Cot Trueng, Indonesia: Fishermen in western Indonesia rescued 121 Rohingya who had sailed from Myanmar, an official said yesterday, with an asylum seeker claiming they had been shot at in Thai waters. The Rohingya were found drifting around 25km (15 miles) from the coastal village of Cot Trueng, on the northernmost tip of Sumatra island in Aceh province, village chief Mukhtar Samsyah said. “Their boat ran out of petrol as they tried to sail to Thailand,” he said. Myanmar views its roughly 800,000 Rohingya inhabitants as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, denying them citizenship.
HANOI: A sign at a Beijing restaurant barring citizens of nations involved in maritime disputes with China — along with dogs — has triggered a wave of online outrage among Vietnamese and Filipinos. Photographs of the controversial sign at the Beijing Snacks near the Forbidden City, a popular tourist spot, have gone viral in Vietnamese-language forums and featured heavily in Philippine newspapers and websites yesterday. Vietnam’s state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper said the sign had “ignited online fury” and claimed many Vietnamese feel this is another example of Chinese “extreme nationalism that deserves to be condemned”.Filipinos also greeted the photo with a mixture of fury and amusement.
GENEVA: Sri Lanka accused UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay yesterday of being biased against it for criticising alleged killings of former Tamil Tiger independence fighters and political dissenters and journalists. In a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, The official, presidential envoy on human rights Mahinda Samarasinghe also asserted that Western countries critical of the country’s record had fallen prey to lies spread by former members of the Tamil Tiger movement. He said Pillay lacked “objectivity and impartiality” in reports to the council and her comments on Sri Lanka were based on “unsubstantiated evidence.”
TAIPEI: More than 140 Nobel laureates led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged China yesterday to release Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, a rights activist jailed for subversion since 2009. In a letter also signed by 400,000 people from more than 130 countries, the laureates called on China’s president-in-waiting Xi Jinping to release Liu and his wife Liu Xia, who has not been charged but is being held under house arrest. The petition was being submitted to the Chinese embassies and diplomatic missions in Hong Kong, New York, Paris, Berlin and London.
SEOUL: A hat which belonged to South Korea’s most revered monarch King Sejong has been recovered more than 500 years after it was looted by Japanese invaders, a senior scholar said yesterday. Documents were found stitched inside the hat carrying explanations of King Sejong’s greatest legacy — the Hangeul alphabet. Sejong the Great ruled from 1418-1450 and introduced the Hangeul phonetic alphabet that replaced classical Chinese characters. Hangeul remains the official script of both South and North Korea.
Agencies
