A Pakistani lawmaker and deputy leader of a conservative religious party, accused of links with militant groups, has invited the Pakistani Taliban to join his Islamist political party.

As a three-day gathering of religious devotees and political followers got under way Thursday, the secretary general of Pakistani’s Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Abdul Ghafoor Haidari, called on the Taliban in Pakistan to lay down arms and pursue its objectives through political means.

Speaking to reporters the previous day in the northwestern restive city of Peshawar, Haidari said, “We invite them [Pakistani Taliban] to join JUI-F and achieve their objectives with the help of a peaceful and political struggle.”

Over a quarter million people, including foreign guests, were expected to attend the gathering in Naushera, near Peshawar, which began to celebrate the centenary of the conservative party.

“We have sent invitations to 52 countries and have also invited ambassadors from Muslim and European Union countries,” Jalil Jan, a spokesperson for JUI-F, told VOA’s Deewa service. “Guests from 20 countries have already arrived. More guests are arriving today and tomorrow morning.”

The guest list also includes the deputy Imam of the Kaaba — the Muslim holy place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Headed by Maulana Fazal-ur-Rahman, JUI-F is an offshoot of a Muslim Sunni clerics’ political movement founded in British India by the Deobandi madrassa in 1919, which opposed the formation of a separate homeland for Indian Muslims — today’s Pakistan.

Rahman’s father, Mufti Mahmoud, was one of the leading members who parted ways with the party in 1945 and supported the creation of Pakistan.

The party has been a strong advocate of Sharia law in the country and has opposed liberal initiatives in the parliament.

According to Haidari, the gathering is being held to demonstrate to the world that there is no space for extremism in Islam, Pakistani media said.

“Islam’s revered beliefs cannot be made controversial. It clearly states that the killing of one person means the murder of all humanity,” said Haidari, who is also the vice chairman of Pakistan’s senate.

Taliban agreement seen as unlikely

Analysts say the Islamist party’s message is unlikely to appeal to Taliban members.

“This will not make TTP [Pakistani Taliban] surrender their arms or leave their movement and ideology,” Amir Rana, a security and political analyst in Islamabad, told VOA. “Those who have joined the Taliban might not come back.”

Peshawar-based political analyst Khadim Hussain said the Taliban does not believe in Pakistani government institutions or its constitution, nor do they accept democracy.

“How can Taliban join the political scenario of Pakistan while having such ideologies against the state?” Hussain told VOA.

Hussain added that unless the Islamist party condemns all forms of terrorist groups, including those that are fighting to topple the government in neighboring Afghanistan, its message would fall on deaf ears. JUI-F has historically supported the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“Fazal-ur-Rahman believes that Afghan Taliban are fighting for freedom or imposing Sharia in Afghanistan and it’s justified,” Hussain said. “But on the other hand, he has a completely different stance on Taliban active against the state in Pakistan. For JUI, if Taliban is used against Afghanistan, that’s right, but if they fight against the state of Pakistan, it’s wrong.”

JUI-F has strongly opposed American drone strikes targeting militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas, viewing it as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty.

Following the 2011 U.S. raid in Abbottabad that killed al-Qaida’s leader Osama bin Laden, the JUI-F condemned the drone strikes, calling on the government to stop the passage of supplies to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan.
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Chung Young-chul takes a drag on his cigarette and watches as wild ducks fly across rice fields and land on a reservoir in this remote farming village. He’s among nearly 2,000 people — ex-gangsters, ex-convicts, former prostitutes, orphans — who were once held here, forced to work without pay for years and are now largely forgotten.

“Some died after they were beaten and got sick. Others died of malnutrition or in accidents,” said Chung, 74. “It was worse than a prison camp … We were starving slaves.”

They were victims of social engineering orchestrated in the 1960s by dictator Park Chung-hee, late father of just-ousted President Park Geun-hye. His 18-year rule was marked by both a dramatic economic rise and enormous human rights abuses.

He cleared city streets of so-called vagrants and put them to work on land and road projects as free labor to help rebuild the country after the 1950-53 Korean War. The victims say they’ve never received a proper investigation or compensation.

In Chung’s village in Seosan city, about 130 kilometers (80 miles) south of Seoul, about 1,770 people were made to work without pay in land reclamation projects. They lived in army-style barracks. Some were ordered to marry female inmates, mostly ex-prostitutes sent from government-run shelters, in two rounds of mass weddings. Ex-workers say local officials told them repeatedly that they would be given some of the land they reclaimed, but that never happened.

