This side could become only the second Asian nation to reach the quarter-finals of a World Cup.
Kagoshima, Japan – Japan take on Croatia in the group of 16 of the World Cup 2022 on Monday. The 6pm (15:00 GMT) kickoff means it will be midnight in Japan when the first whistle is blown.
Many will sacrifice their sleep to watch their team play. With extra time and penalties a possibility, there is a chance that Japanese football fans may be awake and glued to their screens well past 3am.
The wins over Germany and Spain mean that even casual football fans are glued to their screens and are willing to sacrifice their sleep, hoping and praying for one more sleepless night after every match.
Japan progressed beyond the group stage of the World Cup three times but never went beyond the last-16 stage.
The Group E wins over Germany and Spain have created strong hope and belief that Hajime Moriyasu’s team can become the first to cross that barrier. Should the Blue Samurai down Croatia, they will become only the second Asian nation to reach the quarter-finals after South Korea in 2002.
For 44-year-old Japanese fan Takuro Shinmyozu, the player who has made a difference in Moriyasu’s charges is Ritsu Doan. The SC Freiburg winger has scored twice, his goals helping Japan beat Germany and Spain.
While Shinmyozu has been happy with the performances of Doan, dubbed by some as “the Japanese Messi”, he does feel that the 24-year-old needs to improve his behaviour.
“Doan is the best player. He knows what Japan should do. He may need to work on his attitude though,” said Shinmyozu who credits Japan’s disciplined strategy for having helped them overcome Germany and Spain.
“Higher-ranked teams like Germany and Spain have better individual skills and passing than Japan. Japan fended off their attacks and responded with well-organised strategies in the second half of those games,” he added.
Shinmyozu conceded that the team surprised him. He admitted he turned off his television and went to sleep when the team was trailing 1-0 against Germany in their World Cup opener but realised what he had missed out on when he woke up.
Yoichi Tominanga feels that the strong performances of the Samurai Blue in Qatar will serve the national team going well into the future.
He also noticed a change in the mentality of players who now “do not give strong nations respect” on the field as previous generations of Japanese footballers may have been doing to their own detriment.
“We have picked up confidence. We don’t give too much respect to strong nations any more. We are not afraid of them. There are many strong nations like Brazil, Germany, Argentina, Spain and France that we could still learn a lot from. Kids who are watching these games will not think that we are just an underdog. They will think that we can beat these teams. It gives the future of Japanese football a lot of meaning,” he said.
After witnessing the team make gradual improvement since its first World Cup appearance in 1998, longtime football fans such as Tominaga, 38, expected the group-stage games to be difficult but always knew that Japan would have a fighting chance of getting out of the group.
“I thought the group would be hard. I knew we would have a chance of advancing beyond the group stage as most football fans know that anything can happen in football,” said Tominaga.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s former national security director was arrested Saturday over a suspected cover-up surrounding North Korea’s killing of a South Korean fisheries official near the rivals’ sea boundary in 2020.
Suh Hoon’s arrest early Saturday came as President Yoon Suk Yeol’s conservative government investigates his liberal predecessor’s handling of that killing and another border incident the same year, cases that prompted criticism Seoul was desperately trying to appease the North to improve relations.
Former President Moon Jae-in, who staked his single-term on inter-Korean rapprochement before leaving office in May, has reacted angrily to the investigation into Suh’s actions. Moon issued a statement this week accusing Yoon’s government of raising groundless allegations and politicizing sensitive security matters.
Judge Kim Jeong-min of the Seoul Central District Court granted prosecutor’s request to arrest Suh over concerns that he may attempt to destroy evidence, the court said in a statement. Suh didn’t answer reporters’ questions about the allegations on Friday as he appeared at the court for a review over the prosecution’s warrant request.
A previous inquiry by South Korea’s Board of Audit and Inspection concluded that officials from Moon’s government made no meaningful attempt to rescue Lee Dae-jun after learning that the 47-year-old fisheries official was drifting in waters near the Koreas’ western sea boundary in September 2020.
After confirming that Lee had been fatally shot by North Korean troops, officials publicly played up the possibility that he had tried to defect to North Korea, citing his gambling debts and family issues, while withholding evidence suggesting he had no such intention, the audit board said in an October report.
Suh also served as Moon’s spy chief before being appointed as national security director two months before the killing. He faces suspicions that he used a Cabinet meeting to instruct officials to delete intelligence records related to the incident while the government crafted a public explanation of Lee’s death.
Suh is also suspected of ordering the Defense Ministry, National Intelligence Service, and the Coast Guard to portray Lee as trying to defect in their reports on his killing.
Critics say the Moon government went out of its way to paint Lee as unsympathetic as it tried to appease a nuclear-armed rival with a brutal human rights record.
In June, the Defense Ministry and coast guard reversed the Moon government’s description of the incident, saying there was no evidence that Lee had tried to defect.
Moon’s Democratic Party issued a statement criticizing Suh’s arrest, saying suspicions he might destroy evidence were unreasonable since “all the materials are in the hands of the Yoon Suk Yeol government.”
“The Defense Ministry, Coast Guard, National Intelligence Service and other security-related agencies have made a judgment on the Western Sea incident based on an analysis of information and circumstances,” the party said in a statement. It called the investigation a type of political vendetta.
Yoon’s government is separately investigating the 2019 forced repatriation of two North Korean fishermen, despite their reported wish to resettle in South Korea.
In July, the National Intelligence Service filed charges against Suh and his spy chief successor Park Jie-won for alleged abuse of power, destruction of public records and falsification of documents regarding the two cases.
The agency accused Park, who served as its director until May, of ordering the destruction of intelligence reports on Lee’s death. It accused Suh of forcibly closing an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the 2019 repatriation of the two North Korean fisherman captured in South Korean waters.
Critics say Moon’s government never provided a clear explanation of why it sent the two escapees back to the North to face possible execution. Moon’s officials described the men as criminals who confessed to murder and questioned the sincerity of their wish to defect.
Dozens of international organizations, including Human Rights Watch, issued a joint statement accusing Moon’s government of failing to provide due process or to “protect anyone who would be at substantial risk of torture or other serious human rights violations after repatriation.”
Moon left office with little to show for his engagement efforts with the North and the investigations into the two incidents have further tarnished his legacy.
Moon met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times in 2018 and lobbied hard to set up Kim’s meetings with former U.S. President Donald Trump as part of efforts to defuse the nuclear standoff and improve inter-Korean ties.
But the diplomacy never recovered from the failure of the second Kim-Trump meeting in 2019 in Vietnam. Talks collapsed when the sides could not agree on exchanging an end to crippling U.S.-led sanctions against North Korea for steps by the North to wind down its nuclear weapons and missile programs.
HONG KONG (AP) — Videos of hundreds protesting in Shanghai started to appear on WeChat on Saturday night. Showing chants about removing COVID-19 restrictions and demanding freedom, they would stay up only a few minutes before being censored.
Elliot Wang, a 26-year-old in Beijing, was amazed.
“I started refreshing constantly, and saving videos, and taking screenshots of what I could before it got censored,” said Wang, who only agreed to be quoted using his English name, in fear of government retaliation. “A lot of my friends were sharing the videos of the protests in Shanghai. I shared them too, but they would get taken down quickly.”
More on Virus Outbreak in China
That Wang was able to glimpse the extraordinary outpouring of grievances highlights the cat-and-mouse game that goes on between millions of Chinese internet users and the country’s gargantuan censorship machine.
Chinese authorities maintain a tight grip on the country’s internet via a complex, multi-layered censorship operation that blocks access to almost all foreign news and social media, and blocks topics and keywords considered politically sensitive or detrimental to the Chinese Communist Party’s rule. Videos of or calls to protest are usually deleted immediately.
But images of protests began to spread on WeChat, a ubiquitous Chinese social networking platform used by over 1 billion, in the wake of a deadly fire Nov. 24 in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Many suspected that lockdown measures prevented residents from escaping the flames, something the government denies.
The sheer number of unhappy Chinese users who took to the Chinese internet to express their frustration, together with the methods they used to evade censors, led to a brief period of time in which government censors were overwhelmed, according to Han Rongbin, an associate professor at the University of Georgia’s International Affairs department.
“It takes censors some time to study what is happening and to add that to their portfolio in terms of censorship, so it’s a learning process for the government on how to conduct censorship effectively,” Han said.
In 2020, the death from COVID-19 of Li Wenliang, a doctor who was arrested for allegedly spreading rumors following an attempt to alert others about a “SARS-like” virus, sparked widespread outrage and an outpouring of anger against the Chinese censorship system. Users posted criticism for hours before censors moved to delete posts.
As censors took down posts related to the fire, Chinese internet users often used humor and metaphor to spread critical messages.
“Chinese netizens have always been very creative because every idea used successfully once will be discovered by censors the next time,” said Liu Lipeng, a censor-turned-critic of China’s censorship practices.
Others posted sarcastic messages like “Good good good sure sure sure right right right yes yes yes,” or used Chinese homonyms to evoke calls for President Xi Jinping to resign, such as “shrimp moss,” which sounds like the words for “step down,” and “banana peel,” which has the same initials as Xi’s name.
But within days, censors moved to contain images of white paper. They would have used a range of tools, said Chauncey Jung, a policy analyst who previously worked for several Chinese internet companies based in Beijing.
Most content censorship is not done by the state, Jung said, but outsourced to content moderation operations at private social media platforms, who use a mix of humans and AI. Some censored posts are not deleted, but may be made visible only to the author, or removed from search results. In some cases, posts with sensitive key phrases may be published after review.
A search on Weibo on Thursday for the term “white paper” mostly turned up posts that were critical of the protests, with no images of a single sheet of blank paper, or of people holding white papers at protests.
It’s possible to access the global internet from China by using virtual private networks that disguise internet traffic, but these systems are illegal and many Chinese internet users access only the domestic internet. Wang does not use a VPN.
