A look at Syrian refugees in neighboring countries

March 12, 2015

The Syrian conflict, which began with peaceful protests before escalating into a grinding civil war, has touched off a humanitarian catastrophe that has inundated the region.

More than 3.8 million Syrians have fled their country in the four years since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began. Most have traveled to neighboring countries, straining the resources of those nations. There are also hundreds of thousands of unregistered refugees. Syria had a prewar population of 23 million.

A look at Syrian refugees in neighboring countries:

LEBANON

Lebanon is home to nearly 1.2 million registered refugees, with many more not on the books scattered around the country in informal tent settlements and old construction sites. Lebanon, whose population is about 4.5 million, has the highest per capita concentration of refugees worldwide, according to the United Nations. Fearing for its own internal stability, Lebanon recently began imposing restrictions on Syrians trying to enter.

JORDAN

Jordan has nearly 625,000 registered refugees. Many are in encampments near the northern border with Syria but a large number are in urban areas. The largest of the encampments is Zaatari camp, where some 84,000 refugees live under the direct care of the U.N. and the Jordanian government. Another camp that was opened last year, Azraq, was built to host 130,000 people and currently holds around 14,000.

TURKEY

Turkey has more than 1.6 million registered refugees. Ankara has been funding and managing the refugees, who are sheltered in around 21 camps complete with schools, medical centers and other social facilities.

IRAQ

Iraq has nearly 245,000 registered refugees, the majority of them ethnic Kurds from Syria who found shelter in the largely autonomous Kurdish region in the north. Tens of thousands live in a camp of tents and cinderblock shacks near the border, while the rest have found jobs and homes in nearby towns. The regional Kurdish government allows them to move around freely.

EGYPT

Egypt is home to more than 136,000 registered refugees, although officials estimate there are hundreds of thousands who are not registered.

Syrian refugees return to Kobani from Turkey

11 March 2015 Wednesday

The refugees crossed the border from Mursitpinar border gate, located in the southern Turkish district of Suruc, after officials checked their identity papers. A registration system for the refugees was made by Turkey's emergency body, AFAD.

The refugees are allowed to cross back into northern Syria at least three days every week.

Some 200,000 Kobani residents rapidly fled to Turkey's neighboring town of Suruc in Sanliurfa province in one week in early October.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/156458/syrian-refugees-return-to-kobani-from-trukey.

Kurdish fighters rout IS militants from town near Iraq

February 28, 2015

BEIRUT (AP) — Backed by U.S.-led coalition airstrikes, Kurdish fighters fought their way Friday into a northeastern Syrian town that was a key stronghold of Islamic State militants, only days after the group abducted dozens of Christians in the volatile region, Syrian activists and Kurdish officials said.

The victory marks a second blow to the extremist IS group in a month, highlighting the growing role of Syria's Kurds as the most effective fighting force against the Islamic State. In January, Kurdish forces drove IS militants from the town of Kobani near the Turkish border after a months-long fight, dealing a very public defeat to the extremists.

But it is also tempered by this week's horrific abductions by IS militants of more than 220 Christian Assyrians in the same area, along the fluid and fast shifting front line in Syria. The town of Tel Hamees in Syria's northeastern Hassakeh province is strategically important because it links territory controlled by IS in Syria and Iraq.

The province, which borders Turkey and Iraq, is predominantly Kurdish but also has populations of Arabs and predominantly Christian Assyrians and Armenians. "We are now combing the town for explosives and remnants of terrorists," said Redur Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish fighters, known as the People's Protection Units or YPG.

Speaking to The Associated Press over the phone from the outskirts of Tel Hamees, he said the town was a key stronghold for IS and had served as a staging ground for the group's operations in the Iraqi town of Sinjar and the city of Mosul.

Dislodging the group from Tel Hamees cuts a supply line from Iraq, Khalil said. The push on the town's eastern and southeastern edges came after the Kurdish troops, working with Christian militias and Arab tribal fighters, seized dozens of nearby villages from the Islamic State extremists. U.S.-led coalition forces provided cover, striking at IS infrastructure in the region for days.

More than 200 militants died in the fighting, and at least eight troops fighting alongside YPG, including an Australian national who has been with the Kurdish forces for three months, Khalil said. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists inside Syria, said IS defenses collapsed and the militants fled after Kurdish fighters broke into Tel Hamees from the east and south.

The Observatory's director, Rami Abdurrahman, said the Kurds seized more than 100 villages around Tel Hamees and that ground battles and air strikes around the town have killed at least 175 IS fighters in the past several days in some of the latest losses for the group since Kobani.

