Vietnamese blogger jailed for reporting devastating chemical spill: CEOs responsible walk free

More than 200,000 people were directly affected by the disaster that poisoned fish along Vietnam's central coast.

Nguyen Van Hoa was jailed for 7 years.

A Vietnamese blogger has been jailed for seven years for reporting on a chemical spill that poisoned around 125 miles of the country's central coastline in 2016.

A Vietnamese court jailed blogger Nguyen Van Hoa for seven years on 27 November. He was found guilty of disseminating anti-state 'propaganda' including articles which supported protests against a Taiwanese firm responsible for a toxic leak.VIETNAM NEWS AGENCY/AFP/Getty Images

On Wednesday (27 November), Nguyen Van Hoa, 22, was found guilty of disseminating anti-state 'propaganda' in the form of videos and written reports about protests against the spill.

The disaster occurred in April 2016 when hundreds of people became ill from eating poisoned fish.
It emerged several months later that a steel factory owned by Taiwanese Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation had leaked chemicals into the adjacent South China Sea.

More than 200,000 people working in the region were directly affected by the poisoning, according to the Vietnamese ministry of labour.
It emerged several months later that a steel factory owned by Taiwanese Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation had leaked chemicals into the adjacent South China Sea.

More than 200,000 people working in the region were directly affected by the poisoning, according to the Vietnamese ministry of labour.
Formosa took responsibility for the spill, which is considered one of the worst environmental disasters in the country's history, and agreed to pay $500m in damages.

The payment has done little to appease many Vietnamese, whose communities were devastated in the disaster. In April, on the first anniversary of the spill, thousands of people occupied beaches, roads and public buildings throughout Vietnam, demanding justice.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of the Asia division at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IBTimes UK: "

By throwing citizen journalist and blogger Nguyen Van Hoa in prison for daring to expose Formosa's devastating chemical dumping that destroyed the coastal and marine environment in four provinces, Vietnam is displaying outrageous disdain for press freedom and human rights, and prioritizing the interests of foreign investors over the quality of its own people's lives."

Reporters without Borders (RSF) also denounced the verdict. "We firmly condemn this totally disproportionate sentence," said Daniel Bastard, Asia-Pacific director at RSF. "Not even [Hoa's] family was warned that this trial was going to take place. Such drastic action confirms the intransigence of Vietnam's refusal to tolerate any reporting freedom. Vietnam's commercial partners should draw the appropriate conclusions."

"This is an extreme reaction and sheds light on a country that is all to often overlooked when it comes to media freedom in the region, despite being amongst the most restrictive," Jemimah Steinfeld, deputy editor of the Index on Censorship magazine, told IBTimes UK.

"Index is very concerned about this increased government focus on censoring social media and what this means for freedom of expression for everyone in Vietnam, and in particular journalists and bloggers," she said.

Hoa is the second blogger to be jailed for reporting on the protests against Formosa. In June, blogger Nguyen Ngoc Nhu Quynh, better known as Mother Mushroom, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for writing about the spill.

Protesters gather in Hanoi, Vietnam to demonstrate against a unit of Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics, a firm they blame for causing an environmental disaster and the death of large numbers of fish in central coast provinces in April 2016. REUTERS/Kham

Online Censorship: A Global Map & Ranking of Every Country’s Internet Restrictions (Infographic)

Do you know what internet activities are illegal in your country?
Online censorship is the latest battleground in the fight for freedom of information, and every country is handling it differently.  Some countries’ rankings are obvious . The UK and USA have relatively some  internet restrictions, although others come as more of a surprise.Russia restricts access to political media, while Finland – their neighbor across the border – only restricts torrents.
Many different elements can determine a governments’ desire to restrict access in their country. For example, the blanket ban on all internet access in North Korea is strongly related to a fear of its populous understanding life outside of the closely guarded country. China, Taiwan, and Vietnam restrict internet access for political reasons, while countries like Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen have religious motives. Whatever the reason, it is good to know what your country’s policy is.
Check out the map below to see what’s restricted in your country, and compare it to other countries to see where you rank in the world of online censorship.

