cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50787608

Archived

[...]

The 55-year-old nomad and community leader returned to his family home in Kyangche Township, Gade County, in Tibet’s traditional province of Amdo—now forcibly incorporated into Qinghai Province—on 7 February 2026.

[...]

A-nya Sengdra has suffered devastating health complications as a direct result of his brutal imprisonment. Sources confirm that he has developed vision loss, kidney disease, and severe blood pressure problems during detention. Following his arrest in September 2018, he was subjected to systematic torture and denied access to legal counsel for 48 days, during which authorities repeatedly beat him.

Family members, finally permitted a brief visit in August 2025 after years of being systematically denied access, described his profoundly frail and deteriorated condition. Reports confirm he suffered dangerously high blood pressure throughout his imprisonment while Chinese authorities deliberately withheld adequate medical care.

[...]

In a blatant attempt to silence A-nya Sengdra and suppress information about his systematic mistreatment, Chinese authorities have imposed severe restrictions and surveillance despite his nominal release. Both he and his family members are prohibited from discussing his case or sharing any photographs or videos on social media platforms. Furthermore, authorities have barred him from travelling to seek urgently needed medical treatment for his serious health conditions, effectively maintaining him under house surveillance in his hometown. This continued persecution demonstrates China’s contempt for basic human dignity and international human rights norms.

[...]

Sengdra’s original seven-year sentence was scheduled to end on 3 September 2025. However, Chinese authorities arbitrarily extended his detention by more than five months, ultimately releasing him on 7 February 2026. Sources indicate the extension was allegedly based on fabricated accusations of “prison rule violations” or theft, yet no official announcement or transparent judicial procedure was ever provided. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) rightfully characterised this extension as arbitrary detention in flagrant violation of international fair trial standards.

[...]

Archived

[...]

The 55-year-old nomad and community leader returned to his family home in Kyangche Township, Gade County, in Tibet’s traditional province of Amdo—now forcibly incorporated into Qinghai Province—on 7 February 2026.

[...]

A-nya Sengdra has suffered devastating health complications as a direct result of his brutal imprisonment. Sources confirm that he has developed vision loss, kidney disease, and severe blood pressure problems during detention. Following his arrest in September 2018, he was subjected to systematic torture and denied access to legal counsel for 48 days, during which authorities repeatedly beat him.

Family members, finally permitted a brief visit in August 2025 after years of being systematically denied access, described his profoundly frail and deteriorated condition. Reports confirm he suffered dangerously high blood pressure throughout his imprisonment while Chinese authorities deliberately withheld adequate medical care.

[...]

In a blatant attempt to silence A-nya Sengdra and suppress information about his systematic mistreatment, Chinese authorities have imposed severe restrictions and surveillance despite his nominal release. Both he and his family members are prohibited from discussing his case or sharing any photographs or videos on social media platforms. Furthermore, authorities have barred him from travelling to seek urgently needed medical treatment for his serious health conditions, effectively maintaining him under house surveillance in his hometown. This continued persecution demonstrates China’s contempt for basic human dignity and international human rights norms.

[...]

Sengdra’s original seven-year sentence was scheduled to end on 3 September 2025. However, Chinese authorities arbitrarily extended his detention by more than five months, ultimately releasing him on 7 February 2026. Sources indicate the extension was allegedly based on fabricated accusations of “prison rule violations” or theft, yet no official announcement or transparent judicial procedure was ever provided. The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) rightfully characterised this extension as arbitrary detention in flagrant violation of international fair trial standards.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50779967

[...]

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said if China were to take Taiwan, Beijing would become "more aggressive, undermining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and the rules-based international order."

"If Taiwan were annexed by China, China's expansionist ambitions would not stop there," Lai told AFP during an exclusive interview on Tuesday at the Presidential Office Building in Taipei.

"The next countries under threat would be Japan, the Philippines, and others in the Indo-Pacific region, with repercussions eventually reaching the Americas and Europe," he said.

[...]

China has competing territorial claims with Japan and the Philippines, while the Taiwan Strait is a major artery for global shipping.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whose country hosts several US bases and around 60,000 American troops, suggested in November that Tokyo could intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan, drawing a furious response from Beijing.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos has also warned the archipelago nation, where US troops have access to nine military bases, would "inevitably" be dragged into a war over Taiwan.