Only about a dozen of the workers, mostly in their 70s, still live in this village; the rest left or have died. Those remaining pay rent to authorities to farm rice on the land they reclaimed. After repeated legal defeats, some have accepted a recent government proposal to buy the land at market prices in installments over 20 years, though they know they’ll probably die before they complete the payments.

They’ve always been poor and falling rice prices have made them poorer. Deeply in debt, Chung said he and others are pushing to file joint petitions with as many government offices as possible to appeal for help again.

“We have no money to hire lawyers,” he said. “We are the only ones abandoned by South Korea’s legal system.”

Past media reports during Park Chung-hee’s rule, which ended with his assassination in 1979, largely portrayed the people here as making a fresh start with government help. The true nature of their story has been shielded from the public; official records are limited and many workers won’t talk about what they believe were their dark past.

“Governments in South Korea have been very indifferent to them,” said Kim Aram at the Seoul-based Institute for Korean Historical Studies, one of the few experts on the issue. “Now, it’s important to let the people know about the truth of this story because it’s completely unknown to them.”

Chung was left alone at an early age. A North Korean bomb killed his mother in the Korean War, and he was separated from the rest of his family when he fell off the roof of a train carrying refugees.

He worked as a shoeshine boy with other orphans in the southeastern port city of Busan, then became a member of the “Apache” gang, collecting protection money from bars and teahouses.

“We felt strange when we spent a day without fighting” other gangsters, he said.

Chung’s life changed after Park seized power in a 1961 coup and attempted to “purify” society by rounding up people deemed vagrants and putting them to work.

In 1962, Chung said marines carrying rifles smashed down his shack door and took him to a rehabilitation center where hundreds were detained. They were told they were now members of the Republic of Korea Juvenile Pioneering Group.

Chung was sent to a land reclamation site in southern South Korea. About six months later, he volunteered to move to Seosan because he hoped he’d have a better chance to escape. But that was virtually impossible. His supervisors, senior inmates working under a civilian leader, stood guard every 30-50 meters (100-160 feet) and watched inmates even when they went to the toilet.

Each day they used shovels, pickaxes, carts and their bare hands to cultivate reclaimed land. They built waterways and a reservoir.

Most meals were only a bowl of rice and a thin soup made of dried Chinese cabbage leaves. They caught and ate frogs, snakes and rats. At night, they were often ordered to recite Park’s lengthy “revolution promises.” Those who stammered were beaten.

Chung likened his experience to the horrible accounts by escapees from North Korea’s notorious political prison camps. “Some don’t believe what they’ve testified but we trust their testimonies by 100 percent because that’s what we had endured, too,” he said.

Some of the South Korean inmates died, through illness, beatings or accidents, but there is no official data on fatalities. Local officials reached by The Associated Press said they have no information on the operations, and many of them acknowledged they have never heard about the ROK Juvenile Pioneering Group. But a handful of experts like Kim Aram and local villager Kim Tae-young, who works with remaining inmates on land disputes, said the suffering was tense.

By the time the pioneering group was dissolved — which came as Park’s government shifted to export-driven industrialization — control had loosened and many inmates had already left.

Ex-inmates said they had cultivated about 357 hectares (882 acres), but that it was too salty and uneven. Seosan officials “tentatively” distributed the land to the roughly 300 remaining inmates and other poor people in the village between 1968 and 1971, according to farmers and villagers in Seosan.

Some simply sold their parcels — for as little as a sack of potatoes, Chung says — but others cultivated the land. By the time ex-inmates began harvesting rice, the government imposed rent for using state-owned property, Chung and other villagers said. They staged a legal fight, but a local district court ruled against them in 2000 in a verdict upheld by higher-level courts.

In 2011, the state-run Anti-Corruption & Civil Rights Commission recommended that the government lower the prices of the land to reflect ex-inmate’s previous labor but a ministry in charge of government-owned land used the market rates.

There are 278 families who farm the reclaimed land in Seosan, including about a dozen ex-inmates, including Chung and Sung Jae-yong.

“It’s really shameful … but I’m paying the installments with the help of my children,” said Sung, who lowered his head and wept. “I’ve been enduring it until now because I wanted my hard work to pay off. But things have become terrible.”

Chung called Park Chung-hee a “gangster” who ruined his life.

“He captured us and put us here. So he should have taken responsibility for our lives to the end,” he said, tears rolling down his cheeks.

