Headlines
Memet Abdulla, the former chief of the forestry bureau of China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), was detained by national security officers on April 29, 2017, shortly after the launch of a campaign of mass extralegal incarceration that has since seen up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities held in a vast network of internment camps in the region. Abdulla is one of the highest-ranking officials whose detention and subsequent arrest in the campaign have been confirmed. Last year, RFA’s Uyghur Service confirmed details of his disappearance and sentencing to life in prison last year for being “two-faced”—a term regularly used by authorities to refer to Uyghur cadres who they say pay lip service to Communist Party rule in the XUAR, but secretly chafe against state repression of members of their ethnic group
Thailand believed it had avoided the worst of the novel coronavirus’s public health epidemic by closing its borders, but this has only devastated the country’s economy
In South Africa, a private security firm that uses dogs to sniff out illicit substances and explosives at airports is now training them to detect COVID-19
After months of battling the coronavirus pandemic, Europe is slowly getting back on track, with vaccines and economies improving, countries reopening their borders to international tourists, and countries emerging from lockdowns
China has been using social media networks like Twitter to spread positive propaganda about the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) since the start of the pandemic, according to a report published by an international press group
Southern Madagascar is experiencing severe hunger as food supplies have almost completely vanished, resulting in a full-fledged nutrition emergency. People have resorted to extreme measures such as consuming locusts, raw red cactus fruits, and wild leaves in order to survive. For the first time, pockets with the highest levels of Acute Food Insecurity – IPC phase 5 or “Catastrophe” – have been identified, signalling a worsening of hunger
One of the major dynamics of the Internet is its ability to connect physically distant people, with different profiles and those with common job description, and educational lane. This global connectivity on the cyberspace, allows people to easily connect and interact with the use of social applications, which help public and private sectors reconfigure their systems
The four new sports of surfing, sport climbing, skateboarding, and karate will be featured at the Tokyo Summer Olympics, which begin on July 23. Athletes from the United States will compete in all four new sports and have a decent chance of winning medals
A jailed Uyghur businessman has been confirmed to have died in a prison hospital in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), according to his nephew, leading to speculation that his death may have been the result of torture while in detention
Fundamentalist groups are harassing a growing number of female journalists in Bangladesh, creating security concerns for reporters on assignment