"In this changing world, nations belong to a global community -- a situation in any one country would inevitably impact another," Lai said.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50779967

[...]

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said if China were to take Taiwan, Beijing would become "more aggressive, undermining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and the rules-based international order."

"If Taiwan were annexed by China, China's expansionist ambitions would not stop there," Lai told AFP during an exclusive interview on Tuesday at the Presidential Office Building in Taipei.

"The next countries under threat would be Japan, the Philippines, and others in the Indo-Pacific region, with repercussions eventually reaching the Americas and Europe," he said.

[...]

China has competing territorial claims with Japan and the Philippines, while the Taiwan Strait is a major artery for global shipping.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whose country hosts several US bases and around 60,000 American troops, suggested in November that Tokyo could intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan, drawing a furious response from Beijing.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos has also warned the archipelago nation, where US troops have access to nine military bases, would "inevitably" be dragged into a war over Taiwan.

"In this changing world, nations belong to a global community -- a situation in any one country would inevitably impact another," Lai said.

[...]

[...]

Taiwan's President Lai Ching-te said if China were to take Taiwan, Beijing would become "more aggressive, undermining peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific and the rules-based international order."

"If Taiwan were annexed by China, China's expansionist ambitions would not stop there," Lai told AFP during an exclusive interview on Tuesday at the Presidential Office Building in Taipei.

"The next countries under threat would be Japan, the Philippines, and others in the Indo-Pacific region, with repercussions eventually reaching the Americas and Europe," he said.

[...]

China has competing territorial claims with Japan and the Philippines, while the Taiwan Strait is a major artery for global shipping.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, whose country hosts several US bases and around 60,000 American troops, suggested in November that Tokyo could intervene militarily if China attacked Taiwan, drawing a furious response from Beijing.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos has also warned the archipelago nation, where US troops have access to nine military bases, would "inevitably" be dragged into a war over Taiwan.

"In this changing world, nations belong to a global community -- a situation in any one country would inevitably impact another," Lai said.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50778341

Their chances of settling in the United States increasingly bleak, a growing number of Chinese nationals are travelling visa-free to Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and crossing into the European Union.

Archived

Driven by economic hardship and political discontent, a growing number of Chinese nationals are trying to reach the EU via the Balkans, their route to the United States made more difficult by the loss of a visa-free regime with Ecuador and growing hostility under Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

[...]

In 2024, more than 620 illegal border crossings by Chinese nationals were recorded on the Western Balkan route, according to statistics from the European Union border agency, Frontex, plus a further 30 travelling via Greece and Albania.

In 2022, the figure for the Western Balkan route was just 88. In 2025, it hit 706.

[...]

In China, youth unemployment remains high. The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds was 18.9 per cent last August. In 2023, the figure hit a record high of 21.3 per cent, amid signs of an economic slowdown.

Some Chinese migrants on the Balkan route said that they decided to leave China after their small businesses suffered during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The country’s shrinking economic opportunities and intensified social controls in recent years have also fuelled dissent; some Chinese are losing hope of a better life, especially for their children.

[...]

For more than a decade, the Balkan route has been a major pathway for refugees and irregular migrants mainly from the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia trying to reach the EU.

Given China has visa-free arrangements with both Serbia and Bosnia, Chinese nationals have an advantage – they are able to travel directly to Belgrade and cross without visas into Bosnia.

This is a double-edged sword, however, said Milica Svabic, a lawyer affiliated with the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv, which provides legal and social support for migrants and refugees on the Balkan route.

Able to slip into Serbia and rent private accommodation, Chinese nationals are “completely invisible”, said Svabic. “They’re invisible to state institutions [and] NGOs, and this can open the door to labour exploitation, sexual exploitation.”

Many also turn to smugglers to cross into the EU.

[...]

In then years under its current leader Xi Jinping, China experienced a mass exodus as asylum seekers surpassed one million, according to the China-focused NGO Safeguard Defenders.

The number is even more staggering considering the increasing exit controls (including exit bans) placed on determinate categories of Chinese citizens by Chinese authorities. The continuing upward trend also serves as a stark reminder that China’s domestic human rights abuse is not the mere “internal affair” as it so often likes to claim.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50778341

Their chances of settling in the United States increasingly bleak, a growing number of Chinese nationals are travelling visa-free to Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and crossing into the European Union.

Archived

Driven by economic hardship and political discontent, a growing number of Chinese nationals are trying to reach the EU via the Balkans, their route to the United States made more difficult by the loss of a visa-free regime with Ecuador and growing hostility under Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

[...]

In 2024, more than 620 illegal border crossings by Chinese nationals were recorded on the Western Balkan route, according to statistics from the European Union border agency, Frontex, plus a further 30 travelling via Greece and Albania.

In 2022, the figure for the Western Balkan route was just 88. In 2025, it hit 706.

[...]

In China, youth unemployment remains high. The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds was 18.9 per cent last August. In 2023, the figure hit a record high of 21.3 per cent, amid signs of an economic slowdown.

Some Chinese migrants on the Balkan route said that they decided to leave China after their small businesses suffered during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The country’s shrinking economic opportunities and intensified social controls in recent years have also fuelled dissent; some Chinese are losing hope of a better life, especially for their children.

[...]

For more than a decade, the Balkan route has been a major pathway for refugees and irregular migrants mainly from the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia trying to reach the EU.

Given China has visa-free arrangements with both Serbia and Bosnia, Chinese nationals have an advantage – they are able to travel directly to Belgrade and cross without visas into Bosnia.

This is a double-edged sword, however, said Milica Svabic, a lawyer affiliated with the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv, which provides legal and social support for migrants and refugees on the Balkan route.

Able to slip into Serbia and rent private accommodation, Chinese nationals are “completely invisible”, said Svabic. “They’re invisible to state institutions [and] NGOs, and this can open the door to labour exploitation, sexual exploitation.”

Many also turn to smugglers to cross into the EU.

[...]

In then years under its current leader Xi Jinping, China experienced a mass exodus as asylum seekers surpassed one million, according to the China-focused NGO Safeguard Defenders.

The number is even more staggering considering the increasing exit controls (including exit bans) placed on determinate categories of Chinese citizens by Chinese authorities. The continuing upward trend also serves as a stark reminder that China’s domestic human rights abuse is not the mere “internal affair” as it so often likes to claim.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50778341

Their chances of settling in the United States increasingly bleak, a growing number of Chinese nationals are travelling visa-free to Serbia or Bosnia and Herzegovina and crossing into the European Union.

Archived

Driven by economic hardship and political discontent, a growing number of Chinese nationals are trying to reach the EU via the Balkans, their route to the United States made more difficult by the loss of a visa-free regime with Ecuador and growing hostility under Donald Trump’s second term in the White House.

[...]

In 2024, more than 620 illegal border crossings by Chinese nationals were recorded on the Western Balkan route, according to statistics from the European Union border agency, Frontex, plus a further 30 travelling via Greece and Albania.

In 2022, the figure for the Western Balkan route was just 88. In 2025, it hit 706.

[...]

In China, youth unemployment remains high. The unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds was 18.9 per cent last August. In 2023, the figure hit a record high of 21.3 per cent, amid signs of an economic slowdown.

Some Chinese migrants on the Balkan route said that they decided to leave China after their small businesses suffered during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The country’s shrinking economic opportunities and intensified social controls in recent years have also fuelled dissent; some Chinese are losing hope of a better life, especially for their children.

[...]

For more than a decade, the Balkan route has been a major pathway for refugees and irregular migrants mainly from the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia trying to reach the EU.

Given China has visa-free arrangements with both Serbia and Bosnia, Chinese nationals have an advantage – they are able to travel directly to Belgrade and cross without visas into Bosnia.

This is a double-edged sword, however, said Milica Svabic, a lawyer affiliated with the Serbian NGO Klikaktiv, which provides legal and social support for migrants and refugees on the Balkan route.

Able to slip into Serbia and rent private accommodation, Chinese nationals are “completely invisible”, said Svabic. “They’re invisible to state institutions [and] NGOs, and this can open the door to labour exploitation, sexual exploitation.”

Many also turn to smugglers to cross into the EU.

[...]

In then years under its current leader Xi Jinping, China experienced a mass exodus as asylum seekers surpassed one million, according to the China-focused NGO Safeguard Defenders.

The number is even more staggering considering the increasing exit controls (including exit bans) placed on determinate categories of Chinese citizens by Chinese authorities. The continuing upward trend also serves as a stark reminder that China’s domestic human rights abuse is not the mere “internal affair” as it so often likes to claim.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50731537

Archived

Ever since Frank Dikötter’s first book, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992), this prolific star of China studies has challenged conventional truths and broached taboo subjects.

[...]

Yet read as a whole, Dikötter’s body of work does read like a grave indictment of the Communist regime, which is one reason why he is not well-liked by the Chinese authorities.

[...]

If Dikötter has long held a leading position on the Chinese Communist Party’s blacklist, his most recent book will give the authorities no ground to demote him. Red Dawn Over China is a history of the CCP’s rise to power over decades from its obscure origins in the early 1920s to the triumphant end of the Chinese civil war in 1949. To say the least, it was a very bloody affair.

[...]

Those who have read Dikötter will immediately recognise his no-nonsense style, which intersperses dry numbers (thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of deaths) and occasional stories that shed light on how some of these people died. In this book he recounts the story of the CCP’s rise as a non-ending series of crimes, some very meticulously described. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets shot. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets buried alive. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets their head smashed by a rock. Numbers . . . numbers . . . someone gets eaten. Voilà, behold the dawn of Communism.

Dikötter’s general argument is, as he puts it, that “Communism was never popular in China.” It was imposed on the Chinese through systemic, unrelenting violence.

[...]

There was no heroism, no glory, no grassroots enthusiasm for the Communist cause. Just endless brutality perpetrated by a deeply illegitimate movement that never had much of a purchase among the general populace.

[...]

The [new] book is also a valuable reminder that today’s China — the prosperous, technologically advanced superpower — is a country built on a foundation of violence. “Political power,” Mao Zedong argued, “comes out of the barrel of a gun.” A tireless chronicler of the numerous crimes and follies of Chinese Communism, Dikötter once again shows his readers who was pulling the trigger of that gun, and at what cost to the long-suffering Chinese people.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50716266

Archived

The father of a U.S.-based activist wanted by Hong Kong authorities was convicted Wednesday for attempting to deal with his daughter’s financial assets in the city, in the first court case of its kind brought under a homegrown national security law.

Kwok Yin-sang’s daughter Anna is the executive director of the Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council. Authorities in 2023 offered 1 million Hong Kong dollars (about $127,900) for information leading to her arrest and later banned anyone from handling any funds for her — widely seen as part of a yearslong crackdown on challenges against Beijing’s rule following the massive, anti-government protests in 2019.

Kwok, 69, was arrested in April 2025 under the security law, locally known as Article 23 legislation, enacted a year before. He was accused of having attempted to obtain funds from an insurance policy under his daughter’s name. He pleaded not guilty.

Acting principal magistrate Cheng Lim-chi found him guilty on Wednesday, saying Kwok must have known his daughter was an absconder and he was attempting to handle her assets.

[...]

“Today, my father was convicted simply for being my father," said the younger Kwok. “This is transnational repression."

She said his charge was founded on “incoherent fiction" and she had not received or sought funds from her father or anyone in Hong Kong. She added that the moves from the city’s government will not discourage her from carrying on her activism.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50715911

Archived

A 25-year-old man and 31-year-old woman will face the ACT Magistrates Court on Wednesday on charges of reckless foreign interference, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison.

[...]

The case underscores longstanding concerns among Australian security agencies that Beijing has shown little hesitation in pursuing domestic political objectives beyond its borders, including through efforts to monitor, influence or pressure members of the Chinese diaspora.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/50715361

• Norway's foreign intelligence service sees a growing risk of a more assertive Russia and China as the US pulls back from international cooperation and institutions.
• The weakening of the global rules-based order is "shaking the foundations of Norwegian security", according to Nils Andreas Stensones, the head of the service.
• A change of the status quo in the Arctic is raising the risk that Russia and China also alter their ambitions and behavior in the region, the service said in its annual threat-assessment.

Archived

Norway’s foreign intelligence service sees a growing risk of a more assertive Russia and China as the US pulls back from international cooperation and institutions.

“The political behavior in Washington influences how Beijing and Moscow are thinking and maybe how they are acting in the future,” says Nils Andreas Stensones, the head of the service, known as E-tjeneste,

[...]

Norway is one of the members of the NATO alliance that shares a border with Russia. The Nordic nation has sought to play up its importance for US security as it monitors Russia’s nuclear-armed Northern Fleet near its frontier. Yet it has also reiterated its backing for neighboring Denmark that’s faced pressure from President Donald Trump who wants to take over Greenland.