REFLECTIONS IN A CHINESE EYE

Vermonters to Highlight Environment In Bid to Win China Investment, Tourists

Vermont doesn’t have the star power of Arnold Schwarzenegger to help it pull in business with China. The movie-star-turned-California governor received rock-star treatment during a visit to the country last month with a large delegation of California businesses such as Silicon Valley Bank and Marvell Technology. The visit included a speech at a big annual Internet conference led by billionaire Jack Ma of China’s Alibaba Group.

Yet Vermont, one of the smallest U.S. states, has selling points of its own. A pioneer in green legislation in the U.S., Vermont will be highlighting its environment in a bid to attract more Chinese tourists and investment during a trip this month by an 18-member group of government and business leaders led by Governor Jim Douglas.  Soft-spoken Douglas isn’t a body-building star in the Schwarzenegger mode, but the Middlebury College graduate has been elected four times, and was named as co-chair of the U.S. Council of Governors earlier this year by President Obama. Vermont boasts one of the lowest unemployment rates among American states.

China is one of the world’s fastest-growing sources of outbound tourists, and ski areas looking for investment and visitors stand out on a Vermont delegate list which includes including Jay Peak Resort and Stoweflake Mountain Report.

The group will arrive in Beijing on Oct. 17, travel to Shanghai on the 19th, and continue to Hong Kong on the 22nd before heading home.

FORBES

Call for death penalty over food crimes

CHINA has vowed to punish people guilty of food safety crimes, calling for the death penalty to be applied in cases when the culprits "deserve" it, state media reported today.

A circular released by four government agencies including the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Public Security also urged a "high-voltage" crackdown on food safety criminals, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Food safety has become an issue of huge concern in China as scandals involving product contamination or the illegal use of banned substances keep erupting despite government pledges to clean up the industry.

At the beginning of the month, for example, officials in central China acknowledged they had waited five months before notifying the public that a brand of cooking oil had been found to contain excessive carcinogens.

Read more at The Herald Sun

China accused of holding woman in mental hospital for challenging officials

Liao Meizhi one of many wrongly detained in psychiatric institutions for clashing with local bureaucrats, say researchers

 

Yang Chunguang holds the ID card of his wife Liao Meizhi, who is being held in the Yanshi mental hospital, Qianjiang city, Hubei. Photograph: Dan Chung for the Guardian

They snatched Liao Meizhi on her birthday, dragging her off the street and into a dirty blue van as others held back her husband.

It was only two months later, when a stranger knocked on the door, that her family learned where she had been taken. The man said he had just been discharged from a nearby mental hospital – and that Liao was being held there against her will. Her husband insists she has no psychiatric problems.

More than six months after she was seized, her family says she remains incarcerated in the nondescript building with thick steel doors just outside her hometown of Qianjiang, in China's central Hubei province.

Researchers believe she is among a growing number of people wrongly detained in psychiatric institutions after clashing with local officials. One activist has compiled a database of more than 500 such cases.

Some victims have been held for a decade. Those freed describe being forcibly treated – with electro-convulsive therapy and powerful anti-psychotic drugs – for health problems they never had.

"In the last few years you have been seeing more and more cases involving petitioners and whistle blowers – 'the awkward squad' – [often when] the authorities have tried other punishments or sanctions to make them stop and nothing else has worked," said Robin Munro, author of China's Psychiatric Inquisition and a research associate at SOAS law school. "Finally they really try to scare them to hell by putting them in mental hospitals."

Read more at The Guardian

China angry over Manila hijacking

China on Tuesday demanded answers from the Philippines after a 12-hour hostage drama in the heart of Manila ended with eight Hong Kong tourists dead along with their Filipino hostage-taker after a day of botched negotiations. Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said his government was "appalled"

and telephoned his Philippine counterpart Alberto Romulo to voice concern, while Hong Kong residents expressed outrage and media outlets in the Chinese territory denounced Philippine police as incompetent.

"The Chinese government demands the Philippines launch a thorough investigation into the incident and inform the Chinese side of related details as soon as possible," Yang said, according to a statement posted on his ministry's website.

Read more at The Hindustan Times

 

Senior Chinese police officer condemned for graft

BEIJING — An assistant public security minister who led China's economic crimes investigation unit was given a suspended death sentence Tuesday for taking more than $1 million in bribes and abusing his position, state media said.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Zheng Shaodong was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the Xi'an Intermediate Court. Such penalties are usually commuted to life in prison.

