- During a campaign rally on July 13, 2024 for his re-election near Butler, Pennsylvania, former President Donald Trump was shot
and ducked to the ground as several Secret Service agents rushed to the stage and surrounded him on all sides, and took him to safety. A 20-year-old gunman, who fired multiple shots, injuring Trump’s right ear, killing one spectator, and critically injuring two others;
Secret Service agents neutralized the shooter who the FBI identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks. Trump said the motive wasn't clear. The incident has marked one of the most
serious acts of political violence in the U.S.
- Since 7 June 1967, Israel, a country established in 1948, has captured and occupied the Palestinian land, which covers the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. Israel has been accused of major violations of international human rights law,
including collective punishment, some amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity, in its administration of the occupied Palestinian territories.
These include illegal or random killings, random or unwarranted detention, punishment of family members for alleged offenses by a relative, targeted killings of Palestinians, and labor rights abuses against Palestinian workers. On July 19, 2024 the United Nations'
top court ruled that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal,
and ordered Israel to end its decades-long occupation of territories claimed by Palestinians for a future state.
- As a result of the Israel-Palestine conflict, on October 7, 2023 Israeli authorities said
1,139 Israelis and foreign nationals, including more than 300 soldiers, were killed, and 248 persons were taken hostage
(not all are still alive) when Hamas militants burst across the border into southern Israel. It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen
in a vacuum. Since the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s bombardment and offensive in Gaza killed around 39,000 Palestinians (as of 7/20/2024) without mercy, including over
14,500 children
and 13,000 women, and 500 medical personnel, with more than 86,030 injured and
over 1,000 missing.
- After Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Israeli military has carried out a large Israeli ground incursion into the Gaza Strip and tightened a years-long blockade to halt entry of most food, water and medical supplies to Gaza; as of
May 2024, over 85% of Gaza’s people have been displaced, and Gaza has plunged into a humanitarian crisis
with shortages of food, a quarter face starvation, and medical services. Especially, in the
February 1, 2024 incident, Israeli military directly fired at civilians
crowded around aid lorries of the south-western edge of Gaza city, asking for food, 112 people were killed and more than 760 injured by Israel; the White House called the deaths “tremendously alarming”, and people around the world were shocked
by this crime against humanity incident. In the April 1, 2024 incident, 7 aid workers from the food aid charity World Central Kitchen were terribly killed in Gaza by Israeli military, this puts the death toll among humanitarian aid workers at
over 200. In the June 8, 2024 raid to rescue 4 hostages,
Israel killed 274 Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women,
and 153 children and 161 women were among the nearly 700 wounded.
- The Biden administration said that it is “reasonable to assess” that Israeli forces used
US weapons in Gaza in ways that are “inconsistent” with international humanitarian law. Biden administration officials have for months
called on Israel to stop killing civilians and allow more aid into Gaza. There is an increasing friction between
Israel and the United States; the U.S. President, Biden, called Israel’s military operations in Gaza
“over the top" and said the suffering of innocent people has “got to stop.” There were
“missteps” by the Biden administration and expressed regret that the administration may have left a
“a very damaging impression” early in the war.
- Israel captured east Jerusalem, and seized the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria in
the 1967 Mideast war, which was fought between June 5 and 10, 1967 by Israel and the neighboring states of
Egypt (former United Arab Republic), Jordan, and Syria,
and later annexed east Jerusalem in a move not-recognized internationally Israel internationally.
- After the World War II, the majority of Jews in Arab countries
immigrated to Israel. Of the nearly 900,000 Jewish emigrants, approximately 680,000 emigrated to Israel and 235,000 to France;
the remainder went to other countries in Europe as well as to the Americas. About two thirds of the exodus was from the North Africa region, of which Morocco's Jews went mostly to Israel, Algeria's Jews went mostly to France, and Tunisia's Jews
departed for both countries. It is estimated that between 1956 and 1967, about 235,000 North African Jews from Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco immigrated to France. The United States was a destination of many Egyptian, Lebanese and Syrian Jews.
- From 1941 to 1945, six million Jews were killed by the Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
Nazi Germany also killed over 5 million non-Jews, which include Gypsies, Poles,
communists, homosexuals,
Soviet POWs, and the mentally and physically disabled people.
- In Afghanistan women and girls are being deprived of their dignity, rights and status at home and in the society.
The Taliban has enforced punitive laws restricting women's lives, and the government has been institutionalizing large-scale and systematic gender-based discrimination and violence against women and girls and limiting their education and rights.
Women have no rights to movement, no rights to education, and no rights to work. Women must cover their faces in public, and they are not allowed to go to parks and gyms; the government issued orders for girls aged 12-18 to stay home,
and prohibited them to go to high school.
