A tale of two cesspits: DNA reveals intestinal health in Medieval Europe and Middle East

New research proves the feasibility of retrieving bacterial DNA from ancient latrines

MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR THE SCIENCE OF HUMAN HISTORY

Research News

 

IMAGE: THE MEDIEVAL LATRINE AT RIGA DURING EXCAVATION view more 

CREDIT: ULDIS KAL?JIS

A new study published this week demonstrates a first attempt at using the methods of ancient bacterial detection, pioneered in studies of past epidemics, to characterize the microbial diversity of ancient gut contents from two medieval latrines. The findings provide insights into the microbiomes of pre-industrial agricultural populations, which may provide much-needed context for interpreting the health of modern microbiomes.

Over the years, scientists have noted that those living in industrialized societies have a notably different microbiome compared to hunter-gatherer communities around the world. From this, a growing body of evidence has linked changes in our microbiome to many of the diseases of the modern industrialized world, such as inflammatory bowel disease, allergies, and obesity. The current study helps to characterize the change in gut microbiomes and highlights the value of ancient latrines as sources of bio-molecular information.

Ancient Gut Microbiomes: Exploring the Bowels of History

Piers Mitchell of Cambridge University specializes in the gut contents of past people through analysis of unusual substrates. By looking at the contents of archaeological latrines and desiccated faeces under the microscope, he and his team have learned volumes about the intestinal parasites that plagued our ancestors.

"Microscopic analysis can show the eggs of parasitic worms that lived in the intestines, but many microbes in the gut are simply too small to see," comments Mitchell. "If we are to determine what constitutes a healthy microbiome for modern people, we should start looking at the microbiomes of our ancestors who lived before antibiotic use, fast food, and the other trappings of industrialization."

Kirsten Bos, a specialist in ancient bacterial DNA from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and co-leader the study, was first skeptical about the feasibility of investigating the contents of latrines that had long been out of order.

"At the outset we weren't sure if molecular signatures of gut contents would survive in the latrines over hundreds of years. Many of our successes in ancient bacterial retrieval thus far have come from calcified tissues like bones and dental calculus, which offer very different preservation conditions. Nevertheless," says Bos, "I was really hoping the data here would change my perspective."

The team analyzed sediment from medieval latrines in Jerusalem and Riga, Latvia dating from the 14th-15th century CE. The first challenge was distinguishing bacteria that once formed the ancient gut from those that were introduced by the environment, an unavoidable consequence of working with archaeological material.

The researchers identified a wide range of bacteria, archaea, protozoa, parasitic worms, fungi and other organisms, including many taxa known to inhabit the intestines of modern humans.

"It seems latrines are indeed valuable sources for both microscopic and molecular information," concludes Bos.

No Modern Matches for Ancient Microbiomes

Susanna Sabin, a doctoral alumna of the MPI-SHH who co-led the study, compared the latrine DNA to those from other sources, including microbiomes from industrial and foraging populations, as well as waste water and soil.

"We found that the microbiome at Jerusalem and Riga had some common characteristics - they did show similarity to modern hunter gatherer microbiomes and modern industrial microbiomes, but were different enough that they formed their own unique group. We don't know of a modern source that harbors the microbial content we see here."

The use of latrines, where the faeces of many people are mixed together, allowed the researchers unprecedented insight into the microbiomes of entire communities.

"These latrines gave us much more representative information about the wider pre-industrial population of these regions than an individual faecal sample would have," explains Mitchell. "Combining evidence from light microscopy and ancient DNA analysis allows us to identify the amazing variety of organisms present in the intestines of our ancestors who lived centuries ago."

Despite the promise of this new approach for investigating the microbiome, challenges remain.

"We'll need many more studies at other archaeological sites and time periods to fully understand how the microbiome changed in human groups over time," says Bos. "However, we have taken a key step in showing that DNA recovery of ancient intestinal contents from past latrines can work."

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Parents less aware when their kids vape than when they smoke

UCSF study says strict household rules are best way to prevent tobacco use

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO

Research News

 

Most parents know or suspect when their child smokes, but they are much more likely to be in the dark if the child vapes or uses other tobacco products, according to a large national study by researchers at UC San Francisco.

The study, which tracked more than 23,000 participants aged 12 to 17 years old, found that parents or guardians were substantially less likely to report knowing or suspecting that their child had used tobacco if the child used only e-cigarettes, non-cigarette combustible products or smokeless tobacco, compared to smoking cigarettes or using multiple tobacco products.

The researchers also found that when parents set strong household rules about not using tobacco - applying to all residents - their children were less likely to start tobacco use. Just talking to kids about not smoking was far less effective. The study publishes at 9:01 p.m. PT, Oct. 4, 2020, in Pediatrics.

"We know that tobacco-free homes are a key tool to help prevent smoking by kids," said corresponding and senior author Benjamin Chaffee, DDS, MPH, PhD, an associate professor at the UCSF School of Dentistry. "What studies haven't examined is how tobacco-free homes stack up against other approaches and how much tobacco-free home rules might help with other tobacco products beyond smoking.

"Tobacco use by children is troubling, and dentists, like all healthcare providers, should be concerned about preventing youth tobacco use," Chaffee said.

Over the last decade, the smoking landscape has dramatically changed, especially among youth, for whom cigarette smoking has declined while use of electronic cigarettes soared. Last year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that more than 1 in 4 high school students was vaping.

The new study used data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study to investigate parental awareness of youth tobacco use and the role of household tobacco rules in preventing smoking. In addition to cigarettes and e-cigarettes, the study looked at non-cigarette combustible products (including cigars, pipes, hookahs, and bidis), and smokeless tobacco (including snuff, chewing tobacco, snus, and dissolvable tobacco).

It found that parents were more likely to know or suspect that their child was using a tobacco or nicotine product if the child was older, male, identified as white, and lived with a tobacco user, as well as if the parents were less educated. Mothers were singled out as more aware than fathers.

The researchers also found that teens and tweens living in homes with the strictest rules prohibiting tobacco use were 20-26 percent less likely to start using tobacco, compared to youth living in the most permissive homes.

The investigators suggest that parents:

• Don't smoke;
• Create tobacco-free home environments that include all parts of the home;
• Establish strict rules against all tobacco use that apply to all members of the household;
• Have high-quality, clear communication with youth about not using tobacco.

"Low parental awareness of e-cigarette use belies rising public attention to youth vaping," said co-author Tsu-Shuan Wu, a student at the UCSF School of Dentistry. "Youth tobacco use is a considerable public health concern, regardless of the tobacco product used, and parents play a very important role in tobacco prevention.

