Taiwan stages mass anti-China trade pact rally

Taipei (AFP)
March 30, 2014

Tens of thousands of Taiwanese protesters took to the streets in Taipei on Sunday in a bid to pressure embattled President Ma Ying-jeou to retract a controversial trade pact with China.

The protesters, many wearing black shirts and headbands reading "defend democracy, retract service trade pact," crowded the streets leading to the presidential office, despite fresh concessions offered by Ma to further scrutinize agreements with China.

"The people cannot accept the government's reckless decision to sign the service trade pact with China. The government doesn't listen to the people who demand the pact be retracted," said protester Ko Hsuan-yu, a 25-year-old graduate student.

Security was tight as 3,500 police were deployed in the official presidential neighborhood.

The high security presences come after violent clashes on March 23, when a group of protesters stormed government headquarters. More than 100 people were injured when baton-wielding riot police used water cannon to disperse demonstrators and retake the government building in that incident.

Organizers aimed to attract more than 100,000 people to the Sunday protest and vowed to hold a peaceful demonstration. An initial police estimate of the crowd was around 87,000.

"We will not react to any violent actions from the police or other groups. We will maintain peace ... any form of violence is totally prohibited in this movement," said student leader Lin Fei-fan.

Around 200 student-led demonstrators have occupied parliament's main chamber for nearly two weeks in a bid to stop the trade pact with China.

Ma, who has sought closer ties with China since becoming the island's leader in 2008, said Saturday he would agree to demands that a law be introduced to monitor all agreements with China.

But he rejected the protesters' main demand -- that the service trade agreement signed with China in June last year be retracted, saying it could "cause too much damage to Taiwan".

The pact is designed to open up further trade in services between China and Taiwan, which split 65 years ago after a civil war.

But the protesters say the deal will damage Taiwan's economy and leave it vulnerable to political pressure from China.

The deal is a follow-up agreement to a sweeping Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement signed in 2010 to reduce trade barriers between China and Taiwan.

Ma, whose approval ratings sit at just 10 percent, has overseen a marked thaw in relations with Beijing since he came to power pledging to strengthen trade and tourism links. He was re-elected in January 2012.

But China still considers Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification -- by force if necessary.

Source: Sino Daily.
Link: http://www.sinodaily.com/reports/Taiwan_stages_mass_anti-China_trade_pact_rally_999.html.

Taiwan deploys new powerful rocket system: report

Taipei (AFP)
June 05, 2013

Taiwan has deployed a powerful multiple-launch rocket system on an offshore island to guard against any amphibious landing by China, local media reported Wednesday.

The weapon, called Ray Ting 2000 or "Thunder 2000", went into service for the first time on Matsu island and could reach China's Fujian province across the Taiwan Strait, the United Evening News cited sources as saying.

The defense ministry declined to comment.

The system can launch 40 rockets in a minute with a range of 45 kilometers (28 miles), the report said.

"Thunder 2000" is expected to enhance the military's anti-landing capabilities as it phases out the current rocket system introduced three decades ago, military experts have said.

They said the longer range could destroy landing craft before they reach the shore, while the truck-mounted launchers could be combat-ready in eight minutes, less than half the time of the current system.

The ministry reportedly plans to produce more than 50 such systems at a cost of Tw$14.5 billion ($483 million).

China and Taiwan split in 1949 after a civil war, with the defeated Nationalists retreating to the island.

Ties have improved markedly since 2008, when a Beijing-friendly government came to power in Taipei.

But China still considers Taiwan part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Taiwan_deploys_new_powerful_rocket_system_report_999.html.

Court orders stay on Japanese Antarctic whaling

March 31, 2014

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Court of Justice on Monday ordered a temporary halt to Japan's Antarctic whaling program, ruling that it is not for scientific purposes as the Japanese government had claimed.