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Pakistani mullah accused of trying to frame girl in blasphemy case Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti is arrested after witnesses say he added pages of Qur'an to girl's bag

The case against a Pakistani Christian girl potentially facing a death sentence for allegedly burning sacred Islamic texts has been thrown into doubt after her local mullah was arrested on accusations of tampering with evidence in order to frame her. Hafiz Mohammed Khalid Chishti appeared in court on Sunday after witnesses claimed to have seen him adding pages of the Qur'an to a bag of ashes Rimsha Masih had been carrying away for disposal last month in order to strengthen the case against her. Although many of the cases brought under the country's much criticised blasphemy laws are thought to be spurious, the Rimsha case is thought to be the first time in the more than two decades since the laws were introduced that someone has been arrested for fabricating evidence. But while the dramatic turn of events delighted the girl's supporters, a prosecution lawyer insisted he would press ahead with the case against her. Last month a local man, Malik Hammad, spotted the girl with the ashes and accused her of burning a prayer book that included passages from the Qur'an, a particularly provocative form of blasphemy which can carry the death penalty. Police arrested the girl amid uproar in the neighbourhood of Mehrabadi, a poor area on the outskirts of Islamabad. Locals had been whipped into a frenzy by Chishti, who reportedly showed the burned pages to mosque-goers at evening prayers and led a crowd of people to Rimsha's house. But after two weeks of controversy during which the case has been criticised by both human rights groups and even hardline religious conservatives, three of Chishti's deputies have come forward to implicate the mullah. Hafiz Mohammad Zubair told Geo TV that he witnessed Chishti putting two pages of the Qu'ran into a plastic bag of ashes in order to strengthen the case against the girl. Zubair said: "I asked him what he was doing and he said this is the evidence against them and this is how we can get them out from this area." Chishti was brought blindfolded and handcuffed before a court in Islamabad on Sunday morning where he was ordered to remain in police custody for 14 days. Tahir Naveed Chaudhry from the All Pakistan Minority Committee said it had always maintained that evidence was planted on her. "And now it is proved that the whole story was only designed to dislocate the Christian people," he said. "He must be prosecuted under the blasphemy law as it will set a precedent against anyone else who tries to misuse that law." In a bail application made last week defence lawyers said Rimsha was just 13 years old and should therefore be tried under Pakistan's juvenile justice system. It also claimed the girl had Down's syndrome and therefore "cannot commit such a crime". On Sunday the head of the country's Ulema council, a board of senior clerics, demanded the punishment of Chishti and the immediate release of Rimsha. However, Rao Abdur Raheem, the lawyer representing the girl's accuser Hammad, said the development did not change his case. He said he was "1,000% sure" that her bail application, due to be heard on Monday, would be rejected. "Our case is totally separate from the case against Chishti," he said. "The man who accused him of adding pages from the Qur'an also confirmed that Rimsha burned a book containing verses from the Qur'an." Chishti had made no secret of his distaste for the several-hundred-strong Christian community of Mehrabadi, even appearing on national television to bemoan the noisiness of church services which he said had disturbed Muslim residents, the overwhelming majority in the area. He also welcomed the panicked departure of most of the Christians from the area following the furore. He had reportedly made an announcement from the mosque's loudspeaker telling them to leave the area. "We are not upset the Christians have left and we will be pleased if they don't come back," Chishti told the Guardian on 18 August. However, his actions may well have alienated the community's Muslim landlords who rely on poor Christian families to rent their properties. Human rights groups say the blasphemy laws are often used to settle vendettas and property disputes. People have been sentenced to long jail terms on extremely weak evidence, some of which cannot even be examined in court for fear of repeating the alleged blasphemy. Others have been killed by furious mobs, such as last July when a mentally ill man was dragged from a police station in Punjab province and burned alive in the street. Ali Dayan Hasan, head of Human Rights Watch in Pakistan, said he hoped the arrest of Chishti would "act as a deterrent to further frivolous charges and will seek to temper this atmosphere of impunity with which extremists incite violence against vulnerable people in the name of blasphemy". But it is unlikely the controversy over Rimsha will lead to fundamental reform of Pakistan's blasphemy laws as the country gears up for an election. Last year two prominent politicians were assassinated by religious hardliners after speaking out against the law. Mumtaz Qadri, a former security guard who last year gunned down his boss, Salman Taseer, the governor of the Punjab at the time, is regarded by many Pakistanis as a hero for killing a man who had publicly criticised the blasphemy laws and given his backing to a Christian woman who had been sentenced to death for the crime.The Guardian

Gunman attacks 'Batman' premiere in Colorado, 12 dead,71 Victims

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By Keith Coffman and Stephanie Simon

AURORA, Colo. | Fri Jul 20, 2012 2:21pm EDT

(Reuters) - A gunman in a gas mask and bullet-proof vest killed 12 people at a midnight premiere of the new "Batman" movie in a suburb of Denver early on Friday, sparking pandemonium when he hurled a gas canister
into the auditorium and opened fire on moviegoers.

Related Video

"I thought he was just part of a prop": massacre witness

12:20pm EDT

• Police say shooting suspect's home "booby trapped"

The attack injured 55 others including children during a screening of "The Dark Knight Rises" at a mall in the suburb of Aurora, which turned into a chaotic scene of bleeding victims, horrified screams and pleas of "I'm hit, help me," witnesses said.