"Creating tobacco-free home environments is one approach parents can use to set norms and expectations about tobacco use," she said. "And for healthcare providers, raising parental awareness should be part of overall guidance and tobacco-prevention support."

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Funding: Support was provided by the National Institutes of Health grant number U54HL147127 and the Delta Dental Community Care Foundation.

About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. Learn more at ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.

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Body size of the extinct Megalodon indeed off the charts in the shark world

TAYLOR & FRANCIS GROUP

Research News

 

IMAGE: SCHEMATIC DRAWING SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF MAXIMUM POSSIBLE SIZES OF ALL KNOWN 70 NON-PLANKTIVOROUS GENERA (GROUPS) IN THE SHARK ORDER LAMNIFORMES, COMPRISING MODERN (IN GRAY) AND EXTINCT (IN BLACK; WITH... view more 

CREDIT: KENSHU SHIMADA

A new study shows that the body size of the iconic gigantic or megatooth shark, about 15 meters (50 feet) in length, is indeed anomalously large compared to body sizes of its relatives.

Formally called Otodus megalodon, the fossil shark that lived nearly worldwide roughly 15-3.6 million years ago is receiving a renewed look at the significance of its body size in the shark world, based on a new study appearing in the international journal Historical Biology.

Otodus megalodon is commonly portrayed as a super-sized, monstrous shark, in novels and films such as the 2018 sci-fi thriller "The Meg," but it is known that the scientifically justifiable maximum possible body size for the species is about 15 meters (50 feet). Nonetheless, it is still an impressively large shark, and the new study illuminates exactly how uniquely gigantic the shark was, according to Kenshu Shimada, a paleobiologist at DePaul University in Chicago and lead author of the study.

Otodus megalodon belongs to the shark group called lamniforms with a rich fossil record, but the biology of extinct forms is poorly understood because these cartilaginous fishes are mostly known only from their teeth. Based on measurements taken from present-day non-planktivorous lamniforms, the study presents an equation that would allow estimations about the body length of extinct forms from their teeth. The study demonstrates that O. megalodon that reached about 15 meters (50 feet) is truly an outlier because practically all other non-planktivorous sharks have a general size limit of 7 meters (23 feet), and only a few plankton-eating sharks, such as the whale shark and basking shark, were equivalent or came close to the size. The study also reveals that the Cenozoic Era (after the age of dinosaurs, including today) saw more lamniform lineages attaining larger sizes than the Mesozoic (age of dinosaurs) Era.

Warm-bloodedness has previously been proposed to have led to the gigantism (over 6 meters, or 20 feet) in multiple lamniform lineages. The new study proposes their live-bearing reproductive strategy with a unique cannibalistic egg-eating behavior to nourish early-hatched embryos to large sizes inside their mother to be another possible cause for the frequent evolution of gigantism achieved by lamniform sharks.

Understanding body sizes of extinct organisms is important in the context of ecology and evolution. "Lamniform sharks have represented major carnivores in oceans since the age of dinosaurs, so it is reasonable to assert that they must have played an important role in shaping the marine ecosystems we know today," said Shimada.

"This is compelling evidence for the truly exceptional size of megalodon," noted co-author Michael Griffiths, a professor of environmental science at William Paterson University in Wayne, New Jersey. Co-author Martin Becker, also a professor of environmental science at William Paterson University, added, "this work represents a critical advancement in our understanding of the evolution of this ocean giant."

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American people facing 'choiceless’ democracy

TEHRAN, Oct. 04 (MNA) – Stating that the US elections are not fully democratic, Richard Falk said that it does not matter for American people who wins as either way the problems of their lives will not be solved.

To know more about the US Presidential Election, we reached out to Richard Anderson Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University.

Here is the full text of the interview:

Why is turnout so low in US elections?

Electoral turnout has been low in recent years because the perceptions of living in a ‘choiceless’ democracy give many US citizens the impression that it does not matter who wins as either way the problems of their lives will not be solved. Perhaps, more than choiceless, a better existential explanation of this devaluing of the right to vote is the sense of what I would call irrelevant democracy. This means that political outcomes of elections are felt to be irrelevant to conditions of poverty or discrimination, or economic unfairness, an interpretation that gains credibility that it is ‘the losers’ in American society that make up the bulk of those who fail to vote. It reflects deep alienation in middle class and underclass America, which has been somewhat lessened at this time due to a fear that Trump’s reelection could produce a fascist America. This fear will undoubtedly increase voter turnout in November, but not necessarily in a post-Trump future.

Although it is the disadvantaged who disproportionately refrain from voting (and partly also for reasons connected with voter suppression discussed previously), there are sophisticated citizens who refuse to vote on principle or vote under the banner of ‘the lesser of evils.’ Progressive anti-Trumpists are faced with this dilemma in the forthcoming elections.

Can the US election be considered a fully democratic election?

No, the American elections as currently administered on national level are not fully democratic for three principal reasons: (1) most obviously, due to various forms of voter suppression and distortion encroaching especially on the rights of persons of color and the impoverished to cast their votes either as a result of difficult registration rules or by making polling sites feel hostile or requiring especially long waits in neighborhoods where minorities and the poor live; (2) by presidential opposition to voting by mail and by alleging fraud and rigging without any evidence imperiling his willing to transfer political power if he loses, undermining confidence in the integrity of elections and causing the public great anxiety; (3) by not acknowledging and challenging ‘systemic racism’ inherent in American society that produces discrimination against African-Americans, Muslims, and other victimized minorities.

What is the difference between Trump and Biden? Could we describe Biden as a pacifist candidate?

Biden’s record, especially on international issues and the Middle East, is of a consistently war-mongering character that includes strong support for the disastrous 2003 war and subsequent occupation of Iraq and mindless indifference to Israel’s criminal disregard of Palestinian rights. Besides, as suggested, Biden seems as readier for a new cold war than Trump. His version of the foreign policy bipartisan consensus is more coherent and deferential to the considered views of the political elite and militarized American bureaucracy while Trump is an impulsive leader that thinks he can by himself engineer a revival of American preeminence by bullying, bluster, and bluff.

My own reluctant support of Biden is rooted in my greater apprehensions about Trump, which also explains why I equally reluctantly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she opposed Trump. I regard his demagogic style, racist affinities, ultra-nationalism, ecological denialism as a vehicle for a fascist future for the United States, which would mean the total abandonment of democratic procedures of governance, accompanied by repressive policies and practices. Such an abandonment would almost certainly produce harsh exclusionary hostility to immigration except from majority white countries, punishment of dissent and protest activity, and an economic and political order even more slanted in favor of the most wealthy. My reluctance about the electoral choice posed by Biden or Trump is also colored by uncertainty in the form of an obscure future. I fear a belligerent future in which Biden’s approach leads to interventions and even war, whereas I grant the possibility that a reelected Trump could opt for isolationism, which resulted in more moderation in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Interview by Amir Muhammad Esmaeili

News Code 164294

Whoever wins US election, JCPOA must be restored: Finaud


TEHRAN, Sep. 28 (MNA) – Commenting on the fate of the JCPOA and lawfulness of Trump moves against Iran at UNSC head of arms proliferation at GCSP says, "whoever wins the US 2020 Presidential Election, JCPOA must be restored."