 
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Indian police say they have arrested three Hindus suspected of beating to death a Muslim man whom they accused of transporting cows for slaughter.

Fifteen Muslims were brutally beaten Saturday in Rajasthan state in the latest violence by Hindu vigilante groups over treatment of cows, which Hindus they consider sacred. One man died later of his injuries.

Police said the animals were dairy cows that the men had purchased at a cattle fair.

Police officer Rahul Prakash said Thursday that three suspects were arrested Wednesday night and six others were being sought by police.

Hindus account for 80 percent of India’s 1.3 billion people. In many Indian states, including Rajasthan, the slaughtering of cows and selling of beef is banned.

 
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Mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of a middle school student in China’s southwestern Sichuan province has triggered large protests and sparked an outcry online, with demands for a full accounting of how the boy died. Others have focused their attention on police and their heavy-handed handling of the case.

Last Saturday, the body of a 14-year-old student, surnamed Zhao, was found outside his dormitory at Taifu Middle School in Luzhou with numerous bruises and broken limbs. Family members suspect Zhao was beaten to death, but authorities have ruled out homicide.

You Xiaohong, the mother of the deceased boy, is reportedly seeking the help of an independent forensic pathologist to find out the cause of her son’s death.

VOA has been unable to reach You for comment and reports suggest she and others are under surveillance.

Luzhou police announced late Wednesday an autopsy will soon be performed, but did not say whether a third-party pathologist would be allowed to be present.

Cover up?

During the weekend, local authorities were quick to rule out the possibility of a murder, determining Zhao fell off a school building. Their conclusion was backed by the dormitory supervisor and one of Zhao’s roommates, who told local media there were neither signs of break-in nor any noise of fighting to disrupt their sleep that night.

The supervisor said Zhao, who had a fever, remained awake in bed at around 2:00 am when she checked on him again.

Authorities initially did not allow the family to examine the victim’s body, a move that angered the family and thousands of local residents, who quickly staged protests outside the school and the morgue to demand access and safety for their own children.

That was when video clips showing Zhao’s severely-bruised body, and alleged sightings of him being beaten up before his death, went viral on social media, triggering waves of criticism online and speculation over the boy’s mysterious death.

Some suggested that Zhao was beaten to death by a group of five bullies, who had asked him for about $1,500 in protection fees. Others suggested that among those five bullies are the sons of the school principal, local police chief, and township chief, who shared a room with Zhao.

Truth, justice

“All we need is truth,” a user of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblogging, wrote, saying this is a tragedy that may happen to anyone.

Another user, surnamed Hsiao, complained many of her postings surrounding the student’s death have been deleted, asking, “Why is it so hard for the justice to prevail in China? How shall we love you, our mother country of China?”

The other user, named One Bullet, questioned, “Why the cover-up if the local government has had nothing to hide?”

There is no way to independently confirm the online postings.

It appears authorities have put in place stability-maintenance measures, that include heavy censorship of online comments due to the hashtag “Luzhou Taifu Middle School” receiving millions of page views.

One social media user declined to speak with VOA, saying he had already been warned after forwarding a video posting alleged sightings of Zhao being beaten up before his death.

As of Thursday, the incident has remained as the top-trending topic on freeweibo.com, a website that captures censored social media posts.

Vowing to clamp down on rumor mongering, local police confirmed Tuesday that four people were arrested and charged with spreading “fake information” about the student’s death.

Tight security

Several local residents told VOA more than 100 protesters have also been detained after an army of 2,000 police officers was dispatched to tighten the small town’s security.

They also confirmed many residents were asked to sign a letter, endorsing the authorities’ assessment that Zhao fell off the building, but many refused to do so and declined knowledge of a rumored payment of $7.50 each in return.

“Many parents complained about the collection of protection fees by school bullies, which they said the school has turned a deaf ear to,” a restaurant owner nearby told VOA.

Observers have called for the local government to ease its stability-maintenance policy, arguing only solid facts can put an end to rumors or public distrust.

In response to the incident and protests the school was closed for the past two days. Classes will resume Friday.

To ease the public outcry, several lawyers have offered to represent the victim’s family in future legal proceedings, which they say will expose the truth if fairness and transparency are ensured.

Lu Siwei, a lawyer from the province’s capital city of Chengdu, urged local authorities to allow the victim’s family to speak freely with their own choice of legal representation, independent forensic autopsy agencies, and witnesses.

