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BEIJING China's government confirmed Wednesday it is holding a Taiwanese pro-democracy activist and is investigating him on suspicion of "pursuing activities harmful to national security," the latest detention in an ongoing crackdown on civil society.

Lee Ming-che, 42, cleared immigration in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory of Macau on March 19 and never showed up for a planned meeting later that day with a friend in the mainland Chinese city of Zhuhai.

The Taiwan Affairs Office said Lee was in good health but gave no information about where he was being held or other terms of his detention. "Regarding Lee Ming-che's case, because he is suspected of pursing activities harmful to national security, the investigation into him is being handled in line with legal procedures," spokesman Ma Xiaoguang told reporters at a news briefing.

Amnesty International said Lee's detention raises fears China is broadening its crackdown on legitimate activism, and urged the authorities to provide further details on his detention.

Lee's "detention on vague national security grounds will alarm all those that work with NGOs in China. If his detention is solely connected to his legitimate activism he must be immediately and unconditionally released," Nicholas Bequelin, the group's east Asia director said by email.

A colleague of Lee's said he may have attracted the attention of China's security services after he used the social media platform WeChat to discuss China-Taiwan relations.

Cheng Hsiu-chuan, president of Taipei's Wenshan Community College where Lee has worked for the past year as a program director, said Lee used WeChat to "teach" an unknown number of people about China-Taiwan relations under the government of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen.

"For China, the material he was teaching would be seen as sensitive," Cheng said. WeChat has hundreds of millions of active users and is hugely popular in China, where other social media tools such as Twitter are blocked by the authorities.

Lee had traveled annually to China for the past decade to see friends, Cheng said. He would discuss human rights in private but had never held any public events there, Cheng said.

However, in mid-2016 Chinese authorities shut down Lee's WeChat account and confiscated a box of books published in Taiwan on political and cultural issues, Cheng said.

On his most recent trip, Lee planned to see friends and obtain Chinese medicine for his mother-in-law in Taiwan, his wife, Lee Ching-yu, said. He was expected to stay in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou through March 26, she said.

"I want the government of China to act like a civilized country and tell me what they're doing with my husband on what legal grounds and, like a civilized country, what they plan to do with him," Lee Ching-yu said.

China claims sovereignty over Taiwan, a free-wheeling democracy with personal and political freedoms largely unknown on the authoritarian, Communist-ruled mainland. China insists that the two sides must eventually unify and has raised pressure on Taiwan since the election last year of President Tsai, whose Democratic Progressive Party advocates for Taiwan's formal independence. China and Taiwan split amid civil war in 1949.

National security crimes in China are broadly defined and have a range of penalties. Authorities usually release little or no information on the specific allegations, citing the need to protect state secrets.

Powers of the security services in dealing with foreign groups and their Chinese partners were strongly enhanced under a law that took effect in January, leading to concerns about further prosecutions and restrictions on civil society.

Under President Xi Jinping, China has widely suppressed independent organizations and dissenters, as well as lawyers defending people caught up in its crackdown. Rights groups say activists are increasingly being accused of subversion or other crimes against state security.

Dozens of lawyers have been questioned or detained in an ongoing campaign against dissident lawyers launched in July 2015.

___

Jennings contributed to this report from Taipei, Taiwan.

Continued here:
China confirms detention of Taiwanese pro-democracy activist - Fox News

Hong Kongs chief executive-elect Carrie Lam has denied knowing about prosecutions of pro-democracy activists. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/AFP/Getty Images

Hong Kong police have started a crackdown on pro-democracy lawmakers and activists, informing at least nine people they will be charged for their involvement in a series of street protests more than two years ago.

The charges come a day after Carrie Lam was elected to be the citys chief executive. Heavily backed by the Chinese government, she has promised to heal divisions in an increasingly polarised political climate; pro-Beijing elites and businesses have repeatedly clashed with grassroots movements demanding more democracy.

For nearly three months in 2014, protesters surrounded the main government offices and blocked roads in the heart of Hong Kongs financial district. While several high-profile cases were brought in the months after, the vast majority of protesters were not charged.

