■CHINA
Official denies persecution
Beijing denied on Tuesday it had persecuted the family of prominent human rights lawyer Gao Zhisheng (高智晟) after his wife and children fled to the US. “There’s no political persecution or limits on the freedom of the family,” foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) told reporters. Gao’s wife, Geng He (耿和), and their two children sneaked out of Beijing at the beginning of January to escape to the US, where they arrived last Wednesday, Radio Free Asia said. Geng said in a tearful interview that she had fled China after her 15-year-old daughter had tried to commit suicide several times as she was blocked from going to school. State security personnel took Gao from his home village in Shaanxi Province on Feb. 4 and has not been heard from since.
■PHILIPPINES
Hostages alive: Red Cross
Three Red Cross workers held hostage by Islamic militants are alive after deadly clashes with security forces trying to rescue them, the Philippine Red Cross said yesterday. However, the organization’s chairman, Senator Richard Gordon, lashed out at the military for what he said was an ill-conceived operation that had led to the deaths of three soldiers and two militants, without freeing the three hostages. Fierce fighting erupted on Monday and Tuesday on Joli island as security forces came up against members of Abu Sayyaf. Afterwards, the military said it found tents and other equipment belonging to the kidnapped International Committee of the Red Cross workers — Filipina Mary Jean Lacaba, Swiss national Andreas Notter and Italian Eugenio Vagni.
■AUSTRALIA
Containers hard to recover
The 31 containers lost overboard when the Pacific Adventurer was buffeted by a storm off the east coast a week ago would be hard to recover, an expert said yesterday. The Navy mine hunter HMAS Yarra was sent to look for the lost boxes of ammonium nitrate after an aerial survey failed to find them. Greg Boller from the ocean-monitoring firm Tide Tech said the containers could have traveled 700km from the scene of the accident and be nearer Sydney than Brisbane. Aside from losing half its cargo of containers, the Hong Kong-owned ship spilled oil over 60km of beaches.
■INDONESIA
Cleric nabbed over wedding
Police arrested a Muslim cleric in Central Java province for marrying a 12-year-old girl in violation of the country’s child-protection law, an officer said yesterday. Pujiono Cahyo Widianto, 43, revealed in August that he had taken a 12-year-old girl as a second wife in a traditional Islamic wedding ceremony, sparking criticism from child-protection groups. Police in Semarang, the capital of Central Java, said they had charged Pujiono with sexual exploitation of a child.
■CHINA
‘Slumdog’ coming soon
Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire has secured a coveted slot as one of 20 major foreign movies that China will import this year, a distributor said yesterday. Many Hollywood movies miss out on the booming Chinese cinema market because of the annual quota, and others are weeded out by the censorship process. Chinese censors are wary of unflattering portrayals of the country and its people, explicit sex and violence and sensitive topics like Tibet. But Slumdog Millionaire cleared Chinese censors easily, said Zhang Hongyan, a publicist for the distributor, Hong Kong-based Edko Film.
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