Hotznplotzn

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49528159

Archived

Peru’s interim president, José Jerí, has denied lying to the country and claimed he was the victim of a plot to discredit him amid a growing political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen.

[...]

The scandal broke with the emergence of videos of the meetings, showing the president, wearing a top with a hood pulled over his head in one and in dark glasses and gesturing wildly while making a telephone call in the other.

Both meetings were with a well-connected Chinese businessman, Yang Zhihua, whom Jerí refers to as “Johnny” and who has resided in Peru for decades. Yang has built a small business empire including shops, restaurants and a concession for a hydroelectric project.

Prosecutors say another Chinese citizen, Ji Wu Xiaodong, who was present at the first meeting in the restaurant, is accused of belonging to an illegal timber-trafficking network known as Los Hostiles de la Amazonia and had been placed under house arrest for two years.

[...]

Official records show Ji Wu, an accredited Spanish translator who had worked with Lima’s Chinese embassy, made several visits to the presidential palace in the last few months, accompanied by Yang.

[...]

The interim president had previously issued a public apology after the meeting at the Chinese restaurant emerged, which appeared to have been shakily filmed on a smartphone [...] But hours after Jerí’s apology, another video emerged showing the second meeting with Yang, at his store in Chinatown, which had been forced to close by Lima’s municipal government for selling unauthorised products.

[...]

The Chinese firm Cosco Shipping Ports built a fully automated deepwater port in Chancay, 50 miles (80km) north of Lima, which has been operating since November 2024 and offers an express trade route to China.

[...]

Archived

Peru’s interim president, José Jerí, has denied lying to the country and claimed he was the victim of a plot to discredit him amid a growing political scandal over his secretive meetings with Chinese businessmen.

[...]

The scandal broke with the emergence of videos of the meetings, showing the president, wearing a top with a hood pulled over his head in one and in dark glasses and gesturing wildly while making a telephone call in the other.

Both meetings were with a well-connected Chinese businessman, Yang Zhihua, whom Jerí refers to as “Johnny” and who has resided in Peru for decades. Yang has built a small business empire including shops, restaurants and a concession for a hydroelectric project.

Prosecutors say another Chinese citizen, Ji Wu Xiaodong, who was present at the first meeting in the restaurant, is accused of belonging to an illegal timber-trafficking network known as Los Hostiles de la Amazonia and had been placed under house arrest for two years.

[...]

Official records show Ji Wu, an accredited Spanish translator who had worked with Lima’s Chinese embassy, made several visits to the presidential palace in the last few months, accompanied by Yang.

[...]

The interim president had previously issued a public apology after the meeting at the Chinese restaurant emerged, which appeared to have been shakily filmed on a smartphone [...] But hours after Jerí’s apology, another video emerged showing the second meeting with Yang, at his store in Chinatown, which had been forced to close by Lima’s municipal government for selling unauthorised products.

[...]

The Chinese firm Cosco Shipping Ports built a fully automated deepwater port in Chancay, 50 miles (80km) north of Lima, which has been operating since November 2024 and offers an express trade route to China.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49511667

Archived

On 18 January 2026, woman human rights defender Yang Li was intercepted by plain-clothes police, detained and forcibly prevented from travelling to Beijing to seek urgent medical treatment whilst in a critical condition.

[...]

Yang Li is a woman land human rights defender from Jintan District, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Since 2014, she has peacefully documented and spoken publicly about the human rights impact of illegal land expropriation, forced eviction, and demolition in her community, including the displacement of residents and the lack of adequate compensation. She has pursued legal redress through cases before the Jiangsu High People’s Court and a petition submitted in 2023 to Beijing’s National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49511667

Archived

On 18 January 2026, woman human rights defender Yang Li was intercepted by plain-clothes police, detained and forcibly prevented from travelling to Beijing to seek urgent medical treatment whilst in a critical condition.

[...]

Yang Li is a woman land human rights defender from Jintan District, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Since 2014, she has peacefully documented and spoken publicly about the human rights impact of illegal land expropriation, forced eviction, and demolition in her community, including the displacement of residents and the lack of adequate compensation. She has pursued legal redress through cases before the Jiangsu High People’s Court and a petition submitted in 2023 to Beijing’s National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49511598

Archived

UN experts expressed deep concern regarding persistent allegations of forced labour affecting Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz minority groups as well as Tibetans within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and across other parts of China.

