asia
China lockdown protests pause as police flood city streets
With police out in force, there was no word of additional protests against strict government anti-pandemic measures Tuesday in Beijing, as temperatures fell well below freezing. Shanghai, Nanjing and other cities where online calls to gather had been issued were also reportedly quiet.
Rallies against China’s unusually strict anti-virus measures spread to several cities over the weekend in the biggest show of opposition to the ruling Communist Party in decades. Authorities eased some regulations, apparently to try to quell public anger, but the government showed no sign of backing down on its larger coronavirus strategy, and analysts expect authorities to quickly silence the dissent.
In Hong Kong Monday, about 50 students from mainland China sang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and some lit candles in a show of support for those in mainland cities who demonstrated against restrictions that have confined millions to their homes. Hiding their faces to avoid official retaliation, the students chanted, “No PCR tests but freedom!” and “Oppose dictatorship, don’t be slaves!”
The gathering and a similar one elsewhere in Hong Kong were the biggest protests there in more than a year under rules imposed to crush a pro-democracy movement in the territory, which is Chinese but has a separate legal system from the mainland.
“I’ve wanted to speak up for a long time, but I did not get the chance to,” said James Cai, a 29-year-old from Shanghai who attended a Hong Kong protest and held up a piece of white paper, a symbol of defiance against the ruling party’s pervasive censorship. ”If people in the mainland can’t tolerate it anymore, then I cannot as well.”
It wasn’t clear how many people have been detained since the protests began in the mainland Friday, sparked by anger over the deaths of 10 people in a fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. That prompted angry questions online about whether firefighters or victims trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other anti-virus controls. Authorities denied that, but the incident became a target for public frustration about the controls.
Read more: China's Xi faces public anger over draconian 'zero COVID'
Without mentioning the protests, the criticism of Xi or the fire, some local authorities eased restrictions Monday.
The city government of Beijing announced it would no longer set up gates to block access to apartment compounds where infections are found.
“Passages must remain clear for medical transportation, emergency escapes and rescues,” said Wang Daguang, a city official in charge of epidemic control, according to the official China News Service.
Guangzhou, a manufacturing and trade center that is the biggest hot spot in China’s latest wave of infections, announced some residents will no longer be required to undergo mass testing.
The U.S. Embassy advised citizens to prepare for all eventualities and said Ambassador Nicholas Burns and other American diplomats have “regularly raised our concerns on many of these issues directly."
“We encourage all U.S. citizens to keep a 14-day supply of medications, bottled water, and food for yourself and any members of your household," the Embassy said in a statement Monday.
In Washington, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby “obviously, there are people in China that — that have — have concerns about that," referring to lockdowns.
“And they’re protesting that, and we believe they should be able to do that peacefully," Kirby said at a Monday briefing.
Urumqi, where the fire occurred, and another city in the Xinjiang region in the northwest announced markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of infection would reopen this week and public bus service would resume.
“Zero COVID,” which aims to isolate every infected person, has helped to keep China’s case numbers lower than those of the United States and other major countries. But tolerance for the measures has flagged as people in some areas have been confined at home for up to four months and say they lack reliable access to food and medical supplies.
The ruling party promised last month to reduce disruption by changing quarantine and other rules known as the “20 Guidelines." But a spike in infections has prompted cities to tighten controls.
On Tuesday, the number of daily cases dipped slightly to 38,421 after setting new records over recent days. Of those, 34,860 were among people who showed no symptoms.
The ruling party newspaper People’s Daily called for its anti-virus strategy to be carried out effectively, indicating Xi’s government has no plans to change course.
“Facts have fully proved that each version of the prevention and control plan has withstood the test of practice,” a People’s Daily commentator wrote.
Read more: Protests over China's COVID controls spread across country
In Hong Kong, protesters at Chinese University put up posters that said, “Do Not Fear. Do Not Forget. Do Not Forgive,” and sang including “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical “Les Miserables.” Most hid their faces behind blank white sheets of paper.
“I want to show my support,” said a 24-year-old mainland student who would identify herself only as G for fear of retaliation. “I care about things that I couldn’t get to know in the past.”
University security guards videotaped the event but there was no sign of police.
At an event in Central, a business district, about four dozen protesters held up blank sheets of paper and flowers in what they said was mourning for the fire victims in Urumqi and others who have died as a result of “zero COVID” policies.
Police cordoned off an area around protesters, who stood in small, separate groups to avoid violating pandemic rules that bar gatherings of more than 12 people. Police took identity details of participants but there were no arrests.