Australia had sued Japan at the U.N.'s highest court for resolving disputes between nations in hopes of ending whaling in the icy Southern Ocean. Reading a 12-4 decision by the court's 16-judge panel, Presiding Judge Peter Tomka said Japan's program fails to justify the large number of minke whales it says it needs to catch under its current Antarctic program — 850 annually — and it doesn't catch that many anyway. It also didn't come close to catching the 50 fin and 50 humpback whales it aimed to take.

All that drew into doubt Japan's assertion that its whaling is for scientific purposes, he said. "The court concludes that the special permits granted by Japan for the killing, taking, and treating of whales ... are not 'for purposes of scientific research'," Tomka said.

The court ordered Japan to halt any issuing of whaling permits at least until the program has been thoroughly revamped. Japanese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Noriyuki Shikata told reporters that the country "regrets and is deeply disappointed" by the decision.

But "as a state that respects the rule of law ... and as a responsible member of the global community, Japan will abide by the ruling of the court," he said. Former Australian environment minister Peter Garrett, who helped launch the suit four years ago, said he felt vindicated by the decision.

"I'm absolutely over the moon, for all those people who wanted to see the charade of scientific whaling cease once and for all," Garrett told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio. "I think (this) means without any shadow of a doubt that we won't see the taking of whales in the Southern Ocean in the name of science."

Although the decision is a major victory for Australia and environmental groups that oppose whaling on ethical grounds, it will not mean the end of whaling. Japan has a second, smaller scientific program in the northern Pacific — which now may also be subject to challenge. Meanwhile Norway and Iceland reject outright a 1986 moratorium on commercial whaling imposed by the International Whaling Commission.

Nevertheless, environmental groups rejoiced. Activist Pete Bethune, a New Zealander who has clashed frequently with Japanese whalers in attempts to stop their hunt, said "justice was served" by the ruling.

"The court dissected their scientific program, pulled it to bits and it proved that the amount of science is tiny relative to the commercial aspects," he said. He said that if Japan had prevailed, it could have led other countries to begin whaling in the Antarctic and eventually a full commercial Japanese whaling program.

Japan had argued that Australia's suit was an attempt to force its cultural norms on Japan, equivalent to Hindus demanding an international ban on killing cows. Though consumption of whale meat has declined in popularity in Japan in recent years, it is still considered a delicacy by some. Most of the whale meat from Japanese hunts ends up being sold, though the court didn't find that that in itself makes the program commercial and not scientific.

The ruling did say explicitly that killing whales for scientific purposes would be legal under international law in the context of a better-designed study. Japan's program was supposed to determine whether commercial whaling of some species can resume without bringing them in danger of extinction.

The ruling noted among other factors that Japan had not considered a smaller program or non-lethal methods to study whale populations, and said Japan had cited only two peer-reviewed scientific papers relating to its program from 2005 to the present — a period during which it has harpooned 3,600 minke whales, a handful of fin whales, and no humpback whales at all.

US, Japan in historic plutonium return deal

The Hague (AFP)
March 24, 2014

Japan pledged Monday to return hundreds of kilos of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium given to Tokyo for research during the Cold War era, in the first major deal announced at a summit on nuclear security.

"By removing this nuclear material, we can prevent the risk of nuclear terrorism," Japan's special nuclear adviser, Yosuke Isozaki, said on the sidelines of the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in The Hague.

Washington has been pressing Tokyo over the return of weapons-grade material, stored at Japan's Fast Critical Assembly (FCA) northeast of Tokyo, which experts said made a tempting target for extremists.

According to reports, Japan has more than 300 kilos (660 pounds) of plutonium and almost 200 kilos of highly-enriched uranium 235, supplied by Britain and the United States and now stored at the FCA facility in Tokai about 140 kilometers (87 miles) from the capital.

Japan does not have the bomb but the material could be used to build dozens of nuclear weapons.

Monday's announcement is seen as a major victory in President Barack Obama's push to secure the world's radioactive civilian stockpiles.

"This is a very significant nuclear security pledge engaging hundreds of kilograms in weapons-usable material," US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz told journalists.

