Page 2 n THE ASIAN REPORTER
ASIA / PACIFIC
December 4, 2017
Sri Lanka arrests 22 trying to go to Australia by boat
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lankan police say they’ve arrested 22
people who were attempting to illegally migrate to Australia by boat. According
to police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekara, the suspects were arrested on a tip in
the coastal town of Puttalam, about 74 miles north of the capital, Colombo. Sri
Lankan and Australian authorities are cooperating with each other to combat
human smuggling. No Sri Lankan asylum seekers have reached Australia by
boat since 2013. But Sri Lankans, Iranians, and Afghans are the largest
national groups among more than 2,000 asylum seekers living on the Pacific
islands nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Australia pays those
countries to house them, but refuses to resettle any of them.
Uber signs partnership with Vietnam’s leading e-wallet firm
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Uber Technologies Inc. has signed a deal with
MoMo, Vietnam’s leading financial technology firm, enabling Uber riders to pay
for trips using MoMo’s e-wallets in a country where most transactions are done
in cash. The partnership is Uber’s first deal with a fin-tech company in
Southeast Asia. It aims to catch up with regional rival Grab, which has its own
e-wallet service. Backed by Standard Chartered Bank and Goldman Sachs,
MoMo has 5 million users in Vietnam who use its e-wallet to pay utility bills, buy
plane tickets, and do online shopping. Brooks Entwistle, Uber’s chief business
officer in the Asia Pacific, said he expects the partnership to help the two
companies grow and to change Vietnam’s cash-dominated economy. Cash
payments currently account for more than 90 percent of all transactions in
Vietnam. The government has announced plans to reverse that ratio over the
next three years, making 90 percent of transactions cashless.
Woman confessed to putting babies in concrete in the ’90s
TOKYO (AP) — A Japanese woman was arrested after police said she
confessed to putting four newborns in concrete-filled buckets two decades ago
and having been filled with guilt over not caring for her babies. Human remains
were identified in four buckets found in her condominium, an Osaka police
official said, requesting anonymity due to department policy. Mayumi Saito, 53,
was arrested on charges of abandoning bodies, a day after she turned herself in
at the police station. Saito was quoted by police as saying she put the bodies into
concrete from 1992 through 1997 because she had been too poor to raise them,
but she had been filled with guilt over the years. Saito had a part-time job, but
details of her work, family, and comments were not available. The causes of the
babies’ deaths were unclear. It is fairly standard in Japan for criminal charges to
be added later as an investigation progresses. Although Japan is the world’s
third-largest economy and has a reputation as being economically advanced,
poverty remains a problem, especially among women. Social support such as
affordable daycare is lacking for women to be able to work while child-rearing, as
well as to get counselling and other help to cope with parenting duties and
mental stress. Japanese media reports quoted the woman as saying she had no
one to talk to or turn to.
Police say teacher pricked children at kindergarten
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese police say a teacher at a Beijing kindergarten
pricked children with needles as punishment but an investigation found no
evidence of sexual exploitation. Chinese media reports about alleged abuses at
the Xintiandi kindergarten have drawn nationwide anger over potential lapses
in supervision in the booming private preschool industry. The school is run by
Beijing-based RYB Education, a company listed on the New York Stock
Exchange. RYB posted an apology on its website saying “when a needle pricks a
child’s body, it also pricks every one of our hearts.” It said complaints from
parents at other RYB kindergartens would be fully investigated and it would
accept responsibility for harm to any of its students. The police statement said
initial results of an investigation showed that a 22-year-old teacher it identified
only by her surname, Liu, had punished children who refused to sleep by
pricking them with sewing needles.
PACHYDERM POWER. An elephant is used to demolish a house during an eviction drive inside Amchang Wildlife
Sanctuary on the outskirts of Gauhati, Assam, India. Indian police took the unusual step of using elephants in an attempt to
evict hundreds of people living illegally in the protected forest area in the country’s remote northeast. Police used bulldoz-
ers and the elephants in a show of force. The forest dwellers responded by hurling rocks. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath)
Indian police use elephants
to clear their protected habitat
GAUHATI, India (AP) — Indian police took
the unusual step of using elephants in an
attempt to evict hundreds of people living
illegally in a protected forest area in the
country’s remote northeast.