“I think I can say for all the mainlanders in my generation that we are really excited,” said Wang. “But we’re also really disappointed because we can’t do anything. … They just keep censoring, keep deleting, and even releasing fake accounts to praise the cops.”
But the system works well enough to stop many users from ever seeing them. When protests broke out across China over the weekend, Carmen Ou, who lives in Beijing, initially didn’t notice.
Ou learned of the protests only later, after using a VPN service to access Instagram.
“I tried looking at my feed on WeChat, but there was no mention of any protests,” she said. “If not for a VPN and access to Instagram, I might not have found out that such a monumental event had taken place.”
Han, the international affairs professor, said censorship “doesn’t have to be perfect to be effective.”
“Censorship might be functioning to prevent a big enough size of the population from accessing the critical information to be mobilized,” he said.
China’s opaque approach to tamping down the spread of online dissent also makes it difficult to distinguish government campaigns from ordinary spam.
Searching Twitter using the Chinese words for Shanghai or other Chinese cities reveals protest videos, but also a near-constant flood of new posts showing racy photos of young women. Some researchers proposed that a state-backed campaign could be seeking to drown out news of the protests with “not safe for work” content.
A preliminary analysis by the Stanford Internet Observatory found lots of spam but no “compelling evidence” that it was specifically intended to suppress information or dissent, said Stanford data architect David Thiel.
“I’d be skeptical of anyone claiming clear evidence of government attribution,” Thiel said in an email.
Twitter searches for more specific protest-related terms, such as “Urumqi Middle Road, Shanghai,” produced mainly posts related to the protests.
Israeli data analysis firm Cyabra and another research group that shared analysis with the AP said it was hard to distinguish between a deliberate attempt to drown out protest information sought by the Chinese diaspora and a run-of-the-mill commercial spam campaign.
Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment. It hasn’t answered media inquiries since billionaire Elon Musk took over the platform in late October and cut back much of its workforce, including many of those tasked with moderating spam and other content. Musk often tweets about how he’s enacting or enforcing new Twitter content rules but hasn’t commented on the recent protests in China.
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AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan in London and AP Technology Writer Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this story.
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This story corrects that the Urumqi fire was on Thursday, Nov. 24, not Friday.
Children working and travelling on India’s vast rail network need to be educated about the perils of trafficking. Credit: Umar Manzoor Shah/IPS
by Umar Manzoor Shah (karnataka, india)
Inter Press Service
Karnataka, India, Dec 02 (IPS) – Deeepti Rani (13) lives with her mother in a dilapidated dwelling near a railway track in India’s southern state of Karnataka. The mother-daughter duo sells paperbacks on trains for a living.
Four months ago, a man in his mid-fifties visited them. Masquerading as a businessman hailing from India’s capital, Delhi, he first expressed dismay over the family’s dismal conditions. Then he offered help. The man asked Deepti if she wanted to accompany him to Delhi, where he could find her a decent job as a sales clerk or a housemaid. He also told Deepti’s mother that if allowed to go to Delhi, her daughter would be able to earn no less than 15 to 20 000 rupees a month—about 200-300 USD.
The money, Deepti’s mother, reasoned, would be enough to lift the family out of abject poverty and deprivation, enough to plan Deepti’s wedding and bid farewell to the arduous job of selling paperbacks on moving trains.
On the scheduled day, when the man was about to take Deepti, a labourer whose family lives adjacent to her hut informed the police about the possible case of trafficking. The labourer had become suspicious after observing the agent’s frequent visits to the mother-daughter.
When police reached the spot and detained the agent, it was discovered during questioning that he was planning to sell the little girl to a brothel in Delhi.
Ramesh, a 14-year-old boy from the same state, shared a similar predicament. He narrates how a man, probably in his late 40s, offered his parents a handsome sum of money so that he could be adopted and taken good care of.
“My parents, who work as labourers, readily agreed. I was set to go with a man – who we had met a few days before. I was told that I would get a good education, a good life, and loving parents. I wondered how an unknown man could offer us such things at such a fast pace. I told my parents that I smelled something suspicious,” Ramesh recalls.
The next day, as the man arrived to take the boy, the locals, including Ramesh’s parents, questioned him. “We called the government helpline number, and the team arrived after some 20 minutes. When interrogated, the man spilt the beans. He was about to sell the boy in some Middle East country and get a huge sum for himself. We could have lost our child forever,” says Ramesh’s father.
According to government data, every eight minutes, a child vanishes in India.
As many as 11,000 of the 44,000 youngsters reported missing each year are still missing. In many cases, children and their low-income parents who are promised “greener pastures” in urban houses of the wealthy wind up being grossly underpaid, mistreated, and occasionally sexually molested.
Human trafficking is forbidden in India as a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, but it is nonetheless an organised crime. Human trafficking is a covert crime that is typically not reported to the police, and experts believe that it requires significant policy changes to stop it and help victims recover.
Activists and members associated with the Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society (BDSSS) run various child protection programs for children from poor backgrounds.
One such program is ‘Childline 1098 Collab’. A dedicated helpline has been established to help out children in need. The helpline number is widely circulated across the city so that if anyone comes across any violation of child rights, they can dial the number.
A rescue team will be dispatched and provide immediate help to the victim.
Fr Peter Asheervadappa, the director of a social service called Belgaum Diocesan Social Service Society, provides emergency relief and rescue services for children at high risk. Children and other citizens can dial toll-free 1098, and the team reaches within 60 minutes to rescue the children.
“The cases handled are of varied nature: Sexual abuse, physical abuse, child labour, marriages, and any other abuse that affects children’s well-being,” Asheervadappa told IPS.
He adds that India’s railway network, one of the largest in the world, is made up of 7,321 stations, 123,542 kilometres of track, and 9,143 daily trains, carrying over 23 million people.
“The vast network, crucial to the country’s survival, is frequently used for trafficking children. For this reason, our organisation, and others like it, have argued that key train stops require specialised programs and attention. Such transit hubs serve as important outreach locations for finding and helping children when they are most in need,” he said.
But not only have the trafficking cases emerged at these locations. There are child marriages, too, that concern the activists.
Rashmi, a 13-year-old, was nearly sold to a middle-aged businessman from a nearby city. In return, the wealthy man would take good care of the poverty-stricken family and attend to their daily needs. All they had to do was to give them their daughter. They agreed. “Everyone wants a good life, but that doesn’t mean you barter your child’s life for that greed. It is immoral, unethical, and illegal,” says an activist Abhinav Prasad* associated with the Child Protection Program.
He says many people in India are on the lookout for child brides. They often galvanise their efforts in slums and areas where poor people live. It is there that they find people in need, and they take advantage of their desperation for money.
While Rashmi was about to tie the nuptial knot with a man almost four times her age (50), some neighbours called the child rescue group and informed them. The team rushed to the spot and called in the police to stop the ceremony from happening.
“Child marriages are rampant in India, but we must do our bit. It is by virtue of these small efforts that we can stop the menace from spreading its dreadful wings and consuming our children,” said Prasad.
“The military continues to hold proceedings in secretive courts in violation of basic principles of fair trial and contrary to core judicial guarantees of independence and impartiality”, Volker Türk added, calling for the suspension of all executions and a return to a moratorium on death penalty.
Dealing out death
On Wednesday, a military court sentenced at least seven university students to death.
“Military courts have consistently failed to uphold any degree of transparency contrary to the most basic due process or fair trial guarantees”, underscored Mr. Türk.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, reports revealed that as many as four additional death sentences were being issued against youth activists.
The UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) is currently seeking clarification on those cases.
No justice
In July, the military carried out four State executions – the first in approximately 30 years.
Despite calls from the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the international community to desist, a former lawmaker, a democracy activist, and two others, were put to death.
Close to 1,700 detainees out of the nearly 16,500 who have been arrested for opposing last year’s military’s coup have been tried and convicted in secret by ad hoc tribunals, sometimes lasting just minutes.
They have frequently been denied access to lawyers or their families and none have been acquitted.
The latest convictions would bring the total number of people sentenced to capital punishment since 1 February 2021 to 139 individuals.
Unaligned with ASEAN
Mr. Türk reminded that the military’s actions are not in keeping with the ASEAN peace plan, known as the five-point consensus – that includes the “immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar” – which the regional bloc had re-committed to upholding last month during the ASEAN summit.
At the summit, Secretary-General António Guterres had warned that the political, security, human rights and humanitarian situation in Myanmar was “sliding ever deeper into catastrophe”, condemning the escalating violence, disproportionate use of force, and “appalling human rights situation” in the country.
“By resorting to use death sentences as a political tool to crush opposition, the military confirms its disdain for the efforts by ASEAN and the international community at large to end violence and create the conditions for a political dialogue to lead Myanmar out of a human rights crisis created by the military” the UN human rights chief spelled out.
Forced evictions
At the same time, the Myanmar military is forcibly evicting over 50,000 people from informal settlements and systematically destroying homes in what two UN-appointed independent human rights experts called a fundamental violation of core human rights obligations.
Without providing alternative housing or land, last month more than 40,000 residents living in informal settlements throughout Mingaladon, a township in northern Yangon, were evicted – with most given only a few days to dismantle the homes that they had lived in for decades.
After receiving eviction notices, the lack of options swayed some residents to remain while two reportedly committed suicide out of desperation.
“Forced evictions from Mingaladon are only part of the story. Violent arbitrary housing demolitions continue across the country”, the Special Rapporteurs on the right to adequate housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal, and situation of human rights in Myanmar, Thomas Andrews, said in a statement.
UNHCR/Roger Arnold
Rohingya Muslims forced from Myanmar flee to Bangladesh.
‘Scorched earth’ policy
According to the experts, not only those living in informal settlements in Myanmar’s cities were subjected to forced evictions and housing demolitions.
“Homes continued to be systematically destroyed, bombed and burned down in orchestrated attacks on villages by the Myanmar security forces and junta-backed militias”, they said.
