North Korea’s parliament convened Tuesday, with the country’s leader, Kim Jong Un, taking the center seat.

The parliament meeting came amid heightened tensions on the peninsula, with the United States and South Korea conducting their biggest-ever military exercises and the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier heading to the area in a show of American strength. North Korea, for its part, has recently test-launched a long-range ballistic missile, and experts say it could be preparing for its sixth nuclear test.

The Supreme People’s Assembly, nominally the highest organ of government, usually meets once or twice a year. It consists of approximately 600 deputies from around the country who usually confirm new domestic policies, changes to the constitution, budget decisions, laws and official appointments.

Economic, organizational matters

Initial reports from state media said the meeting went through various domestic issues, with North Korean Premier Pak Pong Ju speaking about the latest five-year economic plan, which was announced last year. Another closely watched category on the official agenda was organizational issues, which can mean new appointments of officials to senior positions.

According to the North’s state-run Korean Central News Agency, Pak told deputies that the country had “overfulfilled” its goals on virtually all fronts of the economy and marked successes in everything from increased coal production to the development of a “new type of tractor, truck and various high-performance farm implements.”

Pak said that the Cabinet this year was prioritizing improving the people’s standard of living and noted, among other things, the need to solve the “acute shortage of electricity.”

Foreign media are not allowed to attend the meetings.

Like other attendees, Kim was shown on the North Korean news late Tuesday, holding up his assembly membership card to vote on state business.

Anniversary celebrations

This year’s meeting kicks off what are expected to be major celebrations, including a large-scale military parade and fireworks, to mark the 105th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first leader and “eternal president,” and Kim Jong Un’s late grandfather.

Though the details of the April 15 anniversary, known as the “Day of the Sun,” have not been officially confirmed, Pyongyang residents have been out every day, diligently practicing in the city’s squares and parks for their roles in the mass event.

Pyongyang is always extremely sensitive to the annual U.S.-South Korea war games, which it sees as an invasion rehearsal, and has significantly turned up the volume of its rhetoric that war could be on the horizon if it sees any signs of aggression from south of the Demilitarized Zone.

In the capital, however, there has been little sense of urgency, other than that required to get ready for the big events later this week.

Though the North Korean parliament is often dismissed as a rubber stamp group because it tends to approve, rather than formulate, policies and laws, its role is a bit more complex than the facade and the spectacle presented to the nation by state-run media.

Cross section of public

For one thing, the regularity of its meetings is, in itself, a sign of stability.

“The SPA gatherings completely undercut any analysis or prognostications that the country is going to collapse. If they failed to convene an SPA session, that would be an indication that there is a fundamental problem among DPRK elites,” said Michael Madden, editor of the North Korea Leadership Watch website. North Korea’s formal name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“If there was an existential problem with the [ruling] Workers’ Party of Korea and the political culture, then they wouldn’t be convening so many people at one time in Pyongyang,” Madden said.

He said the parliament’s members are a cross-section of the country’s population, and not necessarily a collection of the elites, adding that assembly deputies get an administrative assistant, or “technical secretary,” and receive a stipend for their work.

They are generally brought into the capital for a week of tours and visits to politically important sites that pay homage to the Kim family.

Back home, Madden added, being an assembly member also has its own perks and “bragging rights.”
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In a series of triptychs, Associated Press photographers in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo capture the ways people in each country interact with the blossoms. Each set of images focuses on a theme: architecture, children, couples, picnics and others. The combined photos are notable as much for their similarities as their differences.
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Police in China’s southwestern Sichuan province have carried out an autopsy to finalize its investigation into the mysterious death of a middle school student, ruling out the possibility of homicide or campus violence.

But some observers and residents remain skeptical, questioning the investigation’s credibility after authorities there had once attempted to hush the incident up and put the boy’s family under surveillance.     

Liao Yaozhong, a lawyer from Hunan province, called the police autopsy into question.

“The ensuing investigation was done in a closed environment, which is hardly convincing,” Liao told VOA over the phone.

“Now that this has become the focus of public attention, it should have had been investigated in an open way in order to ensure credibility” with the presence of independent forensic pathologists or lawyers of the family’s own choice, he added.