Due to the US position in the economic, political, security, and military spheres, the country has taken many unilateral steps in the international arena in recent decades, which has led to the formation of a trend in its foreign and economic policy.

Although this unilateral foreign and economic policy emerged with the post-World War II, ups and downs during the presidency of most US presidents, it seems to have become even more during Donald Trump's term.

Trump's unilateralist policies not only created tensions between the country and other world powers such as Russia and China but have even raised tensions between the United States and its European and NATO allies.

Now that the first term of Trump's presidency is coming to an end, many in the world are waiting for the results of the US presidential election.

To shed more light on President Trump's unilateralism and anti-Iran moves and the reasons behind them, we reached out to Marc Finaud head of arms proliferation at Geneva Center for Security Policy (GCSP).

Here is the full text of our interview with him:

How lawful do you assess the US move?

As this was confirmed by the UN Secretary-General and most other members of the UN Security Council, this decision cannot have any legal effects because the US withdrew from the JCPOA and has no legal ground to activate a mechanism provided for in that agreement.

After opposition from other UNSC members to the US unilateral action, the White House has imposed some other unilateral sanctions on Iran and has threatened other states to obey the US sanctions. Will the US be able to get what it wants with respect to Iran through bullying others?

Unfortunately, the US has been accompanying its unilateral sanctions with extra-territorial jurisdiction, meaning that it can impose secondary sanctions on states or entities that continue to trade with Iran. This is a powerful deterrent that has already discouraged major companies to trade with or invest in Iran, especially if they fear losing the American market. Even the EU mechanism to shield EU companies is not sufficient to give them assurances that they will not be affected by US secondary sanctions.

Why does Trump focus on Iran in the UNSC despite failures? Do you see any relation between his moves and the US 2020 Presidential Election?

Of course, appearing tough on Iran is popular among Trumps’ electoral base and is encouraged by anti-Iranian lobbies. And because this electorate is unmoved by facts, it does not realize that this policy is ineffective if not counter-productive.

How do you assess the US unilateralism’s effect on the efficiency of the UNSC?

This unilateralist policy has led to complete isolation of the US not only within the Security Council but globally. It contributed to further deterioration of the ability of the UNSC to fulfill its role in preserving international peace and security.

Some say the world orders and the UN structure does not meet the US interest anymore and some circles in the US believe in changes to the UN structures and are eager to show UNSC as an ineffective body that doesn’t meet the US needs. They believe focusing on Iran at the body prepares a good opportunity for some groups that have problems with the body to put pressure on the UN for reforms. What do you think of this?

Certainly, the UN as a whole, and the UNSC in particular, need reform for better performance, including enlargement. But exerting pressure on other members, including the US closest allies, is not the best way to achieve this goal. It is no secret that the Trump administration and its advisers are deeply opposed to multilateralism and any cooperative approach to security as demonstrated in the US withdrawal from major international agreements.

How do you see the future of the JCPOA and also the future of the transatlantic relation if Trump wins the election and if Biden wins?

Trump has said that, if re-elected, he would negotiate a new deal with Iran while Biden promised to reintegrate the JCPOA and re-establish dialogue with Tehran. Whoever wins, the JCPOA must be restored as the minimum common denominator on the basis of which further negotiations can take place. This means that the reciprocal nature of the JCPOA must be recognized and a win-win agreement can be the only basis for further relations.

News Code 164087

Bahrain’s normalization deal: mission of godfather’s pawns

By: Mehdi Azizi

TEHRAN, Sep. 12 (MNA) – Saudi Arabia, the godfather, has sent off its insignificant pawns to play the chess game of "normalization of relations with Israel" first to test the waters for its own normalization of relations with the regime.

Of course, Bahrain had already stepped onto this path ahead of other Arab countries, at a time when the first step was taken to implement the so-called “Deal of the Century” in this country. The holding of the economic summit of the Deal of the Century in Bahrain, which took place months ago, showed that Bahrain is certainly acting no differently from its other Arab friends in the Persian Gulf while walking on this path.The “train of normalization”, or more precisely, the recognition of the process of normalization of relations with the Zionist regime, has finally arrived at the Bahraini station, as was already expected.

The important point here is to interpret the reason for choosing the UAE and Bahrain as the first countries to normalize relations with the Zionist regime within the framework of the constituent structure of these countries and the Arab dictators’ dependency on the Zionist regime; dictatorial regimes that see their stability and the survival of their political life in giving concessions to the Zionist regime, and some of them have been formed on the basis of a British or American agreement. Some of these dictatorial regimes also lack political independence and popular support.

Bahrain, meanwhile, can be described as a degrading political model and dependent on Saudi Arabia, lacking national independence and popular support, and aptly fit for the term "Saudi Arabia’s errand boy".

Most countries, which are called small or microscopic countries in international relations, are either formed on the basis of political agreements and seek an opportunity to maintain their power or even eliminate political rivals at home, or in the absence of these elements, they seek to side with and support the policies of the United States and the Zionist regime in the regional and global arenas.

As noted earlier, the power and influence of these countries to sway the public opinion of the Arab nations are not enough for them to play a prominent role for the Palestinian cause, and that is exactly why Israel and Trump have chosen them to act as the first stops for the train of the normalization of relations with the regime. On the one hand, due to the lack of national capacity and commonalities, and home to a heterogeneous population, they are not worried about popular reactions in these countries, and on the other hand, it can be a good benchmark for measuring the reaction of other Islamic and Arab nations to this dangerous and threatening move.

Foreigners make up a large part of the UAE population. On the other hand, these countries are not of special strategic importance in terms of historical and cultural impact on the Palestinian cause. Instead, these countries pick up and carry out missions that the US has pre-defined for them.

However, it should be emphasized that Trump, in addition to using the normalization of relations with the Zionist regime for his own electoral campaign, feels that if he succeeds with the UAE and the islands, then the way to normalize relations with Israel would be paved for other countries, or at least the costs of such a measure would be reduced.

Of course, they are still waiting for the reaction of the Arab and Islamic nations. This is where the support of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and some Arab kings come into the picture. It is clear that the next stop - if their evaluations get the desired results - will be some key Arab countries that play an important role in the Palestinian political arena.