Since the military coup last year, more than 38,000 houses have been destroyed, triggering the widespread displacement of over 1.1 million people.
On 23 November, 95 of 130 houses in the Kyunhla Township were burned down when the Myanmar military set fire to the settlement.
These incidents follow patterns of violence used against Rohingya villages during genocidal attacks in 2017.
“The policies of scorched earth in Myanmar are widespread and follow a systematic pattern,” the experts said.
Special Rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council to examine and report back on a specific human rights theme or a country situation. The positions are honorary and the experts are not paid for their work.
The Southeast Asia waterway is one of the deadliest in the world and more than 1,900 people have already made the journey since January – six times more than in 2020.
‘Grave risks’ at sea
“UNHCR warns that attempts at these journeys are exposing people to grave risks and fatal consequences, said UNHCR spokesperson Shabia Mantoo. “Tragically, 119 people have been reported dead or missing on these journeys, this year alone.”
Most of those risking their lives are Rohingya refugees, who fled Myanmar in their hundreds of thousands in 2017, to escape military persecution.
In an appeal for help from Governments in the region, UNHCR said that the most recent arrivals included more than 200 people in North Aceh, Indonesia, where the authorities allowed them to disembark and provided shelter. Ms. Mantoo said the agency welcomed and appreciated their efforts.
UN support
Refugees who safely disembarked on the Indonesian coast from the two boats, a fortnight ago, are currently hosted, somewhat ironically, in a former immigration office in Lhokseumawe.
UNHCR, with UN migration agency, IOM and partners, is on the ground, the Spokesperson said.
“We are working closely with the local authorities to help support the refugees, including through registration, providing for their basic needs and working to ensure secure and adequate accommodation for the two groups.”
Many more adrift
UNHCR has also received unverified reports of more boats with desperate individuals, adrift at sea, who require life-saving rescue and attention, she said.
With increasing levels of desperation and vulnerability forcing more refugees to make these deadly journeys, UNHCR and humanitarian partners continue to stress the need for increased regional and international cooperation to save lives and share responsibility.
Indonesia currently hosts nearly 13,000 refugees and asylum-seekers mostly from Afghanistan, Somalia and Myanmar and should not be alone in rescuing and disembarking people adrift at sea, Ms. Mantoo added.
“It is imperative that States in the region uphold their commitments made in 2005 under the Bali Process to collectively find solutions for these desperate journeys”.
In 2016, Asia-Pacific governments pledged to do more to prevent people dying on such journeys, after 5,000 men, women and children were abandoned by people-smugglers in the Andaman Sea, and left adrift, starving and sick, for months.
A young child receives vaccine drops in Pakistan, but the region has experienced an upsurgence of cases because of vaccine refusal. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS
by Ashfaq Yusufzai (peshawar)
Inter Press Service
PESHAWAR, Nov 29 (IPS) – Vaccine refusal is impacting the eradication of polio in Pakistan.
Pakistan has vaccinated about 35 million children during its door-to-door campaign, but about 500,000 remained unvaccinated due to refusal by their parents, Jawad Khan Polio officer in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, recorded in 2022 so far.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, one of Pakistan’s four provinces, has reported all 20 polio cases. North Waziristan has detected 17 infections, Lakki Marwat 2 and South Waziristan 1.
Khan says that hesitancy against vaccination is not a new trend, as Pakistan has been facing this problem since the start of the polio-eradication campaign in the 90s.
Of the 17 cases reported in militancy-riddled North Waziristan, 12 were not vaccinated, while five were partially immunized.
Muhammad Shah, whose son was diagnosed with the polio virus in August, told IPS that he had been opposing vaccination because this wasn’t allowed in Islam.
“Our religion Islam says that no medication is permissible before the occurrence of any ailment; therefore, our people defy vaccination to fulfill their religious obligations,” he said. Shah, a religious preacher, says his son will soon recover from the paralysis.
He says he was unrepentant in refusing vaccination of his child and would continue to thwart efforts by vaccinators to inoculate the toddler.
North Waziristan district, located near Afghanistan’s border, has many militants who staunchly oppose vaccination.
“It was the hub of the polio virus till 2014 when militants ruled the area illegitimately as there was a complete ban on all sorts of immunization. The Taliban militants were evicted through a military operation in 2014, and parents started vaccinating their kids,” Sajjad Ahmed, a senior health worker, said.
According to him, polio vaccinations have decreased with the emergence of militancy in the area.
“In the last three months, three persons, including two policemen and one health worker, have been killed by unknown assailants during a polio drive in North Waziristan,” he said.
People are afraid to take part in the campaign due to fear of reprisals by Taliban militants, he said.
Dr Rafiq Khan, associated with polio immunization in the region, told IPS that parents refuse vaccination, arguing that it was a US and Western plot to render recipients impotent and cut the population of Muslims – a baseless argument.
“Alleged Taliban have killed about 70 vaccinators and policemen since 2012. Government deploys 25,000 policemen in each three-day campaign to ensure the safety of workers,” he said.
Khan said that militants are pressuring the people against vaccination, due to which parents weren’t willing to administer jabs to their kids below five years.
“We are also facing fake finger marking of kids. As a standard procedure, our vaccinators mark the thumb of the vaccine recipients with indelible ink so that we know how many children have been immunized,” he said.
However, the parents ask the vaccinators to mark their kids’ fingers without vaccination, he said. In this way, parents deceive the government.
“Now, we have started convincing the parents through community elders and religious scholars to create demand for vaccination,” he said.
The government has enlisted the services of religious scholars to do away with refusals against poliomyelitis.
Maulana Amir Haq, a pro-vaccination cleric, told IPS that they had been holding awareness sessions with people telling them vaccination is allowed in Islam.
“It is the responsibility of the parents to safeguard their kids against diseases and vaccination aimed to prevent the crippling ailments. There, parents should fulfill their religious duty and inoculate their sons and daughters,” he said.
He said that laboratory reports confirm vaccines given to Pakistan’s children are safe and don’t contain any ingredient to sterilise the recipients. The situation is changing because we now reach hardcore refusal cases and vaccinate them.
Federal Health Minister Abdul Qadir Patel said that it is crucial to understand that the only protection from polio is vaccination, and parents should protect their children against disability through free immunization.
“We want to wipe out the virus and safeguard not only our own kids but all around the world,” he told IPS.
Polio will keep haunting us until we interrupt transmission, Federal Health Secretary Dr. Muhammad Fakhre Alam said.
On August 31, a 16-year-old boy was diagnosed positive for polio in Waziristan, which shows how robust Pakistan’s virus detection network is because it highlights that we can identify polio cases in children outside the usually expected age, he said.
National Emergency Operations Centre Coordinator for polio, Dr Shahzad Baig, expressed concerns about the spread of wild poliovirus as millions of people in the country are displaced by recent floods.
“The scale of the current calamity is absolutely devastating. As part of the polio programme, our network of health workers is here to support in every way we can, but I am deeply concerned about the virus gaining a foothold as millions of people leave their homes and look for refuge elsewhere,” he said.
The province of Balochistan and parts of southern Punjab, and 23 districts of Sindh were unable to hold a vaccination drive as floods swept away homes and villages around the country. Despite the extreme climatic conditions, polio teams reached children in all accessible areas, he said.
Neighbouring Afghanistan is facing the same problems; however, it has detected only two cases this year.
Opinion by Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana (bangkok, thailand)
Inter Press Service
BANGKOK, Thailand, Nov 29 (IPS) – The recent climate talks in Egypt have left us with a sobering reality: The window for maintaining global warming to 1.5 degrees is closing fast and what is on the table currently is insufficient to avert some of the worst potential effects of climate change. The Nationally Determined Contribution targets of Asian and Pacific countries will result in a 16 per centincrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 from the 2010 levels.
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana
The Sharm-el Sheikh Implementation Plan and the package of decisions taken at COP27 are a reaffirmation of actions that could deliver the net-zero resilient world our countries aspire to. The historic decision to establish a Loss and Damage Fund is an important step towards climate justice and building trust among countries.
But they are not enough to help us arrive at a better future without, what the UN Secretary General calls, a “giant leap on climate ambition”. Carbon neutrality needs to at the heart of national development strategies and reflected in public and private investment decisions. And it needs to cascade down to the sustainable pathways in each sector of the economy.
Accelerate energy transition
At the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), we are working with regional and national stakeholders on these transformational pathways. Moving away from the brown economy is imperative, not only because emissions are rising but also because dependence on fossil fuels has left economies struggling with price volatility and energy insecurity.
A clear road map is the needed springboard for an inclusive and just energy transition. We have been working with countries to develop scenarios for such a shift through National Roadmaps, demonstrating that a different energy future is possible and viable with the political will and sincere commitment to action of the public and private sectors.
The changeover to renewables also requires concurrent improvements in grid infrastructure, especially cross-border grids. The Regional Road Map on Power System Connectivity provides us the platform to work with member States toward an interconnected grid, including through the development of the necessary regulatory frameworks for to integrate power systems and mobilize investments in grid infrastructure. The future of energy security will be determined by the ability to develop green grids and trade renewable-generated electricity across our borders.
Green the rides
The move to net-zero carbon will not be complete without greening the transport sector. In Asia and the Pacific transport is primarily powered by fossil fuels and as a result accounted for 24 per cent of total carbon emissions by 2018.
Energy efficiency improvements and using more electric vehicles are the most effective measures to reduce carbon emissions by as much as 60 per cent in 2050 compared to 2005 levels. The Regional Action Programme for Sustainable Transport Development allows us to work with countries to implement and cooperate on priorities for low-carbon transport, including electric mobility. Our work with the Framework Agreement on Facilitation of Cross-border Paperless Trade also is helping to make commerce more efficient and climate-smart, a critical element for the transition in the energy and transport sectors.
