Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Wednesday 29th July

In this Bulletin…

- Brick factories enslave the mentally disabled in China;
- Greenpeace urges China to reduce coal use; and
- Saudis rush to prevent Hajj swine flu crisis.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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Once again, brick factories in China were found to be using slave labourers. This time, there are 32 victims-all mentally disabled, reported The Epoch Times.

In 2007, the nation was shocked by reports that brick factories in central China’s Shanxi Province used child slaves-the youngest only 8-years-old.

Mr. Tang Jingling, a human rights activist from southern China told Radio Free Asia that slave workers are widely used by brick factories in China. The victims are not only limited to mentally disabled people.

Tang stated that the collusion between businesses and Chinese officials is the root cause and said it looks like there is a labour law with a decent standard, but that it’s carried out according to another standard.

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China is claiming it will reduce the number of people it executes to an extremely small number and the Supreme People’s Court has said the court will impose more suspended death sentences in the future.

Zhang Jun, vice-president of the Supreme People’s Court in China said it is impossible for China to abolish capital punishment under current realities and social security conditions.

Although the Chinese communist regime does not release figures on the number of people it executes, human rights campaigners say China executes more people than any other country. Amnesty International said China executed 1,718 people in 2008 – 72% of the world’s total.

The death penalty still applies to 60 offences in China, including non-violent crimes such as tax fraud and embezzlement.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast
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According to a new Greenpeace report, China’s energy firms’ high use of coal is hampering the country’s efforts to reduce the effects of climate change, as reported by NTDTV.

The report-called “Polluting Power: Ranking China’s Power Companies”-showed that China’s 10 largest power facilities burnt a total of nearly 600 million tons of coal last year, and it states China’s three largest energy producers alone emitted more CO2 in 2008 than the entire United Kingdom.

China has used coal to fuel economic growth for years because in China coal is cheap and abundant albeit harmful to the environment. Greenpeace is urging China to reduce its coal use in favour of clean, renewable energy sources.

China’s coal mines have the world’s worst safety record and mining coal is considered the deadliest job in China.

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Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said his country had no choice but to hold peace talks with Pakistan and said the alternative was to go to war which was not in anyone’s interest.

The leaders of the two countries met recently in Egypt and agreed to restart talks, but the move was heavily criticised in India.

A joint statement issued in Egypt two weeks ago led to major political fallout in India and was decried by opposition leaders as a climb-down from India’s demand that a resumption of talks should be linked to Pakistan acting against the planners of the Mumbai attacks.

Peace talks between the two neighbours were suspended after November’s Mumbai attacks, in which 170 people were killed, nine of them gunmen.

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You’re listening to Asia Cast on the SOH Radio Network
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A protest rally against last week’s elections by opposition supporters in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, has been broken up by police.

The opposition alleges that last week’s election, which saw President Kurmanbek Bakiyev re-elected with 76% of the vote, was fraudulent, and European monitors say the vote was flawed, with widespread cases of ballot box stuffing and multiple voting.

A group of about 300 protesters had left a market on the outskirts of Bishkek and had gone a short distance towards an opposition headquarters when they were intercepted by police. About forty protestors were arrested.

Main opposition candidate Almazbek Atambayev – a former prime minister, had secured 8% of the vote and declared the poll illegitimate. He is calling for mass protests against the government.

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Saudi Arabia has launched an investigation into its first fatality from the H1N1 Virus as it tries to head off a swine flu epidemic before millions descend for the annual Hajj pilgrimage in late November, health officials said.

The patient, a 30-year-old man who lived in the country’s Eastern Province, was admitted to a hospital in the city of Dammam last week. He died Saturday.

A spokesman for the Health Ministry said there were odd circumstances about his contracting the disease. He had never travelled outside the country and had no communicable diseases.

Of particular concern for Saudis is how to keep it from spreading among the millions of visitors expected in Saudi Arabia during this year’s Hajj pilgrimage.

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