Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Thursday 20th March

In this Bulletin

-East Timor’s President discharged from hospital
-Vietnamese woman faces firing squad and
-Chinese authorities intimidating villagers

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Five weeks after being wounded in an assassination attempt. East Timor’s President has been discharged from hospital in Australia.
Mr Jose Ramos-Horta sustained bullet wounds to the back and chest in the pre-dawn attack on his house in the East Timorese capital, Dili.

Leaving hospital in Darwin, the president thanked staff for their care and said he had been well looked after.
It remains unclear when he will return to East Timor.

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Human rights groups says thousands, of Tibetans that have been detained are at risk of torture amid a sweep by Chinese security forces throughout Tibet and other areas.

After days of violent protests against Chinese rule over the Himalayan region, China’s official Xinhua news agency said 105 Tibetan rioters in Lhasa had surrendered late last night, following a midnight Monday deadline in which they were promised leniency if they turned themselves in to authorities.

But exiled groups and rights activists say the number is in the hundreds, possibly the thousands.

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An Australian woman Luong of Vietnamese origin recently lost her court appeal and will now face a firing squad in Vietnam instead of serving a life term in prison, state-run newspapers reported.

The Court of Appeals accepted a proposal by prosecutors in Ho Chi Minh City yesterday to change the sentence for 34-year-old Jasmine Luong, who was found guilty by a lower court of trafficking heroin to Australia, the Liberation Saigon newspaper said.
She now has 15 days to appeal the sentence to the President.

Trafficking more than 600 grams of heroin is punishable by death or life imprisonment in Vietnam.

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The United Nations special representative to Burma says that his recent trip to the country yielded no solid results.

However, addressing the UN Security Council, Ibrahim Gambari promised that dialogue with the military-led government would continue.

He also made it clear that relations between Burma and the international community will not improve without Aung San Suu Kyi’s release.

Mr Gambari met the detained opposition leader on his visit earlier this month.

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And now for our original SOH news direct from China
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On 18th March, over 300 local party members and cadres of Jiangsu Province drove two trucks and four large earth-moving excavators to Binhu Village, Jiangsu official Town of a village to shore farmers, to intimidate farmers who defend their rights based on the law.

Officials know land-seizure violates the law, majority of the police officers are not in uniforms. Nearly 100 villagers protested loudly at the scene, accusing the officers’s involvement with developers plundering farmers land.

Authorities denied the incident. A Reporter tried to approach the lost-land farmers in the afternoon and evening but failed to reach them.

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Today marks the first day of the Chinese New Year Spectacular shows in Chiayi and Stockholm before continuing on the next leg of the tour of 60 cities worldwide.

The shows delighted audiences who gave it rave reviews on each of its nights in the major cities.

Through background scenery, costumes, and choreography, the Chinese New Year Spectacular expresses pure truthfulness, pure compassion, and pure beauty.

The spectaculars depict traditional Chinese values that have been suppressed in China over decades of communist rule and have received rave reviews from audiences of previous shows.

For show information please visit www.DivineShows.com

or more information about the Divine Performing Arts world tour, please visit: www.divineperformingarts.org

“Asia Cast… keeping you across the top headlines from Asia and the World.”

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