Communist U.N. Boss Praises “Mother Earth”

AIM Column | Jun 25, 2009

By Cliff Kincaid

The reference to being “appropriated privately” was, of course, a dig at global capitalism and the concept of private property.

Armed with a new sex scandal that can further damage Republican opponents of the Obama Administration, our media haven’t found much time to cover the U.N. Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis underway at the world organization’s headquarters in New York. But the Obama White House is working hand-in-glove with a Communist Catholic Priest who gave a bizarre speech on Wednesday devoted to saving “Mother Earth” from evil capitalists.

A performance as gripping as that of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford admitting to adultery was turned in by Miguel D’Escoto, the President of the U.N. General Assembly, when he declared that “There is a growing awareness that we are all sons and daughters of Earth and that we belong to her.” He urged “a planetary civilization” that is “more respectful of Mother Earth, more inclusive of all people and with more solidarity with the poorest, which is more spiritual and full of reverence for the splendor of the universe and which is much happier.”

D’Escoto, who was suspended from his priestly functions by the anti-communist Pope John Paul II, is an advocate of Marxist-oriented Liberation Theology and received the Lenin Peace Prize.

He said the U.N. must become a Noah’s Ark to save humanity.

D’Escoto is the same U.N. figure who recently dismissed the Iranian president’s threat to wipe Israel off the map by saying, “Words don’t kill.”

But words do mean something, and D’Escoto masked his call for global socialism in fancy and flowery words and phrases. He made it clear with his talk of protecting “Mother Earth” that environmentalism would be the ticket to the creation of the new international socialist order.

D’Escoto declared that “We still need to recognize that the globalized means of production, in their industrial voracity, have in large measure devastated the Earth and thus have also damaged the common good of Earth and humanity. We must urgently seek other paths that are more humane and more favorable towards life: the paths of justice and solidarity which lead to peace and happiness.”

Capitalism cannot be reformed, he said, adding that “…controls and corrections of the existing model, while undoubtedly necessary, are insufficient in the medium and long term. Their inherent ability to address the global crisis has proven to be weak. Stopping at controls and corrections of the model would demonstrate a cruel lack of social sensitivity, imagination and commitment to the establishment of a just and lasting peace. Egotism and greed cannot be corrected. They must be replaced by solidarity, which obviously implies radical change. If what we really want is a stable and lasting peace, it must be absolutely clear that we must go beyond controls and corrections of the existing model to create something that strives towards a new paradigm of social coexistence.”

The solution, he went on, involves the affirmation of a “global ethic” for “safeguarding the common good of the Earth and humanity.”

He explained, “We will start with the assumption that the community of peoples is simultaneously a community of common goods. These cannot be appropriated privately by anyone and must serve the life of all in present and future generations and the community of other living beings.”

The reference to being “appropriated privately” was, of course, a dig at global capitalism and the concept of private property.

If we don’t replace capitalism with international socialism, he said that “we could arrive at the same destiny which has already befallen the dinosaurs.”

In fact, Soviet-style communism went the way of the dinosaurs but its adherents, such as D’Escoto, are very much alive, and working with the Obama administration through the U.N. That was evident in the opening remarks to the conference provided by Obama’s very good friend and close adviser, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan E. Rice.

She said that the United States had “placed the highest priority” on the conference and that “President Obama understands that our collective response to the crisis will make up an important moment in world history.”

Committing to more foreign aid from hard-pressed U.S. taxpayers, Rice went on to say that “the United States understands that we have an economic, security, and moral obligation to extend a hand to the countries and the people who face the greatest risks today. That is why we have supported substantial increases in resources to boost the emergency lending capacity of the IMF. That is why we have backed increases to help regional development banks accelerate lending of their own.

The theme of a new international socialist order was predictably echoed by Rodrigo Malmierca Diaz of Communist Cuba, who said that the U.N. conference “must define the mandates, duties, governance structure, and management procedures of the new international monetary and financial institutions” that are supposed to come into being.

Making it clear that the U.S. would lose its sovereignty and standing in this process, he added that “…it must lead us to a pattern of monetary reference not depending on the economic stability, legislation or political decisions of only one country.” He called for “an international economic order based on sustainable development and the generation of wealth on the basis of justice.” This new system will have institutions “subordinated to the United Nations system,” he said.

