Hundreds of Chinese police fanned out across Beijing yesterday, trailed dissidents and swept out-of-town petitioners away from government offices to boost security a day before the annual session of parliament.
Civilians wearing red armbands helped to keep order near the Great Hall of the People, venue of the March 5-14 session of the National People's Congress, and extra police were deployed at almost every nearby bus stop.
Officers and bomb-sniffing dogs patrolled opposite the Great Hall in Tiananmen Square, the focus of the student-led protests that ended in bloodshed in 1989, and extra precautions were taken at the dozens of hotels where the 3,000 deputies are staying.
PHOTO: AFP
Officials in the capital boosted a crackdown on petitioners and on the Falun Gong sect to ensure the safety of leaders and delegates and to prevent bombings, shootings or other terror attacks, Hong Kong's Beijing-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper said.
"Destabilizing factors that affect the capital's stability still exist," the Beijing Daily quoted the city's Communist Party chief, Liu Qi (
Violence is not unknown before the parliament session.
Beijing was rocked by bombings at two of the country's most prestigious universities in February last year. The blame was put on a man seeking publicity who was subsequently jailed for life.
A bomb exploded on a public bus in a busy shopping district in February 1997, wounding about 10 people and police suspected Muslim Uighur separatists from the far northwest.
The Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders said China had closed down some Internet chatrooms before the session.
In a landmark move, parliament will amend the Constitution and add a proposal by the Communist Party, which has ruled with an iron fist since 1949, to "respect and safeguard human rights."
But pro-democracy activist Jiang Qisheng saw no sign of change. He has been put under round-the-clock police surveillance since Feb. 24 and tailed by more than a dozen plainclothes police in two cars, one motorcycle and two bicycles.
"They told me: `Wherever you go, we go,'" Jiang said. "This is a violation of my human rights.
"They used to post their men at the entrance downstairs. Now, they're on the 13th floor outside my home," said Jiang, who was freed last year after serving four years in prison for incitement to subversion.
He was jailed for one-and-half years for his role in the 1989 protests.
Stability is the watchword. Police view disgruntled petitioners as a security threat.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS