Japanese PM apologises to victims of forced sterilisation programme

Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishidi bowed in apology to the victims of forced sterilisation just weeks after Japan’s top court ruled that a defunct eugenics law under which thousands of people were forcibly sterilised between 1948 and 1996 was unconstitutional.

Mr Kishida apologised to the victims on Wednesday and said: “The government, which enforced the law, bears extremely grave responsibility. I am deeply sorry and I offer an apology on behalf of the government.”

He said: “I decided to meet with you today in order to personally express my remorse and apology for the tremendous physical and mental suffering that many people have endured based on the former Eugenic Protection Law.”

People who were forcibly sterilised had filed lawsuits across the country claiming the treatment meted out to them was unconstitutional and sought state compensation.

The Eugenic Protection Law, in place for 48 years until 1996, permitted doctors to sterilise people with mental or intellectual disabilities. The law was brought in to curb the population during food shortages after the Second World War.

According to The Mainichi, the prime minister met with more than 130 plaintiffs, lawyers and supporters and said “it is with deep regret that at least 25,000 people have suffered the grave harm of being sterilised”, under the now-defunct law.

Around 25,000 people were sterilised under the law, including some who consented under pressure.

Former prime minister Shinzo Abe had also issued a public apology to the victims and said the eugenics law had caused “great suffering”.

Meanwhile, Mr Kishida also announced that he had directed authorities to prepare a new compensation plan for survivors, but did not provide any details.

Plaintiffs and their supporters have contended that a previous government compensation offer of 3.2m yen (about £15,700) per person was insufficient.

They achieved a significant victory earlier this month when Japan’s Supreme Court ordered the government to pay 16.5m yen (about £80,000) each to the plaintiffs of several lawsuits and 2.2m yen (about £10,000) to their spouses.

As per a parliamentary report released last year, children as young as nine were among those sterilised under the now-defunct eugenics law in Japan.

Though forced sterilisation was outlawed in 1996, high school textbooks as recently as 1975 stated that Japan’s government was making efforts for the “country’s eugenics to improve and enhance the genetic predisposition of the entire public”.

“I heard the apology directly from the prime minister to the victims, but I think we could have heard it earlier,” Koji Niisato, an attorney for plaintiffs was quoted as saying by NHK.

“Today, I hope that you will listen to the actual conditions of the victims and their real voices and do your utmost to achieve a full resolution for them.”

Suzuki Yumi from Kobe City believed that the meeting was a significant first step towards eliminating discrimination against people with disabilities. However, she noted that many forms of discrimination still persist in Japan.

Kojima Kikuo from Sapporo City shared that Mr Kishida held his hands and acknowledged his hardships. But he was not ready to forgive so soon. He told NHK that what was done to him remains “unforgivable”.

Japan is not the only country to have conducted forced sterilisations.

In 1997, records were uncovered showing Sweden sterilised 60,000 women between 1935 and 1976, some due to physical or mental disabilities, others because they were seen to be “inferior racial types”. The government later passed legislation giving £14,250 in compensation to each of the victims of the programme.

This is not the first time Japan has apologised for its past excesses and wartime actions. Japan apologised for the forced recruitment of “comfort women” during World War II, but it was an apology that did not satisfy South Korea. Then again, it expressed “deep remorse” and a “heartfelt apology” for Japan’s wartime actions, including the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Japan has also apologised to Australian prisoners of war (PoWs) who suffered under Japanese captivity during World War II.

However, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, an Australian historian noted in the East Asia Forum in a 2016 piece titled “The ever-shifting sands of Japanese apologies” that despite acknowledgements and apologies, Japan’s consistency in recognising the full extent of its historical responsibility is questionable.

At least 16 killed in huge fire at China shopping mall

At least 16 people were killed as a massive blaze tore through a shopping centre in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan.

The fire broke out in a 14-storey commercial building in the high-tech zone city of Zigong, located 1,900km from capital Beijing. The city is home to about 2.5 million people.

Firefighters responded to an emergency call shortly after 6pm on Tuesday at the building and pulled around 75 people to safety, state news agency Xinhua reported. The rescue operation continued overnight and ended at 3am (local time).

