World News

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10100479

Ottawa's reaction to a new Chinese law on ethnic unity is tepid and does not live up to Canada's promise to stop foreign governments from threatening diaspora abroad, a Uyghur rights activist said.

The law, which Beijing enacted in early July, gives a legal basis for the Chinese government to prosecute people or organizations outside China if their actions are deemed to harm the progress of "ethnic unity."

"It is a textbook example of transnational oppression," said Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project.

"Our reaction to China is fading away, day by day, week by week. And then we don't hear too much about transnational repression or gross violations of human rights."

China says the law promotes harmony among the country's 55 ethnic groups, who make up just under nine per cent of the country's 1.4 billion population. The law mandates the use of Mandarin Chinese as the primary language in education.

The law says all Chinese citizens have a duty to "forge a common consciousness of the Chinese nation according to law and the constitution."

It may impact minorities like Tibetans and Uyghurs, who have protested Beijing policies in the past, including through violent means.

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Canada's ambassador to United Nations agencies in Geneva, Peter MacDougall, listed the law along a series of issues that Ottawa is watching, in a June 16 statement to the United Nations Human Rights Council, responding to an annual report on human rights worldwide.

"We are also concerned about the ethnic unity law in China, and call for respect of the human rights of minorities," he said, while also touching on unrelated issues in Afghanistan, Iran and Ukraine.

Tohti said he's stunned Ottawa had nothing to say about the risks of the law being used to persecute people in Canada and elsewhere.

"It is a vague and very weak statement," Tohti said. "The nature of Chinese transnational repression, that dimension is almost ignored. And that should be the key focus for Canada."

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Tohti said there is particularly a risk of China issuing arrest warrants that could see people arrested if they travel to countries with extradition treaties with China such as South Korea. Already, Hong Kong's sweeping national security law has been used to issue bounties for activists abroad, including in Canada.

He said Ottawa should mount a global effort to protect Chinese dissidents from the law, but he fears the government has given up on publicly raising human rights issues ever since Prime Minister Mark Carney's visit to Beijing in January.

Tohti noted the Carney government made transnational repression a priority when it hosted the G7 summit last year.

"We should be playing a leadership role. Now we almost drop all of this important leverage from our agenda, and so we are talking softly now. We don't talk too much about China's human rights," he said.

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Deputy Conservative Leader Melissa Lantsman called the law "oppression with a legal stamp" by the Chinese Communist Party.

"Beijing’s new 'ethnic unity law' is just the latest tool in the CCP’s playbook of control, from crushing minority rights at home to menacing Taiwan abroad. Authoritarianism doesn’t stop at borders with this," she wrote on the platform X.

The European Union and the U.S. State Department have said they will not allow the new Chinese law to be applied within their territories. Canada has not explicitly said that.

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10100470

A former federal scientist in an alleged foreign interference case is accused of copying more than 2,000 documents off a shared departmental server to share with China as his lifelong career was nearing its end, CBC News has learned.

Dennis Lu faces trial in Ottawa next year. He researched clean energy with Natural Resource Canada’s Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology for decades, specializing in carbon capture and decarbonization. He was fired during the week of his scheduled retirement in August 2023.

The 65-year-old is charged under the Criminal Code with two counts of unauthorized use of a computer and one count of breach of trust relating to his federal duties.

The alleged breach dates from the day Lu began a leave of absence to travel to Taiwan and China in 2023 to the date of his arrest in 2024. He had recently returned to Canada after living in China for about a year following his departure from Natural Resources Canada.

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The Crown alleges that Lu's devices, seized during the execution of a search warrant at his Ottawa home, contain evidence of questionable affiliations and employment with Chinese companies, universities and academics against Natural Resources Canada’s internal rules — and that Lu intended to share the documents with China, the records state.

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The Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS) briefed Natural Resources Canada about Lu at least three times between 2000 and 2021, the court records show.

The last CSIS briefing was made to Natural Resources Canada's chief of security in February 2021. That prompted an internal investigation in January 2023 to monitor, search and seize information from Lu's computer using "specific word phrases" to see if any of Lu's conduct was "actionable" and to "determine the credibility of the CSIS flags," the records state.

In February 2023 Lu took a leave of absence to travel and the following month he told his manager that he intended to retire in August that year, according to the records.

It's alleged that Lu sent nearly 2,000 emails from his work email account to his personal email account while he was in China, the records state.

Natural Resources Canada cut Lu's access to his work email and its servers in early June 2023, and when Lu returned to Canada at the end of that month, he asked about it. A manager ordered Lu's access reinstated so his retirement could be processed.