“There is a persistent pattern of alleged State-imposed forced labour involving ethnic minorities across multiple provinces in China,” the experts said. “In many cases, the coercive elements are so severe that they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity.”

According to the experts, forced labour in China is enabled through the State-mandated “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” programme, which coerces Uyghurs and members of other minority groups into jobs in Xinjiang and other regions. They are reportedly subjected to systematic monitoring, surveillance and exploitation, with no choice to refuse or change the work due to a pervasive fear of punishment and arbitrary detention. Xinjiang’s five-year plan (2021 to 2025) projects 13.75 million instances of labour transfers. The actual numbers have reached new heights.

[...]

The experts said Tibetans are also subject to forced labour through similar schemes such as the Training and Labour Transfer Action Plan, with calls for systematic training and transfer of “rural surplus labourers.” “These policies justify coercive methods such as military-style vocational training methods. The number of Tibetans affected by labour transfers in 2024 are estimated to be close to 650’000.

Tibetans are also reportedly displaced through the “whole-village relocation” programme which applies coercion to manufacture consent, such as repeated home visits, implicit threats of punishment, banning of criticism, or threats of cutting essential home services.

“Between 2000 and 2025 some 3.36 million Tibetans have been affected by government programmes requiring them to rebuild their house for nomads to become sedentary, whilst official statistics say that around 930,000 rural Tibetans have been relocated through either whole village relocation or individual household relocations,” the experts said.

[...]

The experts urged investors and businesses operating and sourcing from China to conduct human rights due diligence in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by taking the supply-chain related risks into consideration.

“Companies must ensure that their operations and value chains are not tainted by forced labour,” they said, reiterating their call for unfettered access by independent UN human rights mechanisms to China.

[...]

Archived

On 18 January 2026, woman human rights defender Yang Li was intercepted by plain-clothes police, detained and forcibly prevented from travelling to Beijing to seek urgent medical treatment whilst in a critical condition.

[...]

Yang Li is a woman land human rights defender from Jintan District, Changzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Since 2014, she has peacefully documented and spoken publicly about the human rights impact of illegal land expropriation, forced eviction, and demolition in her community, including the displacement of residents and the lack of adequate compensation. She has pursued legal redress through cases before the Jiangsu High People’s Court and a petition submitted in 2023 to Beijing’s National Public Complaints and Proposals Administration.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49511598

Archived

UN experts expressed deep concern regarding persistent allegations of forced labour affecting Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz minority groups as well as Tibetans within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and across other parts of China.

“There is a persistent pattern of alleged State-imposed forced labour involving ethnic minorities across multiple provinces in China,” the experts said. “In many cases, the coercive elements are so severe that they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity.”

According to the experts, forced labour in China is enabled through the State-mandated “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” programme, which coerces Uyghurs and members of other minority groups into jobs in Xinjiang and other regions. They are reportedly subjected to systematic monitoring, surveillance and exploitation, with no choice to refuse or change the work due to a pervasive fear of punishment and arbitrary detention. Xinjiang’s five-year plan (2021 to 2025) projects 13.75 million instances of labour transfers. The actual numbers have reached new heights.

[...]

The experts said Tibetans are also subject to forced labour through similar schemes such as the Training and Labour Transfer Action Plan, with calls for systematic training and transfer of “rural surplus labourers.” “These policies justify coercive methods such as military-style vocational training methods. The number of Tibetans affected by labour transfers in 2024 are estimated to be close to 650’000.

Tibetans are also reportedly displaced through the “whole-village relocation” programme which applies coercion to manufacture consent, such as repeated home visits, implicit threats of punishment, banning of criticism, or threats of cutting essential home services.

“Between 2000 and 2025 some 3.36 million Tibetans have been affected by government programmes requiring them to rebuild their house for nomads to become sedentary, whilst official statistics say that around 930,000 rural Tibetans have been relocated through either whole village relocation or individual household relocations,” the experts said.

[...]

