Month: July 2020

Watching China’s armed police lining up in Shenzhen reminds us of that day in 1989 when a young man showed courage most of us will never know and stood in front of those tanks approaching Tiananmen Square. Over a number of hours, protests that had taken weeks to build were cleared as the People’s Liberation Army liberated the people of their lives, their freedom and, for many more, their hopes of a more open China.

Today, Hong Kong’s liberties are in the line of fire, but the result needn’t be the same. Both China and the Hong Kong Executive can ensure the city state whose financial and professional services have enriched lives around the Pacific continues to prosper. But to get there, some conditions…

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Two British MPs have called on the UK to directly condemn Beijing for failing to hold up its end of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, asking Boris Johnson’s government to consider sanctions against Chinese officials and companies.

Thousands, dressed in black, gathered in a public square Friday evening in Hong Kong’s business district in defiance of showers that had swept through the city.

“What is happening in Hong Kong is truly a human rights crisis in the making,” said MP Heidi Allen, in a message read to the crowd. “We mustn’t allow China to use this as an opportunity to bully us into submission, and relinquish our responsibilities.”

“This slow erosion of your freedoms is precisely what the Sino-British Joint Declaration was supposed to avoid when Britain signed that agreement in 1984,” said Tom Watson in a recorded address.

The extradition proposal “clearly breaches that understanding and starts to align Hong Kong’s legal system with that of China; this is not acceptable," he added.

“The UK must not sit idly by as Hong Kongers lose their rights and freedoms,” he added as he called on the UK government to show “direct moral support” for city residents and to scope out steps to apply pressure on Chinese officials and companies.

Cheers erupted in response to the messages at the peaceful rally. The Union Flag and Hong Kong’s British colonial flag have been fixtures at mass protests that have snaked through the city for three months, as protesters have continually called on the UK to express further support to preserve freedoms in the former colony.

Mr Johnson and other British officials have already called on China to continue recognising the Joint Declaration as the protests continue. In 2014, China called the agreement a historical document with no present significance, worrying many that the freedoms long enjoyed in the former British colony were gradually disappearing.

China, however, has condemned the UK for interfering in domestic affairs, threatening the government to keep out of the political situation in Hong Kong and accusing the government of retaining a colonial mindset.

Joshua Wong, a prominent protest leader imprisoned after the Umbrella Revolution of 2014, told The Telegraph: "It’s time for the Prime Minister, and I believe Boris Johnson should take a more active role. I know it’s hard for him to strongly support Hong Kong democratisation with solid action or legislation, but at least make a phone call to president Xi [Jinping] to remind him not to send troops to Hong Kong – it’s not the solution."

 Andy Chan, founder of the Hong Kong National Partyadded that Mr Johnson wasn’t "speaking up enough". "If they do not speak up, they are making the joint declaration into another Munich Agreement."

In June, the UK halted further export licenses for crowd control equipment indefinitely until human rights issues were addressed after human rights group Amnesty International said some of the tear gas canisters fired by police to disperse crowds were manufactured by PW Defence, a British defence company.

Protesters first came out against a now-suspended extradition proposal, though have stayed in the streets to demand the formal withdrawal of the bill. Calls have also expanded to include broader political reforms including the resignation of the city’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, and direct leadership elections.

 

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Greece said on Wednesday that it would not give safe harbour to Iran’s Grace 1 oil tanker after the US threatened to bring sanctions against any state that aided the ship. 

The Iranian oil tanker left Gibraltar over the weekend after a month in British detention and was heading East across the Mediterranean towards the Greek port of Kalamata. 

The US warned Athens that there could be diplomatic and economic consequences if it helped the ship, which is carrying around 2 million barrels of oil. 

"We have made clear that anyone who touches it, anyone who supports it, anyone who allows a ship to dock is at risk of receiving sanctions from the United States,” said Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state. 

Hours after Mr Pomepeo’s warning, Greece announced that the ship was not welcome to dock at any Greek ports nor unloads its $130 million cargo of oil. 

Miltiadis Varvitsiotis, the deputy foreign minister, said the 1,000-foot long ship was too large for any Greek port and said Greece would abide by EU sanctions against transporting oil to Syria.

"We are sending a message that we are not prepared to facilitate the course of this ship to Syria," Mr Varvitsiotis said. "And this is a message that we have made very clear."

He said that if the ship entered Greek waters or anchored offshore, then authorities would “see” what to do next. 

The US says the ships and its oil are being used to support Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which Washington considers a terrorist group. The Trump administration made an unsuccessful effort to get Gibraltar to detain the ship on those grounds. 