- The Saudi government has been accused of and denounced by various international organizations and governments for violating human rights within the country. For example,
Ali al-Nimr was arrested at the age of 17 for his participation in the
2011 Arab Spring protests, and was sentenced to death by beheading at the age of 18. Saudi Arabia sentenced
the Saudi scholar Hassan al-Maliki to death; Al-Maliki has been behind bars since 2017 on multiple "charges", including “conducting
interviews with western news outlets” and “owning books” that are unauthorized by the Saudi government. Working conditions for the large expatriate labor force are often exploitative; racism in Saudi Arabia extends
to allegations of imprisonment, physical abuse, rape, overwork and wage theft, especially of foreign workers who are given little protections under the law. Saudi women face discrimination in many aspects of their lives;
for example, they cannot file police reports without the permission of a male guardian, and may end up being imprisoned by the government for complaining. Men are free to abuse women in Saudi Arabia, with reports of
women being locked in their rooms for months or threatened with starvation or shooting for offenses such as getting the wrong kind of haircut or being in a relationship with a man the family has not approved.
Although women make up 70% of those enrolled in universities, they only make up 5% of the workforce in Saudi Arabia, the lowest proportion in the world.
- Saudi Arabia (the largest economy in the Middle East
and the 18th largest in the world) restricts almost all political rights and civil liberties. The king combines legislative, executive, and judicial function, and also
serves as the prime minister, and presides over the Council of Ministers of Saudi Arabia and Consultative
Assembly of Saudi Arabia. The royal family dominates the political system. No officials at the national level are elected. Women and religious minorities are mostly excluded from leadership positions in the government, and face
extensive discrimination. Saudi
Arabia has judicial corporal punishment systems that include amputations
of hands and feet for robbery, and flogging for lesser
crimes such as "sexual deviance" and drunkenness. It was reported that women were sentenced to lashes for adultery even they were actually victims of rape.
Companies operating or planning to invest in Saudi Arabia face a moderate to high risk of corruption. In 2018, the government
charged 126 local government employees across the country with corruption, abuse of power and other crimes as part of a controversial
anti-corruption campaign that started in 2017, and it has ended this sweeping crackdown on corruption
recovered more than $106bn through settlements with scores of senior princes, ministers and top businessmen.
- Saudi Arabia has been called an epicenter of sex segregation, stemming partially from its conservative Sunni Islamic practices and partially from its monarchy's legal constraints. Women experience widespread discrimination
in Saudi politics, economy and society. For example, in Saudi Arabia, the law allows a man to control a Saudi woman's life from her birth until her death; if a woman is seen socializing with a man who is not a relative, the government
will charge her with committing adultery, fornication, or prostitution; the government does not allow women to have the right to unilaterally end a marriage, only men have the unconditional right to initiate a divorce.
- In addition to expressing growing concern over the Chinese government’s human rights violations in China and its repression in Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong, many countries around the world
have criticized China for its partnership with Russia. China, Russia's most valuable ally,
has repeatedly criticized Western sanctions against Russia, refused to follow other nations in leveling stiff economic sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, rejected to
condemn the Russian invasion, routinely amplifies Russian disinformation about the Ukraine-Russia's conflict, and does not refer to it as an invasion or a war in keeping with Russian practice.
- The Myanmar (Burma) military staged a coup on February 1, 2021, nullifying the results of the November 2020 elections and arbitrarily detaining hundreds of politicians, activists, and civil servants.
Myanmar has been in chaos since the Army seized power and detained elected government leader Aung San Suu Kyi and much of her party leadership after the coup alleging fraud in the election her party won in a landslide. Hundreds of thousands of people in Myanmar have
marched against the military junta to protest the coup. The military coup forces have confronted peaceful demonstrations, arrested thousands of people, and used lethal weapons to
shoot demonstrators. They have fired on protesters around the country, including Lashio in the northeast, Myeik in the deep south and Hpa-An in the east; as of March 20, 2021
Myanmar’s security forces have killed at least 235 people, wounded hundreds of others, and arrested more than 2,330 people,
in violent crackdowns against opposition to the coup.
- On 1/19/2021 the US has officially determined that China
is committing genocide and crimes against Uyghur people and religious minority groups. In China, since early 2017 the government has imprisoned more than 1 million people in the western Xinjiang region, including Uighurs and
other mostly Muslim ethnic groups, in a vast network of concentration camps. China authorities have
discriminated against these people by restricting their freedom to travel, emigrating, and attending schools, and denying other basic human rights of assembly, speech, and worship, and forcing men, women and children into
at least 380 concentration camps, where they have been subjected to torture, sterilization and political indoctrination in addition
to forced labor
as part of an assimilation campaign in a region whose inhabitants are ethnically and culturally distinct from the Han Chinese majority. While China has encouraged Han majority in Xinjiang to have more children, the government has slashed birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities by forcing intrauterine devices, sterilization and even
abortion on hundreds of thousands as part of a sweeping campaign to curb the Uighurs population; having more than children is a major reason Uighurs and minor people are sent to
prison camps in Xinjiang. China's actions and policies developed to discriminate against Muslim Uighurs and ethnic minorities constitute “crimes against humanity” and
a “genocide.”
- More than 1 million people - mostly from the Muslim Uighur community in China - are though to have been detailed without trial. These people literally do not know how long they are kept in the prison.
