Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Wednesday 21st November

In this bulletin …..
-Nationwide French Protests Put Pressure on Sarkozy
-CBC Reporters in China Pestered Over Falun Gong Documentary and
-London Suicide Bomb Plotter Given 33 Years

French President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed on Tuesday not to yield to mass street protests after teachers, postal workers and civil servants joined striking rail workers in demonstrations challenging his economic reform plans.

France’s rail system has been crippled for a week by a strike over pensions, and the wave of protests has widened with a separate strike by civil servants over job reductions and the cost of living and student protests over university reforms.

The protests, the biggest since Sarkozy came to power in May pledging sweeping economic reforms, disrupted schools, trains, postal services and airports and saw hundreds of thousands join protest marches across France.

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The independent producer of a documentary about the persecution of Falun Gong that is scheduled to air on CBC News world tonight says he was told Chinese officials have approached reporters in China about the film.

Peter Rowe, writer and producer of Beyond the Red Wall: the Persecution of Falun Gong, says an executive of CBC News world told him Saturday morning about the pressure on CBC’s China staff.

Red Wall was initially set to air on CBC News world’s The Lens on Nov. 6, but was pulled hours before its scheduled airing time to be “reviewed,” according to CBC.

A media storm was triggered after CBC officials admitted they had received calls from Chinese Embassy and consulate officials who had expressed concerns about Red Wall. The CBC has continually denied that it was bowing to Chinese pressure by pulling the documentary.

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A Ghanaian man was sentenced to 33 years jail on Tuesday for helping to plot al Qaeda-inspired botched suicide attacks on London’s transport system on July 21, 2005.

Manfo Kwaku Asiedu was sentenced at Kingston Crown Court in London after earlier admitting a charge of conspiracy to cause explosions over the failed bombings.

The attacks were attempted two weeks after four British Islamists killed 52 people in suicide bombings on three underground trains and a bus in the capital.

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Next week the US has confirmed that it will host a conference on Middle East peace aimed at relaunching negotiations to create a Palestinian state.

Invitations have been issued to Israel, the Palestinians, the UN and key Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Syria.

But Washington is still trying to persuade Arab states to send delegates.

The November 27th meeting, at a US naval academy in Annapolis, Maryland, will be the first fully-fledged talks on Middle East peace since 2000.

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In Weiyuan County of Gansu, the Weihe River, which is more than 800 kilometres in length, 56% of the land is arable, but it is also the Guangzhong’s only waste sewage storage and excretion channel.

According to CNA reports, the Shaanxi Provincial People’s Congress Standing Committee finds that the Weihe River had lost its ecological functions and has become the most polluted river of the Yellow River Basin.

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The Hong Kong based China Human Rights Information Center said, on the eighteenth of November in the evening in Zhejiang Huzhou, there where serious riots because the traffic police refused to help people in danger.

According to CNA reports, there was conflict between several thousands of people and armed police. Five police cars were destroyed, 50 people were injured and 20 people were arrested by the Public Security.

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On the fourteenth of November, 12 rights representatives from Zunyi City of Guizhou Province Tung Tsz County went to Beijing in Tiananmen Square; they kneeled before the five stared flag and cried for justice.

The Public Security Bureau Tiananmen Square police arrested them and they were locked up in the local office in Beijing for one day.

However the 12 people were still stranded in Beijing and were trying again to get the central government to come forward to help them.

These petitioners come from the local unemployed workers, farmers who lost their lands, and other rights representatives.

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