It was not immediately known what caused the fire or how many people were in the building when the fire broke out but preliminary investigation showed the fire erupted was due to construction operations.

The building houses a department store, offices, restaurants and a movie theater.

Videos showed clouds of thick black smoke coming out of windows from the building’s lower levels and engulfing the entire building as they rose to the sky.

Fire department authorities have reportedly called on the public to “not believe or amplify rumours” about the blaze. China‘s Ministry of Emergency Management has dispatched a team of experts to Sichuan for an investigation.

Fire hazards remain a problem in China, which reported 947 fire fatalities in this year’s first several months ending on 20 May, up 19 per cent from the same period of the previous year, Li Wanfeng, a spokesperson for the National Fire and Rescue Administration, told the Associated Press.

He said the number of fires in public places such as hotels and restaurants rose 40 per cent and that the most common causes were malfunctioning in electrical or gas lines and carelessness.

In January, a fire killed 39 people in a commercial building in the southeastern Chinese province of Jiangxi. It was caused by unauthorized welding in the basement.

Another 15 people were killed in a residential building in the eastern city of Nanjing in February, after an attached parking lot that had electric bikes caught fire.

10 dead as students and police clash over job quota in Bangladesh

India asked its citizens in Bangladesh to avoid local travel as police clashed with anti-reservation protesters amidst a call for a nationwide shutdown following the death of at least 10 people.

Hundreds of people have sustained injuries in the weeks-long protests which turned violent this week following clashes and incidents of arson that led to the death of at least three students among other victims.

People in the South Asian country stayed home on Thursday as few shops and offices opened for business in the capital Dhaka. The call for the national shutdown by students, demanding the abolition of 30 per cent reservation in government jobs, drew limited response.

The Indian embassy, in an advisory to its citizens currently living or visiting Bangladesh, asked them to “avoid local travel and minimise their movement outside their living premises”.

Thousands of students have called on the Sheikh Hasina government to abolish the reservation in government jobs for family members of freedom fighters from the 1971 War of Independence. The quota system also reserves jobs for women, disabled people, and ethnic minority groups.

Four people died in the clashes with police in Dhaka on Thursday as hundreds more suffered injures, according to local reports.

Police fired tear gas to scatter stone-throwing protesters as the students showed no sign of slowing the agitation. Sporadic clashes were reported in several places as demonstrators blocked major highways. Witnesses said the riot police fought pitched battles with protesters in several places in Dhaka.

Law enforcement authorities have used “unlawful force” against students during the ongoing ‘Bangla-Blockade’ protest, rights group Amnesty International said, citing witnesses and video evidence. Abu Sayed, a 25-year-old university student, was found dead with bullet wounds in the north-western city of Rangpur.

Mobile services were halted across most of the country while internet services were cut for the first time since 2021, according to cybersecurity company Surfshark. The last time Bangladesh witnessed internet restrictions were during the protests over Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the neighbouring country.

The US embassy in Dhaka said it would close on Thursday and advised its citizens to avoid demonstrations and large gatherings.

A US State Department spokesperson earlier this week condemned the violence against peaceful protesters. “The freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are essential building blocks of any thriving democracy … Our thoughts are with those who have been impacted by this violence,” Mathew Miller said.

On Wednesday the protests led to traffic halts on a major road as police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters, who set fire to a toll booth, blocked streets and detonated explosives, Somoy TV reported.

The protesters announced they would enforce “a complete shutdown” across the country on Thursday in response to security officials’ continued attacks on the campus demonstrators. The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said that it would do what it could to make the shutdown a success.

The Bangladesh government on Tuesday shut all public and private universities indefinitely and sent riot police and the Border Guard paramilitary force to university campuses to keep order.

Ms Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the man who led Bangladesh to independence. She has so far refused the protesters’ demands but promised her government would set up a judicial panel to investigate the deaths after police fired bullets and tear gas to scatter protesters.

Her law minister, Anisul Huq, said the government was willing to talk to the protesters “whenever they want to sit in the discussion, it will happen”.

