18/05/2020
- Details remain scant one day after body of 57-year-old diplomat Du Wei is found at his home in Tel Aviv
- Top Israeli foreign ministry official extends condolences to deputy ambassador Dai Yuming
Police, ambulance and embassy staff at the residence where Chinese ambassador Du Wei was found dead on Sunday. Photo: EPA-EFE
China is sending a special investigative team to Israel following
the sudden death of its ambassador Du Wei, whose body was found at his residence on Sunday.
The team, accompanied by a member of Du’s family, was due to travel on Monday, and will handle arrangements for the remains, as well as conducting its own internal investigation, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
Israel’s foreign ministry said its director general Yuval Rotem had spoken with deputy ambassador Dai Yuming to express his condolences. Local police are continuing to investigate at Du’s residence in a suburb of Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.
Details from the Chinese side have been scant. China’s foreign ministry provided a statement to AFP on Sunday which said the preliminary verdict was that Du, 57, had died unexpectedly for health reasons, and details awaited further confirmation. AFP also reported that Du’s wife and son were not with him in Tel Aviv.
“As far as I know, China’s ambassador to Israel Du Wei passed away in ambassador’s residence in Tel Aviv this morning for physical reasons. It happened abruptly,” said Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of state media tabloid Global Times in a tweet late on Sunday night.
Du was last seen in public on Tuesday in a video conference with an official from Israel’s foreign affairs ministry, according to the embassy website.
James Dorsey, senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said Du’s untimely death should be seen as a personal, rather than a political, tragedy for the growing relationship between China and Israel, but he said it came at an important moment for the two countries because of rising US-China tensions.
Dorsey said Israel’s increasing hi-tech cooperation with China, as well as continuing US hostility to Iran – which has close ties with China – were potentially problematic for relations between the two countries.
“I’m not sure that the China-Israel relationship can be seen as independent of the Israel-US relationship. One could argue that the Chinese may be well advised to very quickly replace him soon,” Dorsey said. “Israel could find itself on the fault line of deepening US-China decoupling,” he added.
Israel’s ambassador to China in quarantine after ‘infected’ flight to Seoul
Following a brief trip to Jerusalem on Wednesday – his first foreign visit since March – US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo renewed warnings about China-Israel ties in an interview with Israeli state-owned media outlet Kan News.
“We do not want the Chinese Communist Party to have access to Israeli infrastructure, Israeli communication systems, all of the things that put Israeli citizens at risk,” he said.
China’s embassy in Tel Aviv blasted Pompeo’s comments as “absurd” and “ill-intentioned”. However, the embassy statement was not written by Du, but by a spokesperson.
Du had only served in Israel since February. Just before his arrival,
the Chinese embassy had to issue an apology after then-acting ambassador Dai denounced Israel’s tightened restrictions on Chinese visitors by comparing them to the Holocaust.
During his brief tenure, Du gave frequent interviews to local media, speaking mainly about China’s virus control measures, US-China tensions, and friendship between China and the Jewish people.
Du had worked as a career diplomat since entering China’s foreign service in 1989. Before his appointment in Tel Aviv, he served as China’s ambassador to Ukraine from 2016-2019.
Source: SCMP
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01/02/2020
- The decision, which follows a similar move by the US this week, came as the death toll from the outbreak soared to 259
- Health officials on Friday confirmed the first cases in the UK after two people tested positive for the virus
A coach carrying British nationals evacuated from Wuhan arrives at the Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, near Liverpool in northwest England. Photo: AFP
Britain on Saturday said it was temporarily withdrawing some staff and their families from its diplomatic sites in China, as Beijing struggles to contain the nationwide new
epidemic.
The decision, which follows a similar move by the United States this week, came as the death toll from the outbreak soared to 259 and the total number of cases neared 12,000 within China.
The Sars-like virus has also begun to spread around the world, with more than 100 infections reported in more than 20 countries.
“We are committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of our staff and their families,” a spokesman for the British Foreign Office said.
“We are therefore temporarily withdrawing some UK staff, and their dependents from our embassy and consulates in China.”
He added that
Britain’s ambassador in Beijing and staff needed to continue critical work will remain, and that British nationals in China would still have access to constant consular assistance.
The US, which on Friday temporarily banned the entry of foreign nationals, who had travelled to China over the past two weeks, has also made similar changes.
Two people in UK test positive for coronavirus
On Wednesday, it authorised the departure of non-emergency government employees and their family members from its offices in Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenyang.
And on Friday, it ordered all relatives of staff members under the age of 21 to leave China immediately.
A spokesman for the US Embassy in Beijing said it made the decision “out of an abundance of caution related to logistical disruptions stemming from restricted transportation and overwhelmed hospitals related to the novel coronavirus”.
Coronavirus outbreak: global businesses shut down operations in China
British health officials on Friday confirmed the first cases in the UK, after two members of the same family tested positive for the virus.
One of the two individuals is a student at the University of York, a university spokesman said on Saturday.
Also on Friday, 83 British citizens returned on a UK government-chartered flight from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the epidemic.
They were immediately taken to a hospital in northwest England for a two-week quarantine.
Source: SCMP
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