise oxygen supplies, deliver hospital beds; procure vaccinations; set up vaccination centres; provide emergency crematoria, arrange home visits, organise mourning periods; protect schools; arrange on-the-spot testing. It is back to the wider question of What Works. When crisis comes, and a Government has to look after its people, the system of Indian democracy failed the Indian population, and as we advance, this lesson will not be lost on developing countries trying to find the right formula for bringing law, order, prosperity, housing and medical supplies to their people. Finally, I want to comment on the surge in anti-Asian racism in the US since the pandemic commenced. On 29 March 2021, 65-year-old Vilma Kari was brutally assaulted on her way to church in New York. The crime made headlines in her home country of the Philippines, where Vice President Robredo and Senator Pacquiao, both prospective presidential candidates, were quick to pick up on video film that showed the assailant, Brandon Elliott, a 38-year-old homeless man, yelling, “You don’t belong here” before kicking and punching the victim in the face. The incident was part of a recent spike in anti-Asian violence across the US. Even as overall hate crimes declined in 2020, it is the case that anti-Asian hate crimes reported to the police rose nearly 150% in 16 of the largest US cities, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism in California State University, San Bernandino. The trend was underlined by the 16 March 2021 killing of six women of Asian descent near Atlanta, Georgia, which ignited protests in the US and sent shockwaves through Asia. Specifically, to China, an assault on a 76-year-old woman in San Francisco triggered anger when shown on video in China, which led to a strong narrative about the US abusive treatment of native Indians, African slaves and Chinese labourers. Many blame former President Trump, who appealed directly to white nationalism and stirred anti-China sentiment at home and abroad, often referring to Covid-19 as the “China virus” and attacking China’s trade policies as “economic rape”. And the incidence of hate crimes has not abated under President Biden. Yuen Yuen Ang is a Politics Professor at the University of Michigan. He writes that “It is common to portray US-China relations as ‘a clash of civilisations’ – two cultural opposites with nothing in common. This narrative is unhelpful and misleading. It induces Americans to perceive the Chinese as weird and consequently threatening…While most people avoid overt racism, orientalism creeps in easily and unconsciously as people view China as the land of lanterns and dragons. Imagining an entire race of people as strange and exotic dehumanises them. Once a person ceases to see other people as human, it becomes easy to hate and inflict violence. Racism stalks the streets of US cities. It was there before Trump, but his free-wheeling right-wing US First agenda has fired up racial antagonisms with the last year of his term in office dominated by an anti-China agenda. “Reds Under the Beds” was a term from the Cold War of the 1950s. It has been revived as Pompeo and now Blinken claim that China is a genocidal nation. It is not a surprise that the Ash School of Government at Harvard University found that Chinese students and tourists returning home after a visit to the US had an even greater commitment to China and its style of democracy. Covid-19 is a pandemic that has thrown up many questions about individual well-being, public health policies, government capability and democratic effectiveness. There will be investigations into the origins of the virus, the performance of governments, the policies on vaccination and vaccination distribution. There will be allegations and counter-allegations. Big issues are on the table with important consequences for the long term well-being of the Earth’s inhabitants, and answers will be sought to key questions relating to the ability of democratic and authoritarian governments to handle the demands made upon them by the virus. There is an indication that control of the virus may now be underway. The focus will switch to how governments discharged their primary responsibility to maintain the safety and well being of their populations. GRAHAM PERRY MAY 2021 - - https://grahamperryonchina.com/?p=2092

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neethypaksham · 4 years ago

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Xi Jinping tightens grip on China Tackling of virus, muscular approach, economic recovery have helped mute critics

A year that began in China with the country’s leadership facing searching questions about its handling of a new pandemic that struck the city of Wuhan ends with President Xi Jinping firming up his political control.

If 2020 started as China’s annus horribilis, the year has, in the eyes of many strategic experts in Beijing, only hastened China’s ascendancy and narrowed the gap with the United States, its great rival.

Beijing, having broadly controlled the coronavirus at home, is now leading a global economic recovery, as well as adopting, as India discovered through this summer’s border crisis, an increasingly muscular posture abroad. In contrast, the U.S. has struggled with both its response to the pandemic as well as unprecedented political divisions at home, manifested in a closely fought election that ended with the defeat of President Donald Trump, whose term in office marked a deterioration in relations with China triggered by a trade war.