Hong Kong has tightened security controls and rolled back Western-style civil liberties since China launched a campaign in 2019 to crush a pro-democracy movement. The territory has its own anti-virus strategy that is separate from the mainland.
Hong Kong's Chief Executive John Lee is a law-and-order hardliner who led the crackdown on protesters, including on university campuses.
Both the Hong Kong government and the State Council, China's Cabinet, issued statements Monday pledging to uphold public order and the authority of the National Security Law, which gives authorities sweeping powers to charge demonstrators with crimes including sedition.
Protests also occurred over the weekend in Guangzhou near Hong Kong, Chengdu and Chongqing in the southwest, and Nanjing in the east, according to witnesses and video on social media. Guangzhou has seen earlier violent confrontations between police and residents protesting quarantines.
Most protesters have complained about excessive restrictions, but some turned their anger at Xi, China's most powerful leader since at least the 1980s. In a video that was verified by The Associated Press, a crowd in Shanghai on Saturday chanted, “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!”
The British Broadcasting Corp. said one of its reporters was beaten, kicked, handcuffed and detained for several hours by Shanghai police but later released.
The BBC criticized what it said was Chinese authorities’ explanation that its reporter was detained to prevent him from contracting the coronavirus from the crowd. “We do not consider this a credible explanation,” the broadcaster said in a statement.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Zhao Lijian said the BBC reporter failed to identify himself and “didn’t voluntarily present” his press credential.
“Foreign journalists need to consciously follow Chinese laws and regulations,” Zhao said.
Swiss broadcaster RTS said its correspondent and a cameraman were detained while doing a live broadcast but released a few minutes later. An AP journalist was detained but later released.
China's Xi faces public anger over draconian 'zero COVID'
Barely a month after granting himself new powers as China’s potential leader for life, Xi Jinping is facing a wave of public anger of the kind not seen for decades, sparked by his draconian “zero COVID” program that will soon enter its fourth year.
Demonstrators poured into the streets over the weekend in numerous cities including Shanghai and Beijing, chanting slogans and confronting police. A number of university campuses also experienced protests.
Such widespread demonstrations are unprecedented since the 1989 student-led pro-democracy movement centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that was crushed with deadly force by the army.
Most people in the weekend protests focused their anger on rigid pandemic lockdowns, a form of virtual house arrest that can last for months and has been criticized as neither scientific nor effective.
But some also shouted for the downfall of Xi and of the Communist Party that has ruled China with an iron fist for 73 years, criticism that is deemed seditious and punishable by years in prison. Protesters expressed frustration over a system that is neither performing as promised or responding to their concerns.
So far, the response from the authorities has been muted. Some police in Shanghai used pepper spray to drive away demonstrators, and some protesters were detained and driven away in a bus. However, China's vast internal security apparatus is famed for identifying people it considers troublemakers and carting them off from their homes when few are watching.
Police in Shanghai also beat, kicked and handcuffed a BBC journalist who was filming the protests. Authorities said they arrested him for his own good “in case he caught COVID from the crowd," the BBC said in a statement.
“We do not consider this a credible explanation," it said.
The possibility of further protests is unclear, and government censors have been scrubbing the internet of videos and messages supporting the demonstrations.
Read: China crowds angered by Covid curbs openly urge Xi to resign
The central government, meanwhile, reiterated its stance that anti-coronavirus measures should be “targeted and precise" and cause the least possible disruption to people's lives.
That doesn't appear, however, to be reflected at the local level. Cadres are threatened with losing their jobs or suffering other punishments if outbreaks occur in their jurisdictions, prompting them to adopt the most radical options.
Xi's unelected government doesn't seem to be overly concerned with the hardships brought by the policy. This spring, millions of Shanghai residents were placed under a strict lockdown that resulted in food shortages, restricted access to medical care, and harsh economic pain. Nevertheless, in October, the city's most powerful official, a longtime Xi loyalist, was appointed to the Communist Party's No. 2 position.
The party has long imposed oppressive surveillance and travel restrictions on those least able to oppose them, particularly Tibetans and members of Muslim minority groups such as Uyghurs, more than 1 million of whom have been detained in camps where they are forced to renounce their traditional culture and religion and swear fealty to Xi.
But this weekend's protests included many members of the educated urban middle class from the majority Han ethnic group.
That's exactly the demographic the party relies on to sustain an unwritten post-1989 agreement in which the public accepted autocratic rule and a lack of civil liberties in exchange for improvements in quality of life.