"The material will be transported to the United States for conversion into proliferation-resistant forms," he said.

"It affirms that most research and development can be done without using weapons-grade material," Moniz added.

"This is a very significant announcement because it removes this nuclear material from a potentially dangerous situation," Miles Pomper, a senior researcher at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, told AFP.

"Although the FCA is a small mock-up facility to do nuclear tests, they have a lot of material stored there," he added.

Japanese media reports said Japan has strongly resisted returning the plutonium, saying it was needed for researching fast reactors.

Since last year, Japan and the United States have been actively discussing the matter, The Japan Times reported.

The third NSS being held in The Hague is Obama's brainchild after announcing in 2009 that "nuclear terrorism was one of the greatest threats to international security."

But the summit, set up to discuss ridding the world from nuclear terror, has been overshadowed by the escalating crisis in Ukraine, after Russia's absorption of the Crimean peninsula.

The NSS is to be officially opened by Obama later on Monday.

Source: Nuclear Power Daily.
Link: http://www.nuclearpowerdaily.com/reports/US_Japan_in_historic_plutonium_return_deal_999.html.

Donetsk Republic: Ukraine's one-building autonomy

April 11, 2014

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — To reach the People's Republic of Donetsk, you need to pass a few club-wielding young men in masks, wind through a narrow corridor of sand-filled sacks and enter a gray office tower standing in the heart of this eastern Ukrainian city.

The self-styled autonomous territory — really just an 11-story government building and its surroundings — insists it is the true voice of the 4.3 million people living in the Donetsk region. It has become the latest focus of protest in the largely Russian-speaking east since Kremlin-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in February.

The patch of Donetsk real estate where pro-Russia activists have been squatting for nearly a week is a hotbed of resentment against the perceived chauvinist Ukrainian nationalism taking hold among the nation's leadership.

"They hate us. They take it in with their mother's milk," said retiree Nelya Vladimirovna Ivanova, sitting along with hundreds of fellow rally members on the square. In its current form, the Donetsk Republic poses little real threat to the central government's authority, and rallies demanding autonomy have drawn at most a few thousand people.

Nonetheless, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk visited Donetsk on Friday with a pledge to give more powers to the regions. "We must tell people that we know it's tough, but we know how in the future to secure jobs, increase salaries, attract investors, distribute more authority, and what to do so people are content with life," Yatsenyuk said, laying out what he described as a recipe for national unity.

And some Donetsk residents say the Republic's hostility to western Ukraine doesn't represent their views. Vladlen Nebrat, a youth activist, said that most people in the city see few differences between Russians and Ukrainians, and that younger generations see even less of a difference.

"The problems we see today are problems created by political elites," Nebrat said. "It's the same in Russia and Ukraine. I don't see a problem between the people themselves." Since Sunday, crowds of hundreds have been standing round the clock in and around barricades of tires, sandbags, bricks and razor wires lining the regional administration headquarters in nervous anticipation of a raid that never arrives. Masked young men carrying bats and truncheons stand guard over the area. Groups huddle around barrel-fires for warmth against an early spring spell of drizzle and cold.

On an improvised stage, orators deliver angry speeches, often to chants of "Referendum!" — demanding a vote for total autonomy that constitutes the only clear policy of the Donetsk Republic, whose leadership is a ragtag band of about dozen political unknowns.

The movement is a pale imitation of the secessionist drive in Crimea that led to Russia's annexation of the peninsula — but the palpable unhappiness here points to deeper national tensions. Much of the conversation on the square revolves around well-rehearsed grievances over language, history and a sense of economic injustice.

After Yanukoych's downfall, a nationalist party handed opponents of the new authorities a valuable lifeline by pushing measures through parliament to strip the Russian language of its official status in regions where it is widely spoken.

The idea was swiftly rejected by the president, but the damage was done. Feverish speculation, all eagerly spiced up by Russian state television, has for many inflated the significance of a half-baked language proposal into a confirmation of Russian speakers' worst fears.

