In a park in Heze city in China’s eastern Shandong province, two people were killed and 24 wounded, including three currently in critical condition, when a bomb was detonated Monday night. The bomber was also killed.
Chinese authorities have identified the man as Xie Xintang, 33, an unemployed villager. official state media Xinhua, which originally reported the incident, did not provide details about the motive of the man or about the explosion, which happened at 10:34 local time at Huxi park, Heze city, Shanxian county, Shangdong.
Other Chinese reports say the man was chronically ill and his condition had recently worsened.
Monday night’s terrorist attack in southeastern Turkey, in which 31 people were killed and around 100 injured, may be the first of a series of seven.
The Turkish government is pointing toward the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) for the attack in Suruc, and if it was carried out by the terrorist group this would be their first suicide bombing in Turkey. So far, no one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
As reported by Turkish news organization Hurriyet Daily News, the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) of Turkey repeatedly warned national security services about seven ISIL militants — four men and three women — who crossed the southern border with Syria.
On June 22 and July 3 MIT warned authorities about the seven individuals, provided their names, and stated that there existed an extremely high risk of terrorist attack, after which notice police began counter-ISIL operations in Istanbul, Ankara, Sanliurfa, Konya and Izmir, during which they detained nearly 100 people, but this did not lead to the arrest of any of the seven.
Ramadan, Islam’s holy month, regularly sees a significant increase in religiously-motivated killing, but this year’s was the most deadly of the century, according to The Religion of Peace, a terrorism watch group that keeps records of killings in the name of Islam.
“This year’s Ramadan was the highest since I’ve been keeping track,” Glen Roberts, editor of TROP, told The Speaker. “Normally, Islam’s holiest month sees about 30 percent more terror deaths over a typical month.”
“Nearly 3,000 people were shot, beheaded, blown up, drowned, burned or hacked to death in the name of Islam,” stated Roberts in the summary on TROP’s webpage, noting that no deaths in the name of other religions took place during that time.
For the period roughly corresponding with Ramadan, which lasts 29-30 days based on visual sightings of the crescent moon, 314 terror attacks took place globally, including 63 suicide bombings, which resulted in 2,988 deaths and 3,696 wounded.
Killings during the first few days of Ramadan(TROP resource)
However, as Roberts pointed out, the actual numbers are higher than reported because TROP relies on news reports for figures. There is not a news report for every attack, Roberts told us, and the reports are not followed up by deaths that occur days or longer after the initial incident.
The figures include all killings motivated by a sentiment of religious duty, and so include killings by the Islamic State. “Any killing that I come across by the Islamic State is included in the count. I’m sure that there’s quite a bit that I miss,” commented Roberts.
The 314 attacks that resulted in death between June 18 and July 16 took place in Iraq, Niger, Somalia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Egypt, Mali, Chad, Israel, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Kenya, India, Phillipines, Thailand, China, France, and Austria.
The United Nations’ top diplomat in South Sudan is not needed by the country, according to the young nation’s Unity State government.
Mary Cummins was the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) head, based in oil-rich Unity State. The UN’s human rights division released a report at the end of June in which it accused the government army of human rights violations including systematic killing including killing of women and children, gang rape and burning people alive.
Sunday the South Sudanese government announced that Unity State officials had submitted a request that Cummins be expelled.
Cummins will not be the first UN head to be expelled from South Sudan. Last May, the nation expelled UN humanitarian coordinator Toby Lanzer.
Lanzer was also removed following the publication of a UN report on serious human rights violations in South Sudan, including killing, rape and kidnapping.
The difficulties UN officials face in South Sudan are also illustrated, commentators note, in the resignation of former UNMISS peacekeeping leader Hilde Johnson in July of 2014. Johnson assumed office in the summer of 2011 when South Sudan’s Independence was new and no serious violent conflict existed in the region.
But according to South Sudanese lawyers, the state government does not have authority to remove Cummins because the UN made agreements with the national government, not Unity State.
