As Tibetans around the world marked the 58th anniversary of Tibetan Uprising Day, Chinese officials in Beijing vowed to “resolutely strike” against the “Dalai Lama clique’s separatist activities.”

Che Dalha, the newly appointed chairman of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, said Beijing would take “a clear-cut stand against separatism.”

China views the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s Buddhist spiritual leader, as a dangerous separatist. The Nobel Peace laureate denies espousing violence and says he only wants genuine autonomy for Tibet.

Che’s remarks, reported by Reuters, came as Tibetans in Dharamsala, the Indian city that is home to the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan administration-in-exile, held its annual commemoration of the Tibetan people’s protest against Chinese occupation of Tibet that took place in Lhasa in 1959. Beijing refers to the action as a “peaceful liberation.”

“Despite the repression and crackdown, Tibetans in Tibet have been at the forefront of the Tibetan freedom struggle,” said Lobsang Sangay, political leader of the Tibetan administration-in-exile. “Even today as we speak, there is a major military presence in Lhasa … making it reminiscent of a war zone.”

Surveillance, displays of force

International human rights groups and exiles routinely condemn what they call China’s oppressive rule in Tibetan areas. They say pervasive surveillance and displays of military force are being used to intimidate and quell dissent.

Since 2009, protests have included 145 Tibetans in Tibetan areas self-immolating, calling for “Freedom for Tibet” and “Return of His Holiness the Dalai Lama to Tibet.”

Elsewhere on Friday, from Sydney to San Francisco to Tokyo, Tibetans and supporters marked the anniversary of what is known as the March 10th Uprising.

Indian police arrested 150 Tibetan activists affiliated with the Tibetan Youth Congress as they protested at the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi.

In Minneapolis, the City Council was expected to vote Friday on a resolution in support of Tibetan self-determination, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. In a letter Wednesday, the Chinese consul general in Chicago expressed “deep concerns” about the council’s plans to declare March 10 as Tibet Day.

Some cities, including Richmond, in the San Francisco Bay Area, flew the Tibetan national flag, which is banned in Tibet, to mark the event.

The anniversary commemorations coincided with China’s annual National People’s Conference in Beijing.

Beijing meeting

On Tuesday, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with official delegates from the Tibetan Autonomous Region in Beijing, according to state-run China Tibet Online News. He said Tibet must implement President Xi Jinping’s 2012 comment, which has since been a major political slogan in Tibet: “To govern the nation, we must protect the borders, and to protect the borders, we must first stabilize Tibet.”

Li also talked about the importance of economic development in achieving stability in Tibet.

VOA’s Tsering Wangyal in New Delhi contributed to this report, which originated with VOA’s Tibetan Service.
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Faced with a shrinking pool of visas, the U.S. embassy in Kabul has started turning away Afghan military translators and other Afghan nationals seeking to immigrate to the United States through a decade-old special visa program.

A State Department official said Friday the embassy stopped scheduling new special immigrant visa interviews for Afghans on March 1 after concluding that it had enough unused visas only for those who are already in the final stages of the application process.

As of March 5, only 1,437 special immigrant visas were available for Afghans, while there were more than 15,000 Afghans in various stages of the application process, the official said, adding that the embassy expects to exhaust its pool of visas by June 1.

“The department regularly makes adjustments to our visa processing in order to ensure that we do not exceed the visa numbers allocated by Congress,” the official said, requesting anonymity to discuss the change in policy. “We do not expect to resume scheduling appointments unless new SIV numbers are allocated by Congress.”

While the official said the U.S. remains committed to supporting Afghans that have helped the U.S. mission at great personal risk, advocates for Afghan refugees slammed the decision.

“This devastating development means that thousands of trusted allies will remain in danger, waiting for Congress to allocate visas that were clearly needed months ago,” said Betsy Fisher, policy director for the International Refugee Assistance Project in New York.

The Special Immigrant Visa program was created by Congress in 2008 for Afghan military translators, but was later expanded to cover any Afghan who could demonstrate “at least one year of faithful and valuable service” to or on behalf of the U.S. government.

With tens of thousands of U.S. forces serving in Afghanistan, the program long enjoyed bipartisan support, with Congress extending it annually and authorizing 7,000 visas in 2015 and 2016.

But with the U.S. combat mission winding down and anti-immigrant sentiment on the rise during the presidential campaign, opposition to the program grew. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a longtime critic of the program, led an effort last year against increasing the number of special immigrant visas to Afghans. 

As part of a compromise, Congress extended the program for four years but allocated just 1,500 visas for the 2017 fiscal year.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a long-time advocate of the visa program in Congress who had unsuccessfully pushed for 2,500 visas for 2017, said she’ll soon introduce legislation for additional visas and “use every available opportunity to move this through Congress.”