"The first thing they did was to deprive us of the right to speak our language," Ivanova said. "But this isn't just the language we use to speak, we think in this language as well." Language is something of an illusory fault line, since Russian — claimed as a native language by around one-third of the population — and Ukrainian are similar enough to be mutually understandable by almost all the population.

But the issue cloaks deeper historical antipathies undermining a confident sense of national unity. Donetsk Republic supporters claim that the boundaries of Ukraine in its current form are something of an anomaly — its eastern borders drawn in the early Soviet period, and the western one during and after the war. While they struggle to articulate any specific distinguishing values, it is clear that they see an alien nation in western Ukraine — often dismissively referred to as Galicia, the name of a historic Central European territory.

"In Galicia, they are Poles and Austro-Hungarians," said Donetsk resident Lena Marchuk. "We are totally different. You can't glue us together. We've never loved them." Yet Marchuk herself conceded that her own typically Ukrainian surname and Belarusian and Russian family heritage complicate attempts to draw ethnic and cultural distinctions in a country like Ukraine.

Instead, references are often made to the legacy of Nazi collaboration among Ukrainian nationalists in the west during World War II. The name of the leading Ukrainian nationalist insurgent, Stepan Bandera, who aided Nazis invading the Soviet Union, is used as a curse word by opponents of the government in the capital, Kiev.

A prominent role was played in the late, violent stages of the anti-Yanukovych protests by the largely marginal hardcore nationalist Right Sector movement, distinguishable for its adoption of the black-and-red standard of the war-era Ukrainian Partisan Army. The post-Yanukovych Cabinet includes several figures from the nationalist Svoboda party, which has aligned itself in the past with far-right wing groups in Western Europe.

These associations have earned the government a reputation among its most ardent critics as a "fascist junta." The tag bears especially noxious implications across the former Soviet Union, whose immense human sacrifice during World War II remains a subject of intense and passionate public reverence.

Anxieties over the loss of language and other rights for Russian speakers, expressed by the Donetsk Republic, are patently overstated. Interviews with 1,200 residents of Ukraine found that 74 percent of ethnic Russians living in the east and south of the country did not feel under threat because of their language, according to research by the Baltic Surveys Gallup Organization polling groups.

A potent and often aired gripe is that eastern Ukrainian regions, home to vital heavy industry that scars the landscape and wreaks incalculable damage on health, doesn't get its fair economic dues. "We want them to stop taking all our money through taxes," said Oksana Zherelnikova, who lives in a village outside Donetsk. "Many people in western Ukraine go off to work abroad in the spring and don't pay taxes. We stay here."

Donetsk, however, receives large government subsidies to support its heavy industry. And with this support inevitably to be slashed in line with requirements from International Monetary Fund creditors, an already lingering sense of injustice is only likely to deepen.

Yatsenyuk's decision to travel to Donetsk may go some way to mitigating another bone of contention in the east: that senior officials in the new administration have almost entirely failed to visit the region since the fall of Yanukovych.

Remarks by Yatsenyuk to local officials hinted at a vague compromise on devolution. The government in Ukraine has bristled at insistence that it push through federalization — not least when those calls come from Russia — but that may ultimately be what is needed to stop more adventures in self-determination.

"As the old saying goes, better a bad peace than a good war," Zherelnikova said. "We could live in a united Ukraine, but only if we can follow our own way."

Dozens leave offices seized by Ukraine separatists

April 09, 2014

LUHANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's Security Service said Wednesday that 56 people held inside the agency's local headquarters in the eastern city of Luhansk by pro-Russian separatists have been allowed to leave.

The Luhansk security services building was among several government offices seized by pro-Moscow groups Sunday in an escalation of protests against the interim government in power since the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych in February.

On Tuesday, security services said separatists inside the building, armed with explosives and other weapons, were holding 60 people hostage. It was not immediately clear if the 56 allowed to leave were among that number, or how many people were still being held.