Last week, Liao was in talks with the boy’s father, Zhao Tingxue, via WeChat about legal representation, who, however, told the lawyer that his family was under heavy pressure from local officials. Since then, Liao said he has never heard back from senior Zhao.

On April 1, the body of Zhao’s 14-year-old son, Zhao Xin, was found outside his dormitory at Taifu Middle School in Luzhou with bruises all over his body and broken limbs. Family members suspect that Zhao was beaten to death, but authorities ruled out homicide on the same day.

Detailed investigation report

After days of large protests and a public outcry online, the police released a more detailed report on Friday after an autopsy was performed with the family’s consent.

Authorities maintained that junior Zhao had died from falling off the dormitory building, according to the report posted to the police Weibo account.  

Its findings showed the boy climbed out of the window of his room on the fifth floor as one of his slipper prints was found on the stand near the windowsill and another on the overhang of the building’s third floor as well as finger prints on the concrete wall before he landed on the ground

An autopsy further found that the boy suffered serious internal bleeding from the fall, which the police said explains the bruises on his back and broken limbs. But no open wounds were found that would have suggested he had been beaten before his death, the report added.

The police also interviewed more than 150 people, including his teachers, roommates and the dorm supervisor.

The school insisted the dormitory building remains locked every night after 10 pm and there was no sign of break-in the night Zhao died. Also, with thin walls and room doors that can’t be locked, any fighting would have had been easily discovered by others, yet no one in the dorm reported any noise that night.

But Zhao, who had a fever, did dream about being beaten up by fellow students at around 11 pm, when his nightmare caused a brief stir in the dormitory, the report said.

One of Zhao’s roommates told the police that he was next woken up at 1 am by Zhao, who asked for his company to go to the bathroom. But he was too slow to get up and went back to sleep after hearing Zhao had come out of the bathroom.

The dorm supervisor also reiterated that Zhao remained awake in bed at around 2 am when she checked on his fever again.

The police further clarified what it called a series of groundless rumors, which have been circulating online.

Skepticism remains

In spite of the police’s full account of how the boy died, some of the 66,000 netizens, who have read the report, remain unconvinced.

One Weibo user said the police needed to provide more solid evidence to prove the boy jumped off the building himself, as pictures provided by the police are vague and indirect. Another urged the police to release relevant video clips as there appeared to be surveillance cameras installed on the campus.

Some residents whom VOA spoke to either claimed no knowledge of the report or said that they took the police’s report skeptically.

“I feel it fails to clear many doubts. But anyway, [the boy’s body] has now been cremated,” Mr. Wang told VOA, adding that “I can only say that I half-believe, half-doubt. Many of our neighbors still find it hard to believe.”

Other residents also lamented that justice will never prevail.

“We will be arrested or charged with rumor mongering if we continue to argue that the boy was beaten to death,” a local resident told the New Tang Dynasty TV anonymously.

Authorities appear to have put in place stability-maintenance measures, including heavy censorship of online comments, or a clampdown on what it called rumor mongering.

“It appears that the incident may now be put to rest. But we remain resentful inside. This is the third boy, who had suffered [a similar incident]. Deep down, we know that the boy was beaten to death. But there’s nothing we can do,” she said.

The resident believed that Zhao was bullied in school and that failing to pay protection fees was his cause of death.

The police, nevertheless, provided no clue as to what pushed the boy to commit suicide, as it claimed, although its report did mention testimony by one of Zhao’s classmates, who said the boy expressed deep frustration with his father’s reprimand over earlier misconduct at school.  

The boy’s parents have remained unavailable for comment after they were allowed to see their son’s body and engaged in talks with local authorities.

Brian Kopczynski contributed to this report.
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India has warned Pakistan to consider the consequences on bilateral relations if a death sentence handed to a former naval officer by a Pakistani military court is carried out and said it will do “whatever it takes” to ensure justice for him.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj spoke in the upper house of parliament Tuesday after lawmakers demanded justice for Kulbhusan Jadhav, an Indian national who has been found guilty of espionage and sabotage in Pakistan, but who New Delhi maintains is innocent.

Calling the verdict against Jadhav “indefensible,” Swaraj said he had been sentenced on “concocted charges. I repeat, on concocted charges.”