But now the party's implementation of its “zero COVID" policy shows it is reinforcing its control at the expense of the economy, meaning that the old arrangement has ended, said Hung Ho-fung of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“The whole situation is reflecting that the party and the people are trying to seek a new equilibrium, and there will be some instability in the process,” he said.
To develop into something on the scale of the 1989 protests would require clear divisions within the leadership that could be leveraged for change, Hung said. Xi all but eliminated such threats at an October party congress, when he gave himself a new term and packed the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee with loyalists, sending two potential rivals into retirement.
“Without the clear signal of party leader divisions ... I would expect this kind of protest might not last very long,” Hung said.
It's “unimaginable” that Xi would back down, and the party is experienced in handling protests, Hung said.
Read: Protests over China's COVID controls spread across country
With its “zero COVID” policy, imposed shortly after the coronavirus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019, China is now the only major country still trying to stop all transmission of the virus rather than learning to live with it.
That has kept China’s infection numbers lower than those the United States and other major countries, but public acceptance of the restrictions has worn thin. People who are quarantined at home in some areas say they lack food and medicine. The ruling party faced public anger following the deaths of two children whose parents said anti-virus controls hampered their efforts to get medical help.
And the case numbers continue to rise, jumping in the past week from less than 30,000 per day to 40,273 on Monday. While China initially had a strong vaccination program, that has lost momentum since the summer.
The current protests erupted after a fire on Thursday killed at least 10 people in an apartment building in the city of Urumqi in the northwest, where some residents have been locked in their homes for four months. That prompted an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters or people trying to escape were blocked by locked doors or other pandemic restrictions.
China has persevered with the policy despite criticism from the normally supportive head of the World Health Organization, who called it unsustainable. Beijing dismissed his remarks as irresponsible.
And on Sunday, White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci said measures such as shutdowns are only intended to be temporary.
“It seems that in China it was just a very, very strict extraordinary lockdown, where you lock people in the house, but without any seemingly end game to it,” Fauci said on NBC's Meet the Press.
Yet Xi, an ardent nationalist, has politicized the issue to the point that exiting the “zero COVID” policy could be seen as a loss to his reputation and authority.
“Zero COVID” was “supposed to demonstrate the superiority of the ‘Chinese model,' but ended up demonstrating the risk that when authoritarian regimes make mistakes, those mistakes can be colossal," said Andrew Nathan, a Chinese politics specialist at Columbia University who edited The Tiananmen Papers, an insider account of the government's response to the 1989 protests.
Read: Biden says he and Xi have a “responsibility” to show US, China can “manage differences”
“But I think the regime has backed itself into a corner and has no way to yield. It has lots of force, and if necessary, it will use it," Nathan said.
“If it could hold onto power in the face of the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989, it can do so again now."
Protesting ‘Hindi imposition’, South Indian man burns himself to death
An 85-year-old man set himself on fire in southern India to protest what he perceived as the central government’s efforts to “impose” Hindi – a language that is primarily spoken in the north – as the national language, police said.
MV Thangavel demonstrated on Saturday (November 26, 2022), in front of Tamil Nadu’s ruling DMK party office, of which he was a member, raising slogans against “Hindi imposition.” Then, he reportedly set himself on fire after dousing himself with petrol.
Although the party workers and the public tried to save the elderly man, he died of self-immolation at the scene, according to NDTV.
“Modi government stop imposing Hindi. Why do we need to choose Hindi over our literature-rich Tamil... it will affect future of our youth.” – the placard he was carrying read.
Read more: Indian police detain man accused of killing Australian woman because ‘her dog barked at him’
In the 1960s, the then-ruling Congress party sought to make Hindi the nation’s official tongue, inciting enduring resentment in southern India.
The majority of the languages spoken in southern India are Dravidian, a language family different from the Indo-European that includes Hindi.
Just under 44 percent of Indian citizens, or less than half, speak Hindi, according to the census conducted in 2011. While state administrations in India use regional languages, English is the country’s primary official language.
However, a group of lawmakers led by India’s Interior Minister Amit Shah reportedly proposed making Hindi the nation’s official language last month, including for technical education like engineering and medicine.
Read more: India's tribespeople seek formal recognition of ancient nature-worshipping faith
The usage of Indian languages was encouraged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who described the use of English as having a “slave mindset.” But opponents accuse his administration of trying to impose Hindi over the southern Indian languages, causing anger in south.
China crowds angered by Covid curbs openly urge Xi to resign
Protesters pushed to the brink by China’s strict COVID measures in Shanghai called for the removal of the country’s all-powerful leader and clashed with police Sunday as crowds took to the streets in several cities in an astounding challenge to the government.
