Chindia Alert: You’ll be Living in their World Very Soon
aims to alert you to the threats and opportunities that China and India present. China and India require serious attention; case of ‘hidden dragon and crouching tiger’.
Without this attention, governments, businesses and, indeed, individuals may find themselves at a great disadvantage sooner rather than later.
The POSTs (front webpages) are mainly 'cuttings' from reliable sources, updated continuously.
The PAGEs (see Tabs, above) attempt to make the information more meaningful by putting some structure to the information we have researched and assembled since 2006.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption Mr Gui has been in and out of Chinese detention for years
A Chinese court has sentenced Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai to 10 years in jail for “illegally providing intelligence overseas”.
Mr Gui, who holds Swedish citizenship, has been in and out of Chinese detention since 2015, when he went missing during a holiday in Thailand.
He is known to have previously published books on the personal lives of Chinese Communist Party members.
Rights groups condemned the “harsh sentence” and called for his release.
He was one of five owners of a small bookstore in Hong Kong who went missing in 2015. It later emerged that they had been taken to China. Four were later freed, but Mr Gui remained in Chinese detention.
In delivering its verdict, the Ningbo Intermediate People’s Court said that his Chinese citizenship had been reinstated in 2018. China does not recognise dual citizenship.
Sweden’s foreign minister on Tuesday called for Mr Gui’s release, referring to him a “citizen”.
“We have not had access to the trial,” said Ann Linde in a tweet. “[We] demand that Gui be released and that we have access to our citizens to provide consular support.”
But according to a Reuters report, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said consular arrangements had been put on hold because of the latest coronavirus outbreak, and would be restored once the health problem was “resolved”.
Zhao Lijian added that Mr Gui’s “rights and interests… [had] been fully guaranteed”.
Human rights group Amnesty International on Tuesday also called for Mr Gui to be released immediately and said the charges were “completely unsubstantiated”.
A forced confession?
Mr Gui first made headlines in 2015 when he vanished from Thailand and resurfaced in China.
After his disappearance, there were allegations that he had been abducted by Chinese agents. Chinese officials, however, say Mr Gui and the four other men all went to China voluntarily.
The bookseller ultimately confessed to being involved in a fatal traffic accident more than a decade earlier – a confession supporters say was forced.
He served two years in prison but he was arrested months after his release while he was travelling to the Chinese capital of Beijing with two Swedish diplomats.
China later released a video interview featuring Mr Gui. In it, he accused Sweden of “sensationalising” his case. It is not uncommon for Chinese criminal suspects to appear in “confessional” videos.
Earlier in 2019, Sweden recalled its ambassador to China Anna Lindstedt, who was accused of brokering an unauthorised meeting between Angela Gui – the daughter of Mr Gui – and two Chinese businessmen.
Ms Gui – who has been vocal in campaigning for her father’s release – said one of the men had pressured her to accept a deal where her father would go to trial and might be sentenced to “a few years” in prison, and in return she would stop all publicity around her father’s detention.
Image caption A play staged at Shaheen School has led to the arrest of a parent and a teacher
An Indian school play involving nine to 12-year-olds became the subject of national attention after it landed a young mother and a teacher in jail. BBC Telugu’s Deepthi Bathini reports.
“I’m not sure how I ended up here,” says 26-year-old Nazbunnisa, a single mother who did not give her last name and who works as a domestic help.
She was arrested on 30 January, along with Farida Begum, a teacher at her daughter’s school. The charge against them: sedition, which the women, both Muslim, deny.
They spoke to the BBC in a prison official’s office at Bidar district jail in the southern state of Karnataka. Both were on the verge of tears – they said they are trying to be “strong”, but their lives have suddenly turned “upside down”.
Their bail hearing is scheduled for Tuesday. Their lawyer says the charge of sedition is being misused.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption The citizenship law has sparked huge protests
The two women are accused of spreading “false information” and of “spreading fear among [the] Muslim community” and of using children to insult India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi.
Their ordeal began with a play put on by the students and staff at Shaheen School in Bidar, where Ms Nazbunnisa’s daughter studies and Farida Begum, 52, teaches.
The play was about a controversial new citizenship law, which has polarised India since it was passed in December by the governing Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), offers amnesty to non-Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. It sparked fear among India’s 200 million-plus Muslims as it came in the wake of the government’s plans to introduce a National Register of Citizens (or NRC) based on those who can prove their ancestors were Indian citizens.
Authorities are yet to clarify what documents would be needed to prove citizenship, but taken together, the measures have spurred massive protests – critics say the government is marginalising Muslims while offering a path to citizenship for people of other religious communities who fail to make it on to the NRC.
The governing BJP denies these charges, and insists India’s Muslims have nothing to worry about.
So, given the contentious subject, after one of the parents streamed the school play live on Facebook, the recording quickly went viral. Local resident Neelesh Rakshal was among those who watched it.
Mr Rakshal, who describes himself as a social activist, says he became furious over a scene where a man approaches an elderly woman and tells her that Narendra Modi wants Muslims to produce documents proving their Indian citizenship and that of their ancestors, and if they fail to do so, they will be asked to leave the country.
Image caption Mr Rakshal says the play “spreads hatred”
The woman responds that she has been in India for generations and would have to dig up the graves of her ancestors to look for documents. She then says a “boy who was selling tea”, a reference to Mr Modi who has said he used to sell tea as a teenager, is now demanding that she show him her documents.