“The notion that Mabek Lang and his colleagues expelled a top UN official in the country is like saying Unity State Governor banned the United Nations Secretary General,” an independent South Sudanese legal expert told South Sudan News Agency.
“What the Unity State government supposed to say is that it has decided to expel Mary Cummins from Unity State, not South Sudan; from there, the national government can decide of what to do with the state decision.”
The number of Russian desertions in the first half of 2015 is already almost double the number of desertions between 2010 and 2014, according to Russian journalists and lawyers involved, who also say that Russian soldiers do not want to fight in Donbas despite high pay promised by recruiters.
The desertions are taking place, lawyer Tatyana Chernetskaya said, because Russian soldiers do not want to fight in the Donbas even for the high pay rate — up to 8,000 rubles or $160 per day — promised by senior officers and other recruiters, who, soldiers report, present themselves out of uniform but with clear marks of rank.
“If there is a real trial according to the law, the commanders will be responsible for the violation of order”
Russian deserters face up to 10 years in prison.
One such deserter is Anatoly Kudrin, 23, who served in Maikop Intelligence Brigade, has received six months in a settlement colony, feared being sent to war in Donbass.
“I did not want to take part in the fighting on the territory of Ukraine,” Kudrin told Gazeta.ru news.
The defence of the soldiers includes the soldiers’ own oaths of service. One soldier facing charges wrote in a brief that he “did not fulfill a criminal order since he did not want to go against the oath which [he] took and did not want to participate in military actions on the territory of Ukraine.”
Human Rights Council’s Sergei Krivenko agreed. Russian military statutes, Krivenko noted, provide that important orders shall be written. “In case of doubt it requires the order in writing by any officers.”
Further, Krivenko said, sending troops on combat missions abroad is impossible without a presidential decree. Formally, any such soldiers could be considered “mercenaries” and “participating in illegal armed groups.”
“If there is a real trial according to the law, the commanders will be responsible for the violation of order,” said Krivenko.
“I did not want to take part in the fighting on the territory of Ukraine”
Russian journalists said that they could not provide comment on the issue from the Russian defence ministry, but noted that the ministry has repeatedly provided news outlets with their official position: that Russian soldiers are not in Ukraine.
After months held in Thai immigration detention centers, over 100 Uighurs have been deported to China, despite protests from the United Nations and the Uighurs themselves, who fear punishment in China.
“Thailand and Turkey are not rivals and we do not want to destroy trade and commerce with Turkey,” said Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha in Bangkok Friday. “At the same time, we do not want to destroy the relationship between China and Thailand.”
Without public notice, last month the Thai government sent 172 Uighurs to Turkey from the holding camps where they had been provided for in Thailand.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) commented on the move, saying it was “shocked by this deportation of some 100 people and consider it a flagrant violation of international law.”
Many of the deported Uighurs have been accused of terrorism by Chinese officials. China’s Foreign Ministry said those Uighurs suspected of “committing serious crimes” would be brought to justice, while others would be dealt with in “proper ways.”
Over 60 Uighurs remain in Thai custody awaiting deportation. The Thai government is processing their paperwork to be sure of their citizenship status before moving them.
Complaints against Jiang Zemin, the former leader of China’s Communist Party, rose from only a few thousand to around 35,000 over the previous month. The number of complainants is currently around 44,000.
They are practitioners and supporters of the Chinese religion Falun Gong, and they are urging China’s governing authorities to bring Jiang to justice for his administration’s persecution of the minority religion.
Similar to other mass movements currently taking place in China, the group action against Jiang is taking place on a website. Claimants are submitting complaints to Minghui. Between 1,700 and 2,700 complaints have been filed per day between the end of June and the beginning of July, mostly in China, but complaints have also come in from 19 other countries.
The complaints include illegal detention, forced labor, torture, and murder.
Over the past 16 years, the Chinese government’s torture of Falun Gong adherents has resulted in 3,800 reported deaths. The actual number may be much higher, as matters such as executions, although extremely common in China relative to the rest of the world, are guarded as state secrets.