Earlier state media reports linked Zheng's case to a corruption probe centered on Huang Guangyu, an appliances tycoon who was once China's richest businessman. Huang was sentenced earlier this year to 14 years in prison for insider trading, bribery and other crimes.

Accusations of bribery, tax evasion and the collusion of corrupt officials in financial abuses are common in China.

The Xinhua report did not mention Huang or give specifics of Zheng's case. It said only that he "abused his various positions and accepted bribes worth more than $1.04 million (8.26 million yuan)" between 2001 and 2007.

The China Daily newspaper reported in July that Zheng allegedly sought personal gain by using his authority to help others looking for job promotions or employment and offered favors to people involved in criminal investigations.

Zheng directed the Economic Crimes Investigation Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security from 2001 to 2005 and became an assistant public security minister in 2005, Xinhua said.

Read more at Google news

Senior Chinese police officer condemned for graft

BEIJING — An assistant public security minister who led China's economic crimes investigation unit was given a suspended death sentence Tuesday for taking more than $1 million in bribes and abusing his position, state media said.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Zheng Shaodong was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the Xi'an Intermediate Court. Such penalties are usually commuted to life in prison.

Earlier state media reports linked Zheng's case to a corruption probe centered on Huang Guangyu, an appliances tycoon who was once China's richest businessman. Huang was sentenced earlier this year to 14 years in prison for insider trading, bribery and other crimes.

Accusations of bribery, tax evasion and the collusion of corrupt officials in financial abuses are common in China.

The Xinhua report did not mention Huang or give specifics of Zheng's case. It said only that he "abused his various positions and accepted bribes worth more than $1.04 million (8.26 million yuan)" between 2001 and 2007.

The China Daily newspaper reported in July that Zheng allegedly sought personal gain by using his authority to help others looking for job promotions or employment and offered favors to people involved in criminal investigations.

Zheng directed the Economic Crimes Investigation Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security from 2001 to 2005 and became an assistant public security minister in 2005, Xinhua said.

Read more at Google news

Senior Chinese police officer condemned for graft

BEIJING — An assistant public security minister who led China's economic crimes investigation unit was given a suspended death sentence Tuesday for taking more than $1 million in bribes and abusing his position, state media said.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Zheng Shaodong was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve by the Xi'an Intermediate Court. Such penalties are usually commuted to life in prison.

Earlier state media reports linked Zheng's case to a corruption probe centered on Huang Guangyu, an appliances tycoon who was once China's richest businessman. Huang was sentenced earlier this year to 14 years in prison for insider trading, bribery and other crimes.

Accusations of bribery, tax evasion and the collusion of corrupt officials in financial abuses are common in China.

The Xinhua report did not mention Huang or give specifics of Zheng's case. It said only that he "abused his various positions and accepted bribes worth more than $1.04 million (8.26 million yuan)" between 2001 and 2007.

The China Daily newspaper reported in July that Zheng allegedly sought personal gain by using his authority to help others looking for job promotions or employment and offered favors to people involved in criminal investigations.

Zheng directed the Economic Crimes Investigation Bureau under the Ministry of Public Security from 2001 to 2005 and became an assistant public security minister in 2005, Xinhua said.

Read more at Google news

China removes 13 economic crimes from capital punishment list

The National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee in China has reportedly dropped the death penalty for 13 economy-related non-violent crimes.

"The amendment focuses on limiting the death penalty by removing some of the death penalty crimes and restructuring China's criminal system," the China Daily quoted Li Shishi, director of the Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, as saying at a bimonthly legislative session in Beijing.

The revision would cut the current 68 crimes punishable by death under the Criminal Law by about one-fifth to 55.

If passed, it will be the first time the number of crimes subject to the death penalty has been reduced since the People's Republic of China enacted its Criminal Law in 1979.

It will also be a major move by China to limit the use of the death penalty, after the Supreme People's Court (SPC) began to review all death penalty decisions in 2007.

Read more at Sify

Modern marks for sex offenders

July 29, 2010

These days there are more criminals in our midst than ever. Lest we worry that criminals, once caught, will break out of jail, consider the following. There is a brilliant idea for discouraging jailbreaks: make one sleeve of prison uniforms shorter than the other. The result is that one arm turns darker than the other when exposed to the sun. This makes it easy to identify a prisoner as someone with two differently colored arms, thus preventing jailbreaks.

