News from Asia 9/25/2005

HONG KONG-Villagers in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong who have been campaigning for weeks to remove their elected chief from office are being pressured into resigning from the village committee ahead of a decisive vote next month, sources there say.

KATHMANDU—Chinese border forces opened fire in a bid to halt the flight of 51 Tibetan asylum-seekers into Nepal...

WASHINGTON-Former Czech President Vaclav Havel and retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu are calling for the United Nations Security Council to step in and demand democratic change in military-ruled Burma, citing a steady worsening of conditions there. <...> In a 70-page report, the two leaders compared Burma with seven other countries, including Haiti, Afghanistan, and Rwanda, in which the Security Council had previously intervened, saying the situation in the Southeast Asian country was “far worse.”

WASHINGTON-Schoolchildren in China's northwestern Xinjiang region are routinely pressed by army-backed production brigades into backbreaking, unpaid labor to help with the yearly cotton harvest, residents and officials say.

HONG KONG-An international media watchdog publishes a guide to help citizen journalists and non-mainstream commentators around the world dodge censors and avoid retaliation for what they write, especially in countries where freedom of expression is severely limited.

SEOUL—North Korean laborers assigned by Pyongyang to camps in Siberia to earn their government foreign currency are increasingly fleeing their work teams to go it alone as illegal workers.

News source: Radio Free Asia.