Adapting to a riskier future
Even with mitigation measures in place, our economy and people will not be safe without a holistic risk management system. And it needs to be one that prevents communities from being blindsided by cascading climate disasters.
We are working with partners to deepen the understanding of such cascading risks and to help develop preparedness strategies for this new reality, such as the implementation of the ASEAN Regional Plan of Action for Adaptation to Drought.
Make finance available where it matters the most
Finance and investment are uniquely placed to propel the transitions needed. The past five years have seen thematic bonds in our region grow tenfold. Private finance is slowly aligning with climate needs. The new Loss and Damage Fund and its operation present new hopes for financing the most vulnerable. However, climate finance is not happening at the speed and scale needed. It needs to be accessible to developing economies in times of need.
Innovative financing instruments need to be developed and scaled up, from debt-for-climate swaps to SDG bonds, some of which ESCAP is helping to develop in the Pacific and in Cambodia. Growing momentum in the business sector will need to be sustained. The Asia-Pacific Green Deal for Business by the ESCAP Sustainable Business Network (ESBN) is important progress. We are also working with the High-level Climate Champions to bring climate-aligned investment opportunities closer to private financiers.
Lock in higher ambition and accelerate implementation
Climate actions in Asia and the Pacific matter for global success and well-being. The past two years has been a grim reminder that conflicts in one continent create hunger in another, and that emissions somewhere push sea levels higher everywhere. Never has our prosperity been more dependent on collective actions and cooperation.
Our countries are taking note. Member States meeting at the seventh session of the Committee on Environment and Development, which opens today (29 November) are seeking consensus on the regional cooperation needed and priorities for climate action such as oceans, ecosystem and air pollution. We hope that the momentum begun at COP27 and the Committee will be continued at the seventy-ninth session of the Commission as it will hone in on the accelerators for climate action.
In this era of heightened risks and shared prosperity, only regional, multilateral solidarity and genuine ambition that match with the new climate reality unfolding around us — along with bold climate action — are the only way to secure a future where the countries of Asia and the Pacific can prosper.
Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana is an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP)
Hundreds of demonstrators and police have clashed in Shanghai as protests over China’s severe COVID-19 restrictions continued into a third day and spread to several other cities.
The latest demonstrations — unprecedented in mainland China since President Xi Jinping took power a decade ago — began after 10 people were killed in a fire in Urumqi, the capital of the far-western region of Xinjiang, that many of the protesters blame on protracted COVID-19 lockdowns.
The deaths have become a lightning rod for frustrations over Beijing’s dogged commitment to zero-COVID and its combination of strict lockdowns, mass testing and tracking that continues to impede people’s lives three years after the first cases of the then-unknown virus were detected in the central city of Wuhan.
“I’m here because I love my country, but I don’t love my government … I want to be able to go out freely, but I can’t. Our COVID-19 policy is a game and is not based on science or reality,” protester Shaun Xiao told the Reuters news agency in Shanghai, China’s largest city.
Hundreds of people gathered on Sunday evening in the city, holding up blank sheets of paper as an expression of the censorship of protest, as police kept a heavy presence on Wulumuqi Road, named after Urumqi, and where a candlelight vigil on Saturday evolved into a protest.
Protesters and police clashed in Shanghai, and the BBC reported one of its journalists had been beaten and detained by officers [Reuters]
A Reuters witness saw police escorting people onto a bus which was later driven away through the crowd with a few dozen people on board. An accredited BBC reporter covering the protests was assaulted and detained for several hours, the United Kingdom’s public broadcaster said.
“The BBC is extremely concerned about the treatment of our journalist Ed Lawrence, who was arrested and handcuffed while covering the protests in Shanghai,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
“He was held for several hours before being released. During his arrest, he was beaten and kicked by the police.”
‘We want freedom’
Protesters also took to the streets of Wuhan and Chengdu on Sunday, while students on numerous university campuses around China gathered to demonstrate over the weekend.
In the early hours of Monday in Beijing, two groups of protesters totalling at least 1,000 people gathered along the Chinese capital’s Third Ring Road near the Liangma River, refusing to disperse.
“We don’t want masks, we want freedom. We don’t want COVID tests, we want freedom,” one of the groups chanted earlier.
Thursday’s fire in Urumqi was followed by crowds there taking to the city’s street on Friday evening, chanting “End the lockdown!” and pumping their fists in the air, according to unverified videos on social media.
On Sunday, a large crowd gathered in the southwestern metropolis of Chengdu, according to videos on social media. There, they also held up blank sheets of paper and chanted: “We don’t want lifelong rulers. We don’t want emperors,” a reference to Xi, who has scrapped presidential term limits.
In Wuhan, videos on social media showed hundreds of residents taking to the streets, smashing through metal barricades, overturning COVID testing tents and demanding an end to lockdowns.
Other cities that have seen public dissent include Lanzhou in the northwest. Protesters said they were put under lockdown even though no one had tested positive.
“People have been incredibly patient with lockdown measures but authorities must not abuse emergency policies,” Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director Hana Young said in a statement. “These unprecedented protests show that people are at the end of their tolerance for excessive Covid-19 restrictions.
“The Chinese government must immediately review its Covid-19 policies to ensure that they are proportionate and time-bound. All quarantine measures that pose threats to personal safety and unnecessarily restrict freedom of movement must be suspended.”
Pressure on party
China has stuck with Xi’s zero-COVID policy even as much of the world has lifted most pandemic-related restrictions, but the emergence of more transmissible variants has blunted the effectiveness of the measures to stamp out the virus.
While low by global standards, China’s case numbers have reached record highs for days, with more than 40,000 new cases reported by the authorities in their Monday update.
The National Health Commission has sent officers to various local authorities to help implement the new policies and “rectify some problems”, and avoid a “one size fits all” approach and “excessive policy steps” in tackling outbreaks, the state-run Global Times reported on Monday.
It noted that authorities in the eastern city of Hefei had issued a “not-to-do” list of 16 items, including not to seal and weld doors for those quarantined at home, while in central Zhengzhou, officials clarified that a “stay-at-home” order meant residents would still be allowed out for medical treatment, emergencies, escape and rescue.
There was a heavy police presence at the protest in Beijing [Thomas Peter/Reuters]
In Urumqi, where many of the regional capital’s four million people have been barred from leaving their homes for as many as 100 days, officials have denied the COVID-19 lockdown measures had hampered escape and rescue efforts in the Thursday fire.
Frustration, however, is boiling just more than a month after Xi secured a third term as leader of China’s Communist Party.
“This will put serious pressure on the party to respond. There is a good chance that one response will be repression, and they will arrest and prosecute some protesters,” said Dan Mattingly, assistant professor of political science at Yale University.
Still, he cautioned, the unrest is far from that seen in 1989 when protests culminated in the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
He added that as long as Xi had China’s elite and the military on his side, he would not face any meaningful risk to his grip on power.
“The tragedy of the Urumqi fire has inspired remarkable bravery across China. Unfortunately, China’s playbook is all too predictable,” said Amnesty’s Young. “Censorship and surveillance will continue, and we will most likely see police use of force and mass arrests of protesters in the coming hours and days. Long prison sentences against peaceful protesters are also to be expected.”
In his order, Kim said that North Korea was building a nuclear force to protect the dignity and sovereignty of the state and its people and said that his country’s “ultimate goal is to possess the world’s most powerful strategic force, the absolute force unprecedented in the century”.
He said the Hwasong-17 — an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States — was the “world’s strongest strategic weapon” and that it demonstrated North Korea’s resolve and ability to eventually build the world’s strongest army.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his daughter attend a photo session with the scientists, engineers, military officials and others involved in the test-firing of the country’s new Hwasong-17 missile [KCNA via Reuters]
The ICBM launch on November 18 has been condemned by members of the United Nations Security Council, who called it “a serious escalation” and an “unequivocal threat to international peace and security”. The launch is part of an ongoing blitz of North Korean tests this year that have included the firing of cruise missiles as well as dozens of short- and medium-range ballistic missiles.
Kim said on Saturday that North Korean scientists have also made a “wonderful leap forward in the development of the technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic missiles”.
He did not elaborate further.
That ability is critical if North Korea wants to achieve its goal of possessing a nuclear weapon that can strike its main foe, the US.
Outside observers say that while North Korea has nuclear bombs and missiles that can fly as far as the US, it is not clear if Pyongyang’s scientists can miniaturise the atomic weapons to fit inside the cramped space in the nose of the missiles.
Kim told the scientists, engineers, military officials and others involved in the Hwasong-17 test on Saturday that he expects them to continue to expand and strengthen the country’s nuclear deterrent at an extraordinarily rapid pace.
The North Korean leader and his daughter went on to pose for a series of pictures with those workers as well as the Hwasong-17.
In a separate report, KCNA also said North Korea’s powerful Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly had awarded the Hwasong-17 missile the title of “DPRK Hero and Gold Star Medal and Order of National Flag 1st Class”. DPRK refers to North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
KCNA said the missile “clearly proved before the world that the DPRK is a full-fledged nuclear power capable of standing against the nuclear supremacy of the US imperialists and fully demonstrated its might as the most powerful ICBM state”.
The test fire also demonstrated that North Korea will react in kind to “the enemy’s nuke and full-frontal confrontation,” it added.
BEIJING (AP) — A fire in an apartment building in northwestern China’s Xinjiang region killed 10 people and injured nine, authorities said Friday, amid stringent lockdowns that have left many residents in the area stuck in their homes for more than three months.
The fire broke out Thursday night in the regional capital of Urumqi, where temperatures have dropped below freezing after dark.
Flames spread upward from the 15th floor to the 17th floor, with smoke billowing up to the 21st floor, according to multiple state media reports. The blaze took around three hours to extinguish.
The deaths and injuries were caused by inhalation of toxic fumes, with those taken to the hospital all expected to survive, the reports said. An initial investigation appeared to show the fire was sparked from a power strip in a bedroom of one of the 15th-floor apartments.
