Asia Cast

Asia Cast for Sunday 22nd November

In this Bulletin…

- China not acknowledging H1N1 outbreaks;
- Top CCP officials indicted for torture and genocide of Falun Gong; and
- Vietnam is stepping up its internet blockade.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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Cases of H1N1 have been discovered in many areas in China, and it appears that local government officials are choosing not to acknowledge the seriousness of the epidemic, said The Epoch Times.

In Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, patients were diagnosed with H1N1 only after they died.

A resident in Bao’an Town of Huangshi City in Hubei Province told The Epoch Times that 3,000 students of the Third Daye High School have contracted H1N1. On Wednesday the school suspended classes for seven days.

School and town officials have denied to The Epoch Times that there are any cases of H1N1 in the town or school at all.

Read more on this story at The Epoch Times.

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China’s state-run news is reporting at least 87 people are now known to have died in a coal mine blast in northern China.

An additional 21 miners are reportedly still missing in the Xinxing pit in Hegang City, Heilongjiang Province.

The number of dead has more than doubled since earlier. Some 528 workers were in the mine when the blast hit before dawn on Saturday local time, state-run news reported.

The death toll makes the accident among the worst reported in recent years in China’s notoriously dangerous mines.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast

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Five high-ranking Chinese Communist Party officials have been indicted in a court in Spain for crimes of torture and genocide against Falun Gong practitioners, reports NTDTV.

Among them is former head of the Communist Party, Jiang Zemin who is responsible for launching the brutal campaign in 1999 to “eradicate” the Falun Gong meditation practice.

The court decision means Jiang and the others have 4 to 6 weeks to reply to the judge’s request for their testimony. Otherwise they could face extradition.

They could be arrested if they travel to any of the dozens of countries that have extradition treaties with Spain, including the United States. They could then be sent to Spain, where they would stand trial and face up to 20 years in prison.

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A United States advisory panel on U.S.-China relations has warned Chinese spies are aggressively stealing secrets to build up China’s military and economic power.

The panel members urged U.S. Congress to ensure the country was adequately protected against Chinese spying in a report published the same week the U.S. president was on official visit to China.

The report which was produced by the U.S-China Economic and Security Review Commission says China’s spying is becoming more intense and sophisticated.

A senior military officer stated that the defence department had detected 54,640 malicious cyber incidents to its systems in 2008, with China the largest culprit.

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

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Many of Vietnam’s one million internet users are reporting problems accessing the social networking site Facebook, yet Vietnamese officials have denied they are deliberately blocking access to users.

State-run internet service provider FPT says it has been working with foreign companies to get to the root of the fault blocking connections to Facebook’s U.S. servers.

However workers at many web firms say the government ordered them to block it.

Also, authorities have arrested several bloggers and online journalists, and are ordering people to restrict their online writing to personal concerns.

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Sri Lanka’s closed-site refugee camps set up in the country’s north for Tamils fleeing the final stages of the civil war will be opened next month and the people held within the camps will be allowed to leave them for a day or two at a time, to visit friends and relatives, for example.

Criticised for keeping them there against their will, the government insisted that incarceration was necessary while the refugees were being screened for possible links with the rebels.

An aide to the president confirmed a pledge to close the facilities, which house more than 130,000 people.

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