The Indian foreign minister also said, “If anything, he is the victim of a plan that seeks to cast aspersions on India to deflect international attention from Pakistan’s well known record of sponsoring and supporting terrorism.”

“I would caution the Pakistani government to consider the consequences for our bilateral relationship if they proceed on this matter,” she said.

The Pakistan government Tuesday defended the death sentences awarded to Jadhav, however, and dismissed assertions that if he is executed India will regard it as a “premeditated murder.”

“We have followed all the rules and regulations and laws of the land,” Defense Minister Khawaja Asif told the parliament while delivering a policy statement on the issue.

Asif reiterated that the condemned Indian naval officer was operating a terrorism network in Pakistan at the behest of Indian state and anyone involved in such activities to destabilize the country will meet the same fate.

The minister explained that Jadhave has 60 days to challenge the verdict in a appellate military court before filing mercy petitions to the army chief and president of Pakistan respectively.

Both countries have given conflicting accounts of how the Indian national came into the custody of Pakistani authorities.

India has maintained since Jadhav’s arrest that he was kidnapped in Iran, where he was doing business and taken to Pakistan.

Minister Swaraj said that since Islamabad repeatedly turned down consular access to him, “the exact circumstances are unclear.”

Arrest, confession

Islamabad has said Jadhav was arrested in March of last year in Pakistan’s restive Baluchistan province, alleging he had been tasked by India’s foreign intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing, “to plan, coordinate and organize espionage-sabotage activities aiming to destabilize and wage war against Pakistan.”

After Jadhav’s arrest, Islamabad released a confessional video in which he was shown admitting his involvement in spying. India has questioned the alleged confession, saying it was extracted under duress.

Calling him India’s son, Swaraj said New Delhi will bring him back at any cost.

Premeditated murder

She reiterated in parliament what India told the Pakistani high commissioner soon after the sentence was announced on Monday – that if carried out, the sentence will be tantamount to an act of premeditated murder.

The latest spat between the nuclear-armed neighbors has fueled tensions that have been running high since an attack by armed militants on an Indian army camp in September of last year. New Delhi also accuses Pakistani-based militant groups for a surge of violence in Indian Kashmir, which has witnessed violent protests.

Indian officials told media that they have put on hold the release of a dozen Pakistani prisoners who were to be repatriated this week, apparently in retaliation for the death sentence handed down to Jadhav.
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China was the world’s top executioner last year, while the United States put to death fewer people than it has in more than two decades, the human rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday.

More than 90 percent of the world’s executions took place in five countries — China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan.

More than 3,000 people in 55 countries were condemned to death last year, marking a 56 percent surge from 2015.

‘Nobody executes so quickly’

China is believed to have executed “thousands” of people, more than the combined figure of at least 1,023 executions in 23 other countries last year, the rights group said.

“China now wants to assume a global leadership role. In respect to death penalty it is leading in the worst possible way,” said Amnesty International’s regional director for East Asia, Nicholas Bequelin.

“Nobody executes at that scale. Nobody executes with such secrecy. Nobody executes so quickly.”

Execution numbers a state secret

China does not announce the number of people executed, guarding the data as a state secret.

The head of China’s Supreme People’s Court, Zhou Qiang, said in March China has made sure to impose capital punishment on “an extremely small number of criminals who committed extremely serious crimes,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.

But Bequelin called Zhou’s statement “misleading and disingenuous.”

Amnesty’s China-focused report, China’s Deadly Secret, said for 2016, the group found 305 executions using a Chinese search engine, but only 26 of those cases made it to a national database.

“Whatever is recorded officially is only the tip of a huge, shameful iceberg,” Bequelin said.

‘Flawed and cruel’

For the first time in a decade, the United States dropped out of the world’s top five executioners, recording 20 death sentences carried out last year, the fewest since 1991, putting it in seventh place after Egypt.

Most U.S. executions took place in the states of Georgia and Texas, while 19 states have abolished the death penalty.

The number of death sentences in the United States, at 32, was also the lowest since 1973.

“This shows that judges and juries are less inclined to resort to this flawed and cruel practice,” said James Lynch, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Global Issues Program.