A Uyghur living in exile in Switzerland said he learned from a call with a neighbor that his aunt and four of her children perished in the fire.
“She was a wonderful woman, always thinking of her children and how to treat and educate them well,” Abdulhafız Muhammed Emin said, sobbing during a phone interview. “My heart is really broken, I cannot bear it.”
Xinjiang has been under harsh lockdowns for over three months to combat the spread of the coronavirus under China’s “zero-COVID” policy. The country has grappled with a wave of cases in recent weeks, causing rolling lockdowns and rigid travel restrictions affecting hundreds of millions of people.
Videos circulated on social media showed an arc of water from a distant fire truck falling short of the fire, sparking waves of angry comments online. Some said fire engines had been blocked by pandemic control barriers or by cars stranded after their owners were put in quarantine, but the reason why the truck was far away was unclear.
Many Xinjiang residents are frustrated with China’s harsh COVID-19 controls. In September, some reported hunger amid spotty food deliveries.
Xinjiang “is an open-air prison,” Muhammed Emin said. “The Chinese government doesn’t care about their lives.”
Urumqi Mayor Memtimin Qadir apologized to the city’s residents during a news conference late Friday and announced the formation of a government team to investigate the fire.
During the news conference, Urumqi authorities said that fire escape doors were not locked and that residents were permitted to go downstairs “for activities” since the community was designated as a “low COVID-19 risk area.”
“Some residents’ ability to rescue themselves was too weak … and they failed to escape in time,” said Li Wensheng, head of the Urumqi City Fire Rescue department.
Muhammed Emin disputes that account, citing social media posts saying that many apartment residents were locked in their homes due to COVID-19 controls. Another post said that residents were permitted downstairs for only a few hours a day, and were not free to come and go from the building. The Associated Press could not independently verify the claims in the social media posts.
Urumqi has not experienced a major recent outbreak, with just 977 cases reported Friday, almost all of them asymptomatic. However, as in many parts of China, local officials fearful of losing their jobs are leaning toward more extreme measures to prevent outbreaks within their jurisdictions.
The tragedy comes days after 38 people died in a fire at an industrial trading company in central China caused by welding sparks that ignited cotton cloth.
Four people have been detained over the fire Monday in the city of Anyang and local authorities ordered sweeping safety inspections to root out potential dangers.
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This story corrects the day of the news conference by the Urumqi authorities.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Yoo Young Yi’s grandmother gave birth to six children. Her mother birthed two. Yoo doesn’t want any.
“My husband and I like babies so much … but there are things that we’d have to sacrifice if we raised kids,” said Yoo, a 30-year-old Seoul financial company employee. “So it’s become a matter of choice between two things, and we’ve agreed to focus more on ourselves.”
There are many like Yoo in South Korea who have chosen either not to have children or not to marry. Other advanced countries have similar trends, but South Korea’s demographic crisis is much worse.
South Korea’s statistics agency announced in September that the total fertility rate — the average number of babies born to each woman in their reproductive years — was 0.81 last year. That’s the world’s lowest for the third consecutive year.
The population shrank for the first time in 2021, stoking worry that a declining population could severely damage the economy — the world’s 10th largest — because of labor shortages and greater welfare spending as the number of older people increases and the number of taxpayers shrinks.
President Yoon Suk Yeol has ordered policymakers to find more effective steps to deal with the problem. The fertility rate, he said, is plunging even though South Korea spent 280 trillion won ($210 billion) over the past 16 years to try to turn the tide.
Many young South Koreans say that, unlike their parents and grandparents, they don’t feel an obligation to have a family. They cite the uncertainty of a bleak job market, expensive housing, gender and social inequality, low levels of social mobility and the huge expense of raising children in a brutally competitive society. Women also complain of a persistent patriarchal culture that forces them to do much of the childcare while enduring discrimination at work.
“In a nutshell, people think our country isn’t an easy place to live,” said Lee So-Young, a population policy expert at the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs. “They believe their children can’t have better lives than them, and so question why they should bother to have babies.”
Many people who fail to enter good schools and land decent jobs feel they’ve become “dropouts” who “cannot be happy” even if they marry and have kids because South Korea lacks advanced social safety nets, said Choi Yoon Kyung, an expert at the Korea Institute of Child Care and Education. She said South Korea failed to establish such welfare programs during its explosive economic growth in the 1960 to ’80s.
Yoo, the Seoul financial worker, said that until she went to college, she strongly wanted a baby. But she changed her mind when she saw female office colleagues calling their kids from the company toilet to check on them or leaving early when their children were sick. She said her male coworkers didn’t have to do this.
“After seeing this, I realized my concentration at work would be greatly diminished if I had babies,” Yoo said.
Her 34-year-old husband, Jo Jun Hwi, said he doesn’t think having kids is necessary. An interpreter at an information technology company, Jo said he wants to enjoy his life after years of exhaustive job-hunting that made him “feel like I was standing on the edge of a cliff.”
There are no official figures on how many South Koreans have chosen not to marry or have kids. But records from the national statistics agency show there were about 193,000 marriages in South Korea last year, down from a peak of 430,000 in 1996. The agency data also show about 260,600 babies were born in South Korea last year, down from 691,200 in 1996, and a peak of 1 million in 1971. The recent figures were the lowest since the statistics agency began compiling such data in 1970.
Kang Han Byeol, a 33-year-old graphic designer who’s decided to remain single, believes South Korea isn’t a sound place to raise children. She cited frustration with gender inequalities, widespread digital sex crimes targeting women such as spy cams hidden in public restrooms, and a culture that ignores those pushing for social justice.
“I can consider marriage when our society becomes healthier and gives more equal status to both women and men,” Kang said.
Kang’s 26-year-old roommate Ha Hyunji also decided to stay single after her married female friends advised her not to marry because most of the housework and child care falls to them. Ha worries about the huge amount of money she would spend for any future children’s private tutoring to prevent them from falling behind in an education-obsessed nation.
“I can have a fun life without marriage and enjoy my life with my friends,” said Ha, who runs a cocktail bar in Seoul.
Until the mid-1990s, South Korea maintained birth control programs, which were initially launched to slow the country’s post-war population explosion. The nation distributed contraceptive pills and condoms for free at public medical centers and offered exemptions on military reserve training for men if they had a vasectomy.
United Nations figures show a South Korean woman on average gave birth to about four to six children in the 1950s and ’60s, three to four in the 1970s, and less than two in the mid-1980s.
South Korea has been offering a variety of incentives and other support programs for those who give birth to many children. But Choi, the expert, said the fertility rate has been falling too fast to see any tangible effects. During a government task force meeting last month, officials said they would soon formulate comprehensive measures to cope with demographic challenges.
South Korean society still frowns on those who remain childfree or single.
In 2021 when Yoo and Jo posted their decision to live without children on their YouTube channel, “You Young You Young,” some posted messages calling them “selfish” and asking them to pay more taxes. The messages also called Jo “sterile” and accused Yoo of “gaslighting” her husband.
Lee Sung-jai, a 75-year-old Seoul resident, said it’s “the order of nature” for humankind to marry and give birth to children.
“These days, I see some (unmarried) young women walking with dogs in strollers and saying they are their moms. Did they give birth to those dogs? They are really crazy,” he said.
Seo Ji Seong, 38, said that she’s often called a patriot by older people for having many babies, though she didn’t give birth to them for the national interest. She’s expecting a fifth baby in January.
Seo’s family recently moved to a rent-free apartment in the city of Anyang, which was jointly provided by the state-run Korea Land and Housing Corporation and the city for families with at least four children. Seo and her husband, Kim Dong Uk, 33, receive other state support, though it’s still tough economically to raise four kids.
Kim said he enjoys seeing each of his children growing up with different personalities and talents, while Seo feels their kids’ social skills are helped while playing and competing with one another at home.
“They are all so cute. That’s why I’ve kept giving birth to babies even though it’s difficult,” Seo said.
HONG KONG (AP) — In London, Wong Wai-yi misses the taste of home.
A year ago, the 31-year-old musician was in Hong Kong, earning a good living composing for TV and movies and teaching piano. Today, she makes about half as much in London working part-time as a server alongside her musical pursuits. She chose the job in part because staff meals allow her to save money on food.
It’s a difficult adjustment. And Wong, who left Hong Kong with her boyfriend in January, has turned to a beloved hometown staple to keep her grounded: milk tea. She brings the beverage to parties with Hong Kong friends and gives bottles to co-workers as gifts.
“It’s like reminding myself I am a Hong Konger. It will be fine as long as we are willing to endure the hardships and work hard,” said Wong, who left as part of an exodus that began after Beijing passed a law in 2020 that curtailed civil liberties.
As tens of thousands leave Hong Kong for new lives abroad, many are craving a flavor from childhood that’s become a symbol of the city’s culture: the sweet, heavy tea with evaporated milk that’s served both hot and cold at diner-like restaurants called cha chaan tengs. Workshops are popping up to teach professionals to brew tea like short-order cooks, and milk tea businesses are expanding beyond Chinatowns in Britain.
In Hong Kong, milk tea is an unassuming beverage, something you use to wash down sweet French toast off a plastic plate. It’s so beloved that members of Hong Kong’s protest movement have called themselves part of a “Milk Tea Alliance” with activists from Taiwan, Thailand, and Myanmar, who drink similar beverages.
Following a law that silenced or jailed most political opposition, over 133,000 residents have secured a special visa that allows them to live and work in the U.K. and apply for British citizenship after six years. Official figures have not been released on how many have gone but most recipients are expected to do so, given the visa’s cost.
The pathway was introduced last year in response to China’s 2020 enactment of the National Security Law, which the U.K. called “a clear breach” of the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. The declaration included a promise to retain the former British colony’s rights and freedoms for 50 years after it was returned to China’s rule in 1997.
Exiled activist Lee Ka-wai said that immersing himself at a Hong Kong-style cafe in London with a cup of milk tea was a “luxury.”