The experts urged investors and businesses operating and sourcing from China to conduct human rights due diligence in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by taking the supply-chain related risks into consideration.

“Companies must ensure that their operations and value chains are not tainted by forced labour,” they said, reiterating their call for unfettered access by independent UN human rights mechanisms to China.

[...]

Archived

UN experts expressed deep concern regarding persistent allegations of forced labour affecting Uyghur, Kazakh and Kyrgyz minority groups as well as Tibetans within the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and across other parts of China.

“There is a persistent pattern of alleged State-imposed forced labour involving ethnic minorities across multiple provinces in China,” the experts said. “In many cases, the coercive elements are so severe that they may amount to forcible transfer and/or enslavement as a crime against humanity.”

According to the experts, forced labour in China is enabled through the State-mandated “poverty alleviation through labour transfer” programme, which coerces Uyghurs and members of other minority groups into jobs in Xinjiang and other regions. They are reportedly subjected to systematic monitoring, surveillance and exploitation, with no choice to refuse or change the work due to a pervasive fear of punishment and arbitrary detention. Xinjiang’s five-year plan (2021 to 2025) projects 13.75 million instances of labour transfers. The actual numbers have reached new heights.

[...]

The experts said Tibetans are also subject to forced labour through similar schemes such as the Training and Labour Transfer Action Plan, with calls for systematic training and transfer of “rural surplus labourers.” “These policies justify coercive methods such as military-style vocational training methods. The number of Tibetans affected by labour transfers in 2024 are estimated to be close to 650’000.

Tibetans are also reportedly displaced through the “whole-village relocation” programme which applies coercion to manufacture consent, such as repeated home visits, implicit threats of punishment, banning of criticism, or threats of cutting essential home services.

“Between 2000 and 2025 some 3.36 million Tibetans have been affected by government programmes requiring them to rebuild their house for nomads to become sedentary, whilst official statistics say that around 930,000 rural Tibetans have been relocated through either whole village relocation or individual household relocations,” the experts said.

[...]

The experts urged investors and businesses operating and sourcing from China to conduct human rights due diligence in line with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights by taking the supply-chain related risks into consideration.

“Companies must ensure that their operations and value chains are not tainted by forced labour,” they said, reiterating their call for unfettered access by independent UN human rights mechanisms to China.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49510692

Archived

Much analysis of Xi Jinping paints the Chinese president as a great disrupter, someone who has tossed out the rules of the game to maintain power at home and challenge the west head-on abroad.

[...]

But as the political scientist Minxin Pei convincingly argues [...], it is more accurate to see Xi as part of a communist continuum rather than radical change. More to the point, the focus on change in China distracted attention from what stayed the same — the ruling party’s absolute determination to remain in power, and the fact that it never relinquished the tools to do so.

“In retrospect, the relative ease with which Xi could turn back the clock and restore a form of totalitarian rule few had thought would be possible was not a random outcome of Chinese history in the post-Mao era,” writes Pei [in a new book].

If this analysis is right, the chances of democratic political reform in China remain just as dim in the future as they were in the past. Indeed, the Chinese leadership’s confidence in their system has only hardened over time.

[...]

Xi has used multiple tools to enforce his singular power — an anti-corruption campaign to take down rivals, increased surveillance, ideological enforcement and an ever-present enemy in the US, always useful to mobilise the system.

[...]

Xi has cracked down on entrepreneurs, especially digital giants such as Alibaba. His aim, as ever, was to erase any emerging centres of power not subservient to his agenda.

[...]

Chinese private companies have benefited from subsidies and protection. They can be closed at any time by the state, as they don’t enjoy any real legal protection. But they are also highly innovative, globally competitive and enormously useful to Xi’s agenda. Stalinism never enjoyed anything like it.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49510692

Archived

Much analysis of Xi Jinping paints the Chinese president as a great disrupter, someone who has tossed out the rules of the game to maintain power at home and challenge the west head-on abroad.

[...]

But as the political scientist Minxin Pei convincingly argues [...], it is more accurate to see Xi as part of a communist continuum rather than radical change. More to the point, the focus on change in China distracted attention from what stayed the same — the ruling party’s absolute determination to remain in power, and the fact that it never relinquished the tools to do so.