Some 15,000 villagers have fled the fighting, he added. The Kurds in Syria and Iraq have emerged as the most effective force fighting IS, which controls about a third of Iraq and Syria — much of it captured in a lighting blitz last spring and summer, as Iraqi army forces melted away in the face of the militant onslaught.

In Syria, they have teamed up with moderate rebels for territorial gains against the group. Elsewhere in Hassakeh, IS fighters this week captured dozens of mostly Christian villages to the west of Tel Hamees — taking at least 220 Assyrian Christians hostage, according to activists. The fate of those abducted was still unknown.

On Thursday, video emerged of IS militants smashing ancient Mesopotamian artifacts in a museum in Mosul, Iraq's second largest city. The U.N. Security Council strongly condemned the ongoing "barbaric terrorist acts" by the Islamic State group including attacks "and the deliberate destruction of irreplaceable religious and cultural artifacts housed in the Mosul Museum and burning of thousands of books and rare manuscripts from the Mosul Library."

A council statement said income from looted cultural items in Iraq and Syria is being used to support the group's recruitment efforts and strengthen its ability to organize and carry out terrorism acts.

"The members of the Security Council stressed again that ISIL must be defeated and that the intolerance, violence, and hatred it espouses must be stamped out," the statement said, using one of several alternative acronyms for the group.

Irina Bokova, the head of the U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, denounced the group's destruction of ancient statues and artifacts as "cultural cleansing" and a war crime that the world must punish. From Paris, where the agency is based, Bokova said she could not watch to the end the Islamic State video posted Thursday that shows men using sledgehammers to smash Mesopotamian artworks in Iraq's northern city of Mosul. She called the video "a real shock."

The Louvre Museum in Paris said the destruction "marks a new stage in the violence and horror, because all of humanity's memory is being targeted in this region that was the cradle of civilization, the written word, and history."

French President Francois Hollande also condemned the "barbarity" of the destructions. "What the terrorists want is to destroy all that makes humanity," he said Friday during a visit to the Philippines.

Elsewhere in Syria, at least eight civilians were killed in a car bomb that exploded outside the Bilal Mosque in the rebel-held town of Dumeir, east of Damascus. Many others were wounded in the blast, which occurred as worshippers were leaving the mosque following Friday prayers.

Another car bomb went off outside a mosque in Nasseriya, near Dumeir, also causing multiple casualties. It was not immediately clear who was behind the bombings.

Associated Press writers Ashraf Khalil in Beirut and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

Saudi Arabia recalls ambassador from Stockholm

11 March 2015 Wednesday

Saudi Arabia has recalled its ambassador to Sweden after a diplomatic row between the two countries, Sweden's foreign ministry said on Wednesday.

"We have received information that Saudi Arabia has called its ambassador home," Erik Boman, spokesman for Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom, said.

He said the reason given for the action was Sweden's criticism of Saudi Arabia's record on human rights and democracy.

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/todays-news/156434/saudi-arabia-recalls-ambassador-from-stockholm.

What's at stake in Spain's controversial security law

March 12, 2015

MADRID (AP) — Spain's senate approved a tough new security law Thursday that includes stiff fines for people who take part in violent anti-austerity protests. Critics slam the package as a blatant attack on free assembly and expression. The measures come three years after Spaniards defied authorities with rallies that spiraled into violence, with demonstrators fighting police in rage against austerity measures and in solidarity with those facing eviction.

Media advocates are concerned that the government's Public Security Law, expected to be finalized later in the country's lower house, could stifle journalists because of a clause authorizing fines for "unauthorized use of images" of police.

The bill pressed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party has been dubbed the "Gag Law" by critics, including a panel of U.N. experts. But it is virtually guaranteed passage, because Rajoy's party has a majority in both houses of Parliament. The Senate vote was 134-84.

Here's a look at the law and what's at stake:

BIG FINES FOR UNAUTHORIZED PROTESTS

Rajoy's administration was enraged in 2012 when tens of thousands of protesters surrounded Parliament in downtown Madrid to rail against tax hikes and government cutbacks.

Spaniards must seek government permission to hold protests, but the movement to "encircle" Parliament was unauthorized — and protesters ended up clashing with police. Images of the violence in the heart of the capital shot around the world, spooking investors already concerned about Spain's stability.

The bill sets fines of up to 30,000 euros ($33,000) for protests near Parliament and Spain's regional lawmaking buildings when there is a "serious disturbance of public safety." That means protesters even if they don't participate in violence could face fines.

Human Rights Watch said the "measure is intended to discourage protests that target national and regional legislative bodies" and urged the government to find ways for protesters to express themselves near the sites.

A whopping fine of 600,000 euros ($638,000) is included for unauthorized protests near key infrastructure — including transportation hubs, nuclear power plants, refineries and telecommunications installations.

Spanish government records show riot police intervened in only 1 percent of the thousands of demonstrations during the height of the country's economic crisis in 2012 and 2013, prompting opponents to say the law is disproportionate and unnecessary.

EVICTION DEMONSTRATIONS

Spain's most emotional protests often happen when demonstrators try to halt court-ordered forced evictions of families who cannot pay their mortgages. These people end up not only homeless but still obliged to pay back lenders.

Nearly 35,000 primary residence evictions were carried out last year, a 7 percent rise from 2013. And 11 people were arrested last month after allegedly throwing gasoline at police during a Madrid eviction. Protesters also clambered onto heavy equipment brought in to demolish part of the home; they were dragged away by riot police.

The bill doesn't mention evictions by name, but specifies fines of up to 30,000 euros for preventing government employees from enforcing administrative or judicial orders, even if protesters don't commit a crime.

"This provision appears tailor-made to suppress organized gatherings to prevent evictions for mortgage default and rent arrears," Human Rights Watch said.

RESTRICTIONS ON IMAGES OF WORKING POLICE

Spain's government says beaming pictures of police cracking down on protests could prevent them from doing their jobs or put them at risk of reprisals.

People could face fines of up to 30,000 euros when they disseminate images of officers "that would endanger their safety or that of protected areas or put at risk the success of a (police) operation," the bill says.

Unions representing journalists and Human Rights Watch are worried that the prospect of fines will cause journalists to self-censor their work at protests.

The impact of the possible fines on journalists probably won't be clear until authorities impose them, and the journalists appeal. At that point, courts will have to determine whether disclosure of the images is protected under freedom of information laws, or if the dissemination hurt national security or the safety or privacy of individual officers, said Alejandro Tourino, a Madrid-based media lawyer with the Ecija firm who has done work for The Associated Press.

EXPULSIONS FOR FENCE

STORMING MIGRANTS

Every week last year, hundreds of mostly sub-Saharan African men stormed towering, barbed-wire fences that separate Spain's North African enclave of Melilla from Morocco. The migrants live in rudimentary camps on a nearby mountain before staging well-organized, pre-dawn attacks on the fences.

At least 2,100 made it across in 70 attempts, but many more were intercepted by Spanish and Moroccan police amid accusations by activists that they were expelled even though they touched Spanish soil and should have been allowed to stay and seek asylum.

The original bill sought to legalize summary expulsions. It was amended to set up a process for asylum seekers to have their cases considered if they enter Spain via official Moroccan checkpoints — not over fences.

Critics of the bill say the amendment was a positive step, but they still fear asylum seekers may continue to climb the fences and face expulsion if they can't get through official checkpoints.

THE GOVERNMENT'S TAKE

Rajoy's administration insists the bill was crafted mainly to update a 23-year-old law drafted when the opposition Socialist Party was in power. The government says it will provide more effective security by rooting out protesters prone to violence.

It also allows fines for sex workers if they seek clients near areas where children are present and for drug users who consume in public.

The Socialist Party has vowed to repeal the law if it wins future elections.

But Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez Diaz has said the bill provides a balance between security and citizens' rights by setting fines and sanctions for offenses that are otherwise unpunishable.

"It's a law for the 21st century," Fernandez Diaz told law enforcement officials. "It provides better guarantees for people's security and more judicial security for people's rights."

Associated Press writer Ciaran Giles in Madrid contributed to this story.

Young Spaniards moving to Germany get trapped in dismal jobs

February 26, 2015

BERLIN (AP) — Edur Ansa couldn't find work for a year after he got his nursing degree from Barcelona University. Like many other Spaniards, he started looking for work in Germany and ended up with a job at a private hospital.

That's when he found himself trapped. He said he got lower pay than German counterparts even though he worked longer hours and was better qualified. But when he tried to quit, he found himself locked into his contract until he paid off the language lessons and accommodation his employer provided when he arrived.

"It really upset me that they treated us differently, worse, than our German co-workers," Ansa said. "I just couldn't stand that." Young people from Spain and other struggling southern European countries are finding themselves trapped in jobs they accepted in Germany in order to escape the financial crisis back home. They had been lured by aggressive recruitment drives by Germany companies desperate to plug an acute skilled labor shortage. What seemed like a match made in heaven turned into a hellish deal for many southern Europeans — who claim they were tricked into signing contracts that made it all but impossible to quit what turned out to be miserable jobs.

Dire economic straits and poor German language skills combined to make many of these young workers easy targets, critics say. Spanish unemployment for those 25 and younger is at 53.3 percent; Italy's youth unemployment rate is 44 percent; and in Greece it's 50.6. Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, some 30,000 Spaniards moved to Germany.