The 26-year-old fled Hong Kong in March last year out of fear of being arrested. He is wanted by the city’s anti-graft body for allegedly inciting others to boycott the legislative election in December 2021. As an asylum seeker in Britain, he is not allowed to work and is living on savings.
Even if the taste is right, he said, the feel of a cha chaan teng and the sounds of customers chatting in Cantonese cannot be replicated.
“It’s strange because I can feel a sense of home overseas. But it also has another meaning — there’s something that cannot be replaced,” he said. “What we long for most is to go home and see a better Hong Kong. But we can’t.”
Some emigrants, like Eric Tam, a 41-year-old manager at an insurance company, enroll in milk tea lessons before leaving. Visiting Hong Kong this month, he stocked up on a milk tea blend, a recipe that evolved from British teas in the colonial era.
While tea is easy to find in England, he said, the taste isn’t the same: “British milk tea is just watery milk,” said Tam.
Before moving to Liverpool with his wife and two younger daughters in June, Tam signed up for lessons at the Institution of Hong Kong Milk Tea. The two-year-old organization teaches students skills like pouring tea back and forth between a kettle and a plastic container to enhance its flavor before mixing it with evaporated milk.
Yan Chan, the school’s founder, estimated that about 40% of the 2,000 people who have studied with her were planning to emigrate.
Milk tea only began to emerge as a symbol of the Hong Kong identity over the last 15 years, said Veronica Mak, associate professor at the sociology department of Hong Kong Shue Yan University.
Mak said that many young people began to think about Hong Kong identity after the government removed Queen’s Pier, a landmark from the city’s colonial past, in 2007. Childhood memories, marketing and a fashion for localism came together to make milk tea a totem of Hong Kong culture.
“When you ask young people what kind of milk tea they like to drink, they will tell you it’s the bubble milk tea,” she said, referring to a drink from Taiwan. “But when you come to the identity part … they will not say the bubble tea but the local style milk tea.”
Most milk tea lovers interviewed told the Associated Press that milk tea isn’t political. But Tam said it’s a form of silent resistance.
“We can choose to preserve the culture that we want to keep. It cannot be destroyed even if other people try,” he said.
Contemporary Asian tea culture is catching on globally. Outside Chinatowns, at least five Hong Kong-style milk tea brands have emerged over the past two years in Britain. One set up a pop-up cafe in the trendy London neighborhood of Shoreditch in September, attracting Londoners and tourists as well as Hong Kong emigres.
Eric Wong, a tea wholesaler, began selling bottled milk tea in 2021 after moving to the UK, and offers milk tea workshops. He said he’s making 500 to 1,000 bottles of milk tea a week, and his south London business broke even after about six months. His Trini Hong Kong Style Milk Tea products are available online and at major Asian supermarkets.
The taste of home can provoke strong emotions. A young woman from Hong Kong once shed tears after tasting his tea, Wong said.
Between people planning to leave and growing interest in local culture, Chan is busy. On Nov. 3, nine people attended her class, none of whom had plans to emigrate.
Cooking enthusiast Dennis Cheng had a class with her in late September and practiced the signature pouring while preparing to leave Hong Kong with his wife and children.
He said the taste will help remind him of Hong Kong and friends back home.
“This may help me feel emigrating overseas isn’t really that sad,” he said. “It’s just that I need more time to adapt to it.”
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Associated Press photographer Kin Cheung in London contributed to this story.
HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s airport on Friday officially launched a new third runway which is expected to boost the city’s status as an aviation hub.
The Airport Authority Hong Kong said about 140 flights a day are already using the new runway, which has been in operation since early July.
However, the airport is still using only two runways because its center runway was closed in July for reconfiguration.
The airport is also expanding its Terminal 2 and is building a new concourse and baggage handling system.
Work is expected to be completed by 2024, after which the airport will use all three runways, giving it more flight capacity. The entire project will cost 145 billion Hong Kong dollars ($18.5 billion), according to Jack So, chairman of the airport authority.
“The project was funded from the private market and it doesn’t involve any government money,” So said at the launch ceremony. “This proves that the international financial community, banking sector and funds are confident of Hong Kong and its airport.”
Brendan Sobie, an independent aviation analyst based in Singapore, said that when all three runways are operating, it will allow more planes to land during peak hours, thereby expanding the airport’s capacity.
“You need that capacity, that infrastructure, because you’d start losing out if others have something you don’t have,” Sobie said.
He noted that several other airports in Asia, including in Bangkok and Jakarta, are either working on a third runway or have already added one.
Hong Kong’s additional runway will also facilitate cargo growth.
The city eased pandemic travel restrictions last month, allowing inbound and outbound travel without mandatory quarantine. However, incoming travelers must have a regular COVID-19 test upon arrival.
US Federal Communications Commission decision targets devices from Huawei, ZTE and other manufacturers.
The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has announced it is banning telecommunications and video surveillance equipment from prominent Chinese brands, including Huawei and ZTE, citing an “unacceptable risk to national security”.
The five-member FCC said on Friday that it had voted unanimously to adopt new rules that will block the importation or sale of the targeted products.
“Our unanimous decision represents the first time in the FCC’s history that we have voted to prohibit the authorization of communications and electronic equipment based on national security considerations,” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a statement on Friday.
He added that the move had “broad, bipartisan backing” among US congressional leadership.
Security officials in the United States have warned that equipment from Chinese brands such as Huawei could be used to interfere with fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks and collect sensitive information.
The ban is the latest move in a years-long push “to keep US networks secure” by identifying and prohibiting devices deemed to be security threats, the FCC said.
Friday’s initiative also includes a ban on Hytera Communications, the Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company and the Dahua Technology Company.
Huawei declined to comment to the Reuters news agency. ZTE, Dahua, Hikvision and Hytera did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
But in 2019, then-US President Donald Trump signed into law the Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act, which established criteria to identify communications services that Washington deemed could pose a risk to national security.
The services that were designated threats under that law were then subject to the Secure Equipment Act of 2021, signed by President Joe Biden.
That act created the groundwork for Friday’s announcement. It directed the FCC to “adopt rules clarifying that it will no longer review or issue new equipment licenses” to those companies.
At the time, Florida Senator Marco Rubio hailed Biden’s decision.
“The Chinese Communist Party will stop at nothing to exploit our laws and undermine our national security,” he said in a statement. “This legislation fixes a dangerous loophole in our law, curtailing their efforts to worm their way into our telecommunications networks.”
One of the largest manufacturers of telecommunications equipment in the world, Huawei has had an embattled relationship with the US and its allies, facing some of the heaviest sanctions ever placed on a single company in the US.
Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was detained for nearly three years in Canada, following allegations by the US Justice Department that she attempted to violate sanctions by trying to conduct business dealings with Iran.
She was indicted on bank and wire fraud charges and faced US extradition proceedings in Canadian court, sparking a diplomatic crisis between Canada, the US and China. Meng was released and returned to China in 2021.
Another FCC commissioner, Geoffrey Starks, described Friday’s ban as a preventative measure that would pay dividends in the future.
“By stopping equipment identified as a threat to the United States from entering our markets, we significantly decrease the risk that it can be used against us,” Starks said in a statement. “We also lower the possibility that we’ll need to rip and replace that equipment in the future. Ultimately, if it can’t get authorized, it can’t be deployed.”
23-year-old Varin poses next to a mural for queer rights in Sulaymaniyah. It was not long before it was vandalized. Credit Andoni Lubaki/IPS
by Karlos Zurutuza (sulaymaniyah, iraq)
Inter Press Service
SULAYMANIYAH, Iraq, Nov 25 (IPS) – It’s mostly people in their twenties sitting on a terrace in the shade of a beautiful grove of trees: black clothes, piercings, tattoos and some purple streaks in their hair.
It could be a trendy cafe in Berlin, Paris or any other European capital, but the sunset call to prayer reminds us that we are in Sulaymaniyah. After Erbil, it’s the second city in the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq.
We cannot disclose the cafe’s exact coordinates, nor the full name of the person who has brought us here. She is dressed in white -shorts and a T-shirt- and boasts a rainbow bracelet on her left wrist. She asks to be quoted as Kween. “It’s just queen with a k for Kurdish,” she explains. Kween is a trans woman.
The youngest of five children from a Kurdish family in Diyala, a district in the east of the country, this 33-year-old Kurd admits to IPS that she was “a boring man” for the first 25 years of her life.
“I learned to block my needs. However, I first dressed as a woman in my mother’s clothes and also put on makeup when I was only five,“ she recalls. In a dress, she adds, “I feel the person I am and the person I have always been.”
But that freedom mostly enjoyed in solitude has its price. How to forget the beating her older brother gave her when she was first caught, at six; the humiliation and bullying she suffered at school…
She was almost killed when she was 24. Someone contacted her on the Internet and asked to meet on the outskirts of the city. But they were five individuals, waiting to give her a thrashing. Completely numb from the beatings and covered in mud and blood, Kween still mustered the strength to walk to a local judge’s office.
“You have two options: either file a complaint and stain your family’s name forever, or simply stop doing what you do,” the magistrate blurted at her. Back home, she could not say what she had gone through or, above all, why. Even today, no one in Diyala knows that Kween is a woman.
Against all odds, she’s been working for several years with a foreign NGO focusing on the protection of vulnerable groups. Among other projects, she´s working on a list of Kurdish words to talk about the rights of the LGBTI collective that are not offensive.
An example: Hawragazkhwaz (literally, “someone attracted by members of their own sex”), is, so far, the only inclusive form for “homosexual;” miles away from commonly-used terms that include ideas such as “paedophilia” or “rape”.
Kween has not yet decided to have surgery or take hormones, but she hasn’t had much time for it either. The work at the NGO and the search for a place in society for the members of the LGBTI community, she says, absorb most of her time.
“If I have a mission in life, this is it.”
