Six In The Morning Sunday December 28

ASIA PACIFIC

In Limbo, a City in China Faces Life After Graft

By IAN JOHNSON

LÜLIANG, China — For 10 fat years, this mountainous corner of central China was synonymous with the nation’s energy-hungry economic takeoff. Its rich deposits of coal fueled the most frenetic era of the Chinese boom, turning owners of small mines into millionaires and dirty towns into gleaming cities.

Now, Lüliang is at the center of one of the most sweeping political and economic purges in recent Chinese history. As President Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption enters its second year, the Communist Party authorities have made an example of this district of 3.7 million, taking down much of its political and business elite in a flurry of headline-grabbing arrests.

Seven of the 13 party bosses who run Shanxi Province, where Lüliang is located, have been stripped of power or thrown in jail, and party propaganda outlets have trumpeted the crackdown in the region as proof that Mr. Xi is serious about rooting out corruption.

PATRICK COCKBURN
Sunday 28 December 2014

War with Isis: The West needs more than a White Knight

World View: Despite billions spent on weapons, the US has not been able to counter the militants' gruesome tactics

There is a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass in which Alice meets the White Knight who is wearing full armour and riding a horse off which he keeps falling. Alice expresses curiosity about why he has placed spiked metal anklets on his horse's legs just above the hoofs. "To guard against the bites of sharks," he explains, and proudly shows her other ingenious devices attached to himself and his horse.

Alice notices that the knight has a mouse trap fastened to his saddle. "I was wondering what the mouse trap was for," says Alice. "It isn't very likely there would be any mice on the horse's back." "Not very likely, perhaps," says the Knight, "but if they do come, I don't choose to have them running all about." It's as well "to be provided for everything", adds the Knight. As he explains his plans for countering these supposed dangers, he continues to tumble off his horse.

Secret dead of Russia's undeclared war

The Kremlin’s denial that Russian soldiers are fighting in Ukraine has left families of dead servicemen searching for truth and justice. 

By Tom Parfitt, Kozmodemyansk

Anton Tumanov gave up his life for his country - but his country won’t say where, and it won’t say how.

His mother knows. She knows that Mr Tumanov, a 20 year-old junior sergeant in the Russian army, was killed in eastern Ukraine, torn apart in a rocket attack on August 13.

Yelena Tumanova, 41, learned these bare facts about her son’s death from one of his comrades, who saw him get hit and scooped up his body.

“What I don’t understand is what he died for,” she says. “Why couldn’t we let people in Ukraine sort things out for themselves? And seeing as our powers sent Anton there, why can’t they admit it and tell us exactly what happened to him.”

After tsunami recovery, Sharia law now defines Aceh province

In 2004, the Indonesian province of Aceh was a civil war zone. Then came the tsunami. Today the region is at peace, but Aceh has established an Islamist government under the eyes of the Jakarta government.

There are hardly any traces left of the biggest natural disaster in Aceh's history. Several of the ruined villages on the coast have been rebuilt. Modern residential blocks, new mosques, even freshly asphalted roads now cover the area. The markets are full again, the fishermen venture out to sea, and people work in the factories - as if the wave had never come. The wave that, on December 26, 2004, ended the lives of 160,000 people in Aceh alone.

Around $7 billion (5.7 billion euros) in reconstruction aid were sent to the utterly destroyed province from around the world. "Afterwards," explains Felix Heiduk, Indonesia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), "there was a reconstruction the likes of which had hardly ever been seen before in the world. If you compare the Aceh of today with the Aceh of before the tsunami, there has been a clear modernization boost in the past few years."

Modern houses, backward legal system

That's not the case, however, for human rights in the province.

Experts doubt North Korea was behind the big Sony hack

By Brian Todd and Ben Brumfield, CNN

Sure, North Korea's government despises the movie "The Interview."

But when its propagandists say it did not hack Sony Pictures before the original release date of the flick that satirizes dictator Kim Jong-un, they might just be telling the truth.

Some U.S. cyber experts say the evidence the FBI has presented to attempt to incriminate hackers working for the communist regime is not enough to pin the blame on Pyongyang.

"It's clear to us, based on both forensic and other evidence we've collected, that unequivocally they are not responsible for orchestrating or initiating the attack on Sony," said Sam Glines, who runs the cybersecurity company Norse.

Myanmar city holds first poll in 60 years

Critics say municipal election in country's biggest city, Yangon, is flawed, with only one vote per household allowed. Last updated: 28 Dec 2014 03:26

Myanmar's biggest city has gone to the polls for the first municipal elections in six decades but under severe voting restrictions and limited power of the councillors being elected.

Elections in Yangon city on Saturday were closely watched as a test of the country's democratic credentials ahead of a landmark nationwide poll scheduled for November next year.

For many, the ballot for the Yangon City Development Committee was the first chance to vote under the country’s quasi-civilian government, which replaced outright military rule in 2011.

It was also a rare opportunity to have a say over the future of the country's commercial hub, where residents complain about runaway construction and soaring rents, worsening traffic, poor sanitation and weak pollution control.