IV. International
(04-01-08)
.
A growing number of
monks have embraced political causes across
Asia.
Last fall, monks in Burma risked their lives to rise up
against the country’s ruling military junta. More
recently, monks in Tibet have been at the center of
ongoing protests against the Chinese government.
.
Without revolution or bloodshed,
Bhutan
became the world’s newest democracy, as wildflower
farmers, traditional leaders, Buddhist folk artists, and
computer engineers voted in their country’s first
parliamentary elections, ending a century of absolute
monarchy.
.
Thousands of Okinawans
(about 6k) rallied to protest crimes by US troops and
demand a smaller military presence on the southern
Japanese island
of Okinawa
after last
month’s arrest of a Marine on suspicion of raping a
school girl.
.
The sporadic war in
Sri Lanka
has divided and weakened society, re-igniting
long-standing ethnic tension between the majority
Sinhalese who are predominantly Buddhist and the
minority Tamils who are mainly Hindus and Christians.
. China
lashed out at critics on
its crackdown on Tibetan protesters, describing US House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi a “habitually bad-tempered” while
claiming the western media serve those who want to smear
the Communist country.
. China said
it is willing to resume a long-stalled human rights
dialogue with the
US,
apparently seeking to improve its image before the
Summer Olympics Game in Beijing.
. China may
consider changing its one-child policy (and two for
rural couples) which has helped slow population growth
over the last 30 years, but family planning services
will not be scrapped altogether.
. Violent
protests erupted in several northern Chinese fishing
towns after residents heard that a chemical factory
rejected as environmentally dangerous by the nearby city
of Xiamen would be built in their area (300-acre tract
on Haicang, an island just off Xiamen) instead,
witnesses and other residents said.
.
The newly elected
president of
Taiwan (Ma
Ying-jeou) predicted he could reach agreement with
Beijing on a wide range of delicate issues because he is
willing to put aside the question of whether this
self-rule island should be considered an independent
nation or a part of China.
. Analysts
said that his inauguration on May 20 will open a new
horizon for relations with China. But they cautioned
against optimism, warning that much still separates the
two sides. CCP has its own historical baggage and
political realities to deal with in any negotiation with
Taiwan.
.
Ma said China and Taiwan probably would not settle the
issue in his lifetime but would be better off trying to
reach practical agreements. They could begin their talks
by returning to an understanding reached in 1992 that
was repudiated by the Chinese government.
.
Roughly a third of
children and mothers are malnourished in
North Korea,
said a recent UN study. The average 8-year old is in 7
inches shorter and 20 pounds lighter than his cousin in
the South of the same age.
.
The South’s new president (Lee Myung-bak) wants to
impose conditions in the Nrth for his country’s aid
package of food and fertilizer on progress in removing
nuclear weapons, an improvement in human rights and on
guarantees that food will go to poor people, not the
military.
.
China, the main ally and main trading partner, has
quietly slashed aid to
North Korea,
according to figures by the World Food Program.
Deliveries plummeted from 440k metric tons in 2005 to
207k tons in 2006. Last year there was an increase in
aid. But it remained far below the levels of the past
decade.
. North
Korea’s ability to buy food has plunged, as cost of rice
and wheat on the global market has jumped to record
high, exacerbated by the price of oil, up 50% in the
past 6 months.
. North Korea
expelled 11 South Korean officials from the Kaeung
Industrial Zone in response to the South’s
increasing tough criticism of its neighbor’s record on
human rights and nuclear proliferation. The zone is a
booming factory park just north of the border where
about 24k North Koreans work for 69 South Korean
companies.
. Orchestra
diplomacy won kudos and standing ovation from the North
Korean audience as the New York Philarmonic performed a
concert in the shuttered Stalinist state that has long
considered the United States to be its prime enemy.
. Will the
North Koreans have enough food for its people before the
fall harvest and what will its neighbors do about it?
This year, the famine bailout season is more urgent,
more complicated and more politically explosive than at
any time since the mid-a990s when millions starved
behind its closed borders.
.
In spite of the emergence of grass-roots private market
across North Korea and UN monitoring, large number of
people still suffer severe hardship, joining the ranks
of millions of North Koreans who go hungry even when
harvests are good and food aid arrives.
. India
figures prominently as an issue in
Nepal’s
forthcoming elections. The Himalayan nation has always
figured in India’s
politics and is likely to do so in a larger manner over
the next few months.
.
India’s government and
its communist allies failed to crack a deadlock over a
controversial nuclear deal with the US but said they
would meet again this month to discuss the pact.
.
Finance Secretary D. Subbarao admitted that inflation at
6.6%was “disturbing” and hoped the price of commodities
would come down over the next few weeks. He said rising
inflation was partly linked to high global commodity
prices with the index past the 5% red line drawn by RBI.
. Pakistan’s
newly elected Prime Minister, Yousef Raza Gillani, a
soft-spoken consensus builder from Benazir Bhutto’s
People’s Party, ordered the immediate release of top
judges who had been under house arrest since last year
to re-instate the country’s once-independent judiciary,
a dramatic challenge to US-backed president Pervez
Musharraf.
. A missile
strike on a suspected Taliban safe house in a remote
tribal area of NW Pakistan killed at least 10 people
2/28, including al Quaeda lieutenant Abu Laith al-Libi.
All those killed were Afghans who had lived in the area
for years.
.
Last month’s bombing (2/29) in Pakistan was the was the
deadliest in the Swat Valley since followers of a
pro-Taliban cleric (Maulana Fazlullah) grabbed control
of large parts of scenic corner of Pakistan’s restive
northwest.
.
A group of monks
shouting that here was n religious freedom in
Tibet
disrupted a carefully
orchestrated visit from foreign reporters to the capital
of the Tibet Autonomous Region, an embarrassment
for China as it tried to show that Lhasa was calm
following deadly anti-government riots. China’s Foreign
Ministry warned that they have full rights and warned
Europe not to interfere.
. Hundreds
of protesters swarmed Tibet’s capital (3/14) and clashed
with police and setting fires to shops and cars in a
spasm of violence worse than any in the last 20 years.
Armored personnel carriers rolled into the city as a
Lhasa descended into a state of siege.
. The anger
of Tibetans over the Chinese occupation boiled over and
culminated into confrontation led by monks and joined by
hundreds of laypeople. They resent the efforts of CCP
government in Beijing to bind their homeland to the rest
of China.
.
Reports of protests and
riots in 2 heavily Tibetan areas of W. China supported
Tibetan activists’ views that unrest was spreading and
that crackdown in
Lhasa would not quell
the deep resentment Tibetans are openly expressing about
China’s practices.
.
Authorities have
steadfastly attempted to project an image of harmony and
stability in Tibet and elsewhere even as they have
tightened their grip over the region as it prepares to
host the Olympic Games in August.
. Thanks to
government propaganda and to ethnic Han pride, most
Chinese see the Dalai Lama and his monks as
obstructionist reactionaries trying to split the country
an reverse the social and economic progress that China
has brought to a backward and isolated land over the pas
55 years.
