AsiaCast

Asia Cast Monday 30th July

Militants occupy Pakistan shrine
Ivorian Coast leader in landmark visit
Falun Gong organ harvesting continues

Islamic militants have occupied a shrine in a tribal district of Pakistan and named it after the Red Mosque in Islamabad, eyewitnesses say.

They are also reportedly planning a religious school for girls, to be named after a seminary in the Red Mosque.

The mosque was the scene of a siege this month in which one hundred people died.

Recently, a suicide bomber killed at least thirteen people near the mosque.

More than one hundred and eighty people have been killed in militant attacks in the past few weeks.

*******

Ivorian Coast President has arrived in the former rebel-held north for the first time since two thousand and two, when an uprising against him split the country.

He is in Bouake – the stronghold of the former New Forces rebels.

He says that only a few guns are to be burnt in the ceremony, as details of the disarmament are still sketchy.

Following a peace agreement in March this year, the president appointed a former rebel leader as prime minister.

A new government was formed, and an amnesty law created by presidential decree, which covered almost all crimes committed by both belligerent parties.

Under that deal, a buffer zone patrolled by United Nations and French peacekeepers between the two forces has been dismantled.

*******

Investigators of the International Coalition on Persecution of Falun Gong have approached the broker of kidney organs at the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army Hospital under the pretext of seeking organs for a friend.

Communication between the parties lasted for several weeks.

The findings further substantiate claims that the Chinese Communist Party harvests organs from live Falun Gong practitioners and that such practices still continue.

The practice was at its peak during 2003.

*******

Prior to the Olympic games, the Chinese government has placed even greater restrictions upon the media in China. Stifling the flow of information.

A reporter for the Times Weekly interviewed the chiefs of various news services in China, and discovered the increased control over the media.

Mr. Wang, the former editor for Xinjing Paper, said that the Propaganda Ministry of the CCP contacts the media chiefs regularly, advising them on what they can and cannot report.

*******

As of July twenty seventh, at the site of where the 2008 Olympic games are to be held. The residents of Datun village, Beijing, have been rallying in front of Beijing Huahui Real Estate for twelve consecutive days.

They urge authorities to respect their property rights and to compensate them after they were forcibly evicted to make way for development. Yet in twelve days not one communist cadre has come out to meet with them.

The appeal was triggered by the local regime’s plan for the new construction of a golf course and apartments in the Olympics Project. The construction has evicted nearly one thousand families to make way.

The local regime has sent many police vehicles and security teams to keep an eye on the appeal.