Police forcibly cleared the demonstrators in China’s financial capital who called for Xi Jinping’s resignation and the end of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule — but hours later people rallied again in the same spot, and social media reports indicated protests also spread to at least seven other cities, including the capital of Beijing, and dozens of university campuses.
Largescale protests are exceedingly rare in China, where public expressions of dissent are routinely stifled — but a direct rebuke of Xi, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, is extraordinary.
Three years after the virus first emerged, China is the only major country still trying to stop transmission of COVID-19 — a “zero COVID” policy that regularly sees millions of people confined to their homes for weeks at a time and requires near-constant testing. The measures were originally widely accepted for minimizing deaths while other countries suffered devastating wavs of infections, but that consensus has begun to fray in recent weeks.
Then on Friday, 10 people died in a fire in an apartment building, and many believe their rescue was delayed because of excessive lockdown measures. That sparked a weekend of protests, as the Chinese public’s ability to tolerate the harsh measures has apparently reached breaking point.Hundreds of demonstrators gathered late Saturday in Shanghai, which experienced a devastating lockdown in the spring in which people struggled to secure groceries and medicines and were forcefully taken into centralized quarantine.
Read: Protests over China's COVID controls spread across country
On a street named for the city in China’s far west where the fire happened, one group of protesters brought candles, flowers and signs honoring those who died in the blaze. Another, according to a protester who insisted on anonymity, was more active, shouting slogans and singing the national anthem.
In a video of the protest seen by The Associated Press, chants sounded loud and clear: “Xi Jinping! Step down! CCP! Step down!” Xi, arguably China’s most dominant leader since Mao Zedong, was recently named to another term as head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, and some expect him to try to stay in power for life.
The protester and another, who gave only his last name, Zhao, confirmed the chants. Both insisted on having their identities shielded because they fear arrest or retribution.
The atmosphere of the protest encouraged people to speak about topics considered taboo, including the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which the ruling Communist Party had ordered troops to fire on pro-democracy student demonstrators, the unnamed protester said. Some also called for an official apology for the deaths in the fire in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region. One member of the Uyghur ethnic group that is native to Xinjiang and has been the target of a sweeping security crackdown shared his experiences of discrimination and police violence.
Read: China reports 10,000 new virus cases, capital closes parks
“Everyone thinks that Chinese people are afraid to come out and protest, that they don’t have any courage,” said the protester, who said it was his first time demonstrating. “Actually in my heart, I also thought this way. But then when I went there, I found that the environment was such that everyone was very brave.”
Initially peaceful, the scene turned violent in the early hours of Sunday. Hundreds of police surrounded the protesters and broke up the first more active group before they came for the second as they tried to move people off the main street. The protester said that he saw multiple people being taken away, forced by police into vans, but could not identify them.
The protester named Zhao said one of his friends was beaten by police and two were pepper sprayed. He said police stomped his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes in the process, and left the protest barefoot.
Zhao said protesters yelled slogans, including one that has become a frequent rallying cry: “(We) do not want PCR (tests), but want freedom.”
On Sunday afternoon, crowds returned to the same spot and again railed against PCR tests. People stood and filmed as police started shoving at people.
A crowdsourced list on social media showed that there were also demonstrations at 50 universities. Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south, Beijing in the north and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. The Associated Press could not independently verify all the protests.
In Beijing, students at the nation’s top college, Tsinghua University, held a demonstration Sunday afternoon in front of one of the school’s cafeterias. Three young women stood there initially with a simple message of condolence for the victims of the Urumqi apartment fire, according to a witness, who refused to be named out of fear of retribution, and images of the protest the AP has seen.
Students shouted “freedom of speech” and sang the Internationale, the socialist anthem. The deputy Communist Party secretary of the school arrived at the protest, promising to hold a schoolwide discussion.
Meanwhile, two cities in China’s northwest, where residents have been confined to their homes for up to four months, eased some anti-virus controls Sunday after public protests Friday.
Meanwhile, Urumqi, where the fire occurred, as well as the smaller city of Korla were preparing to reopen markets and other businesses in areas deemed at low risk of virus transmission and to restart bus, train and airline service, state media reported.
Monkeys in central Thailand city mark their day with feast
A meal fit for monkeys was served on Sunday at the annual Monkey Feast Festival in central Thailand.
Amid the morning traffic, rows of monkey statues holding trays were lined up outside the compound of the Ancient Three Pagodas, while volunteers prepared food across the road for real monkeys — the symbol of Lopburi province, around 150 kilometers (93 miles) north of Bangkok.