A crisis in Wuhan

Few in China would have expected the year to end as it does. China’s initial fumbling of the pneumonia outbreak that began last December, when the leadership in Wuhan delayed action for three weeks, has now become a footnote, with the leadership showcasing China’s recovery as underlining the superiority of its political system.

Back in February, the death of the whistle-blower doctor Li Wenliang had led to an outpouring of criticism, which prompted Beijing to fire the Communist Party leaders in charge of Wuhan and Hubei province. Mr. Xi then acknowledged the pandemic had posed “a major test” of China’s governance.

In March, a prominent former real estate tycoon with close Party links, Ren Zhiqiang, penned a searing essay directly criticising Mr. Xi’s leadership.

Yet by the summer, China’s controlling of the outbreak, thanks to strict lockdowns and a sweeping testing and tracing system, helped the Party weather the storm. Coupled with the failure of the U.S. to tackle the coronavirus effectively— which the Party propaganda has ceaselessly highlighted as a vindication of its leadership — signs are Mr. Xi remains as strong as ever heading into 2021, a sensitive year that will see the Party celebrate its centenary in July.

Heading into the anniversary, the trend of political centralisation under Mr. Xi is only expected to continue, as also the shrinking space for dissent. Mr. Ren, the real estate tycoon, was in September sentenced to 18 years in jail ostensibly on corruption charges, although the real offence was his critical essay.

The previous month, another prominent critic of Mr. Xi’s from inside the Party, Cai Xia, a professor of the Party School, was expelled from the elite institution that Mr. Xi once headed over her criticisms of his leadership style, which included an observation that a growing number of Party officials were opposed to the political direction under him but were afraid of speaking out.

Strong recovery

China’s subsequent recovery from the pandemic helped the leadership mute its critics, with the world’s second-largest economy likely to be the only major country to grow in a pandemic-hit year. China in the first quarter contracted by 6.8%, but has since recovered strongly, growing 3.2% in the second quarter and 4.9% in the third. Shuttered factories have reopened, although the global slump remains a headwind.

That has prompted Mr. Xi to double down on his push for greater self-reliance, which he has called a “dual circulation” model that strikes a better balance between relying on domestic consumption and external trade.

A key Party plenum held in October discussed “a new development pattern” for the 14th five-year plan (2021-2025) and also laid out a “Vision 2035” blueprint that emphasises more sustainable growth.

China is still struggling with rising debt, a problem worsened by this year’s economic relief measures, and is also pushing for cleaner growth, with Mr. Xi this year announcing a target to go carbon neutral by 2060, which will require a reduction of coal in the energy mix from 58% to less than 50% by 2025.

Assertive Posture

If 2020 has reinforced the belief in Beijing of its global ascendancy, it has also been marked by an increasingly muscular approach abroad on all of its frontiers.

China’s homegrown aircraft carrier, the Shandong, sailed across the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea after being inducted into the navy this year and will be combat ready by early 2021. Beijing has made clear to the new administration in Washington it will brook no interference in its “internal affairs”, even as it has pursued increasingly hard-line policies in Hong Kong, where a new national security law has tightened its grip, and in Xinjiang, where it has hit out at any criticism over the internment of more than one million Uighurs in “re-education” centres.

In early May, China appeared to disregard three decades of a carefully built consensus with India as it mobilised two divisions along the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in a move that officials in Delhi saw as aimed at unilaterally redrawing the LAC in Ladakh.

A clash in Galwan Valley in June that led to the loss of 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers marked the most serious border crisis with India since the 1960s, leading many former Indian officials to describe 2020 as a major inflection point in relations with China.

As the year ends, a sub-zero LAC remains tense with neither side agreeing on a plan to disengage, with the expectation in India of continued hostilities as the snow melts in the spring and tensions on the border to dominate the relationship next year.

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englishchinesetranslations · 4 years ago

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Loyal members of Chinese Communist Party are working in British consulates, universities and for some of the UK's leading companies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal

Leaked database of 1.95m registered party members reveals how Beijing's malign influence now stretches into almost every corner of British life, including defence firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants

Some members, who swear oath to 'guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life...and never betray the Party', are understood to have jobs in British consulates

Loyal members of the Chinese Communist Party are working in British consulates, universities and for some of the UK's leading companies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

An extraordinary leaked database of 1.95 million registered party members reveals how Beijing's malign influence now stretches into almost every corner of British life, including defence firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants.