“In retrospect, the relative ease with which Xi could turn back the clock and restore a form of totalitarian rule few had thought would be possible was not a random outcome of Chinese history in the post-Mao era,” writes Pei [in a new book].

If this analysis is right, the chances of democratic political reform in China remain just as dim in the future as they were in the past. Indeed, the Chinese leadership’s confidence in their system has only hardened over time.

[...]

Xi has used multiple tools to enforce his singular power — an anti-corruption campaign to take down rivals, increased surveillance, ideological enforcement and an ever-present enemy in the US, always useful to mobilise the system.

[...]

Xi has cracked down on entrepreneurs, especially digital giants such as Alibaba. His aim, as ever, was to erase any emerging centres of power not subservient to his agenda.

[...]

Chinese private companies have benefited from subsidies and protection. They can be closed at any time by the state, as they don’t enjoy any real legal protection. But they are also highly innovative, globally competitive and enormously useful to Xi’s agenda. Stalinism never enjoyed anything like it.

[...]

Archived

Much analysis of Xi Jinping paints the Chinese president as a great disrupter, someone who has tossed out the rules of the game to maintain power at home and challenge the west head-on abroad.

[...]

But as the political scientist Minxin Pei convincingly argues [...], it is more accurate to see Xi as part of a communist continuum rather than radical change. More to the point, the focus on change in China distracted attention from what stayed the same — the ruling party’s absolute determination to remain in power, and the fact that it never relinquished the tools to do so.

“In retrospect, the relative ease with which Xi could turn back the clock and restore a form of totalitarian rule few had thought would be possible was not a random outcome of Chinese history in the post-Mao era,” writes Pei [in a new book].

If this analysis is right, the chances of democratic political reform in China remain just as dim in the future as they were in the past. Indeed, the Chinese leadership’s confidence in their system has only hardened over time.

[...]

Xi has used multiple tools to enforce his singular power — an anti-corruption campaign to take down rivals, increased surveillance, ideological enforcement and an ever-present enemy in the US, always useful to mobilise the system.

[...]

Xi has cracked down on entrepreneurs, especially digital giants such as Alibaba. His aim, as ever, was to erase any emerging centres of power not subservient to his agenda.

[...]

Chinese private companies have benefited from subsidies and protection. They can be closed at any time by the state, as they don’t enjoy any real legal protection. But they are also highly innovative, globally competitive and enormously useful to Xi’s agenda. Stalinism never enjoyed anything like it.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49453491

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/49453195

The [UK] government approved China's proposal to redevelop the former Royal Mint site [in London] into a vast 215,300 sq ft (20,000 sq m) UK headquarters, despite opposition from politicians and campaigners.

About 200 people live in Royal Mint Court, a complex of flats on the site, with many fearing a loss of privacy, disruption caused by protests and eviction.

[...]

On Tuesday evening, Royal Mint Court Resident's Association announced they had reached their target of £145,000 in donations, jumping from £35,000 12 hours earlier.

Campaigners say they will challenge the legality of the government's decision and believe there could be several grounds on which to bring their case.

These could include whether the government had a predetermined view on the development and whether redactions were made by the Chinese when they were asked to reveal detailed plans.

Planning law specialist Lord Charles Banner KC has been instructed to act for the association, they added.

[...]

Royal Mint Court resident and treasurer for the group, Mark Nygate, said they had received donations from people across the UK.

"We are humbled that so many of those persecuted by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), together with ordinary Brits up and down the country, have placed their faith in us, and stood by residents.

"We won't waste a single penny in ensuring that this embassy plan crashes on the solid rock of our judicial system."

The residents' campaign has the support of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a group set up to hold China to account on democracy and human rights issues.

Luke de Pulford, from the group, said: "The blistering speed with which this crowdfunder has reached its target is a clear indication of the sheer unpopularity of this mega-embassy.

"It remains to be seen if the world's second superpower is a match for UK planning law."

[...]

The embassy would be the biggest of its kind in Europe and would sit in close proximity with the financial district as well as fibre optic cables carrying sensitive information.

Opponents have warned it could serve as a base for spying and pose security risks.

[...]