A leak document reveals how every aspect of a detainee's life is monitored and controlled: "The students should have a fixed bed position, fixed queue position,
fixed classroom seat, and fixed station during skills work, and it is strictly forbidden for this to be changed". The Chinese government has consistently claimed the camps in the far western Xinjiang region offer voluntary education and training.
But official documents show how inmates are locked up, and indoctrinated and punished. "It's a total transformation that is designed specifically to wipe the Muslim Uighurs of Xinjiang as a separate cultural group off the face of the Earth."
China has sought for years
to assimilate the Muslim Uighur population into the majority Han Chinese, partially by flooding Xinjiang province with migrants from elsewhere. But the effort to crush the population has recently picked up speed. This is an actionable piece of evidence,
documenting a gross human rights violation.
- The Chinese government has described its efforts in Xinjiang as a benevolent campaign to curb extremism by training people to find better jobs.
But the documents reveal the party’s efforts to organize a ruthless campaign of mass detention in the name of curbing terrorism, a program whose
consequences they discussed with cool detachment. When children asked the Chinese government about the disappearance of their parents and families
detained in camps built to hold Muslim minorities "Since it’s just training, why can’t they come home?", they were told ". It seems that you’re still misunderstanding how concentrated education is run. Usually, you would return home for winter or summer vacation
without any problem. But if you were careless and caught an infectious virus like SARS, you’d have to undergo enclosed, isolated treatment, because it’s an infectious illness. If you weren’t thoroughly cured, as soon as you returned home you would infect your
family with this virus, and your whole family would fall ill."
- Xinjiang is officially designated an autonomous region within China, like Tibet to its south.
Uighurs, who are ethnically Turkic Muslims, make up about 45% of the Xinjiang region's population; 40% are Han Chinese.
Uyghurs in Xinjiang suffer under a "fully-fledged police state" with extensive controls and restrictions upon their religious, cultural and social life because the Chinese government tightly controls religious expression and freedom
in Xinjiang by imposing rules on the Uighur community. More than 1 million Uighurs are being tortured and “politically brainwashed” in camps and prisons in China while China insisted that
the camps are voluntary education centers that help purge “ideological diseases". Despite growing evidence of forced
labor and torture in custody, indoctrination and other abuses in Xinjiang, Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan have remained relatively silent on the issue while the governments of Malaysia,
Indonesia and Turkey have voiced concerns about the Uighurs.
- The third person most associated with mass deaths in the bloodiest of human centuries after Germany's Adolf Hitler and Soviet's Joseph Stalin is
China's Mao Zedong. During the period of 1949 and ended with his death in 1976,
Mao Zedong was in some way responsible for
80 million deaths or more, including 1.2 million Tibetan people.
In comparison, Hitler is blamed for 12 million concentration camp deaths and at least 30 million other deaths associated with World War II, while Stalin is believed responsible for between 30 million and 40 million "unnatural deaths".
- As a result of an investigation, on July 21, 2020 the US ordered to close the Chinese Houston (TX) Consulate, which was part of a large Chinese espionage
effort using diplomatic facilities around the US. The consulate was a nest of Chinese spies who tried to steal research data,
science and technology from facilities in Texas, including the Texas A&M medical system and The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Houston. The consulate, which was directed to close in order to protect American intellectual property and Americans' private
information, was the first (consulate) established in 1979 after the US and China established diplomatic relations. Relations between the US and China have plummeted, amid an ongoing trade war, the coronavirus pandemic, and US criticism of China's human rights abuses in
Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
- In the US, China has engaged for years in massive illegal spying and influence operations and that those activities have increased markedly in scale and scope over the past few years. China spends a widespread effort to steal U.S.
military technology and classified information and
the trade secrets of U.S. companies. US prosecutors charged two
Chinese hackers working for the China government, both nationals and residents of the People’s Republic of China (China), with stealing coronavirus treatment and vaccine research in the US. They are hacking into the computer systems of
hundreds of victim companies, governments, non-governmental organizations, and individual dissidents, clergy, and democratic and human rights activists in the US and abroad, including Hong Kong and China. They began as early as 2009 and are still going on, stole intellectual
property and trade secrets worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
- China has a long history of propaganda and efforts to cajole the world into following its own narrative on geopolitical and conflict issues like Tibet,
Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South China Sea.
Its newest propaganda is COVID-19, a new SARS coronavirus disease, first reported in Hubei, a city in central China of 11 million, in late December 2019, by
suppressing information about the coronavirus’ origin, downplaying by a factor of 15 to 40 times of the number of cases of coronavirus and its seriousness to the rest of the world,
and maintaining through mid-January 2020 that this coronavirus wasn't even contagious. China has been lying since early December 2019
about the nature of the new coronavirus by firmly telling the world that it couldn’t be transmitted between humans, and continually reported wrongly low number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the country. Its propaganda resulted in causing or contributing over 1,192,025
coronavirus cases and 64,085+ deaths worldwide (as of April 4, 2020). Taking advantage of the COVID-19 outbreak, the country has increased exerting military pressure on Taiwan,
coercing and bullying its neighbors, and seriously violating sovereignty in
the South China Sea.
