Month: November 2019

A Chinese court Thursday jailed nine people, one with a suspended death sentence, for smuggling fentanyl into the United States, saying this was the first such case the two countries had worked together on.

China has faced U.S. criticism for not doing enough to prevent the flow of fentanyl into the United States, and the issue has become another irritant in ties already strained by a bruising trade war the two are now working to end.

The announcement of the successful action against the smugglers comes as the two countries are expected to sign an interim trade deal.

Fentanyl is a highly addictive synthetic opioid, 50 times more potent than heroin. It is often used to make counterfeit narcotics because of its relatively cheap price, and it has played an increasingly central role in an opioid crisis in the United States.

US-China teamwork

Yu Haibin, a senior official with China’s National Narcotics Control Commission, told reporters in the northern city of Xingtai where the court case was heard, that Chinese and U.S. law enforcement had worked together to break up the ring, which smuggled fentanyl and other opioids to the United States via courier.

One of the people sentenced by the court was given a suspended death sentence, which in practice is normally commuted to life in jail, and two got life sentences, Yu said.

More than 28,000 synthetic opioid-related overdose deaths, mostly from fentanyl-related substances, were recorded in the United States in 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. drug enforcement has pointed to China as the source of fentanyl and its related supplies. China denies that most of the illicit fentanyl entering the United States originates in China, and says the United States must do more to reduce demand.

Issue of demand

Yu said that the issue of fentanyl was not something any one country could resolve.

“If illegal demand cannot be effectively reduced, it is very difficult to fundamentally tackle the fentanyl issue,” Yu said.

In August, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Chinese President Xi Jinping of not fulfilling a promise to crack down on fentanyl and its analogs.

Yu said China was willing to work with U.S. law enforcement authorities and all other international colleagues to fight narcotics and “continue to contribute China’s wisdom and power for the global management of narcotics.”

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A Bolivian protest leader who has become a symbol of opposition to President Evo Morales arrived on Wednesday in the nation’s capital, La Paz, where he plans to formally demand the leftist leader step down after a contentious election last month.

Luis Fernando Camacho, a civic leader from the eastern city of Santa Cruz, was whisked away in a convoy from the city’s main airport in nearby El Alto in the midst of a huge security presence and with rival protest groups massing outside.

The gambit, after he was blocked from leaving the airport on Tuesday, has sparked a fierce backlash from government supporters, while seemingly helping rally a split opposition. Camacho plans to march to the presidential palace to deliver a pre-written letter of resignation for Morales to sign.

The new attempt is likely to fan tensions following weeks of protests and strikes since the Oct. 20 vote. Hostilities have ramped up since Tuesday night in La Paz and Cochabamba, with clashes between Morales supporters and the opposition.

Government supporters and anti-Morales protesters clashed outside the El Alto airport late into Wednesday night. Carlos Mesa, the runner-up in the October election, had been at the airport waiting for Camacho to arrive, along with ex-President Jorge Quiroga.

“I think this is a fundamental moment for the opposition that believes in a democratic response and a peaceful way out,” said Mesa, who has repeatedly raised allegations of fraud against Morales and called for new elections.

Morales, a socialist leader who has been in power since 2006, has defended his election win and said that the opposition is trying to lead a “coup” against him and that his rivals were inciting violence.

Bolivians vs Bolivians

With little sign of a political solution, the standoff has worsened. On Wednesday, newspaper headlines decried the violence and pointed to an economic cost of $167 million. “Bolivians against Bolivians” read the front page of one local daily.

Local media reported the death of one young man in his twenties in the city of Cochabamba on Wednesday. In a tweet, Camacho blamed the death on Morales, and in a separate video message called for unity and calm.

Morales confirmed the death, saying the youngster was an “innocent victim of violence provoked by political groups encouraging racial hatred amongst our Bolivian brothers”.

“I hope Camacho and the people who follow him understand that the route they are taking simply leads to disaster,” state media reported defense minister Javier Zavaleta as saying.

Morales won last month’s vote with a lead of just over 10 points over Mesa, handing the former coca grower an outright win and avoiding a second-round runoff. The victory, however, was marred by a near 24-hour halt in the count, which, when resumed, showed a sharp and unexplained shift in Morales’ favor.

International governments have called for calm and are backing an audit of the election by the Organization of American States (OAS), which has recommended that a second round vote go ahead. Morales has agreed the audit will be “binding.”

The OAS on Wednesday called for calm while it completed its audit.

Since the vote, cities have gone into lockdown, with daily marches and road blocks. Camacho earlier this week called for people to blockade public institutions and the country’s borders in order to hit government incomes.

Benjamín Blanco, a senior trade official, said on Wednesday that borders with Peru, Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil had been affected, with hundreds of trucks being stopped.

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Britain’s Parliament dissolved Wednesday for a five-week election campaign. Rising inequality is expected to be one of the central issues in Britain’s pre-holiday general election, as conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson faces off with leftist leader Jeremy Corbyn. Johnson has called for the snap election to gain more parliamentary support for his Brexit plan. But for some British voters, employment, health care, the environment and other issues are more important than how soon and under what conditions Britain can leave the European Union. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports.

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The Berlin Wall’s demise 30 years ago brought an end to a divided  Berlin — and symbolized the eventual liberation of East Germany, and later the rest of Eastern Europe, from Soviet communist rule. Yet the wall’s anniversary comes as the politics of east and west continue to reverberate through German society.  In former communist East Germany, a democratic slogan from the revolution of 1989 rebounds – and resonates – among the present day nationalist far right. Charles Maynes reports from Thuringia in eastern Germany.

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A lone attacker on Wednesday stabbed three foreign tourists and their tour guide at a popular archaeological site in northern Jordan, the official Petra news agency reported.

The agency said the attacker also wounded a policeman before he was subdued and arrested. The wounded were taken to a hospital.
 
Amateur video showed a bloody scene next to the Jerash archaeological site, an ancient city whose ruins, including a Roman amphitheater and a columned road, are one of the country’s top tourist destinations.
 
In one video, a woman can be heard screaming in Spanish. “It’s a dagger, it’s a dagger, there is a knife. Please, help him now!”
 
One woman is seen lying on the ground, with much blood around her, as someone presses a towel to her back. Another man sits nearby with an apparent leg wound.
 
There were no further details, but the al-Ghad newspaper said the tourists were Mexican and suffered serious wounds.

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Suspected separatist insurgents stormed a security checkpoint in Thailand’s Muslim-majority south and killed at least 15 people, including a police officer and many village defense volunteers, security officials said on Wednesday.

It was the worst single attack in years in a region where a Muslim separatist insurgency has killed thousands.

The attackers, in the province of Yala, also used explosives and scattered nails on roads to delay pursuers late on Tuesday night.

“This is likely the work of the insurgents,” Colonel Pramote Prom-in, a regional security spokesman, told Reuters. “This is one of the biggest attack in recent times.”

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, however, as is common with such attacks.

A decade-old separatist insurgency in predominantly Buddhist Thailand’s largely ethnic Malay-Muslim provinces of Yala, Pattani, and Narathiwat has killed nearly 7,000 people since 2004, says Deep South Watch, a group that monitors the violence.

The population of the provinces, which belonged to an independent Malay Muslim sultanate before Thailand annexed them in 1909, is 80 percent Muslim, while the rest of the country is overwhelmingly Buddhist.

Some rebel groups in the south have said they are fighting to establish an independent state.

Authorities arrested several suspects from the region in August over a series of small bombs detonated in Bangkok, the capital, although they have not directly blamed any insurgent group.

The main insurgency group, the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (BRN), denied responsibility for the Bangkok bombings, which wounded four people.

In August, the group told Reuters it had held a secret preliminary meeting with the government, but any step towards a peace process appeared to wither after the deputy prime minister rejected a key demand for the release of prisoners.

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A trade war between the world’s top two economies cut U.S. imports of Chinese goods by more than a quarter, or $35 billion, in the first half of this year and drove up prices for American consumers, a U.N. study showed on Tuesday.

Beijing and Washington have been locked in a trade feud for the past 16 months although there are hopes that an initial deal offering some relief may be signed this month.

If that fails, nearly all Chinese goods imports into the United States — worth more than $500 billion — could be affected.

U.S. imports from China subject to tariffs fell to $95 billion between January and June from $130 billion during the same period of 2018, the study released by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) showed.

“Overall, the results indicate that the United States tariffs on China are economically hurting both countries,” the report said. “United States losses are largely related to the higher prices for consumers, while China’s losses are related to significant export losses.”

Over time, Chinese companies began absorbing some of the extra costs of the tariffs through an 8% dip in export prices in the second quarter of 2019, but that still left 17% “on the shoulders of U.S. consumers”, said the report’s author Alessandro Nicita, an economist at UNCTAD.

The sector hit hardest by the U.S. tariffs are U.S. imports of Chinese office machinery and communication equipment, which fell by $15 billion. Over time, the scale of Chinese export losses increased alongside mounting tariffs, the study said.

Other countries stepped up to fill most of the gap left by China, the study found. It named Taiwan as the largest beneficiary of “trade diversion”, with $4.2 billion in additional exports to the United States in the first half of 2019. They were mostly office and communication equipment.

Mexico increased exports to the United States by $3.5 billion, mostly agriculture and transport equipment and electrical machinery. The European Union boosted deliveries by $2.7 billion, mostly via additional machinery exports, it found.

“The longer the trade war goes on, the more likely these losses and gains will be permanent,” Nicita said. Not all of Chinese trade losses were picked up by other economies and billions of dollars in trade were lost entirely.

The paper did not analyse the effect of Chinese tariffs on U.S. imports into China because detailed data was not yet available.

It also does not capture the most recent phase of the trade war — including 10% tariffs on about $125 billion worth of additional Chinese goods imported into the United States that took effect on Sept. 1 — beyond noting that it is likely to add to existing trade losses.
 

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Nigerian police have freed 259 people from an Islamic rehabilitation center in the southwestern city of Ibadan, police said on Tuesday, taking the number rescued from abusive institutions since September to nearly 1,500.

Images from local TV station TVC taken after the captives were released showed a group of mostly young men and teenage boys. Many were emaciated. An infant was also among the group.

“We eat one meal a day,” freed captive Olalekan Ayoola, told TVC, saying the food wasn’t fit for a dog to eat.

Nigeria launched a crackdown on informal Islamic schools and rehabilitation centers in late September after a man was refused permission to see his nephews at one institution and complained
to police.

Many captives have said they were physically and sexually abused and chained up to prevent them escaping. Other sites raided in major police operations have been in the mostly Muslim north of the country. Ibadan is in the southwestern state of Oyo, which is predominantly Christian. Oyo state police spokesman Fadeyi Olugbenga said the facility was raided on Monday at about 2 p.m. (1300 GMT).

“Yesterday, 259 persons were released. We had women, men and teenagers,” Olugbenga said. Some people were locked inside a building and some were chained.

Olugbenga said nine people, including the owner of the center, had been arrested and were under investigation. Oyo’s commissioner of police, Shina Olukolu, told reporters on Monday that anyone found culpable would be prosecuted to “serve as a warning to others who may want to operate such houses that serve as illegal detention centers.”

Spokesmen for President Muhammadu Buhari, who ordered the crackdown, and the vice president both declined to comment. The president’s office issued a statement in October that said: “No responsible democratic government would tolerate the existence of the torture chambers and physical abuses of inmates in the name of rehabilitation of the victims.”

Islamic schools, known as Almajiris, are common across the north of the West African country. Such schools have been dogged by allegations of abuse and accusations that some children have
been forced to beg on the streets.

At other raided facilities, some parents thought their children were there to be educated and even paid tuition fees. Others sent misbehaving relatives to Islamic institutions to
instill discipline.

Muftau Adamu told TVC his parents came to collect him from the center in Ibadan but were told they must pay 1 million naira ($3,270) first – and never came back.

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Egypt’s president has lavished praise on President Donald Trump on social media, calling him a “man with unique power to confront crises.”
 
Abdel-Fatah el-Sissi’s comments are the latest public example of the two leaders’ closeness.
 

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Egypt Says Washington to Host Nov. 6 Meeting on Ethiopia Dam Dispute

Egypt is worried that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, under construction near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan, will restrict supplies of already scarce Nile waters

El-Sissi thanked Trump late Monday for his “generous concern” for helping revive Egypt’s deadlocked dispute with Ethiopia over its construction of a massive upstream Nile dam.
 
A former army general who seized power in 2013 coup, el-Sissi has carried out a widespread crackdown on dissent, silencing critics and jailing thousands.
 

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How Egypt’s President Tightened his Grip

Behind the scenes, President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi’s closest advisers reworked the constitution to prolong his presidency and tighten his grip on Egypt. Not since the decades-long rule of Hosni Mubarak has so much power been concentrated in the hands of one man

Trump has avoided censuring el-Sissi for his repression, instead admiring his efforts to combat terrorism.
 
Trump has drawn criticism for his relationships with autocratic leaders such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

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