In general, it can be said that Saudi Arabia has sent off its insignificant pawns and errand boys to play in this game of chess, in order to, if the conditions are right, make public its own normalization of relations with Israel. This issue has been raised even with the Egyptians.

Undoubtedly, this American political show is only for electoral purposes and can be evaluated in line with the implementation of projects such as the deal of the century, the annexation of the West Bank and parts of the occupied Golan, the relocation of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem al-Quds, and now the Arab countries’ normalization of relations with the Zionist regime.

In any case, what happened in actuality was that all Palestinian factions, with all their various suffixes, methods of resistance, approaches, and different tastes, achieved a common ground, with results that may not have been so easy to obtain over the years.

It should be noted that Arab ethnicity or mere Arabism, without invoking Islamic teachings and the option of resistance, not only cannot bring the Palestinian people closer to its aspirations but rather putting trust in the camp over the years, i.e. the process of reconciliation, has reduced the level of demands of the Palestinian people from the formation of an independent Palestinian state to the withdrawal of settlements in the Palestinian territories.

MNA/5021452

China is on the verge of an end to absolute poverty. Now for the really hard part


Poverty alleviation was given new prominence in 2015 when President Xi Jinping pledged to lift those in the greatest hardship by 2020

Despite the expense and resources spent on improving the lives of poor rural Chinese, there is more to be done to help them adjust and keep them in work


Zhuang Pinghui in Beijing Published:  2 Oct, 2020

Jifu Jifuzi and his wife Li Youling watch TV in their new home. Photo: Simon Song


Jifu Jifuzi was living in an isolated village on a mountain cliff in southwestern China just as other members of the Yi ethnic minority had done for generations.


The remote location in Sichuan province originally helped the community to avoid conflicts but ultimately it meant they were left behind as China modernised.

The family – Jifu, his wife and three adult children – were living in a mud house with a fire in the centre of the room and their chickens and pigs next to their home. When it rained, the roof leaked and mountain roads were too muddy to go anywhere.
But things started to improve rapidly in 2018, after Chinese President
Xi Jinping visited the Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture – one of the poorest parts of the country – and called on cadres to speed up
poverty alleviation efforts.

Villagers in Xujiashan moved into their new houses built by the government in 2019. 

Photo: Simon Song

Roads were built to connect the mountain villages and houses were constructed to ensure each person had the standard 35 square metres of living space. Villagers finally had access to relatively modern amenities: a flush toilet, running water, television and, for better hygiene, their animals were raised away from the living quarters.

“I am very grateful for all this. I didn’t pay for anything,” said Jifu Jifuzi, 50, who moved to a five-bedroom house with his family in October last year.

He and his two sons headed to Zhejiang to work on construction sites in the far eastern province now that new roads made the journey easier. Together they could bring home about 60,000 yuan (US$8,800) a year.

Jifu was the face the Chinese government proudly showed to the outside world, representing the 10 million rural residents across the country resettled from remote or hazardous areas as part of Beijing’s poverty alleviation campaign.

In a three-day government-organised tour, large areas featuring new blocks of flats, houses and public squares were decorated with slogans thanking the Communist Party in Yi-dominant counties. The media was also shown the former mud hut homes to underscore the achievements of the campaign.

China is set to announce that its poverty alleviation programme is a success, having spent a lot of money and labour, but there appears to be a long way to go if people helped by the campaign are to stay employed, adjust to their new lifestyle and stay out of dire poverty.

Xi tries to reassure ethnic minorities they won’t be ‘left behind’
11 Jun 2020



China’s anti-poverty campaign began decades ago but picked up pace in 2015 when Xi made an ambitious pledge to end absolute poverty – measured in 2011 as equal to an annual income of 2,300 yuan in 2011 – by 2020. The timer was set to ensure China became a “moderately prosperous society”, a founding mission for the ruling party by 2021 when it celebrates its centenary.

The Chengbei Ganen Community is the largest relocation settlement from inhospitable areas of the poverty alleviation initiative of Yuexi county, Sichuan province. Photo: Simon Song


To reach the goal the unprecedented campaign was carried out with no consideration of cost – either labour costs or funds – in spite of the country’s slowing economy.

Each household deemed to be in poverty was identified with a clear sign by their entrance and the name and telephone number of a public servant or staff of a state-owned enterprise paired up to help the household. More than 2.9 million party cadres were sent to villages to help poor villages rise above the poverty line. In higher-level arrangements, affluent eastern provinces have been paired with poor provinces and offered financial support, jobs and business opportunities.

A Tibetan woman plants vegetable next to her village home. In Qingshui village, in Liaoping township of Ganluo county, Liangshan prefecture, there is a population of 721 in 212 households, and the registered poor population is 319. Villagers were resettled in new houses in 2019. Photo: Simon Song


It is difficult to calculate how much money has been poured into the cause – the campaign has depended on resources from enterprises as well as government funding – to build infrastructure such as roads and businesses, relocate people away from extremely poor areas and pay for education and public health. In Liangshan alone, 115.7 billion yuan (US$17 billion) has been spent since 2016.

Poverty alleviation efforts were redoubled in 2018 for the final three years of “rough battle” to help areas deeply mired in poverty, especially the “three regions and three prefectures”, involving 19 groups of ethnic minority people who lived on the Tibet plateau, in Xinjiang, in Linxia in Gansu province, in Liangshan in Sichuan province and in Nujiang in Yunnan province.

Because of the campaign, about 13 million rural residents have been lifted out of poverty each year since 2013, according to official government figures. The staggering number of 98 million impoverished rural residents in 2013 was cut to 5.5 million by last year.

Officials predicted that China would reach its target as scheduled – no pandemic, economic slowdown or closed factories would stand in the way when China was so close to reaching its crowning social accomplishment.

“The epidemic and floods in summer have been big challenges but we are very confident that we can reach the poverty alleviation target this year,” said Hong Tianyun, deputy head of the State Council’s Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development.

Ethnic Yi women learn to do traditional Yi embroidery as a vocational training at Chengbei Ganen Community in Yuexi county. Photo: Simon Song

Peng Qinghua, party secretary of Sichuan province, conceded that the coronavirus pandemic had made the poverty alleviation work more difficult, especially because the province was known as a major source of migrant workers for other areas but many of those workers had not been able to leave while much of the country was under lockdown.

“That would affect their annual income but the impact would not be severe,” Peng said. Work on poverty alleviation programme construction projects that had been suspended because of lockdowns had since resumed and would be finished on schedule, according to Peng.

However, high living costs and limited job opportunities are new obstacles for rural families who must give up farming after moving to new homes.

Local governments are under huge pressure to help these families, including providing them with job training or organising business opportunities, but it is not always an easy task.

In the Ganen residential area of Yuexi county near Liangshan where 6,600 people have been moved from their mountain homes to flats, the local government pays women 30 yuan a day to train to work as nannies or domestic helpers.

Hailai Budumu, whose husband works on construction sites in the Sichuan capital Chengdu, said through a translator that she was happy to move into a 75-square metre flat last year after paying 20,000 yuan “because it is a much better house than the old one”. She took part in the 23-day nanny training with little expectation that she would become one earning as much as 1,000 yuan a month.

“A job as a cleaner near my home with a few hundred yuan a month would be fine,” she said.

Her trainer Li Fang added that the challenge was not just to meet work skill sets but that people moving from the high mountains had to adapt to modern urban living and learn hygienic habits to appear “employable” for local families.

“Moving meant a drastic change [of life] and sometimes higher living costs. The tap water is cleaner than spring water but also comes at a price,” said Lin Shucheng, party secretary of Liangshan prefecture.

He said the prefecture government’s preferred strategy was to relocate families closer to where they were living instead of sending them away to distant cities and towns if they did not have family members to support them.

There are also doubts over the effectiveness of the poverty alleviation work because the huge amount of resources involved means the programme may not be sustainable.

Local governments are also trying to set up businesses, such as vegetable farms and collectively owned apple orchards, and promote local tourism to help create job opportunities and generate sustainable income.

“New businesses may fail and rural residents who have been lifted out of poverty may fall back [into the poverty trap again],” said Li Guoxiang, a rural affairs researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. “Such risks are always present and [we need] at least three years to observe and monitor to ensure the efforts are successful, and we may even extend the period if necessary.”

Wang Yonggui, head of the poverty alleviation and development bureau in Liangshan, said establishing better and more efficient transport links was crucial to success of the programme.

“I was born here and I know what [life] was like when all the counties here – 11 of them – were inaccessible because we were not linked to any highways and it took five hours just to travel 10km,” Wang said. “We need to build more roads in the next five years so that our crops and harvests can be sold outside and we may even be able to make some money by selling our spring water.”

But even if the 2020 goal is achieved, it does not mean China has eliminated poverty once and for all. Premier Li Keqiang said in May that 600 million people in China still lived on about 1,000 yuan a month.

It signals that the party has a long way to go to reach its second centenary goal: to build China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and has reach the level of moderately developed countries by 2049 – 100 years after the founding of
the People’s Republic of China.

Li, of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, indicated that in future China may not set a “poverty line” like it did in battling absolute poverty.

“The next stage of poverty alleviation is about narrowing the gap between cities and rural areas, and between affluent and poor regions. It is not going to be about individuals but groups of people,” Li said.

“That goal is possible to reach because of what China has achieved in dealing with absolute poverty – to provide individuals with necessary conditions to survive and let them develop the capability for self-development.”

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: victory Declared in first part of anti-poverty drive


Zhuang Pinghui
Based in Beijing, Zhuang Pinghui joined the Post in 2004 to report on China. She covers a range of issues including policy, healthcare, culture and society

How U.S. Justice Department disarmed its police reform effort

By John Shiffman, Brad Heath

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In 2017, a white St. Louis policeman was acquitted of murdering a Black man. The verdict sparked days of protests and clashes with police. Before shifts that week, two officers texted colleagues, expressing excitement.

“Let’s whoop some ass,” officer Christopher Myers wrote, according to texts obtained by federal agents. Later, he added: “The bosses are being a little more lenient with the use of force by us.”

“The more the merrier!!!” officer Dustin Boone wrote. “It’s going to be fun beating the hell out of these shitheads once the sun goes down and nobody can tell us apart … Just fuck people up when they don’t act right!”

On the third night of protests, the two officers confronted a middle-aged Black protester named Luther Hall. Hall later told authorities his hands were raised when someone grabbed him from behind and slammed him into the ground face first. Then, Hall said, he was struck by police batons and boots. He required spinal surgery and for weeks struggled to eat through a bruised jaw.

The alleged beating was not captured on video. But the accuser made an excellent witness: Hall was an undercover cop, posing as a demonstrator.

The alleged misconduct by police at the 2017 clashes triggered criminal charges against these and other officers. Myers and Boone have pleaded not guilty to criminal civil-rights violations.

For many residents the charges were not enough. They also called for a sweeping review of racial and other problems within the St. Louis department, a so-called “pattern or practice” investigation, a powerful federal tool to address systematic police abuses. The probes enable the Justice Department to sue a police force and compel it to clean up abusive practices.

The U.S. Attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, got involved, according to a government lawyer familiar with the matter, reaching out to fellow officials appointed by U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington to push for a pattern or practice case. Such cases are investigated by a special civil rights unit in Washington.

“He was shut down pretty hard,” the lawyer recalled. “He got the message pretty quick: We weren’t going to be doing these kinds of cases.”

Jensen declined to comment for this story. Lawyers for Boone and Myers didn’t reply to requests for comment.

The decision was part of a broader retreat by the Justice Department from policing America’s police. In nearly four years, Trump officials have opened just one police pattern or practice case, official records show, compared to at least 20 opened during the eight years of the Obama administration.

The Justice Department’s civil rights division “has a strong record of upholding the civil rights of all Americans,” spokeswoman Ali Kjergaard said. “We fully support police reform and have aggressively prosecuted police officers who violate civil rights.”

SESSIONS SPURNS ‘AN EXTREME REMEDY’

The result is that at a time when the United States is facing another public reckoning over civil rights abuses by police, the Justice Department unit charged with handling such problems has remained largely sidelined.

“There are 18,000 police departments in the country and they are all doing well?” said Cynthia Deitle, former chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s civil rights unit under presidents Bush and Obama. “No one needs an overseer? Nobody needs to be checked? Everybody’s fine? That just can’t be true.”


The story of how Trump officials disarmed the primary federal program designed to address police abuse is based on interviews with 25 current and former government lawyers, including the man who changed the policy, former Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He was replaced by Trump in 2019 with William Barr, who has expressed skepticism that systemic racism is a problem among police.

Sessions told Reuters he limited - but did not end - pattern or practice investigations, because federal oversight of local police is “an extreme remedy” that “shouldn’t be used willy nilly.”

Behind the scenes, two people involved said, Sessions aides tried to marshal evidence to back this hands-off approach. Sessions believed that police reform agreements don’t work or worse, backfire, inadvertently driving spikes in crime.

The evidence, which included statistical and consultant reviews, did not confirm Sessions’s theories, people who participated said. A consultant the Trump Administration hired to review existing pattern or practice cases told Reuters that he found them largely effective and appropriate, and recommended that this work continue.

