Torbjørn Færøvik's Blog, page 187

STAND NEWS EDITORS CONVICTED OF SEDITION IN LATEST BLOW TO HONG KONG PRESS FREEDOM

The Hong Kong government dealt yet another blow to the city’s press freedom on Thursday when two former editors of local independent media outlet Stand News were found guilty of sedition. The judge, handpicked by Hong Kong’s chief executive, ruled against the editors, who had spent over 300 days in pre-trial detention and were the first journalists to be convicted in decades. Chung and Lam were

It’s Texas 60 miles from North Korea: the US military’s largest overseas base

Rock stars get to see more of the world than most of us, but when members of the quintessential 2000s’ rock band Hoobastank jetted into the US military base of Camp Humphreys in South Korea, they were struck by the familiarity. “When we came in through the gates, I was like ‘dude, this is, this looks like Texas somewhere,’” lead singer Doug Robb told CNN before the band headlined the Fourth of

Magnus Fiskesjö and Rukiye Turdush: Mass Detention and Forced Assimilation of Uyghur Children in China

One of history’s largest operations to confiscate children to force-assimilate them, is currently under way in China’s colonized territories. Organized by the Chinese government, this massive campaign forms part of a set of measures targeting twelve to fifteen million ethnic Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other Turkic ethnicities who live in East Turkistan. This is a new, massive campaign launched in 2017

China and Philippines trade blame over latest vessel collisions in disputed South China Sea

The Chinese and Philippine Coast Guards traded blame over the latest collisions involving their vessels in the disputed South China Sea on Saturday.mThe Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) said a Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) ship had “deliberately collided” with one of its vessels near the disputed Sabina Shoal, according to state broadcaster CCTV.“At 12:06, the Philippine ship No. 9701 deliberately

Workers in Japan can’t quit their jobs. They hire resignation experts to help

Yuki Watanabe used to spend 12 hours every day toiling away in the office. And that’s considered a short day. A typical 9-to-9 workday is the bare minimum. “The latest I would leave [the office] would be 11 p.m.,” said the 24-year-old, who used to work for some of Japan’s largest telecoms and e-payment companies. So intense were the demands that Watanabe - who used an alias to speak to CNN, for

From the bookshelf: ‘Zhou Enlai: A Life’

Zhou Enlai was a giant of twentieth century international relations. Serving as China’s premier from the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 until his death in 1976 and also as China’s first foreign minister, Zhou set up China’s foreign service and skilfully guided China through the international events of the entire Mao Zedong era.Zhou was a key member of the Chinese Communist Party’s

Climate Change on the Third Pole Causes, Processes and Consequences

The Third Pole region, that is, the Tibetan Plateau and its surrounding mountain ranges, are the heart of Asia’s water cycle and supply almost all of the continent’s major rivers. Read more

In Retrospect: Nobel Peace Prize. The 14th Dalai Lama held his Acceptance Speech on 10 December 1989

Your Majesty, Members of the Nobel Committee, Brothers and Sisters:I am very happy to be here with you today to receive the Nobel Prize for Peace. I feel honoured, humbled and deeply moved that you should give this important prize to a simple monk from Tibet. I am no one special. But, I believe the prize is a recognition of the true values of altruism, love, compassion and nonviolence which I try

Once a safe haven, Hong Kong is now ‘exporting its own refugees’

The ongoing crackdown on political dissent in Hong Kong Party has turned the city, where millions once took refuge from Chinese Communist rule, into an “exporter of refugees,” according to exiled former pro-democracy lawmaker Nathan Law. Law, who had his passport revoked in June along with other “wanted” overseas activists, said his father was a refugee who settled in Hong Kong after fleeing

Uyghurs sentenced to cumulative 4.4 million years in prison: study

All told, Uyghurs imprisoned by China in Xinjiang have been sentenced to a cumulative 4.4 million years, a report by Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program says. And the true tally is probably far higher, researchers said. The figure highlights the scale and severity of the Chinese government’s crackdown on the mostly Muslim Uyghurs since 2017, when thousands of Uyghurs and other Turkic