BEIJING – Chinese authorities have detained the relatives of several dissidents living abroad, they said, as part of a widening crackdown following the publication of a letter critical of President Xi Jinping.

Germany-based journalist Chang Ping said local authorities in the southwestern province of Sichuan had detained his two younger brothers and a younger sister in connection with suspicions that he had been involved in writing an anonymous letter calling on Xi to step down for the good of the country.

“Numerous relatives in China have been subject to investigation, harassment, and threats” after he discussed the letter in an article and interview, Chang said in a statement posted on the web site chinachange.org.

Police had asked them to demand that he cease publishing any criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party, “or the government would find ways to charge my family members”, he said in the document, dated Sunday.

Chang, a prominent commentator on contemporary affairs, was formerly a senior journalist at the outspoken Southern Weekend newspaper but moved to Germany after coming under sustained pressure for advocating more government opennness and accountability.

The detention of Chang’s family is the latest example of what appears to be a widening campaign of intimidation aimed at people thought to be associated with the letter criticising Xi.

Last week, New York-based Wen Yunchao said officials in the southern province of Guangdong had taken away three of his family members.

Chang and Wen have both denied any connection to the letter.

Four members of staff at Wujie News, a state-backed website which carried the letter earlier this month before deleting it, have been missing since last week, a reporter at the outlet earlier told AFP.

According to reports 10 associated technical personnel have also been held.

Media criticism of top leaders is almost unheard of in China, where the press is strictly controlled by the ruling Communist Party.

The letter, seen by AFP in a cached form, berated Xi for centralising authority, mishandling the economy and tightening ideological controls.

“Due to your gathering of all power into your own hands… we are now facing unprecedented problems and crises in politics, economics, ideology, and culture,” it said.

Chinese journalist Jia Jia was detained at Beijing’s main airport ahead of a flight to Hong Kong last week, before being released Friday evening.

Rights groups linked his detention to an official probe into the letter.

Lahore, Pakistan – A suicide bomber who attacked a park thronging with families celebrating Easter killed at least 72 people in Pakistan, with children among the dead.

More than 200 people were hurt when explosives packed with ball bearings ripped through crowds near a children’s play area in the park in Lahore, leaving dozens dead or bloodied.

Witnesses described children screaming as people carried the injured in their arms, while frantic relatives searched for loved ones.

“We had gone to the park to enjoy the Easter holiday. There was a blast suddenly, I saw a huge ball of fire and four to six people of my family are injured. Two of them critical,” 53-year-old Arif Gill told AFP.

“This is not an attack against Christians, everybody is victim, there are many Muslims among the victims, everybody goes to the park to enjoy,” he added.

“This is an attack against everybody.” Javed Ali, a 35-year-old who lives opposite the park near the centre of the city, said the force of Sunday’s blast shattered the windows of his home.

“After 10 minutes I went outside. There was human flesh on the walls of our house. People were crying, I could hear ambulances,” he said.

Many wounded children were taken to Lahore’s Jinnah Hospital Monday, some clearly in pain as doctors examined injuries to their legs, arms and faces.

Doctors had described frenzied scenes at hospitals in the immediate aftermath of the attack, with staff treating casualties on floors and in corridors, as officials tweeted calls for blood donations.

Senior police official Haider Ashraf put the toll at 72 Monday, saying at least eight children were among the dead.

“Christians were not the specific target of this attack because the majority of the dead are Muslims,” he said. “Everybody goes to this park.” Lahore’s top administration official Muhammad Usman said 233 were wounded. Late Sunday rescue officials had put the number of injured at more than 300.

Earlier, Usman said the bomber “blew himself up near the kids’ playing area where kids were on the swings”.

Schools and other government institutions were open, but three days of mourning have been announced in Punjab province, of which Lahore is the capital, said commissioner Abdullah Sumbal.

A faction of the Pakistan Taliban said it carried out the attack, according to the website of the Express Tribune.

“We claim responsibility for the attack on Christians as they were celebrating Easter,” a spokesperson for Jamaatul Ahrar was quoted as saying.

But police cautioned Monday they could not confirm the claim.

Pakistan suicide attack kills 65 at Easter celebration

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

AFP, Reuters

“We can’t say anything about the claim of responsibility until a complete investigation,” said Ashraf.

A military spokesman said intelligence agencies were chasing all leads.

Facebook activated its safety check system after the blast, so people could tell friends and relatives they were safe, but a glitch meant notifications were sent to people all over the world.

The company later apologised, but some users said the error meant news of the attack spread more quickly than it might otherwise have done.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif expressed his “grief and sorrow over the sad demise of innocent lives”.

His Indian counterpart Narendra Modi telephoned to say “the people of India stand with their Pakistani brethren in this hour of grief,” state media reported.

Powerful military chief General Raheel Sharif vowed to bring those responsible to justice and said he “will never allow these savage inhumans to over run our life and liberty”, according to a military spokesman.

The US labelled the incident “cowardly”, while Pakistan’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai tweeted: “Pakistan and the world must unite. Every life is precious and must be respected and protected.” The Vatican condemned the attack, calling it “fanatical violence against Christian minorities,” and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for Islamabad to protect religious minorities.

Christians make up an estimated 1.6 per cent of the Pakistan’s 200 million people, the vast majority of which are Muslim, and have long faced discrimination.

Twin suicide attacks against churches in Lahore killed 17 people in March last year, sparking two days of rioting by thousands of Christians.

Attacks targeting children have a special resonance in Pakistan, still scarred by a Taliban assault in Peshawar in 2014 that killed 150 people, mostly children.

A military operation targeting insurgents was stepped up in response, and last year the death toll from militant attacks fell to its lowest since the Pakistani Taliban were formed in 2007.

SEOUL – South Korea has detected bird flu in ducks on a poultry farm near Seoul, an agriculture ministry official told Reuters on Monday, the first discovery in four months and a month after the country regained its bird flu-free status.

The case involved a strain known as H5N8, the same type of influenza that occurred last November.

All 11,604 ducks at the infected farm in the city of Icheon, 80 kilometres (50 miles) east of Seoul have been slaughtered, the official said.

South Korea had resumed poultry meat exports to Hong Kong for the first time in nearly two years after it was declared an Avian Influenza-free nation, the agriculture ministry said on March 13.

The bird flu discovery comes amid ongoing concerns about food safety in South Korea, where an outbreak of foot and mouth disease was discovered in pigs in January.

Driven to despair by her daughter’s frequent transformations, a Chinese woman threatened to disown her during a TV show if she does not kick her addiction to plastic surgery.

A popular talk show aired last Thursday by Jiangsu Satellite Television in China showed the desperate 61-year-old mother telling off her daughter, who has had more than 20 cosmetic operations over two years, reported the South China Morning Post and China Times.

Worried about the risks involved in such procedures, the mother told the studio audience in the show which was uploaded on Youtube: “Every time I see her, she looks different. I can hardly recognise her even though I’m her mother.”

She added: “Now my daughter’s face has been totally reshaped, all her extended family say she looks rather like a monster. How can I not be worried?”

Her 29-year-old daughter, Yu Ning, said she spent nearly 800,000 yuan (about S$168,000) on plastic surgery.

Yu, who had a clothing business, also revealed in the programme that she wanted to look like celebrity actress Fan Bingbing, who boasts a milky white complexion, sparkling big eyes, a pointed chin and a nose with a fine bridge.

This was despite her friends already saying that she was “a good-looking girl” before she went under the knife.

Yu first had jaw and nose jobs done in China before heading to Seoul for a dramatic redesign of her face. She also her nose and eyes reconstructed in Seoul.

Unhappy that her jaw had become longish, she underwent a second jaw contouring operation there.

Yu revealed on the show that she planned to have her height extended this year, a procedure that would require her shin bones to be broken so that implants could be inserted to increase her height by several centimetres.

The news made her mother burst into tears immediately, but Yu kept up her smile as a recent surgery had made her lips curl upward permanently, she explained to the audience.

Read also:

Show Luo’s girlfriend gets slammed again – even after admitting having plastic surgery

Local blogger goes for 5th plastic surgery after giving birth

Missing Vietnamese woman had wanted $4,000 for plastic surgery

chenj@sph.com.sg

Chinese mum threatens to disown daughter, a plastic surgery addict

Click on thumbnail to view photos. Source: 

YouTube screengrabs