Day: June 27, 2021

TEHRAN – Spokesman for Iran’s foreign ministry, said yesterday, Iran will not negotiate endlessly over the revival of the 2015 nuclear deal, urging the United States to abandon the “failed legacy” of former President Donald Trump.

Iran has actively participated in the Vienna talks, aimed at the revival of the Iran nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which the United States tried to “destroy,” Saeed Khatibzadeh tweeted.

The U.S. government, under Trump, withdrew from the JCPOA in May, 2018, and unilaterally reimposed sanctions on Iran. In response, Iran gradually stopped implementing parts of its commitments to the agreement from May, 2019.

The JCPOA Joint Commission began to meet offline on Apr 6, in Vienna, to continue previous discussions about a possible return of the United States to the deal and how to ensure the full and effective implementation of the JCPOA.

 

 

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

​Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) Governor Benjamin E. Diokno will serve a second term as co-chair of the Regional Consultative Group for Asia of the Financial Stability Board (FSB-RCGA). Coming from his current term which expires at the end of June 2021, this new two-year term is unprecedented under the current charter of the Regional Consultative Groups of the FSB.

“I am thankful for the privilege and welcome the challenge to serve a second term as co-chair of the RCGA. I look forward to the opportunity to actively work with my colleagues in the RCGA, addressing the after-effects of the pandemic and re-establishing financial stability in the region,” said the Governor.

Governor Diokno first took the helm of the RCGA in July 2019, and his second term will end in June 2023.

Continuing from his recent initiatives, Governor Diokno said that he wants to amplify the voice of the emerging economies in the region in the discussion of systemic risks at the global stage.

As the Governor puts it, “the very point of the FSB in establishing the regional consultative groups is so that the discussions extend beyond the formal G20 membership. Global standards and best practices apply to all and we should leverage this opportunity to shape the discussion and its agreed outcomes.”

The Governor’s point rings particularly true at this time. While the policy objective of financial stability was drawn based on the lessons of the 2007 global financial crisis (GFC), the emergence of the COVID-19 virus is the systemic risk that was not foreseen. Many experts have previously pointed out that COVID-19 is a test case for how far the world has progressed on the financial stability agenda post-GFC, even though there is no ready playbook for the policy issues caused by this pandemic-cum-recession.

“I have said it before that our guiding principle moving forward is one of balance,” Governor Diokno said.

“We have to balance providing the interventions that address the needs today while remaining conscious of the possible longer-term effects of these interventions. As prudential authorities, we must balance the certainty provided by regulations against the need for flexibility so that we can respond to this once-in-a-lifetime crisis,” he added.

“I look forward to the next two years as the RCGA crafts solutions to urgent problems that have serious longer-term implications,” the Governor concluded.

The FSB-RCGA brings together national authorities responsible for financial stability in 17 jurisdictions. Its members include the financial authorities from Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam.

 

 

Source: Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP)

Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino III was buried Saturday with thousands lining the streets of Manila to remember him for standing up to China in bitter territorial disputes, striking a peace deal with Muslim guerrillas and defending democracy in the Southeast Asian nation where his parents helped topple a dictator.

Aquino died Thursday at age 61 of kidney disease arising from diabetes following a long public absence, after his single six-year term ended in 2016. Family and friends sang a patriotic song after a silver urn with Aquino’s remains was placed beside the tomb of his mother, former President Corazon Aquino. Military honors included a 21-gun salute at the private cemetery.

Aquino’s family did not want him or his parents buried at the national Heroes’ Cemetery, where past presidents and top officials had been laid to rest, including dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Aquino’s mother and his assassinated father, an anti-Marcos opposition senator, helped lead a resistance that sparked a 1986 army-backed “people power” revolt, which ousted Marcos.

“In his journey beyond, his two heroic parents will be there to embrace him,” Archbishop Socrates Villegas said during Mass.

Villegas praised Aquino for living up to an image of a humble and incorruptible politician who detested the trappings of power. Fighting back tears, Villegas said he envied Aquino because he was now in a place “where God’s commandments are no longer transgressed and God’s name is no longer blasphemed, where vulgarity and brutality and terror are vanquished by compassion.”

The remarks, broadcast live by TV networks, were an oblique criticism of the current populist president, Rodrigo Duterte, whose brash style, expletive-laced rhetoric and tirades against the country’s dominant church stood in sharp contrast to Aquino. Church leaders have criticized Aquino’s successor for a brutal crackdown on illegal drugs that has killed thousands of petty suspects and alarmed Western governments and human rights watchdogs.