“I will ask him for his documents and if he doesn’t show them to me, I will hit him with slippers,” she adds.
Mr Rakshal says he immediately registered a police complaint against the school for “using children in a school play to abuse the prime minister and also for spreading hatred”.
The complaint named the school management and the parent who streamed the play. While several members of the school management and the president of the school have also been charged with sedition, police told the court they are still looking for them.
“We do not know for what reason sedition charges have been invoked against the school. It is beyond the imagination of any reasonable person. We will fight it in court,” the school’s CEO, Thouseef Madikeri, says.
Image copyright GETTY IMAGESImage caption School officials allege that they are being targeted because most of the students are Muslim
Police also questioned students – videos and screen grabs of CCTV footage showing them speaking to students were shared widely on social media, prompting criticism.
Mr Madikeri alleges that on one occasion, police in uniform questioned students, with no child welfare officials present – an accusation denied by police superintendent DL Nagesh.
“The students were questioned five times. It’s mental harassment to students and this may have an impact on them in [the] long run,” Mr Madikeri says.
The Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has asked police to explain why they questioned students so many times. Police say it was because not all the students were available at the same time.
Mr Madikeri told the BBC it was the questioning of students that led to the arrest of Farida Begum and Ms Nazbunnisa.
One parent whose child was questioned says she is now scared of going to school.
“My daughter told me police repeatedly asked her to identify the teachers and others who might have taught them the [play’s] dialogues,” he said.
“I do not understand what was wrong in the play. Children have been seeing what has been happening around the country. They picked up the dialogues from social media.”
Image caption Farida Begum’s husband is worried about what will happen
Ms Nazbunnisa is also perplexed as to why she was arrested.
“My daughter was rehearsing for the play at home,” she says. “But I did not know what it was about, or what this controversy about CAA or NRC is about. I did not even go to see her play.”
Ms Nazbunnisa has met her daughter only once since she was jailed: “It was just for a few minutes, and even then only through a window. I held back my tears. I did not want to scare her further.”
The girl is staying with a friends of the family – they told the BBC she is having nightmares and often wakes up crying for her mother.
“She has been pleading that her mother not be punished for her mistake. She is sorry for what has happened,” one of them says.
Farida Begum, who suffers from high blood pressure, says she is “scared of what the future holds”. Her husband, Mirza Baig, says he fears that his wife being in jail will affect his daughter’s marriage prospects.
LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) – Heavy rains have killed at least 113 people in India’s Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states over the past three days, officials said on Monday, as flood waters swamped a major city, inundated hospital wards and forced the evacuation of inmates from a jail.
India’s monsoon season that begins in June usually starts to retreat by early September, but heavy rains have continued across parts of the country this year, triggering floods.
An official said that at least 93 people had died in most populous Uttar Pradesh since Friday after its eastern areas were lashed by intense monsoon showers.
Rising water levels forced authorities to shift 900 inmates from a prison in eastern Ballia district, police officer Santosh Verma said.
In neighbouring Bihar, an impoverished agrarian region that was hit by floods earlier this year, the death toll from the latest bout of rain had reached 20 on Monday, a state government official said.
Bihar’s capital city of Patna, home to around 2 million, has been badly hit, with waist-deep flood waters across many streets, and entering homes, shops, and even the wards of a major hospital. In some parts, authorities deployed boats to rescue residents.
“The rains have stopped but there is waterlogging in many areas,” Bihar’s Additional Secretary in the Disaster Relief Department Amod Kumar Sharan said.
In its bulletin on Monday, India’s Meteorological Department said the intensity of rainfall over Bihar was very likely to reduce. Showers in Uttar Pradesh are also expected to abate this week.
Weather department officials said this month that monsoon rains were likely to be above average for the first time in six years. [nL3N26B1MD]
Image copyrightGETTY IMAGESImage caption: Mukesh Ambani, left, sits next to his wife Nita Ambani, and Anil Ambani on the right
India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani has paid a debt payment owed by his brother, saving him from spending time in prison.
Anil Ambani faced a prison sentence after a deal between his firm Reliance Communications (RCom) and telecoms giant Ericsson collapsed.
That left his firm owing Ericsson 5.5bn rupees ($80m; £60m), which it failed to pay by a court deadline.
The move marks a new twist a long-running feud between the brothers.
RCom failed to comply with an India Supreme Court order to pay Ericsson the money by 15 December last year.
The court found him guilty of contempt, giving him another four weeks to pay or go to prison.
On Monday, RCom said the debt had been paid.
“My sincere and heartfelt thanks to my respected elder brother, Mukesh, and (his wife) Nita, for standing by me during these trying times, and demonstrating the importance of staying true to our strong family values by extending this timely support,” Anil Ambani said.
The two brothers have long had an acrimonious relationship, fighting over their father’s businesses after he died in 2002 without a will.
The Reliance empire was divided between the two brothers in 2005 after a bitter seven-month feud.
The brothers have fought bruising court battles in the past over natural gas interests.
Mukesh Ambani is worth more than $54bn, according to Bloomberg.
His firm Reliance Industries, whose activities span from oil to telecommunications, is among India’s most valuable companies.
By contrast, Anil Ambani has an estimated net worth of around $300m, Bloomberg said.
The Ambani family made headlines last year with the lavish wedding of Mukesh Ambani’s daughter, Isha Ambani, which featured a performance from US singer Beyoncé
Image copyright GETTY IMAGES
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 