Almost as bizarre as some of the opening remarks, the United Nations University has produced a special “conversation series” in connection with the conference with such notables as American leftist Professor Noam Chomsky, a leader of the Communist Party spin-off group, the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. The United Nations University describes Chomsky as being among “the most important intellectual and policy voices from around the globe.”

The “conversation” with Chomsky consists of links to his various media appearances, including on the far-left “Democracy Now!” radio program hosted by Amy Goodman, and Iranian television.

Thousands of Chinese soldiers occupy Urumqi

Chinese security forces gather in a square in Urumqi, western China’s Xinjiang province, Wednesday, July 8, 2009. China’s president cut short a G8 summit trip to rush home Wednesday after ethnic tensions soared in Xinjiang territory, and the government flooded the area with security forces in a bid to quell emotions in the wake of a massive riot that left at least 156 dead. AP Photo

Military patrols marched in formation past the deserted store-fronts, chanting “Defend the nation, Defend the people”.

AGI | Jul, 8 2009

(AGI) – Urumqi (China), 8 Jul. – Following the enactment of a curfew, thousands of soldiers covered the city of Urumqi – capital of the Xinjiang region of China – in order to calm a wave of inter-ethnic violence which began this Sunday. With a heavy display of force, thousands of soldiers entered Urumqi, during the same hours in which Hu Jintao, with an unprecedented gesture, left the G8 summit in Italy to return to his native country. While Chinese Liberation Army helicopters surveyed from above, soldiers and police officers entered and secured the city.

The forces were armed with automatic weapons, many of them clad in riot-proof gear, and the soldiers quickly took control of the abandoned city streets. During the curfew hours, from 9pm to 8am, military patrols marched in formation past the deserted store-fronts, chanting “Defend the nation, Defend the people”. The situation has yet to pacify entirely. Skirmished continue between the Han population and the Uyghur of the Xinjiang region. According to international media, two Uyghur were assaulted separately by mobs of Han Chinese.

In one of the incidents, nearly 20 Han men armed with sticks assaulted an Uyghur man in the city centre. The attack was stopped after several minutes, when security forces were able to disperse the crowd. In the second incident, a group of Han men passed three Uyghur men on the street and began following them. Two were able to escape, while the third was caught and assaulted by the crowd, which chanted “Hit, Hit”. The victim was kicked and shoved by various men and women, before police were able to save him. There are rumours of others dead. 156 victims were registered Sunday.

Meanwhile, Beijing has blocked tourism in the Xinjiang region, and has blocked access to the internet site Facebook within the country. The website, the most popular social networking site world-wide, has been inaccessible for some hours now. The block is an addition to some restrictions already enacted Sunday, immediately following attacks, such as the ban of Twitter. The country has also blocked access to many foreign sites, most of which are running exceptionally slowly, while sites such as Youtube remain entirely closed. China has the most internet users in the world (more than 300 million) though it enacts amongst the heaviest net censorship, especially during moments of political tension.

Chinese government accused of taking babies from parents to sell on US and EU adoption markets

Chinese babies sold for adoption to US and Europe, report claims

Authorities in China are investigating reports that dozens of babies who were taken from their parents for breaching the country’s strict one-child policy were sold for adoption to families in Europe and America.

Telegraph | Jul 3, 2009

By Peter Foster in Beijing

An investigation has alleged that up to 78 babies taken into care in Guizhou province, in southern China, were sold for £1,800 each, mostly to childless couples in the US but also to families from European countries, including Sweden and Spain.

Many of the girls were genuine orphans or had been abandoned by their parents as unwanted, however, in at least three cases it is alleged the children were removed in lieu of £2,000 fines levied for breach of China’s draconian one-child policy.

The cases relate to a three-year period between 2004-2006, when the policy was being strictly enforced by the local government of Zhenyuan county in Guizhou.

The local government issued a statement saying that two senior local officials had been warned and had received “executive demerits” following a local disciplinary inquiry. The statement said the government would continue to investigate the allegations. “There will be no cover up,” the statement added.

China is a popular destination for overseas couples, particularly from the US, who want to adopt children and is generally perceived to have a well-regulated and transparent system, imposing strict requirements on applicants.

Yang Jibin, the reporter who researched the story for the Southern Weekly newspaper in Guangzhou, said he was shown a list of 80 female babies while on a visit to the Zhenyuan state orphanage, of which 78 had been adopted abroad.