On Monday the government announced it would prosecute two politicians, Tanya Chan and Shiu Ka-chun. The others charged are former student protest leaders Eason Chung and Tommy Cheung, and the founders of the Occupy Central movement, Benny Tai, Rev Chu Yiu-ming and Chan Kin-man. Activist Raphael Wong and former legislator Lee Wing-tat will also be charged.

This isnt just my case being prosecuted, its prosecution against Hong Kongs democracy, Chan said in an interview. Lam said her first job would be to reunite Hong Kong people and this will make that task much more difficult.

All nine surrendered to police on Monday, with activists rallying around them in support.

The current chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, has taken unprecedented steps in recent months to remove pro-democracy politicians from office. Two were barred from taking their seats last year, and the government has launched legal challenges against four other legislators.

I feel very sad, the government hasnt tried to to heal the wounds in society, Shiu said just before turning himself in to police. I respect the law, but the timing is very deliberate.

Supporters from Hong Kongs pro-democracy political parties and organisations rallied around the accused, some holding signs reading the revolt is justified, protesting is not a crime.

Several hundred gathered outside Hong Kong police headquarters and chanted calls for full democracy. Activists said the prosecutions and Lams election had reinvigorated the pro-democracy camp.

If Chan or Shiu are jailed for more than a month, they could lose their seats in the legislative council. The charge of creating a public nuisance carries a maximum penalty of seven years in jail.

Leung is trying to change the result of the legislative election through the courts, Chan said. This is a well planned and well designed action, the timing is very critical.

Shiu echoed concerns that the prosecutions could be an attempt to eject himself and Chan from the legislature.

Lam said she did not know about the arrests in advance.

I made it very clear that I want to unite society and bridge the divide that has been causing us concern, Lam said at a press conference. But all these actions should not compromise the rule of law in Hong Kong.

The protests that led to the charges were sparked by the Chinese governments decision to vet candidates for the chief executive. Beijings reform package was voted down, and only 1,194 or 0.03% of registered voters could cast a ballot in Sundays election.

Lam met student leaders of the pro-democracy protests in 2014, and ended up taking a hard line against concessions on the political reform offered by Beijing.

It is unclear why the government waited more than two years to prosecute the protesters and the police did not respond to multiple requests seeking comment.

Originally posted here:
Hong Kong democracy activists charged hours after election of new city leader - The Guardian

I'm ashamed to say that I can't remember whether or not I met PC Keith Palmer, the policeman murdered by Khalid Masood in Parliament last week. I have been in and out through those gates often enough, greeted in that polite, slightly wry manner that British coppers use. But, like most people, I would generally just grunt "morning," often with minimal eye contact. (As you'll have noticed, this is another British specialty.)

It is easy to take the police for granted, to see them almost as wisecracking gatekeepers. Palmer's death reminded me that these smiling, sardonic men will, when the need arises, place themselves between me and a murder weapon. From now on, I'm going to thank them properly.

Lots of politicians and journalists will be thinking similar thoughts. That's what made the attack on Parliament so effective in propaganda terms. It's not simply that reporters were nearby; it's that many of them, locked inside the Palace of Westminster, were part of the story themselves.

Then there's the history. Although we Brits can be unspeakably rude about our MPs, we still think of Parliament itself as a symbol of national freedom. We have a half-memory, somewhere at the back of our collective mind, of a smoke-wreathed Westminster Hall standing defiantly among the Nazi bombs. A terrorist abomination in the center of a provincial city would not have had the same impact, either psychologically or in news terms.

But please try to keep a sense of perspective. There has been only one casualty of Islamist violence in Britain since the 2005 Tube bombings: Lee Rigby, an off-duty soldier who was mown down by a car as he cycled outside his barracks and then hacked to death. His murderers, like the attacker in Westminster, had no access to bombs or firearms. They, too, used the most basic weapons of all: a car and a knife.

A vehicle can be deadly, of course, as the appalling attacks in Nice and Berlin demonstrated. Still, it is worth pondering the fact that the most serious jihadi attack in Britain since 2005 involved some idiots driving into Glasgow Airport, evidently under the impression that this would set it on fire. They scrambled from their burning car only to be beaten up by a nearby baggage handler.

The scarcity of attacks tells us something of the imbalance of forces. On one side stand some of the world's best counter-terrorism experts, whose successes, in the form of forestalled atrocities, can never be truly counted. On the other stand some numbskulls with cars and knives.

We should treat them as what they are: losers with laughable underwear bombs and a pleasing tendency to blow themselves up in error. But we don't. We write them up as members of a sinister global terrorist network. We describe them as a threat to the state. I heard one supposed terrorism expert preposterously telling Fox News that the attack had "brought London to a standstill." The only sign of a "standstill" I saw was a notice on a bus about "delays around Westminster." Light snow causes more disruption, for Heaven's sake.

But no one has an incentive to downplay terrorism. The academic expert, the police chief, the spook, the journalist: all come together in consciously or subconsciously wanting to magnify the drama. No politician dares point out that you are statistically more likely to be killed by a toddler than by a jihadi. So we carry on taking these losers at something close to their own estimate that is, as soldiers engaged in a civilizational war. It is precisely this illicit glamor that draws lonely and alienated young men to political violence in the first place.

Also from the Washington Examiner

Will attend an international summit on women's issues next month.

03/27/17 1:32 PM

The Chinese don't report terrorist incidents, seeing no reason to give insurgents publicity. In consequence, terrorism is rare in China. Yet when Le Monde, applying the same logic, declined to print the names of the perpetrators of the Paris attacks, wishing to deny them a sense of martyrdom, it was widely criticized.

In the aftermath of the London attack, every commentator including, I'm afraid, this one reached for the same clich. It was, we said, "an attack on democracy." But the real danger to democracy is that we respond in a way that cheapens our values while at the same time attracting the next unbalanced teenager looking for a nihilistic cause. The men who carry out these crimes are not holy warriors. They are ugly, emotionally stunted criminals. We need to remember that.

Dan Hannan is a British Conservative MEP.

See the original post:
The real danger to democracy - Washington Examiner

WASHINGTON Under the dark gray cloud, amid the general gloom, allow me to offer a ray of sunshine. The last two months have brought a pleasant surprise: Turns out the much feared, much predicted withering of our democratic institutions has been grossly exaggerated. The system lives.

Let me explain. Donald Trumps triumph last year was based on a frontal attack on the Washington establishment, that all-powerful, all-seeing, supremely cynical, bipartisan cartel (as Ted Cruz would have it) that allegedly runs everything. Yet the establishment proved to be Potemkin empty. In 2016, it folded pitifully, surrendering with barely a fight to a lightweight outsider.

At which point, fear of the vaunted behemoth turned to contempt for its now-exposed lassitude and decadence. Compounding the confusion were Trumps intimations of authoritarianism. He declared I alone can fix it and I am your voice, the classic tropes of the demagogue. He unabashedly expressed admiration for strongmen (most notably, Vladimir Putin).

Trump had just cut through the grandees like a hot knife through butter. Who would now prevent him from trampling, caudillo-like, over a Washington grown weak and decadent? A Washington, moreover, that had declined markedly in public esteem, as confidence in our traditional institutions from the political parties to Congress fell to new lows.

The strongman cometh, it was feared. Who and what would stop him?

Two months into the Trumpian era, we have our answer. Our checks and balances have turned out to be quite vibrant. Consider:

Trump rolls out not one but two immigration bans, and is stopped dead in his tracks by the courts. However you feel about the merits of the policy itself (in my view, execrable and useless but legal) or the merits of the constitutional reasoning of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (embarrassingly weak, transparently political), the fact remains: The president proposed and the courts disposed.

Trumps pushback? A plaintive tweet or two complaining about the judges that his own Supreme Court nominee denounced (if obliquely) as disheartening and demoralizing.

Federalism lives. The first immigration challenge to Trump was brought by the attorneys general of two states (Washington and Minnesota) picking up on a trend begun during the Barack Obama years when state attorneys general banded together to kill his immigration overreach and the more egregious trespasses of his Environmental Protection Agency.

And beyond working through the courts, state governors Republicans, no less have been exerting pressure on members of Congress to oppose a Republican presidents signature health care reform. Institutional exigency still trumps party loyalty.

The Republican-controlled Congress (House and Senate) is putting up epic resistance to a Republican administrations health care reform. True, thats because of ideological and tactical disagreements rather than any particular desire to hem in Trump. But it does demonstrate that Congress is no rubber stamp.

And its independence extends beyond the perennially divisive health care conundrums. Trumps budget, for example, was instantly declared dead on arrival in Congress, as it almost invariably is regardless of which party is in power.

Trump is right. It is the opposition party. Indeed, furiously so, often indulging in appalling overkill. Its sometimes embarrassing to read the front pages of the major newspapers, festooned as they are with anti-Trump editorializing masquerading as news.

Nonetheless, if you take the view from 30,000 feet, better this than a press acquiescing on bended knee, where it spent most of the Obama years in a slavish Pravda-like thrall. Every democracy needs an opposition press. We damn well have one now.

Taken together and suspending judgment on which side is right on any particular issue it is deeply encouraging that the sinews of institutional resistance to a potentially threatening executive remain quite resilient.

Madisons genius was to understand that the best bulwark against tyranny was not virtue virtue helps, but should never be relied upon but ambition counteracting ambition, faction counteracting faction.

You see it even in the confirmation process for Neil Gorsuch, Trumps supremely qualified and measured Supreme Court nominee. Hes a slam dunk, yet some factions have scraped together a campaign to block him. Their ads are plaintive and pathetic. Yet I find them warmly reassuring. What a country where even the vacuous have a voice.

The anti-Trump opposition flatters itself as the resistance. As if this is Vichy France. Its not. Its 21st-century America. And the good news is that the checks and balances are working just fine.

More:
American democracy: Not so decadent after all - Times-Mail (subscription)

It would be easy to become despondent in the face of the relentless attack on the media and on facts that confront us these days. But there is reason to be hopeful.

McKenzie Murray, a senior at Olympia High School in Olympia, Washington, explained why, despite the troubling patterns she sees, shes optimistic about the future. Her essay detailing her perspective which won the Washington Consortium for the Liberal Arts 2017 High School Liberal Arts Essay Contest makes it clear that she understands the nature of the problems were facing.

Politically, were in the midst of some of the most divisive times my generation has ever seen. And as discourse surrounding policy devolves, and people realize that they can capitalize on confusion and fear, a completely new challenge has suddenly been added to our high school experience--the proliferation of fake news on our social media feeds.

She also understands the consequences of the problem. Our democracy cant function without trust between the citizens, our policymakers, and the writers that keep us in touch with one another. Undermining the media is a tactic to silence civilian dissent and cover up gross ethical violations by some of the most powerful people in our nation.

Why, then, is she optimistic? Simply put, she sees a solution to the virulence that is putting some of our most cherished social values at risk.

The antidote to this silencing is a liberal education--an education that spans disciplines and emphasizes critical thinking. The liberal arts give us a voice, and a framework for understanding and discussing our world. Literature and philosophy allow us to look at the idea of a post-truth society and call it what it is--Orwellian, and a violation of our most basic civil liberties. Social studies allow us to look at when this has happened before, and what people did about it. Studying English and language fosters the kind of reasoning and judgment skills that we need to stay informed citizens. Mathematics and the sciences assist us in critical thinking, and seeing the logical underpinnings beneath hazy rhetoric and false claims.

McKenzie recognizes the power the liberal arts has to shape the qualities needed for students to become active citizens. She appreciates the fact that no one discipline or approach is enough to solve our most pressing problems. And as she notes, a broadly based liberal education, can create important habits of thinking: It fosters a kind of vital curiositya desire to understand life and humanity and to constantly keep learning.

She is confident that her generation will embrace this sort of education and that by doing so members of her cohort will learn the kind of critical thinking, truth-seeking, and commitment to respect and unity that we will need to practice throughout our entire lives.

I find McKenzies optimism to be contagious. If high school students like her are able to clearly define some of our most troubling problems and to recognize the type of education needed to craft solutions, there is good reason to be hopeful. Perhaps this next generation will be less divisive and more skeptical, more willing to recognize the difference between opinions and facts, than the current one. If so, they will likely create a more rational and more just world while supporting the full stretch of human knowledge from the sciences to the arts.

Start your workday the right way with the news that matters most.

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Democracy and the Liberal Arts: A Student's Perspective - Huffington Post