Germany's shortage of skilled workers has hit the health sector especially hard. According to the German Health Ministry, the country needs some 30,000 nurses to fill vacant jobs. Many of the southern European migrants ended up in nursing and geriatric care — only to find out, they say, that their German co-workers often got more money, worked fewer hours and got more days off.

Many wanted to quit when they found out. But there was no way to leave without a heavy penalty. They didn't know that they signed contracts for several years, and that they would owe thousands of euros in German classes, board and accommodation if they quit early. It's unclear exactly how many of the thousands of young southern Europeans who are lured to Germany by promises of work find themselves trapped in jobs.

Many got job offers through recruitment agencies that showed them contracts in German they couldn't understand or generic Spanish contracts that did not include the clauses about having to stay with the companies for years. Other, like Ansa, say they read the fine print, but felt they had no other choice but to sign anyway.

"I saw that there was demand for repayment — but what was I going to do?" Ansa said. "It was my only chance for a job." Phone calls and emails sent to Ansa's former hospital went unanswered. Thomas Bublitz, head of the Federal Association of German Private Hospitals, said he had heard of cases in which Spanish nurses, because of their university education, had problems adjusting to the requirements of German hospitals. He stressed, however, that all nurses receive salaries based on their qualifications, not their origin.

Bublitz also defended the measures preventing employees from leaving early, if the hospitals invest in German lessons. "It's legitimate that these hospitals, if they pay for the language classes, tie their employees contractually for a certain period of time," Bublitz said. "After all they're paying for an education that otherwise the employees would have to spend money on themselves."

Officials at the Spanish Embassy in Berlin say they are aware of the difficult situation many Spanish employees face in Germany — but that there's not much they can do. Labor contracts with special clauses demanding back payments for quitting early are legal in Germany, they say.

"It is a problem that worries us," embassy official Angel de Goya told The Associated Press. Nobody knows exactly how many young Europeans are stuck in dismal working conditions across the country. But both of Germany's labor unions say they've also been approached by many young Spaniards asking them how they can quit their jobs without having to go into debt.

"We've had cases in which companies demanded up to 12,000 euros after the employees left their jobs early," said Kalle Kunkel, an activist from the ver.di union. "We're dealing with a modern version of indentured servitude here."

"This is the downside of the European Union's freedom of movement," Kunkel said. "Other countries pay for the education of these people and then German companies bring them here to exploit them." Sylwia Timm, who works for the DGB union's "Fair Mobility" project, said her group started printing booklets in Spanish and handing them out to potential job seekers in Spain: "Since it's too late once they're in Germany, we're now trying to warn them of all the risks before they sign the contracts," Timm said.

A spokeswoman for Germany's labor ministry said German labor law applies to foreign and domestic employees in the same way. "As for the concrete design of the contracts, the German government cannot influence these," said the spokeswoman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

Some young Europeans stay in their miserable jobs until the end of their contract, which is mostly after three years. Others try to borrow money from friends and family to buy their way out. Then there are those who just quit and leave, hoping the companies won't be able to track them down.

Ansa quit five months into a three-year contract with the private Brandenburg Klinik. The Spaniard said it upset him that he had to work longer shifts, was better qualified and still got a lower salary than his German co-workers. But what really pushed him over the edge was when he was told he could request vacation time only after all the German employees had put in their requests.

Unlike Spaniards, who study for four years at a university to become nurses, Germans need only to go through a three-year vocational training and are usually less qualified then their Spanish co-workers. Salaries vary across the country, but it is not unusual that German nurses earn 30 percent more than their Spanish colleagues, said Kunkel from ver.di union.

"It is just so unethical what they're doing to us here," said Ansa. "These companies are taking advantage of our difficult situation in Spain, exploiting us and keeping us here against our will." Two weeks after Ansa quit his job, the Brandenburg Klinik sent a letter to his parents' address in Spain, demanding a repayment of 3,222 Euros within the next 14 days. Ansa has not yet paid, nor responded to further letters from lawyers and a Spanish court demanding he reimburse the money.

He has stayed in Germany and worked for a few months in a different job at a Berlin nursing home, but quit recently quit that job as well. Now he's looking for a new job, again. "I'll try one more time to find a decent job here — third and last time," Ansa said. "If that doesn't work out, I'll go home."

Alan Clendenning and Jorge Sainz contributed reporting from Madrid, Spain.

Japan accepts 11 asylum seekers

11 March 2015 Wednesday

Japan accepted 11 asylum seekers out of a record 5,000 applications in 2014,Ministry of Justice data showed, drawing criticism from advocates and lawyers that the country is not doing enough to provide protection to refugees.