“Allowing this program to lapse sends the message to our allies in Afghanistan that the United States has abandoned them,” Shaheen said in a statement issued late Thursday.

Julie Tarallo, a spokeswoman for Senator John McCain, another strong proponent of the program, did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

Word of the halted visa program comes just five days after President Donald Trump signed a second executive order limiting travel. While the order blocks the issuance of travel visas to people from six countries, Afghanistan is not one of them. However, the order does cut refugee admissions by more than half, to 50,000.

The first travel order, barring travelers from seven majority-Muslim countries, was halted in the courts February 3, a week after it was issued. Even though the order was stayed, at least one Afghan family that arrived in the U.S. under a Special Immigrant Visa was detained.

A former Afghan military translator, his wife and three children were detained for more than 40 hours after arriving at Los Angeles International Airport on March 2, according to IRAP. The translator was placed in detention in Orange County, while his family was booked on a flight to Texas where they were to be held in detention.

All five were released after IRAP and other refugee advocates asked the U.S. district court in Los Angeles to intervene on their behalf.

IRAP did not disclose the translator’s name for security reasons.

Nike Ching at the U.S. State Department contributed to this report.
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A top Chinese regulator says China assesses all applications for trademarks equally, including those submitted by now-President Donald Trump.

The chief of China’s State Administration for Industry and Commerce, Zhang Mao, said Friday the process by which Trump was granted preliminary approval for 38 trademarks “strictly conforms” to regulations.

Critics fear foreign governments might gain leverage from Trump’s global portfolio of brands. Democrats in Congress were critical of Trump after The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the potentially valuable trademarks had been granted, raising questions of conflict of interest.

Zhang, whose administration oversees the country’s trademark office, says all domestic and foreign trademark applications are evaluated uniformly and the system is transparent.

The recent provisional approval of Trump’s trademarks came at a pace that some experts view as unusually quick.

 
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The Islamic State militant group claimed this week’s devastating attack on a hospital in Kabul that killed at least 30 people. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem explores what this attack shows about IS’s changing tactics and capability in Afghanistan.
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A growing number of South Korean companies are feeling the impact from China’s backlash over Seoul’s decision to begin deployment of a U.S.-made missile defense system at home. Chinese employees of South Korean companies and those working for related industries are also getting caught up in the diplomatic spat.

Lotte Group, the South Korean company that provided the military with a plot of land for the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, has already had more than 50 of its stores closed in China.

A spokesperson for the company told VOA that 55 of Lotte’s stores have been closed, impacting 7,000 of the company’s Chinese employees. Lotte said it employs some 20,000 in China. The company has around 115 outlets and facilities in China.

Although company sales records attribute only a small portion of Lotte’s overall sales to its biggest overseas market – China – the country is a major destination for South Korean trade and Lotte is not the only company being impacted.

Backlash

The backlash is impacting cosmetics, tourism and other sectors as Chinese authorities step up their use of administrative related measures and behind the scenes prodding to put pressure on Seoul.

This week, a South Korean and U.S. joint venture between Lotte Group and American candy giant Hershey Co. confirmed that it was ordered to stop production because of safety violations.

Royal Caribbean, a U.S. cruise operator, said in a post on its Chinese website that it had changed its China based cruises to remove visits to popular South Korean resorts because of what it called “recent developments regarding the situation in South Korea.”

Some airline operators in China have suddenly halted routes to South Korea. According to a statement on the website of South Korea’s Eastar Jet, starting next Wednesday, flights between several Chinese cities – including Harbin, Shenyang and Ningbo – and the South Korean city of Cheongju and tourist hotspot of Jeju, will be canceled.

The notice said flights will not resume until October 28, 2017. The statement listed “worsening China/South Korea relations” as the reason for the change.

The head of Xiamen Airlines, Che Shanglun, told reporters on the sidelines of high-level political meetings in Beijing that some passengers were canceling or postponing their trips to South Korea.

“We haven’t reduced flights, but passenger numbers have fallen… by about 10-20 percent daily, Che said.

So far, state media has largely led the push for sanctions against South Korea. The Chinese government warned that the public could respond, but also stressed that law abiding foreign firms are welcome in China and will be protected.

The government’s ambiguous stance seems to be a cover for its aggressive efforts behind the scenes to make South Korea feel the pinch and the Chinese public believe that the outrage is coming from the ground up.

But, clearly that is far from the case. While there have been some small and sporadic protests. Public outrage over the missile deployment in South Korea seems muted in comparison to the public outcry over a territorial dispute with Japan in 2012 over the Senkaku or Diaoyu islands as they are called in China.

Apathy and sarcasm

On Friday, at one Lotte Mart in central Beijing that is still open, it was business as usual. Customers were coming and going – both young and old. Some pulling grocery carts, others with hands full of tasty pastry treats.