Most alarmingly, some of its members – who swear a solemn oath to 'guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life...and never betray the Party' – are understood to have secured jobs in British consulates.

Among them is a senior official at the British Consulate in Shanghai. Its headquarters is also home to intelligence officers from the UK security services.

The official describes their role as supporting ministers and officials on visits to East China.

Loyal members of the Chinese Communist Party are working in British consulates, universities and for some of the UK's leading companies, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. An extraordinary leaked database of 1.95 million registered party members reveals how Beijing's malign influence now stretches into almost every corner of British life, including defence firms, banks and pharmaceutical giants. (Pictured above, front, President Xi Jinping at a CCP session)

The database was originally leaked on Telegram, the encrypted instant messaging app, and passed in September by a Chinese dissident to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, which comprises more than 150 legislators around the world who are concerned by the influence and activities of the Chinese government. Detailed analysis by MoS of the material reveals that pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca – both involved in the development of coronavirus vaccines – employed a total 123 party loyalists

The analysis also revealed that there were more than 600 party members across 19 branches working at the British banks HSBC and Standard Chartered in 2016. Both have drawn criticism for their response to Beijing's crackdown in Hong Kong

Firms with defence industry interests including Airbus, Boeing and Rolls-Royce employed hundreds of party members, the analysis showed

While there is no evidence that anyone on the party membership list has spied for China – and many sign up simply to boost their career prospects – experts say it defies credulity that some are not involved in espionage. Responding to the findings, an alliance of 30 MPs last night said they would be tabling an urgent question about the issue in the Commons.

Writing in The Mail on Sunday today, former Tory Party leader Iain Duncan Smith says: 'This investigation proves that members of the Chinese Communist Party are now spread around the globe, with members working for some of the world's most important multinational corporations, academic institutions and our own diplomatic services.

'The Government must now move to expel and remove any members of the Communist Party from our Consuls throughout China. They can either serve the UK or the Chinese Communist Party. They cannot do both.'

Writing in The Mail on Sunday today, former Tory Party leader Iain Duncan Smith (above) says: 'This investigation proves that members of the Chinese Communist Party are now spread around the globe, with members working for some of the world's most important multinational corporations, academic institutions and our own diplomatic services'

The Foreign Office last night insisted that it has 'robust procedures in place to keep information secure and to vet staff at our overseas posts'. It is understood they are aware that they employ party members.

However, a senior Whitehall intelligence source said the revelations did raise security questions. 'In that station [the official] will be sat one floor away from the MI6 team and could have identified intelligence officers.'

Dating from 2016, it includes the names of party members in Shanghai, the largest city in China and its financial hub.

The list is divided into more than 79,000 branches, many of them affiliated to individual companies or organisations.

In total, the Chinese Communist Party has more than 92 million members, but competition to join is fierce with fewer than one in ten applicants successful.

After authenticating the material, with the help of data security analysts Internet 2.0, IPAC passed the database to four media organisations around the world, including The Mail on Sunday. Detailed analysis of it by this newspaper reveals that:

A party member who studied at St Andrews University worked at various consulates in Shanghai including that of the UK;

Chinese academics who swore the oath to assist the party attended British universities where they were involved in potentially sensitive areas of research including aerospace engineering and chemistry;

There were more than 600 party members across 19 branches working at the British banks HSBC and Standard Chartered in 2016. Both have drawn criticism for their response to Beijing's crackdown in Hong Kong;

The pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and AstraZeneca – both involved in the development of coronavirus vaccines – employed a total 123 party loyalists;

Firms with defence industry interests including Airbus, Boeing and Rolls-Royce employed hundreds of party members.

Security sources believe the initial data leak came from a dissident who targeted an outwardly unremarkable office block in Shanghai which housed the records.

Despite the near certainty of being executed for treason if caught, he or she probably accessed it via a server before downloading it on to a laptop and releasing it on Telegram where it was found by IPAC.

In total, the Chinese Communist Party has more than 92 million members, but competition to join is fierce with fewer than one in ten applicants successful. (Above, President Xi Jinping of China)

As well as the names of members, the database has places, dates of birth, Chinese ethnicity and in some cases addresses and telephone numbers.

The consular official is registered in a communist party branch within a company called the The Shanghai Foreign Agency Service Corporation, a state-owned employment agency.

