Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has offered a 'sincere and solemn' apology to the people of her city following record protests on Sunday in response to the controversial China extradition law. In her first press conference since crowds poured on to the streets to denounce Lam, the bureaucrat-turned-politician described going through an emotional period of 'self-reflection', and said she hoped to heal rifts in society. However, Lam refused to fully meet any of the protesters’ requests for her to resign, withdraw her extradition law, and apologise both for police brutality and for describing one protest as a riot
Continue reading...Category Archives: China
Labour of luxury: the migrant workers who build high-end Shanghai – in pictures
Photographer Jonathan Browning pictures Chinese migrant workers in front of advertising billboards for the projects they are helping to construct – office complexes and luxury apartments for the wealthy of Shanghai
Continue reading...Sound of Hong Kong’s defiance reverberates in Beijing
Beijing’s public support for Hong Kong leader likely hides private fury, but letting her go would be another humiliation
The most obvious casualty of Hong Kong’s extraordinary uprising against chief executive, Carrie Lam, and her campaign to tie the city more closely to China, will be the bureaucrat-turned-politician’s own career. If she stays on, it will only be as a lame duck leader.
But the city’s turmoil is also a major challenge to her boss and patron, Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Continue reading...China is harvesting organs from detainees, tribunal concludes
Victims include imprisoned followers of Falun Gong movement, China Tribunal says
An independent tribunal sitting in London has concluded that the killing of detainees in China for organ transplants is continuing, and victims include imprisoned followers of the Falun Gong movement.
The China Tribunal, chaired by Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, who was a prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said in a unanimous determination at the end of its hearings it was “certain that Falun Gong were used for forced organ harvesting”.
Continue reading...Where does your plastic go? Global investigation reveals America’s dirty secret
A Guardian report from 11 countries tracks how US waste makes its way across the world – and overwhelms the poorest nations
- This week we’re exploring plastic pollution as part of our six-month Toxic America series. Please support this journalism and help us hit our $150,000 goal
What happens to your plastic after you drop it in a recycling bin?
According to promotional materials from America’s plastics industry, it is whisked off to a factory where it is seamlessly transformed into something new.
Continue reading...Hong Kong: pressure builds on Carrie Lam as public rejects apology
Calls for leader to stand down after estimated 2 million march over unpopular extradition bill
Protesters have kept up pressure on Hong Kong’s leader by blocking streets outside the shuttered legislature building and welcoming the city’s most prominent political activist, Joshua Wong, on his release from jail.
As the political crisis entered its second week, Hong Kong’s police chief admitted that his officers had sought to arrest wounded demonstrators in hospitals after a previous protest, but claimed criminal screening was routine for anyone arriving at A&E.
Continue reading...Man falls to his death to become Hong Kong protest’s first ‘martyr’
Crowds mourn the unknown activist, praising his passion and sense of justice
Many among the vast crowds that marched through Hong Kong on Sunday carried white flowers tributes to an anonymous man who had fallen to his death the previous evening after unfurling a large protest banner on scaffolding near government headquarters.
No one knew the man’s name, or why he was there, even though protesters and an opposition politician spent hours trying to persuade him to come down with hymns and exhortations.
Continue reading...‘Fighting for our freedom’: protesters flood into Hong Kong’s streets
Authorities urged to withdraw extradition bill as Carrie Lam apology fails to calm ire
A wave of protesters hundreds of thousands strong, most dressed in black and many carrying white flowers of mourning, have swept through central Hong Kong to denounce a controversial extradition law and demand the city’s leader, Carrie Lam, steps down.
They poured in from all over the city, in numbers so large that the march route had to be extended, and then widened, with crowds spilling from the main road to fill neighbouring streets, and halting all traffic outside government headquarters.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands take to streets in renewed Hong Kong protests – video report
Protesters dressed in black have marched through central Hong Kong demanding a full retraction of the China extradition law. The huge new rally comes after Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, announced an indefinite halt to the proposed bill, which would allow residents and visitors to be sent for trial in China’s opaque Communist-controlled court system
Continue reading...Hong Kong streets flooded by extradition bill protesters – in pictures
Tens of thousands of people dressed in black call for complete withdrawal of suspended bill
Continue reading...Hong Kong’s Carrie Lam defiant in face of extradition climbdown
Chief executive adopts unapologetic, defensive tone and refuses to resign
Carrie Lam’s announcement that a controversial extradition bill had been suspended reinforced the Hong Kong chief executive’s reputation as a hard-nosed leader who can “put up a good fight”.
Throughout her press conference on Saturday, Lam adopted a resolute, unapologetic and defensive tone that her critics labelled arrogant and insincere.
Continue reading...Ice cream and cake: Vladimir Putin hosts birthday party for Xi Jinping – video
Russian president helps Chinese counterpart celebrate 66th birthday in style on Sunday, giving him Russian ice cream and sharing champagne before a summit in Tajikistan. The two leaders reportedly consider each other to be close friends.