The number of asylum applications rose 53 percent from the previous year, while the refugee recognition rate was 0.2 percent, one of the lowest among industrialized economies.

"The low recognition rate is shameful," said immigration lawyer Shogo Watanabe.

In 2013, Japan accepted six refugees, its lowest for 15 years.

A lack of planning for the protection and resettlement of refugees, as well as dysfunction in the system that processes asylum claims, was behind the low intake, said Mieko Ishikawa, director of Forum for Refugees Japan.

"There's no comprehensive policy on the part of the government, and there are gaps in the system's transparency, efficiency and independence," she said.

Germany and the United States were the largest destinations for asylum seekers in 2013, receiving 109,580 and 88,360 applications respectively, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees data shows.

Tokyo's refugee recognition rate is only a fraction of the global 2013 average of 32 percent.

"No other developed refugee jurisdiction has such as consistently low rate," said Brian Barbour of the Japan Association for Refugees.

The sharp increase is in part down to the attractiveness of Japan to foreign workers, some of whom claim asylum to stay in the country, say immigration officials.

Asylum applications have risen nearly four-fold since 2010, when legal changes gave re-applicants the right to work as their claims were judged.

"Most people aren't coming for political reasons. In countries like Nepal and Sri Lanka, many people think they can come to Japan to work," said Hiroshi Kimizuka, director of refugee recognition at the Ministry of Justice.

A labor shortage has pushed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government to expand a "trainee" program for manual workers that has been criticized for poor conditions and human rights abuses. The government has also sought to attract white collar foreigners, while insisting that the measures are not an "immigration policy".

Source: World Bulletin.
Link: http://www.worldbulletin.net/haber/156407/japan-accepts-11-asylum-seekers.

China plans to boost military budget by 10.1 percent in 2015

March 05, 2015

BEIJING (AP) — China announced Thursday that its official military budget will grow by 10.1 percent in the coming year, amid unease among Beijing's neighbors about its growing might and territorial ambitions.

The increase to about $145 billion in spending would mark the fifth year in a row of double-digit increases despite the country's slowing economic growth, which fell to 7.4 percent last year from 7.7 percent the previous year.

The spending reflects China's growing power and desire to assert itself in the region and globally. However, Beijing says the bigger budgets are aimed only at modernizing and improving conditions for the 2.3 million-member People's Liberation Army, the world's largest standing military.

"China has a tougher road to travel than other large nations in terms of national defense modernization. We can only rely on ourselves for research and development of most of our military technology," legislative spokeswoman Fu Ying said.

"Meanwhile, we need to ceaselessly improve conditions for our soldiers," Fu said. Fu spoke at a news conference Wednesday, ahead of the formal announcement of the military budget early Thursday. She said that China's military posture remains strictly defensive and that it has never used "gunboats" to advance its trade interests.

Despite such assurances, neighboring countries have increased their own military spending in part to counter China's rise. In the past several years, Chinese and Japanese ships have frequently confronted each other near a set of contested East China Sea islands. China and India also have a disputed border high in the Himalayas.

China also has disputes with several neighbors over territory in the South China Sea, where U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said last week that Beijing is expanding outposts as part of an "aggressive" effort to assert sovereignty.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. was monitoring China's military developments. She called for China to be more transparent and use its capabilities "in a manner that's conducive to maintenance of peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region."

Japan increased its defense budget by 2.8 percent this year to a record $42 billion, the third consecutive year of increases following 11 years of declines prior to hawkish Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's rise to power in 2012. Planes and naval vessels to counter China's growing capabilities top the Japanese military's shopping list.

Even more dramatically, India, the world's biggest arms importer in recent years, increased its spending this year by 11 percent to $40 billion, with big increases for its navy and air force. New Delhi has expressed concern not only about the disputed land border, but also about the Chinese navy's growing presence in the Indian Ocean.

China's official military spending is still less than a third of the U.S. defense budget, a proposed $534 billion this year along with $51 billion for the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. But it comes against a background of anticipated flat or falling American spending on its armed forces in coming years.

The Pentagon and global arms bodies estimate China's actual military spending may be anywhere from 40 to 50 percent more because the official budget doesn't include the costs of high-tech weapons imports, research and development, and other programs.

Neighboring countries have come to expect Chinese defense increases, said Alexander Neill, a senior fellow for Asia-Pacific security for the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "There's the expectation that it's not likely to plateau in the next few years, but will generally sit around that level commensurate with the PLA's reform and modernization goals," Neill said.

