VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

South Korean police raided on Thursday the office of an anti-North Korea activist group that said it had released balloons into the North last week carrying dollar bills and leaflets denouncing the government in Pyongyang.

Such releases, though banned by a recent law, can provoke condemnation from the North, which last year blew up a joint liaison office and threatened military action after it was angered by the propaganda leaflets.

Police said they executed a search and seizure warrant at the Seoul office of Fighters for Free North Korea, a group led by Park Sang-hak, who defected from the neighbouring nation in 2000.

"Seven police officers raided my office around 10:10 a.m.," Park told Reuters.

Police and military have been investigating the group's claim that it launched 10 advertising balloons from border provinces carrying 500,000 leaflets, 500 booklets and 5,000 one-dollar bills. read more

"The investigation has been underway and we served a search and seizure warrant this morning," a police officer said by telephone.

Seoul's unification ministry, which handles relations with the North, said it had seen media reports of the search, but declined to comment during the investigation.

On Sunday, Kim Yo Jong, a senior North Korean government official and the sister of its leader Kim Jong Un, sharply criticised the South for failing to stop the launches. read more

"We regard the maneuvers committed by the human wastes in the South as a serious provocation against our state and will look into corresponding action," state media quoted Kim as saying, without elaborating. (Reuters)

The resumption of student visa applications at U.S. missions in China got off to an acrimonious start this week when netizens took exception to an American embassy social media post they interpreted as likening Chinese students to dogs.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump, whose time in office was marked by tense relations in Beijing, had in January last year barred nearly all non-U.S. citizens who were in China from entering the United States after the coronavirus outbreak.

On the Twitter-like Weibo service on Wednesday, the visa section of the U.S. embassy in China asked students what they were waiting for after the Biden administration eased restrictions. read more

"Spring has come and the flowers are in bloom. Are you like this dog who can't wait to go out and play?" said the post in Chinese, which was accompanied by a video of an excited puppy trying to climb over a safety gate.

The post drew an angry backlash from some Weibo users, however, who felt the comparison was inappropriate, and was later deleted.

"Is this American humour? I believe they did it on purpose!" one user wrote.

"Dogs in American culture basically have positive meanings, but in Chinese culture and idioms, they are mostly negative," wrote another user. Others quipped that the students' "master" was now calling them back to the United States.

The Global Times, an English-language tabloid run by the Chinese Communist Party's People's Daily, also cited netizens as saying that the post was "blatant racism".

A U.S. embassy spokesman in Beijing issued an apology on Thursday morning to anyone who had been offended by the comments.

"The social media post in question was meant to be light-hearted and humorous," he said. "We took it down immediately when we saw it was not received in the spirit we intended."

It is not the first time animal-related remarks have sparked a backlash in China. In 2019, a senior economist from UBS was placed on leave after comments about pigs in China were perceived by some as a racial slur. He was later reinstated. (Reuters)

The Group of Seven scolded both China and Russia on Wednesday, casting the Kremlin as malicious and Beijing as a bully, but beyond words there were few concrete steps aside from expressing support for Taiwan and Ukraine.

Founded in 1975 as a forum for the West’s richest nations to discuss crises such as the OPEC oil embargo, the G7 this week addressed what it perceives as the biggest current threats: China, Russia and the coronavirus pandemic.

G7 foreign ministers, in a 12,400-word communique, said Russia was trying to undermine democracies and threatening Ukraine while China was guilty of human rights abuses and of using its economic clout to bully others.

There was, however, little concrete action mentioned in the communique that would unduly worry either Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The G7 said it would bolster collective efforts to stop China's "coercive economic policies" and to counter Russian disinformation - part of a move to present the West as a much broader alliance than just the core G7 countries.

"I think (China is) more likely to need to, rather than react in anger, it is more likely going to need to take a look in the mirror and understand that it needs to take into account this growing body of opinion, that thinks these basic international rules have got to be adhered to," British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

Russia denies it is meddling beyond its borders and says the West is gripped by anti-Russian hysteria. China says the West is a bully and that its leaders have a post-imperial mindset that makes them feel they can act like global policemen.

China’s spectacular economic and military rise over the past 40 years is among the most significant geopolitical events of recent history, alongside the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union that ended the Cold War.

XI AND PUTIN

The West, which combined is much bigger than China and Russia economically and militarily, has struggled to come up with an effective response to either China or Russia.

"We will work collectively to foster global economic resilience in the face of arbitrary, coercive economic policies and practices," the G7 ministers said on China.

They said they supported Taiwan’s participation in World Health Organization forums and the World Health Assembly - and expressed concerns about "any unilateral actions that could escalate tensions" in the Taiwan Strait.

China regards Taiwan as its own territory and opposes any official Taiwanese representation on an international level.

On Russia, the G7 was similarly supportive of Ukraine but offered little beyond words.

"We are deeply concerned that the negative pattern of Russia’s irresponsible and destabilising behaviour continues," G7 ministers said.

"This includes the large build-up of Russian military forces on Ukraine’s borders and in illegally-annexed Crimea, its malign activities aimed at undermining other countries’ democratic systems, its malicious cyber activity, and (its) use of disinformation."

VACCINES

On the coronavirus pandemic, the G7 pledged to work with industry to expand the production of affordable COVID-19 vaccines, but stopped short of calling for a waiver of intellectual property rights of major pharma firms.

"We commit to working with  industry  to facilitate expanded manufacturing at scale of affordable COVID-19  vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics and their component parts," the G7 foreign ministers said in a joint statement.

They said the work would include “promoting partnerships between companies, and  encouraging voluntary licensing and tech transfer agreements on mutually agreed terms”. (Reuters)

The world cannot act soon enough to put idle manufacturing capacity to work making COVID-19 vaccines to help redress a massive imbalance in global supply, the head of the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday.

WTO director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said equitable access to vaccines, diagnostics and treatments was "both the moral and economic issue of our time". The World Health Organization said in April that of 700 million vaccines globally administered, only 0.2% had been in low-income countries.

Okonjo-Iweala told a meeting of the 164-member WTO that those who had ordered more vaccines than they needed must share with others. Members should also address export restrictions and bureaucracy disrupting vital medical supply chains.

She urged governments to work with manufacturers to use production capacity available in countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, South Africa, Indonesia and Senegal that could be turned around in a matter of months.

Production needed to rise from the 5 billion doses produced today to the 10.8 billion being forecast for this year to 15 billion, in particular if booster doses would be needed.

The debate on vaccine inequity at the WTO has centred a proposal by India and South Africa to waive intellectual property rights, at least for the duration of the pandemic.

Ten meetings of WTO members have failed to achieve a breakthrough and Wednesday's online gathering was no different as 42 countries gave their views. However, members also heard that India and South Africa intend to refine their proposal before another discussion later in May.

Okonjo-Iweala said she was happy to hear of the revised text.

"I am firmly convinced that once we can sit down with an actual text in front of us, we shall find a pragmatic way forward," she said, referring to a balance between developing country demands while protecting research and innovation. (Reuters)