A Justice Department official in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.
ROOTS IN RODNEY KING

Congress granted the Justice Department the authority to review a police department’s civil rights records in 1994, in response to the beating of motorist Rodney King and the riots that followed the acquittal of Los Angeles officers charged with assaulting him.

Since then, the Justice Department has conducted 70 investigations and won court-ordered settlements known as “consent decrees” after 21 of them. Another 20 ended with binding settlements promising reforms. The investigations have exposed excessive force, racial discrimination and other unconstitutional acts by police.

Cases are investigated and enforced by lawyers in the Justice Department’s elite “special litigation section.” Typically, the process takes years and compels police to spend tens of millions of dollars on training, equipment and oversight. Usually, a federal judge appoints a special monitor to oversee these changes.

Sessions, previously the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican, set about to change the policy when Trump tapped him as attorney general in 2017. The primary problem, he said in a recent interview, is not the police, but violent crime.

“One of the most radical, unjustifiable policies I’ve observed in my whole adult life is this attack on police,” Sessions said. “You have to be careful before you start savaging police departments. Recruiting will go down. People will retire early. Good officers will leave, and then you get caught in a negative spiral that leads to dangerous, dangerous outcomes.”

Sessions said he was especially troubled by a consent decree that called for Baltimore police to stop abusing city residents, a document created in the Obama Administration’s final days. Sessions sought to scale back the decree, calling it too broad and restrictive. A federal judge said it was too late, and the decree went into effect.

A court-appointed monitoring team said in a report Wednesday that although Baltimore had overhauled many of the policies faulted by investigators, “these reforms have not yet translated into widespread changes in officer conduct,” and that the city’s recordkeeping was too shoddy to know whether it was working.

The Baltimore case set a tone going forward, Sessions said. He vowed never to enter such broad and open-ended deals again.

A CONSULTANT’S UNEXPECTED ADVICE

Sessions also ordered a review of all existing consent decrees. His order was made public but did not disclose details. Officials briefed said the department began an internal statistical analysis and hired a former big-city police chief to review every consent decree.

Justice officials declined to make the 2017 statistical findings public. But a government official familiar with them said they were inconclusive: Crime rose in some cities following an announcement that a police department was under investigation, but usually returned to normal levels once publicity subsided.

The Justice Department said in a separate review the same year that outside studies “provide strong evidence” that its cases “succeeded in bringing about more effective constitutional policing.” Another review, prepared for the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that murders and overall crime tend to fall after the department announces a pattern or practice case. The exception is when the investigations come in the tense wake of high-profile episodes of deadly force against Black people.

The Sessions statistical project was abandoned, a government official said, after it became clear that “there’s no way to do a data-driven analysis” that compares police departments of different sizes and cultures.

Next, the Trump administration tapped outside advice. It hired former Phoenix police chief Jack Harris to review every active consent decree and monitor report, in all more than 10,000 pages of detail. In the end, Harris did not find major problems with the Obama-era decrees, he told Reuters.

“In the vast majority of cases that the Justice Department looked at, clearly the police department needed to change the way it was doing business, and the consent decree was the appropriate way to force change,” Harris said.

Of consent decrees he added: “For the most part, they work. They’re not perfect. They can cost a lot of money to a community but they will bring your department into the modern era.”

Harris did suggest tweaks to several decrees that he found too burdensome on police. For example, he said, requiring Albuquerque police to send a supervisor to the scene of every police use of force, no matter how small, created administrative duties that cut into time fighting crime. The consent decree was altered to address this.

Among Harris’s other recommendations: calling for lie-detector tests to weed out racist or violence-prone police recruits and an end to rules that let police purge officer discipline reports every few years, a practice he said makes it harder to identify and fire bad cops. Harris said he didn’t know what Trump officials did with this advice.

“SUMMER CASES ARE RINGING ALARM BELLS”

Sessions and his aides were troubled by other probes, too.

Days before Trump took office, the Justice Department delivered a blistering investigation of Chicago’s police force. It found that officers routinely used excessive force against minorities. In one case, it said an officer beat and tasered a 16-year-old girl who had broken a rule against using a cellphone in school.

Often, the next thing the Justice Department would do is file a civil lawsuit against the local police force that could lead to court-ordered reforms. Instead, after Trump took office, Justice demurred.

Sessions acknowledged that “Chicago had a pattern of abuse that justified a lawsuit to protect our constitutional liberties.” But he also said that he was reluctant to impose restrictive limits on the police.

Months passed. Illinois’ attorney general took the city to court instead, filing a lawsuit in August 2017 to fix the problems federal investigators had identified. After Chicago and the state proposed their own consent decree, the Justice Department objected. It urged a court not to enact the decree, saying the deal would make it harder to battle “an alarming and unprecedented surge in violent crime and homicide.”

Ultimately, the city signed a consent decree with the state. Harris, the consultant, told Reuters he wrote a memo endorsing a draft of the state’s decree with minor revisions, which said: “I have found the improvements that are required, changes mandated by the various consent decrees to be positive directions for a department to improve performance and utilize policing best practices.” A judge approved the state’s decree in 2019.

The Justice Department continued to refrain from new investigations as nationwide protests broke out against police violence this year after the death of George Floyd under a cop’s knee in Minneapolis. A document obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that as of mid-September, the department has opened no new pattern or practice investigations against any police forces this year.

“The summer cases are ringing alarm bells,” said former Justice Department special litigation attorney Puneet Cheema, now at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “One could look at the lack of response to the events of the summer and say, where is the Department of Justice?”

“SOME MONSTERS WITHIN OUR POLICE”

In St. Louis, Black officers have complained for years about the behavior of some white colleagues. The Ethical Society of Police, a local association of mostly Black cops, issued a 112-page report in 2016 detailing alleged abuses and racism. An update this year alleged little had changed.

“Black officers being called the N-word and monkeys, women being called the C-word,” said Heather Taylor, a recently retired homicide detective who as president of the organization compiled the reports. “A lot of times, officers are viewed as heroes. Sometimes we are heroes. But sometimes we are complete monsters, and we have some monsters within our police department.”

St. Louis police spokesman Keith Barrett said the department takes misconduct allegations seriously and refers internal affairs cases to state and federal prosecutors. “We hold ourselves to the high standards the community we serve demands,” he said.

Tensions between police and protesters spiked after the September 2017 acquittal of the white St. Louis officer accused of homicide. At one point, video shows, police herded protesters into an area where they could not escape and then attacked some, a tactic known as “kettling.” The clashes led to more than a dozen civil rights lawsuits, alleging police brutality.

One suit was filed by Hall, the undercover cop, who declined to comment for this story. According to an FBI affidavit, Hall told superiors that fellow officers “beat the fuck out of him like Rodney King.”

Federal authorities gathered video and interviewed scores of people, lawyers and witnesses said. They filed just one criminal case - against five St. Louis police officers related to the attack on the undercover officer.

Five white officers were charged, including Boone and Myers, the two officers who sent the text messages about beating protesters. They pleaded not guilty to charges of violating Hall’s civil rights and conspiracy to obstruct the investigation. A third officer pleaded guilty to making a false statement, and a fourth pleaded guilty to using excessive force; they await sentencing. Trial for Boone, Myers and a fifth officer, who pleaded not guilty to lying to the FBI, has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Current and former government lawyers say federal officials in St. Louis and Washington did weigh a potential pattern or practice investigation against the St. Louis force in 2017. The officials considered possible evidence of systematic problems in the department, including statements signaling potential bias and other misconduct; the shifting of a police camera mounted on a street pole away from the scene, seconds before officers advanced on protesters; and a federal judge’s finding that police illegally used chemical agents against nonviolent protesters.


In Washington, career attorneys told Reuters they conducted an initial review but decided not to recommend a full investigation, partly because they felt Trump appointees wouldn’t approve it and because officials were already monitoring a consent decree in neighboring Ferguson, Missouri.

In St. Louis, local U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen phoned NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund president Sherrilyn Ifill, who had asked for the sweeping review. Jensen told her he would look into the matter, a lawyer familiar with the conversation said. Ifill declined to comment.

Jensen also emailed senior Justice officials in Washington, asking them to consider a full probe, according to a government lawyer involved. But Jensen did not pursue the matter further once Trump officials rebuffed him, the government lawyer said.

THE TRUMP ERA’S ONE CASE

The Bush administration opened at least 14 police pattern-or-practice cases. The Obama team opened at least 20, according to the department’s list of its cases. Trump officials have brought just one of their own, against police in Springfield, Massachusetts.

That case was opened in 2018, lawyers involved said, after it was framed by career lawyers to appeal to Sessions: The case would be limited to a tiny drug unit in a mid-sized department so allegedly violent and corrupt that their actions were ruining cases against nefarious drug dealers.

“That was the pitch to Sessions:‘This is a unit so bad that they can’t effectively fight crime,’” a government lawyer said. “It was a smart pitch and it was also true.”

Sessions confirmed he approved the Springfield probe, finding it to be properly focused.

The results were made public more than two years later, in July 2020, long after Sessions was succeeded by Barr. The investigation found that Springfield drug detectives routinely used violence, abusing residents’ constitutional rights. Detectives “repeatedly punch individuals in the face unnecessarily, in part because they escalate encounters with civilians too quickly.”

Mayor Domenic Sarno said in September that Springfield was “working together” with the Justice Department to fortify oversight of the police force, add body cameras and change certain policies. So far, the government has not sought an enforceable consent decree.

The Justice Department continues to hold back. In July, after protesters and police clashed, Seattle forbade its officers from using pepper spray, tear gas and projectile launchers on crowds. Ordinarily, cities are free to restrict the weapons their officers use.

This time, Seattle was blocked - by the Justice Department.

The reason: Seattle’s police department is operating under a 2012 consent decree imposed after the Justice Department found officers were using “unnecessary, excessive force.” As is typical, the decree gives Justice the authority to object whenever Seattle changes its use-of-force rules. Such provisions are normally used to prevent backsliding. The Justice Department, now run by Barr, invoked the decree to nix Seattle’s tighter weapons rules.

A federal judge temporarily put Seattle’s new rules on hold. A spokesman for the city declined to comment on the case.

“The consent decree was intended to be a tool the community could use to reform police departments,” said Brandy Grant, executive director of Seattle’s Community Police Commission, a city body that monitors the police. “Now we’re worried they could be weaponized to block reforms.”


Reported by John Shiffman and Brad Heath in Washington. Additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici. Edited by Michael Williams.

Huawei’s Meng Wanzhou is wasting court’s time with doomed extradition manoeuvres, Canada lawyer says

Government lawyer Robert Frater calls for the ‘summary rejection’ of applications by Meng’s lawyers attacking the US record of the fraud case against her

Meng lawyers contend the US record is so misleading the case should be thrown out, but Frater says they are trying to turn the extradition hearing into a trial

Ian Young in Vancouver Published:  30 Sep, 2020

Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei, leaves her home to attend a court hearing in Vancouver on Tuesday. Photo: AP

A Canadian government lawyer representing US efforts to have Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou extradited to face fraud charges has accused her lawyers of wasting “precious court time” with legal manoeuvres that are doomed to fail.

Robert Frater told Associate Chief Justice Heather Holmes of the British Columbia Supreme Court on Tuesday that she must not allow the extradition hearing to be turned into a trial, and that she should “cut off at the knee” applications by Meng’s team to have the case thrown out.

Meng's lawyers say the US record of the case is so misleading that the only remedy is to release her, and that new evidence to prove this should be admitted by Holmes.

“Extradition hearings are supposed to be expeditious processes,” said Frater, telling the judge that she had “the ability to refuse to waste precious court time on processes that have no hope of success”.

Meng Wanzhou arrives at the BC Supreme Court to attend a hearing in Vancouver on Tuesday. Photo: AP

“The dominant thread of case law is for summary rejection of these kinds of motions,” Frater said.

Meng returned to court in Vancouver this week, for the first time since May, to hear her lawyers argue that American authorities misled the court in its record of the case (ROC). They want the court to admit new evidence they say will help show the unreliability of the US ROC and the Supplementary ROC (SROC).

Frater argued for the judge to reject the applications. He said that “extradition hearings are not trials”, but that Meng’s lawyers had “edged perilously close to jury addresses” in their arguments on Monday and Tuesday.

Your duty is not to let this proceeding become a trial. It is not to admit extra evidence on causality in US sanctions law … so that you can decide an issue on which, with the greatest of respect, you have no expertise.Canadian government lawyer Robert Frater to presiding judge

“Your duty is not to let this proceeding become a trial,” Frater told Holmes. “It is not to admit extra evidence on causality in US sanctions law … so that you can decide an issue on which, with the greatest of respect, you have no expertise.”

He added: “We say you should stop both these applications here and now.”
Frater said affidavits filed by Meng’s team to support their claims were “garden-variety alternative inference and defence evidence that is inadmissible”. They were “an invitation to get down into the weeds of US law”.