China's low inflation could make this year's increase close to or bigger in real terms than rises in recent years, when rapid price increases eroded the military's buying power. Last year's increase was 12.2 percent.

China's neighbors may gain a degree of reassurance from the dip in the growth rate, said Ni Lexiong, a military expert at Shanghai's University of Political Science and Law. Growth of less than 10 percent would likely "be not enough" to meet the PLA's modernization goals, Ni said.

China is seeking to improve conditions for the military amid rising labor costs and competition with the private sector for top graduates in science and technology. The need for ever-more sophisticated weaponry is also increasing the costs, with the addition of an aircraft carrier combat wing, the roll-out of two prototype stealth fighters and cruise missiles that fly faster than the speed of sound.

The PLA's traditional mandate had been to guard China's borders and prepare for contingencies involving Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing has pledged to take control of, by force if necessary.

However, newer missions, including U.N. peacekeeping operations, are taking China's military much further afield. China is also poised to pass an anti-terrorism law that could authorize the sending of military forces overseas to take part in anti-terror missions if granted permission by the host nation.

China's forces, under the control of the Communist Party, are seen as being hampered by political interference, and top commanders have lately come under scrutiny as part of a nationwide crackdown on corruption.

Already, President Xi Jinping has overseen the arrests of two top generals, including the military's retired No. 2 officer, Xu Caihou. This week, officials announced that 14 other top officers are under investigation or have been convicted of crimes such as selling ranks, embezzling funds or taking kickbacks on housing contracts.

While harming morale among some officers, the anti-graft drive could bring benefits to the military through a reduction of waste and losses from corruption, said Shanghai expert Ni.

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.

China state media seen stepping-up anti-Western rhetoric

March 03, 2015

BEIJING (AP) — Western values are a "ticket to hell," a newspaper published by China's Communist Party said in a recent editorial that held up Ukraine and some Arab countries as examples of outside ideas causing turmoil.

It was the latest colorful example of a rising level of invective targeting critics of the authoritarian government. In the two-plus years since President Xi Jinping took the helm of the ruling Communist Party, state media have become more strident in defending the one-party system and stoking nationalism.

Events of recent months have accelerated the trend. Last fall's pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong opened floodgates of disdain against "anti-China" forces. Last week, the party tabloid Global Times laid into well-known blogger Ren Zhiqiang for questioning official warnings against Western values infiltrating Chinese college classrooms.

The newspaper pointed to turmoil in Ukraine and the Arab world to show how any adoption of Western models by non-Western countries "basically amounts to the copying of failure." "No matter how beautiful they appear on the surface, they are in fact a ticket to hell, and can only bring disaster to the Chinese nation," the newspaper said.

While Cold War brickbats such as "running dogs of the American imperialists" have yet to return, there's been an overall revival of tough language laying down the party's bottom line and seeking to undermine opposing arguments.

Some critics fear a reversion to the extreme intolerance of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and will scrutinize the speeches at China's annual ceremonial legislature opening Thursday for more signs of the trend.

"Over the last two years or so, the propaganda has become less refined. There's a big market for this kind of crude nationalism," said Willy Lam, a Chinese politics expert at Hong Kong's Chinese University.

The exchange involving the blogger followed a stern warning in January by Education Minister Yuan Guiren against threats to communist ideological purity in higher education. His comments, in turn, reflected an internal party document, leaked in 2013, that warned against Western values such as constitutionalism, respect for civil society and press freedom.

A further echo was heard last week, when the president of the Supreme People's Court, Zhou Qiang, demanded that judges stand strong against Western concepts of judicial independence and division of powers.

"Resolutely resist the influence of erroneous Western thought," Zhou said. Such pronouncements are clearly being dictated from the highest party echelons, said Li Datong, a political commentator who has been removed from a state media senior editing job for broaching sensitive subjects.

"These people talking so harshly now were only recently espousing greater openness, not less. Clearly things have changed," Li said. Foreign countries and leaders are frequent targets. The state media pilloried Britain after Prime Minister David Cameron met with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by Beijing. Britain, the Global Times said in a December 2013 commentary, is no longer seen as a "big power" among Chinese, but as "just an old European country apt for travel and study."

Especially strident outrage from Beijing was sparked by last year's "Occupy Central" protest movement in China's semiautonomous region of Hong Kong. Beijing rejected the protesters' demands for open nominations for elections for Hong Kong's top executive.

Protest leaders were accused of being pawns of shady outside forces and foreign governments. An October, the party's flagship newspaper People's Daily accused organizers of seeking to "arouse social conflict and incite illegal activities under the name of election issues." They were leading democracy "into peril," it said in an editorial.