The protests are the first major challenge to Ms Hasina since she secured a fourth consecutive term early this year in an election boycotted by the opposition parties.

The quota system was suspended in 2018, ending similar protests against it. However, a High Court last month asked for the 30 per cent quota for descendants of freedom fighters to be restored.

The Supreme Court last week stayed the High Court’s order for four weeks and the country’s chief justice asked the student protesters to return to their classes.

“Bangladeshi authorities must fully respect people’s right to freedom of peaceful assembly in line with its commitments under international law and its own Constitution and protect peaceful protesters from further harm,” said Taqbir Huda, regional researcher for South Asia at Amnesty International.

Cambodia breeding programme marks comeback of endangered crocodile

At least 60 baby crocodiles of the rare Siamese species were born in Cambodia marking a hatching record for the endangered species in this century.

The crocodile eggs successfully hatched in Cambodia’s Cardamom National Park, conservationists said, adding that the record birth marked a “real sign of hope”.

Cambodia has been running conservationist programmes, like breeding the crocodiles captively and then releasing them in the wild, for two decades to save the species from extinction.

The Siamese crocodile is one of the world’s rarest crocodiles, largely due to decades of hunting and habitat loss. They are categorised as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List – an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological species.

The birth of 60 new crocodiles gives a “massive boost” for the survival prospects of the species, conservation group Flora and Fauna said in a statement.

Characterised by its olive-green colour and distinct bony crest at the back of its head, these crocodiles can grow up to nearly 10ft in length.

Once widespread throughout Southeast Asia, they have disappeared from 99 per cent of its former range. These freshwater reptiles have faced decades of hunting and habitat loss, leading to their classification as a critically endangered species.

Now only 400 crocodiles are estimated to be left, mostly in Cambodia.

Conservationists have been engaging with the local Indigenous communities to protect the species and help them thrive. Locals patrol the regions where the new crocodiles are released.

“The local Indigenous People revere this reptile, and it is taboo to kill or hurt one,” Flora and Fauna said in a statement.

Community-led monitoring and anti-poaching activities are helping to protect key breeding sites, the group said, adding that its a collaborative effort with the Cambodian government to bolster the surviving wild crocodile population through a conservation-breeding and reintroduction programme.

Since 2012, the programme has successfully released a total of 196 captive-bred Siamese crocodiles in safe areas and suitable habitats in the Cardamom Mountains.

Tourists in hospital after two bus crashes on same road in New Zealand

Two buses carrying Chinese tourists veered off the same stretch of road in perilous weather conditions on New Zealand’s South Island on Thursday, with 15 passengers taken to hospital, two of them seriously hurt.

The buses were traveling in the same direction on a stretch of highway popular with tourists when they slid from the road and overturned, at about the same time and only 100 meters (yards) apart, New Zealand’s police said. Temperatures in the area were freezing and others driving on the highway reported heavy fog and black ice on the road at the time.

Their cause was not known, New Zealand officials said. A spokesperson would not confirm the nationality of those on board, but a post by the Chinese consulate in Christchurch on the social media platform WeChat said the buses were carrying Chinese tourists.

The local ambulance service said 15 people were taken to hospital, two by helicopter in a serious condition. Eight of those in hospital were moderately hurt and five had minor injuries. Officials did not say how many others were treated at the scene or how many people were on the buses.

Grace Duggin, an Australian tourist, was traveling in a car behind one of the vehicles and saw it veer off the road, rolling multiple times before landing in a field. Conditions before the crash were made treacherous by slippery black ice, she said, which regularly closes the South Island’s tourist highways in winter.

A passenger pulled bloodied passengers out through a hatch in the roof of the bus, Duggin said.

“It was mostly the little kids who had severe head lacerations,” she said. “All the windows were completely smashed out on both sides and the windscreen, so obviously there’s been a lot of glass injuries.”

Duggin said the other bus appeared to have veered off the road at the same time, a short distance further along the highway on the same side of the road.

Neither bus appeared to have been involved in the other’s crash, she said. The two vehicles appeared identical, though no logo or company name was visible on either.