The provincial government’s public security bureau should also take over the investigation and make public findings periodically to clear doubt, the lawyer wrote on his Weibo account.
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Strong trade ties between the United States and nations in Southeast Asia are under a cloud as a U.S. investigation into trade imbalances gets underway. Regional governments say the apparent policy shift has spurred concern and anxiety.

A 90-day investigation by the U.S. Commerce Department of countries with large trade surpluses with the United States follows President Donald Trump’s call for a crackdown on “foreign importers that cheat.” Trump said the shift will result in a “historic reversal” in U.S. trade policy.

“While we’ve seen an improvement in the trade figures between January and February, we continue to be very focused on eliminating our nation’s trade imbalance,” said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. “This administration is determined to achieve free and fair trade, to protect hard working Americans, and to grow our economy.”

Among the Asian economies singled out by Trump were those of China, Japan, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia, India, Taiwan, Indonesia and Vietnam.

Analysts say the review may mark a major change in Asia’s trading relationship with the United States.

Campaign rhetoric

After World War II, Southeast Asia’s emerging economies, beginning with Japan, looked to the U.S. economy to spur export led growth — key to the region’s progress in lifting millions out of poverty.

But charges that some trade policies, particularly China’s, had damaged the U.S. economy were a prominent feature of Trump campaign rallies.

Krystal Tan, an economist with the Singapore-based Capital Economics, said the trade investigation has led to concerns and uncertainties across the region.

“At this stage it’s still quite difficult to see what kind of measures the U.S. might want to take. It does look like countries that are probably most nervous about potentially being named currency manipulators are [South] Korea and Taiwan,” Tan told VOA.

The United States argues that currency manipulators deliberately keep their currency low in value against the U.S. dollar in order to boost their exports.

Taiwan trade officials say the trading relationship with the U.S. is not a hostile one, as over 80 percent of Taiwan’s exports to the U.S. are intermediate goods — those sent to the U.S. for final assembly.

David Hsu, deputy director general of Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) told local media the trading relationship with the U.S. was “mutually beneficial.”

Taiwan’s main concern is the potential imposition of sanctions following the review.

Tan says South Korea and Taiwan, to avoid sanctions, will need to open their markets to more U.S. products.

Malaysia’s International Trade and Industry Minister, Ong Ka Chuan, told local media Malaysia was neither responsible for, nor taking advantage of, the U.S. trade deficit.

Ong said any sanctions could impact American manufacturers in Malaysia, such as Intel and Western Digital.

“If Trump were to punish us for this [trade surplus] the American firms will be ones dealt a severe blow,” he said.

Kuala Lumpur-based RHB Research chief economist Peck Boon Soon said the U.S. policy revision left Malaysian business cautious on the outlook.

“Yes, certainly it remains very uncertain until [Trump] really implements those policies and whether those policies would be able to be implemented. We are watching these things quite closely and we would be waiting for more developments before we decide what to do with our forecasts on exports,” Peck told VOA.

In late 2016, export growth boosted Malaysia’s economic growth rate to 4.5 percent — “the strongest in the four quarters.”

The United States is Thailand’s third largest trading partner after China and Japan. Two-way trade reached $36.5 billion in 2016, with $24.49 billion from Thai exports. The trade surplus with the U.S was $12.4 billion.

Major exports to the United States include machinery, electrical appliances, electronics and parts, rubber products and gems and jewelry.

Both Malaysia and Vietnam were key participants to the 12 nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a key component of President Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” policy intended to counter China’s growing political and economic influence.

TPP withdrawal

Trump withdrew the United States from the TPP soon after taking office.

This week, Vietnam’s Prime Minister, Nguyen Xuan Phuc, criticized the U.S. policy shift, saying the trade policies would have a “huge impact” on Vietnam’s export driven economy.

Carl Thayer, a political scientist with the University of New South Wales, says Phuc’s comments were “guarded”, but with Hanoi looking to build trading ties under China’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

“Vietnam had its heart and soul on the TPP. They have a massive surplus with the U.S. It almost equals their massive deficit with China. But there’s not very much they can do, they’re being pragmatic and looking at the RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership,” Thayer said.

Thayer said Vietnam has banked on a strong U.S. presence in Asia as a counterweight to China’s regional influence, especially in the South China Sea.

“The more Trump goes his own way Vietnam has got to do a five power balance with India, Russia, Japan, as well as China and the U.S. weakness; the U.S. side. So Vietnam has a harder time preventing being sucked into China’s orbit — in all of this — it needs a strong U.S. action,” he said.