Throngs of macaque monkeys ran around, at times fighting with each other, while the crowds of visitors and locals grew.
As the carefully prepared feast was brought toward the temple, the ravenous creatures began to pounce and were soon devouring the largely vegetarian spread.
While the entertainment value of the festival is high, organizers are quick to point out that it is not just monkey business.
Read: Thailand pre-school shooting: Death toll rises to 36
“This monkey feast festival is a successful event that helps promote Lopburi’s tourism among international tourists every year,” said Yongyuth Kitwatanusont, the festival’s founder.
“Previously, there were around 300 monkeys in Lopburi before increasing to nearly 4,000 nowadays. But Lopburi is known as a monkey city, which means monkeys and people can live in harmony.”
Such harmony could be seen in the lack of shyness exhibited by the monkeys, which climbed on to visitors, vehicles and lampposts. At times the curious animals looked beyond the abundant feast and took an interest in other items.
“There was a monkey on my back as I was trying to take a selfie. He grabbed the sunglasses right off my face and ran off on to the top of a lamppost and was trying to eat them for a while,” said Ayisha Bhatt, an English teacher from California working in Thailand.
The delighted onlookers were largely undeterred by the risk of petty theft, although some were content to exercise caution.
Read: Thailand now offering 10-year visa: Who are eligible?
“We have to take care with them, better leave them to it. Not too near is better,” said Carlos Rodway, a tourist from Cadiz, Spain, having previously been unceremoniously treated as a climbing frame by one audacious monkey.
The festival is an annual tradition in Lopburi, the provincial capital, and held as a way to show gratitude to the monkeys for bringing in tourism. This year’s theme is “monkeys feeding monkeys,” an antidote to previous years where monkey participation had decreased due to high numbers of tourists, which intimidated the animals.
Kim's daughter called 'most beloved' child in 2nd appearance
North Korea's leader has taken his daughter to a meeting with missile scientists in her second public appearance, in which state media called her Kim Jong Un's “most beloved” child, deepening outside debate over whether she is being primed as his successor.
The daughter, believed to Kim’s second child named Ju Ae and about 9 or 10 years old, was first unveiled to the outside world last weekend in state media photos showing her observing the North’s intercontinental ballistic missile launch the previous day with her parents and other older officials. The daughter wearing a white puffy coat and red shoes was shown walking hand-in-hand with Kim past a huge missile loaded on a launch truck and watching a soaring weapon.
On Sunday, the North’s state media mentioned her for the second time, saying she and Kim took group photos with scientists, technicians, officials and other workers involved in what it called the test-launch of its Hwasong-17 ICBM.
KCNA described her as Kim’s “most beloved” or “precious” child, a more honorific title than her previous description of “(Kim’s) beloved” child on its Nov. 19 dispatch. It also released a slew of photos showing the daughter in a long, black coat with a black fur collar, holding her father’s arm.
Read more: Kim claims that the ICBM test shows the ability to counter US threats
Some photos showed the two of them standing in the middle of a line of uniformed soldiers before a massive missile atop a launch truck. Others showed Kim's daughter clapping her hands or talking to her father as people cheered in the background.
Taking after her mother Ri Sol Ju, who wasn’t visible in any of the photos Sunday, she had a more mature appearance than in her unveiling a week ago.
“This is certainly striking. The photograph of Kim Ju Ae standing alongside her father while being celebrated by technicians and scientists involved in the latest ICBM launch would support the idea that this is the start of her being positioned as a potential successor,” said Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
“State media underscoring her father’s love for her further underscores this, I think. Finally, both of her initial public appearances have been in the context of strategic nuclear weapons — the crown jewels of North Korea’s national defense capabilities. That doesn’t strike me as coincidental,” Panda said.
After her first public appearance, South Korea’s spy service told lawmakers that it assessed the girl pictured is Kim’s second child, who is about 10 and whose name is Ju Ae. The National Intelligence Service said her looks matched information that she is taller and bigger than other girls of the same age. It also said that her unveiling appeared to reflect Kim’s resolve to protect the security of North Korea’s future generations in the face of a standoff with the United States.
Read more: Kim threatens to use nukes amid tensions with US, S. Korea
South Korean media previously speculated Kim has three children — born in 2010, 2013 and 2017 — and that the first child is a son while the third one is a daughter. The unveiled daughter is highly likely the child who retired NBA star Dennis Rodman saw during his 2013 trip to Pyongyang. After that visit, Rodman told the British newspaper The Guardian that he and Kim had a “relaxing time by the sea” with the leader’s family and that he held Kim’s baby daughter, named Ju Ae.