Meng and her lawyers are excluded as extradition case moves behind closed doors
19 Aug 2020

Earlier on Tuesday, Meng’s lawyer Frank Addario said that a HSBC banker who met Meng in a Hong Kong teahouse in 2013 must have left the meeting knowing that Huawei and a partner were working in Iran.

Her lawyers argue this undercuts US charges that she defrauded the bank by lying about Huawei’s Iran dealings, thus exposing the bank to the risk of breaching US sanctions on Tehran.

Addario and another lawyer for Meng, Scott Fenton, have argued this week that the unreliable and “defective” ROC from the US omitted details about the evidence against Meng. Specifically, they cited a PowerPoint presentation she gave to the HSBC banker that forms the backbone of the fraud charge.

Fenton and Addario said the ROC omitted parts of the PowerPoint presentation in which Meng described Huawei’s business relationship with a partner called Skycom that was working in Iran – the very relationship the US claims she tried to cover up.

Meng told the banker, identified as “HSBC Witness B”, that Skycom was a Huawei partner working to sell telecommunications gear in Iran, and that the relationship was “normal and controllable business cooperation”, her lawyers have said.

On Tuesday, Addario said: “The banker would have left the meeting knowing that Huawei and Skycom were working together in Iran.”

Meng Wanzhou’s extradition hearing goes behind closed doors
19 Aug 2020


Meng’s presentation put the bank “on notice”, and should have been enough for it to take any action it deemed necessary to avoid breaching US sanctions, Fenton argued on Monday.

HSBC could have vetoed transactions it deemed risky, or conducted them outside the US banking system, in a way that would not have triggered any Iran sanctions risk, he said.

Meng’s lawyers also say the ROC by the US was misleading because it claimed only “junior” HSBC employees knew of the true relationship between Huawei and Skycom. The US omitted the actual titles of HSBC staff who were aware of the relationship, including a “senior vice-president” who knew Huawei operated Skycom’s bank account.

“The junior-senior distinction is an invention of the ROC author,” said Addario on Tuesday. This “deliberately misled” readers of the ROC, he said.

In a court filing, Meng’s team had said that “the evidence that the Requesting State relies on as essential to committal [the ROC and SROC] is so unreliable or defective that it should be disregarded”. The extradition case should be thrown out, they contend.

Meng, 48, who is Huawei’s chief financial officer and a daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei, has denied the allegations against her.

Chinese embassy lashes out at Canada over Spavor, Kovrig cases
27 Jun 2020


She was arrested at Vancouver’s airport on December 1, 2018, on a stopover from Hong Kong. Her detention threw China’s relations with the US and Canada into disarray.

Within days, China arrested Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, charging them with espionage; their detention is widely seen in the West as hostage-taking and retaliation for Meng’s arrest.

Meng remains under partial house arrest in Vancouver, living in one of the two homes she owns here. Her extradition proceedings are scheduled to last until next year, but appeals could drag out the process much longer.

The hearing was adjourned until Wednesday.

With the police’s redefinition of media, I am no longer a journalist

• But it’s not just the media being redefined, it is also the Basic Law, liberal studies, and separation of powers as we know it. Hong Kong’s very character is being changed

Michael Chugani

Published: 8:45am, 1 Oct, 2020

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor speaks to the media last February. Are aggressive questions no longer part of media freedom? Lam refused to answer when reporters asked her recently. Photo: Felix Wong

Last Tuesday, I was redefined. It wasn’t my choice. The Hong Kong police did it, a
redefinition backed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung.


To them, I am no longer what I have been all my working life – a journalist who has worked full-time and as a freelancer for many media outlets. I have worked as a freelancer in Hong Kong, London, Washington and Seattle.


I covered Britain’s parliament, the United States Congress, the White House, where I questioned then president Bill Clinton during photo opportunities, interviewed Senator Mitch McConnell, who gave me the exclusive on the US-Hong Kong Policy Act, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, and did a television interview with former president Jimmy Carter – all as a freelancer.

I now freelance for a TV station where I do English and Chinese shows, and for three English and Chinese newspapers, including the Post. But from last Tuesday, the police and the government no longer recognise freelancers as journalists.

The police amended its rule to recognise only those working for media outlets registered with the Government News and Media Information System (GNMIS), and “internationally recognised and reputable” foreign media. I don’t qualify under GNMIS requirements.


Hong Kong journalists protest against police’s new definition of ‘media representative’
All the media outlets I freelance for are registered with GNMIS but use staff reporters for protests and press conferences, which means I can’t represent them. But as a freelancer, I need to cover protests, as I did last year, for a fuller insight for my columns and TV talk show.

The new rule allows me to cover protests from a distance. But I cannot enter police cordons for a close look or ask questions. I could be arrested if I did.

Lam and Cheung have been on my TV show several times. The police commissioner was on the show last year. Does the redefinition mean they aren’t allowed to come even though the government recognises the TV station I freelance for as a media organisation? I don’t know.
Critics say the new definition, which no longer recognises the press passes of the Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association, and student journalists, is another step in strangling the city’s freedoms.

How has Hong Kong lost its freedoms? Let me count the ways
23 Jan 2020

I believe it’s more than that, not because the government has redefined my media freedom. I see a systematic effort to change the very character of Hong Kong as we know it. A
redefined Basic Law allows mainland entities like the central government’s liaison office to
comment on local affairs.

A redefinition of liberal studies is under way. Lam has redefined separation of powers as we know it. The national security law contains vague red lines on free speech. And the police has redefined who a media person is.

I no longer get angry every time Lam insists media freedom is intact. I just turn off the television set. On Sunday, it emerged that RTHK had reopened a probe into loyalist complaints against a reporter who aggressively questioned Lam during last year’s protests. She was ordered to accept a probation extension or quit

.

RTHK assistant programme officer Nabela Qoser. Photo: RTHK

Are aggressive questions no longer part of media freedom? Lam refused to answer when reporters asked her this on Tuesday, 

saying RTHK, as a government department, handles its own issues. Commerce secretary Edward Yau Tang-wah, who oversees RTHK, gave a similar reply.

Let me remind Lam and Yau that they had no problem condemning an RTHK reporter who asked a World Health Organisation official last April if Taiwan should be readmitted as an observer. Both lambasted RTHK for breaching the one-China principle.

Asking a question breaches the one-China principle. Aggressive questioning of the chief executive is apparently out of bounds. Lam and Yau can comment on RTHK’s Taiwan question but not on the renewed probe on aggressive questioning.

The police say its new rule widens rather than tightens freedom for registered media. By insisting media freedom is intact, Lam wants us to
see a horse when it’s a deer. Thankfully, many Hongkongers can tell the difference between a deer and a horse.


Michael Chugani is a Hong Kong journalist and TV show host