If the Grace 1, now renamed the Adrian Darya 1, enters Greek waters then the US could make a second legal effort to have an allied government seize the ship. Greece appears eager to avoid being caught up in the confrontation between the US and Tehran.  

Iran has acknowledged the ship is linked to the Revolutionary Guard but denies that it was ever heading to Syria. Tehran has warned Washington not to try to interfere with the ship’s passage from Gibraltar. 

The EU has not designated the Guard as a terror group and EU states say they will only move against the ship if it attempts to carry its oil to Syria, which is under European sanctions. 

The Trump administration’s continuing focus on the ship is likely to only delay the release of the Stena Impero, the British-flagged tanker seized by the Revolutionary Guard in July, along with its 23 crew members.  

Iran initially indicated that the Stena Impero had been seized in retaliation for the Grace 1 but now claims that the ship violated maritime rules in the Persian Gulf. 

Mohammad Rastad, Iran’s deputy transport minister, said the case of Stena Impero had been submitted to a court in the southern port city of Bandar Abbas, without giving a date when it would be heard.

Australia announced on Wednesday that it was joining the US-led naval mission to protect civilian ships in the Persian Gulf. Scott Morrison, the Australian prime minister, said he was sending a frigate and surveillance plane to take part. 

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Britain and Bahrain had already joined US mission but France and Germany have refused to take part, arguing it is part of Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran. 

China on Friday criticised a decision by the government of Australia’s New South Wales state to close Chinese-sponsored language programs in more than a dozen public schools over political concerns.

Geng Shuang, the foreign ministry spokesman, said the 13 Confucius Institute programmes operating in the schools had been "open, transparent and lawful" and a "win-win thing."

Confucius Institutes are run by a Chinese Education Ministry department known as Hanban and its teachers and curriculum are chosen by the communist state.

They are normally housed in universities, and New South Wales, which includes Sydney, was the only government body in the world to host them within its own education department starting in 2012.

"Without communicating with China, the New South Wales state announced it was stopping this programme. This shows no respect to the local people and students, it is not fair and not good for our people-to-people exchange," Mr Geng said at a daily briefing.

"We hope Australia and the authorities in New South Wales can respect our cooperation and cherish the results of our cooperation, not politicise this normal exchange program and do more to contribute to our friendship and mutual trust," he added.

A New South Wales report issued after a review of the programme said no evidence of "actual political influence" was found but that there was a sense that "the institute is or could be facilitating inappropriate foreign influence."

"Having foreign government appointees based in a government department is one thing," it said. "Having appointees of a one-party state that exercises censorship in its own country working in a government department in a democratic system is another."

China has opened around 500 Confucius Institutes around the world since 2004, including more than 100 in the US alone.

While China publicly portrays them as purely a vehicle for teaching Chinese language and culture, they have come under increasing scrutiny for their role spreading Chinese pro-government propaganda and censoring opposing viewpoints on issues such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

Several have already been closed down on grounds of interfering in academic freedom, and a bipartisan report from Congress in February urged US colleges and universities to sever ties with the institute, concluding that the deals give Chinese authorities too much control over programs on US soil. 

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Puerto Rico was bracing on Wednesday for the arrival of Tropical Storm Dorian, closing schools and diverting cruise liners, as it threatened to reach hurricane strength on its approach to the US territory.

US President Donald Trump on Tuesday night declared a state of emergency for the island, which is still struggling to recover from devastating back-to-back hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017.

Those hurricanes killed about 3,000 people just months after the territory filed for bankruptcy to restructure $120 billion of debt and pension obligations.

Having been criticised over the response to the 2017 storms, the White House said in a statement that Mr Trump had approved the emergency declaration, allowing for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide assistance in coordination with ongoing disaster preparedness efforts.

"We are better prepared than when Hurricane Maria attacked our island," Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vazquez said during a televised news conference.

Ms Vazquez, who took office this month after political turmoil led to the resignation of his predecessor, said preparations for the storm were more than 90% complete, culminating with the opening of emergency shelters.

Infrastructure ranging from electric power lines to telecommunications and banking networks were in better shape than they had been in 2017, she added.

Dorian, which passed over Barbados on Tuesday, is expected to move near or over Puerto Rico on Wednesday before approaching the island of Hispaniola, which is shared between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, according to the Miami-based National Hurricane Center.

The Dominican Republic also ramped up storm preparations on Tuesday. Juan Manuel Mendez, director of the emergency operations center, said authorities have identified 3,000 buildings that can be converted into shelters, with capacity for up to 800,000 people.

In Puerto Rico, public schools will be closed on Wednesday and public workers have been instructed to stay home, Ms Vazquez said.