Oath of loyalty which party members swear

New members of the Chinese Communist Party swear an oath of loyalty in front of a traditional flag bearing a hammer and sickle to signify proletarian solidarity.

With fist raised, they say: 'It is my will to join the Communist Party of China, uphold the Party's program, observe the provisions of the Party Constitution, fulfil a Party member's duties, carry out the Party's decisions, strictly observe Party discipline, guard Party secrets, be loyal to the Party, work hard, fight for communism throughout my life, be ready at all times to sacrifice my all for the Party and the people, and never betray the Party.'

While there are 92 million members across China, this equates to just six per cent of the population. Indeed, competition is fierce with less than one in ten applicants accepted.

The rewards are not purely ideological. Senior positions in business, academia and government are almost exclusively occupied by party members.

Experts say that since coming to power in 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping has emphasised the importance of the Party with members compelled to attend more regular meetings and undergo appraisals.

It employs almost 2,000 people and its website says it 'provides comprehensive and high-quality services to more than 100 foreign organisations in Shanghai including foreign consulates, foreign news media, and foreign schools'.

Analysis of the data shows at least 249 Communist Party members were registered with the agency in 2016.

Academics on the membership list include some living and working in the UK. They include a research fellow in aerospace engineering at a leading university who also works for a private company.

Aerospace engineering is designated by the British Government as among the seven most militarily sensitive university subjects.

Students from countries that are not in the EU or the 'Five Eyes' network of Britain, the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are required to have an Academic Technology Approval Scheme (ATAS) certificate.

During the application process, they are asked to declare any state-linked funding, although some security experts fear the vetting process is not stringent enough. The research fellow did not respond to a request for comment last night.

The US security services have been increasingly concerned about the threat of Chinese espionage on campuses.

In the nine months to September, 14 Chinese nationals were charged over alleged spying offences and the Trump administration last week changed its visa rules so members of the Chinese Communist Party and their families can stay or get travel documents for only a month.

Last week, John Ratcliffe, the US Director of National Security, warned that China posed the 'greatest threat to democracy and freedom' since the Second World War and was striving to dominate 'the planet economically, militarily and technologically'.

Australia revoked the visas of two professors from China in September amid suspicions they were involved in espionage. One of the men appears on the leaked membership list.

The database also reveals that party members work for many British and international companies in China, several involved in the defence or pharmaceutical industries.

Rolls-Royce, Boeing, Airbus and the French defence contractor Thales each have dozens of party members or more on their books while the British banking giants HSBC and Standard Chartered both have hundreds. Jaguar Land Rover was another company with staff who were members of the party.

Last week, John Ratcliffe (above), the US Director of National Security, warned that China posed the 'greatest threat to democracy and freedom' since the Second World War and was striving to dominate 'the planet economically, militarily and technologically'

Cosco, a major Chinese shipping firm, even has two branches in the UK for its seven members. Three are based at the port of Felixstowe, Suffolk, which receives almost half of Britain's container trade.

In total, the list for 2016 reveals 2,909 members working for Cosco across 118 branches worldwide.

None of the companies above said they banned members of the Chinese Communist Party from being employees.

There is no evidence that any of the firms named above has been targeted or fallen victim to espionage and each insists it has measures in place to protect data, staff and customers.

Reacting to the findings, former Foreign Office diplomat and China expert Matthew Henderson said: 'This is yet further proof of how China has inveigled its way into the British establishment. We are dancing with rabid wolves, intent on driving a wedge between Britain and America, overthrowing democracy and outstripping the West.'

Sam Armstrong, from the Henry Jackson Society foreign policy think-tank, said: 'This is a deeply disturbing illustration of China's spread across the globe which we can't look away from and must tackle head on.'

And a former CIA and White House intelligence analyst, who specialises in East Asia affairs, said: 'This is what the Chinese Communist Party is and you can't trust them. They're always looking for opportunities where they can take advantage of relationships, friendships, whatever, to further the interests of the Communist Party.'

However, Robbie Barnett, an affiliate of the Lau China Institute at King's College London and at London's School of Oriental and African Studies, said: 'It's not likely that many members in China actually believe in or care about Communism, so it's largely a nation-building project, not an ideological one.

'That's just one of the many reasons that a McCarthyist, catch-all approach doesn't make sense, even apart from the fact that it would be a gross abuse of people's human rights.'

