Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Friday 30th November

In this Bulletin…

- Philippine coups leaders to face full force of the law;
- Pakistan’s President Musharraf pledges to lift state of emergency; and
- Celebrity politicians to face off in Hong Kong by-election.

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Philippine President Gloria Arroyo has said that renegade soldiers who led Thursday’s attempted coup will face the full force of the law. The coup attempt ended after hundreds of troops stormed a luxury hotel in Manila that the two dozen rebels had occupied. The mutinous soldiers were arrested after a day-long siege and led away from the Peninsula Hotel in handcuffs. Police said they expected to make further arrests of individuals believed to have supported the rebels.

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The US Government has welcomed Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s pledge to lift a state of emergency on 16 December but have urged Pakistan’s leader to go further and ensure free and fair parliamentary elections in January.

President Musharraf, who took power in a coup in 1999, was sworn in for a new term as a civilian head of state on Thursday after resigning as army chief.

The US, which regards Pakistan as a close ally in its war on terror, denied that Mr Musharraf had been pressurised into lifting the emergency or into giving up his military uniform.

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A by-election which will be held this Sunday to fill one seat in Hong Kong’s sixty member legislature will pit two celebrity politicians against each other, energising debate on democratic reform in a city that returned to Chinese rule 10 years ago.

Hong Kong’s fractious pro-democracy camp is looking for a symbolic win after former civil servant Anson Chan suffered a demoralising defeat in this month’s district council elections at the hands of the city’s biggest pro-Beijing party.

Chan, 67, will be vying for the seat against Regina Ip, 57, another former civil servant who enjoys the support of the pro-establishment constituency but is perhaps best known for trying to ram an unpopular anti-subversion law through the legislature in 2003 when she was security chief.

A win by Chan, who led in recent polls, could give the democratic camp some momentum ahead of a five-yearly legislative election in 2008, analysts say.

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A court in Ontario, Canada has agreed to allow a China-based group of lawyers backed by the Chinese Communist regime to make a submission in a torture lawsuit against former communist party leader Jiang Zemin, but not without some heavy restrictions.

The All-China Lawyers Association (or ACLA), which earlier said it wanted the case against Jiang dismissed, will be limited to a 20-page submission on the application of Canada’s State Immunity Act.

The ACLA was seeking friend-of-the-court status in a lawsuit waged by six Canadian residents who were tortured in China for their belief in Falun Gong, a spiritual practice persecuted by the Chinese regime.

In a ruling released Friday, Madam Justice Maureen Forestell noted there likely exists a strong relationship between ACLA and the defendants, which includes Jiang and four other high-ranking Chinese officials who have played key roles in the eight-year persecution of Falun Gong.

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Archaeologists have unveiled an ancient Xi Han dynasty tomb dating back about 2000 years in Jinzhou city, Hubei province, central China.

The tomb contained silk, china, cups, and other relics along with the coffin, but the artefacts were not preserved as well as archaeologists had hoped.

China’s communist government has a poor history of protecting its archaeological sites with an ongoing construction boom contributing to the destruction of many them.

In July, about ten tombs dating back nearly 1,800 years were destroyed by construction workers building a shopping mall in Nanjing.

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In related news from NTDTV, according to a survey from the Beijing University of Technology, in 2006, only one third of Chinese traditional buildings were still standing with destruction of culturally and historically significant buildings commonplace since the Communist Party took power in 1949.

Experts are concerned that the destruction of the city’s built environments will leave future generation with no connection to or understanding of the nation’s history and tradition.

Experts say this trend is especially prevalent in cities like Beijing where development is proceeding practically uncontrolled for future events such as the Olympic Games.

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