Royal Caribbean’s cruise liner "Allure of the Sea" cancelled a scheduled visit to the island on Thursday, and Carnival Cruise Line also adjusted its itineraries, Vazquez said.

Carnival Cruise Line confirmed the changes. Royal Caribbean did not immediately respond.

By Wednesday morning, the storm was located about 85 miles (140 km) southeast of St. Croix, in the Bahamas, carrying maximum sustained winds of 60 mph (95 kmh), the NHC said.

Dorian is expected to dump 4 to 8 inches of rain on Florida when it reaches the state in the southeast United States, the NHC said. 

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Thousands of children from former Isil territory in Iraq are being barred from school because they do not have the right papers, Human Rights Watch reports.

Government officials have told schools to prevent any pupils from starting class if they lack the correct civil documentation, despite an agreement signed last year that an exception would be made for children who were living in the Islamic State. 

Campaigners say this amounts to a transparent attempt by authorities to identify children with fathers who fought for Isil or who lived in Isil areas, and withhold their basic rights.

“Denying children their right to education because of something their parents might have done is a grossly misguided form of collective punishment,” said Lama Fakih of Human Rights Watch.

Between 2014 and 2017 Isil commanded large swathes of territory across northern Iraq.

Iraqis living under their control were issued with Isil state documents including birth certificates, which the Iraqi government does not recognise. 

Many children had their government certificates confiscated by Iraqi soldiers or militiamen while fleeing the army’s offensive against Isil.

Iraq’s constitution guarantees all children born to an Iraqi mother or father citizenship, and as such access to civil documentation. 

But one woman claims that when she took her 3-year-old’s Isil birth certificate to have it changed to a government one, the clerk tore it up. “He said to me, we won’t give your son a birth certificate, his father was Isil,” she said.

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Even those who survived with their papers in tact are now being asked for additional documentation they don’t have, such as a father’s death or divorce certificate, to block them from attending school, according to Human Rights Watch. 

“It undermines any potential government efforts to counter extremist ideology by pushing these children to the margins of society,” Ms Faikh said.

A stencilled work by the elusive British street artist Banksy has been stolen from outside the Pompidou Centre in Paris, the modern art museum announced Tuesday.

The image, which appeared in June 2018 on the back of a sign for the museum’s car park, features a masked rat – Banksy’s avatar, symbolising the downtrodden – brandishing a utility knife, the instrument he uses to cut out his stencils.

The Pompidou Centre said it suspected the thieves of using a saw to cut the sign, which had been fitted with a plexiglass cover to prevent it being pilfered.

It said its the museum’s security guards had already caught thieves trying to snatch the work a year ago.

The Pompidou, which houses Europe’s biggest collection of contemporary art but does not own the Banksy work, said it had filed a police complaint for destruction of property.

The theft comes seven months after another Banksy oeuvre paying hommage to the victims of the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris was stolen from outside the Bataclan, the concert venue where Islamic State gunmen massacred 90 people.

There also, the thieves brazenly cut the white stencilled image of a girl in mourning out of a fire exit.

Both the girl and the revolutionary rat were among a dozen works with which Banksy blitzed Paris a year ago.

The rat was inspired by Paris street artist Blek le Rat, who started out in 1986 when a general strike by students and workers brought France to a halt.

An anti-capitalist mural in the Left Bank, featuring a businessman in a suit offering a dog a bone after sawing the animal’s leg off, has also disappeared.

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South Korea has condemned Japan’s refusal to ban images of the former imperial flag of the rising sun from the Tokyo Olympic Games next summer, as relations between Seoul and Tokyo continue to sour.

South Korea’s foreign ministry on Tuesday called on the organisers of the 2020 Games and the International Olympic Committee to forbid depictions of a flag that is widely associated with Imperial Japan’s conquest and occupation of large parts of the Pacific and mainland Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. 

The committee rejected the request, the Sankei Shimbun reported, on the grounds that it does not believe the flag serves as political propaganda.

An Min-suk, a member of the ruling Democratic Party and head of the South Korean government’s Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee, claimed in a radio interview on Wednesday that the decision “violates the spirit” of the Olympic Games. 

If Japan violates the IOC spirit that separates sport from politics, the games will be “the most shameful event since the 1936 Nazi Olympic”, he said. 

Mr An went on to call on other countries in the region to support Seoul’s position on the matter and to “denounce” Japan. The first country that the South should link up with is North Korea, he added. 

“We will first ask North Korea to band together”, the JoongAng Daily newspaper reported. “I think it would be a good opportunity for both Koreas to overcome the ongoing stalemate”. 

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South Korea and Japan are locked in a bitter dispute about historical issues that has spilled over into the economic realm. 

