China

Syria

Syria: controlled elections amid deepening crisis

To nobody’s surprise, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad’s bloc won a majority of seats in the country’s parliamentary election, dismissed as a farce by the exiled opposition. As in the presidential elections that confirmed Assad’s hold on the presidency in 1994, millions displaced by the war were not able to vote. The elections were held amid a deepening economic crisis, with the UN noting a 200% food price hike in under a year and warning of widespread hunger. Russia and China meanwhile continue to use their veto on the Security Council to block aid deliveries to opposition-held areas. (Photo: UNICEF via UN News)

Syria

OPCW condemns Assad regime over chemical attacks

Member states of the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) voted 29-1 to condemn Syria’s Bahsar Assad regime over chemical attacks on civilians in opposition-held areas. Overriding a sustained propaganda campaign by Russia, the regime and their supporters, the member states endorsed the conclusions by the OPCW Investigation & Identification Team that regime forces used sarin and chlorine in attacks on al-Lataminah, Hama governorate, in March 2017. Russia and Iran, the primary backers of the Assad regime since the Syrian uprising began in 2011, voted no, joined by China. There were nine abstentions. (Photo from April 2017 Khan Sheikhoun attack via EA Worldview)

Central Asia

Uighurs charge China officials with ‘genocide’ at ICC

Lawyers submitted a complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC), demanding that an investigation be opened into senior Chinese leaders for genocide and crimes against humanity, allegedly committed against the Uighurs and other Turkic peoples. The complaint was filed on behalf of the East Turkistan Government in Exile (ETGE) and the East Turkistan National Awakening Movement (ETNAM). China is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, but the lawyers argue that the ICC can exercise jurisdiction over these crimes because part of the criminal conduct occurred within the territory of two signatory states—Tajikistan and Cambodia. The complaint asserts that Uighur victims have been unlawfully deported to the People’s Republic of China from Tajikistan and Cambodia to face abuses including murder, unlawful imprisonment, torture, forced sterilization, and forced marriages. (Photo: ETNAM)

East Asia

Hong Kong pro-democracy groups ‘dissolve’

Hong Kong pro-democracy group Demosisto announced it will disband following China’s enactment of a “National Security Law” that extends Beijing’s control over the semi-autonomous city. The decision to disband came hours after three of the group’s leading activists, Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Agnes Chow, issued statements saying they were stepping down from the organization under threat of “political imprisonment.” (Photo: ANSA)

East Asia

Taiwan solidarity with Hong Kong —and BLM

At a rally at Taipei’s Liberty Square marking the one-year anniversary of the start of the Hong Kong protest movement, demonstrators held banners that read: “Taiwan and Hong Kong are partners together, the struggle remains unfinished,” and “Against the expansion of Chinese imperialism.” Earlier that day, demonstrators gathered in Taipei’s 228 Memorial Park for a show of a solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. Some speakers drew parallels between the contemporary police brutality in the US and the repression of dissidents during the “White Terror” of Taiwan’s authoritarian past. (Photo: CNA)

South Asia

Himalayan border conflicts escalate

China has mobilized thousands of troops backed up by armored vehicles to a contested area along the border with India in the Himalayas, where troops last month hurled stones at each other across the unmarked boundary known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC). The area in question is in the Galwan River valley between Ladakh, in Indian-administered Kashmir, and Chinese-administered Aksai Chin. Top generals from both sides held talks in Moldo, on the Chinese side, but tensions remain high. India charges that Chinese forces are hindering patrols by its troops along the LAC in Ladakh and Sikkim, and refutes Beijing’s claim that Indian forces have crossed to the Chinese side. (Map via Wikipedia)

East Asia

US-China brinkmanship over Taiwan

In an alarming tit-for-tat, Taiwan’s defense ministry said that several Chinese fighter jets briefly entered the country’s air defense identification zone, and the US took the unusual move of flying a C-40A military transport plane over Taiwan. The US overflight was assailed by Beijing’s Taiwan Affairs Office as “an illegal act and a seriously provocative incident.” This comes as the US is deploying three aircraft carrier strike groups to the Pacific—the first such triple deployment in three years, seen as an explicit warning to China. The deployment follows accusations by Lt. Gen. Kevin Schneider, commander of US forces in Japan, that China is using the COVID-19 crisis as a cover to push territorial claims in the South China Sea. (Photo of USS Nimitz: US Navy via USNI News)

East Asia

Hongkongers defy police on Tiananmen anniversary

Thousands gathered in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park to attend the annual candlelight vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre—in defiance of an unprecedented police ban, ostensibly imposed as a measure to contain COVID-19. Attendees wearing surgical masks clambered over police barriers to enter the park. Thousands of riot police on stand-by did not interfere, although there were street clashes as troops broke up gatherings elsewhere in the city. The commemoration—the only one that can be freely held on Chinese soil—may no longer be possible in future, following Beijing’s passage of a “National Security Law” harshly limiting Hong Kong’s autonomy. (Photo: HKFP)

East Asia

Podcast: for Minneapolis-Hong Kong solidarity

In Episode 53 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the pathological propaganda game in which Donald Trump exploits the pro-democracy uprising in Hong Kong and Xi Jinping exploits the uprising that has exploded across the US since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. With Trump scolding China over the Hong Kong repression even as he threatens to unleash military troops on protesters in the US, the contradictions could not be more evident. Weinberg urges the Hong Kong protesters to put down their American flags, and stateside protesters not to be fooled by Chinese Foreign Ministry statements in support of the uprising in the United States. Protesters in Hong Kong and the US are natural allies of each other—not of each other’s respective oppressors. Listen on SoundCloud. (Photo composite by Chris Rywalt, with images from AP and Reuters; fair use asserted)

Planet Watch

ICC complaint filed over COVID-19

The Canadian Institute for International Law Expertise (CIFILE) has asked the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate individual world leaders and the World Health Organization (WHO) for alleged international crimes relating to their handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. The group states that past disease outbreaks, including SARS, suggest that the director-general of the WHO should have notified nations well before the initial March 11 notification date. The complaint asserts that the response to the pandemic constitutes a “crime against humanity” under Article 7(k) of the Rome Statute. The complaint further states that the ICC may exercise jurisdiction over international crimes under Articles 12 and 13 when a member state of the ICC has been affected. Specifically the complaint cites Canada as an affected signatory to the Rome Statute. (Photo: WikiMedia via Jurist)

Planet Watch

Trump tears up arms control treaties

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo announced that the United States is formally withdrawing from the Treaty on Open Skies, a post-Cold War trust-building measure that allows the US and Russia to conduct unarmed reconnaissance flights over each others’ territories. Having last year withdrawn from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces treaty, the White House is now threatening to similarly abandon New START, the 2010 agreement that limits the US and Russia to 1,550 deployed nuclear missiles each. (Image: Lockheed Martin)

East Asia

Another independent journalist arrested in Wuhan

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists is urging Chinese authorities to immediately release journalist Zhang Zhan, drop any charges against her, and ensure that the media can cover the coronavirus pandemic without fear of arrest. Zhang, an independent video journalist who had been posting reports from Wuhan on Twitter and YouTube since early February, went missing in the city one day after she published a video critical of the government’s countermeasures to contain the virus. The Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau issued a notice stating that Zhang had been arrested and detained for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” If convicted, she could face up to five years in prison, according to the Chinese criminal code. (Photo: China News Service via Wikimedia Common)