Although Duterte has publicly ridiculed the opposition Aquino was associated with, he called for the outpouring of sympathy for Aquino to be turned into an “opportunity to unite in prayer and set aside our differences.”

“His memory and his family’s legacy of offering their lives for the cause of democracy will forever remain etched in our hearts,” Duterte said.

After Mass, Aquino’s urn was carried in a convoy to the cemetery with thousands of people lining roadsides and taking pictures. Some wore yellow clothing or ribbons, the color associated with the Aquino-led political opposition.

“We’re bidding goodbye, and want to say thank you to a decent man who became president,” said one supporter, Teddy Lopez, who waited for the convoy outside the cemetery. “We were respected by the whole world during his time.”

President Joe Biden called Aquino a “valued friend and partner to the United States” who served his country “with integrity and selfless dedication.”

Aquino, whose family spent years in U.S. exile during Marcos’ rule, had turbulent ties with China as president.

After Beijing sent ships to occupy a shoal off the Philippine coast, Aquino authorized the filing in 2013 of a complaint that questioned the validity of China’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea before an international arbitration tribunal. The Philippines largely won. But China refused to join in the arbitration and dismissed the tribunal’s 2016 ruling.

“There are those who thought the rule of law did not apply to great powers. He rejected that view and proved them wrong,” said former Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who served under Aquino.

Del Rosario, with Aquino’s approval, led efforts to bring the country’s disputes with China to international arbitration. Aquino’s challenge to the rising superpower was praised by Western and Asian governments but plunged relations with Beijing to an all-time low.

At home, one of Aquino’s major successes was the signing of a 2014 peace deal with the largest Muslim separatist rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, that eased decades of fighting in the country’s south.

Teresita Deles, who served as Aquino’s peace adviser, said the pact prevented the rebels, who are now helping administer a Muslim autonomous region, from pressing on with an insurgency at a time when the Islamic State group was trying to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia.

 

“It changed the whole landscape of their lives. The children’s schooling has not been interrupted for seven years and the fields are planted again,” Deles told The Associated Press.

But while Aquino moved against corruption — detaining his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, and three powerful senators — and initiated anti-poverty programs, the deep-seated inequalities and weak institutions in the Philippines remained too daunting. Arroyo was eventually cleared of corruption charges because of insufficient evidence.

Opponents pounded on missteps, although Aquino left office with high approval ratings. Philippine presidents are limited to a single term.

Aquino campaigned against Duterte in 2016, warning that a looming dictator would set back the democratic and economic momentum achieved in his own term. He also warned of potential dangers if Marcos’ namesake and son, who was then separately running for the vice presidency, would triumph. He criticized Marcos’ son for refusing to acknowledge that his dictator-father “did the country wrong.”

Aquino then warned that backers of the late dictator were trying to rewrite the horrors of the martial law era under Marcos.

“Let me also remind you that the dictatorship has many faces,” Aquino said in February 2016. “There are other personalities who want to reinstate all these to deprive the people of the right processes and put in the hands of one man the power to determine what is right and what is wrong, and who is innocent and who is guilty.”

Duterte won with a large margin, and later allowed Marcos to be buried with military honors at the the Heroes’ Cemetery. U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called Duterte’s first year in office, when he launched his bloody anti-drug crackdown, a “human rights calamity.”

Marcos’ son lost the vice presidential race by a slim margin, and is reportedly considering a run for the same office, or even the top post, when Duterte’s term ends next year.

 

 

Source: Voice of America

North Korean state television has acknowledged Kim Jong Un’s apparent weight loss, even admitting that the leader’s health is a subject of concern in Pyongyang.

The admission was broadcast during an interview with a North Korea resident on state-run Korean Central Television, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.

“The people were most heartbroken to see the respected general secretary looking thinner,” the resident said in the interview broadcast Friday. “Everyone is saying that they are moved to tears.”

The comments were included in an unrelated KCTV report featuring street interviews with residents expressing opinions on a variety of topics, including a recent cultural performance.

The report did not mention what, if any, health issues Kim was experiencing. Analysts said, though, that it still appears important that Pyongyang is acknowledging his changed appearance.

“Minimally, someone decided that Kim’s visible weight loss would be the elephant in the room — the now palpably much slimmer elephant in the room — if they DIDN’T mention it, as everyone is talking about it. You can’t not notice it,” Aidan Foster-Carter, a veteran, Britain-based Korea specialist, told VOA in an online message.

The 37-year-old’s health has often been the subject of intense speculation, most recently after he appeared on state TV looking much trimmer than he had several weeks before.

Though Kim’s new physique was apparent in his thinner face and baggier clothes, one news outlet found a way to possibly confirm the weight loss by comparing state media images of the leader’s $12,000 IWC Portofino Automatic watch.

NK News, a Seoul-based news outlet, concluded that the length of the watch’s strap past the buckle was longer in recent state media images than those published in November.

Rumors about Kim’s health intensified last year after he skipped a major public birthday celebration for his late grandfather, North Korea’s founding leader.

Since then, Kim has been absent from state media for several extended periods of time without explanation.

 

Kim, a frequent cigarette smoker, appears much heavier than when he took power in 2011. Last year, South Korea’s spy agency reported Kim weighed over 136 kilograms.

Rumors about Kim’s health also circulated in 2014, when he was absent from public view for several weeks. He eventually resurfaced using a cane; state media cryptically said he had experienced “discomfort,” but did not elaborate.

Kim is the third generation of his family to rule North Korea. His father, Kim Jong Il, died of a heart attack in 2011 at the age of 69. Although his death was unexpected, he had appeared sickly at the end of his life.

“There is a big difference between how his dad looked in his final years — clearly shrunken in a not good, ill sort of way — and the new svelte Kim Jong Un. From what I’ve seen he looks better than before,” Foster-Carter said.

Although media discussion about Kim’s weight often takes a light-hearted or mocking tone, his health situation is important, since he exercises authoritarian rule over a nuclear-armed country that may not have a succession plan in place.

Kim Jong Un’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, appears to have gained influence in recent years, but it is not clear whether she would be a part of any succession plan.

Earlier this month, the South’s Yonhap news agency reported that the ruling North Korean Workers’ Party recently created a de facto second-in-command position. It reported that Jo Yong Won, a close aide to Kim, appears to have been elected to the position.
The developments come amid tough times in North Korea. Earlier this month, Kim acknowledged his country faces a “tense” food situation.

North Korea went into a severe coronavirus lockdown in January 2020, cutting off almost all contact with the outside world and even restraining trade with its economic lifeline, China.

The KCTV comments about Kim’s health could be part of a domestic propaganda campaign designed to show that Kim is “tightening his belt” during hardship, says Peter Ward, a Seoul-based Korea specialist and PhD candidate at the University of Vienna.

“But I doubt he lost weight because of that,” Ward added.

“The fact that the media is talking about it means the authorities understand it’s a major story inside the country,” he says. “And they want the people to speak in specific ways about it. Call it the North Korean version of message discipline, if you will.”

 

 

 

Source: Voice of America

With Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy newspaper gone, questions remain about the future of press freedom in the city.

Apple Daily’s publisher said that with founder Jimmy Lai in prison, five executives arrested under the national security law and its financial assets frozen, it was impossible to continue.

The closure was met with international condemnation, including from U.S. President Joe Biden, who said Thursday, “Beijing must stop targeting the independent press.”

But as the million-copy final edition sold out, media analysts said the loss of Hong Kong’s last pro-democracy newspaper could impact the press scene and how journalists approach reporting on some issues.

By Sunday, the impact appeared to be spreading, with the news website Stand News announcing it would temporarily remove some commentary and opinion articles from its website.

Meanwhile, the South China Morning Post and online news outlet Citizen News reported that Apple Daily editorial writer Fung Wai-kong, 57, was arrested Sunday night at the airport on suspicion of foreign collusion to endanger national security.

Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has said it is a journalist’s responsibility not to break the national security law and denied the Apple Daily case is an attack on media.

“What we are dealing with is neither a news outlet problem nor a news reporting problem. It’s a suspicious act of endangering national security,” Lam said at a briefing this past week.

EEric Wishart, the press freedom committee co-convener at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Hong Kong and a journalism lecturer at Hong Kong University, said, “The big question is, when do you cross that line?”

“Can an opinion piece breach the law? [Can] quoting somebody outside of Hong Kong breach the law? This is a big ask for journalists,” he told VOA.

Andrew Powner, managing partner at Haldanes, a Hong Kong law firm that represents international media, said the foreign press has continued to report freely, including criticism of the Hong Kong and Chinese governments.

“It would appear that international media who are merely quoting Western critics or quoting advocates who are calling for sanctions should not fall foul of the (national security law); providing that the content of the article does not attempt to incite others to commit offences under the (law), but falls within the internationally accepted norms of balanced reporting,” Powner said via email.

Until the first judicial interpretation of the security law is reached, “red lines” will not be known in detail, Powner said. He added that allegations and evidence that led to the Apple Daily executives’ arrests are not yet public.

The lawyer said that press freedom is guaranteed under the law and that authorities have said the arrests are an “exceptional case.”

An adviser to Apple Daily’s founder says that Hong Kong’s security bureau alleged the paper violated the law in 30 articles but has not informed the publishers what those were.

A spokesperson for Hong Kong’s security bureau told VOA earlier this week that it will not comment on active legal proceedings but that “endangering national security is a very serious crime.”

Two Hong Kong lawmakers told VOA the law is important. It was passed in July last year in reaction to mass anti-government protests in 2019 that often turned violent.

Eunice Yung said there are no exemptions under the legislation, adding that the executives were rightfully arrested. “They need to bear the legal consequences if they breach the national security law,” she said.

Yung said the Apple Daily case is not about freedom of the press, but acknowledged it was hard to draw the line.

“If you merely criticize the law or comment on how strong it is, or what should the law include, or what should be exempted, I think this is allowed and it is totally reasonable,” she said. But “if you ask a foreign country to sanction Hong Kong officials, this is another story.”

Lawmaker Holden Chow held a similar view, saying Hong Kong would continue to have freedoms “as long as they don’t go beyond the law.”

Keith Richburg, a journalism professor at Hong Kong University, told VOA in May it was “troubling” that media that are critical of the government are being targeted in the city, with “Apple Daily and Stand News probably at the frontlines.”

Stand News was founded in 2014 and describes itself as a pro-democracy news website.

During the protests of 2019, several of its reporters were injured, including journalist-turned-activist Gwyneth Ho. She was one of 47 people accused of subversion under the law in February.

Ronson Chan, the website’s deputy assignment editor, told VOA last week, “After the close of Apple Daily, half of the people in Hong Kong say Stand News will be the next target.”

“I haven’t heard a very clear message we might be searched or our staff will be arrested. From my understanding of the law and the police operation, I don’t think we have a problem with our news reporting,” Chan said. He added that Stand News’ editorial policy is sticking to its “mindset” and “principles.”

The news website made a similar comment Sunday, when it announced via its website the temporary removal of commentary, op-eds, blogs and reader contributions. The website said that news articles and video would not be affected.

Stand News said that six of its board members have resigned and that the website “continues to operate and its policy and editorial work remain unchanged.”

Chan told VOA Sunday the website was not under government pressure, saying, “All the measurements are made by ourselves.”

Hong Kong’s only public broadcaster, Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), has also come under scrutiny in recent months, with its new director of broadcasting axing popular shows for alleged bias. Journalists have been terminated, and Lam was provided her own TV segment, a move criticized as propaganda by critics.

Wider impact

Mark Simon, assistant to Lai at Next Digital — the parent company of Apple Daily — said that clamping down on the media will have a “lasting impact.”

“You cannot have political prisoners, you cannot close down media, you cannot seize private property and be an international finance center; it doesn’t happen,” Simon told VOA last week.

Self-proclaimed as “Asia’s World City,” Hong Kong has had a long-standing reputation as a global financial hub.

But with the scenes of protesters, tear gas and riot police during protests in 2019, that reputation has taken a hit. Add in the national security law last year, and international businesses are considering their options.

Political analyst Joseph Chen, formerly of Hong Kong and now in Australia, cited a recent survey on how changes in the region were affecting the city’s international status.

When the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, a leading business organization, surveyed its members, 42% indicated they were considering leaving. Among the 300 members who responded, the most widely shared concern was with the national security law.

“Apparently many multinational corporations in Hong Kong are considering downsizing their operations and expanding their operations in other cities in Asia, like Singapore and Tokyo,” Chen said. “I think these trends will hurt Hong Kong’s economy in the foreseeable future.”

The security law has certainly affected Apple Daily. The paper is out of print after 26 years, and two of the five executives have been denied bail. A hearing is scheduled for August 13.

 

 

Source: Voice of America