None were willing to talk about the dispute or comment on what the government and some online argue is widespread public anger over the decision.

A security guard was on the lookout at the door and two others sat nearby at the bottom of an escalator that leads down to the below ground shopping mart. Their presence appeared to be part of what has been described as an increased security presence at stores in case protesters gather outside. But none were seen.

The store’s general manager was unwilling to comment  neither on the ongoing dispute nor on concerns he might have about the fate of the store. One woman said that if the store did get closed down she would just go elsewhere.

She did not have any comment about the ongoing dispute, that many online claim has their blood boiling.

Pictures of protests outside some stores have been posted online, but on social media there were just as many sarcastic remarks about the push to apply punishing sanctions on South Korea as there were calls to do more.

One supportive comment about a news story detailing the impact on South Korea’s hotel industry called on all brave Chinese to stand up and not buy goods from any country that is unfriendly to China and to stop traveling to Japan and South Korea. A response said: “What right do you have to hold others hostage?” Another comment quipped: “Please tell me, which country is friendly to China?”

The comments were found on the popular online news portal Netease and in response to an article about worsening China/South Korea ties and its impact on the hotel industry in South Korea. The report said that in response to the deployment hotels in South Korea saw a 30 percent drop in reservations and that hotels affiliated with Lotte were leading the way.

Still one reader, who realized that means 70 percent were still keeping their reservations, asked: “Why are there still people traveling to South Korea?” One respondent shot back: “Because South Korea is a safe place to visit, people are cultured and well mannered, and goods are cheap. At home, tourists are getting ripped off.”

Many were skeptical that the calls for a boycott would last, noting that the last time the Chinese were rallying against Japanese goods, the push did not last long.
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Japan’s Self Defense Force will withdraw from the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan when its troops return home around the end of May, closing a controversial episode in the prime minister’s push to expand the military’s overseas role.

The primary task of Japan’s 350-strong military contingent, based in Juba for the past five years, has been to build infrastructure in the war-torn country.

Oil-rich South Sudan has torn by civil war since 2013, when President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer. Fighting since has increasingly fractured the world’s youngest country along ethnic lines, leading the U.N. to warn of the risk of genocide.

“As South Sudan’s country-building is entering a new phase, we can draw a line under the activities of the self-defense forces,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told reporters at his residence in Tokyo on Friday.

Japan would continue providing development aid, however, he added.

The withdrawal will ease political pressure on Abe, who had vowed to resign if any troops were killed, as his support among voters erodes after his wife was linked to a school accused of involvement in a murky land deal.

In a move that stoked controversy in Japan, the contingent was allowed, since November, to mount rescue missions and escort U.N. staff and personnel of non-government bodies (NGO).

That was in line with a 2015 security law pushed by Abe that expanded the SDF’s overseas role, a change critics say has weakened Japan’s war-renouncing constitution.
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The Islamic State militant group claimed this week’s devastating attack on a hospital in Kabul that killed at least 30 people. VOA’s Ayesha Tanzeem explores what this attack shows about IS’ changing tactics and capability in Afghanistan.
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Park Geun-hye, the recently ousted president of South Korea, was the country’s first female head of state.

Park was a longstanding member of the nation’s political community. She grew up in the Blue House, the presidential mansion, as the daughter of late dictator Park Chung-hee, who ruled from 1961 to 1979.

Park served as the nation’s first lady for five years after her mother, a popular first lady, was shot to death by a North Korean agent. The assassin was aiming for the president. Park carried out first lady political duties until her father was assassinated by his own spy chief in 1979.

Park’s father was widely accused of suppressing dissent and abusing human rights. Park Geun-hye has said she regrets those aspects of her father’s iron-fisted rule.

Before becoming president, Park served five terms as a lawmaker and had an unsuccessful run for president in the campaign before her triumphant turn.

Influence-peddling scandal

The stunning and sudden collapse of Park’s presidency was caused by allegations that a multimillion dollar influence-peddling scandal was being run out of the Blue House.

In December, 234 members of the 300-seat National Assembly voted to impeach Park.

The president’s image as a strong and incorruptible leader crumbled under allegations her longtime friend, Choi Soon-sil, secretly exploited her close relationship with Park to force Korean conglomerates to donate some $65 million to two dubious foundations, while at the same time funneling some of the funds and lucrative side contracts to companies owned by herself and her friends.

Park maintained her innocence

Park met with her Cabinet after the impeachment vote and refused to resign. However, she said she would abide by the outcome of the impeachment vote and plead her case before the Constitutional Court.

She has maintained the actions she took were in the national interest and has insisted she never personally benefited during her years of public service. She offered three public apologies for not being aware that some of her close associates may have been involved in some wrongdoing.
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