The idea was from Jeremy Bentham, an 18th-century English jurist and philosopher, as a way to run the Panopticon, a prison designed by Bentham that allows a few wardens to watch a large number of prisoners at once.

Because it seeks to prevent recidivism by changing a part of the prisoner’s body, tanning a prisoner’s arm is similar to facial tattooing, where the name of the crime was written on the face of the offender. In the TV drama “Chuno,” there was a scene in which fugitive slaves were tattooed with the word “nobi,” meaning “slave,” after they were caught.

Tattooing is one of five punishments originating from China. One written record about the Kitan, a northern tribe that was eventually subjugated by China, says that the word “jeok,” meaning “thief,” was tattooed on the wrist of a first-time offender; on the arm of a second-time offender; on the elbow of a third-time offender; and on the shoulder of a fourth-time offender. A fifth-time offender was beheaded. Korea adopted this punishment during the Joseon era, but it was abolished during the reign of King Yeongjo because it was viewed as cruel to the offender.

Read more at JoongAng Daily

China says terrorist cell broken up; 10 arrested

Officials say the Islamic separatists from the Xinjiang region represent the 'main terrorist threats' facing the country. Human rights groups express skepticism.

Reporting from Beijing —

Chinese officials announced Thursday that they had broken up a cell of Islamic separatists from the restive Xinjiang region of the northwest who they said represented the "main terrorist threats" facing the country.

At a news conference in Beijing, public security officials displayed photographs of knives, hatchets, bullets and homemade explosives said to have been confiscated between July and October from members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement. East Turkestan is the name used by many Uighurs for Xinjiang.

"This once again proves that the East Turkestan Islamic Movement and other organizations are the main terrorist threats our nation faces presently and in the near future," said Wu Heping, a spokesman for the public security ministry

Ten people were arrested, two of whom were identified as ringleaders, Abudurexiti Abulaiti, 42, and Yiming Semair, 33. The men were said to have connections to an international terrorist who had been "dispatched from abroad" to conduct terrorist activities in Xinjiang.

The Chinese announcement elicited skepticism from human rights advocates, who say China has a history of inflating terrorism threats in order to justify repression of minorities. The timing of the news conference was also questioned, coming shortly before the one-year anniversary of massive ethnic riots in Xinjiang's capital city of Urumqi, where more than 200 people, mostly Han Chinese, were killed.

Read more at The Los Angeles Times

Executions In China Under Growing Scrutiny

June 22, 2010

Protesters from Amnesty International in Hong Kong demonstrate in March 2009 against the death penalty in China. The human-rights group says China executed more than 1,700 people in 2008, roughly three-quarters of the world total.

Mike Clarke/AFP/Getty Images

Protesters from Amnesty International in Hong Kong demonstrate in March 2009 against the death penalty in China. The human-rights group says China executed more than 1,700 people in 2008, roughly three-quarters of the world total.

June 22, 2010

China's government is coming under increasing pressure to reduce its use of the death penalty, slowly shifting the country's legal system away from centuries of authoritarian tradition and toward greater legal protection for individual rights.

Beijing classifies the number of people it puts to death as a state secret, but it's believed to be nearly as much as all other countries combined. The human-rights group Amnesty International says China executed more than 1,700 people in 2008.

Legal experts are watching the case of a man in southern China who was sentenced to death three times — and then spared execution three times — to see whether recent legal reforms will save his life.

In 1983, Beijing wanted to punish criminals faster, so it gave provincial courts the final say over executions. It took back that prerogative three years ago

Read more at NPR

Moore's Outlaws

Cyber attacks are increasing exponentially. Here's what recent episodes can teach us about thwarting cyber crime, espionage, and warfare.

By David Talbot

Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of the Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Lab, admits it crossed his mind last year that he might die in a plane crash caused by a cyber attack. Kaspersky is a man of eclectic tastes and boyish humor; when we met in his office on the outskirts of Moscow, he was munching a snack of sweetened, freeze-dried whole baby crabs from Japan, and at one point he showed me a pair of men's undergarments, bought on a Moscow street, that had been stamped "Protected by Kaspersky Anti-Virus." But he grew quite serious when the subject turned to the days leading up to April 1, 2009.