Kween, a 33-year-old Kurdish trans woman, says she only dresses as a woman in “safe places”.. Credit: Andoni Lubaki/IPS
“Immoral conduct”
A transgender woman is beaten, burned alive and thrown in a dumpster; assailants torture, then murder a gay man while his partner is forced to watch; a lesbian is stabbed to death while being told to stop her “immoral conduct”.
These are just three cases among the many included in a Human Rights Watch report on the LGBTI collective in Iraq released in march 2022. Kidnapping, rape, torture and murder of queer people at the hands of armed groups, “often by the state’s security forces,” are also reported.
“The members of this community live under the constant threat of being captured and killed by the Iraqi police, and under total impunity,” Rasha Younes, an HRW researcher, denounced in the report.
The images of gay people the Islamic State pushed from rooftops are still fresh in everyone’s minds. Also the ones Doski Azad, a Kurdish trans woman, posted on Instagram before her body was found in a ditch last February. She was murdered by her own brother.
During the rule of the Islamic State, many members of the LGBTI community were executed from rooftops or other high points in cities such as Mosul (Iraq) or Raqqa (Syria). Credit: Andoni Lubaki/IPS
“I know a lot of people who never go out on the streets,” Varin, a 23-year-old queer activist tells IPS from the same terrace. It was thanks to the Internet that she discovered that, like her, there were people who did not feel identified with any single gender expression.
The activist works in a swimming pool, but her chemistry studies have opened up a job opportunity for her in Qatar that she does not want to miss.
“I showed up for the job interview dressed as a demure woman and, of course, with long sleeves so the tattoos wouldn’t show,” she bursts out with a loud laugh.
Varin points to “around 30 members” within Sulaimaniyah LGBTI community. They meet in cafes like this one. Social networks also make it easier to get to know each other.
Do they organize protests? No, too dangerous. Actually, the mural that she will choose to pose for our photograph has already been vandalized (it would be completely destroyed a few days later).
Despite the threats, this Kurdish city has become the safest space in the country for members of the LGBTI community. Many queer people from the south of the country seek refuge in cities like Erbil, the Kurdish capital of Iraq.
The situation is by no means comparable, but Varin underlines that Erbil is still a very conservative city, “one of those in which time stands still during the month of Ramadan and where you can never let your guard down.”
Suicidal tendencies
In April 2021, several young men from Sulaimaniyah were arrested “for being homosexual and for their immoral conduct.” That´s how the leader of the operation labelled it before the press. The Sulaimaniyah Police refused to answer questions from IPS. Nonetheless, harassment seemingly extends to anyone who may dare to show any kind of support.
Such is the case of Rasan, a local NGO constantly forced to answer to justice for “promoting the LGBTI community.” They are still awaiting trial after the most recent lawsuit, filed by a member of the Kurdish parliament.
The campaign of harassment of members of the LGTBI community in Iraq condemns the majority to a life of isolation to avoid arrest, torture, and murder. Credit: Andoni Lubaki/IPS
From their office in Sulaimaniyah, Tanya Kamal Darwesh, director of Rasan, assures IPS that their mission is not to promote the LGTBI community but “to raise awareness in society about it.” But even more worrisome, she adds, is that the arrests of members of the collective are still common currency in Iraq´s Kurdish region.
“Instead of accepting the existence of these people, they insist on criminalizing them: they are accused of prostitution, drug trafficking or whatever else to kick them off the streets,” denounces the human rights activist.
“All the clans, the parties, the leaders, both religious and political, coincide in their animosity towards the queer collective. They often stick to religious issues to justify violence, or simply they make politics out of it,” rounds up Darwesh.
Their defenselessness is overwhelming, and the psychological impact of intolerance towards this group translates into cases of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress and even suicidal tendencies.
That’s the diagnosis conveyed to IPS via videoconference by a trauma psychologist who prefers not to give her real name for the interview. She has been working with victims of sexual violence and torture in the Middle East for over a decade and she wants to avoid a veto at all costs.
Other than attacks at almost every level, she also highlights the risk of being “excluded from the labour market, or even from their own families in a region where they play such a key role.”
After several trips to the region, the specialist has had the chance to meet Varin and Kween in person. “Other than hope to the community, they also offer a space in which to ask questions,” she stresses. “Just by being visibly queer, they’re already showing great courage.”
Many on the far right and some on the left rejected the symbolic move to declare Moscow as a terrorist regime.
The European Parliament on Wednesday adopted a resolution declaring Russia a state “sponsor of terrorism” over its war in Ukraine.
“The deliberate attacks and atrocities committed by Russian forces and their proxies against civilians in Ukraine, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and other serious violations of international and humanitarian law amount to acts of terror and constitute war crimes,” the European Parliament said.
In total, 494 members of the European Parliament (MEPS) voted in favour of the resolution, 58 were against and 44 abstained.
The largely symbolic move is unlikely to make an impact, because the European Union – unlike the United States – does not have the legal framework to designate countries. Across the Atlantic, on the US list are North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Iran.
The EU established its terror list in 2001, following the September 11 attacks in New York.
It includes people, groups and entities and is reviewed at least every six months.
ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda armed groups are among those currently on the list.
Which members voted against the resolution?
Russia is the first country to be declared a state sponsor of terrorism by the European Parliament.
However, members were not unanimous in their voting, with a larger proportion of the right-wing bloc of the Parliament against the association of Russia with terrorism.
Twenty-six members of the far-right political group Identity and Democracy voted against designating Russia as a sponsor of terrorism.
Here is a breakdown of votes by country, home country party, and member:
These French politicians who voted against the resolution are all members of the National Rally or Rassemblement National, which is led by Marine Le Pen.
Mathilde Androuët
Jordan Bardella
Aurélia Beigneux
Dominique Bilde
Annika Bruna
Patricia Chagnon
Marie Dauchy
Jean-Paul Garraud
Catherine Griset
Jean-François Jalkh
France Jamet
Virginie Joron
Jean-Lin Lacapelle
Gilles Lebreton
Thierry Mariani
Philippe Olivier
André Rougé
The following German politicians who voted against the resolution are all members of the far-right Alternative for Germany or Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD).
Christine Anderson
Gunnar Beck
Nicolaus Fest
Maximilian Krah
Joachim Kuhs
Guido Reil
Bernhard Zimniok
Czech MEPs, who are members of the populist Freedom and Direct Democracy party, or Svoboda a přímá demokracie:
One member of the centre-right European Conservatives and Reformist Group voted against the resolution:
Emmanouil Fragkos, whose party in Greece is Greek Solution, or Elliniki Lusi-Greek Solution
Twelve members from the centre-left Progressive Alliance of the Socialists and Democrats voted against the resolution.
From Bulgaria – all with the centre-left Bulgarian Socialist Party:
Ivo Hristov
Tsvetelina Penkova
Sergei Stanishev
Petar Vitanov
Elena Yoncheva
From Germany – all with the Social Democratic Party of Germany or Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), which is the party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz:
Joachim Schuster
Dietmar Köster
From Italy – these three politicians belong to Partito Democratico or the Democratic Party:
Pietro Bartolo
Andrea Cozzolino
Massimiliano Smeriglio
From Slovakia:
Monika Beňová (SMER-Sociálna demokracia, or Direction – Slovak Social Democracy)
Robert Hajšel (Independent)
Ten members of the Left group in the European Parliament voted against the resolution:
From Belgium:
Marc Botenga (Parti du Travail de Belgique or Workers’ Party of Belgium – which is a Marxist party)
From Cyprus:
Niyazi Kizilyürek (Progressive Party of Working People – Left – New Forces)
From Czech Republic:
Kateřina Konečná (Komunistická strana Čech a Moravy, or Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia)
From Germany (DIE LINKE. party, or The Left party):
Özlem Demirel
Martin Schirdewan
From Portugal (Partido Comunista Português, or Portuguese Communist Party – a Marxist-Leninist group)
Sandra Pereira
João Pimenta Lopes
From Ireland (Independents 4 Change):
From Spain:
Miguel Urbán Crespo (Anticapitalistas)
Nine MEPs who are not affiliated with any political grouping also voted against the resolution:
Nicolas Bay (France – Reconquête!, or Reconquest – a nationalist party)
Francesca Donato (Italy – now an independent but formerly with the far-right Lega Nord, or Northern league headed by Matteo Salvini)
Marcel De Graaff (Netherlands – Forum voor Democratie, or Forum for Democracy, a right-wing populist party)
Lefteris Nikolaou-Alavanos (Greece – Communist Party of Greece)
Kostas Papadakis (Greece – Communist Party of Greece)
Miroslav Radačovský (Slovakia – Slovak PATRIOT, which is a right-wing party)
Milan Uhrík (Slovakia – Hnutie Republika or Republic – a far-right party)
Martin Sonneborn (Germany – Die Partei or The Party, which is a satirical party)
Tatjana Ždanoka (Latvia – Latvijas Krievu savienība or the Latvian Russian Union, which is backed by ethnic Russians and other Russian-speaking minorities)
For Anwar Ibrahim’s supporters, his appointment as Malaysia’s new prime minister has been a long time coming.
The 75-year-old opposition leader secured the Southeast Asian country’s top job on Thursday after its king intervened in the political impasse that followed last weekend’s inconclusive general election and named him the country’s 10th prime minister.
It was a remarkable comeback for Anwar, who has spent nearly three decades in the opposition, including 10 years in prison on sodomy and corruption charges that he claims were politically motivated
Many Malaysians on Twitter responded with joyous disbelief.
“I was at the airport when the announcement of our 10th PM was made,” wrote Twitter user @itsraenu_. “I heard people scream and saw people smile from ear to ear.”
“Anwar’s resurgence is something to be inspired of for many coming generations to come,” wrote Twitter user @CHKen_2. “Waited 24 years for this, went through all sorts of political backstabbing and even having to endure imprisonment – but never gave up on his principles. Keep on believing.”