The country’s transport agency had earlier issued a warning about wintry conditions on the road, State Highway 8. The stretch where Thursday’s crash happened — between the township of Lake Tekapo and the town of Twizel — had been closed days earlier after another crash on a snowy, icy morning.

Like many of the South Island’s tourist highways, the road traverses the pristine mountain and lakefront vistas that draw visitors to New Zealand — but can be dangerous in the Southern Hemisphere winter, especially to travelers unused to winding, slippery roads. Tourists and locals have died on the same stretch before; in April, four were killed — including two Malaysian students studying in New Zealand — in a three-car crash.

In 2019, an American tourist pleaded guilty to driving charges after he drifted onto the wrong side of the road, hitting another car and killing a man who was visiting from Australia.

Elsewhere in the country, tourist buses have plunged from New Zealand’s highways — which outside of the main cities are often winding, narrow or mountainous — in deadly crashes before. In one of the worst episodes, a bus flipped in rainy conditions north of Rotorua, on the North Island, in 2019 killing five tourists from China.

In 2008, eight tourists and their driver were killed when their bus hit a logging truck.

Americans being held by Taliban to swap for Guantanamo Bay prisoners

Do not travel to Afghanistan due to the risk of violence, detention or kidnapping. That is the advice from the American government to its citizens considering visiting the central Asian country, ruled by the Taliban since they seized Kabul in August 2021.

Few Americans have gone against the advice but last week the US State Department confirmed that two men who did travel to Afghanistan and one who was already there have been arrested by the Taliban on seemingly spurious charges.

A State Department spokesperson identified them as Ryan Corbett, George Glezmann and Mahmood Habibi.

The Taliban have admitted to detaining only two of the men, Mr Corbett and Mr Glezmann. “Both American nationals violated the country’s law and discussion has been held with the US officials in this regard,” the Taliban said on Sunday.

They are holding them, a Taliban spokesperson suggested, to exchange for Afghans imprisoned by the Americans in Guantanamo Bay.

“We also have prisoners in America, prisoners in Guantanamo,” Zabiullah Mujahid said earlier this month. “We should free our prisoners in exchange for them.”

The military jail near Cuba, notorious for the humiliating and allegedly abusive treatment of its prisoners, was set up by the George W Bush administration after 9/11 and once held over 200 Afghans, most without charge or legal recourse to challenge their detention. According a Voice of America report earlier this year only one Afghan national remains detained there.

Here’s what we know about the three Americans held by the Taliban.

Ryan Corbett

Mr Corbett from New York started an enterprise called “Bloom Afghanistan” in 2017 to boost the country’s private sector by providing business consulting services, microfinance lending and evaluation of international development projects. He wanted to help Afghans start their own businesses.

But after the Taliban drove out Western troops and captured Kabul, he left the country with his pregnant wife and children.

He returned, apparently to train the Bloom Afghanistan staff, only to be detained in August 2022 despite having a valid visa. The State Department said last year that he was wrongfully detained.

The Taliban haven’t stated a reason for Mr Corbett’s detention but have allowed him to make eight “desperate and difficult” calls to his wife in the past 22 months, his lawyer Ryan Fayhee told The Independent.

“On top of being beaten severely, he’s deprived of food, nutrients, sunlight and any human interaction. We are told that he has experienced fainting spells and lost significant weight in the Taliban’s custody,” the lawyer said, claiming that Mr Corbett was being held in a small basement cell.

The Taliban have not allowed consular access to Mr Corbett. The Independent previously reported that they do not provide adequate medical assistance to prisoners they call “Western collaborators” who are injured during torture.

“This is what we call hostage diplomacy because on one hand they want to join the world community but then reject the established norm of consular services that allow another country’s representatives to go in and see after the care and safety of individual prisoners,” Mr Fayhee said.

His wife, Anna Corbett, told The Independent that “it is a race against time to bring Ryan home before it is too late given ongoing reports of his deteriorating health”. She has called on US president Joe Biden “to undertake the difficult work it will take to free Ryan”.

Mr Fayhee said the Taliban are making a mistake thinking they can get their people out of Guantanamo by “victimising an innocent man and family”.

“This is not a step forward but backward and the Taliban will not gain anything from this bargain,” he said.