Last night, a Chinese Embassy spokeswoman said: 'We urge the media to abandon ideological bias and Cold-War mentality and view China, the Communist Party of China and China's development in a rational and impartial manner.'

Chained: Media mogul who defied tyranny

Handcuffed, bound in chains and flanked by police officers, businessman Jimmy Lai is led to court to face charges of colluding with foreign powers.

The pro-democracy media mogul, one of the few business leaders in Hong Kong to speak out against the draconian new national security laws, was denied bail yesterday over allegations he had asked foreign countries to impose sanctions.

Mr Lai, 73, owner of the pro-democracy tabloid Apple Daily and founder of Next Digital Media, has repeatedly called for international action over the erosion of liberties in Hong Kong.

The charges reportedly relate to tweets he posted, including one in May asking Donald Trump to impose sanctions on China, and his decision to launch an English-language edition of Apple Daily.

Hong Kong politician Ted Hui, who lives in Britain after being forced into exile, told Radio 4's Today programme: 'I feel extremely heavy watching my friends go to jail, perhaps for life. Freedom of speech is totally collapsed in Hong Kong and it's extremely alarming to the world.'

Mr Lai's arrest is the latest in a crackdown on Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement since the sweeping national security law passed this summer by Beijing, which allows Chinese security forces to operate there.

Last week, activists Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam were jailed for taking part in an unauthorised protest last year. Teenage activist Tony Chung was also convicted last week of desecrating the Chinese flag, and at least 16 other activists were arrested.

The devotee who works just yards from MI6 spies

Outwardly at least, the British consulate in Shanghai – at 17F Garden Square – appears wholly unremarkable. There is little to distinguish it from the other high-rise buildings that crowd the city's historic riverside district. What goes on inside, however, is quite a different matter.

One consular official identified in the leaked database is said by security sources to work near to a team of MI6 officers operating under diplomatic cover. Intriguingly, and some critics of the China's regime may think worryingly too, the official is apparently on the floor below or, as one security source put it, 'down a staircase'.

There is no evidence that anything untoward has taken place, but the simple fact that a Chinese Communist Party member is working in close proximity to intelligence officers has in itself given rise to concerns that the UK is 'playing with fire'.

Long known as a city of intrigue, Shanghai was fabled in the 1930s as the Paris of the East, China's most modern metropolis, a haven for gangsters and intellectuals, colonials and radicals, the new rich and the ultra-poor.

The communist revolution changed all that and the city's famous vitality was largely stamped out. Even in the late 1980s, when other parts of China were modernising fast, Shanghai lagged behind.

Now its appearance is positively futuristic. The skyscrapers in the gleaming financial district Pudong, for instance, dwarf the old colonial waterfront across the Huangpu river.

One senior Whitehall security source claimed: 'In that station [the official] will be sat one floor away from the security services team.

'In theory, anybody walking past where the official works and up the staircase could be identified as an intelligence officer and that information passed back to the Communist Party.'

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: With hopeless naivety, big business and universities have failed to understand that China is out to destroy our way of life

By IAIN DUNCAN SMITH for the Mail on Sunday

Members have to swear overriding loyalty to the one party that has ruled in China since the 1940s.

They must pledge to 'guard party secrets', to 'fight for communism throughout my life' and to be ready at all times 'to sacrifice my all for the Party'. The oath is for life and sworn in the presence of party officials. Swift, harsh punishment would result should they ever dare to break it.

Belonging to the party is no mere formality. The CCP demands secrecy, cunning and utterly ruthless discipline from its millions of members. Notoriously secretive, its authority is absolute.

Joining the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is quite unlike signing up for a political party here or in any other democracy. It might seem closer to joining a crime family in the New York Mafia. Members have to swear overriding loyalty to the one party that has ruled in China since the 1940s

Members are routinely schooled in the beliefs, tenets and principles of Chinese Communist thought.

Democracy and freedom are such existential threats, for example, that violence and oppression are necessary to quash them. Western nations such as the UK are locked in mortal conflict with China and must be defeated.

It is a party whose beliefs about religious minorities remind us of the racist policies of the worst dictators of the 20th Century.

The CCP sees nothing wrong with rounding up Uyghur Muslims, placing them on trains and carting them to 're-education camps' where women can be sterilised and the men put to forced work.