That was the date a virulent computer worm called Conficker was expected to receive an update from its unknown creator--but nobody knew to what end. A tweak to Conficker's code might cause the three million or so machines in its army of enslaved computers, called a botnet, to start attacking the servers of some company or government network, vomit out billions of pieces of spam, or just improve the worm's own ability to propagate. "It's like if you have a one million army of real soldiers. What can you do?" �Kaspersky asked rhetorically. "Anything you want." He let that sink in for a moment. "We were waiting for April 1--for something. I checked my travel schedule to make sure I didn't have any flight. We had no idea about this functionality. Security officials were really nervous." In the end? "Nothing happened. Whew! Whew!" Kaspersky cried out. He crossed himself, clasped his hands in a prayerlike pose, and gazed toward the ceiling.

The unknowns about Conficker in the spring of 2009 (the infection remains widespread but, so far, inactive) reflect larger unknowns about just how bad cyber security will get (see Briefing). The trends aren't promising: tour Kaspersky's labs--or those of any computer security company or research outpost--and you quickly learn that malware is tougher to detect, spam delivery faster, and attacks growing in number and financial impact (see "The Rise in Global Cyber Threats" see slideshow). Security

experts and attackers are locked in a kind of arms race. In Kaspersky's case, his engineers and cryptographers do everything from seeking faster automated virus-detection methods to trolling Russian-language hacker blogs for clues about what's coming.

Ingenious solutions are multiplying, but the attacks are multiplying faster still. And this year's revelations of China-based attacks against corporate and political targets, including Google and the Dalai Lama, suggest that sophisticated electronic espionage is expanding as well. "What we've been seeing, over the last decade or so, is that Moore's Law is working more for the bad guys than the good guys," says Stewart Baker, the former general counsel of the National Security Agency and a former policy chief at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, referring to the prediction that integrated circuits will double in transistor capacity about every two years. "It's really 'Moore's outlaws' who are winning this fight. Code is more complex, and that means more opportunity to exploit the code. There is more money to be made in exploiting the code, and that means there are more and more sophisticated people looking to exploit vulnerabilities.

Read more at Technology Review

China says it has cracked 'major' terrorist ring

BEIJING — China said Tuesday that it had uncovered an unspecified "major terrorist organization," a claim that came just ahead of the anniversary of bloody ethnic rioting in the far western region of Xinjiang.

The Public Security Ministry gave little information in its brief announcement, which also coincided with the launch of a government propaganda campaign to promote patriotism in restive Xinjiang, following moves to strengthen security there.

The announcement posted on the Public Security Ministry's website said only that police had "cracked a case involving a major terrorist organization." It said details would be given at a news conference Thursday.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the alleged terrorist group was Xinjiang-based, although Beijing has consistently labeled those opposing Chinese rule over the traditionally Muslim Uighur region as terrorists. In 2008, the government claimed to have cracked a number of Uighur plots to attack the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Beijing has also applied the term to Tibetans who live abroad and whom China accuses of fomenting anti-government riots in 2008 that killed 22 in Tibet's capital Lhasa. Domestic enemines such as the banned Falun Gong meditation sect have also been described as terrorists.

Long-simmering tensions between Uighurs and majority Han Chinese migrants in Xinjiang turned deadly in the capital Urumqi last July 5, leaving nearly 200 people dead in China's worst ethnic violence in decades. Beijing accused overseas organizers of plotting the violence.

Read more at Google News

China Changes Rules on Evidence Obtained by Torture

Stanley Lubman, a long-time specialist on Chinese law, teaches at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law and is the author of “Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China After Mao,” (Stanford University Press, 1999).

A tragic but true story has been used to support a change in Chinese criminal procedure. Zhao Zuohai was acquitted after serving 10 years in jail for murdering a neighbor. He had confessed to the crime, was sent off to jail but, ten years later, his “victim” turned up alive. Three policemen who had obtained his confession – which turned out to have been coerced — have been arrested. Now, new rules have been announced limiting the use of torture, one of the most offensive human rights violations common in Chinese criminal procedure.

Late last month two guidelines that promise to limit the use of torture by police and prosecutors in criminal cases were issued by no less than five Chinese organizations concerned with law enforcement, the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security, and the Ministry of Justice.

They are welcome reforms in practices that were long forbidden under the Criminal Law (Section 247) and Criminal Procedure Law (Section 43) adopted in 1997, which forbid the use of torture, but without addressing the consequences for the use or exclusion of evidence obtained through torture. Although China is a nation in which a legal system is being created in remarkably short time, criminal law and criminal procedure remain the branches of the law most in need of reform, and the process of reform has been painfully slow.