The US government, the lawyer pointed out, has substantial leverage over what the Taliban want. “The Taliban want legitimation as the sovereign authority in Afghanistan, they want to be part of the world community, they want sanctions to be lifted and they want to be taken seriously. Quite like Russia and quite like Iran, the choice is to recognise the rule of law and to have a legitimate criminal justice system,” he said.

“But the Taliban choose not to be a part of the international community on their own by detaining and torturing foreign citizens like Ryan Corbett in basement cells without offering any transparency.”

George Glezmann

Mr Glezmann, 65, travelled to Afghanistan in December 2022 to explore its culture and artefacts. He was on a five-day vacation from his work as an airline mechanic for Delta Airlines in Atlanta.

He has reportedly spent the past 18 months in a small underground cell with other detainees, with intermittent periods of solitary confinement, and his health is declining.

His ordeal was highlighted when the US Congress passed a resolution seeking his release last Tuesday. “During his detention, George Glezmann has had only seven phone calls totaling 54 minutes with his family and limited in-person visits with representatives of Qatar, the protecting power of the United States in Afghanistan,” the resolution read, adding that he suffers from several medical conditions like facial tumours, hypertension, and severe malnutrition.

The Taliban have held Mr Glezmann “without charging him with a crime or granting him due process in any judicial proceedings”, the resolution said.

His family fears he may not survive the detention.

The US Secretary of State said last October that Mr Glezmann was wrongfully detained.

His wife has urged the Taliban to release him on humanitarian grounds. He was a simple tourist travelling to Afghanistan as part of his plan to visit 100 countries, Aleksandra Glezmann has said.

Mahmood Habibi

Mr Habibi seemingly paid the price for the American strike that killed Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri in Afghanistan on 31 July 2022.

The Taliban likely assumed Mr Habibi’s employer, the US Federal Aviation Administration, was involved in the strike, but did not charge the civil aviation expert with a crime.

His detention was flagged in March by the US Congress in a resolution seeking his release. Mr Habibi was born in Afghanistan but has US citizenship.

He was arrested on 10 August 2022 after the Taliban searched his home and took away his laptop and paperwork.

Mr Habibi’s wife, with whom he has a young daughter, has had no contact with him since he was taken away.

He is reportedly held by the General Directorate of Intelligence but the Taliban have denied having him in custody, the Congress resolution noted.

“He could live anywhere but he preferred to live there, to work for his country and work for the future of Afghanistan,” his sister Amna Nawaz told PBS.

American lawmakers have urged the Biden administration to ask the “Taliban to respect Mahmood Habibi’s human rights and provide full, unfettered, and consistent health and safety visits to Mahmood Habibi while in detention”.

China plans to harness energy from hurricanes using giant turbines

A Chinese firm has launched the world’s largest wind turbines that can harness energy even during strong Category 5 hurricanes.

The massive Ocean X platform developed by MingYang Smart Energy consists of two wind turbines in a V-shaped arrangement providing a combined power output of over 16MW.

Launched in the southern Chinese port city of Guangzhou, the turbine platform can produce 54,000MWh of energy annually, enough to power 30,000 Chinese households each year, the company said in a LinkedIn post.

The firm first tested a smaller 1:10-scale prototype in 2020, and completed the installation of the OceanX platform at its original size in April, this year.

It consists of counter-rotating rotors each with giant turbine blades with diametres of 182m (597ft), sitting atop a V-shaped structure.

This structure is held together by high-tension cables and mounted on a Y-shaped floating platform to ensure maximum stability.

The mega platform, built with ultra-high-performance concrete, weighs about 16,500 tonnes and can operate in waters deeper than 35m (115ft), the company said.

MingYang says the turbine platform can endure and generate power even during Category 5 hurricane conditions, withstanding wind speeds up to 260 kmph (161 mph) and waves as high as 30m (98ft).

“Robust typhoon resistance, withstands up to 79.8mps winds,” the company says in its website.

These types of hurricanes can cause catastrophic damage, leveling most framed houses, trees, and power poles when they cross residential areas.

