“I can report that 20 thousand tons of wheat has been exported to the Peoples Republic of China for the first time,” said Kazakhstan’s Vice-Premier Umirzak Shukeev during the meeting.

Earlier, during negotiations between Kazakhstan’s national corporation ‘Prodkorporatsija’ and China’s leading grain, oil, and food trading group COFCO, the ‘Prodkorporatsija’ stated their readiness to deliver around 150 thousand tons of high-quality wheat to the PRC market.

“The serious barrier to advancement of Kazakhstan grain to world markets is the absence of a direct transit route to seaports. The expense of transfer tariffs for each ton of grain rises approximately 50 dollars,” said Shukeev.

In this regard, the Kazakhstan government plans to initiate and complete export infrastructure construction including a railway grain terminal along the Kazakhstan – PRC border by 2013. The terminal will directly link Dostyk station (Kazakhstan territory) and Alashankou (Sintszjan-Uigur Independent Area, Northwest China). The single storage capacity of the terminal is put at one million tons of grain.

Shukeev also stated that the coordination of the project by governmental order has provided a direct means of reducing the transportation costs of the grain through China and this rate stands at 40 US$ per ton.

According to the ‘Kazakh-grain’ news agency, the country topped world wheat flour exports in 2007 and now maintains 6th place among the world’s largest grain exporters. Last year, the country’s share from the world’s total wheat flour export amount stood at 18 percent.

After a lengthy, interesting, and highly competitive presidential election in Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich was finally sworn into office in the country’s capital of Kiev yesterday.

During the presidential runoff over the last few months, the defining contrast between Yanukovich and his chief opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, seemed to be the former’s pro-Russian affinity versus the latter’s pro-European inclinations.

In his inaugural speech, however, President Yanukovich said that it was important for his country to build relations with Russia, the European Union, and the United States.

“Being a bridge between East and West, an integral part of Europe and the former Soviet Union at the same time, Ukraine will choose a foreign policy that will allow our country to get the most out of the development of equal and mutually beneficial relations with Russia, the European Union, the United States, and other countries that influence development in the world,” he said.

In addition to dealing with finicky relationship between its neighbors on either side, Yanukovich will also have his hands full repairing the debt-ridden and unreliable Ukrainian economy, fighting rampant corruption and poverty, as well as stabilizing a shaky political system that hasn’t been able to achieve much in recent years due to fighting within the Orange Revolution parties.

Check out this CNN interview with Mr. Yanukovich.

By Edith Balazs

Feb. 24 (Bloomberg) — Hungarian Prime Minister Gordon Bajnai said countries in central and eastern Europe should join together and create a “triangle” of supply points for natural gas to reduce dependence on fuel from Russia.

“I’m proposing that countries in the region set up a gas supply triangle to boost the diversity and security,” Bajnai said at an energy summit in Budapest today, which was attended by heads of government from countries in the region. “We need to increase the number of independent suppliers.”

Countries in the region, dependent on Russian gas, have repeatedly suffered from fuel shortages because of pricing disputes between Russia and Ukraine, a transit country. Hungary gets about 80 percent of its gas from Russia and supports the European Union-backed Nabucco pipeline aimed at bringing Caspian gas to Europe.

Nabucco would be the eastern tip of a triangle, which would include a planned liquefied natural-gas terminal in Poland in the north and an LNG terminal in Krk, Croatia, in the south, Bajnai said. The plan would secure supply of gas transported in the Baltic and Adriatic seas, he said.

“Our aim is to create a critical mass that can represent its interest more efficiently, a critical mass that simply can’t be passed by or overlooked,” Bajnai said.

Tamayo was in the midst of a 36-year sentence for crimes including “disrespect, public disorder, and resistance,” according to the independent Cuban Human Rights Commission, and launched the hunger strike in protest to poor prison conditions.

Mr. Tamayo’s death came while Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was visiting Cuba to inaugurate an US$800 million investment.

While standing alongside Mr. Lula da Silva, Cuban President Raul Castro was asked about the death of Orlando Tamayo by Brazilian reporters.

“We regret it very much. That’s the result of relations with the United States,” President Castro said, referring to Havana’s belief that Cuban dissidents are U.S. agents working to destabilize the communist government.

“We didn’t murder anyone here, no one was tortured. That happens at the Guantanamo base, not in our territory,” Castro said.

According to the Associated Press, Orlando Tamayo is the first Cuban activist to die on an anti-government hunger strike in nearly 40 years.