North Korea has made no mention of Kim’s reported two other children. But speculation that his eldest child is a son has led some experts to question how a daughter can be Kim's successor given the deeply male-dominated, patriarchal nature of North Korean society. Kim is a third-generation member of the family that has run North Korea for more than seven decades, and his father and grandfather successively governed the country before he inherited power in late 2011.
“We’ve been told that Kim has three children, including possibly a son. If this is true, and if we assume that the male child — who has yet to be revealed — will be the heir, is Ju Ae truly Kim’s most ‘precious,’ from a succession standpoint?” said Soo Kim, a security analyst at the California-based RAND Corporation. “I think it is too early to draw any conclusions.”
She said that Kim Jong Un may think his daughter’s unveiling is an effective distraction while conditioning Washington, Seoul and others to living with the North Korean nuclear threat as “the spectacle of Ju Ae appears to eclipse the intensifying gravity of North Korea’s nuclear and missile threat." She added that by parading his daughter around, Kim Jong Un may also want to tell his people that nuclear weapons are the sole guarantor for the country’s future.
In remarks at the group photo session, Kim Jong Un called the recently tested Hwasong-17 “a great entity of strategic strength” and ordered officials to further build the country’s military capability to a “more absolute and irreversible one.” The North’s Hwasong-17 launch was part of a barrage of missile tests that it says were meant to issue a warning over U.S.-South Korean military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.
Analyst Cheong Seong-Chang at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea said that Kim Jong Un cannot make his son his successor if he thinks he lacks leadership. Cheong said Kim may be preventing potential pushback for choosing a daughter as a fourth-generation leader, so he likely brought her to a successful ICBM launch event to help public loyalty toward him be carried on smoothly to his daughter.
“When a king has many children, it’s natural for him to make his most beloved child as his successor,” Cheong said. “Kim Ju Ae is expected to appear occasionally at Kim Jong Un’s public events and take a succession training.”
Revealing the young Ju Ae came as a huge surprise to foreign experts, as Kim Jong Un and his father Kim Jong Il were both first mentioned in state media dispatches after they became adults. Cheong, however, said Kim Jong Il had Kim Jong Un in mind as his heir when his son was 8 years old. Cheong cited his conversations with Kim Jong Un’s aunt and her husband, who defected to the United States.
The fact that the South Korean spy agency said Ju Ae is about 10 years old despite reportedly being born in 2013 could be related to the country’s age-calculating system that typically makes people’s age one or two years older.
Protests over China's COVID controls spread across country
Protests against China's pervasive anti-virus controls that have confined millions of people to their homes spread to Shanghai and other cities after complaints they might have worsened the death toll in an apartment fire in the northwest.
Shanghai police used pepper spray against about 300 protesters, according to a witness. They gathered Saturday night to mourn the deaths of at least 10 people in an apartment fire last week in Urumqi in the Xinjiang region in the northwest.
Videos posted on social media that said they were filmed in Nanjing in the east, Guangzhou in the south and at least five other cities showed protesters tussling with police in white protective suits or dismantling barricades used to seal off neighborhoods. Witnesses said a protest occurred in Urumqi, but The Associated Press was unable to confirm details of other videos.
President Xi Jinping’s government faces mounting anger at its “zero-COVID” policy that has shut down access to areas throughout China in an attempt to isolate every case at a time when other governments are easing controls and trying to live with the virus.
Read more: China reports 10,000 new virus cases, capital closes parks
That has kept China’s infection rate lower than the United States and other countries. But the ruling Communist Party faces growing complaints about the economic and human cost as businesses close and families are isolated for weeks with limited access to food and medicine.
Some protesters were shown in videos shouting for Xi to step down or the ruling party to give up power.
Party leaders promised last month to make restrictions less disruptive by easing quarantine and other rules but said they were sticking to “zero-COVID.” Meanwhile, an upsurge in infections that pushed daily cases above 30,000 for the first time has led local authorities to impose restrictions residents complain exceed what is allowed by the national government.
The fire deaths in Urumqi triggered an outpouring of angry questions online about whether firefighters who needed three hours to extinguish the blaze or victims trying to escape might have been obstructed by locked doors or other controls. Authorities denied that, but the disaster became a focal point for public anger about anti-disease restrictions, ruling party propaganda and censorship.
In Shanghai, protesters gathered at Middle Urumqi Road at midnight with flowers, candles and signs reading “Urumqi, November 24, those who died rest in peace,” according to a participant who would give only his family name, Zhao.