The suspect also booby-trapped his Aurora apartment with sophisticated explosives, creating a hazard for law-enforcement and bomb squad officers who swarmed to the scene. Authorities evacuated five nearby buildings, and created a perimeter of several blocks.

Officers took the suspect into custody in the parking lot behind the cinema, where he surrendered without a fight, police said.

He was armed with a high-powered rifle, a shotgun and two pistols, according to a law enforcement source close to the investigation.

The suspect was identified as James Eagan Holmes, 24, a University of Colorado medical school student who was in the process of dropping out of a graduate program in neurosciences, the university said in a statement. His family issued a statement of sympathy for the victims and asked for privacy while they "process this information."

The living room of the suspect's apartment was crisscrossed with trip wires connected to what appeared to be plastic bottles containing an unknown liquid, said Chris Henderson, Aurora's deputy fire chief. Authorities planned to detonate the suspected explosives with a robot, he said.

"The pictures are fairly disturbing. It looks very sophisticated, how it's booby-trapped. It could be a very long wait," Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates told reporters.

The gunman appeared at the front of the theater during the movie and released a canister which let out a hissing sound before gunfire erupted, police said.

"When we got out of the theater it was just chaos. There was this one ... guy, was on all fours crawling. There was this girl spitting up blood," witness Donovan Tate told KCNC television. "There were bullet holes in some people's backs, some people's arms. There was this one guy who was stripped down to just his boxers. It looked like he was shot in the back or something. It was crazy."

Confusion reigned as shooting broke out during an action scene in the summer blockbuster, one of the more highly anticipated films of the year. The gunman may have blended in with other moviegoers who wore costumes as heroes and villains.

"He looked like he was in the military or like he was a SWAT person so he just kind of blended in with the chaos of the crowd. People thought he was probably like a cop or something," witness Jennifer Seeger told NBC's "Today."

Chandler Brannon, 25, who had been watching the movie with his girlfriend, said that about 20 minutes into the movie he saw a smoke bomb go off and heard what sounded like fireworks. He later realized they were a rapid volley of gunshots.

"I told my girlfriend to just play dead," he told Reuters. "All I could see was a silhouette."

CAMPAIGN TAKES A DAY OFF

President Barack Obama, who was notified of the shooting early on Friday morning by his homeland security adviser, John Brennan, urged Americans to "stand together" with the people of Aurora and said political campaigning ahead of the November 6 election should be set aside.

"There are going to be other days for politics. This, I think, is a day for prayer and reflection," Obama told supporters at a previously scheduled campaign event in Fort Myers, Florida, which he cut short to address the shooting.

White House officials saw no connection to terrorism, an Obama spokesman said.

Obama's opponent, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, pulled all television ads in Colorado until further notice, campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said, and a scheduled campaign was dedicated to addressing the shooting.

MEMORIES OF COLUMBINE

The shooting evoked memories of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, also a Denver suburb and 17 miles from Aurora, where two students opened fire and killed 12 students and a teacher.

Six Aurora-area hospitals reported receiving 55 patients from the scene. Ten victims died in the theater and two died in the hospital, Aurora Police spokesman Frank Fania told NBC.

"This is one of the most horrific nights I've ever had to work," said Comilla Sasson, an emergency doctor at University of Colorado Hospital in Aurora where 22 patients ranging in age from three months to 45 years arrived in private cars, police cars and ambulances.

U.S. military personnel apparently were among the casualties but it was not immediately clear whether any were killed, the Defense Department said.

Buckley Air Force Base is the largest employer in Aurora, a city of more than 320,000 people, according to the Aurora Economic Development Council.

"Our hearts go out to those who were involved in this tragedy and to the families and friends of those involved," read a statement from Holmes' family in San Diego that was read by police there.

The family, which said it was cooperating with authorities, asked for privacy.

SECURITY PRECAUTIONS

In New York, police will deploy officers at screenings of "The Dark Knight Rises" throughout the city "as a precaution against copycats," Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said in a statement.

The Paris movie premiere was cancelled on Friday, event organizers said. Workmen cleared away barriers that had been set up in preparation for the premiere at a cinema on the capital's Champs Elysees avenue.

"Warner Bros. is deeply saddened to learn about this shocking incident. We extend our sincere sympathies to the families and loved ones of the victims at this tragic time," said Jessica Zacholl, a spokeswoman for Time Warner-owned Warner Bros., the studio behind the film.

The film, with a budget of $250 million, opened on 4,404 screens, the second widest release ever behind "Twilight: Eclipse," and industry analysts had said it stood a good chance of matching or beating the opening weekend box office record of $207 million set by Disney's "Avengers" in May.

The prior release in the Batman series, "The Dark Knight," has grossed more than $1 billion at the worldwide box office since its release in 2008.