One of the new guidelines, for use in capital cases, provides that evidence obtained illegally, involving ”torture, violence or threats, undocumented physical evidence, and evidence certified by unqualified organizations” may not be used to convict defendants. (“Evidence guidelines ban torture in capital cases,” South China Morning Post, May 31, 2010) Professor Bian Jianlin of the China University of Political Science and Law was quoted as noting that” no previous law or regulation clearly stated that when evidence may have been acquired through forced confession it must be excluded.” The same guideline also states that “every fact must be supported by evidence,” the first time that this principle has been clearly articulated in a legal norm.

Read more at China RealTime Report

China to build 550 mental hospitals in response to school stabbings

China has announced that it will build 550 more mental hospitals over the next two years as it struggles to find a response to a wave of murders by mentally ill criminals

Malcolm Moore in Shanghai

Pupils hold a vigil at Nanping City Experimental Elementary School where eight children were stabbed to death Photo: REX FEATURES

 

Yin Li, the vice minister of Public Health, said China was determined to bolster its mental health care by building hundreds of new facilities.

He said improved treatment for mentally ill patients would reduce the chance of "social disturbances", including the "recent offences by mental patients in some areas" according to the state-owned China News website.

Earlier this year, China suffered a series of copycat attacks on kindergartens, with tens of children being stabbed to death by crazed knifemen. In some of the cases, including the killing of eight children on March 23 in Fujian province, the authorities determined that the attackers had been mentally unstable.

Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, said that China had to "pay attention to the deeper motives" that led to the attacks.

"China is undergoing a huge social transformation and consequently large numbers of mental patients are emerging because of various social problems," said Jiang Qianjin, a professor of psychology at Zhejiang University.

"From the point of view of maintaining stability, the new hospitals are definitely good news. There are a large number of poor and mentally-unstable people scattered around the country, but the hospitals have had poor facilities and treatment and the attention they were given was far from sufficient."

The Telegraph

Chinese Gambling Ring Arrested For Betting On World Cup

June 20th, 2010

A chinese gambling ring has been arrested after placing bets on the World Cup. The group of 21 gamblers were arrested following a massive crackdown on online gambling by the Chinese government. It was reported that the 21 gamblers were under constant surveillance
by the local police department for 4 months and it is alleged that they have wagered over $a300,000 at online casinos and by placing bets on the World Cup in South Africa.

The Chinese government has been cracking down on illegal online gambling since the beginning of 2010 and their doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. They are now stepping up efforts to find and prosecute individuals that place a bet on the FIFA World Cup. Up to this point, their has been over 3,600 people arrested and over $100 million in gambling funds seized by the government.

Chinese citizens enjoy gambling but they are restricted from all forms of online gambling, and the only real gambling opportunity that is available in mainland China is the national lottery.

Casino News

Animal organs worth millions seized at Guwahati airport

GUWAHATI: Customs officials Sunday seized a huge consignment of tiger bones and other animal parts estimated at a whopping Rs.10.66 million and destined for use in traditional medicines in China, an official said.

A customs official said the seizure was made from the Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport in Guwahati and includes tiger bones and skulls, besides 125 kg of pangolin scales.

"The animal organs were estimated at about Rs.10.66 million if sold in the international market," Customs Superintendent S. Das said.

The consignment came in neatly packed sacks from Dimapur, the commercial hub of Nagaland, in a regular flight and reached Guwahati.

"The consignment was booked as parcels by Speed Post (government posts department courier service) and was destined for (Manipur capital) Imphal," Das said.

"We are now focusing on how to bust the racket and arrest the main kingpins involved."

The official said preliminary investigations indicate the consignment would have gone by road from Imphal to Myanmar to its final destination, somewhere in China.

"This is the route for animal organs smuggling syndicates with animal organs like tiger bones, rhino horns, pangolin scales, going from Assam into Manipur and then finding their way to Myanmar before reaching other South Asian countries," the official said.

On Thursday, a similar consignment was seized from the same airport here worth an estimated Rs.20 million.

"An organised international animal organs trafficking syndicate is operating here. Tigers are killed in some wildlife sanctuaries in Assam and then the organs that are in demand are carefully segregated for smuggling to China," Das said.

People in China and other South Asian countries use tiger fat to treat leprosy and rheumatism, while tiger claws are used as a sedative, teeth for fever and nose leather for dog bites.

Tiger bone is used in Vietnam as a balm to alleviate rheumatism and general weakness. But it is the demand for medicines derived from ancient Chinese traditions that drives today's market for tiger parts.

