27/04/2020
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean officials are calling for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be ill or is being isolated because of coronavirus concerns, emphasising that they have detected no unusual movements in North Korea.
At a closed door forum on Sunday, South Korea’s Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees engagement with the North, said the government has the intelligence capabilities to say with confidence that there was no indications of anything unusual.
Rumours and speculation over the North Korean leader’s health began after he made no public appearance at a key state holiday on April 15, and has since remained out of sight.
South Korea media last week reported that Kim may have undergone cardiovascular surgery or was in isolation to avoid exposure to the new coronavirus.
Unification minister Kim cast doubt on the report of surgery, arguing that the hospital mentioned did not have the capabilities for such an operation.
Still, Yoon Sang-hyun, chairman of the foreign and unification committee in South Korea’s National Assembly, told a gathering of experts on Monday that Kim Jong Un’s absence from the public eye suggests “he has not been working as normally”.
“There has not been any report showing he’s making policy decisions as usual since April 11, which leads us to assume that he is either sick or being isolated because of coronavirus concerns,” Yoon said.
North Korea has said it has no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, but some international experts have cast doubts on that claim.
On Monday, North Korean state media once again showed no new photos of Kim nor reported on his whereabouts.
However, they did carry reports that he had sent a message of gratitude to workers building a tourist resort in Wonsan, an area where some South Korean media reports have said Kim may be staying.
“Our government position is firm,” Moon Chung-in, the top foreign policy adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said in comments to news outlets in the United States.
“Kim Jong Un is alive and well. He has been staying in the Wonsan area since April 13. No suspicious movements have so far been detected.”
Satellite images from last week showed a special train possibly belonging to Kim at Wonsan, lending weight to those reports, according to 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project.
Though the group said it was probably the North Korean leader’s personal train, Reuters has not been able to confirm that independently, or whether he was in Wonsan.
A spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry said on Monday she had nothing to confirm when asked about reports that Kim was in Wonsan.
Last week China dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signalled in terms of Kim’s health.
On Friday a South Korean source told Reuters their intelligence was that Kim Jong Un was alive and would likely make an appearance soon.
Experts have cautioned that Kim has disappeared from state media coverage before, and that gathering accurate information in North Korea is notoriously difficult.
North Korea’s state media last reported on Kim’s whereabouts when he presided over a meeting on April 11.
Kim, believed to be 36, vanished from state media for more than a month in 2014 and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp.
Source: Reuters
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08/12/2019
Participants learn about the construction of Shanghai West Bund in Shanghai, east China, Dec. 7, 2019, before attending the upcoming 2019 South-South Human Rights Forum. (Photo by Wang Xiang/Xinhua)
SHANGHAI, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) — Officials and scholars from more than 70 Asian, African and Latin American developing countries, as well as the United Nations, visited Shanghai on Saturday before attending the upcoming 2019 South-South Human Rights Forum.
The forum, hosted by the State Council Information Office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will be held in Beijing from Dec. 10 to 11.
According to the Beijing Declaration issued at the first South-South Human Rights Forum held in Beijing in 2017, participants agreed that the right to subsistence and the right to development were the primary basic human rights.
During the one-day trip in Shanghai, the officials and scholars, from countries including Laos, Brunei, South Africa, Mexico and Mauritius, visited the city’s financial district and the World Expo Museum, snapped pictures of local residents’ life scenes on the bank of the Huangpu River, and investigated the progress of waste sorting in ordinary residential streets. They were impressed by the prosperous and orderly development of the mega city.
“I think China is becoming more open and confident about human rights. The changes I saw here are examples of the great improvements in the Chinese people’s rights to subsistence and development,” said Davina Sigauta Rasch, director of Corporate Service of the Ombudsman Office in Samoa, who studied international economics and trade from 2009 to 2013 at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.
She said that compared with 10 years ago, China has made significant progress in the emerging fields such as high-speed railways and mobile payments, which directly improved people’s lives. China is not only developing itself, but also helping other developing countries, she said.
Her idea was echoed by Lionel Vairon, CEO of CEC Consulting in Luxembourg and also a senior research member of the Charhar Institute, a private think tank in China.