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On July 7, 2023, Lu allegedly copied 2,414 documents from a Natural Resources Canada shared server onto a device, and on Aug. 9, 2023, a further 188 documents from the shared drive onto a separate device.

Natural Resource Canada officials interviewed Lu about the copied documents on Aug. 17, 2023. That same day, the department told the RCMP about the findings of its internal investigation into Lu, the records state.

A year later, he was arrested and charged by members of Ottawa INSET, an RCMP-led team of law enforcement and intelligence partners that handles threats to national security. He had just returned to Ottawa after spending his first year of retirement living in China.

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/67827582

"This is a coalition of warmongers," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, accusing the group of wanting to "continue the war"

Is it right for the Kremlin to describe Ukraine's European supporters as "warmongers" given that it is Russia which made its own choice to start a war with Ukraine?

Under the proposal, anyone who publicly or at a gathering denies the right of the State of Israel to exist, or calls for its elimination, would face punishment.

archieve: https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-902237

original url : https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-902237

Under the proposal, anyone who publicly or at a gathering denies the right of the State of Israel to exist, or calls for its elimination, would face punishment.

archive: https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-902237

original url : https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-902237

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/67724986

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/67725030

Non-paywalled: https://archive.is/jVHBm

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10077088

The United States, the United Kingdom and a dozen other Western and Asian countries reasserted on Sunday that China’s expansive claims in the South China Sea are illegal based on a 2016 arbitration ruling.

A joint statement issued by the 14 nations said they rejected “destabilizing” actions in the disputed waters that threaten regional stability. The 27-nation European Union released a separate statement, reaffirming the ruling as a “landmark decision in the peaceful settlement of disputes."

The statements commemorated a July 12, 2016, arbitration ruling by a tribunal established in The Hague under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, saying the landmark decision is “is final and legally binding."

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China refused to join the arbitration initiated by the Philippines in 2013 after a tense standoff in the contested waters a year earlier that ended with Beijing effectively seizing a disputed shoal.

Beijing rejected the 2016 ruling and continues to defend its claims to virtually the entire sea passage, a key global trade route that has long been feared as one of Asia’s most active flashpoints. The areas has been the scene of repeated territorial standoffs involving China and the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

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In addition to the U.S. and Britain, the other countries listed in Sunday's statement were the Philippines, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Italy, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia.

“We reiterate our strong opposition to any destabilizing or unilateral actions including by force or coercion that threaten peace and stability in the region,” they said.

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Territorial confrontations in the disputed waters have become more prevalent in recent years, particularly between Chinese and Philippine and Vietnamese forces and fishing fleets.

Chinese coast guard ships and support vessels have used powerful water cannons, military-grade lasers and dangerous blocking maneuvers against Philippine forces and fishermen from rival claimant countries that have led to collisions in the high seas and high-risk encounters in the air.

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Archived

cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/10083500

The plenary of the European Parliament has called this Tuesday to intensify efforts to deepen diplomatic relations and security cooperation with democracies such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, in the face of the advance of "authoritarian" models in East Asia in a context of high global geopolitical tension.

The resolution, approved with 542 votes in favor, 37 against, and 79 abstentions, underlines that the EU needs a more decisive approach to East Asia in order to reduce strategic dependencies and strengthen its economic security.

Faced with a regional dynamic increasingly conditioned by "coercive" economic practices and growing security tensions, MEPs advocate for intensifying collaboration with partners who share democratic values and high regulatory standards.

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MEPs also recall that East Asia not only constitutes an essential pillar of global trade, technological innovation, and critical supply chains, but is also a key player for international security in the face of challenges such as the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, China's influence on the geopolitical chessboard, or the growing cooperation between Russia and Pyongyang.

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At the same time, the European Parliament recognizes the leadership role of Japan and South Korea in areas such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), defense technologies, and response to cyber and military threats. Therefore, it proposes promoting military-industrial cooperation focused on interoperability, joint development, and capability acquisition, particularly in aviation and drone technologies.

The resolution also advocates for consolidating strategic alliances with Japan and South Korea through closer cooperation in security and defense, including cybersecurity, the fight against terrorism, crisis management, and combating disinformation and foreign interference, in addition to strengthening economic ties.

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Likewise, the text advocates for creating a specific framework for cooperation between the EU and Taiwan with a marked economic and commercial dimension, focused on semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and cybersecurity and maritime security.

Archived

Dies from a sudden illness

Drug overdose or he was suffering from long term AIDS. Oh well, carry on.