Asia Cast

Asia Cast for Friday 13th November

Professors say violence between students and in society is a common site in China where the communist philosophy promotes fighting. (By Mark & Andrea Busse/Flickr)

In this Bulletin…

- Student beatings a common sight on Chinese campuses;
- Human rights group reports on China’s illegal detention centres; and
- North Korea say South Korea will pay for recent gunfire.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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One video circulating on Chinese websites shows a female student in Shanghai viciously beating another girl, a sight that some professors say is more common now, among students and in society, The Epoch Times reports.

The camera which caught the incident, rolled while bystanders snapped photos with their cell phones, laughing and chatting about the incident. At one point, someone lit a cigarette for the attacker.

One Chinese professor said education in China does not stress morality and the communist party itself promotes the philosophy of fighting which has a very bad influence on children.

Searching Chinese Web sites can yield thousands of videos of campus violence.

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While the Chinese regime maintains abortions and sterilizations are voluntary, a hearing on Tuesday in Washington, D.C. reveals another story, says NTDTV.

The Congressional Panel of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission heard accounts from one woman who became pregnant without a “birth permit.” She was hunted down by local family planning officials who then terminated her pregnancy with drugs and surgery.

Reggie Littlejohn, president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers told NTD the Communist regime is propagating lies and says that the regime knows if people understand that people are being dragged out of their homes and strapped down to tables and forcibly aborted, they’d be international outcry.

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Human Rights Watch has put out a report titled, An Alleyway in Hell, which declares ordinary people are often abducted off the streets in China and taken to illegal detention centres commonly known as “black jails.”

The report states they are sometimes stripped of their possessions, beaten and given no information about why they have been detained.

Many of those held are petitioners, people who travel to Beijing to present their complaints to the State Bureau for Letters and Calls.

Black jails are just one aspect of China’s inhumane detention system that has come in for international criticism over recent months.

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You’re listening to Asia Cast on the SOH Radio Network

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast

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New suspicions have been raised about the apparent attempted assassination of the former Taiwanese president in 2004, with the ruling party accusing him of staging the shooting in an attempt to win public support, a charge he denies.

The new probe was ordered by the ruling Nationalist Party (KMT), which fielded the candidate who lost to Mr Chen.

Investigators who re-examined the eve-of-election shooting of Chen Shui-bian found no blood or bullet holes in his underwear or trousers.

At the time it was claimed Mr Chen had been shot and wounded in the lower part of his abdomen.

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Thousands of Maoist activists have clashed with police on the streets of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, against the governing coalition.

Riot police used tear gas and batons to disperse activists who had surrounded the main government complex and blocked all entry points to the area.

The protests have caused traffic chaos throughout Kathmandu and are expected to continue on Friday.

The coalition government has asked the Maoists to call off their protests and they have refused to discuss Maoist demands, saying the issue has already been resolved.

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North Korea is threatening the South, calling the south warmongers who like to play with fire and threatening that the South will pay an expensive price for firing at Pyongyang’s retreating patrol boat on Tuesday.

The threat was published in the North’s official mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun Daily, while recently the two Koreas had met to discuss a possible summit between their leaders but failed to reach an agreement.

The navies from the two sides had exchanged gunfire for the first time in seven years.

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