What Dalai Lama has said and done in the past decades have fully shown that he is not a pure religious figure, but a political figure in exile who’s long engaged in activities to split China and undermine ethnic unity in China under the cover of religion. While claiming that his visits to foreign countries are aimed at spreading religious teachings, he has never stopped defaming the Chinese Government, selling “Tibet independence” proposals and undermining relations between China and other countries. This is well reflected in his remarks during his current visit, including those he made on CNN’s Larry King Live.

In addition, the talks between Dalai’s private representatives and the Chinese Government at the end of January have demonstrated once again that the Dalai group is still clinging to their separatist propositions, including the so-called “greater Tibet region” and “meaningful autonomy”, whose ultimate goal is to separate a quarter of Chinese territory from China. This is something that no sovereign country can allow to occur.

As Dalai Lama claimed on Larry King Live, he regards a foreign country other than China or its Tibetan Autonomous Region as his “home”, and Tibet is “not much concern” to him. Such a political figure is in no way qualified to represent the Tibetan people as self-claimed by him.

Tibet has never been a country in history, but an inalienable part of China from ancient times. Dalai Lama’s repeated calling Tibet a “country” explains nothing but his true mind of splitting Tibet from China. We urge the U.S. side earnestly abide by the U.S. Government’s committment of recognizing Tibet as part of China and not supporting “Tibet independence”, take measures to undo the damages caused by Dalai’s visit, stop providing convenience or platform for Dalai and pro-Tibet independence forces, take concret actions to maintain the healthy and stable development of China-U.S. relations. We sincerely hope American people see through Dalai’s true nature as a separatist and his ulterior motive of sabotaging China-U.S. relations, understand and support China’s just positions on Tibet-related issues.

KIEV, Feb 22 (Reuters) – Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on Monday renewed her attacks on President-elect Viktor Yanukovich, whom she accuses of winning election through fraud, and rejected any post-election deal with him.

In a televised statement she accused her rival of already beginning to sell off Ukraine’s gas pipeline network — a sensitive issue since it touches on relations with Russia — and predicted he would not stay in power for long.

The sharp attack by the fiery 49-year-old premier, who on Saturday dropped her legal challenge to Yanukovich’s election, significantly raised political tensions before his inauguration on Thursday.

“Yanukovich, who came to power by lies, is not our president and he will not last long,” she told a televised broadcast. “I want to say that I would not, under any circumstances, create a coalition together with Yanukovich,” she declared.

Yanukovich, a 59-year-old ex-mechanic who is backed by wealthy industrialists in eastern Ukraine, beat Tymoshenko by a narrow margin of 3.5 percentage points in the Feb. 7 runoff.

She says she was robbed of victory by electoral fraud, but at the weekend she withdrew an attempt to get a high court to give the go-ahead for another vote. She said she could not trust it to fairly consider the evidence.

Yanukovich is set to be sworn in to office on Feb. 25 and now has to steel himself to working with Tymoshenko — albeit for only a short period — until he can force her out by forging a new coalition in parliament.

Delays in ending Ukraine’s long political turmoil and bringing a measure of stability to the power structure will only continue to deter much-needed investment for the struggling economy.

The ex-Soviet state of 46 million has been kept afloat by an International Monetary Fund bail-out programme of $16.4 billion, but this has been suspended because of paralysis in decision-making and breached promises.

The IMF has said it will resume the programme once stability has returned to government.

The Yanukovich camp is pressing ahead with trying to strike a deal for a new coalition among the opportunistic deputies in parliament which can involve long and tricky horse-trading.

If he fails to do this, he may be forced to call an early parliamentary election with unpredictable consequences.

Until then, he is doomed to share the higher echelons of power with a prime minister who does not regard him as legitimately elected.

FUTURE IN OPPOSITION?

Yanukovich is expected to tilt Ukraine back towards the old imperial master, Russia, after five years of estrangement under pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko. His first foreign visit after inauguration is expected to be to Moscow in early March.

One specific charge Tymoshenko levelled against him was that he had begun “selling off Ukrainian national interests in all directions”, including the privatisation of the gas network system.

Yanukovich has proposed creation of a consortium including Russia to run the country’s gas pipelines.

On Monday, she broached for the first time a possible future in opposition if Yanukovich managed to outflank her in parliament and form a new coalition bringing in defectors from among her erstwhile allies.

“If the patriotic forces, the democratic political parties in parliament sell out politically, then I will go into opposition to bring closer the time when our state returns to a civilised way of development,” she said.

Earlier on Monday, her camp said it wanted a quick parliamentary vote which she hopes will back her government before Yanukovich has time to muster support to bring it down.