Under the banner of the New England Annual Conference of United Methodist Churches, 600 Methodist churches in six states have issued a resolution passed Saturday calling for an end of the War on Drugs in the name of Christ.
The group cited the failure of the “‘so-called’ War on Drugs” to make progress in eliminating “or even reducing” substance abuse, as well as the negative consequences that have resulted from “War on Drugs” policy, including a violent underground market and its associated loss of life, the high incidence of death due to overdose in the unregulated and sometimes adulterated market, and the harms associated with processing and punishing people as criminals for drug use.
“The ‘War on Drugs’ has arguably been the single most devastating, dysfunctional social policy since slavery” for people of color, the resolution noted, while costing millions of dollars per year to finance.
The group concluded that the issue was one of the poor and marginalized, and the consequence of the drug war was “mass incarceration, racial injustice, and the breakdown of families,” according to Major Neill Franklin (Ret.), executive director of LEAP.
The group made their call under the authority of “the love of Christ, who came to save those who are lost and vulnerable.”
Dong-Hyuk Shin, the only North Korean prison camp escapee, revealed that the inaccurate details in his autobiography “Escape from Camp 14” were neither lies nor confusion about his memories following his traumatic experiences. He just wanted to keep some painful experiences to himself.
“First of all, let me tell about the controversial issues surrounding my book, as some people are still regarding me as a liar. For what and how would I make up those horrible memories? I just wanted to hide a part of my life in the book. Isn’t that a choice I am free to make?” Shin said.
Escape From Camp 14
According to the book, Shin underwent torture in North Korea’s most notorious political prison camp, No.14, at the age of 13. He later corrected this claim, however, to say that it was actually in Camp 18, known to be less controlled, when he was 20 years old, after moving out of Camp 14 at age six. Shin was transferred back to Camp 14, again, so he escaped from No. 14 in the end.
He said that he also had to correct the inaccurate report about his confession from United States media. The author of his book, Blaine Harden added in a new forward of the e-book that, “Trauma experts see nothing unusual in this.”
Shin, however, strongly denied the loss of memories, as Harden explained. “I didn’t forget any of the memories of my life. In reality, I couldn’t forget them even if I tried. Every time I tried to erase those terrifying moments, they remained in my head more clearly,” he said.
The prison camp survivor has undergone a tough time since the end of last year, when he arrived in South Korea. Last October, North Korean authorities produced a video called “Lie and Truth” to attack Shin, who had given evidence of North Korea’s human rights violations in front of the UN Commission of Inquiry. In the video, Shin’s father — whom he believed to be dead — contradicted his story.
“I found out that my father was still alive when I watched the video. I believed that he died in the prison camp where he was transferred. When I saw him in such a ridiculous video for the first time, I wasn’t happy at all, but I felt despair. I thought that he would’ve rather died than lived, because I can imagine how much he suffered and is still suffering tortures in the country because of me.”
“If I knew that my story would have gained this much fame at that time, I would’ve disclosed every single detail to the writer.”
The video and the presence of his father ultimately made him reveal what he did not explain in the book. Amid condemnation from many people, he could not stand the criticism of other North Korean defectors.
“I didn’t care about the South Korean media that only focused on the numbers, such as Camp 14 and 18 and my age, while ignoring the scars of prison camp torture on my body. But I was very sad and even enraged because of other defectors who had suffered in North Korea like me,” he continued.
“Some of them denounced me by showing the video produced by North Korean government. I felt miserable, as they didn’t know my true intention, which was to save the dying. I think that they might be jealous of my fame and money. But to be honest, I didn’t earn any money while working for human rights. And the fame had nothing to do with my life, since many North Koreans are still being killed. If I knew that my story would have gained this much fame at that time, I would’ve disclosed every single detail to the writer.”
He alluded to discontinuity in the campaign on his Facebook page this January, but a month later he restarted it.
The prison camp survivor has been involved in North Korean human right activity since 2007. But recently he has felt that everything that he has done was in vain, as nothing has changed yet compared to eight years ago.