Serhiy Tyhipko, a lawmaker associated with the previous Ukraine government and who is now in opposition, said he was able to enter the seized building Tuesday night and claimed there were no hostages inside. He urged Kiev to take note of the protesters' demands.

"The authorities are not listening to the southeast. People are putting forward certain demands, but nobody hears (them) and doesn't want to react," Tyhipko was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

All the cities affected by the uprisings are in Ukraine's industrial heartland in the east, which has a large population of ethnic Russians and economic and cultural ties to Russia are strong. Many residents are suspicious of government that took power in February.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said the standoff in Luhansk and the two neighboring Russian-leaning regions of Donetsk and Kharkiv must be resolved within the next two days either through negotiations or through the use of force, the Interfax news agency reported.

"The regime of anti-terrorist operation in all three regions is still in force and we can begin carrying out all planned actions at any moment," Avakov was quoted as saying. There was little immediate evidence of any major deployment of Ukrainian special forces at the site.

Avakov was speaking as anti-government protesters in Luhansk erected high barricades along a thoroughfare running in front of the security service premises. Overnight, speakers at a gathering in front of the building condemned the government in Kiev and renewed demands to be allowed to hold a referendum on declaring autonomy for their region. That demand is similar to one that preceded Crimea's annexation by Russia.

The Ukrainian government and the U.S. have accused Moscow of fomenting the unrest as a pretext for another Russian military incursion similar to last month's takeover of Crimea. Up to 40,000 Russian troops are massed along the Ukrainian border, according to NATO.

Speeches at the rally were occasionally interspersed with chants of "Russia! Russia!" and an unidentified speaker won cheers as he listed names of prominent politicians that he suggested should be executed.

Those occupying the building have issued a video statement warning that any attempt to storm the place would be met with force. In the video, posted by Ukrainian media, a masked man identified the occupiers as Ukrainian veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and warned the authorities against trying to retake the building. "Welcome to hell, then!" he said.

The security services said negotiations with the separatists were continuing and that parliamentary deputies had been able to enter and leave the building unhindered. The Russian Foreign Ministry hit back at the West on Wednesday, calling for the U.S. to stop using international organizations as a means of "exacerbating tensions surrounding Ukraine."

"The daily activity of Russian troops on national territory does not threaten the security of the U.S. or other member states of the OSCE," the Russian statement said. "Attempts to accuse Russia of a buildup of troops are unfounded."

Maria Danilova in Kiev and Laura Mills in Moscow contributed to this report.

Ukraine leader: Kharkiv protesters driven out

April 08, 2014

DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian security forces on Tuesday drove pro-Russian protesters out of the regional government headquarters in Kharkiv that they had seized and arrested about 70 of them, the country's leader said.

Acting President Oleksandr Turchynov told lawmakers in parliament that security forces retook control even as the separatists used hand grenades and unspecified weapons against them. Some police were injured in the melee.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov described the measure on his Facebook page as an "anti-terrorist operation." Pro-Russia demonstrators, however, continued occupying the Donetsk regional administration in the nearby region and calling for a referendum on its status.

Both cities are in Ukraine's east, where hostility is strong toward the new government that took power in February after the ouster of Kremlin-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych. The seizures of the buildings and calls for referenda were an echo of the events that led to Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula last month. After Yanukovych fled to Russia, Russian troops took control of Crimea and the region soon voted to join Russia.

The West has not recognized the vote or the annexation and has retaliated with sanctions against Russia. Even as the United States warned Russia of further sanctions if Moscow continues to seek to destabilize Ukraine, the White House announced a high-level meeting among U.S., EU, Ukrainian and Russian diplomats in the coming days to try to solve the crisis.

Russia has refused to deal with Ukraine's new government since Yanukovych's ouster and, according to NATO, still has tens of thousands of troops along its border with Ukraine, which the alliance has called a threat.

Meanwhile, a fistfight broke out in Ukraine's parliament Tuesday as tempers rose between opposing factions. Nationalist lawmakers scuffled with communists, after the Communist Party leader accused the government of cracking down on dissent.