Each and every member has subscribed to all of this and more – harvesting organs from religious minorities, locking up lawyers, crushing the spirit of its own people. There is little room for deviation in political thought in Xi Jinping's Chinese Communist Party.

It would be bad enough were these individuals confined to China, where they have a vice-like grip on political power.

However, The Mail on Sunday's investigation shows that CCP influence is spreading around the globe, with members working for some of the world's most important multinational corporations, academic institutions and even our own diplomatic services.

Much of their spread into the UK took place under the so-called Golden Era, or project Kow Tow, as I prefer to call it. The UK welcomed China, believing – wrongly – that China would open up its economy and that Chinese investment would bring welcome growth, investment, and prosperity to the UK.

It is hardly surprising, then, that City of London behemoths Standard Chartered, KPMG and Ernst & Young each hired several hundred CCP members across several branches in China.

And it is even less surprising that HSBC tops the shameful league table of companies willing to comply with Chinese Communist Party rules. HSBC likes to criticise Brexit for its perceived small-mindedness, with adverts telling the UK 'we are not an island'.

It is a party whose beliefs about religious minorities remind us of the racist policies of the worst dictators of the 20th Century. The CCP sees nothing wrong with rounding up Uyghur Muslims, placing them on trains and carting them to 're-education camps' where women can be sterilised and the men put to forced work. (Above, a protest in Mumbai, India)

Its own behaviour speaks volumes, however. Last week, it rushed to freeze the bank accounts of exiled Hong Kong lawmaker Ted Hui. Earlier in the summer, it issued statements denouncing the democracy protests.

Now we learn that it apparently once employed more than 300 members of the very party that is orchestrating the draconian crackdown in Hong Kong. Time and again, HSBC has proved itself to be Beijing's favourite bank.

None of this would be remarkable in a Chinese institution but for a British bank – regulated and headquartered here in London – it is inexcusable.

The conduct of HSBC and other UK financial institutions is not just wrong but immoral.

We can only hope that this leak confirms the truth that is beginning to dawn on businesses around the world. Operating in China carries an inbuilt ethical and reputational risk. We already know that household brands have been linked with slave labour from Uyghur prison camp detainees in the Xinjiang region.

Mounting evidence links the Party to state-sponsored concentration camps and genocide against Uyghur minorities.

So when will rich multinational firms decide it is no longer worth the damage to their brand?

The threat is not just to their corporate image, by the way, or to our moral standing as a nation – it is a threat to our security. Companies such as Boeing, Airbus, Thales, and Rolls-Royce each play an essential role in manufacturing equipment used by our Armed Forces.

They make some of our most advanced weaponry and are trusted to guard top-secret designs for our most sensitive assets and facilities. Yet collectively they employ hundreds of Chinese Communists who have pledged to serve the Party above all else.

Other vital firms such as Pfizer, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline employ hundreds of Communist Party members, giving them access to networks, designs and supply chains.

Then there is the matter of academics in the UK, some of whom are studying among the most sensitive subjects at our universities.

In recent years we've come to understand that China is systematically targeting – and stealing – academic technology.

In September, our Government barred Chinese military scientists from sensitive research. Now we know why.

Most troubling of all is the discovery that this scourge extends to our own Foreign Office.

Applicants to the FO are among the most closely vetted in Government, and rightly so. Staff in our consulates and embassies will see and discuss matters of state.

They are rightly considered among the most useful potential 'assets' by foreign intelligence services. Even the most anodyne pieces of information can have implications for national security.

So the Foreign Office will need to explain to the public and to Parliament how it is that we employed lifelong members of the Chinese Communist Party in one of the most sensitive facilities in the UK diplomatic network, the consulate in Shanghai.

An urgent investigation must now take place into exactly what sort of access this individual – and other Communist Party Members – have had.

I believe the Government must now move to expel and remove any members of the Communist Party from our consulates in China. They can serve the UK or they can serve the CCP. They cannot do both.

There is a common theme of naivety running through our companies, universities, and government officials.

We have failed to recognise that at the core of China's system is a system of ideas and values that not only runs contrary to ours but seeks to overcome it. The interests of the Communist Party come first.

It is not that China has sought to hide this reality but that we in the free world have been prepared to turn a blind eye to it for so long.

Small wonder, then, that Xi Jinping states openly that China will have the world's most powerful military forces in the world by 2049.

The question today is this: to what degree have our institutions and big business been helping him achieve his goal?

#ccp #china #uk #britain

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