Asia-Cast

Asia Cast for Sunday 20th June

In this Bulletin…

- Southern China devastated by heavy rains ;
- Thousands turn out for annual Dragon Boat Festival; and
- Malaysia pressured to review arbitrary detention.

But first we have our SOH focus on China.

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Hong Kong’s Security Bureau has announced that last month a radioactive leak occurred at a Chinese nuclear power station close to Hong Kong. But the power station’s Hong Kong based part-owners said there wasn’t a leak, but a minor rise in the radioactivity of the station’s cooling water.

The announcement by the Hong Kong security Bureau was in response to a report by Radio Free Asia. The report said the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station released dangerous amount of radioactive iodine into the air last month.

The Epoch Times website has more on this story.

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Chinese state media said over a million people living along rivers in China’s south have been evacuated. Water levels are becoming dangerously high as torrential rains continue to cause mayhem across southern China.

At least 69 deaths have been reported in floods and landslides after days of almost non-stop torrential downpours.

State media reported over 1.4 million people living along riverbanks and in low-lying areas had had to move.

The National Meteorological Centre warned more heavy rain was on the way. The cost of the disaster has reached $950 million US dollars.

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Please listen out at the end of this bulletin for news on upcoming changes to Asia Cast. Now back to the rest of today’s Asia Cast.

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Tibetans trying to rebuild their lives after a devastating earthquake are facing an unexpected problem; an official reconstruction project approved by China’s State Department.

The Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture is a region in China’s Qinghai Province mostly inhabited by Tibetans. In April this year a 6.9-magnitude earthquake affected the lives of nearly 100,000 people.

One Tibetan affected by the quake told The Epoch Times local authorities were preventing residents from rebuilding their own homes.

Check The Epoch Times for more about the difficulties Tibetans in the Yushu region are facing.

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The Epoch Times said over 10,000 people attended the annual Dragon Boat Festival in Taiwan’s Longtan Township last week.

The event has been held on the Longtan Pond for almost 100 years. As well dragon boat racing the festival includes a unique lion dance competition in which contestants perform highly technical lion dances on stakes placed in the middle of Longtan Pond.

The festival originated in China. It is a traditional holiday commemorating the death of the poet Qu Yuan. Qu Yuan drowned himself because he was distraught by politics. Local people beat drums and flailed the water to protect his spirit and to prevent the fish from eating his body. And it turned into a sport.

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An article in a leading medical journal has said up to 77 million people in Bangladesh have been exposed to toxic levels of arsenic from drinking water in recent decades.

The study was published online in The Lancet. It followed thousands of people over a 10 year period. And found 20 per cent of deaths among this group were caused by arsenic accumulating in the body.

Arsenic is a naturally occurring poisonous element. People started to become exposed to it in the 1970s when hand pumps were installed to reach underground water sources.

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The UN has urged Malaysia to repeal security laws allowing people to be detained without trial.

UN officials made the recommendation after investigating allegations of widespread abuse of detainees.

According to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, almost all those it interviewed said they were tortured or mistreated in Malaysia’s detention centres. The group said people preferred to be in prison than a detention centre as they felt safer there.

Malaysia says it is amending its preventative laws, but has not yet said how. Parts of these laws have been used against journalists and politicians in the past.

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Over the next week we’re going to be announcing some big changes to the format and frequency of Asia Cast. The changes are part of a drive to bring you, our listeners, as broad a range of interesting audio content as possible. Listen out for more on this throughout the week.

And we now bring you the Shen Yun quote of the day

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