He says bilateral relations with Vietnam, built up over the past two decades, are a casualty of the trade policy shift.

“Yes, it gets worse for Vietnam because they can’t rely on the U.S. They have no idea what [the U.S.] is going to do,” he said.
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Afghan president Ashraf Ghani’s historic two-day visit to Indonesia was largely focused on economic ties between the young democracies.

Indonesian president Joko “Jokowi” Widodo promised to build a large hospital and Islamic center in Afghanistan in addition to signing several agreements for further cooperation.

The leaders also discussed working together on deradicalization and extremism.

But there seems to have been no mention of the nearly 8,000 Afghan refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia.

Afghans, particularly ethnic Hazara, a persecuted group that is thought to be of Mongolian or Central Asian descent, make up about half of all refugees and asylum seekers in Indonesia.

Many originally hoped to continue on boats to Australia, but since that country closed its maritime borders in 2014, large groups of Hazara refugees have coalesced in West Java and Sumatra.

A few days before arriving in Indonesia, President Ghani was met with large Hazara protests in Canberra, Australia’s capital. No such protest transpired in Jakarta, but several Afghan refugees and humanitarian actors expressed dismay that the subject was ignored during the state visit.

Hardline stance on emigrants

President Ghani, a Columbia University-educated development expert, has expressed little concern for Afghan citizens who leave as either migrants or refugees.

“I have no sympathy,” he told the BBC in 2016. “We have spent hundreds of millions of dollars [on people] who want to leave under the slightest pressure.” He has called on Afghans to rebuild their war-torn country, although many have pointed out that Ghani’s own children live in the United States.

“He is terrible on the issue of refugees,” said Justin, a young Hazara refugee living in West Java. “He lives in an amazing castle in Afghanistan. He never can understand our lives.” “I’m sure that he will say something to Indonesia’s government like ‘please send back our people,’” said Justin, referring to Ghani’s calls for repatriation. “I guarantee that Afghanistan is absolutely unsafe for me. If I go back, I will die.”

Hazaras are a Shi’a Muslim group who live in the majority-Sunni countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They are said to be of Mongol or Turkic descent, and look visibly different from other ethnic groups in those countries, which has made them an easy target for sectarian violence, most recently from the Taliban. Hazaras have lived in Afghanistan at least since the 16th century.

Ghani has included several Hazaras in his administration, including his Second Vice President, Mohammad Sarwar Danish. Ghani himself is a Pashtun, the country’s largest ethnic group.

But Hazaras who remain in Afghanistan are concerned about both ongoing persecution in the nation at large and stunted development in Hazara provinces. In a 2016 human rights report, the U.S. State Department wrote that “the Taliban continued to target and kidnap members of the Hazara ethnic community, executing Hazara hostages in certain instances.” And last year, the TUTAP power line, which would have improved electricity and infrastructure, was rerouted away from the Hazara-majority Bamiyan province.

Afghan diaspora in crisis

Afghan refugees, like all refugees in Indonesia, can’t work or go to school, so they lead listless lives between registering with UNHCR as refugees and eventually being resettled to a third country like the United States, which can take years if it happens at all. In the meantime, many Hazaras have set up their own, unaccredited schools and community welfare projects like the Refugee Women Support Group in Cisarua, West Java.

Resettlement prospects for refugees nearly everywhere have diminished this year, as the United States instituted a temporary moratorium on resettlement and most Western countries in Europe and Oceania decreased their annual quotas. Afghanistan was long the world’s biggest source of refugees, until Syria outpaced it in 2014 due to its ongoing civil war.

Resurgent Taliban

Despite huge international aid and no end in sight for American military involvement, Afghanistan has struggled to curb the Taliban insurgency. In fact, the group has reorganized after its leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur was killed in a drone strike and is embracing an assertive, coherent identity, according to the Afghan Analyst Network. This means, among other things, a likely continuance of minority persecution in Afghanistan in the near future.

Even large cities and regional capitals, which Australian government once argued were safe for Hazaras when it forcibly deported some in 2014, are insecure.

“There is no hope of life back in Afghanistan for Hazara minorities,” said Mohammad Baqir, a Hazara refugee in Jakarta who was disappointed with Ghani’s omission of refugee rights during his visit. “Day after day a new group with a different name but the same objective — to eradicate the Hazara from every corner of the world — arises in Afghanistan with no obstacles from the government. We refugees prefer this life with an uncertain future over that life with no future.”
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