British Prime Minister David Cameron hinted yesterday that he had raised the case of jailed Nobel Prize-winning dissident Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波) with Chinese leaders on a trade trip this week.
Cameron said “nothing and no-one was off limits” in discussions with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) and President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤) during his visit, Britain’s largest ever trade mission to China.
“I raised human rights and I can tell you that nothing and no-one was off limits,” Cameron told the BBC in Seoul, where he is attending the G20 summit.
“But it’s right that we do some of these things privately, firmly, not using a megaphone,” he added.
Cameron’s two-day visit to China was shadowed by questions about whether and how he would broach human rights issues with leaders while attempting to double trade between the two countries.
He said in a keynote speech on Wednesday that being able to talk about human rights “makes our relationship stronger,” while acknowledging differences and disagreements between the two countries.
Liu’s case has generated international controversy since he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last month to the fury of Beijing.
He was jailed in December for 11 years on subversion charges after co-authoring Charter 08, a bold petition calling for democratic reform in one-party China that has been widely circulated online and signed by thousands.
Britain is among the countries to say it will not heed a Chinese call for Western diplomats to steer clear of Liu’s award ceremony in Oslo next month.
Downing Street officials had previously declined to confirm that Cameron raised Liu’s case with Wen and Hu.
Cameron went into the trip saying he wanted to drum up deals worth billions of dollars, but the total amount signed is reportedly not more than US$1.4 billion.
Cameron’s longer-term target is to double the level of trade in goods and services between Britain and China by 2015 from US$51.8 billion last year.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not