AsiaCast

Asia Cast for Thursday 10th December

In this Bulletin…

- School stampede kills 8 students in Chinese middle school;
- Tibetans jailed for posting Dalai Lama photos online; and
- India to secure naval harbours with electronic fencing.

But first, here’s our SOH focus on China
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China’s state-run media has reported that one girl and seven boys were trampled to death in a stampede at a middle school in south-central China, says NTDTV.

Twenty-six who were injured in the stampede and suffered broken bones, concussions and punctured lungs were taken to hospitals in Xiangxiang City, in Hunan Province.

Hundreds of students at the school who where leaving evening classes rushed down a narrow staircase, when apparently one girl tripped, causing many others to lose their balance and fall.

In the past seven years, more than 50 students in China have been killed in stampedes at school.

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In what may be seen as another move at controlling Chinese web content, China has closed one of their country’s largest file sharing sites because of an alleged crackdown against copyright infringement,

The file sharing site, BT China has been closed since Friday and another popular site VeryCD.com was down Wednesday.

Adding to China’s rising efforts in their extensive system of Web monitoring and censorship crackdowns on freedom of information, state-run media reports say other file sharing sites will be closing in the coming days.

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And now for the rest of today’s Asia Cast

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According to French-based media watch group Reporters Without Borders, two Tibetan youths have been given three-year jail sentences for posting photographs of the Dalai Lama online.

The two youths were charged with communicating information to contacts outside of China, as the communist regime has made it illegal to have or share photos of the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Reporters Without Borders is calling the convictions absurd and says that the young Tibetans have been detained in Lhasa since the first of October and their families have not been given any information about the two.

See more on this at NTDTV.

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Philippine investigators have so far charged 24 people with rebellion in the massacre on Mindanao Island last month.

30 journalists and 27 members of a rival clan were among the 57 killed in the November 23rd massacre.

Several figures of a local clan have been charged, just days after martial law was declared in the province where the killings took place.

Officials say two weeks ago a clan leader and local mayor surrendered to police and were charged with multiple counts of murder.

The Philippine national police chief says so far they have identified 161 suspects who directly participated in the killings.

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

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In efforts to secure their naval harbours against clandestine threats from sea, India is planning to install electronic fences as part of their Integrated Harbour Defence System, say security officials.

The deadly attacks in Mumbai in November of 2008, in which ten gunmen had sailed boats into Mumbai and killed over 170 people, have precipitated a greater need to protect the country’s coastline.

The defence system will have diver detection sonar, and high resolution radar with a shore-based command and control system, among other things.

Radar detectors will also be installed at distances of every 80 kilometres on the coastline.

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The government of Australia’s Northern Territory has given back sacred land to the original custodians of the land, the Eastern Arrernte tribe.

The land which is currently a nature park, was inhabited by the Arrernte for more than 20,000 years, and contains totems of a race of ancient giant caterpillars to which they trace their origins.

The park will still be open to the public under a joint management plan, where the land will be leased back to authorities and will continue on as a nature park.

The park is already a popular tourist site and some Aboriginies work there as tour guides or rangers.

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