Over the past 70 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, great achievements which have attracted worldwide attention have been made, he said, adding that the international community should not ignore China’s progress in human rights out of ideological misunderstanding and prejudice.
“In the future, global governance must make a choice between the policy of strong-power hegemony and the path of a community with a shared future for humanity. And the latter is the wisdom China has contributed to the world,” he said.
Source: Xinhua
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21/07/2019
- Islam was forced on ethnic group ‘by religious wars and the ruling class’, Beijing says in latest report defending its actions in far western region
- Uygurs’ ancestors were enslaved by the Turks, document says
Beijing has issued a white paper seemingly designed to defend its actions in Xinjiang where as least 1 million Uygurs are being held in detention centres. Photo: AFP
Uygurs became Muslims not by choice but by force, and Islam is not their only religion, Beijing said in a white paper published on Sunday, as it continued its propaganda campaign to justify its controversial policies in the far western province of
.
“The Uygur people adopted Islam not of their own volition … but had it forced upon them by religious wars and the ruling class,” according to the document released by the State Council Information Office.
Islamic beliefs were forced on the Uygurs during the expansion of Arabic states. This is a historical fact, the report said, though that did not undermine the Uygurs’ religious rights now.
The report said also that there are Uygurs who hold to faiths other than Islam, and others who do not practise any religion at all.
The paper also took aim at the Uygurs’s historic links with Turkey.
“Historically, the Uygurs’ ancestors were enslaved by the Turks,” it said, citing a history of conflicts between the two groups dating back to the 8th century.
China promotes Xinjiang as tourist idyll
The white paper was issued amid a campaign by Beijing to justify its policies in the restive region, which is home to more than 10 million Uygurs, most whom are Muslim.
Earlier this month, the ambassadors of 22 countries signed a letter calling on Beijing to halt its mass detention of Uygurs in Xinjiang, the first such joint move on the issue at the UN Human Rights Council.
The signatories included envoys from Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, Japan and Switzerland. The United States, which quit the forum a year ago, did not sign the letter.
China responded by issuing a letter signed by the ambassadors of 37 countries, including several Muslim majority states like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, backing its policies in the region.
Beijing said the show of support was “a powerful response to the groundless accusations made against China by a small number of Western countries”.
UN experts and activists say at least 1 million Uygurs and other Muslims are currently being held in detention centres in Xinjiang. China describes the facilities as training and education centres that aim to stamp out religious extremism and provide people with useful skills. It has never said how many people are being detained in them.
The United States has repeatedly criticised Beijing over its policies in Xinjiang.
On Wednesday, US President Donald Trump met victims of religious persecution from around the world, including Jewher Ilham, a Uygur woman whose father Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2014 after being found guilty of promoting separatism.
“That’s tough stuff,” Trump said after hearing Ilham’s account of her father’s ordeal.
China describes the detention camps in Xinjiang as training and education centres. Photo: AFP
In January, US lawmakers nominated the imprisoned economist, writer and former professor at Minzu University in Beijing, for the 2019
Nobel Peace Prize in a bid to pressure China to stop its crackdown on the minority group.
Sunday’s white paper is the latest in a string of similar documents published recently by Beijing as it seeks to defend the legitimacy of its policies in Xinjiang. In a document issued in March, it said that over the past five years it had arrested nearly 13,000 “terrorists” in the region.
Xinjiang camps defended at UN human rights forum
Neither the March report nor Sunday’s white paper mentioned Beijing’s other controversial policies in the region, such as the collection of DNA samples and extensive surveillance on local people.
“Xinjiang has borrowed from international experiences, combined them with local realities, and taken resolute measures against terrorism and extremism,” it said.
The measures have been effective, it said, though did not elaborate.
Over the past year, China has increased its efforts to defend the camps, including organising strictly controlled visits by selected diplomats and journalists to see the people who live in them.
State media has also released videos showing seemingly happy and healthy people inside the camps in a bid to counter accounts of harsh conditions and abuse published by the Western media.
Source: SCMP
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11/12/2018
Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan delivers a keynote speech during the opening ceremony of the 2018 Imperial Springs International Forum in Guangzhou, south China’s Guangdong Province, Dec. 10, 2018. (Xinhua/Zhang Ling)
GUANGZHOU, Dec.10 (Xinhua) — Chinese Vice President Wang Qishan on Monday said China will follow the trend of history, adapt to and lead economic globalization while eliminating its side effects, maintain the rules-based multilateral trading system, enhance equal consultation and cooperation, and jointly build an innovative, inclusive and open world economy.