Typical wind turbines may struggle under such rough conditions, causing power fluctuations and premature wear down of their power generator’s components.

The company calls its new design “an adaptive system that ensures stability and safety even in extreme typhoon conditions,” which it hopes would bring “a new dawn in marine energy”.

This may be crucial for power generation in the coastal parts of China like Guangzhou which are regularly hit by strong typhoons, especially in the era of climate change-fuelled storms.

It also comes as a shot in the arm in China’s goal is to supply a third of its national power consumption via renewable sources by 2025.

By powering thousands of households with green energy, the wind turbine platform may also help reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 56,000 tonnes.

Cyanide found on teacups in Grand Hyatt hotel where six tourists died

Police in Thailand have found traces of cyanide on teacups in a room where six foreign nationals were found dead in a luxury hotel in central Bangkok on Tuesday.

The bodies of at least two Vietnamese-Americans and four Vietnamese nationals were found in the Grand Hyatt Erawan Bangkok, police said.

America’s FBI has joined the Thai police in investigating the deaths at the hotel, which is very popular with visiting tourists.

The victims, three men and three women, were aged between 37 and 56, according to Noppasin Punsawat, Bangkok’s deputy police chief.

Forensics officials said on Wednesday that traces of cyanide were found on cups and vacuum flasks in the suite where the bodies were discovered.

Tests are still being conducted on the victims and a formal cause of death has not been announced. But officials at the Chulalongkorn Hospital, to which the bodies were brought, said an autopsy also found traces of cyanide.

The bodies showed traces of the rapid-acting chemical and had purple lips, indicating a lack of oxygen, Chulalongkorn Hospital’s Kornkiat Vongpaisarnsin told reporters.

The Thai government said prime minister Srettha Thavisin has ordered all agencies involved to take urgent action, as the country seeks to avoid any further impact on the wider tourism industry. It said the Vietnamese and the American embassies had been contacted over the deaths.

The bodies were discovered by hotel staff after the group missed their check-out time, and police were called at around 5.30pm on Tuesday.

The six had last been seen alive when food was delivered to the room on Monday afternoon. The hotel staff said they saw one woman who received the food, and security footage showed the rest arriving one by one to the room shortly after.

Hotel staff found that food ordered from the previous day was left untouched, with some servings of fried rice still under plastic wrap. On a nearby table, several used teacups were found next to two vacuum flasks.

It has been reported that two of the victims were a husband and wife who had invested the equivalent of £213,267 with two of the other victims to build a hospital in Japan. It has been speculated that the group might have been meeting to settle the matter.

The couple reportedly suspected Vietnamese-American national Sherine Chong of cheating them due to a lack of progress in the project and decided to fix their differences in Thailand.

“The case likely stems from a debt problem. There are no other possibilities. The culprit is among the six because they were the only people who entered the room. There were no others,” police major-general Theeradej Thumsuthee told reporters.

Police said they suspect Chong may have poisoned the others with a drink brought in a flask that did not belong to the hotel.

A seventh person whose name was part of the hotel booking was identified by police as a sibling of one of the six victims, authorities said. Police say they have established that the seventh person had no involvement in the deaths.

Thai authorities have ruled out the possibility of a mass suicide as some of the victims had arranged future details of their trip, such as guides and drivers. The bodies were not grouped in the same place – some were in the bedroom, some in the living room – suggesting that they did not knowingly consume poison and wait for their death together, said Trairong Piwpan, the chief of police.

He said two of those who died appeared to have been trying to reach for the door but appear to have collapsed before they could do so.

The prime minister said the incident was not “an act of terrorism or a breach in security”, adding that “everything is fine”.

The Grand Hyatt Erawan has more 350 rooms and is located in a popular tourist district known for luxury shopping and restaurants.

More than 28 million foreign tourists visited Thailand last year, spending £25.94bn in the country, where other key sectors of the economy have slowed down since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Thai government expects 35 million foreign arrivals this year, on the back of longer visa stay periods and visa waivers being extended to more nationalities.

The tourism sector was shaken last October by a shooting at a luxury shopping mall, close to the Hyatt, in which two foreigners were killed, prompting government measures to improve confidence.