Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Saturday 1st August

In this Bulletin…

- Amnesty International campaigning for Chinese lawyer’s release ;
- Aung San Suu Kyi supporters demonstrate across Asia; and
- Japanese exports rise, but so does unemployment.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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As the oppression of Chinese human rights lawyers continues, a member of Beijing’s Open Constitution Initiative was seized by police during a raid on his home on Wednesday.

Xu Zhiyong had recently publicly criticised the Chinese authorities closing down and fining off the organisation’s legal research centre.

The Open Constitution Initiative is a group of lawyers willing to tackle cases involving human rights and public welfare issues. Members of the group represented parents of children poisoned during China’s tainted milk scandal despite the regime deterring lawyers from doing so.

Xu said the authorities’ actions ultimately punished the many thousand powerless people who needed help.
Beijing recently revoked the licenses of 53 lawyers, many of whom are renowned human rights activists.

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In related news, a human rights lawyer from Liaoning Province who has defended Falun Gong practitioners in court has been arrested and beaten by police.

On July 4, Wang Yonghang and his wife were taken to a detention centre by plainclothes police who broke into their home in Dalian City without a warrant.

Around 20 police searched their home, confiscating computer equipment and a camera, as well as several books belonging to Mr. Wang’s wife, herself a Falun Gong practitioner.

Mr Wang’s wife was released the next day. On July 6 she learned that he was being detained at Dalian City Police Detention Centre, however she was prevented from seeing him, as were the two lawyers she subsequently hired.

Amnesty International has launched an urgent appeal calling for Wang’s release.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast
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Right across Asia, protesters, including Burmese dissidents and human rights activists, say Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is innocent of all charges filed against her, reports NTDTV.

They describe her trial as a ploy by the Burmese government to keep her in jail until after next year’s elections.

Around 50 protesters marched in front of the Burmese Embassy in Manila on Friday with a huge banner saying to sentence Suu Kyi would be to sentence democracy in Burma. One of the protesters told NTDTV the world knows that Suu Kyi will receive a guilty verdict, but that it is really the military junta who are the guilty ones.

Similar protests were held in Bangkok, Seoul and Tokyo.

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There are signs that Japanese manufacturing is continuing to recover as factory output in June rose for the fourth month in a row, up 2.4 per cent from May.

From April to June, output rose 8.3 per cent compared with January to March. The biggest quarter-on-quarter rise since 1953.

However, factory output last quarter was still substantially lower than the same time a year earlier.

Separate figures showed consumer spending was down again last month and unemployment reached a six-year high.

Retail sales were also down as consumers continued to cut spending because of job market fears.

Analysts said the two sets of official figures showed that Japan’s slow recovery from recession was being led by exports, but that domestic consumption remained weak.

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According to a report by an Indian sustainability campaign group, India is emerging as the world centre of hunger and malnutrition.

The Navdanya Trust says that there are more than 200 million people, a quarter of the population, going without enough to eat.

The prominent environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who runs the trust, said there were now more hungry people in India than in sub-Saharan Africa. Ms Shiva said that 57 million children in India are underweight due to malnutrition.

The government has not responded to the report which was released on Thursday.

But it has repeatedly pointed out that huge progress has been made in recent years to improve the country’s food security as its population grows by an estimated 18 million people a year.

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Landslides in the mountains of western Nepal killed five people on Friday, raising the death toll from landslides and floods during this year’s monsoon season to 43, officials said.

An additional 12 people are missing, including nine who are unaccounted for after landslides in eastern Nepal, Home Ministry official Ishwar Regmi told reporters.

The five deaths Friday happened in Syangja district, about 150 km west of the capital Kathmandu, and the nine who are missing are from Sankhuwasabha district, about 400 km east of the capital.

About 30 people have died in landslides and floods in the past six days, Regmi said. Hundreds of people in different parts of the country have been displaced by fear of landslides.

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