CHINA
Self-immolation reported
An overseas rights group says a Tibetan student has died after setting himself on fire in Gansu Province in the first such protest in five months. The London-based Free Tibet yesterday said that Lhamo Tashi burned himself to death on Wednesday last week in Hezuo in the Tibetan prefecture of Gannan. A request for comment at the local Communist Party office was not immediately answered, and calls to the local police bureau rang unanswered. About 130 Tibetans have self-immolated since 2009 to protest Beijing’s rule over Tibet.
CHINA
Convictions in torture cases
Three police officers and four other people helping them have been convicted of torturing suspects to obtain confessions, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday, in a story that contracted authorities’ claims in April that there had not been a single case of torture used to coerce a confession at any detention center for the past five years. Xinhua said one of the cases ended in the death of a man after he had been tortured with electric shocks and hit on the head and face with a shoe. Mustard oil was poured into suspects’ mouths in other forms of torture, it said. The seven cases all occurred in March last year at a police sub-bureau in Harbin. The seven defendants were given prison sentences of up to two-and-a-half years. Xinhua said the Harbin cases “reflect the chaos in the process of law enforcement and severely hurts the public’s trust in the judicial authority.” The maximum penalty for using torture to extract a confession is three years’ imprisonment, rising to 10 years if severe or disabling injuries have been caused and, potentially, the death penalty if death is caused. Hong Daode (洪道德), a criminal law professor at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, said: “It looks like the sentences given by the court are too lenient ... and it will set a bad example for future torture cases.”
CHINA
Fugitive CEO resurfaces
The missing chief executive of embattled German-listed Chinese shoe maker Ultrasonic AG resurfaced in a video interview with a Chinese news outlet, denying rumors he absconded with millions of dollars of company money. Ultrasonic CEO Wu Qingyong (吳清勇) said he had simply been on holiday with his grandson and had lost his cellphone, according to an interview posted by news outlet Sina late on Sunday that it said took place in Quanzhou. Ultrasonic said on Tuesday last week that Wu Qingyong and his son, Ultrasonic chief operating officer Wu Minghong (吳明鴻), had gone missing and most of its cash reserves in China and Hong Kong had also vanished, fueling concerns about corporate governance in the world’s second-biggest economy. Ultrasonic’s supervisory board dismissed the pair on Thursday, saying they had drawn down a credit facility last month and transferred the money to China before disappearing.
NEW ZEALAND
Key pushes flag vote
Fresh off a big election win, Prime Minster John Key says he wants the nation to vote next year on changing its flag. Key yesterday told television station TV3 that he wants a national referendum held next year. He first raised the idea of a flag vote in March. Some people consider the flag to be an unwanted relic from a colonial past, while others feel a deep attachment to it. It depicts the Southern Cross star constellation and includes the UK’s Union Jack in the upper left corner. Opponents say it is too similar to Australia’s flag and does not reflect the nation’s independence from Britain.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
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
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
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