Exports: Bangladesh leaves Pakistan behind for the first time

July 19,2012 : Bangladesh for the first time has left Pakistan behind in exports as the former has   surpassed an unprecedented mark of $24.3 billion during last fiscal year as   compared to $23.6 billion figures registered on account of Pakistan's exports. 

Exports of Dhaka, which remained historically lesser than the same of Pakistan, have now recorded the jump this year despite the challenges like inflation in the major importing market of Europe and other domestic issues. Though the total export figure of Bangladesh was still lesser than its fixed target of over $26 billion, it continued growth as compared to Pakistan's exports, which declined by 4.71 per cent, as compared to last year's figure of $24.8 billion. On the other hand, Dhaka succeeded to cross previous figure of $22.92 billion to $24.3 billion this year. 

Both countries are largely based on textile exports and whenever there is a change in demand, supply and price of textile made ups in international market, total exports of the two countries accordingly.

According to experts, Bangladesh, comparatively relying more on textile garments, is enjoying the zero rated facility and tariff concession in global market specially EU because of its status as Least Developed Country (LDC).

On the other hand, Pakistani products are facing high duties in the said markets. However, despite having at least 40 per cent share of non-textile item, Pakistani exports could not maintain the increasing trend after July to June 2010-2011 when Islamabad had pushed its exports from $19.3 billion to $24.8 billion with the increase of over $5 billion.

During 2008-2009, 2009-2010, 2010-2011, Dhaka's exports were recorded as $15.54 billion, $16.17 billion and $22.982 billion respectively. On the other hand, Pakistani exports during the said financial years were $17.69 billion, $19.29 billion and $24.81 billion, respectively showing an increase of 2 to 3 billion over the exports recorded by formerly East Pakistan. 

However, Bangladesh's exports rose 5.9 per cent in the year ended June despite demand for garments from key Western markets remained waned. But the fresh increase was still nearly 8.4 per cent short of a target of $26.5 billion originally set by Dhaka. 

Pakistan, which had also fixed export target of $26 billion keeping in view last year's growth, remained much far away from the target. Bangladesh's economy and exports have been boosted recently by a dramatic shift in global garment orders from China to lower-cost Bangladesh. Ready made garment sales for the fiscal year rose 6.56 per cent from a year ago to $19 billion.

Bangladesh's low labour costs have helped it join the global supply chain for low-end clothing, manufacturing garments for international brands. 

Sources at Ministry of Commerce, however presented the excuses of energy crisis, poor law and order situation and inflation in major importing markets for the declining trend in exports of the country. They are optimistic that Pakistani exports especially textile would enjoy a considerable growth after the approval of Unilateral Tariff Concession Package offered by EU. 
Besides, the GSP and GSP Plus facility, Pakistan is likely to get in EU by January 2014, could also give a boost to over all exports  for the first time. Source:  Business Recorder: Pakistan's Premier Financial Daily

Terrorism charges against five after London arrests

Three men accused of going to Pakistan for terrorist training, while a man and a woman are charged over terrorist materials

Agencies in London

• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 July 2012 02.23 BST

Terrorism charges against the five including going to Pakistan for terrorist training and possessing terrorist materials. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

Five people have been charged with terrorism offences following arrests by the Metropolitan police counter-terrorism command.

Three men from London – including Richard Dart, who appeared in a BBC Three documentary after converting to Islam – were charged on Wednesday night with offences that involved travelling to Pakistan for training in terrorism between July 2010 and July 2012.

Dart, 29, of Broadway, Ealing, Imran Mahmood, 21, of Dabbs Hill Lane, Northolt, and Jahangir Alom, 26, of Abbey Road, Stratford, are charged with preparing for acts of terrorism between 25 July 2010 and 6 July this year.

The three are alleged to have travelled to Pakistan for terrorism training, to have travelled abroad to commit acts of terrorism, and to have advised and counselled the commission of terrorist acts by providing information about travel to Pakistan and terrorism training, and operational security while there.

Dart was featured in a recent BBC documentary My Brother the Islamist, which chronicled the efforts of his filmmaker stepbrother Robb Leech to understand why the former had rejected his family and embraced an uncompromising form of Islam.

A fourth man, Khalid Baqa, 47, of Priory Road, Barking, is charged with three counts of possession of terrorist material and one count of dissemination of terrorist material. According to the charges, Baqa had CDs containing a document entitled 39 Ways to Support and Participate in Jihad, as well as a number of issues of a magazine called Inspire for distribution to others.

A woman, Ruksana Begum, 22, of Provost Estate, Islington, is charged with possession of a digital memory card containing a document likely to be of use to a terrorist

All five will appear at Westminster magistrates court on Thursday.

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