Zhao said one of his friends was beaten by police and two were pepper-sprayed. He said police stomped on his feet as he tried to stop them from taking his friend away. He lost his shoes and left barefoot.
According to Zhao, protesters yelled slogans including “Xi Jinping, step down, Communist Party, step down,” “Unlock Xinjiang, unlock China,” “do not want PCR (tests), want freedom” and “press freedom.”
Around 100 police stood in lines to prevent protesters from gathering or leaving, Zhao said. He said buses with more police arrived later.
Read more: China launches Covid-19 vaccine inhaled through mouth
Another protester, who gave only his family name, Xu, said there was a larger crowd of thousands of demonstrators, but police stood in the road and let them pass on the sidewalk.
Internet users posted videos and accounts on Chinese and foreign social media showing protests in Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu and Chongqing in the southwest and Urumqi and Korla in Xinjiang.
A video that said it was shot in Urumqi showed protesters chanting, “Remove the Communist Party! Remove Xi Jinping!”
Protests in Xinjiang are especially risky following a security crackdown against Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic minorities that has included mass detentions.
Most protesters in the videos were members of China's dominant Han ethnic group. A Uyghur woman in Urumqi said Uyghurs were too scared to take to the streets.
“Han Chinese people know they will not be punished if they speak against the lockdown,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified by name for fear of retaliation. “Uyghurs are different. If we dare say such things, we will be taken to prison or to the camps.”
Posts on Chinese social media were quickly deleted, which Beijing often does to suppress criticism it worries might serve as a rallying point for opposition to one-party rule.
People in some parts of Xinjiang have been confined to their homes since early August. Some complain they lack access to food and medicine and have posted appeals for help online.
In a possible attempt to placate the public, authorities on Saturday announced they had achieved “societal zero-COVID” and restrictions in Urumqi and Korla would be relaxed. The government said taxi, railway, bus and other public services that had been suspended for weeks would resume. State-owned China Southern Airlines announced it would resume flights from Urumqi to four Chinese cities starting Monday.
Social media users greeted news the disease was under control with disbelief and sarcasm. “Only China can achieve this speed,” wrote one user on the Sina Weibo social media service.
Anger boiled over earlier after Urumqi city officials appeared to blame the deaths from Thursday night's fire on the apartment tower’s residents.
“Some residents’ ability to rescue themselves was too weak,” said Li Wensheng, head of Urumqi’s fire department, at a news conference.
Police announced the arrest of a 24-year-old woman on charges of spreading “untrue information” about the death toll online.
Late Friday, people in Urumqi marched largely peacefully in big puffy winter jackets in the cold winter night.
Videos of protests featured people holding the Chinese flag and shouting “Open up, open up." Some shouted and pushed against rows of men in the white protective suits.
Two Urumqi residents who declined to be named for fear of retribution said large-scale protests occurred Friday night. One of them said he had friends who participated.
The AP pinpointed the locations of two of the videos of the protests in different parts of Urumqi. In one video, police in face masks and hospital gowns faced off against shouting protesters. In another, one protester spoke to a crowd about their demands. It was unclear how widespread the protests were.
Xi has defended the strategy as an example of the superiority of the Chinese system compared with the United States and other Western countries, which politicized the use of face masks and had difficulties enacting widespread lockdowns.
But support for “zero-COVID” has cratered in recent months, as tragedies sparked public anger.
Last week, the government of the central city of Zhengzhou apologized for the death of a 4-month old girl who was in quarantine. Her father said his efforts to take her to a hospital were delayed after ambulance workers balked at helping them because he tested positive for the virus.
The Uyghur woman in Urumqi said she had been unable to leave her apartment since Aug. 8, and was not even allowed to open her window. On Friday, she and her neighbors defied the order, opening their windows and shouting in protest.
“No more lockdowns! No more lockdowns!” they screamed, according to the woman.
Pakistan's ex-PM Khan says his party to quit all assemblies
Pakistan's former premier Imran Khan said Saturday his party was quitting the country's regional and national assemblies, as he made his first public appearance since being wounded in a gun attack earlier this month.
Khan, a former cricket star turned politician, was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament in April. He is now in the opposition and has been demanding early elections, claiming his ouster was illegal and orchestrated by Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, with the U.S. government’s help. Sharif and Washington have dismissed the allegations and the current government says the next polls will be held as scheduled in 2023.
Khan launched a protest march late last month from the eastern city of Lahore toward Islamabad as part of his campaign for early polls, but stepped down from personally leading the convoy after he was wounded by a gunman who opened fire at his vehicle. One of Khan’s supporters was killed and 13 were wounded in the attack. The gunman was arrested.