Tokyo has taken exception to South Korean courts permitting compensation suits to go ahead against Japanese companies that used Korean forced labourers during the 1910-1945 occupation of the peninsula.

Japan says all compensation claims were settled under the 1965 treaty that normalised relations between the two nations and saw Tokyo pay $500 million in compensation. 

Accusing the left-leaning government of Moon Jae-in of failing to abide by the agreement, Japan has imposed export restrictions on chemicals critical to South Korea’s microchip industry. Seoul has retaliated by withdrawing from a military information sharing agreement and imposing export restrictions of its own. 

Sections of the public in both countries have been quick to respond to the political row, with South Koreans boycotting popular Japanese brands, from Kirin beer to Toyota cars, and cancelling holidays in Japan. 

A Japanese tourist was assaulted late last month by a man as she walked along a street in Seoul, with the footage going viral on social media sites. 

Last week, a letter containing a bullet and a letter threatening to “hunt” Koreans was delivered to the South Korean Embassy in Tokyo. 

The stricken seven-time Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher is in Paris’ Georges-Pompidou hospital for cell therapy surgery, according to French daily Le Parisien.

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The Paris hospitals department, contacted by AFP, refused to confirm or deny the news citing medical privacy laws.

But according to Le Parisien, the 50-year-old German is in the cardiovascular department overseen by surgeon Philippe Menasche, described as a ’pioneer in cell surgery against heart failure’.

Schumacher will receive stem cells to obtain an anti-inflammatory effect throughout his system, Le Parisien suggests.

"The treatment will begin on Tuesday morning and (he will) leave the establishment on Wednesday," said Le Parisien, which claims the former Ferrari star has already been treated there twice this spring.

The athlete was struck down by a skiing accident that snapped his helmet in December 2013 and little information on his condition has been made public since then.

He was placed in a medically-induced coma for six months after the fall and was moved from Grenoble hospital to Lausanne before being returned home in September 2014 where he receives private treatment.

It has been suggested by old friends he is unable to walk or properly communicate.

Schumacher won his first world title 25 years ago and had won his first Grand Prix back in 1992. His glory years were spent at Benetton and Ferrari, for whom he won the last of his 91 Grand Prix victories in China in 2006.

He came out of retirement in 2010 for a three-year stint with Mercedes.

Fans revere the determined German and his name was chanted at the Monza circuit last weekend for Ferrari’s most successful Formula One driver Schumacher, with his son Mick, who is part of the Ferrari Driver Academy, present.

America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will stop testing harmful chemicals on animals by 2035, but the move has been dismissed as a "gift" to the chemical industry by a leading environmental group. 

The EPA has in the past relied on animal testing to judge the risk of chemicals and pesticides pose to human health, but has gradually been implementing alternative tests.

The agency’s chief, Andrew Wheeler, said the move to completely eliminate animal testing was borne out of his own "longstanding personal beliefs", adding that new technologies offered viable alternatives. 

The announcement has been praised by animal rights groups, but has met with scepticism in some quarters. 

Mr Wheeler, a former coal industry lobbyist, has overseen President Donald Trump’s campaign to rollback several of his predecessor Barack Obama’s environmental regulations. Earlier this month the agency weakened wildlife protections by revising the Endangered Species Act for the first time in the law’s 45-year history. 

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Mr Wheeler’s new testing directive, which will see requests and spending on mammal studies cut by 30 per cent by 2025 and eliminated completely by 2035, has been welcomed by the chemical industry 

However the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental non-profit, warned that animal testing, was crucial to identifying chemicals harmful to people and the environment. 

The group said that the alternative testing methods proposed by the EPA can be useful but may not be sufficient. 

Jennifer Sass, a senior scientist for the group, said the EPA is phasing out the tools that lay the groundwork for protecting the public from dangers like formaldehyde and chlorpyrifos, a pesticide used on crops, animals and buildings. 

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Ms Sass called the EPA chief’s plan a "gift" to the chemical industry that will result in a "rigged system that gives the green light to harmful chemicals".

Mr Wheeler said he is directing the EPA’s leadership team to form a working group of agency experts to come up with a plan within six months "to ensure that the agency’s regulatory, compliance and enforcement activities, including chemical and pesticide approvals and agency research, remain fully protective of human health and the environment."

Mr Wheeler suggested computer modelling and lab tests involving human cells and tissues could be used as an alternative to animal testing. 

The agency will also provide $4.25 million (£3.53 million) in funding grants to five institutions – Johns Hopkins University, Vanderbilt University, Vanderbilt’s Medical Center, Oregon State University and the University of California-Riverside – to further research alternatives to animal testing.