- China's underreporting of its pandemic totals was unsurprising, and official statistics from the country are often lies. Unlike South Korea,
China did not test vast amounts of people so those who may have died and not tested for COVID-19 were unlikely to be counted in the official tally. For the Hubei province, including Wuhan,
on January 25, 2020 the official figure was only nearly 6,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and just over 200 deaths. However, the University of Hong Kong
reported in The Lancet, they estimated that 75,815 individuals have been infected in Wuhan as of that day. As of March 31, 2020 China’s government has reported only 3,000 deaths in the Hubei province,
where Wuhan is located — a number that Wuhan’s residents have rejected as a full order of magnitude too small. Unlike China, in Indonesia, President Joko Widodo admitted in March 2020,
the government had filtered information about the spread of the virus saying "we don't want to make the public panic, we don't want to cause unrest in the society". A study by the London-based Centre for Mathematical Modelling of Infectious Diseases released in late March estimates that as few as 2% of
Indonesia's coronavirus infections have been reported. That would bring the true number to more than 89,000 but a serious lack of testing, as with many other nations, means we will never be sure.
- After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the US was determined to retaliate. On March 10, 1945 over 100,000
Japanese people were killed and another million injured, most of them civilians, when more than 300 American B-29 bombers dropped 1,500 tons of firebombs on the Japanese capital, Tokyo, that night.
The human toll that night exceeded that of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki later that year, where the initial blasts killed about 70,000 people and 46,000 people respectively. The US B29 bombers were the culmination of 20 years of aviation advances
leading up to World War II and were the first to have pressurized, heated fuselages, enabling them to operate above 18,000 feet without crews having to don special gear or use oxygen masks. Several weeks before attacking Tokyo,
Allied bombing raids on February 13–15, 1945, that almost completely destroyed the German city of
Dresden. On the night of February 13, the British Bomber Command hit Dresden with an 800-bomber air raid, dropping some 2,700 tons of
bombs, including large numbers of incendiaries. Aided by weather conditions, a firestorm developed, incinerating tens of thousands of people.
The U.S. Eighth Air Force followed the next day with another 400 tons of bombs and carried out yet another raid by 210 bombers on February 15. It is thought that some 25,000–35,000 civilians died in Dresden in the air attacks, though some estimates are as high as 250,000, given the influx of undocumented
refugees that had fled to Dresden from the Eastern Front. Most of the victims were women, children, and the elderly.
- ToTok is most popular in the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), but also serves millions of users in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North America.
The company that created ToTok, Breej Holding, is believed to be a front group for an Abu Dhabi-based hacking firm called DarkMatter.
But the service, ToTok, is actually a spying tool. It is used by the government of the U.A.E. to try to track every conversation, movement, relationship,
appointment, sound and image of those who install it on their phones. Google removed it from its store
on 12/19/2019, and Apple followed suit on 12/20/2019.
- In today's Hong Kong, people can be arrested for publishing children's books. The Hong Kong government has found five people guilty of publishing
children's books telling about a village of sheep trying to fight back against a group of wolves who are trying to take over their settlement. These cartoon e-books
have been interpreted by authorities as having an overtly political message. The Hong Kong government has been worried that the books' young readers would be led to believe that Chinese authorities were coming to Hong Kong with the "wicked intentions" of ruining the lives of the
city's inhabitants. Hong Kong police and prosecutors regularly use the national security law to clamp
down on political speech and views.
- In Hong Kong people can be caught for carrying zip tie (also known as a hose tie, cable tie, or tie wrap), which a type of short plastic
fastener for holding items together, primarily electrical cables and wires. They can be punishable
by up to 2 years in jail under the Summary Offences Ordinance, and the new charge carries a maximum jail sentence of 10 years under the Crimes Ordinance of "National Security Law". This strange law can be interpreted so broadly
that people can be arrested and kept in jail for carrying a pen to "forge signatures".
- Hong Kong authorities have rapidly begun to apply the new National Security Law to prosecute peaceful speech, curtail academic freedom, and generate a chilling
effect on fundamental freedoms in the city. The law, which China’s government imposed on June 30, 2020, include creating specialized secret security agencies, denying fair
trial rights, providing sweeping new powers to the police, increasing restraints on civil society and the media, and weakening judicial oversight. It's Beijing’s most aggressive assault on Hong Kong people’s freedoms
since Britain handed over its former colony, Hong Kong, in 1997. China pledged to preserve the “one country, two systems” framework through 2047; however, China has seen Hong Kong as part of its territory and applied vague laws against Hong Kong people.
These include the use of intimidation, covert surveillance,
enforced disappearances, arbitrary detention, and torture and
deaths in custody of activists, rights
lawyers, and journalists.
Hong Kong people face the prospect of lengthy prison terms for possessing banners or chanting slogans that the authorities dislike. As a result, the United States and
many countries no longer treat Hong Kong and China separately on several major issues, including trade and extradition. Hong Kong became just like another Chinese city.
- Until 1997, Hong Kong was ruled by Britain as a colony but then returned to China under the "one country, two systems" arrangement. Unlike other cities in China, which are tightly governed by the authoritarian central government,
Hong Kong is a semi-autonomous city with its own legal and political systems, and its people have more rights. However, the Chinese government actively interfered in Hong Kong's affairs and created bills to control and take away Hong Kong people's rights.
As of today, almost no Hong Kong youth identified themselves as Chinese. Since the summer of 2019, Hong Kong protesters (driven by a sense of desperation rather than hope)
began fighting these bills to protect Hong Kong’s autonomy from China. Protesters feared the bills would allow China to encroach on these rare freedoms.
As the protests have continued, they are posing a challenge to the city's government and Beijing. The "special" relationship of Hong Kong's leadership with mainland China is a key element in untangling this mess.
- In Hong Kong, China demands to implement a law that would criminalize secession, subversion of state power, terrorist activities and colluding with
foreign forces to endanger national security. Critics say Hong Kong’s legal statutes already account for such matters and that Beijing is determined to use the law to pursue political opponents. China has long demanded such a law for Hong Kong,
but efforts were shelved in the face of massive protests in 2003.
- In order to take a firm rhetorical stance, saying the protests "showed signs of terrorism",
China and Hong Hong government are using threats and pressure to get business to back its increasingly hard-line stance toward
Hong Kong, leading companies to warn and intimidate workers who
speak out in protest. For example, HSBC, the London bank, was threatened because it has slowly backed Beijing’s push to enact a new national security law covering the territory, and two Chinese banks, Chiyu Banking and Wing Lung Bank, had pressured their employees to
sign a petition supporting the law, by forcing them to sign a petition and taking screenshot of their signature and share it publicly.
- China and Hong Kong government have pressured various companies, including railway operator MTR Corporation, airline Cathay Pacific, and
the Big Four accounting firms (KPMG, Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) - in Hong Kong)
to take a hard-line approach against employees who took part in the protests. Cathay Pacific witnessed a huge managerial reshuffling and fired pro-democratic employees after the Civil Aviation Administration of China
threatened to block Cathay's access to Chinese airspace while the MTR has closed stations and has ended its service early after being criticized for transporting protesters. The world's "Big 4" accounting firms have confirmed they stand with China by
distancing themselves from a newspaper advertisement in which their employees expressed support for Hong Kong
protesters. Chinese state media outlets largely ignored the Hong Kong protests, which were also mostly
censored from Mainland Chinese social media.
- As China tightens its grip on Hong Kong over which British rule ended 20
years ago, pro-democracy activists are still fighting against erosion of freedoms. Since May 2019, thousands of people in Hong Kong gathered and peacefully marched
for pro-democracy protests, which had seen numerous clashes between protesters and police with police firing tear gas at demonstrators as the
city's protests enter their 13th weekend to demand some basic freedom requests, such as the full withdrawal of the suspended extradition bill and implementation of open and free elections. The Hong Kong public’s
response to police violence shows that people are willing to put their bodies on the line for freedom.
More than one million people being drawn to the streets twice in a week in June, only to have many
of their demands ignored, is a sign of a serious democratic deficit. On September 2, tens of thousands students boycotted
the first day of classes as part of a citywide strike.
- The Chinese Communist Party has in effect controlled the Hong Kong government, and infringed on freedom of speech and movement.
For example, after Hong Kong Professional Teachers Union organized for its members and students to join the general strike on August 5, 2019,
the Government's Regional Education Offices asked all schools for names of the teachers and pupils who participated in the strike, hinting at possible future retribution. The Government installed lampposts used for carrying facial recognition
function and infringing upon personal privacy of citizens, and protesters attempted to tear down or dismantle them. Hong Kong leader, Carrie Lam, was sorry for
causing “unforgivable havoc” by igniting the political crisis engulfing the city and she would quit if she had a choice!.
- In 2019 million people in Hong Kong protested to demand a full withdrawal of the extradition bill, dismissal of charges against arrested protesters, a government retraction regarding the term "riot", an independent investigation into police
brutality, and universal suffrage. Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law, under which the government has had all but wiped out formal opposition. Authorities have raided and closed down newsrooms, jailed activists and protesters,
unseated elected lawmakers, heightened censorship both online and in printed publications, and changed school curricula. The city has been transformed beyond recognition since.
- Hong Kong’s human rights record took a dark turn. Civil liberties in Hong Kong are increasingly being undermined by the growing interference of the central government,
20 years after the city returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. In April 2018, Hong Kong police arrested 11 pro-democracy advocates on charges including “unlawful assembly” and “obstructing police.” The
charges stem from the advocates’ protest against a decision by China’s top legislative body forcing Hong Kong courts to disqualify two pro-independence legislators. In July 2018 a Hong Kong court disqualified
four more pro-democracy lawmakers for modifying their oaths swearing allegiance to China in a 2016 ceremony.
- Until 22 May 2014 the politics of Thailand were conducted within the framework of a constitutional monarchy, whereby the prime minister
is the head of government and a hereditary monarch is head of state. The judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislative branches. Since the coup d'état
of 22 May 2014, Thailand revoked its 2007 constitution. The 2007 Constitution was annulled by the 2014 coup-makers who run the country as a military dictatorship. The country has been under the rule of a military organization called
National Council for Peace and Order (NCPO), which has taken control of the national administration, and abolished the national assembly and assumed the
responsibilities of the legislative branch. Military courts have been tasked to be responsible for most cases that are normally under the civilian courts. The
NCPO has repeatedly postponed promised elections, fearing that the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai Party would do well despite the junta’s election laws and rules that are expressly designed to disadvantage Pheu Thai.
- The politics of Italy are conducted through a parliamentary republic with a multi-party system.
Italy has been a democratic republic
since 2 June 1946, when the monarchy was abolished by popular referendum
and a constituent assembly was elected to draft a constitution, which was promulgated on 1 January 1948.
Italy has had more than 50 governments and more than 20 Prime Ministers since 1945.
- Saudis close to Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, discussed
killing other enemies a year before Khashoggi’s death, and used coercion and abuse to seize billions.
- The Turkish lira tumbled more than 16 percent on August 10, 2018 - a record low against the dollar - after the US announced the punitive doubling of steel and
aluminum tariffs, to compel it to turn over a jailed American pastor in Turkey; the US is the biggest destination for Turkish steel exports with 11 percent of the Turkish export volume. Mr Erdogan, the Turkey president,
who has consolidated unprecedented power through a series of referendums, framed Turkey's crisis as a “national battle” against economic enemies, including the US.
- The Cambodia government under the Prime Minister Hun Sen’s leadership arrested the leader of Cambodia’s political opposition on dubious charges of treason; dissolved the main opposition party
and banned over 100 members from political activity; intensified the misuse of the justice system to prosecute political opposition and human rights activists; and forced several independent media outlets to close; he ordered internet service providers to block independent news websites, including Radio Free Asia, Voice of America and Voice of Democracy, in the days leading up to and
during the election. Prime Minister Hun Sen, one of the world’s longest serving leaders – is seeking to prolong his 33-year grip on power in the national vote set for July 29, 2018 and has used the courts to cripple his opponents,
warned that people who curses or insults him would eventually die without a plot of land to bury their bodies. After voting, Prime Minister Hun Sen said his party won every seat in Parliament. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, which sent observers to Cambodia even as Western monitors stayed
away for fear of legitimizing the polls, deemed the elections a "success".
- A Laos hydroelectric dam that was under construction collapsed on July 23, 2018, sending flash floods through six villages, and killing many people and flooding villages in the southern province of Attapeu. Over 7,000 people were displaced and hundreds more were missing.
Laos, a landlocked, communist state that is largely isolated from the rest of the world, is one of Asia’s poorest countries. China, Laos and Cambodia have begun massive hydroelectric development programs, with more than a dozen dams planned, under construction or completed on the main river and many more dams on tributaries.
The dam that collapsed is part of the Xe-Pian Xe-Namnoy hydroelectric power project, which involves Laotian, Thai and South Korean firms.
- Vietnam issued a contentious cybersecurity law, which requires global tech companies such as Google and Facebook to store user data in Vietnam,
open offices in the country and remove offending contents within 24 hours at the request of the Ministry of Information and Communications and the specialized cybersecurity task-force under the Ministry of Public Security.
Around 57% of Vietnam’s 93 million people have Facebook accounts and about 65 million people are online, the new policy has potentially devastating consequences for freedom of expression.
- An intricate network of companies controlled by the family of longtime Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, the world’s sixth-longest-serving premier, has amassed a
secret fortune with a value of at least $200 million and possibly between “$500 million and $4 billion”.
Hun Sen's financial links into 114 domestic, private companies controlled or owned outright by members of Hun Sen’s family
and their links to big international brands, such as Apple, Nokia, Visa, Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Durex and Honda, and many others. Wealth is a sensitive issue for Hun Sen, who has said he makes a wage of just $1,150 a month after 30 years in the job. While Hun Sen’s wealth is vast, on a regional level his family effort pales
when comparing with Malaysia’s Taib Mahmud, who is by far the richest;
Taib ruled the East Malaysian state of Sarawak for 33 years and retired with a
family fortune valued at more than $20 billion and held through a network of 400 companies. In 2015, Malaysia's Prime Minister, Najib Tun Razak, was accused of
channelling over RM 2.67 billion (USD $681 million) from 1MDB,
a government-run strategic development company, to his personal bank accounts; he declared that the "money was a personal donation from Saudi Arabia’s royal family".
More than $1 billion entered Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak's personal bank accounts, much of it from state investment fund 1MDB.
- Effective October 8, 2017 the U.S. has suspended all non-immigrant visa services at all U.S. diplomatic facilities in Turkey following the arrest of a consulate employee, and
Turkish markets slammed after the U.S. suspended visa.
- In July 2017 China quickly cremated its only Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo, the country's most famous political prisoner.
Liu was a Chinese literary critic, writer, poet, anti-communist, human rights activist
and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who called for political reforms and was involved in campaigns to end Communist
single-party rule. He championed non-violent resistance as a way of overcoming “forceful tyranny”, and had been serving an 11-year jail sentence for demanding an end to one-party rule when he was
diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer in May 2017. On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained due to his participation with the
Charter 08 manifesto, and was formally arrested on 23 June 2009 on suspicion of "inciting subversion of state power".
Like Liu Xiaobo, many Chinese
political activists have been detained, jailed or exiled for their pro-democracy or
rights defending activities in China.
- Although the 1982 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, the Chinese government often uses the "subversion of state power" and
"protection of state secrets" clauses in their law system to imprison those who criticize the government. The government controls the media and Internet censorship very tighhly. The government maintains censorship over all media capable of reaching a wide audience. This includes television, print media, radio,
film, theater, text messaging, instant messaging, video games, literature, and the Internet. At least 40 Chinese journalists and 74 Netizens were reportedly imprisoned in China since 2014.
China’s prisons held more than 100 journalists, citizen-journalists and bloggers, including a Nobel peace laureate and three winners of the Reporters Without Borders (RSF)-TV5 Monde Press Freedom Prize, as of June 2017.
- China wants its minorities, Tibetans and Uyghurs,
to sing and dance on TV – but do little else, the government exoticises, and marginalises, its non-Han Chinese ethnic groups.
Since February 2009, at least 122 Tibetans have set themselves on fire as a grimin protest China and most have died from their wounds.
- Little is publicly known of identity of the man who stood in front of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the
Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force. The British tabloid Sunday Express named him as Wang Weilin (王维林), a 19-year-old student,
who was later charged with "political hooliganism" and "attempting to subvert members of the People's Liberation Army. However, this claim has been rejected by an internal Communist Party of China,
which reported that they could not find the man based on statements made by a reliable party member, "We can’t find him, we got his name from journalists, we have checked through computers but can’t find him among the dead or among those in prison,". There were at least 300, and perhaps thousands,
of the protesters had been killed and as many as 10,000 were arrested after Chinese troops and security police stormed through Tiananmen Square, firing indiscriminately into the crowds of protesters. There are several conflicting stories about what happened to this young man after the demonstration; among these sources he was arrested and executed
by a firing squad. However, in a 1990 interview with Barbara Walters, then-CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin
was asked what became of the man, Jiang stated "I can't confirm whether this young man you mentioned was arrested or not.".
- One of Richard McGregor's books, "The Party", describes a relationship between the Communist Party and the Chinese government. The Chinese Communist Party,
the country's sole political party governing China, let Chinese people know that they are using the "model of the US government" that "appoints the entire U.S. cabinet and the heads of federal regulatory commissions, the justices of the Supreme Court, state governors and their deputies, the mayors of major cities, the chief executives of GE, Exxon-Mobil,
Wal-Mart and about fifty of the remaining largest U.S. companies, the editors of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the bosses of the TV networks (e.g.; ABC, CBS, and NBC) and cable stations (HBO, ShowTime, and CNN), the presidents of MIT, Yale and Harvard and other big universities, and the heads of think-tanks (eg.; Brookings Institute,
Rand, and the Heritage Foundation)", and the vetting process is secret, and the appointments are announced without any accompanying explanations why they had been made; most Chinese people know these are not true, but no one dares to speak up.
Interestingly, in March 2008 the Chinese Communist Party ordered to "establish a store Communist Party committee" within one Wal-Mart store located in the north-east of China.
- China is made up of 23 provinces, five autonomous regions, four municipalities directly under the Central Government, and the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao. The 23 provinces are Anhui, Fujian, Gansu,
Guangdong, Guizhou, Hainan, Hebei, Heilongjiang, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Jilin, Liaoning, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Sichuan, Taiwan, Yunnan, Zhejiang; the five autonomous regions are Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, Xinjiang, and Tibet; the four municipalities are Beijing, Chongqing, Shanghai and Tianjin.
The interesting and fun fact is that Taiwan is not belonging to China, which has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted Taiwan is no longer in legitimate existence.
- China is a socialist republic ruled by a single party, the Communist Party of China. Power in China is divided between the National People's Congress (NPC), the President, and the State Council. The NPC is the single legislative body, whose members are selected by the Communist Party.
The State Council, headed by the Premier, is the administrative branch. The People's Liberation Army (PLA), which includes the Army, Navy, Air Force, and the Second Artillery Force, also wields considerable political power, the President is chairman of the Central Military Commission of China, the country's top military organ and commander of its armed forces.
The President, the Premier and all government officials are selected by the Communist Party.
- Roughly half (47%) of China’s current population were born under the country’s one-child policy (ages 0 to 34 today), and they lived through a very different China,
the world’s most populous nation, than the half who were born before.
- President Trump defeated Clinton in the Electoral College in the 2016 presidential election,
collecting 304 votes to her 227; however, Clinton won the popular vote by 2,864,974 ballots cast. Trump tells Congressional leaders 3-5-million
"illegals" cost him popular vote.
- One of 11 members of Germany’s parliament (622 members) with Turkish roots; about 3 millions people of Turkish descent live in Germany; half of them retain Turkish citizenship,
making Germany in effect Turkey’s fourth-largest electoral district. Some 2,000 of the country’s 3,000 mosques are Turkish, and 900 of those are financed by DITIB, an arm of the Turkish government, which sends the imams from Turkey.
- Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, tightened his grip on Turkey in July 2016, by shutting down
16 television channels, 23 radio stations, 45 newspapers, 15 universities, 934 other schools, 109 student dormitories, 19 unions, 35 medical institutions as well as over 1,100 other charities and foundations, in his decree since imposing a state of emergency after the failed military coup.
He has suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants, journalists and others for “complicity in the attempted coup”. The dismissed
2,400 military personnel included 1,200 commissioned officers from the navy, air and land forces.
- In "Hostile Takeover: The Corporate Empire of Cambodia’s Ruling Family" Prime Minister Hun Sen (who is already one of the world’s longest-serving leaders) and his family
have interests in at least 114 local companies with a combined share capital over $200 million. “The Huns are renowned as one of the
richest, if not the richest, and most powerful families in Cambodia, with a combined wealth estimated by experts to total between $500 million and $1 billion.”
The report was released just a week in July 2016 after the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee in Washington approved a spending bill that makes foreign aid to Cambodia (one of the world's poorest countries) worth $77.8 million
contingent upon an end to government harassment of opposition politicians.
- Corruption is deeply embedded in Thailand for numerous reasons, including the tradition that officials were entitled to 10 to 30 percent of expenditures
for rendering their services, rather than a salary; a tradition of giving gifts to high officials also persists, and while these practices are not directly corrupting, the continuation of gift-giving during a period when officials receive salaries is a major basis of corruption.
Businesses indicate that irregular payments and bribes are commonly made in order to obtain favorable judicial decisions; almost four out of five Thai believe most or all of the police to be corrupt.
- Malaysia's then-Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail linked a donation of $681m (£478m) made to the account of Mr. Najib Razak, Malaysia's prime minister,
with companies and bodies which had ties to 1MDB. In 7/2015 Mr Najib fired Mr Patail and replaced him with Mr Naji, and also canned the deputy prime minister, Muhyiddin Yassin,
who had criticized his handling of the crisis. Mr Naji cleared Mr Najib of corruption in 1/2016. Mr. Razak said that a Saudi royal family member gave him $681 million!
- Malaysia's prime minister, Najib Razak, who founded and is the chair of 1MDB, was accused of siphoning money from the investment fund after $681 million was transferred into his personal accounts
while $4 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB.
- In April 2016 Thailand’s coup leaders gave military officers broad police-like powers to arrest and detain, further eroding the capabilities of civilian authorities in the junta-run state. The military is authorized to
seize assets, suspend financial transactions, ban suspects from traveling and arrest people involved with against public peace, defamation, gambling, extortion, and labor abuses.
- As of 2012 around 70,000 Christians were imprisoned in North Korea’s concentration camps
- The level of corruption in Cambodia exceeds most countries in the world. Despite adopting an 'Anti-Corruption Law' in 2010, corruption prevails throughout the country. The 2010 Anti-Corruption Law provided no protection to whistle-blowers, and whistle-blowers can be jailed for up to 6 months if they report corruption that cannot be proven.
- Around 200,000 Timorese were killed by Indonesia during the period the country occupied East Timor from December 1975 to October 1999.
- An investigation conducted by United Nations showed that in the first 10 months of 1982, Thai pirates attacked 289
Vietnamese refugee boats - with, on average, more than three attacks per boat; there were 484 known deaths or murders and 583 identified rape victims.
- Thai pirates killed nearly 1,450 refugees and raped more than 2,300 people in the south China Sea in 1980's, and the Thai government did not take any actions.
- An estimated 70 million deaths in China through starvation, forced
labor, and executions when Mao Zedong governed as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.
- Around 2 million people, an estimated 25 percent of the total population, were killed in Cambodia during the brutal regime of Pol Pot and the
Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979. The genocide was ended following the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.
- At least 67% of 2,709,918 Americans military personnel served in uniform in Vietnam were volunteers, and the last American troops departed Vietnam on 29 March 1973.
The fall of South Vietnam happened 30 April 1975, two years after the American military left Vietnam.
- In 1971, during the nine-month-long Bangladesh war for independence, the Pakistani military and its supporting militias killed around 3,000,000
people and raped between 200,000–400,000 Bangladeshi women in a systematic campaign of genocidal rape.
- In 1915, Turkey set in motion a plan to expel and massacre Armenians
living in the Ottoman Empire; by the early 1920s, when the massacres and deportations finally ended, around 1.5 million Armenians, an estimated 75 percent of the total population, were dead;
the Turkish government has denied that a genocide took place.
- Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the first ruler of an independent Haiti, ordered the killing of the white population of French creoles on Haiti which culminated in the 1804 Haiti Massacre
- An estimated 2 million deaths in Vietnam through starvation during the Japanese occupation of Vietnam from October 1944 to May 1945.
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