The Regions Party faction of Yanukovich said on Friday it planned a vote of no-confidence in the government in early March after his inauguration. But Tymoshenko’s bloc said it had collected enough signatures to force the vote this week before his swearing-in.

Tymoshenko’s BYuT bloc appears to feel that the Yanukovich camp, which is busy preparing for the inauguration, will not have time to muster the necessary 226 votes for it to succeed this week.

The Associated Press
Friday, February 19, 2010; 6:46 AM

ASHGABAT, Turkmenistan — Turkmenistan is set to allow the creation of a second political party this year, breaking up the one-party system that has been in place since the Central Asian nation gained independence, state media reported Friday.

The only political force registered in the ex-Soviet nation is the pro-government Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, which is closely modeled on the Communist Party.

“If anyone wishes to propose creating a new political party, we can register one this year, as stipulated by the Constitution,” President Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov said at a government meeting Thursday. The constitution that was adopted in 1992 allows for the formation of political parties.

It was not immediately clear to what extent the new party could diverge from the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan. It’s a common practice in former Soviet Central Asia to create nominal opposition parties loyal to the government.

Most active government opponents have fled the energy-rich Central Asian nation, where dissent is not tolerated.

Berdymukhamedov came to power in December 2006 after the death of Saparmurat Niyazov, who kept Turkmenistan largely isolated in two decades of authoritarian rule and an all-encompassing personality cult.

Berdymukhamedov has made vague commitments to implement democratic reforms, kindling hopes the Central Asian country would introduce greater freedoms.

But critics say Berdymukhamedov has failed to live up to his pledges.

In the 2008 parliamentary elections, almost all elected deputies were from the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan. A small number of independent candidates drawn from state-approved civic groups were also allowed to run. Everybody competed on a platform of support for Berdymukhamedov.

Under reforms enacted earlier in 2008, the number of seats in Parliament was more than doubled to 125, and the chamber’s powers were nominally boosted.

Another seminal development was the abolition of the rubber-stamp People’s Council – a 2,507-member assembly of presidential appointees, town elders and others that was formerly Turkmenistan’s highest legislative body.

In a session that lasted less than ten minutes, a Beijing court on Thursday upheld an 11-year sentence against popular Chinese human rights activists Liu Xiaobo, co-author of the pro-democracy Charter 08.

After the court decision, US Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman called on “the government of China to release him immediately and to respect the right of all citizens to peacefully express their political views and exercise internationally recognized freedoms”.

European Union representatives in Beijing said: “The EU believes that the verdict against Liu Xiaobo – for his role as author of Charter 08 and for publishing articles concerning human rights on the internet – is entirely incompatible with his right to freedom of expression.”

Beijing said the prosecution was in accordance with Chinese law.

“China has no dissidents,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said.

The following is an abridged statement by Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, co-author of the Charter 08 campaign for constitutional reform, given in his trial on 23 December 2009. Today the result of his appeal against an 11-year jail sentence for subversion was announced – the court upheld the verdict.

June 1989 was the major turning point in my 50 years on life’s road. Before that, I was a member of the first group of students to take the newly restored college entrance examinations following the Cultural Revolution; my career was a smooth ride, from undergraduate to grad student and through to PhD. After graduation I stayed on as a lecturer at Beijing Normal University.

On the podium, I was a popular teacher, well received by students. I was also a public intellectual: in the 1980s I published articles and books that created an impact. I was frequently invited to speak in different places, and invited to go abroad to Europe and the US as a visiting scholar. What I required of myself was to live with honesty, responsibility and dignity both as a person and in my writing.

Subsequently, because I had returned from the US to take part in the 1989 movement, I was imprisoned for “counter-revolutionary propaganda and incitement to crime”, losing the platform I loved; I was never again allowed to publish or speak in public in China. Simply for expressing divergent political views and taking part in a peaceful and democratic movement, a teacher lost his podium, a writer lost the right to publish, and a public intellectual lost the chance to speak publicly. This was a sad thing, both for myself as an individual, and, after three decades of reform and opening, for China.

Thinking about it, my most dramatic experiences after 4 June 1989 have all been linked with the courts; the two opportunities I had to speak in public have been provided by trials held in the people’s intermediate court in Beijing, one in January 1991 and one now. Although the charges on each occasion were different, they were in essence the same, both crimes of expression.

Twenty years on, the innocent souls of 4 June are yet to rest in peace, and I, who had been drawn into the path of dissidence by the passions of 4 June, after leaving the Qincheng prison in 1991 lost the right to speak openly in my own country, and could only do so through overseas media, and hence was monitored for many years; placed under surveillance (May 1995 – January 1996); educated through labour (October 1996 – October 1999), and now once again am thrust into the dock by enemies in the regime.