A former deputy prime minister, Anwar looked set to take the top job in 1998 before he was sacked from the government after falling out with then-Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad over his handling of the Asian financial crisis. Anwar was then accused of sodomy – a crime in Malaysia – and corruption. Tens of thousands took to the streets in defence of the charismatic leader and his calls for “reformasi” or reform.
But he was jailed the following year.
Anwar managed to secure an acquittal on the sodomy charge in 2004 but was jailed again in 2015 on similar allegations. From jail in 2018, he coordinated an opposition alliance and even joined forces with his former mentor-turned-foe Mahathir to topple then-Prime Minister Najib Razak amid the multibillion-dollar corruption scandal at state fund 1MDB.
At the time, Anwar was named the official prime minister-in-waiting but was again denied the post when renewed clashes with Mahathir brought down their government. Amid the instability, Najib’s United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), which voters had roundly rejected in the 2018 vote, returned to government, although Najib himself was jailed after the first of five trials linked to 1MDB.
For Anwar’s supporters, his rise to the top after decades of turmoil is testament to the power of persistence.
Anwar “taught us to never give up on dreams”, wrote Twitter user @aidarazman. “PM at 75 years old? We have so much more to experience.”
“Hard not to get emotional watching this, knowing the challenges he and his family have faced,” @edwardkuruvilla wrote, posting a picture of Anwar’s oath-taking ceremony. “May your tenure be a great one,” he added.
Many of the new leader’s supporters also poked fun at Mahathir, who is now 97 and is blamed for thwarting Anwar’s ambitions. The former prime minister failed to defend his seat in Saturday’s election, failing to win even the 12.5 percent of votes required to get back the thousands of Malaysian ringgit he paid as an electoral deposit.
“Don’t forget, Dr Mahathir not only lived to see his deposit wiped out in an election and his sole political purpose of the last 30 years, blocking Anwar Ibrahim from being PM, finally happen … but as a former prime minister, he will be invited to attend Anwar’s swearing-in too,” wrote Twitter user @amirulruslan.
Anwar’s supporters also took a moment to appreciate his wife, Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, who they say has been instrumental in his rise.
Twitter user @JustinTWJ described the 69-year-old as the “Mother of Reformasi”, noting her role in leading Anwar’s Reformasi movement after his jailing and her role in mobilising the alliance that brought down Najib. “I can’t imagine the strength she has to do it all.”
LONDON, Nov 24 (IPS) – In our recent book, “The Connections World: The Future of Asia”, published by Cambridge University Press in October 2022, we argue that mutually beneficial links between dynastic business houses and political elites have been important drivers behind Asia’s extraordinary renaissance. Yet, these close ties now threaten future economic growth.
That is because the ubiquitous Asian corporate structures of Business Groups systematically work with politicians in Asia to create excessive market power and overall concentration. They have proven remarkably adept at entrenching themselves.
Although, by concentrating resources in relatively few hands, this was quite an effective engine of growth in the past half century, the limitation of competition and brake on innovation threatens future progress.
The pervasive and highly resilient networks of connections running between businesses and politicians have provided a common backbone to Asian development and have cut across political systems. We characterize these networks as the Connections World.
That world comprises a web of interactions between businesses and politicians/political parties that are highly transactional and commonly contain significant degrees of reciprocity.
Thus, politicians look to firms to make campaign or personal contributions; pay bribes; provide jobs for family or associates whilst also providing reciprocal favours, such as creating jobs in regions or at moments that are politically advantageous.
At the same time, businesses look to politicians for protection from foreign or domestic competition; to supply subsidies, loans and/or public sector contracts. All parties benefit from these interactions, creating a stable political economy equilibrium.
These arrangements have served Asia well over the past half century, with Asia’s share of the world economy rising from 9% in the 1970s to nearly 40% now. However, the connections world will provide a less supportive foundation for growth in the future for a variety of reasons. Neither politicians nor business groups have sufficient interest in stimulating competition, whether through the entry of domestic or foreign multinational as competitors.
Moreover, because Asian business groups are often highly diversified, with the control of the oligarch or dynasty enhanced by cross-holdings and ownership pyramids, their economic consequences must be measured not only by the traditional measures of market power, but also by overall levels of concentration as, for example, indicated by the share of total revenues for the largest five firms relative to GDP.
To put this in context, while the market concentration ratio (CR5) of the largest US firms, mainly in tech sectors, is often high, the five-firm overall concentration ratio is only around 3%. The comparable figures across Asia in 2018 are much higher, as can be seen in Figure 1. The CR5 in South Korea exceeds 30% and even in very large economies – India and China – it exceeds 10%.
The findings are even starker when we consider the largest ten firms (CR10). In the US, this is only around 4% but in South Korea exceeds 40% and in India and China exceeds 15%.
Looking forward, the consequences of the connections world will be far less propitious, not least because growth will have to rely increasingly on innovation. The existing networks are, for the most part, ill-suited to promote innovation which thrives on an open ecosystem of science universities and business parks, capital funders, lawyers and entrepreneurs and a healthy willingness to risk and lose.
Moreover, the connections world crowds out new entrants, soaks up capital and skilled workers and managers and suppresses the competitive environment so essential for the trial-and-error process at the heart of much successful innovation. Even when the business groups themselves are innovative, there is relatively little innovation going on in the wider economy.
What should be the policies and other measures that could address the shortcomings of the connections world? Central to the policy menu for loosening the grip of entrenched business will have to be measures designed to induce the transformation of business groups into more transparent and better governed businesses, while also radically weakening the links between politicians and business.
This will not happen naturally because the mutual benefits from market entrenchment and political connections outweigh any gains to the current players from reform. The required policies will need to include changes to corporate governance that undercut pyramidal ownership structures, mergers and cross-holdings, that impose inheritance taxes and shift to new types of – and targets for – competition policy.
Some of those policies were successfully introduced in the USA under Roosevelt. More recently, Israel has adopted criteria in competition policy for overall, as well as specific market, concentration levels, while South Korea has placed high inheritance taxes at the heart of their raft of policies to weaken the vice-like grip of their gigantic business groups.
At the same time, measures need to be adopted aimed at limiting the discretionary scope and incentives for politicians to leverage their connections for personal or family benefit. Although hard to achieve, incremental improvements, such as through audited registers of interests, can start to affect behaviour.
In short, although many commentators have already declared the 21st century to be Asia’s, that is far from predetermined. Unless the sorts of policies that we propose are introduced to roll back the tentacles of the connections world, many Asian economies will in fact find themselves unfavourably placed to exploit their potential in the coming decades.
Simon Commander is Managing Partner of Altura Partners. He is also Visiting Professor of Economics at IE Business School in Madrid. Saul ESTRIN is Professor of Managerial Economics at LSE and previously Professor of Economics and Associate Dean at London Business School.
Japan’s stunning victory over Germany left their football fans in a state of joyous disbelief on Wednesday.
Now, supporters of the Samurai Blue are earning praise in Qatar for an off-pitch tradition that appears to be uniquely Japanese: Cleaning up stadiums after other football fans have left.
In what is becoming an increasingly common sight, Japanese fans stayed behind after their team’s win over Germany on Wednesday and helped to clean up the Khalifa International Stadium.
As soon as the stadium started to empty, Japanese supporters could be seen taking out light blue disposable rubbish bags and getting to work.
While the sight of spectators staying back to clean up may be a surprise to many, for the Japanese it is not out of the ordinary.
“What you think is special is actually nothing unusual for us,” Danno, a Japanese fan, told Al Jazeera with a casual shrug.
Danno does not understand why people think the gesture is odd.
Japanese fans cleaning the stadium after they’ve just shocked the world.
“When we use the toilet, we clean it ourselves. When we leave a room, we make sure it’s tidy. That’s the custom,” he explained.
“We can’t leave a place without making it clean. It’s a part of our education, everyday learning.”
Social media posts featuring Japanese football fans with rubbish bags started doing the rounds in the days following the opening game of the tournament, between Qatar and Ecuador at Al Bayt Stadium on Sunday.
You dont to be a #Muslim to clean your trash behind you
Look a at this amazing behavior from #Japanese fans they are cleaning the studiom behind them even it’s not there match, not the country and not even their own trash
In one post, a man is expressing his shock at a Japanese fan cleaning inside the Al Bayt Stadium long after most spectators had left and in a match that did not feature the Japanese side.
Samurai Blue’s supporters have been cleaning up football stadiums for a while; even a defeat does not detract them from this important post-match task.
During the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Japan lost their round-of-16 match against Belgium with an injury-time goal. Japanese fans were heartbroken but that did not detract them from getting out their disposable rubbish bag and going to work.
Saysuka, who spoke to Al Jazeera ahead of the match against Germany, said she is aware people are taking notice of their tradition but noted the fans are not doing it for publicity.
“Cleanliness and tidiness is like religion to us in Japan and we treasure it,” she said, before opening her backpack to show a pack of rubbish bags she will use and distribute to others after the match.
Japan’s fans are truly the best.🇯🇵
They beat Germany in a famous win, but before celebrating stuck around at the Khalifa International Stadium to help clean up.👏 pic.twitter.com/sZhNExEDqi
While social media videos of the stadium-cleaning Japanese may be relatively new, tidiness and organisation have deep roots in Japanese culture. These characteristics are gaining a worldwide following through books and television shows.
Japanese organising consultant Marie Kondo is now a global household name thanks to her books and a popular Netflix series on the topic.
Takshi, a Japanese football supporter who lives in the United States but grew up in Japan, says he learned the tradition of tidiness as a child.
“We had to clean our rooms, our bathrooms, our classrooms, and then as we grow up, it becomes a part of our lives,” he said.
After Japan’s victory over Germany, Takshi and his 13-year-old son Kayde stayed behind with their fellow supporter.
With Japan now having three points on the table and two more group matches to go, fans and spectators can expect to be treated to more Japanese aesthetics, on and off the football pitch.