The remarks came as Wang attended the opening ceremony of the 2018 Imperial Springs International Forum in China’s southern city of Guangzhou.
Some 200 former world leaders, renowned scholars and business elites gathered here to exchange their views on “Advancing Reform and Opening-up, Promoting Win-win cooperation”.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of China’s reform and opening-up, which, according to Wang, is a glorious chapter for the Chinese nation’s great rejuvenation history, and not only profoundly changed China, but also deeply influenced the world.
Reviewing China’s reform and opening-up, Wang stressed that the process is linked to the exploration and practices of socialism carried out 30 years before 1978, the history of Chinese people’s struggle for national rejuvenation since 1840, as well as the sufferings and glory of the Chinese nation over the past 5,000 years.
“The sufferings and glory of history are the source of the present,” said Wang, adding that socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era and the Chinese nation is closer to the goal of great rejuvenation than any other time in history.
He said the door to China will never be closed and will only be opened wider and wider, and this is a strategic choice based on China’s development needs.
China will firmly adhere to its own path, work in a down-to-earth way on its own tasks, continue mutual learning and cooperation with other countries, build a peaceful world, contribute to global development and maintain international order, Wang said.
Noting that the interests of countries around the world are deeply intertwined nowadays, Wang said China will be committed to the path of peaceful development, uphold new forms of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation, and build a community with a shared future for humanity featuring lasting peace and common prosperity.
Posted in China alert, forum, Imperial Springs, international, Uncategorized, VP |
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CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 
South Korean officials call for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim is ill
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korean officials are calling for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be ill or is being isolated because of coronavirus concerns, emphasising that they have detected no unusual movements in North Korea.
At a closed door forum on Sunday, South Korea’s Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees engagement with the North, said the government has the intelligence capabilities to say with confidence that there was no indications of anything unusual.
Rumours and speculation over the North Korean leader’s health began after he made no public appearance at a key state holiday on April 15, and has since remained out of sight.
South Korea media last week reported that Kim may have undergone cardiovascular surgery or was in isolation to avoid exposure to the new coronavirus.
Unification minister Kim cast doubt on the report of surgery, arguing that the hospital mentioned did not have the capabilities for such an operation.
Still, Yoon Sang-hyun, chairman of the foreign and unification committee in South Korea’s National Assembly, told a gathering of experts on Monday that Kim Jong Un’s absence from the public eye suggests “he has not been working as normally”.
“There has not been any report showing he’s making policy decisions as usual since April 11, which leads us to assume that he is either sick or being isolated because of coronavirus concerns,” Yoon said.
North Korea has said it has no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, but some international experts have cast doubts on that claim.
On Monday, North Korean state media once again showed no new photos of Kim nor reported on his whereabouts.
However, they did carry reports that he had sent a message of gratitude to workers building a tourist resort in Wonsan, an area where some South Korean media reports have said Kim may be staying.
“Our government position is firm,” Moon Chung-in, the top foreign policy adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said in comments to news outlets in the United States.
“Kim Jong Un is alive and well. He has been staying in the Wonsan area since April 13. No suspicious movements have so far been detected.”
Satellite images from last week showed a special train possibly belonging to Kim at Wonsan, lending weight to those reports, according to 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project.
Though the group said it was probably the North Korean leader’s personal train, Reuters has not been able to confirm that independently, or whether he was in Wonsan.
A spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry said on Monday she had nothing to confirm when asked about reports that Kim was in Wonsan.
Last week China dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation.
Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signalled in terms of Kim’s health.
On Friday a South Korean source told Reuters their intelligence was that Kim Jong Un was alive and would likely make an appearance soon.
Experts have cautioned that Kim has disappeared from state media coverage before, and that gathering accurate information in North Korea is notoriously difficult.
North Korea’s state media last reported on Kim’s whereabouts when he presided over a meeting on April 11.
Kim, believed to be 36, vanished from state media for more than a month in 2014 and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp.
Source: Reuters
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