The scales of the pangolin are used in conjunction with herbs to treat a host of conditions, including masses in the abdomen, rheumatism, skin and external diseases, besides invigorating the blood, promoting menstruation and lactation, reducing swelling and dispelling pus.

Profits in the illegal animal organs trade are staggering - a rhino horn sells for up to Rs.1.5 million per kilogram in the international market after the horns are smuggled to clandestine Asian markets.

A kilogram of pangolin scales is worth about Rs.60,000, while a gram of crushed tiger bone costs about Rs.1,000 in the international market, customs officials said.

Tiger hunting is illegal worldwide and the trade in tiger parts is banned under a treaty binding 167 countries, including India.

A possible route of animal organs smuggling is to Kathmandu via Siliguri and then from Nepal to China and the Middle East. The other possible route is from Imphal to Moreh on the Manipur border with Myanmar and then via Myanmar to Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and China

The Times of India

They fled from the nightmare of North Korea – only to be sold into slavery in China

Soldiers and police cordoned off a bridge near northeastern China’s Dandong city last month as a special train rolled across the Yalu river carrying North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

The high security surrounding Kim’s secret crossing from North Korea into China might have given the impression this stretch of water dividing the two Communist-ruled police states marked one of the world’s most secure borders.

Yet people continue to breach the

900-mile border in both directions.

Most make the risky crossing from the North Korean side, with no plans to return.

“I defected to China in March 2007 for a new opportunity outside North Korea but I was victimised by human traffickers and sold to an entertainment club and restaurant where I worked as a virtual slave for two years,” said Pang Yon-ju, a 26-year-old woman now living in Seoul. “I was terrified by the possibility of arrest at any time by the Chinese police.”

Pang joined a group of nine North Koreans who took refuge in the Danish embassy in Hanoi in September after they were helped along the ‘underground railway’ through China to Vietnam by the Seoul-based Helping Hands Korea.

Another woman in Pang’s group, Kim Sun-hi, escaped after traffickers sold her to a Chinese farmer. Kim said she could not remember a “single day of peace” during five years as an illegal migrant in China. She told Helping Hands she first entered China in March 2004 “for food”.

“But I was victimised by human traffickers in China at this point and became the wife of a poor Chinese farmer,” Kim said. “Luckily, I did not have any children with the Chinese farmer and managed to break away from him to work at a restaurant.”

Thousands of other North Korean women are not so lucky. Between

30,000 and 300,000 North Korean migrants remain in limbo in China, according to different estimates, most of them women.

“Some remain in hiding for a lifetime while others seek brokers or activists who will guide them along their journey out,” said LiNK Global, a US-based group helping the refugees inside China.

“From China, refugees must traverse the underground railroad to find one of the many routes to freedom, either through Mongolia or south through south-east Asia,” LiNK said.

As the United Nations High Commission for Refugees marks World Refugee Day today, it lists no North Korean refugees in China, though it designates them as ‘persons of concern’.

The UNHCR has requested access to the North Koreans many times since they began flooding across the border nearly 20 years ago during a famine that was estimated to have killed more than one million people in their homeland. North Korea now has a population of about 23 million.

China continues to label the North Koreans ‘economic migrants’, refusing to grant them refugee status and repatriating those caught by the police.

Kitty McKinsey, an East Asian regional spokesperson for UNHCR, said her organisation was “quite disturbed” by reports of trafficking, sexual exploitation and other abuses of North Koreans in China. It also believes China should not send back North Korean migrants, she said.

 

Read more at hearldscotland

India seizes third shipment of tiger parts on way to China

INDIAN customs have officers seized a third shipment of tiger bones and other animal parts, worth $230,000 and destined for use in traditional medicine in China.

A customs official said the officers found tiger bones, skulls, and 125 kilograms of scales from pangolins, rare scaly mammals that are distant relatives of the anteater and a protected species in India.

"The animal products were estimated at about 10.66 million rupees ($264,000) if sold on the international black market," a customs superintendent said.

Customs officials, acting on a tip-off, also seized two other shipments at the international airport in the eastern city of Guwahati on Wednesday and Thursday.

In total, the raids netted contraband worth about $758,000.

On average, poachers kill 30 tigers every year in Indian reserves, with demand driven by China where pelts, claws and bones are prized in traditional medicine.

In 2008, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh set up a national wildlife crime prevention bureau, drawing experts from the police, environmental agencies and customs in a bid to break up the poaching network.

