Asia Cast

Asia Cast for Wednesday 1st July

The Sea Link Bridge in Mumbai in its final stages of construction. After ten years of production the Bandra-Worli Bridge is finally open to commuters. (By bombman/Flickr)

In this Bulletin…

- Chinese petitioners go abroad to appeal for human rights;
- Chengdu authorities snatch body of Falun Gong practitioner; and
- Mumbai sea bridge opens.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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The Shanghai-based League of Chinese Victims, a human rights organization, is appealing internationally about the gross human rights violations occurring in mainland China after China’s winning bid of the 2010 World Expo, said The Epoch Times.

In 2002 Shanghai won its bid to host the 2010 World Expo whose slogan is “Better City, Better Life” and the Chinese regime is investing a great deal of money, manpower and materials in preparation, an estimated $20 billion US dollars.

Just like with the Beijing Olympics, in preparation for the expo, officials are forcing people out of their homes, which are destined for demolition to make way for the event.

In its speech to the Council of Europe, the League exposed the tyrannical behavior occurring in Shanghai, with the moving of over one million residents so far, many times against their wills, and with physical force and violence.

The regime is targeting the human rights league as well. Before the 20th anniversary on June 4th of the Tienanmen Square Massacre, 48 Shanghai petitioners had been detained and the group’s legal counselor, renowned human rights lawyer Zheng Enchong had been summoned 60 times.

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Recently, 100 riot police sent by local authorities forcefully removed the body of a Falun Gong practitioner from a Chengdu morgue in Sichuan Province, said NTDTV.

Mr. Xie Deqing who was 69 years old and a retired staff member from the Chengdu Hydroelectric Investigation and Design Institute had gone to court to attend a trial of Falun Gong practitioners being persecuted.

But on arrival Mr. Xie and his wife were kidnapped by security and sent to the Chengdu Legal Education center to be brainwashed to denounce their belief that Falun Dafa is good.

He was released shortly after because his health had deteriorated and fell into a coma once he returned home. Eventually Mr. Xie passed away; his hands and body completely black and his family believing it was due to poisoning at the education center and the reason police snatched Mr. Xie’s body, leaving no evidence behind.

There have been scores of reported cases of Falun Gong practitioners who were injected with nerve-damaging drugs at the Chengdu Legal Re-education Center. Many who have made it out of the center became insane or disabled.

For more information on the persecution of Falun Gong visit the Falun Dafa Information Center.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast
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The Chinese regime’s mouthpiece, CCTV, has recently accused Google of being a porn search engine and has allegedly provided facts to back up its claim, reported The Epoch Times.

Yet bloggers in China are claiming such facts have been fabricated by the regime with the intention to support the mandatory installation of its new computer filtering software Green Dam which was to start July 1st and has since been put on hold indefinitely.

The CCTV program “In Focus” said links to porn sites were provided by Google even when searching with keywords such as “son” in Chinese, and the regime’s illegal internet information reporting center condemned Google China and called for action to “purify the Internet.”

However, required installation of the Green Dam software sparked a domestic and international controversy with the strongest opposition coming from Chinese Internet activists, bloggers and lawyers who threatened protests, lawsuits and other actions against the plan.

This has many thinking the plan was put on hold indefinitely due the huge amount of protests worldwide against the software .

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South Korean Defense Minister Lee Sang-hee announced North Korea is going ahead with its plans to enrich uranium, a likely step to making nuclear weapons.

North Korea announced earlier in June it would weaponise its plutonium stocks and start enriching uranium for a light-water nuclear reactor, something that Lee says clearly shows they are moving forward.

The North is already thought to possess enough reprocessed plutonium for between six and eight nuclear weapons, yet analysts say Pyongyang has not mastered the technology needed to make a nuclear warhead small enough to put on a missile.

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You’re listening to Asia Cast on the SOH Radio Network
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A very expensive bridge over the sea of India that took ten years and $400 million US dollars to build has been officially opened in Mumbai, the island city with a population of 18 million.

The bridge, built to ease traffic congestion and cut travel time between the western suburbs of Bandra with Worli over the Arabian Sea has eight lanes and may reduce travel from 45 minutes to six.

Critics of the bridge do not think it will help the traffic flow of its 1.5 million cars and counting.

Described as an engineering marvel, construction has yet to begin on other sections of the planned road and serious concerns remain about traffic congestion at either end of the Bandra-Worli Bridge.

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

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