Support of execution drops

Support for the death penalty in the United States fell to 49 percent, the lowest in more than four decades, according to a 2016 survey by the Pew Research Center.

Although President Donald Trump has supported the death penalty, Lynch said the fight against capital punishment took place mostly at the state level, adding federal authorities had not carried out any executions since 2003.

“Rhetoric and tone from important political figures, not the least the president, is important and is something we would be concerned about,” Lynch said. “But there is a long term trend against the death penalty in the U.S.”
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Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai has been named as a U.N. Messenger of Peace with a special focus on girls’ education.

During a ceremony at U.N. headquarters Monday, and streamed live on Facebook and YouTube, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the 19-year-old, saying, “I am a frustrated ex-physics professor … facing the most famous student in the world. You are not only a hero, but you are a very committed and generous person.”

He read from the designation on the framed certificate that he presented to the young activist, citing her dedicated service to the ideals and objectives of the United Nations — especially its vision of a life of dignity for all people.

Guterres also cited Yousafzai’s “courageous defense” of the rights of all people, including women and girls, to education and equality, and honored her for showing “an unwavering dedication to peace” even in the face of great danger, and her desire to foster a better world.

Yousafzai is the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate, receiving that international accolade in 2014 when she was 17 years old. She is now the youngest U.N. Messenger of Peace.

Early start as blogger

Yousafzai became an advocate for girls’ education when she was 11 years old and living under Taliban rule in Pakistan’s Swat Valley. There she began to blog anonymously for the BBC’s Urdu language site, campaigning for the right of girls to an education.

“Education is the right of every child and, especially for girls, this right should not be neglected,” Yousafzai told a packed room of diplomats and young girls Monday. “If we want to go forward, we have to give education to girls. And, once you educate girls, you change the whole community, the whole society.”

The role of men in effecting change in society is crucial, she said, paying tribute to her father as one who always encouraged her.

“What is different in my story is that my father did not stop me,” she said. “It wasn’t that I was very intelligent or very clever or I had some special kind of training or something. All I had was a father and a family who said, ‘Yes, you can speak out, it’s your choice.'”

Shot by the Taliban

Yousafzai’s advocacy brought retaliation from the Taliban, which preferred to see women and girls oppressed. On Oct. 9, 2012, Yousafzai, then 15, was attacked and shot in the head while on the school bus.

Yousafzai was airlifted to a Pakistani military hospital in Peshawar, and four days later to an intensive care unit in Birmingham, England.

“I realized that extremists tried all their best to stop me; they tried to kill me and they didn’t succeed,” she said. “And it is a clear evidence that no one can stop me. This means that now this a new life, a second life, and it is for the purpose of education.”

Working for girls education

Yousafzai lives in Britain with her parents and younger brother. There, she has become an international advocate for girls’ education through the Malala Fund, which she runs with her father, Ziauddin. The fund promotes 12 years of free, safe and quality education for girls worldwide.

She has visited the families of the Chibok girls in Nigeria, worked with Syrian refugees — opening two schools for them in Lebanon — and has invested in education for girls in her native Pakistan.

According to U.N. statistics, more than 130 million girls do not go to school. Many are forced to marry early or must work or care for younger siblings, denying them their right to education.

Yousafzai joins the ranks of other U.N. Messengers of Peace, including actors Michael Douglas (disarmament) and Leonardo DiCaprio (climate change), and musician Stevie Wonder (persons with disabilities).

Hometown reaction

In Yousafzai’s hometown of Swat, people hailed her new U.N. title.

Mohammad Khan, a prominent human rights activist and lawyer based in Swat, said he was pleased that the international community has appreciated Yousafzai’s efforts and the ordeal she has gone through for the sake of women’s rights and education.

“The sacrifice she has given for humanity, it has no precedent in [the] contemporary world,” Khan told VOA’s Deewa service.

Yousafzai’s school teacher, Ahmed Shah, said he was proud of Yousafzai for being designated as the U.N. peace messenger.

“It is a matter of great pride and prestige for us that Malala Yousafzai has brought these honors for our homeland,” he told Deewa.

VOA’s Deewa Service contributed to this report.
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