“I started this campaign desperately to save tens of thousands of maltreated North Korean residents, because I was also one of them. I didn’t have time, as people were dying every second.”
He was particularly skeptical about the UN’s inquiry into the human rights situation in North Korea, launched in 2013.
“For what did the United Nations establish the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in North Korea? What did they do for North Korean residents? It took more than one year for the UN General Assembly’s Human Rights Committee to adopt the resolution. What is next, then?
“I gave all evidence to them in order to save my family and friends — not to lay flowers on their graves. I don’t think that the officials of the UN would understand how serious the real situation in North Korea is, because most of them have not lived that kind of a desperate life.”
The 33-year-old activist begged people to see the invisible reality: “When I told my story to the UN, at first they asked me whether I could prove it,” he said.
“Six million Jews died in the Holocaust over the course of about three years. Who imagined that many people were killed in that short a time? It is exactly same as 70 years ago. We can’t see what is happening in North Korea, but the fact is that people are being publicly executed at this very moment.”
“I felt miserable, as they didn’t know my true intention, which was to save the dying.”
Despite of his sense of futility over his human rights campaign, he said that he will never give it up.
Currently, Shin is planning two projects for the near future. “I’m thinking to publish a magazine about ordinary South Koreans’ lives and to send them into North Korea through the Chinese border with North Korea,” he said.
Similarly, South Korea’s activist groups, led by North Korean defectors, have sent anti-North propaganda leaflets, attached to large balloons, from near the border for several years. This activity, however, escalated tensions between the two Koreas, and North Korean authorities even threatened South Korea with military action.
“North Korea’s sensitive reaction indicates that these flyers are quite influential in society. I chose to produce a magazine to describe South Korea more specifically. I would like to feature photos of couples holding hands, drinking coffee in the cafe, and walking freely in central Seoul. And I wish North Koreans could realize that they also have a right to live like that.”
“I found out that my father was still alive when I watched the video. I believed that he died in the prison camp where he was transferred.”
He said that the second project is a bit more personal. “I’m aiming to make a video that rebuts every part of the video ‘Lie and Truth,’ before a conference at the United Nations in Geneva this September,” he said.
Through the video, he is hoping to send two messages to the North Korean government. “My ultimate goal is to enter North Korea with a delegation to the UN, and I want to visit Camp 14 where I was born and lived. If I can do that, no one will dispute my life, and finally I can prove the human rights violations,” he said.
The other message seems to be more important for In-Gun Shin — that was the original name of human rights activist Dong-Hyuk Shin.
“I’ll request the authorities let me meet my father either in North Korea or in a third country before he dies. And firstly, I’ll ask him why I was born in the prison camp. I then will say ‘I love you’ to my father for the first and last time.”
What is the state of lobbying in Europe? How transparent is it? Is there a clear and enforceable code of conduct for lobbying activities? How diverse are the voices affecting decision making?
The study looks at the practice of lobbying and its regulations within 19 EU national governments and the three main EU institutions: the European Commission, the EU Parliament, and the EU Council.
It is underpinned by three research criteria:
Transparency – are interactions between lobbyists and public officials transparent and open to public scrutiny?
Integrity – is there a clear and enforceable code of behaviour that ensures lobbying is conducted ethically?
Equality of access – how diverse is the range of voices affecting decision-making, how accessible is the political system to a wide range of citizens?
With some 15-30 thousand lobbyists regularly walking in the corridors of EU institutions, the lobbying industry in Europe is not just thriving but is becoming increasingly sophisticated. It includes professional lobbyists, corporations, private sector representatives, trade unions and law firms, and also NGOs, think-tanks, academics and faith-based organisations.
Underpinned by transparency, integrity and equality of access, lobbying can be a democratic tool, as multiple views can help shape the political debate and agenda in ways that are richer and fairer to the millions of people who will be ultimately impacted by the decisions taken. Legislation on food labeling, pesticide use, carbon emissions, smoking bans, recycling targets, and gay marriage are all examples of lobbying as a force for good.
However, in their latest report TI show us why the practice often still has a rather seedy ring to it.
