Australia has for the past year been denied access to a citizen arrested in Hong Kong, diplomats said yesterday, the latest case to be prosecuted under the territory’s far-reaching National Security Law.
Canberra officials said they were notified of the person’s arrest in January last year, but “have been denied consular access despite multiple attempts.” They did not name the person.
“The individual is deemed to be a Chinese citizen under China’s citizenship laws, which do not recognize dual nationality,” a spokesperson for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.
Hong Kong, once regarded as a bastion of free speech within authoritarian China, has been transformed by a 2020 law that Beijing imposed to neuter dissent in the wake of huge democracy protests. More than 160 people have been arrested under the law, including activists and journalists from pro-democracy news outlets.
Often denied bail, many suspects have been detained for long periods before trial.
They include several dual nationals, most notably mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英), a British-Chinese dual citizen and owner of the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper.
Lai has been charged over his alleged role in Tiananmen vigils, annual events commemorating the bloody crackdown on Chinese students calling for reform in Beijing.
Like Australia, Britain, Canada and the US have in the past expressed concerns about being denied access to their imprisoned citizens who hold dual nationality.
A key aspect of the security law is that instead of the usual trial by jury, national security cases are decided by hand-picked judges.
The Australian foreign affairs department said officials had been able to attend court hearings and were “in regular contact with the individual’s lawyers.”
“Australia and many other countries have expressed concern about the erosion of basic freedoms and autonomy in Hong Kong, and have called on Hong Kong and Chinese authorities to abide by their human rights obligations,” the department said.
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