Police used bulldozers and the elephants
in a show of force. The forest dwellers
responded
by
hurling
rocks.
Police
commissioner Hiren Nath said five protesters
were injured in a scuffle after police used tear
gas in the Amchang forest area in Assam
state.
Authorities plan to demolish about 1,000
bamboo and tin huts.
State forest minister Pramilla Brahma said
the area is an elephant habitat and the
unauthorized settlements were forcing the
pachyderms to leave in search of food. There
have been many incidents in which wild
elephants have entered villages, destroying
crops and even killing people.
Nath said the police action followed a court
order to clear the forest of illegal encroach-
ment.
The eviction drive is being carried out by
wildlife wardens, with police providing
protection against possible attacks by angry
residents.
Obama re-emerges on global stage with trip to Asia, France
By Josh Lederman
The Associated Press
ASHINGTON — Now a private
citizen, former President Barack
Obama re-emerged on the global
stage with a three-country tour that included
meetings with the leaders of China and India,
just as President Donald Trump courts those
same world powers.
During a five-day trip, Obama mixed paid
speeches with meetings with foreign leaders
and even a town hall event for young people,
the signature event that Obama became
known for around the world during his eight
years in office. He finished the trip in France.
The tour continues a longstanding tradition
of former U.S. presidents travelling overseas
after leaving office, especially as they work to
attract donations and other support for their
foundations, libraries, and presidential cen-
ters. But Obama’s trip may garner particular
W
attention, given that many foreign countries
are still uncertain about Trump’s foreign
policy and may look to his predecessor to help
explain America’s current direction.
“Barack Obama is the great explainer to the
rest of the world of what the heck is going on in
America,” said Douglas Brinkley, a
presidential historian at Rice University.
“He’s a calming influence in a world that’s
teetering on frenzy right now. Obama arrives
and it reminds them of old-style diplomacy and
the dignity of statesmanship.”
Obama spoke at a business conference in
Shanghai before travelling to Beijing to speak
at an education event. He also met with
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who hosted
Trump for a high-profile visit only a few weeks
earlier. Obama’s office said the global
economy, climate change, and other issues
were among discussions.
Then the former president went to India,
Continued on page 8
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Vietnam court upholds jail term for blogger
HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — A Vietnamese appeals court has upheld a blogger’s
10-year prison sentence for Facebook posts alleged to be anti-state propaganda,
according to her lawyer, in the second tough sentence imposed on dissidents in a
week that drew a rebuke from the U.S government. Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh
was convicted in June of spreading propaganda by distorting government
policies and defaming the communist regime. Lawyer Nguyen Ha Luan said the
People’s High Court determined after a half-day hearing in the south-central
province of Khanh Hoa that the conviction was justified. Quynh maintained she
was innocent throughout the trial, Luan said, adding she admitted to have
written the articles but saying they did not constitute a crime. The 37-year-old
blogger known by her pen name Me Nam, or “Mother Mushroom,” co-founded a
network of bloggers and is very popular in Vietnam. She has written about
human-rights and civilian deaths in police custody and the release of toxic
chemicals by a Taiwanese-owned factory that killed thousands of fish in one of
Vietnam’s worst environmental disasters. U.S. Charge d’Affaires Caryn
McClelland said she was “deeply troubled” by the court’s decision to uphold the
sentence on a “vague” charge and called for the blogger’s release. McClelland
said Quynh was one of six individuals convicted this year for exercising the right
of fundamental freedom of expression, association, and of peaceful assembly. In
March, Quynh received in absentia the International Women of Courage Award
at the U.S. State Department. Quynh was jailed at the time.
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82.296
4011.5
6.6163
2.0719
7.8128
64.581
13523
35340
112.17
8273.3
4.0869
103.17
105.33
3.2102
50.28
58.895
3.7503
1.3464
1086.4
153.6
30.008
32.618
22730