On Saturday night, in Rawalpindi city near Islamabad, Khan rejoined the protest march.
He told tens of thousands of his cheering supporters that his Tehreek-e-Insaf party was leaving all regional and national assemblies and getting out of this "corrupt system.”
His party resigned from the national assembly en masse in April ahead of a vote to elect a new prime minister, although most of the resignations have yet to be accepted. Khan's stronghold is in the northwest province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and leaving the Punjab assembly would hand power to his rivals.
The politician spoke for more than an hour, including references to the Sufi mystic Rumi, the fall of the Soviet Union, and the seventh-century Shiite leader Imam Hussain.
Toward the end of his speech, he did a U-turn on his demand for snap elections, saying his party would win the polls scheduled for nine months' time. He also said he would no longer march on the capital.
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“They (government) cannot deal with a march in Islamabad, they can call as many police as they want, but they cannot stop the hundreds of thousands from entering Islamabad,” said Khan. "We could have created a situation like Sri Lanka. I have decided against marching on Islamabad because I don’t want there to be anarchy in the country. I don't want to cause any harm to this country."
After months of protests over an economic crisis that has led to shortages of essentials such as food and medicine, thousands of Sri Lankans stormed the president’s residence in July, forcing then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and later resign.
Khan said he will meet his chief ministers and parliamentary party and announce the timing of the exit.
The rally came days after the appointment of a new army chief, Asim Munir, who ran the country's spy agency during Khan's term in office but was fired without an explanation from the then-premier.
Munir replaces Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, who Khan has also accused of playing a role in his ouster. Bajwa denies the allegation.
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Pakistan's Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari described Khan's Saturday night rally as a “facesaving flopshow.”
He said in a tweet: “Unable to pull revolution crowds, failed at undermining appointments of new chiefs, frustrated, resorts to resignation drama.”
Indian police detain man accused of killing Australian woman because ‘her dog barked at him’
Delhi Police have detained an Indian man accused of killing an Australian woman in Queensland in 2018. The man, Rajwinder Singh, had left Australia after killing the woman.
Toyah Cordingley (24) was killed by Rajwinder, according to investigators, because “her dog barked at him,” NDTV reports.
Apparently, after an altercation with his wife, Rajwinder Singh (38) headed to Wangetti Beach in Queensland. He admitted to Delhi police that he was carrying some fruits and a kitchen knife.
A pharmacy employee, Cordingley, was walking her dog down the shore. Rajwinder and Cordingley got into a fight, as the latter’s dog was barking at him. According to authorities, this led to the Indian man attacking and reportedly killing Cordingley.
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Rajwinder then tied the dog to a tree and buried Cordingley’s body in the sand.
Two days later, Rajwinder Singh fled Australia – leaving behind his wife, three children, and his job.
A Red Corner Notice from Interpol was issued against Rajwinder, and on November 21 the Patiala House Court issued a non-bailable warrant in accordance with the extradition laws.
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According to a senior police officer, Rajwinder was detained by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police along the G T Karnal Road based on information supplied by the CBI, which serves as Interpol’s central agency in India, and their Australian counterparts.
Death toll from Indonesia earthquake reaches 310 as more bodies found
The death toll from an earthquake that struck Indonesia’s Java island early this week rose to 310 after rescuers found more bodies under landslides, an official said. At least 24 people remain missing.
In devasted towns in western Java, residents gathered near badly damaged mosques for Friday prayers. Others held prayers along with rescuers between the tents at evacuation centers.
Bodies were recovered Friday in two areas of mountainous Cianjur district where landslides triggered by Monday’s quake brought tons of mud, rocks and broken trees, said Henri Alfiandi, chief of the National Search and Rescue Agency.
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More than 1,400 rescuers have been searching through the rubble since the magnitude 5.6 quake, which injured more than 2,000 people.
The head of the National Disaster Management Agency, Suharyanto, who uses one name, said rescuers will continue searching until rebuilding begins.
“We will do it up to the last person. There is no reduction whatsoever, in strength, enthusiasm, or the equipment,” Suharyanto said.
He said distribution of food and other aid is improving and is reaching more people in 110 evacuation locations.
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The disaster agency said the earthquake damaged at least 56,000 houses and displaced at least 36,000 people. Hundreds of public facilities were destroyed, including 363 schools.
An earthquake of that strength would not typically cause such serious damage. But Monday’s quake was shallow and shook a densely populated area that lacks earthquake-resistant infrastructure.
Indonesia is frequently struck by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis because of its location on the arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin known as the “Ring of Fire.”