Chinese police have arrested an activist university professor on charges of inciting subversion after he set up an independent political party, his wife said yesterday.
Guo Quan (郭泉), a professor at Nanjing Normal University and frequent government critic, was taken into police custody on Thursday, his wife Li Jing (李晶) said by phone.
Guo formed the China People’s Livelihood Party in 2004 — renaming it the China New People’s Party late last year — to protect the rights of “workers, farmers, businessmen, students, and urban residents,” according to Guo’s blog, which is blocked in China.
“Police gave his mother an official notice saying Guo is suspected of subverting state power,” Li said.
“It is suspected that Guo might have been detained for organizing the China Xinmin Party [New People’s Party],” China Human Rights Defenders, a network of Chinese and overseas rights activists, said in an e-mailed statement.
In a recent blog entry, Guo called the eight other legal parties besides the Chinese Communist Party “flowers in a vase” meant to give the appearance of democracy in China.
The group also said the arrest could be linked to articles published online by Guo that criticized the Nanjing city government, particularly for its construction of a chemical plant.
Guo had previously been stripped of his teaching duties over his activism and his been held in detention before, according to his blog.
Guo’s blog claims the China New People’s Party has 10 million members and branches in all provinces of the country.
Meanwhile, two milk inspectors for a major dairy firm were severely beaten in an attack blamed on suppliers angry at tough new safety checks following a tainted milk scandal, the China Youth Daily reported yesterday.
The two men were working in the northern city of Tangshan as inspectors for Mengniu, one of China’s largest dairy companies, which has implemented strict new safety inspections, the paper said.
The attack occurred on Nov. 5 after inspector Li Zhongping had confronted an outside dairy supplier over a batch of milk he was selling that appeared not to confirm with new standards, it said.
“According to an initial analysis, this incident was triggered by [Li’s] decision that this truck’s milk was not in compliance,” it quoted an unnamed Mengniu official as saying.
Li and another inspector, Zhang Liwei, were set on by a group of about five club-wielding men as they left work later that day.
Li was badly beaten, suffering numerous injuries over his body, including fractured vertebra, and was in a coma for “a long time,” the paper said, without specifying Li’s current condition.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS