Why is EU anti-Semitism chief smearing solidarity?

Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator (right), with pro-Israel lobbyist Arsen Ostrovsky. (via Twitter)

David Cronin- 20 June 2016

Has a senior European Union official been smearing the Palestine solidarity movement based on hearsay?

A few days ago, I learned that Katharina von Schnurbein, the EU’s anti-Semitism coordinator, felt that comments she made at a recent pro-Israel conference had been misquoted. So I called von Schnurbein asking precisely what she had said.

Von Schnurbein confirmed that she did not regard an article on the European Jewish Press website as accurate.

The article claimed that she viewed the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel as motivated by a hatred of Jews.

After a brief telephone conversation, von Schnurbein emailed me what she described as her “exact words” at the conference, which was organized by the European Coalition for Israel, a Christian Zionist group.

According to the transcript she provided, von Schnurbein told the conference that “anti-Semitism can hide behind anti-Zionism,” before stressing the “EU’s firm rejection of the boycott, divestment and sanctions attempts to isolate Israel.”

“In the context of fighting anti-Semitism here in Europe, we are particularly worried about the discriminatory repercussions activities by the BDS movement might have on Jews and, in particular, Jewish students across Europe,” she added. “Reports show that anti-Semitic incidents rise after BDS activities on campuses.”

Von Schnurbein’s message did not refer to any specific “reports,” so I sent her a follow-up query asking for an example.

She replied: “On the Internet, you will find many reports from across the world. Also, the European Union of Jewish Students regularly report incidents on their website.”

Vibes

Eager to find out about such incidents, I checked the website she mentioned. A search for “BDS” yielded 14 results. None of them detailed a correlation between Palestine solidarity campaigning and anti-Semitism.

Instead of solid information, I found an article in which one student spoke of “anti-Israel vibes” in European universities.

As well as having to feel such “vibes,” students had to deal with seeing posters defending Palestinian rights in the corridors of some colleges, according to that article. In some cases, it added, students had to walk by fruit counters in supermarkets where stickers urging a boycott of the Jaffa brand have been posted or a swastika had been carved into a few oranges.

If that is the kind of “incident” that von Schnurbein is worried about, then I humbly suggest she needs to do a bit more research.

“Vibes” are, by definition, intangible. And this is the first time I have ever heard of anyone complaining about a swastika being engraved in a Jaffa orange. The idea that such a tactic is being widely employed by BDS activists — if at at all — is ludicrous.

I have no objection in principle to having an EU coordinator against anti-Semitism. Every form of religious and racial bigotry should be carefully monitored so that effective strategies for combating that bigotry can be developed.

Yet von Schnurbein does not appear to be interested in careful monitoring. Rather than assessing how widespread hatred of Jews is in Europe today, she spends much of her time hanging out with the pro-Israel lobby.

Recycling rumors

That lobby constantly conflates robust criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. The conflation is a deliberate policy that has been pursued at least since the 1970s when Abba Eban, then Israel’s foreign minister, arguedthat sympathizers with the Palestinian struggle should be accused of hating Jews.

Although von Schnurbein said she was misquoted by the European Jewish Press, she told me that she did not complain about the article. Rather, she asked the European Coalition for Israel to change a press statement on which the article relied.

This is not the first time that an EU official or institution has smeared the Palestine solidarity movement.

The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency decided in 2012, for example, that calls for the boycott of Israel should beviewed as anti-Semitic.

As I documented in a recently published report The Israel lobby and the European Union, the agency’s decision had no scientific justification. Rather, it was taken after a few meetings with pro-Israel groups.

The BDS movement has repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. In a recentinterview with The Intercept, Omar Barghouti, one of the movement’s founders, emphasized that BDS campaigners are “opposed to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. And we’re not shy about that.”

“We’re very categorical about our opposition to all forms of racism,” Barghouti added. “Because of that — not despite that — Israel is extremely worried. Israel’s regime of occupation and apartheid is worried when this human rights inclusive movement is reaching out and appealing to a mass public, including many young Jewish Americans.”

I sent Barghouti’s remarks to von Schnurbein, asking her if she accepted that the BDS movement denounces anti-Semitism. She did not answer my question.

What does her reticence tell us? Does she prefer to recycle rumors than listen to the truth?

Jean-Pierre Bemba sentenced to 18 years in prison by international criminal court

Former DRC vice-president convicted for his part in campaign of rape and murder in Central African Republic from 2002-03

Jean-Pierre Bemba’s lawyers said they would appeal against his war crimes conviction. Photograph: Reuters---Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said it was an important day for international criminal justice. Photograph: Jerry Lampen/EPA

Supporters of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila, celebrate his 45th birthday at the Velodrome stadium. Kabila’s term expires in December. Photograph: Junior D Kannah/AFP/Getty Images

Jason Burke Africa correspondent-Tuesday 21 June 2016

Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison for rape and pillage committed by his troops, becoming the highest-level official to be sentenced at the international criminal court.

Bemba, 53, wearing a blue suit and tie, watched impassively from the dock during the hearing at The Hague on Tuesday. 

The former militia commander is the third person convicted by the controversial “court of last resort” set up to try the world’s worst crimes in 2002.

Campaigners welcomed the lengthy prison term.

“Today’s sentencing marks a critical turning point for the thousands of women, children and men who were victims of Bemba’s orchestrated campaign of rape and murder,” said Karen Naimer, the director of the sexual violence in conflict zones programme at Physicians for Human Rights.

“The punishment meted out today can’t turn back the clock, but it can bring a measure of closure to those victims who’ve waited patiently more than a dozen years for this day to come,” she said.

The conviction was the ICC’s first verdict to recognise rape as a weapon of war and to employ the doctrine of command responsibility: that leaders are accountable for the crimes of their subordinates, the group said. 

The court told Bemba that the years he had spent behind bars since his arrest in Belgium in 2008 and subsequent detention would be deducted from his sentence.

Earlier in the day Bemba’s lawyers said they would appeal against his war crimes conviction and press for a mistrial.

Bemba was found guilty in March of five charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his private army – the Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) – after he sent them into the neighbouring Central African Republic (CAR) from October 2002 to March 2003 to put down a coup.

“I believe this is a very important day for international criminal justice, especially when it comes to sexual and gender-based crimes,” the chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, told Agence France-Presse news agency at the time.

The prosecution had called for a minimum 25-year jail term.

In their ruling, three trial judges found that Bemba was responsible as the military commander of the MLC for a reign of terror by about 1,500 of his troops, including wide-scale rapes and murders, as they sought to quash a coup against the then CAR president Ange-Félix Patassé.

Bemba, who in 2002 became one of four vice-presidents of Congo under a peace agreement brokered by South Africa which ended the bloody civil war, was sentenced to two 18-year terms and two 16-year terms, to run concurrently.

The judges said Bemba could at any point have ended the MLC’s five-month rampage, but chose not to.

The ICC was set up in 2002 to be an independent international “court of last resort” for grave crimes that could not be dealt with locally.

The conviction and sentencing of Bemba will boost the court, which has a budget of more than $150m (£102m) annually. 

Campaigners said the case was also historic because a record number of civilian victims – more than 5,200 – participated in the proceedings and may now be eligible for reparations.

However, analysts say the judgment will also highlight the failure of the court to punish anyone for the widespread and systematic human rights abuses committed by militia in Congo itself, particularly during the years of the civil war from 1998 to 2002.

“For the Congolese, it would feel like a missed opportunity for what happened there. One shouldn’t minimise what happened in the CAR but there is a sense of a missed opportunity,” said Hans Hoebeke, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group in Nairobi, Kenya.

The institution has repeatedly been criticised for unfairly targeting Africa and African leaders. Critics point out that nine of the 10 “situations” currently being examined by the court relate to Africa.

Current high-profile ICC trials include that of Laurent Gbagbo, the former president of Ivory Coast, who denies charges that he orchestrated “unspeakable violence” in an attempt to hold on to power after losing an election in 2010, and that of Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi, who is accused of razing medieval shrines, tombs and a 15th-century mosque that formed part of the Unesco world heritage site in Timbuktu, Mali, when the city was seized by Islamic militants in 2012.

In 2015, the ICC was forced to drop charges against Kenya’s president Uhuru Kenyatta, who had been accused of stoking ethnic violence after Kenya’s 2007 presidential election.

Prosecutors blamed their failure to put Kenyatta on trial on political interference and massive interference with witnesses, especially after Kenyatta was elected president in 2013. In April, charges against Kenyatta’s deputy, William Ruto, were also dropped for similar reasons.

In an interview with the Financial Times last week, Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, rejected accusations that the ICC was institutionally biased against Africans.

“I remind the Africans that it’s wrong for them to say that only African leaders are put into the dock,” Annan, who is from Ghana, said.

Several African governments have threatened to quit the ICC.

In February, the African Union backed a proposal by Kenyatta “to develop a road map for the withdrawal of African nations” from the court.

Last month, Yoweri Museveni, the president of Uganda, called the ICC useless during a swearing-in ceremony for his fifth term in power, prompting a walk-out by western diplomats.

Museveni has been named as a supporter of Bemba during Congo’s most recent civil war

Bensouda has said charges of bias are misplaced. “If certain people are looking to shield the alleged perpetrators of those crimes, of course they will say we are targeting [African states]. But … the victims deserve justice, the victims are Africans, and in the absence of the ICC nobody else is giving them justice,” Bensouda told the Guardian recently.

The ICC is also conducting “preliminary examinations” into eight further conflicts, including in Afghanistan, Colombia and Burundi, a spokesperson said.

The court’s decision has significant implications for politics in Bemba’s homeland.

Bemba finished second to the current president Joseph Kabila in the second round of the 2006 presidential elections with 42% of the vote. In 2007, hundreds of people died in the streets of Kinshasa when forces loyal to the two men clashed in the capital.

Bemba fled first to the South African embassy, then to Portugal and finally to Belgium, where he was arrested.

However, the wealthy businessman remains president of the opposition MLC and has retained a significant power base in the north and east of Congo, along with a presence in Kinshasa.

“His party still exists but is seriously diminished … The opposition at this point does not have a strong figurehead and there is no evidence of any significant mobilisation,” said Hoebeke.

Kabila’s second term expires in December, but polls are unlikely to be held as scheduled. Supporters of the president say more time is needed to organise logistics and prepare electoral rolls. Kabila’s critics accuse him of mounting a bid to remain in power indefinitely.

One leading opposition figure – Moise Katumbi – left Congo last month for medical treatment after being charged with mounting a coup attempt. Katumbi remains overseas, rallying opposition figures.

Vietnam’s Love-Hate Relationship with China-A Historical Explanation

Ho Chih Minh was a great friend of China, he was well versed in Chinese history, culture and language; but, at the same time, as a keen student of history, he was also deeply sensitive to the threat posed by China to Vietnamese freedom.

by V. Suryanarayan

( June 20, 2016, Chennai, Sri Lanka Guardian) China had always been and would continue to be a key point of reference to the foreign policy makers of Southeast Asian countries, especially for Vietnam. Sharing land and maritime boundaries with China, Vietnam, from very early times, had been profoundly influenced by its giant neighbor in the north. It has shared cultural traditions; in fact, Prof. Arnold Toynbee, in his monumental book,Half the World – The History and Culture of China and Japan, includes Vietnam, along with Japan and Korea, in the East Asian world. At the same time, the proud and heroic Vietnamese had been intensely nationalist; they had always resisted China’s hegemonistic designs. According to perceptive Southeast Asia watchers, Vietnam will be the bulwark against Chinese expansionism in Southeast Asia.

Vietnam, as we know it today, came into existence on the eve Asia’s European age. Historically this country had several independent kingdoms. The first was the Indianised kingdom of Funan. We do not know its real name, Funan is the name given by Chinese historians. It continued to exist from the first century AD to the Sixth century AD. It was located in the Mekong delta of Vietnam and Cambodia.

The second, which was also an Indianised kingdom, was Champa, the Chinese name for it was Lin Yi. It existed between 2^nd and 17^th century AD. It extended over the southern and central coastal regions of Vietnam. The people of Champa, known as the Chams, were highly Hinduised. There are still 200,000 Hindus in Vietnam. The Author had the good fortune to meet a Hindu Cham delegation in the World Hindu Conference held in New Delhi few years ago. They were very keen to establish contacts with Hindu religious organizations in India to foster and promote their Hindu identity.

The Vietnamese originally lived in the Red River delta in the northern part of Vietnam. They developed their agricultural skills and became prosperous. Their rulers developed a good administrative system. But their curse was China, the northern neighbor. The expansionist Chinese rulers sent military expeditions to the South and brought Nam Viet under Chinese control. What is more they imposed Chinese culture on them and sinicised them.

Ho Chih Minh was a great friend of China, he was well versed in Chinese history, culture and language; but, at the same time, as a keen student of history, he was also deeply sensitive to the threat posed by China to Vietnamese freedom.

The Chinese conquest of Nam Viet took place in the second century BC and it continued till 967 AD. The thousand years of Chinese domination was characterised by frequent uprisings by the Vietnamese and brutal military reprisals by the Chinese army. The Important elements of Chinese culture- the Mandate from Heaven, Chinese script, Confucian values and the institution of Mandarinate – were introduced in Vietnam. But it was not blind imitation; the Vietnamese retained some of the indigenous characteristics. Unlike other Southeast Asian countries, which followedTheravada form of Buddhism, Vietnam followed theMahayana form. It got mingled with Confucianism and Taoism and a syncretic religion known as Tan Giao came into existence. As far as script is concerned, till the Vietnamese script was romanised in the 17^th century, Vietnamese adopted the Chinese characters. The Vietnamese also copied the centralized system of administration and gradually extended their sway over the whole country. In that process the people of the county were Vietnamised.

Suspicion of Chinese designs is a recurrent theme in Vietnamese history. While adapting the Chinese culture the Vietnamese, with extra-ordinary courage, resisted the Chinese army. Andrew Forbes quotes a Vietnamese martial song sung by the Vietnamese guerrillas: “Fight to keep our hair long, fight to keep our teeth black, fight to show that the heroic southern country can never be defeated”.

Nayan Chanda, in his book Brother Enemy, mentions an interesting incident. Even during the height of the war against the United States, when China’s support was very crucial¸ the Vietnamese zealously guarded their cultural traits. In October 1972, the American scholar George M. Kahin visited Vietnam. He was very keen to find out the extent of religious freedom. He participated in a well attended mass in a catholic church in Hanoi. Soon after, his Vietnamese host asked Prof. Kahin, “Would you like to see something of our religion?” Kahin accepted the invitation and was taken across a bridge to a temple in an island in Hanoi’s Hoan Kiem Lake. In that temple there were three altars, one to Buddha, one to God of Earth and water and a third dedicated to Tran Hung Dao, the General who defeated the Chinese Mongol army in the 13^th century. Upon enquiring Prof. Kahin came to know that there were half a dozen shrines in Hanoi where Vietnamese paid homage to heroes and heroines, such Le Loi and Trung sisters, who had fought against Chinese invaders.

The Author cannot resist the temptation to narrate the heroism of the Trung sisters who committed suicide after resisting the Chinese invaders in the first century AD. The Trung sisters – Trung Trac and Trung Nhi – were daughters of a powerful Vietnamese landlord, who lived in the first century AD. Vietnam was under the rule of the Han dynasty; the Vietnamese women enjoyed more freedom than their Chinese counterparts. China was governed by Confucian values where women occupied a lower place. Feeling oppressed by the Chinese rule, the Vietnamese were exhorted to revolt and the Trung sisters organized a rebellion and formed an army of 80,000 men and women. They won back the territory conquered by the Chinese. In 42 AD the Chinese forces returned to recapture the territory. The Vietnamese fought hard, but were to be defeated. According to popular belief, the Trung sisters decided to take their own lives in the traditional manner of jumping into the river and drowning. The Trung sisters became symbols of Vietnamese resistance. Temples were later built in their honour and the people of Vietnam celebrate their memory every year with a national holiday.

Ho Chih Minh was a great friend of China, he was well versed in Chinese history, culture and language; but, at the same time, as a keen student of history, he was also deeply sensitive to the threat posed by China to Vietnamese freedom. After the Second World War when the French colonialists wanted to re-establish their dominance over Vietnam, few Vietnamese nationalists wanted to use the Kuomintang forces as a buffer against the French Army. Ho Chih Minh, according to Andrew Forbes, cautioned his Vietminh colleagues and asked them to draw the right lessons from history. To quote Ho Chih Minh, “The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff the French shit for five years, than to eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life”.

Vietnam’s relations with the outside world, including China since the proclamation of independence on September 2. 1945, has undergone several twists and turns. Since the focus of my paper is on Vietnamese history before the Second World War, I shall not dwell on the important developments that took place during the three Indo- China wars and in subsequent years.

I would like to conclude the essay with a quotation from the well known scholar Andrew Forbes who aptly sums up Sino- Vietnamese relations. Andrew Forbes quotes from a novel, Fried Gold,written by the famous Vietnamese novelist Nguyen Huy Thiep. To quote: “The most significant characteristics of this country are its smallness and weakness. She is like a virgin girl raped by Chinese civilization. The girl concurrently enjoys, despises and humiliated by the rape”.

 Dr. V. Suryanarayan was Founding Director and Senior Professor, Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Madras.

THE BIGGER PICTURE: India needs a balanced 'give-and-take' relationship with China to negotiate NSG entry

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar (right) was in Beijing to undertake direct diplomacy with China, in a bid to get support for India’s membership into the Nuclear Suppliers Group---As part of the India-US nuclear agreement of 2008, the US promised to ease India's entry into nuclear groups

The first round of diplomacy began with President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Beijing last month---The Nuclear Suppliers Group is a cartel of powerful countries with the capacity to conduct nuclear trade

By MANOJ JOSHI-20 June 2016

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar’s visit to Beijing last week indicates that New Delhi is undertaking direct diplomacy to obtain China’s support for India’s membership into the Nuclear Suppliers Group. 

This is as it should be. It was foolish and futile to try and somehow shame China into supporting the Indian cause.

Actually, the first round of diplomacy began with President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Beijing last month.

What is not widely known is that the Foreign Secretary, who was accompanying the President, took the opportunity to engage the Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in a one-on-one meeting.

What transpired in either meeting will not be known, but the success or failure of the effort will soon become evident in the forthcoming NSG meeting in Seoul.

Trade

Suffice to say, it will make little difference. India has already sought and obtained a waiver to conduct civil nuclear trade from the body and also pledged to follow its rules, whether or not we are members.

However, it will be a dent in the prestige of the government, which had hyped-up India’s efforts to enter the body to the point where being denied entry will be seen as a major setback.

The NSG debate is a good primer of the manner in which world politics functions.

The NSG itself is not a body based in international law, but a cartel of the powerful - in this case, countries with the capacity to conduct nuclear trade. The only language in which it communicates is power; and the only method of negotiation is give and take.

There are other similar bodies, beginning with the G7/G8 - now somewhat chastened - but which once acted as arbiter of the international economic system.

So there is the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), a club of countries which have the know-how of making missiles, space systems or their components. 

The Australia Group is a cartel of countries making chemicals and the precursors of chemical weapons - and then there's the Wassenaar Group of countries with advanced conventional weapons technologies.

As part of the India-US nuclear agreement of 2008, the US promised India ease of entry into all these groups.

This was said to be huge for India, as the only country that could achieve this goal was the US, the sole global superpower.

Being cartels and not international agreements, these regimes are not always universal. China, the major missile and arms exporting power, is not a member of the MTCR or the Wassenaar, though it claims to harmonise its rules with both of them.

Position

Given this perspective, China’s formal position raising the issue of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty was a red-herring.

It was not India’s refusal to join the NPT that led to the NSG’s creation, but its first nuclear test.

With the world more or less accepting India as “a state with nuclear weapons”, and marking this by the 2008 waiver, that issue should no longer have any salience.

Neither should the Chinese need to assuage Pakistan’s angst. 

Beijing has been a major beneficiary of Islamabad’s obsession with India. It is in its interest to prolong this situation, rather than bringing in Pakistan from the cold. 

It is actually all about that oldest issue in diplomacy - give and take. What is India willing to offer to China, in exchange for its support for the Indian application for NSG membership? 

Far from being offered something, Beijing believes it is seeing increased Indian truculence. New Delhi has gone out of its way to connect freedom of navigation issues with the South China Sea, and tried to shame China into placing Jaishe-Muhammad chief Masood Azhar in the ISIS-Al Qaeda sanctions list at the UN. Indian entities with government backing sought to organise a conference of the entire galaxy of Chinese dissidents - and that, too, at the headquarters of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile.

As it is, India has been disdainful towards Beijijng’s pet initiative, the One Belt One Road. 

Membership

New Delhi, however, believes that it has sought to balance its ties with China by participating in the New Development (BRICS) Bank and the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank.

India has sought membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and sought to put an even spin on its position on maritime issues in the communiqué issued after the Russia-India-China meeting in April, upholding UNCLOS and addressing disputes through “negotiations and agreements” between the parties concerned.

In June it dropped references to the South China Sea in relation to freedom of navigation issues.

It has also indirectly signaled that, were it to become a member of the NSG, it would consider the Pakistani application on its merits.

But what will clinch the issue is the deal Jaishankar will be seeking to strike with Beijing.

Such deals are not made in public. We can only surmise their existence through the outcomes, or in hindsight.

The writer is a Contributing Editor, Mail Today and Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation.  

British lawmaker Cox was killed because of her political views, husband says

BY MICHAEL HOLDEN AND KYLIE MACLELLAN-Wed Jun 22, 2016

Lawmaker Jo Cox, who was shot and stabbed a week before Britain's referendum on European Union membership, died because of her political views and had been deeply troubled by the tone of the campaign, her husband said on Tuesday.

Prime Minister David Cameron appealed to voters across the generation gap to back staying in the EU, two days before a closely fought referendum that will shape the future of Europe. The campaign to leave the EU has echoes of populist movements across Europe and in the United States.

The murder of Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children who was an ardent supporter of EU membership, shocked the country and abruptly changed the tone of a caustic campaign that has polarised Britons.

"She had very strong political views and I believe she was killed because of those views," her husband Brendan Cox told broadcasters. "She died because of them and she would want to stand up for those in death as much as she did in life."

It was unclear how Brendan Cox's words might influence voters.

Cox had been worried about Britain's political culture, including a coarsening of language and people taking more extreme positions, he said. She was also concerned about divisive politics globally.

"She worried about the tone of the debate" that focussed increasingly on immigration and "about the tone of whipping up fears and whipping up hatred".

"I think the EU referendum has created a heightened environment for it but actually it also pre-existed that. It's something that's happened over the last few years I think and again not just in the UK but globally," Brendan Cox said.

Britons vote on Thursday on whether to quit the 28-nation bloc amid warnings from world leaders, investors and companies that a decision to leave would diminish Britain's influence and unleash turmoil on markets.

"BRITS DON'T QUIT"

In an address outside his Downing Street office, Cameron hammered home his message that leaving the EU would jeopardise Britain's economy and its national security, with fewer jobs, fewer allies and higher prices.

"Brits don't quit," he said, using the official backdrop to make a direct pitch to older voters considered more eurosceptic and more likely to vote.

"It will just be you in that polling booth. Just you, taking a decision that will affect your future, your children's future, your grandchildren's future."

The Conservative prime minister's remarks came as an opinion poll showed very narrow support for staying in the EU. The Survation poll put the "Remain" camp just one percentage point ahead of the campaign for a so-called Brexit, well within the margin of error.

Opponents said Cameron's appearance suggested he was worried about the outcome.

As each side sought to play its last trump cards, the pro-EU "Britain Stronger in Europe" campaign issued a final poster of a door leading into a dark void with the slogan: "Leave and there's no going back."

If Britain votes to leave, Cameron would face pressure to resign, though he has said he will continue as leader.

‘Wukan,’ Once a Byword for Chinese Democracy, Now Censored

Five years ago, protests against land grabs in the small village led to an electoral experiment. But little has truly changed.

BY LEAH LIU, BETHANY ALLEN-EBRAHIMIAN-JUNE 20, 2016

A fishing village in southern Guangdong province, once a standard-bearer for small-time democracy in China, has now become a political disaster — and the most-censored term on Chinese social media.

In September 2011, amid protests over land sales in the village of Wukan, residents closed off roads leading in to the village and expelled local governing officials. Police laid siege as residents stockpiled food. Villagers conspicuously proclaimed their loyalty to the ruling Communist Party during the protest, indicating that they were not rebelling against it, but asking for its intervention. In what is sometimes called the “Wukan model” for handling dissent, the dispute was eventually resolved when the provincial party secretary negotiated with the villagers, granting them the right to elect a local leader.

The sudden detention of that democratically-elected leader, Wukan Communist Party Secretary Lin Zulian, has mobilized Wukan residents to protest once again, and has kicked China’s massive online censorship apparatus into high gear. Some time in mid-June, Lin posted a letter to his account on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging platform, announcing his intent to organize a mass demonstration protesting further illegal land sales, a practice endemic in China in which local governments seize land, often held by small farmers, for lucrative resale to commercial ventures.


But days later, on Friday, June 17, dozens of police cars arrived in Wukan; Lin was detained early the next morning. Law enforcement authorities in Lufeng City, which oversees Wukan, released a statement that Lin was suspected of taking bribes. Local residents claim there’s been another land grab, and many felt the allegations were a cover for silencing Lin. According to the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, 400 police faced off with villagers for several hours on June 18. On June 19, thousands of residents marched to the slogan “Return our secretary,” according to one resident’s interview with the New York Times.

As often happens during protests, Wukan residents soon took to the internet. They posted videos and pictures of the village surrounded by police, and shared images of recovered surveillance video of Lin being taken away in the middle of the night. But in what has become a common tale pitting netizens against China’s increasingly controlled web, many posts were quickly taken down in a swift flurry of censorship. On June 19 and June 20, “Wukan” and “villagers” were the most censored terms on Weibo, according to censorship tracker Weiboscope, operated by the Journalism and Media Studies Center at the University of Hong Kong. Lin’s account is now deactivated. After the extensive elimination of Wukan-related posts and comments, only a few news stories from certain media and updates from government accounts are still available on Weibo. In an open letter published online by the local police department, villagers have been asked to cooperate with Lin’s investigation and to avoid “extreme actions.”

Only a fraction of the hundreds of comments that poured in on social media remain, but what’s left evinces support of Lin and the villagers. A user who claimed to be from Wukan wrote,“Secretary Lin is the one we voted for, one person, one vote. Our Wukan needs Secretary Lin.” The user also disavowed the strong police showing to arrest a “more than 70-year-old man.” Another added, “Everyone in Lufeng knows about this. He is a white-haired old man fighting for his people. He’s been laden with trumped-up charges.” One Weibo user asked if the act was “revenge” for Lin’s previous activism.

While journalists continue to have access to Wukan, netizens widely reposted a video clip of a Wukan government official cursing and threatening Hong Kong reporters on June 20. The official, identified as the deputy mayor of Donghai county, which administers Wukan, barked at reporters, brandished an umbrella threateningly, and used it to shield himself from cameras as if it were a truncheon. One reporter shouted back, “You shouldn’t curse … You’re a government official.” In a subsequent shot, Zhang Shuijin, appointed by the county as Lin’s replacement shortly after his arrest, tried to calm down the villagers but was called out by an unidentified woman in a flowered shirt for “selling out the village.”

Local government land grabs are endemic across China, leading to thousandsof protests each year as landholders try to obtain fair compensation. Land sales are a major source of income for many local governments, which sometimes aim to boost development through expensive construction or infrastructure projects. In the process of clearing land for such projects, local officials often compensate farmers with only a fraction of the seized land’s value. A 2011 survey of 1,791 farmers conducted across 17 provinces revealed that farmers whose land has been taken received an average of $17,850 per acre in compensation — whereas authorities pocketed an average of about $740,000 per acre after resale, largely for commercial ventures. It’s unsurprising, then, that Wukan protesters seem to have struck a collective nerve across the country.

The redux in Wukan highlights an irony central to the rule of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who took power in late 2012. Xi’s signature policy has been a sweeping campaign against corruption, as well as harsh crackdowns on dissenting speech. Yet sometimes speech is necessary to highlight corruption, as it was in Wukan several years ago. That’s a reality that prevailing authorities don’t seem to accept. As a June 20 editorial in party-owned newspaper Global Times stated in response to the Wukan protests, “If the drastic actions of the Wukan villagers are adopted by other people involved in disputes, China will see mess and disturbance at a grass-roots level.” In Xi’s China, the negotiation that mollified Wukan residents in 2011 may no longer be possible. Yet the corruption there continues.

MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images

UN rights chief urges Suu Kyi’s govt to end discrimination against Rohingya

Why is no one helping Myanmar’s Rohingya?

Myanmar’s Rohingya may be victims of ‘crimes against humanity’: UN 

UN says Myanmar's discrimination against Rohingya Muslims 'could lead to genocide

21st June 2016

BURMA’S new government has been urged to end discrimination and human rights violations against the Rohingya Muslims and other minorities by the U.N. human rights chief in a report released on Monday.

Zeid Ra-ad al-Hussein, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, is pushing Ang Sang Suu Kyi’s government to eradicate restrictions of movement, forced labor and sexual abuse against the Rohingya Muslims, among other violations.