He told the story of one couple, Lu and Yang, who gave up their fourth baby girl in 2003 after a visit from a birth control officer who insisted on taking the baby away, describing the girl as “abandoned baby, found and turned in by Lu” in the orphanage register.

“That was my job. I just followed the policy,” the officer was reported as saying, “They were willing to give up their baby to offset the fine” After relinquishing their child without signing any formal contracts, Lu and Yang never returned to the orphanage to visit. They added that, even if the child was now found, they would not take her back for fear of having to pay the outstanding fine.

Tang Jian, leader of Birth Control Administrative Bureau Inspection Team of Zhenyuan county apparently admitted the practice was prevalent at the time.

“It is true that some baby girls were forced be brought into the charity house and then sent abroad,” he was quoted as saying.

Other parents were less compliant when asked to give up their children. A former worker at the orphanage quoted in the report recalled one local father who tried several times to take back his daughter in 2004, even offering bribes to staff to let her go.

When this failed, he came to visit his daughter more and more often until, one day, he grabbed her, stood up and ran. “Four or five nannies surrounded him immediately and took back the baby,” the worker recalled.

Soldier recalls how troops fired their way into Beijing

Chen Guang, 37, a Beijing painter, was a soldier in Tiananmen in 1989 has created a series of works based on his photographs of the incident.

Soldier-turned-painter Chen Guang, 37, has used Tiananmen Square as a subject for his art.

Two decades later, Tiananmen Square is silent

New York Times | Jun 3, 2009

By ANDREW JACOBS

Soaked in sweat, his heart racing, Chen Guang descended the steps of China’s Great Hall of the People and aimed his automatic rifle at the sea of student protesters occupying Tiananmen Square. A 17-year-old soldier from the countryside, Chen and his comrades had just been given chilling orders: to clear the symbolic heart of the nation, even if it meant spilling blood.

“We were assured there would be no legal consequences if we opened fire,” Chen recalled in an interview on Tuesday. “My only hope was that the students would not put up a fight.”

Twenty years after Chinese troops shot their way into the center of Beijing, killing hundreds of people and wounding many more, Chen provided a rare window into the military crackdown that re-established the Communist Party’s supremacy after six weeks of mass unrest and then, for most Chinese, disappeared in an official whitewash.

Speaking publicly for the first time — and defying security officials who have told him to keep silent — he explained how soldiers from the 65th Group Army dressed in civilian clothes on June 3 and stealthily made their way to the Great Hall on Tiananmen Square’s western edge. At midnight, with clips of ammunition slung across their chests, they faced off against demonstrators, the air filled with the singing of students and the sound of gunfire. “I can assure you I didn’t shoot anyone,” he said.

Now an artist and a bit of a provocateur living on the outskirts of Beijing, Chen said he spent the next 20 years suppressing memories of that day. But last year he began working on a series of paintings based on hundreds of photographs, taken at his unit’s request while he was on the square. They include gauzy images of protesters commandeering a public bus, exuberant students parading with pro-democracy banners and soldiers feeding their abandoned encampments into bonfires.

“For 20 years I tried to bury this episode, but the older you get the more these things float to the surface,” he said, chain-smoking in his apartment. “I think it’s time for my experiences, my truth, to be shared with the rest of the world.”

But by publicizing his experiences through his art, Chen risks provoking the authorities, who are eager to suppress discussion of the incident and excise June 4 from public memory. In recent weeks, as the anniversary of the crackdown approached, the police have detained dissidents whom they feared might draw attention to June 4. Last spring, Zhang Shijun, a former soldier from north China, was arrested after telling The Associated Press that he regretted his role in crushing the pro-democracy protests.

Last summer, after local galleries refused to show his paintings, Chen posted them on the Internet. Within hours, however, they had been taken down.

A slightly built man who talks softly and without emotion, Chen says he is not worried about the consequences of speaking out, even if he has received warnings to keep his paintings to himself. “I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m just talking about my experiences,” he said.

Raised in rural Henan province, the son of a factory manager, he dropped out of high school at 15 because he said he was a lousy student. He wanted to be an artist, but everyone told him that was no way to make a living. “The pressure from my family was intense so I decided to join the army,” he said. Because enlistees had to be at least 18, he lied about his age.