But I still want to tell the regime that deprives me of my freedom, I stand by the belief I expressed 20 years ago in my hunger strike declaration – I have no enemies, and no hatred. None of the police who monitored, arrested and interrogated me, the prosecutors who prosecuted me, or the judges who sentence me, are my enemies. While I’m unable to accept your surveillance, arrest, prosecution or sentencing, I respect your professions and personalities. This includes the prosecution at present: I was aware of your respect and sincerity in your interrogation of me on 3 December.

For hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy. I hope therefore to be able to transcend my personal vicissitudes in understanding the development of the state and changes in society, to counter the hostility of the regime with the best of intentions, and defuse hate with love.

I firmly believe that China’s political progress will never stop, and I’m full of optimistic expectations of freedom coming to China in the future, because no force can block the human desire for freedom. China will eventually become a country of the rule of law in which human rights are supreme. I’m also looking forward to such progress being reflected in the trial of this case, and look forward to the full court’s just verdict – one that can stand the test of history.

Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I’d say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, my sweetheart, that I’m confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one.

Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough to hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

Given your love, my sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow optimistically. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens’ speeches are treated the same; where different values, ideas, beliefs, political views … both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; where, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; where all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; [where] all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent.

I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech.

Freedom of expression is the basis of human rights, the source of humanity and the mother of truth. To block freedom of speech is to trample on human rights, to strangle humanity and to suppress the truth.

I do not feel guilty for following my constitutional right to freedom of expression, for fulfilling my social responsibility as a Chinese citizen. Even if accused of it, I would have no complaints.

*This statement was translated from the Chinese by Professor David Kelly of the China Research Centre, University of Technology, Sydney. It can be read in the original and in full here ]]> http://communisttaxlawyer.com/location/china/china-has-no-dissidents-1225.html/feed 0 http://communisttaxlawyer.com/location/china/taiwan-looking-for-more-1221.html http://communisttaxlawyer.com/location/china/taiwan-looking-for-more-1221.html#comments Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:22:56 +0000 The Proletariat http://communisttaxlawyer.com/?p=1221 Taiwan’s Defense Minister Kao Hua-chu said over the weekend that Taiwan would continue to try and procure weapons from countries like the United States in an effort to stabilize the region.

“The United States has kept providing Taiwan with defensive weapons according to the Taiwan Relations Act, enabling Taiwan to be more confident in pressing for reconciliation with the Chinese mainland,” Minister Kao said.

“In the future, Taiwan will continue purchasing more weaponry from the United States… so as to build a smaller and leaner deterrent force.”

The US$6.8 billion arms sale between the U.S. and Taiwan in January infuriated Chinese officials who accused America of using “cold war logic.”

Speaking at a security conference in Munich last week, China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said that the deal violated standards in international relations and provoked officials in Beijing.

According to the AFP, Taiwan’s Premier Wu Den-yih dismissed Yang’s allegations, saying Beijing’s continued missile buildup along the mainland coastline facing the island had prompted Taiwan to seek more self-defensive weaponry.

“It’s just like two people trying for reconciliation. If one of them sticks a gun in his waist, it would be weird, don’t you think so,” Wu said in an interview with Hong Kong-based Phoenix satellite television Saturday.

“The people of Taiwan would feel better if China can withdraw its missiles…,” he said.

That’s not going to happen.

Opposition leader Viktor F. Yanukovich has declared victory over current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election, which has garnered immense international attention over the last few months.

It is not yet official, and Tymoshenko will not concede, but exit polls currently put Yanukovich three to four points ahead.

In the simplest form, Tymoshenko has the support of eastern Ukraine with her pro-Europe stance while Yanukovich, in contrast, has the support of the Russian-speaking western and southern Ukraine.

The two fierce rivals have spared no expense in their efforts to insult, humiliate, and discredit one another with smear campaigns as they dragged each other through the mud.

Although it has been entertaining, the true victims of this election are the Ukrainian people. They are the ones who will be stuck with one of these candidates as their president in a now more divided country that already has its fair share of problems.

Furthermore, for those hoping this drawn out election may finally find its conclusion, you may be disappointed. The fallout of Tymoshenko’s loss may carry on for some time.

Over the weekend, she called on her supporters to take to the streets in protest if Yanukovich prevails.

As the elections started on Sunday, Tymoshenko’s team also said that Yanukovich supporters were practicing “terrorism” and “open banditry.”

Ukrainian officials deny any such reports.