China Muslims: Xinjiang schools used to separate children from families
China is deliberately separating Muslim children from their families, faith and language in its far western region of Xinjiang, according to new research.
At the same time as hundreds of thousands of adults are being detained in giant camps, a rapid, large-scale campaign to build boarding schools is under way.
Based on publicly available documents, and backed up by dozens of interviews with family members overseas, the BBC has gathered some of the most comprehensive evidence to date about what is happening to children in the region.
Alek Sigley: Australian released from North Korean detention wants to return to ‘normal life’
Alek Sigley, the 29-year-old Australian who was freed from detention in North Korea on Thursday after going missing for more than a week, has released a statement pleading for privacy and saying he wants to return to “normal life”.
Sigley has reunited with his wife Yuka Morinaga in Tokyo following his departure yesterday, he said in the statement, adding that he would not be holding a news conference or doing any media interviews.
“I just want everyone to know I am OK, and to thank them for their concern for my wellbeing and their support for my family over the past week,” he said. “I’m very happy to be back with my wife, Yuka, and to have spoken with my family in Perth [Australia] to reassure them I’m well.”
Venezuela’s army death squads kill thousands — UN
A UN report has detailed the extrajudicial executions of thousands of young men by special forces. The report says that the death squads are carrying out President Maduro’s strategy for neutralizing political opponents.
Venezuelan security forces have been sending death squads to commit extrajudicial killings of young men, according to a United Nations report released on Thursday. The crime scenes are then staged to make it look like the victims were resisting arrest.
Caracas has said that about 5,287 people died last year when they refused to be detained by officers, and that this has been the case for a further 1,569 through the middle of May this year. However, the UN report suggests that many of these deaths were actually extrajudicial executions.
Sudan protesters, ruling generals reach power-sharing agreement
Sudan’s ruling military council and a coalition of opposition and protest groups reached an agreement to share power during a transition period leading to elections, sources said on Friday.
The two sides, which have held talks in Khartoum for the past two days, agreed to “establish a sovereign council by rotation between the military and civilians for a period of three years or slightly more,” African Union mediator Mohamed Hassan Lebatt said at a news conference.
Calls for boycott of Japan grow in S Korea as labor row simmers
By Joyce Lee
Calls in South Korea for a boycott of Japanese goods in response to Japanese restrictions on the export of high-tech material to South Korea picked up on Friday, as a dispute over compensation for forced wartime labour roiled ties between the U.S. allies.
The dispute is the latest flashpoint in a relationship long over-shadowed by South Korean resentment of Japan’s 1910-1945 occupation of the Korean peninsula, in particular South Korean“comfort women”, a Japanese euphemism for women forced to work in Japanese military brothels before and during World War Two.
The latest bitterness over forced labor could disrupt global supplies of memory chips and smartphones. Samsung Electronics Co and SK Hynix Inc – the world’s top memory chipmakers, and suppliers to Apple and China’s Huawei Technologies – could face delays.
After removing a citizenship question on the 2020 census, the DOJ is trying to put it back on — at Trump’s request
The Supreme Court ruled the 2020 census can’t have a citizenship question. Trump says it can and will.
By
One day after the fight over whether the 2020 census would include a citizenship question seemed definitively decided in the negative, the Trump administration abruptly cast the whole issue into doubt, telling federal judges on Wednesday it was looking for ways to add it back in — at President Donald Trump’s direction.
Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt said in a statement submitted to the US District Court in Southern Maryland, “We at the Department of Justice have been instructed to examine whether there is a path forward, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that would allow us to include the citizenship question on the census.”
Should the lawyers find that path forward, Hunt said, “Our current plan would be to file a motion in the Supreme Court to request instructions on remand to govern further proceedings in order to simplify and expedite the remaining litigation and provide clarity to the process going forward.”
They also agreed to form an independent technocratic government and to launch a transparent, independent investigation into violent events in recent weeks.