SWEDEN
Chinese activist wins award
Li Wenzu (李文足) on Tuesday was awarded the Edelstam Prize for her outstanding contributions and exceptional courage in standing up for one’s beliefs in defense of human rights. Li is the wife of detained rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang (王全璋), who disappeared during China’s “709 crackdown” in 2015. She has been “instrumental in campaigning for the release of the hundreds of lawyers and activists detained during the crackdown” and supporting the families of the detainees, the Edelstam Foundation said. Since Li is barred from leaving China, her award was received by Yuan Weijing (袁偉靜), a rights activist and wife of exiled lawyer Chen Guangcheng (陳光誠), on her behalf.
UNITED STATES
Senators call for ZTE probe
Senators Chris van Hollen and Marco Rubio on Wednesday asked the White House to investigate whether Chinese telecom ZTE Corp breached US sanctions by helping Venezuela set up a database that monitors the behavior of its citizens. Their letter follows a Reuters investigation of the database and an associated Venezuelan identity card program published on Nov. 14. The company is accused by many Western officials of helping China export surveillance tactics and equipment to authoritarian governments around the world. ZTE has increasingly worked with Venezuela’s government in various projects there, mostly in ventures with Compania Anonima Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, or Cantv, the state telecom. Reuters found that ZTE had helped Caracas build a database that could track citizens’ behavior through a national ID card that could compile data, including financial and medical histories, usage of social media, political affiliation and whether a person voted. One area of concern for the senators is whether ZTE installed components made by Dell Technologies in the database.
GEORGIA
First woman leader elected
Ruling party candidate Salome Zurabishvili has been elected the nation’s first woman president, results showed yesterday, but the opposition claimed fraud and called for supporters to take to the streets. With 99.9 percent of ballots counted, the French-born former diplomat had taken 59.61 percent of the vote in Wednesday’s second round of the election. Her rival, Grigol Vashadze, from an alliance of 11 opposition parties led by exiled former president Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement, had 40.46 percent. The election was seen as a test of Georgia’s democratic credentials as the nation seeks EU and NATO membership. It was also a trial run for more important parliamentary elections in 2020, when the ruling Georgian Dream party is set to face off against a range of opposition parties.
MAURITIUS
Reggae makes UNESCO list
Reggae music yesterday won a spot on the UN’s list of global cultural treasures. UNESCO added the genre that originated in Jamaica to its collection of “intangible cultural heritage” deemed worthy of protection and promotion. Reggae music’s “contribution to international discourse on issues of injustice, resistance, love and humanity underscores the dynamics of the element as being at once cerebral, sociopolitical, sensual and spiritual,” UNESCO said. Reggae emerged in the late 1960s out of Jamaica’s ska and rocksteady genres, also drawing influence from US jazz and blues. Jamaica applied for reggae’s inclusion on the list this year at a meeting of the UN agency in Mauritius, where 40 proposals were under consideration.
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
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
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
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