Government allies and retired officials condemning the demonstrators included former ambassador to the United Nations Zhou Nan, who warned that "anti-China forces inside and outside Hong Kong" were conspiring against the city and could threaten China's socialist regime.

Observers see the more combative language as an outgrowth of Xi's calls for stronger party control and a more vigorous role for China on the world stage. "I do think this is very much an initiative that Xi Jinping approved, if not started," said Steve Tsang, senior fellow at the University of Nottingham's China Policy Institute.

Shortly after taking over as party leader in 2012, Xi took a hard line on issues of national sovereignty and state survival. He said that while China seeks a peaceful international environment, "No country should presume that we will engage in trading our core interests or that we will swallow the 'bitter fruit' of harming our sovereignty, security or development interests."

Tsang said that approach underscores Xi's confidence in the political model he's adopted, but also betrays his nervousness about the party's ability to retain power. The Hong Kong protests were especially nerve-rattling because they showed the influence of Western thinking over public attitudes in the former British colony, which enjoys its own legal system and other freedoms.

"Hence the current warning against Western values," Tsang said. Beijing political commentator Zhang Lifan warned of a "vicious cycle" of insecurity leading to ever-sharpening criticism. Political debate already has fallen behind that of the relatively open 1980s, and threatens to revert to the violent intolerance of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang said.

Despite that, Lam said internal party polling shows the stridency has resonance with patriotic young Chinese, seen for example in the rising number of university graduates volunteering for the armed forces.

"Xi's major objective is to stoke the flames of nationalism, especially among the young people. They're proud of what Xi is doing for China's position in the world," Lam said. Yet, while surveys show high levels of patriotism, Chinese society also displays a strangely contradictory attitude toward the West.

Despite their willingness to defend their nation and join in condemnations of its enemies — particularly arch-foe Japan — many Chinese are voting with their feet when it comes to their futures, with the West receiving the strongest endorsements.

An estimated 274,000 Chinese are studying in the United States alone, with tens of thousands more in Australia, Britain and elsewhere. And while estimates vary, millions more are believed to have obtained foreign residency or purchased property abroad, particularly among the elite. So large are the numbers that financial experts have begun to warn of the dangers of capital flight, though China's economy remains on a firm footing.

Ukraine's grinding war stains innocence of childhood

March 13, 2015

KHARTSYZK, Ukraine (AP) — Seryozha colors in his drawing of a tank, lost in thought. Like many 7-year-olds in eastern Ukraine, he has trouble recalling a time before the war.

"They've always been shooting," he says, vigorously scratching with the brightest of pencils. Yelena Nikulenko, the director of the children's home in the rebel-held town of Khartsyzk, says kids like Seryozha have been let down twice.

First orphaned or abandoned by their parents, they were then dumped by their new families when the Ukrainian government stopped paying benefits to foster families in separatist-controlled areas. "On top of that, you have the war, the shelling, the fear," Nikulenko says. "It will be a scar for the rest of their lives, that's for sure."

The conflict that erupted in Ukraine last year between government troops and Russian-backed separatists has claimed at least 6,000 lives and displaced nearly 1.8 million people. The United Nations Children's Fund estimates that 1.7 million children on both sides of the front line have been harmed through lack of proper shelter, nutrition, medicine or schooling.

Children struggle to understand what is going on around them, and why. Fighting has abated drastically since a new cease-fire came into effect last month, but the suffering, loneliness and terror remain.

In the government-held town of Popasna, 70 kilometers (45 miles) north of the children's home, only a few people walk along deserted streets between apartments gutted by rocket fire, a grim contrast to the days when the town bustled with 30,000 people. One of those destroyed homes belongs to Tatyana Belash, who has now taken shelter in a basement with her 3-year old daughter, Zlata.

As the adults talk politics, Zlata, a shy girl with blonde pigtails, darts around the basement cluttered with battered mattresses. Asked about the shelling, Zlata shies away and seeks comfort in stroking her cat.

"When we first came here, she kept saying: 'Let's go home!'" Belash says. "I couldn't explain to her that we couldn't go home because there was fighting going on." Children in the Ukraine-controlled village of Chermalyk play war and scuttle in and out of the craters made by falling Grad rockets.

As 11-year old Tolik Tokar shimmies into one crater, his head disappears from view. Then he raises his head and pretends to shoot at the baddies: the separatists. The boys take aim with make-believe guns fashioned from sticks — but Tokar has seen shooting first-hand, not just in play.

"When shelling was raging, we went to check it out, and then they opened fire on me," Tokar says, stammering as he tells his tale. "The bullets tore through the cloth on my shoulder here and flew past."