Tiger hunting is illegal worldwide, and the trade in tiger parts is banned under a treaty binding 167 countries, including India.

There are an estimated 1,400 tigers living in the wild in India, according to conservation group WWF.

In August of 2009, an Indian delegation in Beijing asked China for full co-operation for controlling cross-border trafficking of tiger parts and to send a clearer message to smugglers, but no official agreement was reached.

The Herald Sun

Counterfeit Condoms and a New Arrangement

New Yorkers long ago stopped being fooled by the luxury knockoffs peddled from sidewalk card tables at prices too good to be true. Not that they always keep their wallet in check — as a close inspection of many a supposedly pedigreed Louis Vuitton handbag might reveal, if the penny-pinching owner would allow it.

There are some counterfeit goods, though, where the close-enough counterfeit is far from an adequate substitution for the confidence of a brand-name product. Take a specific, alarming example: Trojan condoms.

Federal officials say that a counterfeit smuggling ring, ZX Trading, made millions selling imported Chinese knockoffs, including bags, clothes and sunglasses that bear brand names including Disney, Nike and North Face. But perhaps the most troubling discovery was of a stash of more than half a million fake Trojan brand condoms, which did not have spermicide as advertised and later failed water leakage tests.

A prosecutor for the United States attorney’s office in Brooklyn called the fake condoms “a danger to the public.” A lawyer for Church & Dwight, which owns Trojan, warned that the condoms “may pose potential safety risks to consumers and users.”

Two siblings were scheduled to be sentenced on Friday in Brooklyn for their role in running the counterfeit-smuggling ring that federal officials say was responsible for importing the bogus condoms. The hearing was postponed because of a debate about the level of the siblings’ involvement in the condom situation.

The two, Lin F. Hu and Jian Lin Hu, pleaded guilty to one count of trafficking in counterfeit goods last year, though they specifically did not admit to importing the condoms. A recent court filing on behalf of the siblings reiterated the denial, adding, “The mere fact that a product has a counterfeit brand name does not mean that it is dangerous.”

Prosecutors are seeking a sentence of 46 to 57 months in prison.

Counterfeit condoms have become a booming business in China in recent years. According to a report in The Times of London last year, the Chinese authorities reported that they had raided a workshop in Hunan Province where more than two million condoms had been made in unsterile conditions, lubricated with vegetable oil and falsely labeled with brand names like Durex and Rough Rider. – A. G. Sulzbergerhe

The New York Times

Keep human hands digging out online dirt

 
A local bill in Zhejiang Province has recently triggered controversy over "human flesh searches" among Chinese netizens and media. Article 39 of the drafted Regulation on Promoting Information in Zhejiang Province, which is being proposed for approval by the provincial people's congress, stipulates that no organization or individual is allowed to publish, transmit, delete or change information that individuals have disclosed online.

It's clearly an attempt to restrict human flesh searches, which are massive and cooperative research efforts using Internet media such as blogs and forums for the purpose of identifying and exposing individuals who have come to the attention of netizens, most commonly supposedly corrupt officials. The term "human flesh" indicates the pivotal role human ingenuity plays in this process, far different from traditional online searches by computer algorithms.

Human flesh searches sound horrible. But they are an inevitable outcome of online discussions of topics that everybody is interested in. It exists in many countries and regions outside of China, under different names.

The prevalence of human flesh searches is largely due to a grass-roots sense of justice and sympathy.

When an official is caught abusing an ordinary person, for instance, netizens want to expose them and find out any other dealings they have, such as children at school in the US, expensive properties, and costly cars.

However, there's definitely a problem in that such searches may mislead the public and violate some people's legal rights and interests. For instance, in 2008, a game player was severely harassed due to netizens' beliefs that he had probably had a one night stand with another man's wife.

Read more at Global Times

Wuhan Nail House Owner Fights Forced Demolition with Home-Made Cannon

A recent post about one really tough nail house has been going around on internet. It was popular enough to warrant an article on Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao (明报).

Here is what the original forum post said:

Translation:

武汉超牛钉子户自制火炮对抗拆迁（原创猛图）

The high profile Chongqing nail house looks like nothing compared to this. Here is one super guy I met when visiting a classmate in Dongxihu District (东西湖).

I spent an afternoon locating the farmer whose name is Yang Youde (杨有德).

