Headlines
Police in northwestern China are cracking down on writers of online erotic fiction across the country, including many college students,according to RFA sources and media reports, amid concern that officers are punishing people outside their jurisdiction.
One of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, Joshua Wong, was transported from prison to court Friday and charged with colluding with foreign forces, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Tibetan activists protested for a “Free Tibet” during a women’s soccer friendly between the United States and China at the weekend — and won the support of other spectators who booed when they were briefly evicted from their seats by security.
An 88-year-old mother whose son died in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre has trouble even walking to a Beijing cemetery to commemorate his passing every June 4, but authorities still keep her under surveillance. “Am I that scary?” she asks.
Rohingya rights groups on Thursday decried “regional inaction and global neglect” over the plight of the Muslim minority from Myanmar after more than 400 refugees were feared drowned when two boats sank this month after setting sail from Bangladesh.
The Thai prime minister said Wednesday she spoke to her Cambodian counterpart to reduce tensions after Cambodia said one of its soldiers was killed in a brief gunfight with Thai troops at a sensitive border region.
Two captured North Korean soldiers fighting with Russia in its war against Ukraine were not among the 1,000 prisoners of war recently repatriated by Ukraine to Russia due to a request from Seoul, said a South Korean lawmaker.
One North Korean woman described how her father died of starvation. Another said her friends were publicly executed for watching and sharing South Korean television dramas. North Korea’s ambassador appeared unmoved. When he got up to speak, he described it as a political scheme and labeled the women as “human scum.”
North Korean authorities have distributed high-performance handheld radio signal detectors to border security agents as part of an intensified campaign to block residents from making unauthorized phone calls to South Korea, local sources told RFA.
A human rights group is urging Kazakhstan not to deport to China a 23-year-old ethnic Kazakh man who fled from Xinjiang several weeks ago, warning he could face persecution and internment there.