A few dozen kilometers away on the rebel side, children play the same games — but with roles reversed. There, Ukrainian soldiers are the bogeymen, with "Nazi" one of the favorite slurs. The 22 children under Nikulenko's tutelage, in Khartsyzk, are some of the most vulnerable anywhere in the war-wracked region, and she asks that they be identified only by their first names. Before fighting began, the home served as a shelter for children rescued from the streets, or seeking respite from dysfunctional families. More have been abandoned in recent months.

Veronika, a freckled and gap-toothed 6-year-old, smiles and pulls down on her red-checked dress as she recalls life before the war — the visits to the amusement park and zoo, her mother's home cooking. She even has fond memories of her father, who returned home after a stint in prison for slashing her mother's shoulder with a knife.

Since then, her father enlisted with the rebel army and her mother left her at the children's home. Veronika relies on her own inner strength to ward off the terror brought on by war. "When they were doing boom-boom, it was so scary," she says, recalling a recent bout of shelling. "Once when they were shooting at night, I fell off the bed."

Veronika's mother visits Khartsyzk from time to time. The young girl hopes to go home when summer comes. Nikulenko says children in her care have come under the spell of Russian television. They love watching programs that cast the rebels as valiant heroes of a popular uprising. Ukrainian government troops are treated as vicious occupiers.

"It's very dangerous, this black-and-white perception," Nikulenko says. "These children get information only from one side. They see that (government troops) shoot at us and that their fathers and brothers take arms and go to protect us."

As a group of girls huddles on a carpet in the games room, Yulya, a tall and unsmiling 12-year old, stands to one side. Before the war began, Yulya lived with her grandparents in Rusko-Orlivka, a village that changed hands several times as fighting raged last summer for the nearby town of Ilovaysk.

Yulya's grandfather told her that when the rebel fighters captured Rusko-Orlivka, fighters found nine Ukrainian soldiers hiding out in a farm, marched them out to a forest and shot them. Yulya says she felt little pity.

"I understand they are people too, but they kill other people," she says in a whisper. "I know that, because my grandfather told me so." For the very young, little is truly understood about who is fighting or why.

Drawing his tank in the children's home, Seryozha, in a moment of confusion, gets it into his head to decorate it with a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag. "It was born in Ukraine. I was born in Ukraine, too," he says. Above the Ukrainian flag that sticks out from the side, he then draws the black, blue and red flag of the separatists.

Seryozha's own past is a blur even to those around him. A scar on his back shows where he was shot with an air-powered pistol before the war. Nobody quite knows what happened, beyond that his parents died of tuberculosis, leaving his sister and two brothers orphaned.

A bureaucratic oversight separated Seryozha from his siblings. As they were evacuated by Ukrainian authorities to a neighboring region, nobody remembered that Seryozha was lying in a hospital recovering from tuberculosis. He landed in the Khartsyzk home in January.

Children may have a hazy understanding of the events around them, but forgiveness appears to come more easily than to the adults. Could Seryozha ever be friends with children from the other side? "Yes," he says simply. "But only if they behave and don't fight."

Mstyslav Chernov contributed to this report.

Ukraine claims completing weapons pullback

March 07, 2015

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's military says it is completing its pullback of heavy weapons under the terms of a peace agreement aimed at ending the war with separatist rebels that has killed more than 6,000 people.

An internationally brokered agreement calls for both sides to create a buffer zone by pulling back heavy weapons. Saturday was the deadline for the pullbacks to be completed. Rebel official Denis Pushilin on Saturday said the separatists had completed their pullback ahead of schedule and another top rebel, Eduard Basurin, said even some mortars not covered under the agreement were being pulled back.

Col. Valentin Fedichev, deputy commander of the anti-rebel offensive, said Ukrainian forces were finishing their pullback. There was no independent confirmation of either side's claim.

Rebel pageant: Ukrainian fighters trade in boots for heels

March 07, 2015

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Trading in their combat boots and fatigues for high heels and ball gowns, female rebel fighters who normally fight Ukrainian soldiers took Saturday off to take part in a beauty pageant.

The event was organized by self-proclaimed authorities in the rebel-held city of Donetsk on the eve of International Women's Day, which is widely celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union. Women from three main rebel battalions showed off their dinner dresses before they changed back to fatigues to receive prizes and roses.

Most of the women were local residents who followed their husbands or boyfriends to the front while one was a Russian, from the Russian western city of Bryansk. Some of the women used to work in pre-schools, while others were in private business.

"I'm not used to this," said Nataliya, a contestant in a corseted dress who gave her nom de guerre as "Radist." ''There are heels to wear and then the dress is so revealing. We are soldiers after all."