China’s top prosecution body has cast a thin, bespectacled teenage activist from Hong Kong as a pro-independence advocate backed by the US in an online video that warns against uprising movements across the country.
Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), a student leader who rose to fame at the age of 15 after forcing the Hong Kong government to shelve a pro-China national education scheme in schools, appears in a video with a caption that says “American-led Western power.”
The video, released on Monday by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate via its microblogging account, depicts harrowing images of refugees from central Asia, the Middle East and eastern Europe dying or in horrific conditions. The video then contrasts this with pictures of a strong and stable China.
Photo: AP
Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang are singled out, as are dissident activists who are “damaging China’s internal stability and harmony by hook or by crook. Behind all these incidents, we can often catch a glimpse of the dark shadow of the Stars and Stripes,” the video states.
Wong, now 19, said on his Facebook page that he viewed the video statements as a joke and had not advocated for Hong Kong independence.
The democracy activist was found guilty by a Hong Kong court on July 21 for unlawful assembly related to demonstrations that paralyzed key arteries of the territory in 2014.
The 79-day “Occupy Central” street demonstrations crippled parts of Hong Kong and were one of the boldest populist challenges to the Chinese Communist Party leadership in decades.
Relations between the two have frayed in the year and a half since the end of the protests.
The video ends with a message warning watchers to “Protect China, be cautious against color revolutions.”
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS