YANGON – Myanmar police on Tuesday said they had arrested three people over the murder of a local journalist known for his investigations into illegal logging and brothels.

Eleven Media reporter Soe Moe Tun’s battered body was found last month on the side of a road in Monywa, northwest of Mandalay.

Myanmar ended official censorship in 2012 after the military junta ceded power, but journalists still face intimidation for investigating controversial topics.

At least four reporters have been killed with impunity in Myanmar since 1999, according to the New York-based Committee for the Protection of Journalists.

Local media sources said Soe Moe Tun had reported on the mining industry, illegal logging and the growth of karaoke lounges fronting for brothels before his death.

Thein Swe Myint, an officer from Monywa police station, said authorities had arrested three suspects after questioning some 40 people over the murder.

“First we arrested two people from a local KTV (karaoke) operator and we have arrested another one who used to be a logging truck driver,” he told AFP.

Saigang region, where Soe Moe Tun worked, is a hub for mining and logging of Myanmar’s prized teak wood.

Much of the timber is smuggled out of the country to India in a vast illegal trade thought to be worth billions of dollars.

Advocacy groups say journalists covering the industry are increasingly facing intimidation for their work.

At least 10 reporters covering environmental issues have been killed in South and Southeast Asia since 2010, according to Reporters Without Borders.

Several months ago local Myanmar reporter Tin Zaw Oo was forced to move after his family was threatened by illegal loggers, said Myanmar Journalists’ Network.

Soe Moe Tun’s wife, Khin Cho Lett, said she hoped his killers would be brought to justice.

JAKARTA – Jakarta’s Christian governor Tuesday shouted at an Islamic hardliner testifying against him in dramatic scenes at his blasphemy trial, seen as a test of religious tolerance in the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Hundreds of supporters and opponents of governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama rowdily traded insults as they rallied outside the hearing in the Indonesian capital, with thousands of police deployed to prevent clashes.

The first Christian to govern the capital in more than 50 years, Purnama is on trial accused of blasphemy over remarks he made about the Quran while campaigning ahead of February elections for the Jakarta governorship.

Hundreds of thousands of conservative Muslims have protested against the leader, known by his nickname Ahok, in recent months in the largest demonstrations in Indonesia in years, but he denies insulting Islam and his supporters say the case is politically motivated.

Purnama, who faces up to five years in jail if found guilty, went on trial last month for blasphemy and at the latest hearing Tuesday members of hardline group the Islamic Defenders Front (FPI) – which has spearheaded the protest movement – testified against him.

“I reported the suspect (to the police) because he insulted the Quran,” Muhsin Alattas, head of the FPI’s Jakarta branch, told the hearing.

But as the witness was questioned, Purnama – known for his short temper – began to shout at him.

“Who has given FPI the authority to speak on behalf of all Muslims?… many Muslims don’t like FPI,” he said.

“Just ask the FPI,” the witness responded during the hearing, which was taking place in an auditorium at the agriculture ministry after being moved from a Jakarta court for security reasons.

In his comments in September, Purnama accused his opponents of using a Koranic verse, which suggests Muslims should not choose non-Muslims as leaders, in order to trick people into voting against him.

The case, which is expected to take several more weeks, has sparked concerns about growing intolerance in Indonesia where a reputation for pluralism has been eroded by a surge in attacks on minorities.

BEIJING – A former official of China’s Food and Drug Administration has been jailed for taking bribes from vaccine manufacturers, reports said Tuesday, in a case with echoes of a major scandal that rocked the Asian country last year.

Yin Hongzhang, the former deputy director of the administration’s drug testing centre, received a 10-year sentence and was fined 500,000 yuan for taking bribes to help vaccine manufacturers gain approval for their drugs, China’s Legal Evening News newspaper said.

His wife and son earlier received prison sentences for participating in the scheme and accepting property and bribes worth 3.56 million yuan (S$740,000), including ivory products worth 180,000 yuan, it said.

Yin was taken into custody in April 2015 and charged with taking payouts in relation to four biotech firms’ efforts to obtain government permits for a variety of vaccines, including for SARS and avian flu.

The sentence follows the March revelation of a massive vaccine scandal that enraged the Chinese public.

That case involved the improper storage, transport and sale of tens of millions of dollars’ worth of vaccines – many of them expired.

No one was believed to have been harmed, but the story still provoked outrage in a country where families, who were long limited to one child by government policy, fiercely protect their offspring.

Public fury erupted after a report revealed that information about the case had been suppressed by authorities, who had arrested two key suspects nearly a year earlier.

From 2010, the pair, a mother and daughter from Shandong province in eastern China, sold 25 different kinds of expired or improperly stored vaccines worth more than 570 million yuan (US$88 million), the official Xinhua news agency reported at the time.

BEIJING –

China has stepped up security regulations in the border areas of Tibet to combat terrorism and “splittist” risks, state-owned enterprises, “Global Times” said.

This move follows the call by China’s south-western neighbor India in early December to avoid complicating a long argument about a senior Tibetan exile’s religious leaders visiting the border region.

In 1962, the two countries conducted a brief border war.

Beijing believes that the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is a dangerous separatist. Nobel Peace Prize winner, he said, he only wanted his home real autonomy, fled to India in 1959 after escaping to China’s failed uprising.

The Sunday changes “provide the legal basis for a potential terrorist campaign to further open Tibet,” said Wang Chunhuan, a scholar of the Tibet Academy of Social Sciences, who cited the new law.

This measure makes the land ports and trade zones within the scope of previous laws and instructs low-level governments have the responsibility to dump the police to help regulate the border, according to the article, Monday Monday night. “The Tibetan economy is open to the world and the need to combat separatism, infiltration, illegal immigration and terrorism is increasing.” Baju, deputy head of the regional border defense police, said in a December 14 statement that the official Tibetan legal press was reported at the time.

Rights groups say China has trampled on Tibetan religious and cultural traditions, accusing Beijing of refusing to call its troops a peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1950.

Himalayan Communist Party leader Wu Yingjie said in a speech on Tuesday at the official China Tibet website that the Tibetan army built the “Great Wall of Steel” in Tibet to defend the border.

Wu also quoted the words of President Xi Jinping: “governance, governance side, edge, first of all to stabilize Tibet.” Wu said that the military capability of the region must be strengthened in order to “never allow anybody to separate any part of Tibet in any way at any time”.

SHANGHAI – China’s corruption watchdog is investigating a former vice-minister of the aviation regulator for disciplinary violations, saying he had paid below market price for property during his tenure.

The official concerned, Xia Xinghua, who had worked in the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) from 2009 to 2014, has been expelled from the ruling Communist Party, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said on Tuesday.

Xia, who often represented the CAAC in meeting with foreign executives and regulators, also took holidays in the guise of work trips and played illegally in golf games others had paid for, the watchdog said. “As a leading party cadre, Xia had a weak concept of discipline and violated party regulations,” it said in a statement on its website, employing the usual euphemism for graft.

Xia went on to become the chairman of the China Civil Airports Association (CCAA), which represents more than 100 airports, in April 2014, after leaving the aviation regulator, the airport body says on its website.

An official of the airport body declined to comment, and officials of the aviation regulator did not respond to telephone calls. Reuters was unable to reach Xia for comment.

China’s far-reaching crackdown on graft has swept through several industries and led to the arrest and jailing of senior politicians and executives. In 2015, the watchdog announced a probe into the deputy head of the aviation regulator.

The fight against corruption has gained “crushing momentum,”the Communist Party said last month.

SEOUL –

South Korea said on Tuesday that US President-elect Donald Trump issued a “clear warning” to North Korea, refuting Pyongyang’s ballistic missile requirements.

“North Korea is just saying that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the United States,” Trump tweeted. Trump’s tweak was a day after North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appeared to be trying to announce his country as a new president in a “final phase” of developing intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) pressure.

Kim also said that last year his country greatly strengthened its nuclear arsenal.

Washington has repeatedly said that it would never accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, but Trump had not explicitly stated his policy to the isolated Stalinist state.

“President Trump’s message was important because it was his first reference to North Korea’s nuclear program and could be seen as a clear warning,” South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-Hyuck said in a briefing. .

He said the new US administration was clearly aware of the “seriousness and urgency” of the Pyongyang nuclear threat because of “positive outreach” by South Korea.

US policy on the North would remain largely unchanged, he said.

“They are maintaining an unwavering stance on the need for sanctions on North Korea,” Cho said.

In a New Year’s speech on Sunday, Kim did not make a specific reference to the incoming Trump administration. But he called on Washington to make a “resolute decision to withdraw its anachronistic hostile North Korea policy”.

Analysts are divided over how close Pyongyang is to realizing its full nuclear ambitions, especially as it has never successfully test-fired an ICBM.

However, it carried out two nuclear tests and numerous missile launches last year alone in pursuit of its oft-stated goal – developing a weapons system capable of hitting the US mainland with a nuclear warhead.

JAKARTA – Indonesia plans to prosecute the captain of a tourist boat for negligence after a fire ripped through the vessel on New Year’s Day, killing at least 23 people and injuring dozens, police said on Tuesday.

The boat was carrying about 250 people before it was engulfed by flames shortly after leaving Jakarta.

Authorities were still searching the waters around the port for victims, while bodies retrieved from the charred ship were still being identified, said Hendra Sudirman, head of Jakarta’s Search and Rescue agency.

After questioning, the captain had been named a suspect, police said. “We have detained the captain of the boat since the incident. His status is now a suspect based on information from the crew, the passengers,” Argo Yuwono, a spokesman for Jakarta’s Metro Police, said on Tuesday.

Under the shipping law, if a captain causes deaths by sailing a ship knowing it is not seaworthy he can be jailed for up to 10 years. Negligence causing death under the criminal code is punishable by up to five years in jail.

Sea accidents are frequent in Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago, with vessels often overloaded, poorly maintained or having too few life jackets.

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First victims found in Indonesian ferry accident: Official

Source: AFP, Twitter

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