Discussion of senior leaders' private lives is extremely rare in China and their exact birth dates are considered a state secret.
Continue reading...Indefinite delay to Hong Kong extradition bill announced – video
Efforts to pass a controversial law in Hong Kong which would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial have been indefinitely suspended, Carrie Lam announced on Saturday. The move followed a week of mass protests and street violence over the bill
Hong Kong leader suspends extradition bill amid protest pressure
Carrie Lam says legislation that would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China ‘caused a lot of division’
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has been forced into a humiliating concession after a week of mass protests, promising to indefinitely suspend efforts to pass a controversial new extradition law ahead of another demonstration that has been called for Sunday.
Lam’s announcement represented perhaps the most serious government climbdown in the face of public pressure since a security law was dropped in 2003, an important democratic moment for a city where people are free to demonstrate but not able to choose their leaders.
Continue reading...The US must stand with the people of Hong Kong
But for policies to be effective we must keep in mind how US actions affect the debate within China, where there is vigorous struggle over the country’s future
As the United States engages in an increasingly heated debate over policy towards China – the fight against Huawei, the trade war, talk of a new cold war – the protests in Hong Kong serve as a reminder that there are people in China who are concerned about the same things we are – basic rights, jobs, families.
In Hong Kong this week hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets to protest a proposed law that would enable the government to extradite Hong Kong citizens to the mainland – legislation perceived as legal cover for the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to jail those in Hong Kong advocating for their democratic rights.
Continue reading...‘Deep concerns’: US objects to UN counterterrorism chief’s visit to Xinjiang
Other countries joined the US in objecting to the trip in a region where China detains 1 million Uighurs and muslims
The United States and other western countries have objected to a visit by the United Nations counterterrorism chief to China’s remote Xinjiang, where UN experts say some 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims are held in detention centres.
Vladimir Voronkov, a veteran Russian diplomat who heads the UN Counterterrorism Office, is in China at the invitation of Beijing and is due to visit Xinjiang’s capital Urumqi, according to an email sent by his office to countries that raised concerns.
Continue reading...Russia is not alone in exploiting Africa | Letters
Tracey Lindner says the scramble for Africa is largely about securing resources that are crucial for military and civilian digital technology. Terry McGinn shines a spotlight on the US
Foreign involvement in Africa is far from unique to Russia (Leaked documents reveal Russia’s efforts to exert influence in Africa, 12 June). The new scramble for Africa involves more powers than the first round over a century ago. This time it’s in part about securing resources such as oil, gas and rare earth metals crucial for military and civilian digital technology, and denying these resources to rival powers.
The United States Africa Command (Africom) now has 7,500 American troops active in all but one African country, up from 6,000 in 2017. Apart from its huge base in Djibouti, controlling the narrow strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, a vital chokepoint through which all shipping using the Suez Canal has to pass – most importantly (for the Americans) Chinese shipping – the US has constructed small “lily pad” bases, whose presence gives the US a strong military capability.
Continue reading...Britain has a duty to help Hong Kong out of this dark moment | Chris Patten
China’s power grab via a new extradition bill must be opposed by governments around the world, especially Britain’s
It took something out of the ordinary to provoke a million people in Hong Kong to take to the streets to demonstrate against proposed new extradition rules. Roughly one-sixth of the population demonstrated peacefully: families, young and old, lawyers, academics, students, professionals and manual workers.
What caused such an outpouring against a piece of legislation? Quite simply, the people of Hong Kong – not British, but Hong Kong Chinese – have seen their government connive with the Communist regime in Beijing to undermine their way of life and freedoms.
Continue reading...Adviser to Hong Kong leader calls for extradition bill delay
Pro-Beijing politician also urges pause and diplomat distances China from law
The pressure of Hong Kong public opinion against a proposed extradition law appears to be causing cracks in the unity of pro-Beijing leaders after two senior figures called for the legislation to be delayed or dropped.
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has staked her authority on pushing through the legislation, vowing not to back down during a week in which protests have convulsed the city. She has compared demonstrators who were pelted with rubber bullets and teargas to spoilt children.
Continue reading...UN counter-terror tsar visits Xinjiang where Uighurs held in huge numbers
Activists say official visit risks affirming China’s narrative that camps thought to hold a million people are not an abuse of human rights
The UN’s counter-terrorism tsar is on a visit this week to China’s Xinjiang region, where Beijing insists the estimated 1 million Uighurs and other Muslims it is detaining constitute a potential terrorist threat.
Vladimir Voronkov, the under-secretary general for counter-terrorism, is the highest level UN official to visit Xinjiang, which activists have described as an open-air prison where people are deprived of religious freedom.
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