The study finds ineffective and piecemeal lobbying regulations across EU countries and institutions overall. It finds that only seven (Austria, France, Ireland, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and the United Kingdom) of the 19 countries investigated have some kind of lobbying regulation in place, but even then regulation is either poorly designed or not properly implemented.
When measured against international standards and best practices, the 19 EU countries and EU institutions together only scored an average 31 percent for the quality of their promotion of transparency, integrity and equality of access in lobbying.
For the three EU institutions alone the score is slightly higher at 36 percent, but still well below the ideal mark.
At 55 and 53 percent respectively, Slovenia is the only country and the EU Commission is the only institution to surpass the 50 percent mark. In both, whereas transparency and integrity measures are found to be relatively solid, the measures’ reach, implementation and enforcement are, however, found to be lacking.
The study finds that only 10 of the 19 countries assessed have some form of lobbying register.
In six (Austria, Ireland, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, the United Kingdom), this is a national mandatory register. Yet while mandatory, lobbying, its targets and activities are found to be too narrowly defined – indeed none of the 19 countries are found to have adequate definitions across the board.
The UK Lobbying Act (2014), for example, is estimated by the Association of Professional Political Consultants to only be able to capture around one per cent of those who engage in lobbying activities – this is due to its narrow targets focus on ministers, permanent secretaries and special advisers – but not on members of parliament or local councillors, the staff of regulatory bodies, and private companies providing public services.
In 14 countries, voluntary registers may apply only to select institutions, such as the National Assembly and Senate in France, in the Netherlands, and the EU Transparency Register, or to target sub-national level institutions, such as the Italian regions of Tuscany, Molise and Abruzzo, or Catalonia in Spain.
These registers’ voluntary nature fails to fully and accurately capture the real extent of lobbying, and through use of non-user-friendly data formats and through weak or non-existent oversight and sanctions, their potential as transparency, integrity and equality of access tools is further hindered.
Another finding of the report is that much of the influence in Europe is exercised through informal relationships away from the public eye, such as through corporate hospitality events, all paid expense business trips, gala dinners, or quiet drinks in parliamentary bars.
Lobbyists in Hungary told of their travels alongside international business delegations and visits to football matches. Lobbyists in Milan told of how they catch politicians in the Alitalia’s lounge in Linate’s Airport, while they wait to catch their flight to Rome.
Below the radar by design, such interactions are likely to fall through any regulatory net.
The study highlights also how particular groups enjoy privileged access to decision makers. With the largest sums of money spent, the pharmaceutical, finance, energy and telecoms sectors tend to dominate the lobbying landscape. In 2012, the official figure for spending by the pharmaceutical sector alone was 40 billion Euros, however the study suggests a more realistic number for the sector would be 91 billion Euro.
Click to enlarge
That Goldman Sachs recently increased their declared lobbying expenses does seem to corroborate that official figures tend to err on the conservative side.
The study also warns that with an increasingly intertwined relationship between politics and business, known as the ‘revolving door’ between public and private sectors, is posing serious risks of regulatory and policy capture.
Although a cooling-off period before former public officials can lobby their former colleagues is in place in most countries, the report finds that none of the 19 EU countries have effective monitoring and enforcement of such revolving door provisions.
One example cited is that of France. Since 2013 French legislation requires a three-year cooling-off period between the end of a public service mandate and a role within a company that the official previously had interactions with as part of his or her mandate.
In practice, effective monitoring is likely to be impeded by the very limited resources available to monitoring bodies, such as the Public Service Ethics Commission, versus the scope of their monitoring responsibilities – for the Public Service Ethics Commission this is over some 5.5 million public officials. And with MPs also being exempt from such cooling-off period, such legislation shows room for improvement.
When it comes to equality of access to decision makers, in 17 of the 19 EU countries assessed public officials are required to promote citizens’ participation through consultations, indicating that public engagement is paramount.
Yet although formal mechanisms to collect a variety of voices do exist, none of the countries are found to have measures in place that can show whose voices decision makers ultimately take into account. Measures that ensure a balanced composition of advisory groups — key in preventing cases like this – are only found in Portugal.