Some background: Mr. Yang has a house and a vegetable patch near Jinyinhu part of Dongxihu District, where some developer wanted to start a project a few months earlier. However, before the two sides could agree on compensation, the developer hired security guards to tear down Yang's house. In this one vs. many fight, Yang was at a distinct disadvantage. Each time he called the police, the officers only urged both sides to refrain from violence but failed to solve the problem.

Yang was mad after seeing his buildings being torn down little by little, so he built a "cannon cart" using super-sized firecrackers and a hand trolley.

The homemade cannon was astonishing. The first time it was used, chaos broke out among the guards. But because only one shot can be fired at a time, Yang still got beat up. Luckily the police then arrived and pulled the guards away. Yang then thought up another idea. This time he built a blockhouse on top of his house

Read more at Veggie Discourse 

N.Korean women up for sale in China: activist

SEOUL — Young female refugees from North Korea are increasingly becoming a commodity in China, where they are sold to farmers for up to 1,500 dollars a head, according to a Seoul campaigner.

The human trafficking is far from new but has become more prevalent as prices soar amid a shortage of Chinese women in the countryside, said Reverend Chun Ki-Won, head of the Durihana Association, which offers aid to refugees.

Chun, who has helped more than 900 North Koreans escape from China, said women are forced to live "like animals" because of Beijing's policy of repatriating the refugees as economic migrants.

"China is now a responsible nation. It should care about national prestige through solving human rights issues," he told AFP.

If the women were not in danger of being sent back "they would not have to live such an inhumane life as this" in China, he said.

Men escaping the impoverished hardline North increasingly fall victim to tighter border controls or to bounties offered to Chinese for turning them in.

Women can find safer shelter across the border because of their economic value. Nowadays they make up around 80 percent of the tens of thousands of North Koreans hiding in China, Chun said.

Read more at Google News

Mixed messages from the merry men

CHINESE cinema-goers will later this month thrill to Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett, as Robin Hood and Maid Marian, flinging the filthy French from the beloved homeland.

Their movie has been selected as one of the 20 foreign films annually given access to China.

At first blush, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor might seem the perfect theme for a society that has been avowedly communist for 60 years.

This, after all, was the way Mao Zedong came to power: leading a revolt against fat rural landowners and inherited wealth.

But a second take leads to different thoughts. Today, it is the Communist Party that is the establishment, and it is cadres who hold most of the keys to privilege and power. The wealthy are expected to become party members.

So who will Chinese viewers identify, if their thoughts turn to today's parallels, as the heroes and villains?

An erroneous view has taken root abroad, following the communist ascendancy, that China's culture is now - as people wrongly presume it always had been - one of subservience and deference to The Powers That Be: the kowtow as kosher.

If so, then, Chinese viewers of Robin Hood will rather focus on the theme of the righteous ruler returning to claim what is rightfully his, rather than on revolt.

The triads can be traced back, legend has it, to secretly loyal followers of the displaced Ming dynasty who conspired to undermine the succeeding Qing rulers, the Manchus, who had swept in from the northeast, from beyond the Great Wall. In this reading, the cruel yet oddly effete French rulers of England in Ridley film might have their equivalents in the Manchu-speaking barbarian Qing emperors.

Read more at The Australian

Killer in China School Stabbing Knew His Victims

BEIJING — The mystery over a series of vicious attacks on schoolchildren across China deepened Thursday, as reports emerged indicating that the latest and deadliest round of slaughter was committed not by a stranger to his victims, but rather by a man well known to them and their families, someone probably seen near the school almost every day.

Meanwhile, in Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhejiang Province, police officers detained a woman on Thursday morning after she stormed into a youth center brandishing a rusty knife, according to a worker at the center and photographs posted by a local newspaper. (By Thursday night, the photographs and an accompanying article had been removed from the newspaper’s Web site, possibly in keeping with government pressure to mute coverage.)

The officers stopped the woman before she harmed anyone, and it was unclear what she had intended to do, the worker said in a telephone interview. The previous five attacks on schoolchildren were all committed by men.

The assailant in the Wednesday attack, Wu Huanming, 48, was the landlord of the Shengshui Temple private kindergarten and had been having frequent disputes with the school administrator, Wu Hongying, over when the school would move out of the building, Chinese news organizations said in early reports. So far, there are no suggestions that the two were related.

Mr. Wu barged into the school with a kitchen cleaver on Wednesday morning and hacked and killed Ms. Wu and a student, then wounded 18 other people, including Ms. Wu’s 80-year-old mother. She and six pupils died of their injuries. Mr. Wu killed himself at his home.

Read more at The New York Times