Chinese authorities have fined three British geology students for “illegal map-making activities” in the politically tense Muslim region of Xinjiang, state media reported yesterday.
The Xinjiang Daily said the three students from Imperial College London had been researching fault lines in the remote western region, where anger against Chinese rule triggered deadly attacks last year.
China clamped down hard on the vast region following the unrest, which had led to fears of terror attacks on the Beijing Olympics in August.
China has in recent years placed stricter controls on data-collecting activities such as map-making across the country, with state media reports voicing fears that unauthorized maps could compromise state security.
The students, who were not named in the report, were fined a total of 20,000 yuan (US$2,940) but received no further punishment, the report said.
It said authorities confiscated their equipment in October after they were found collecting data in several areas, including Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road trading post where some of last year’s unrest took place.
Last month, state media said two Islamic “terrorists” were sentenced to death for an attack in the city just four days before the Olympics, which killed 17 police officers and injured 15.
Yesterday’s report said the students had also been in the desert village of Keping. Authorities in May razed a mosque in Keping over “illegal religious activities,” Radio Free Asia and an exiled Uighur group had said previously.
Those activities included failing to follow government propaganda on supporting the Olympics, the reports had said.
The students had permission from China’s Earthquake Administration for geological research, the Xinjiang Daily said, but noted that it had not been cleared with any other government departments.
“The data they gathered would have been valuable in analyzing mineral and topographic features of the areas,” it said.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person