Less than a year later, in mid-April, Beijing was convulsed by protests touched off by the death of Hu Yaobang, the Communist Party chief who had been forced to resign to take responsibility for what some rival leaders viewed as reckless economic and political reforms.

Isolated in their barracks three hours north of the city, Chen said he and his fellow soldiers understood little about protests. They knew only what military officers told them: “that bad people were trying to destroy the nation that was established with the death of martyrs,” he recalled.

On May 19, they were given orders to enter the city. But their path was blocked by throngs of students and ordinary Beijing residents supporting the demonstrators. For two days the troops were lectured to and fed by strangers while the nation’s military leaders debated what to do.

On the third day, his unit withdrew, but Chen said the episode left him confused. “We were told they were bad people but the students seemed so honest and earnest,” he said.

After nearly two weeks isolated in their barracks, the soldiers were given civilian clothes and told to make their way to the Great Hall in groups of two or three. Chen said his assignment was far more unnerving. He said he was the only passenger in a double-length bus with its seats removed and its interior filled to the windowsills with guns and ammunition.

Unfed and terrified, the soldiers, most of them teenagers, waited inside the Great Hall while military commanders, perched at a second-floor window, strategized the assault. Around midnight, power to the square was cut and the soldiers eased their way down the broad steps to the street. To frighten the students into leaving, he said the men were told to fire into the air. The tactic had the desired effect.

By 2 a.m., tens of thousands of students were weeping and singing the Internationale as they filed out of the square. Not long afterward, armored vehicles rolled in. One went to work on the Goddess of Democracy, a papier-mache statue that art students had built just days earlier. “It took them three rams before it fell to the ground,” Chen said.

Most of the deaths in the crackdown, according to multiple accounts of the incident, occurred in the streets leading toward the square, not in the square itself.

Less than a year after the suppression, Chen enrolled in the military’s art school, then transferred to the Chinese Academy of Fine Art. In 1995, he left the army. In those early years, Chen was drawn to photography and performance art, creating work that was lurid and provocative.

He spent months filming prostitutes and took photographs of himself copulating on the Great Wall. He also produced a series of sexually explicit photos of himself posing with an elderly intellectual man who had been persecuted by the Communist Party. “I wanted to portray myself having a visceral connection to someone who had experienced China’s tumultuous history,” he said.

Although none of his early work refers directly to Tiananmen Square, he said most of it had been influenced by the trauma there. “Even if a connection is hard to see, everything I do is touched by that experience,” he said. Chen said he saw soldiers bloodied by rocks and a protester having his head rifle butted by soldiers.

But the image that haunts him most is rather mundane. As he was cleaning up the square that morning, he spotted a luxuriant pony tail amid the detritus of crushed bicycles and tangled blankets. The clump of hair, held by a purple band, had been crudely shorn, perhaps as an act of protest but possibly the result of something more sinister. “It was a startling image. I can’t stop thinking about that hair and why it had been cut off,” he said.

In recent months he has produced a score of self-portraits. In each, his neck, shoulder and chest are littered with scraps of hair. He cuts his own hair only every year or two and then stores the clippings in his apartment. So far he has filled the equivalent of two dozen coffee cans, raw material for a future project.

He said he does his most intense work comes every June, around the same time that he is hit with wrenching stomach pain. It is the same twisting of the gut that he first experienced on the square, he said.

It was around this time last year that Chen decided to revisit the cache of photographs he had taken two decades earlier. Just before the assault on the square began, Chen’s commander handed him a camera and 20 rolls of film and told him to wander freely. When it came time to hand back the film, he hid three rolls in his pocket.

He said the photographs inspired him to take on a subject that few in China care, or dare, to touch. His paintings are artistic depictions of history, he insisted, not expressions of right or wrong. The images are largely dispassionate, although Chen has rendered them in a washed-out, melancholy blue.

“I have no regrets about what I did,” he said. “But I feel that this tragedy could have been avoided. Maybe if we start talking about this event we can prevent it from happening again.”

China Floods Tiananmen Square With Police to Bar Protests

New York Times | Jun 5, 2009

By SHARON LaFRANIERE

BEIJING — China blanketed Tiananmen Square with police officers Thursday, determined to prevent any commemoration of the 20th anniversary of a military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left hundreds dead.

Visitors to the sprawling plaza in central Beijing were stopped at checkpoints and searched, and foreign television crews and photographers were turned away. Plainclothes police, standing rigidly next to uniformed officers, seemed to outnumber the tourists. White government vans were parked in a line in front of the Mao Zedong’s mausoleum.

Some who wished to remember the bloody end to the student-led movement suggested on Internet chat sites that visitors wear white to the square. But there was no clear sign of that on Thursday morning, nor signs of any other protests.

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on Beijing to publish the names of those killed or missing, saying it would help China “heal.”

“A China that has made enormous progress economically and is emerging to take its rightful place in global leadership should examine openly the darker events of its past,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement.

She called on Chinese authorities to release all prisoners still serving sentences in connection with the June 4 events, adding, “China can honor the memory of that day by moving to give the rule of law, protection of internationally recognized human rights, and democratic development the same priority as it has given to economic reform.”

The president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, who has fostered closer ties to the mainland through a series of trade and tourism accords, took an unusually strong tone in remarks about Beijing’s refusal to re-examine the 1989 episode. He called for a fuller accounting by the Communist government, saying that “this painful period of history must be faced with courage and cannot be intentionally ducked.”

Public discussion of the anniversary in China was systematically blocked. There was no mention of the anniversary in Thursday’s Beijing newspapers. In the state-run mass-circulation China Daily, the lead stories were about job growth in China and the purchase of the Hummer brand from General Motors by a Chinese firm.

Earlier this week, popular Internet services like Twitter and many university message boards were shut down.

Ahead of the anniversary, a number of prominent dissidents have either been detained, confined to their homes or escorted out of town by the police.

Jiang Qisheng, who was imprisoned for four years in 1999 after he published a letter asking the Communist Party to reassess the June 4 events, said he has been confined to his Beijing apartment, except for brief walks.

“They started watching me in my apartment building on May 15th,” he said in a telephone interview. “Before yesterday, I could go swimming or grocery shopping, but in their car, of course. But since yesterday, I have been prevented from going anywhere.

“We never forget June 4th,” he said, “and I believe most of Chinese people of my generation don’t forget. They are just tied up with daily routine life.”

At the Macao airport in southern China, immigration authorities detained a former key student leader of the Tiananmen Square protests. Arriving from Taiwan, Wu’er Kaixi, now a 41-year-old investment banker, said he wanted to surrender to Chinese authorities and face trial after 20 years in exile.

“I have decided enough is enough,” he said in an telephone interview from the airport detention room. “We dissidents in exile, that’s what we do. We try very hard to come home, all of us, but the door is shut very tightly.”

He said he decided to try to turn himself in because he hadn’t seen his parents for two decades.

“I also want to be in a courtroom so that I can talk,” he said.

In 1989, Mr. Wu’er was a charismatic 21-year-old student from Beijing Normal University and one of the main leaders of the pro-democracy movement that was crushed by the military. Hundreds died — if not more — when the government dispatched troops and tanks to the square. Mr. Wu’er, who was No. 2 on the government’s list of the 21 most-wanted protest leaders, escaped overseas.

Had he known the outcome would be so bloody, Mr. Wu’er said Wednesday, he is not sure that he would have tried to keep the protests going.

“If you know there is going to be loss of human life, ‘’ he said, “how can you make that decision?”

Mr. Wu’er said in a text message that he had been forced to board a 1:26 p.m. flight on Thursday from Macao to Taiwan, where he lives with his wife and two sons.

The Associated Press reported that Xiang Xiaoji, another dissident who took part in the 1989 demonstrations, was denied entry to Hong Kong on Wednesday. The anniversary of the June 4 crackdown is commemorated every year with a candlelight vigil there, and preparations were under way Thursday for the evening gathering in Victoria Park.

A U.S. Consulate General spokesman told the news agency that the decision to deport Mr. Xiang, now an American citizen, was “particularly regrettable in light of Hong Kong’s well-known reputation as an open society.”

Maoists call for mandatory military training for all citizens over 18

Maoists back mandatory military training

Republica | May 31, 2009

KATHMANDU, May 31: Lawmakers from the Nepali Congress (NC) and Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) have objected to a proposal for mandatory military training to all citizens above 18 years as proposed by a thematic committee of the Constituent Assembly (CA).

The provision is proposed by National Interest Preservation Committee of the CA in its preliminary draft report on the new constitution.

“Such a provision will lead the society toward militarization and that will invite civil war in the country,” NC lawmaker Dr Narayan Khadka said while addressing the CA meeting.

Also, Khadka and other NC leaders expressed their objection to describing Maoist combatants as People´s Liberation Army (PLA).

They said terming them PLA was against the spirit of Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and other past accords.

CPN-UML lawmaker Bhim Rawal termed the mandatory provision for military training to all citizens as a wrong provision. He said the Maoist fighters should be called combatants as described by the CPA. He said calling them PLA personnel would be against the CPA.

However, lawmakers of Unified CPN (Maoist) strongly criticized the statement of the leaders from other political parties.

Maoist lawmaker Khim Lal Devkota accused other leaders of betrayal. “The PLA personnel are the ones who fought for republic system and the CA. You all (leaders from other parties) were against it,” said Devkota, adding, “It is a deceitful behavior from you who are reaping rewards in the new systems while disrespecting the fighters.”

He claimed that without contribution of Maoist fighters, establishing republic in the country would have been impossible.

“One special chapter should be dedicated in this report to adore the fighters´ glorious contribution,” Devkota said, adding, “Trying to overlook their role is dishonesty on the part of other political parties.”

Chandra Bahadur Thapa, another Maoist lawmaker, also fiercely attacked leaders from other political parties. “We have felt that other parties are trying to push us toward war by disrespecting the PLA members,” he said.

Thapa, who is also Kathmandu valley in-charge of Maoists´ paramilitary wing Young Communist League, claimed that the CA members who had fanned out earlier to collect people´s opinion had received 22,764 votes in favor of the mandatory military training system. “Can we disrespect the people´s mandate,” he asked. He claimed people supported the idea by giving overwhelming votes for this.

Meanwhile, National Interest Preservation Committee in the CA has tabled a concept paper and preliminary report of the new constitution prepared by the committee.

China faces dark memory of Tiananmen

The government will likely mark the sensitive date  with deafening silence

AFP | May 31, 2009

By Robert J. Saiget

BEIJING (AFP) — Authorities in China are bracing for the 20th anniversary of the deadly June 4 crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, a pivotal moment that still haunts the nation.

The way the government will likely mark the sensitive date on Thursday — with deafening silence — shows it is keenly aware of the emotional scars that remain after the army ended six weeks of peaceful rallies in central Beijing.

China’s Communist leaders have made any discussion of the brutal quelling of the student-led demonstrations — in which hundreds, maybe thousands, were killed — taboo, but dissidents say the public could yet hold them accountable.

“People remember this date because they want the Communist Party to take responsibility for the crimes it committed,” said 53-year-old Qi Zhiyong, who lost a leg after being shot by troops near Tiananmen Square.

“It reminds them the party will resort to unbridled violence whenever it feels threatened.”

In a bid not to rankle the wary authorities, the main public commemoration planned for Thursday will probably be silent.

Activist groups have called on citizens simply to wear white — the traditional colour of mourning — to honour those killed in the mayhem that erupted when tanks and troops rolled in to crush the protests.

The year 1989 was a disastrous one for communism across the globe and in China the ruling party found itself in a struggle with democracy activists who challenged its authoritarian rule over the world’s most populous nation.

The Tiananmen movement began in mid-April, when public grief over the death of former party leader and popular reformer Hu Yaobang gradually morphed into bold calls from students for political reform and steps to combat corruption.

Young students started to occupy Tiananmen Square, the symbolic centre of political power in China. A sense of euphoria saturated the plaza as they took part in rallies no one would have thought possible just weeks earlier.

“There were banners everywhere. This was the first unauthorised political demonstration in the (history of the) People’s Republic of China,” recalled one of the student leaders, Wang Dan.

Calls for democracy and freedom filled the square, thousands went on hunger strike, and one charismatic activist, Wu’er Kaixi, brazenly challenged Premier Li Peng during a meeting broadcast live on state television.

Indeed, the whole world was watching, as news crews from around the globe gathered in Beijing to cover the historic visit by then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, only to stumble upon an event that would be far more significant.

In the corridors of power, the protests drove a wedge between hardline leaders led by Premier Li and moderates headed by Communist Party general secretary Zhao Ziyang.

The hardliners won, with patriarch Deng Xiaoping, China’s most powerful man, tilting the balance in their favour. Zhao was removed from his post as party leader and spent 16 years under house arrest until his death in 2005.

The student movement was declared a “counterrevolutionary rebellion”, and soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army descended on the capital, crushing the democratic dreams of an entire generation.

The number of people killed in the night of June 3-4 remains a mystery. China’s official death toll is 241, including 36 students. Dissidents say thousands may have died.

The crackdown set off a wave of condemnation across the globe, and for several years China was treated as a near-pariah, as Western governments offered asylum to student leaders fleeing into exile.

The international community has long since welcomed China back into the fold, and Beijing’s communist leaders have cemented their hold on power, transforming the country into the world’s number three economy.

But they have shown no willingness to change their position that the protests threatened Communist Party rule and had to be quelled in order to maintain economic reforms.

“Facts have proven that the socialist road with Chinese characteristics that we pursue is in the fundamental interests of our people,” foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told journalists in May.

But, undeterred, victims of the crackdown have called for renewed international pressure on Beijing to reverse the official verdict on the quelling, saying failure to stand up to a rising China tacitly abets the repression.

“So far, the international community… has adopted a policy of appeasement towards the Chinese government,” said Ding Zilin, 72, whose teenage son was shot dead by the army.

Bao Tong — a former aide to Zhao who was jailed for seven years following the crackdown — said the world has failed to push China to be more open about the events of Tiananmen because of Beijing’s increasing global clout.

“Not wanting to offend China means they cannot help China, cannot help China’s people attain their own rights, and cannot help the world community gain a reliable, stable, peaceful member,” Bao told AFP recently.

“This is not a good thing,” he added.

Bao has since been ordered to sit out the anniversary at a resort more than 1,000 kilometres (625 miles) from Beijing — evidence that the authorities in the capital are not yet ready to reopen the Tiananmen wounds.

Communist Party of Nepal in favour of having a “baby king”

UML in favour of reinstating monarchy, say Maoists

The Hindu | May 29, 2009

by Prerana Marasini

KATHMANDU: The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoists) has said the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) is in favour of having a“baby king”.

The remark came after the first Cabinet meeting of the CPN (UML)-led government decided to erect a republican monument in one of the parks of Kathmandu. Maoist’s spokesperson Dina Nath Sharma said the decision was nothing but a conspiracy to bring back monarchy through former king Gyanendra’s grandson. “The decision which was taken by a Cabinet meeting, when the Cabinet has not taken a full shape, indicates that UML is in favour of reinstating monarchy,” he told The Hindu, adding the CPN(UML) had disregarded the agreement between political parties to build the monument on the premises of the former Royal Palace.

But General Secretary of CPN-UML Ishwar Pokharel rubbished the claims. He said: “They’re making a non-issue, an issue.” “What is going to be builtinside the palace premises is different from what is going to be built in Ratnapark.”

The Maoist’s spokesperson also said the new Prime Minister’s appreciation of President Ram Baran Yadav’s move to reinstate the Nepal Army Chief,favouring military supremacy, was also suggestive of conspiracy to revive monarchy. When the Nepali Congress president went to New Delhi, when theformer king Gyanendra was still there in India, the Maoist leaders here claimed that there was a plot to reinstate monarchy.

Constituent Assembly Chairman Subash Nembang on Thursday met with Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal, Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’and Nepali Congress President Girija Prasad Koirala and urged them to end their bitterness so that the process of Constitution-writing was notaffected.

Meanwhile, the Nepali Congress and CPN(UML) have agreed to expand the Cabinet by Sunday. The portfolios will be decided as per the representationof the parties in the Constituent Assembly. But the Maoists have maintained that they would obstruct the House until their resolution against thePresident’s decision on the Army chief was discussed.

South American Leaders Reaffirm Socialist Trinity

Chavez proposed accelerating socialist initiatives. Morales proposed that people suspected of acts of secession or treason in Bolivia are tried by military justice.

The leaders called on the newly formed Union of South American Nations, or Unasur, to create a specific body that can defend governments against “press abuses.”

AFP | May 25, 2009

QUITO, Ecuador (AFP)–The presidents of Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela reaffirmed Sunday their commitment to a trilateral socialist alliance as they gathered here to celebrate Quito’s anniversary of independence from Spain.

Ecuador’s newly reelected leader Rafael Correa vowed in the wake of his poll victory to take further steps to “radicalize” the country’s socialist direction, in sync with constitutional reforms championed by his ideological kin, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez.

“We will not change course,” Correa said in a speech marking the victorious 1822 Battle of Pichincha, near present-day Quito, as he reaffirmed his country’s commitment to integrating socialism in the region.

“On the contrary, we are going to deepen and radicalize our citizen’s revolution, accelerating the process,” he said.

Correa also questioned the existence of full democracy in the region.

“Despite being victors, we continue to maintain that Ecuador and Latin America still does not have democracy,” he said. “At most, we have elections.”

The three leaders boosted trade ties during multiple weekend meetings, with Venezuela and Ecuador on Saturday moving ahead on cooperation agreements in the energy, mining and banking sectors.

As the global economic downturn continues, Chavez also proposed accelerating socialist initiatives, within his country and as a strategic move to cement the leftist direction of South American politics.

“We will not delay, we will speed up the pace,” he said, noting that the economic crisis “opens up the way to build a new world.”

The ideological overtures came as the leaders called on the newly formed Union of South American Nations, or Unasur, to create a specific body that can defend governments against “press abuses.”

At a joint news conference with Chavez on Saturday, Correa promised when he takes on the rotating role of Unasur leader he would seek to battle press corruption that targets the continent’s “lawfully elected governments.”

With his Venezuelan counterpart’s support, Correa vowed to “clean up” the country from a press he described as a “corrupt instrument of the oligarchy” and the main “enemy of change” in both nations.

“Ecuador has the full backing of Venezuela in its internal fight against this phenomenon, which borders on fascist madness that is open, blatant (and) cynical,” said Chavez.

For his part Morales concurred with the sentiment but stopped short of publicly backing the proposal of a Unasur mechanism, although he also joined in with lambasting his country’s media.
Morales said that he will raise the issue when he soon meets with the Inter American Press Association which defends press freedoms.
The president said he plans to discuss with the IAPA “how much of the Bolivia media are corrupt liars.”

On Sunday, Morales also proposed that people suspected of acts of secession or treason in Bolivia are tried by military justice “because they are traitors of the motherland.”

In recent months, Morales, who joins Correa and Chavez as having tense relations with the United States, has accused Washington of conspiring with his opponents to incite violence in Bolivia, and even accused it of having a hand in an assassination plot against him.

Communist leader elected Nepal’s new Prime Minister

Leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) Madhav Kumar Nepal, center wearing cap, greets people at the Parliament in Katmandu, Nepal, Friday, May 22, 2009. The veteran communist leader, who is so far the only one who has announced plans to contest for the position of the prime minister, is likely to be elected as he has the support of 350 members in the 601-seat parliament. Nepalese lawmakers will vote for a new prime minister on Saturday that could end weeks of political turmoil in this Himalayan nation. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe)

AP | May 24, 2009

By BINAJ GURUBACHARYA

KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Lawmakers elected a communist party leader as Nepal’s new prime minister on Saturday in a move aimed at ending weeks of political turmoil.

Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist Leninist) was elected unopposed, parliament speaker Subash Nemwang announced.

Parliament members congratulated Nepal, and his supporters cheered and offered him flowers when he walked out of parliament.

Nepal, 56, has the backing of 22 political parties and 350 members in the 601-seat parliament, more than the simple majority required to be elected.

Nepal has been a prominent figure in Nepalese politics for more than a decade. He was a key figure in 2005 protests against the authoritarian rule of then-King Gyanendra and the weeks of street protests that led to the restoration of democracy a year later.

The previous prime minister, former Maoist rebel chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, resigned May 4 following a dispute with Nepal’s president.

Dahal’s party, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), had blocked parliamentary proceedings but ended its protest several days ago, allowing Saturday’s election.

Maoist lawmakers walked out of parliament on Saturday and did not participate in the process.

Both Dahal’s and Nepal’s parties are communist but differ in policies and beliefs.

The Maoists ended their decade-long armed struggle just three years ago and entered a peace process. They won general elections in 2008 but did not obtain a majority in parliament. Nepal’s party has long been part of mainstream politics.

Dahal resigned after President Ram Baran Yadav rejected his sacking of the country’s army chief, who had resisted efforts to integrate former Maoist fighters into the military.