The report however does also praise some regulatory improvements that have occurred, such as the recently adopted lobbying law in Ireland, and the progress made in a number of countries — namely Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, France, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia and Spain — towards regulating not just lobbying but also its parallel act of political financing.
Yet, while such developments are positive and welcome steps in the right direction, the study warns that transparency, integrity, and equality of access remain overall rather elusive in lobbying regulation in Europe, and that while many voices seek a chance to shape political debates in ways that take their own interests into account, when it comes to influencing decision makers it is the well-resourced corporate interests that reach the most ears.
Overall, a lack of a EU-wide mandatory lobbying register on one side, and the presence of mostly voluntary and generally poorly designed, implemented and/or enforced national codes of conduct on the other, are enabling lobbying to continue to take place below the radar, so that we don’t really know who is lobbying whom, for what, and with what resources.
The study calls for lifting such veils of secrecy and the opening of lobbying to public scrutiny as the first steps towards promoting a fairer system in which a plurality of voices have equal access to political agenda-setting, and in which decisions ultimately are made so that people are put before profits.
BELGRADE, Serbia — Early Saturday morning the Macedonian town of Kumanovo was awakened by a major shootout and grenade explosions. According to local media reports, police officers were attacked by an armed group, estimated to be 70 fighters strong.
TV NOVA morning news reported that one whole part of the town was blocked by strong police forces, and many more of Macedonian army and police units were arriving from other places.
Unofficial reports confirmed three police officers had lethal injuries, while another 11 were wounded and were receiving care in hospitals.
Police action is in progress, and results are yet to be seen. There are unconfirmed reports of casualties on the other side as well.
Kumanovo is a small town in northern Macedonia. This state is widely known for its long-lasting dispute with Greece, which has been unwilling to recognize their name due to historical reference.
With a mixed Christian and Muslim (Albanian) population, Macedonia has not been excluded from violence based on ethnic or religious grounds.
In 2001, Albanian paramilitary groups took control of a region close to Kumanovo, claiming their right to independence. Many months later and after the loss of hundreds of lives, Macedonia prevailed and peace talks resulted in wide democratic rights for the Albanian minority.
However, one month ago a strong group of the armed Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) took control of a police outpost on the border between Macedonia and Kosovo and sent a message to the Macedonian government that they will fight for Great Albania. This, in general, reflects the wish of some Albanians to unite all of the nation in a single state, along with the territories where they live now. This 18th century idea affects all neighboring countries — Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro.
Current Senator and former President of Uruguay José “Pepe” Mujica was awarded a diploma distinguishing him as a Doctor Honoris Causa of the Universidad de Buenos Aires School of Economics last night.
The ceremony took place at the UBA School of Economics despite a minor disturbance earlier that day in which university students cut off the street and demonstrated after a new dean was appointed despite “irregularities” in the voting process.
The ceremony began with a spirited introduction by the dean of UBA’s School of Social Sciences, Glenn Postolski, who spoke of Senator Mujica’s struggles during the Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985) and accomplishments throughout his political career. The crowd erupted in applause when Postolski mentioned the fact that Mujica legalized marijuana in an effort to combat drug trafficking during his time in office.
Following Postolski´s introduction, Mujica spoke briefly to the audience about Latin American unity and the need for a new system in order to confront the economic and political issues of the region today. “We lack the political will to integrate ourselves. Let´s face the facts,” affirmed Mujica in regards to regional affiliation.
The senator also called for the integration of Latin America’s universities, stating, “If we don´t start by integrating intelligence, we aren´t going to integrate a goddamned thing.”
“I know my language isn’t very academic,” added Mujica to the crowd’s amusement.
Mujica stressed the importance of “fighting to live,” saying that a human “is the only animal capable of taking its life into its own hands.”
In the end, Mujica, surrounded by a sea of smartphones and cameras, obliged the press by answering some questions and signing autographs before departing the university through the side garage in a silver Toyota.