The 18-page report, requested by the U.N. Human Rights Council, said it found a “pattern of gross violations against the Rohingya… [which] suggest a widespread or systematic attack” which has given rise to the possibility of “crimes against humanity”.

It calls on the Burmese government to abolish “all discriminatory local orders” in the western Rakhine state, where some 120,000 Rohingya and Kaman Muslims live in camps for internally displaces people.

SEE ALSO: Burma: Military chief denies existence of ‘Rohingya’ term

The Rakhine state also has one of the lowest literacy rates in the country, according to the report, and non-citizens are barred from studying certain professions – including medicine, economics and engineering.

“Local orders” in the northern Rakhine state which include a series of discriminatory policies and directives from local authorities target the Rohingya community and have been in place in a number of years.

Zeid said in a statement: “The new government has inherited a situation where laws and policies are in place that are designed to deny fundamental rights to minorities, and where impunity for serious violations against such communities has encouraged further violence against them.

“It will not be easy to reverse such entrenched discrimination. This will be a challenging provess that requires resolve, resources and time. But it must be a top priority to halt ongoing violations and prevent further ones taking place against Myanmar’s ethnic and religious minorities.”

SEE ALSO: Offensive ‘boat people’ cartoon slammed by Rohingya activist as ‘dangerous’

However, the Burmese government is still intent on avoiding the term “Rohingya”, as Suu Kyi told the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights on Monday during a visit to the capital Naypyitaw.

According to Reuters, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “At their meeting here this morning, our Foreign Minister Daw Aung San Suu Kyi explained our stance on this issue that the controversial terms should be avoided.”

The Rohingya are not officially recognized by Burma as an ethnic group, and conflict over land and resources in Rakhine has spurred on fatal violence between Buddhists and Muslims. More than 100,000 Rohingya were forced to flee their homes and now live in decrepit camps.

Additional reporting by Associated Press

Deadlock Over Canada’s Law Regulating Physician-Assisted Suicide Broken

Senate accepts government’s proposal even though it previously wanted broader application of rules

Canada's Health Minister Jane Philpott, right, speaks as Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould listens at a news conference in Ottawa on Thursday over assisted-suicide. PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS

By PAUL VIEIRA-June 17, 2016

OTTAWA—Canada’s senate voted on Friday to accept the government’s proposed legislation regulating physician-assisted suicide even though it previously argued that limits placed on who could seek a doctor’s help to die were unconstitutional.

This ends a political deadlock between the lower and upper houses of Canada’s Parliament and means the country will have a formal law regarding doctor-assisted suicide after it was decriminalized earlier this month. Doctors said they needed a specific law to give them legal clarity and protection over providing right-to-die services.

Canada’s Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould said the outcome is a right-to-die law that reflects “the best public-policy choice on an incredibly sensitive and transformative issue.”

Under the new law, an individual diagnosed with a terminal illness, or a “reasonably foreseeable” death, could seek a doctor’s help to terminate his life. The person must submit a written request with signatures from two witnesses, which then goes for review by two doctors or nurses. The law is similar to rules in place in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington, which also allow doctor-assisted death.

To avoid so-called suicide tourism, the Canadian law limits right-to-die services to people who qualify for government-funded health services in Canada.

The bill was first introduced in April, but was held up for weeks in the Senate because some members of the upper chamber argued the government’s proposal was unconstitutional. The Senate agreed to amend the bill to broaden the criteria under which someone could seek a doctor’s help to die, arguing the change reflected the Supreme Court of Canada’s landmark judgment on the hot-button issue.

The top court said in a 2015 ruling that people with “grievous and irremediable” medical conditions had the constitutional right to seek a physician’s help to die. Some senators said the top court put no conditions, such as the diagnosis of a terminal disease, as to when Canadians could exercise their rights.

The Liberal government rejected the Senate’s main amendment. Ms. Wilson-Raybould said the legislation struck a delicate balance between allowing people to exercise their constitutional right to seek a doctor’s help to die, and setting up safeguards to protect the elderly and disabled, who might be under pressure from others to seek right-to-die services.

“I’m obviously disappointed by the outcome, [but] I believe that all different viewpoints were listened to with respect,” said James Cowan, a Liberal senator who pushed for broader eligibility criteria in the right-to-die bill.

Write to Paul Vieira at paul.vieira@wsj.com